Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's the long holiday weekend (and A's birthday on Tuesday so it's especially longer than usual), so we are doing All Sort of Fun Things! We went walking in the Presidio today, we'll be going to the Disney Family Museum tomorrow (they have a really neat exhibition going on regarding their animation work during WWII), Monday we may finally go to Grandview Park in the Sunset -- how long have we lived on this side of town and not gone there..??? -- and Tuesday we go to the De Young Museum AND go see Shang-Chi at Stonestown! :)

Which means I've been sliding some of my normal weekend things here and there throughout the day today. Just finished the laundry, and now working on my Shutterstock Project in which I share some of my most recent pictures on my Dropbox so I can upload to the site both here and on my laptop. I was hoping to get some uploads done today, but I think this is a good start at any rate. I updated all my blogs, and I'll sneak even sneak in my Daily Doodle later on. I've been tempted to get some words done today too, but if I don't get to it I'm okay with that.

Speaking daily words, I've said over at Welcome to Bridgetown that I've Ramped Things Up. I am now working on THREE novel projects, averaging about 800 or so words a day for each (I could easily do more but I'm easing myself into that instead), plus trying to hit other daily goals such as the aforementioned daily drawing -- I'm using last year's Inktober prompts for that -- as well as journal entries, poetry and other things that pop up. And very soon this will also include finding temporary outlets that could make us some pocket change.

So how am I doing this, you ask? Well, funny thing -- apparently when I close down social media browsers and other distractions for a few hours, I get a lot done! Yes, I have in fact implemented a long-game plan or two here! Seriously, as soon as they're cleared away, I get myself geared up to be creative and just run with it as far as I can. Some days I get a lot of words down, other days I don't, but as long as I'm dedicating time and brain space to it, I'm getting it done to my liking. My idea is that if I'm going to finally dive headlong into this writing career full-time, I'm gonna have to commit to it to the level that I know I can work at to achieve as much as I can.

I'm extremely curious to see where this leads me...!

I really should not feel this exhausted by an afternoon of concertgoing.

Granted, this concertgoing includes quite a lot of walking, eating really bad things (including a cheeseburger with bacon utilizing two full glazed donuts as a bun) (yes I have photo proof) (YES IT WAS TASTY), constantly breathing in secondhand pot smoke and vaping vapors, and walking home afterwards. I'm not old, really I'm not. I'm just...out of shape. Yeah, that's it!

Various pictures were taken yesterday for Day 1 of Outside Lands (which I will be posting to Walk in Silence soon enough). In record time, I was told by OL Staff that my nicer camera was not permitted as I did not have a press pass, even though it's a) a personal camera, and b) has a detachable lens no bigger than 2 inches (okay, I measured it and it's 2 inches plus 1/8 of an inch, but let's not be pedantic asshats, shall we?) and was told to put it away. This kind of put a damper on my mood for the rest of the day, as I was really looking forward to taking good pictures. I don't want to be that photographer who flouts rules until caught. I went for the music first and foremost, so I was happy enough to take pictures with my phone yesterday (and got some really good shots!), and will be taking my older point-and-click today and tomorrow.

And yes, even despite being on my feet all day, eating bad food and grooving to good tunage, I still found time to work on the ADoS edit when I got home. There's a good chance that's the source of my exhaustion, but it's totally worth it.

OH! And speaking of A Division of Souls...I can't tell you how giddy I get looking at this page, making it official: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565782

:D

I'm not going to post a picture of the whiteboard this time out, because for the most part it remains the same:

Mon-Fri: Revision of Bridgetown Trilogy
Wed: Photo post
Sat: Art, Music
Sun: Walk in Silence, Music

The whiteboard will most likely change as necessary, depending on what major project I'll be working on and anything new that comes up.

What's important here is the goals:

Revision of the Bridgetown Trilogy, and Related Projects.
I'm a few chapters short of finishing the first revision run-through of The Persistence of Memories, and will be picking up The Process of Belief soon after. As time permits (and if, by chance, I get a bite from Angry Robot or an agent or someone), I will also be tidying up A Division of Souls. This trilogy remains my main project for the time being.

I will also be updating the Welcome to Bridgetown blog with new related posts as well. I have a bunch of fun ideas for that one.

I have also previously commented on wanting to write further stories in this universe. I have a few vague ideas and a few stronger ones, and plan on working on a few of those as well as time permits.

That said...the related goal here is to get the Mendaihu Universe stories out into the wild this year.

Can't Find My Way Home.
I've decided that this one may end up being my next project unrelated to the above. I recently read through the outline I'd worked on a few years previous, and a lot of it still stands up well. The few chapters I worked on in the past a little less so, but it's nothing a little revision can't help. It's also a story that's not nearly as intensive in worldbuilding as the above, so there's not as much prewriting work to do.

Another idea I'd had for this novel was to post it online in installments. It's supposed to be read that way anyway--its episodic nature was inspired by the various anime series I've watched over the years, with a finite set of chapters (twenty-four), many of them with self-contained minor storylines with the overall plot showing up tangentially. I'm seeing this novel more as an experiment more than as a publishable novel (although I'd be happy with that as the end result), so I'm totally fine with self-publishing this online. As soon as I've come up with a bit of a backlog and a set schedule, I will of course let everyone know of its debut.

The YA Novels (Angela Death and The Children of Dun Corran).
These two may be a little further out on the schedule, maybe third or fourth quarter, but I'd like to at least work on outlines. I recently read through the outtakes and notes on these as well, and found them strong, if lacking in extension at this time. If anything, I believe I'd started these too early--I wasn't ready to write them just yet. I'd like to think I'm at the point where I may be able to try them out now.

Journaling, Poetry, Music, Photography and Art.
After much deliberation, I've reevaluated these five things in my life--many of them pastimes that I've taken part in for decades now, but never expanded on professionally. I've come to the conclusion that these will most likely remain personal endeavors, things for me to work on in spare moments, avenues to let off steam or play around without trying to make them professional. Over the last few years I found that the onus of trying to create everything to publication was actually inhibiting me rather than giving me a personal creative outlet, and that was exactly why I'd had such a dry spell. For 2014, I plan on using these five as a personal and emotional outlet rather than a professional one, as that is precisely what they were back in the day, and should probably remain. Most if not all of what comes out of this will most likely remain offline.

That said, if I do in fact create something I feel is worth sharing, I will of course post it. And I will of course show up from time to time on LJ and elsewhere when time and mood allows!

Walk in Silence, the book and the blog.
As said previously, this one fell by the wayside due to other more important deadlines. I am hoping to pick this up again on the weekends. This project has changed quite a number of times over the last few years, going from a book to a blog and back again, and I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it, but for now I'm going to focus primarily on the blog. The reason for this is that much of what I'm going to be posting will most likely end up in the book anyway, if it comes to fruition. I do not have a set deadline for this book at this time, given my other self-imposed deadlines, so this one will most likely meander here and there until next year.

Other.
So yes...I have given myself a shit-ton of homework for the year, all due by December 31. And most of this will be worked on in tandem with everything else in my life. I'll be squeezing these things in between the cracks of my day; a slow day at work, at the gym, on vacation, what have you. Like I said in my previous post, I was able to handle my schedule last year, so I think I should be able to ramp it up a bit this year. I'm not sure if I've given any room for anything else to work on, but I know that I'll be working on all this on a day-to-day basis, and if time frees up for me to do something new, I will by all means embrace it.


Here's to an insanely busy 2014. Despite the workload, I'm looking forward to it.

The whiteboard calendar makes a return after a half-year hiatus with a spankin' new writing schedule for 2013. I played around with this one this morning with the aim of the year being both fun and creative, as well as productive.

The first thing you probably noticed in the picture is how frequent the acronym ADOS pops up--it's there on every weekday. The main focus and goal this year is to finish this revision of A Division of Souls and prep it for submission sometime in Q3, thus most of my writing time will be dedicated to that. Once that goal is achieved, that acronym will change to TPOM (The Persistence of Memories, aka Book 2). I purposely didn't put it on the weekends in order to keep time available for other things. That's not to say I won't use the occasional weekend to work on it, just that it's not scheduled.

We also have the return of poetry and photography to the schedule. These were placed in the middle of the week, as they don't take up too much time and are a good distraction to the regular work schedule. The photography will show up on the Tumblr site, but the poetry will most likely stay offline, at least for now.

We also have Walk in Silence popping up on Sundays--this is the same as previous, as that worked out really well for me. This way I can spend a good long afternoon/evening working on it while listening to music. I may of course work on it during the week if time permits.

You may also notice that Saturday has "Art", and both weekend days say "Music." I'm really looking forward to this, actually. Saturdays I'll dedicate a bit of time to learning how to master my new Wacom tablet, not to mention getting back into the groove of drawing. I also want to spend a bit of time practicing my music. It's high time to pick up the guitars again, not to mention learn how to play with my new synth. I put these both on the weekend because I want to have fun! These two activities are things I've always loved doing, yet I never seem to give myself any time for them.


I also mapped out some of my goals and intentions this year, which aren't on the whiteboard but are on my mind nonetheless. There's a lot of personal and creative things going on in 2013 that I'm looking forward to. This year's mantra is "positivity"--time to focus on the things in my life that bring me peace rather than things that set my blood boiling and/or waste my time. This means creativity, community, learning, and forward motion. It might be a bit busy this year, but as said, the main aim is to have fun, be creative, and be productive.

I'm definitely looking forward to all of it.