Category: On My Writings

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My Works On My Writings Reading

2022 – A Year in Review

INTRODUCTION

It’s hard to believe that another year has already gone by. I could swear it was 2020 yesterday, but it’s been two years since then. That’s crazy to think about.

As I began reflecting on the year to get ready for this post, I started to get rather annoyed at myself. I hadn’t used another year productively. I didn’t get nearly enough done. I should’ve done more. When I started to compile the statistics for my writing, I began to realize that I had a rather productive year. I just wasn’t consistent for the whole thing.

PART ONE: The Year Reviewed

2022 started with me being so close to finishing my first book. So naturally, I didn’t write at all in January. February was a bit more productive on the book, but not by much. In March, I finally finished writing book one of The Inner Ring Saga. That book had taken years to finish writing a draft, and it was one of the most satisfying feelings of my life to finish writing it. I had spent ages with the characters getting to know them. Finishing a chapter in their lives was a huge accomplishment for me. Is it the most well-written rough draft in the history of writing? Nope. I would say it’s pretty close to garbage. Literal garbage. It’s going to take a lot of editing and work to get to the point where anyone, even Beta readers, can read it. A lot of work.

I took a break from writing for about a month starting the first round of edits afterward. During the break, I ended up toying around with an idea I had rolling around in my head for a while. This led to me doing a bit of an outline for the book that I’m currently working on, The Branded Blade. This book began to excite me more and more, and while I knew I should jump into editing The Inner Ring Saga book one, I decided not to do that and rather lean into my excitement and start writing The Branded Blade. I must say the experience of writing that book has topped that of The Inner Ring Saga book one. I think it’s because the story is told from one perspective instead of having a lot of viewpoints spread out throughout the book. (The first book in The Inner Ring Saga has eight character viewpoint perspectives if I remember right. When I go back to edit it, I’m adding in a couple of more characters and rearranging some structure so it’s going to end up being even more than that.) The Branded Blade forced me to learn how to write characters in a better way. I had to maintain focus on one character and understand that character. It’s been a challenge, and there definitely will be a lot of editing to come, but it’s something new, and that’s exciting. This year I wrote just over 50,000 words in The Branded Blade, putting me at around the halfway point. Maybe even a little bit further than that.

Another surprising thing that’s happened this past year has been my discovery of poetry. I’ve known what poetry is for a while. English classes make you well aware of it. But, I had always hated poetry because of the English classes I took in high school. In February, I had a bit of a change of heart. I had an idea, and in the spur of the moment, I wrote it down. There wasn’t a great way to write this idea in short story form, and it wasn’t good enough for a script or novel. It was just an idea, nothing with characters or plot. It was just a thought. From that thought, I crafted it into Clouds, my first poem. I enjoyed the experience of writing the poem and decided to keep trying my hand at it. Over the last year, I’ve written around fourteen poems. I’ve posted several to my Instagram account, and a couple to the blog.

My fall semester ended up being much busier than I had anticipated, so it led to lessened productivity. I barely wrote for the last few months. I barely read. It was not ideal at all. Part of it was because the classes I was taking were heavy on reading, and that always drains my enjoyment of reading and writing for fun. If I’m having to do something for school, it’s hard for me to turn around and do that same thing for fun. It always has been. Luckily, next semester will be less than that. Instead, it will likely just be a lot of work quantity-wise. So exciting.

2022 Writing Stats Summary

  • Poems Written: 14
  • Finished the rough draft of Book One of The Inner Ring Saga. Around 7,000 words written.
  • Outlined The Branded Blade.
  • Wrote 50,000+ words in The Branded Blade.

PART TWO: 2023 Goals

There are two primary goals that I have for 2023. I’ll touch on each one separately.

The first goal is the one that may or may not happen. It’s going to take a lot of work and pushing myself to learn and grow in writing and other areas. I want to self-publish a poetry collection. I’ve been working on it a decent amount this past year. All of the poems that I’ve written fit into it in some manner or fashion. Right now, I have a total of fourteen. I would want for there to be around forty to fifty in the collection. Enough to make it around a hundred pages long. I would have to learn a lot to self-publish this in the way that I would want. I wouldn’t want to just put it on Amazon as a generic ebook. I’d want to be able to sell physical copies and potentially offer signed copies from my website. I don’t know. All of that is still in the brainstorming section. I need to finish writing the thing first. Plus, I don’t know how interested people would be in it. My poetry isn’t the greatest, it’s just something I enjoy writing.

The second goal I have is to finish The Branded Blade. First, I want to finish the rough draft of the book. It has about 50,000 words left in it if I’m guessing correctly. I’ve also found that as a writer, I’m able to write the last half of the book a lot faster than the first. Hopefully, that remains true for this book. My goal would be to finish writing the rough draft by the beginning of June. I would take the summer and work on the second draft and use the fall to finish the third draft. Then, in 2024, I could send out copies for Beta readers to read and give me feedback, and hopefully, I’d work on getting it published after those edits. It’ll take a lot of work, but I do believe that it’s a reasonable goal to knock out those three drafts by the end of the year. I just need to stay consistent and use my time wisely.

Some of you (or if I’m being honest, no one) may be wondering about Burger Palace. (If you don’t know what Burger Palace is, think The Office but set in a fast food burger chain. It’s an idea that I thought needed to happen, so I began working on scripts and characters for it. The pilot is written, and I have some other episodes plotted, and some cold opens written.) I’m not setting any strict goals for Burger Palace because I’ve decided it’s not something I want to do anything with until I’ve published a book. Not just a poetry collection, an actual book. So, I’m not setting any goals for it. I’m sure I’ll work on it sporadically throughout the year while procrastinating on other writing projects. But, I don’t have anything planned.

2023 Writing Goals Summary:

  • Self-publish my poetry collection, Seasons.
  • Finish writing the rough draft of The Branded Blade.
  • Finish the second draft of The Branded Blade.
  • Finish the third draft of The Branded Blade. (This one’s probably pushing it if I’m honest with myself. But, I’m not.)
  • Outline the sequel to The Branded Blade.

PART THREE: Reading

I’m sure most of you don’t care about what I read this year. But, for my own sake, I’m going to talk about it. It’ll be fun to look back on and see what I enjoyed reading.

This year I barely read half the amount of books that I read in 2021. As of today (December 30th) I’ve read twenty books. Only eleven of those were fiction too. I do have a clear top three of the fiction books that I read this past year, and I’ll briefly touch on each of them. They’re not ranked in any particular order.

The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson. This book is in contention for one of my favorite Sanderson books. It tied together a lot of interesting threads that had been left hanging in the Cosmere, specifically in the Mistborn sector of it. Secret History (the novella released in between Mistborn books) came into play in a major way. There were so many cameos from characters I didn’t expect and was excited to see. One character arc was wrapped up in a way that left me hurt, but satisfied. There were also several hints as to what the bigger conflict in the Cosmere might be. It left me excited, and a little bit impatient. I will say, you might want to pick up the first few Stormlight books before reading this one. Cosmere connections are beginning to be important.

Jade City by Fonda Lee. There have been several books in my life that just refresh me. They refresh my love for reading. My love for storytelling. My love for good stories in general. This book is one of those. I loved the worldbuilding, from the unique magic system to the different clans that fought for power. The character work is also some of the best I’ve read in a while. There were several great plot twists that I did not see coming too. It is a bit of a darker book, not for the faint of heart. Be prepared for that if you decide to read it. One of the top books on my list for next year is Jade War and Jade Legacy. I’ve heard that the series only gets better, and if Jade City is any sign, the next two are going to be a fun ride.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman. If I wasn’t sure about Backman being on the list of my favorite authors, this book solidified it. I fully intended to read both Beartown and Us Against You before The Winners released this past fall, but that didn’t happen. I only got through Beartown. What a book though. It carries such a raw emotion throughout it. Backman’s ability to make you relate to characters of any state of life is something that I hope I can emulate as an author. He writes them in such an honest and real way. This book is no exception. I got invested in the lives of the hockey players and families of Beartown. It wasn’t quite the level that A Man Called Ove was for me, but it was close. Backman is a must-read author (start with A Man Called Ove though).

I’m hoping to get through quite a few more books this year, but it’ll depend a lot on my school schedule. Only two more years and I’m done. Then maybe I can read more.

CONCLUSION

I’m bad at concluding things and wrapping them up. I’ve been told it should be a summary of everything that was talked about and then inspire or add something at the end. I don’t know. What I do know is that for 2023 I have bigger dreams and goals than any previous year. (That might be an overstatement.) Hopefully, there will be stuff that I can share this next year. But if not, oh well. I’m still writing for fun. Nothing’s going to change that.

Until next year,

Titus Watson

December 30th, 2021

P.S.

I’m aware my website needs some major updating. That just takes a lot of time. Time I haven’t had or chosen to dedicate to that. Maybe I’ll do that over this next year. Maybe I won’t. Who knows?

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My Works On My Writings

Red Swords, Integrals, and Longer Days

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When the days get longer, I feel more exhausted. It could also be because school is getting close to being over (I’m in exam week right now) and I’m just sleeping less.

I was thinking to myself earlier this week about how little I really use my website to engage readers and talk more about my writing. I’m always using social media now, and I kind of hate that. I would much rather write a blog post than a social media post. But, a lot fewer people read this. In fact, if you’re reading this, you’re probably one out of three people, and the third person is probably a family member. As a compromise for myself, I have decided to post a new blog post on the first of every month. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The month of April was interesting. I’m not sure if it was a good interesting or a bad interesting.

School is almost over, and at the end of every semester, I start to get less and less motivated to do work in every aspect of life. I begin to feel stretched thin from all of the work I’ve put into school and life and I just want to rest. I typically read and write less too, but that depends on how stretched I am. I’m a little nervous about exams (specifically my Basic Multivariable Calculus class), but I’m doing fairly well grades-wise up to this point so, hopefully, it won’t be too bad.

On top of that dragging feeling that is school, I started writing my second book! Right now I’m titling it The Branded Blade. It’s got this name for a few reasons. The first is that it sounds kinda cool. But, since that’s not a good enough reason, it deals a little bit with some of the character and world-building. The main character, Jamie Franklin, carries a red-bladed sword with a branded mark on the hilt. The fact that it is a red blade is significant to the world. But, if you want to know why you’ll have to read about it if it gets published. (For more details on the book’s plot, you can read my last blog post here.)

This book really has me excited about writing again. The story feels more unique and it’s a lot less complicated than in my last book. I enjoyed writing multiple POVs, but it is a lot more challenging than just working on one. Plus, the stress of making sure to foreshadow and plant the seeds for events to come in the seventh book in a series while working on the first can be a little much at times. Especially for it being my first book. But, that pressure is gone for The Branded Blade.

I’ve learned a lot since the last time I started a book, and the process here feels a lot smoother. For one thing, I’ve been writing more consistently. My goal is to finish the rough draft of this book by late August/early September. Right now I’m at almost 11k words and I started writing it on April 12th. Not doing too bad considering all the school I’ve had to do.

If you’ve made it this far, I feel like you deserve a bit of a treat, especially since no one reads this blog. So, here’s the first paragraph of the book. It’s not perfect, and it’s still a rough draft, but I feel like it is a good start for the book.

Jamie loved interacting with and studying the many creatures that roamed the lands, but he liked it more when they weren’t trying to kill him in the process. They always seemed to look so docile and friendly in the drawings. He needed to stop trusting the drawings.

– The Branded Blade

That’s all I have for this month. Hopefully, I’ll have written some more or done something interesting by the time June rolls around.

That’s wild to think about. June is next month. I feel like 2022 just started.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get exclusive updates on my writing, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to know about exciting new projects!

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Poetry, Books, and New Magic

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Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since the update, and I have a feeling there are a couple of things that you would like to hear about.

A lot has happened since my year in review. As a complete shocker, I haven’t really followed the schedule that I laid out in the review. But, I have been productive nonetheless.

First, I finished writing the rough draft first book in my series, The Inner Ring Saga. It was a long road to get here. But, the sense of accomplishment that comes with writing a nearly six hundred-page novel is pretty incredible. The novel is a little over 151,000 words long. But, I will be adding about eight or nine viewpoint chapters and a new character in the second draft. There’s a lot of work to go in the book, but it’s one step closer to being finished.

This is the rough draft printed out in its entirety. A lot of editing to come!

Since I finished writing the rough draft, I’ve decided to let it sit and rest for a bit. I’ve worked hard on that book for nearly five years and I need to be away from the story for a little bit. I’m in no way done with it, but I do need some space before carrying on with the second draft.

So, what am I doing in the meantime?

Well, a couple of things.

First, I started outlining a new fantasy book in a separate universe from The Inner Ring Saga. This world is very unique and has some interesting dynamics that will be fun to play with. This book I’m outlining is the first in a trilogy (and it will stay a trilogy because I can’t write another seven-book series. It’s not viable for publishing). The story is like The Witcher meets Sherlock Holmes and the main character has just come out of the world’s school for magic. Speaking of magic, the magic is based entirely on the mind. There are several different types of magic (which you’ll have to read the book to find out) but they’re all different aspects of how the mind operates. It’s set in a pre-Victorian era style world which is a setting I’ve always found super cool. As far as the actual outlining is going, it’s gone rather slow. Which I’m totally okay with, I don’t want to get burned out again.

Second, you may have noticed I have been posting some poems here on my website and on my Instagram account (which you can follow here). I’m trying to branch out a bit in my writing style, and poetry and short stories are giving me a new style to take a break from the longer fantasy novels I have typically been writing. Right now I’m working on writing a short story and poem collection called Seasons. Each part of the book will be centered around Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. I want there to be at least one short story and four or five poems for each part. It’s a super fun project to work on. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it when I’m finished. I don’t want to publish it traditionally, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to self-publish it either. We’ll have to see what happens. First I’ve got to finish it.

I hope to start posting more to the blog here, but I can’t really make promises. To keep up to date, the best bet is to follow me on Instagram. I’ve been more consistent with posting there than anywhere else.

As for what I’ve been reading lately, I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like. School has taken a pretty decent chunk of that time. But, I did start reading the Stormlight Archive and the Green Bone Saga, both of which have been excellent. Kaladin is quickly becoming a favorite, and the intrigue of what happened in the prologue has me hooked on Stormlight. The Green Bone Saga also has some really interesting character dynamics and the plot being like crime lords warring against each other is pretty awesome.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. Until next time!

Thanks for reading! If you want to get exclusive updates on my writing, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to know about exciting new projects! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below!

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On My Writings Reading

2021 – A Year in Review

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I hate writing introductions, so I’m going to keep this brief.

The year may not be over, but if I don’t write this yearly wrap-up now, I’ll probably forget. I tend to forget to do things on time. I’m working on it. I’ll start by summarizing what I did this year and then talk about some of my goals for next year.

2021 In Review

It’s been a year of accomplishment for me. I’ve gotten a lot done and I’m very close to hitting quite a few of my major goals for the year. There’s been ups and downs like any other year, but looking back I can see that even though there were some major downs, I had some big ups.

The first big up for me was that I finally caught back up on my schoolwork after being behind for what seemed like forever. It’s amazing how much stress goes away when you only have a few assignments to accomplish a day. It frees up so much time to do things. Well, my overachiever self decided I wanted to graduate High School a semester early. So, instead of graduating in the spring like most people, I finished school this month. I am done with High School. It feels like a much bigger accomplishment than it is. There’s still a good way to go before I’m done with school, but it’s one step closer.

In 2020 one of my big goals was to read more than I had in 2019. I decided I wanted to do the same thing this year. And being the overachiever/unrealistic person I am, I decided I wanted to double what I had read in 2020. I only read 20 books in 2020. So that left me to read at least 40 books this year. Not too challenging. As of my writing this, I have finished 41 books. And let me say, I have not been bored in my reading this year. I didn’t read many books I didn’t love.

Of the books I read, I have an easy top-five, though I do feel the need to include honorable mentions. They switch their position on the list in my mind quite a bit, but as of this writing, this is how I view them. I may do a post on them later, I may not.

My top five reads:

  1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  2. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
  3. Dune by Frank Herbert
  4. The Murderbot Diaries (Books 1-4) by Martha Wells
  5. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Honorable Mentions:

  • Kindred by Octavia Butler
  • The Shadow and Bone Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo
  • Crooked House by Agatha Christie

I read so many more and if I wanted to I could write only about what I read and what each book has taught me. But, alas, that is not the point of this wrap-up. Maybe another post.

Another goal for 2021 was for me to finish writing my first novel. Well, haven’t quite gotten there yet. But, I am only four chapters away from doing that. I may be able to by midnight December 31. While I haven’t finished it, I have written well over 85 thousand words in the book. It’s not perfect by any means. But, as I’m writing the end of it, I must say that it feels like a huge accomplishment. Threads have started to come together. Foreshadowing from early chapters is being paid off (even if it needs to be made clearer in the second and proceeding drafts).

In addition to working on my novel, I worked some more on my scripted comedy show. I haven’t written another full draft of an episode. But I’ve got pretty much the entire first season laid out and the scripts planned. I just need to sit down and write them. I also worked on writing a couple of short stories and planned for my next novel.

2021 was fairly productive now that I think about it. I could have done more and used my time better, but I’ll probably say that every year to some extent.

Goals for 2022

My biggest goal for 2022 is to be a published author in some fashion. Right now I’m thinking that means trying to get a short story published in a magazine. It’s a small step to take, but I think it’s reachable. This would mean that I have to make sure I am doing my best to make my writing the best I can, and doing it consistently. Doing this for short stories would help me to perfect my skills and I can take the lessons learned and use them when writing novels.

But, writing short stories is not all I want to do for a year. That sounds kind of boring, and it won’t feel like I’ve done as much even though I have. I also want to get a couple of more drafts through my first novel. I want to get it to the point where it’s the best that I can do on it without taking it to the next level or someone else. My goal is to do this at the beginning of the year. But, I may take a couple of weeks off from writing at the beginning of the year just so I can breathe after finishing Book One.

I also want to begin work on my second novel (I’ll explain the premise of it more once I finish writing my first novel). I think it won’t be nearly as long as the first draft of my first novel has been. It will also be easier to accomplish because the plot is not nearly as complicated and (as far as I know right now) there won’t be viewpoint shifts. I want to get at least halfway through that book.

  • January to March

    Start and finish the second draft of my current novel (#SotS).

  • April to June

    Start and finish the third draft of my current novel (#SotS).

  • July to August

    Work on planning my second book while writing short stories simultaneously.

  • September to December

    Start writing my second novel.

This is a very loose schedule. I am big on writing when I feel like it. If I’m in the middle of reading a really good book and have a lot of school work, I’m more likely to read than write. It helps me decompress and relax more than writing does.

As far as a reading goal for next year, I haven’t decided to be completely honest. My over-ambitious self wants to set a goal to read 100 books. But, my logical self says that’s stupid and impossible to reach if I want to pass all of my classes and hit my other goals. I want to read at least as many books as I did this year, that’s for certain. But beyond that, I’m not sure.

Overall, 2021 was a pretty good year from a productivity standpoint. Hopefully, 2022 will be even better and I’ll have even more to talk about!

Until next time,

Titus Watson
December 2021

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#aSotS #tIRS On My Writings

July 2020 Update On My Projects

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Well, it’s been a couple of months since I updated everyone on the status of my multiple writing projects (subscribers to The Raven get monthly updates). So I figured I’d go ahead and update you guys!

The Site
I’ve got a couple of several part article series in the works. I want to write them in their entirety before I post them just so I can make sure that I’m coherent all the way through them. So be on the lookout for those in the next few months!

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS
I made some decent progress in #tIRS this past couple of months. I’m at about 35-40% of the way through the story with nearly 50k words written in it. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve written so far. I’m not unhappy with it. I know it’s flawed, but it’s a rough draft. What else should I expect? I’m about to be taking a break from writing it for a month or so while I work on one of my other projects, which I’ll talk about below.

The Screenplay
My goal for the fall is to have this entire screenplay written. This is why #tIRS might take the backseat for a month or so, I’ll need to outline the screenplay. I don’t think that it will take as long to write the screenplay once I finish outlining it. I’ll update my progress on outlining on the site and on Twitter (so be sure to give me a follow if you haven’t already).

The Backburner
– Short Story Collection: Still about where I was last time. Not much progress done. Hopefully this fall I’ll knock out a couple of stories in it.
– Science Fiction Project: Needs to be outlined before any work on it is started.

I haven’t been nearly as productive in my writing lately as I’ve wanted to be. I’m hoping to manage my time better this fall and create good consistent time to write. We’ll see what happens!

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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May 2020 Update On My Projects

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So, it’s been another month. That means a new update on my projects.

Yes, I know. It’s an easy out for an article. But, I’ve been super busy just with life lately, so an easier article was needed. I’m hoping that the next one I publish will be a book review on The Hero of Ages, but don’t quote me on that.

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS

I’ve made a lot of progress here in the last month. I’m now close to reaching 40k words in the rough draft. I’m still only about 30-35%ish threw the story. But, I finally finished writing Chapter Eight (which clocked in 35 pages in length and 7,601 words). Chapter Eight was immensely fun to write, but I have a feeling that it will be edited a lot. But, it was a nice break from my protagonist and now I’m glad to be back with him on his journey. I may have said this before, but Book One is by far the most trope-filled book in the series, but it also has a few scenes that are big implications for the rest of the series. It is definitely going to take a lot more work to finish the rough draft, but I’m feeling confident. I don’t know if the rough draft will actually be finished by the end of the summer, but I’m hopeful it will be.

Short Story Collection

Not much progress here I’m afraid. I haven’t finished outlining the first story yet, nor have I started writing it. But it’s because I’ve been writing a good bit more in #tIRS, which is a good thing.

The Science Fiction Project

Same as the short story collection, not much progress. Which, this story I won’t be putting a lot of effort into until after I finish the first book in #tIRS.

The Screenplay

This is a new one! I’ve had an idea for a screenplay for a movie. I’m sort of in an ideas phase. It’s not outlining yet, but it’s not on the backburner either. I’ve been reading a few books on screenwriting to prep for writing it, and I think it’s gonna be fun! It’s nice to be able to change which medium of writing I’m working on at any given moment. It’s gonna be a fun experiment for sure. The story is one I’m super excited about. I could write it as a book, sure. But, as a film the end of it will be even more gut-wrenching and touching. Before there is speculation on what it is, it’s not a fantasy or science fiction movie. I actually haven’t figured out which genre it fits in, but I will. I just need time to learn the genres.

So overall, it was a fairly productive month. Granted, I still didn’t write as much as I wanted too, but I did write a little more consistently. My goal is to start writing better articles here. I have several that are in mind, but they will take a good while to write.
I want to hear from you guys though! What type of articles would you like to see more? Would you rather me focus on my novels and other projects and not be as worried about the content on this site? I really want this to be a community where you guys feel safe to post questions and such. And please, email me with questions on writing! If I don’t have an answer, I’ll find you one!

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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On My Writings

Update to Posting Schedule

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Hey everyone!

I have decided to make some pretty big changes to my posting schedule.

First, let me tell you why I have made these changes to the blog. I have noticed that my articles are not getting a lot of views when I post them weekly, even though they do okay after a matter of time has gone by. But, if I’m putting in effort to be putting out articles weekly, that’s taking away from the time I have to be writing my books. So, if I switch up my posting schedule, I’ll have more time for the projects I am super passionate about and hopefully finish those sooner.

Second, a change to the newsletter. I’ve decided I’m going to be changing when I send my newsletter (named “The Raven”). Why? Well, for one thing, it wasn’t getting read by many of you. In fact, I think Issue 15 (April 11th’s edition) only 40% of you subscribers read it. I think a reason for this is, I send it too frequently. People get a lot of emails these days, and I know even when I get a lot of emails from certain lists, I just mark them as read. But, there are newsletters that I get that hardly ever get sent out, and I always read those in full. So I’ve decided to shorten the number of newsletters I send and hopefully, that will help you guys not to have as many emails in your email!

Third, the actual changes. So I have decided to change my weekly posting of blog posts to biweekly. I’ll still post on Tuesdays, but I’ll only post on the first and third Tuesday of the month. This will give me more time to write better posts as well. I said I would be changing when I would send “The Raven” as well. I have decided to only send it out on the last Saturday of the month. This is so I don’t clog up your emails and that, hopefully, they will be more attractive to be read.

Thanks to all of my dedicated readers of the blog! Let me know if you think there are any other changes that should be implemented or not.

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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#aSotS #tIRS On My Writings

April 2020 Update on My Projects

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Well, another month has passed by so it’s time for me to give you an update on my projects. You may have noticed that I haven’t titled this article “April 2020 Update on #tIRS” and I did that for a reason. I now am working on two projects at one time. I’m still working on #tIRS, but I’m also working on a short story collection as well.

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS

Not much has happened here I’m afraid. I’ve put in a few words here and there, but I’m still at about 26k words. While I am very proud of what I’ve written so far, however rough it may be, I decided to take a break from it for a couple of weeks. This is because I have passed a major plot point in the book, and I feel I did much better writing the first act of the book this time then I did in my first attempt. My goal is still to finish writing the rough draft by the end of the summer, and I think I will accomplish that goal. But, writing the second act is probably going to go a lot slower as I will need to accomplish a lot not only to set up the climax but to hint at what’s to come in the series. This first draft really is only me putting the story down on paper, but I do want it to be the best it can be that way I don’t have a lot of work to get done. As I write it and come up with more and more ideas, I am beginning to realize that the first book is going to be the shortest in the series by far because the rest of the series will have more viewpoint characters and grow more complicated. I think when I go to outline book two, I’ll need to outline at least books two and three so I can properly foreshadow what’s to happen at the end of book three. After I finish book three, I will probably work on some other projects before finishing off the series.

I think I will say that while my goal is for these to be published books one day, I do not write them solely for the purpose of publishing them. If they get published, awesome! If they don’t, that’s fine. I love writing and this story is one I want to write. So I won’t stop writing #tIRS if I don’t get it published. I will definitely continue writing it.

Short Story Collection

I’m fairly certain that this is the first time that I have mentioned this project in one of my articles. So let me give you guys a brief description of what it is. The book is going to be a collection of short stories. These short stories all have the same two main characters and several recurring characters. The story is set in America in the 1950s. The short stories will all be mysteries and each short story is a different case. The idea spiraled out of me when I began to think about classic detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, or Father Brown. All those characters weren’t set in America and none of them were set in modern times or close to modern times. So I’ve been exploring the idea and have come up with some really good stuff. I am still working on outlining the introductory short story which will most likely end up being closer to a novella. But, I have already finished the second short story in the book. My goal is for this to be a good project that I can take quick breaks away from the intensity of #tIRS (it takes a lot of brainpower to keep up with all my characters and places) and write a quick story and then return back to #tIRS. I don’t know when I’ll say that this collection is complete, but there definitely won’t be just one collection.

The Science Fiction Project

This project is going to take the back burner for a while. I might begin outlining it once I finish the rough draft of #aSotS, but I doubt I will even start until I’m completely finished with #aSotS.

I know, that’s quite a lot of projects! I don’t want to give estimates on when I will have them out for you guys to read because I will be submitting #aSotS to agents and publishers first, and from what I read it can take a while to get responses. I hope that it will be sooner rather than later for these projects, but before I start thinking about publication, I need to finish writing them!

I also want to take a moment and thank you guys for reading. I may not have many readers of this blog, but the few of you that do are faithful readers and read almost every article. While the numbers are still few, I am very thankful for all of you guys.

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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March 2020 Update on Book One in the #tIRS

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I was thinking about it recently, and you blog readers haven’t had an update on my book in a while (I give readers of “The Raven” weekly updates on it though). So, I thought, “Let’s give the readers an update!” So here we go.

The progress is going slow, really slow. I haven’t had a week where I wrote over 5k words in my novel. I am currently sitting at 25k words and am roughly 31% of the way through the story.

But, I will say that it’s not for lack of thought about the story. In fact, I keep having new components and plots pop into my mind, and I’m not sure if five books will be long enough. I hope that isn’t the case and I’ll be able to do it well in five. But, lately I’ve realized that there are a lot of plots and subplots lining up! The first book is going to be pretty basic and set-up major parts of the story. But as we get into the later books in the series, there will be more major characters. The first book will be long (right now I’m guesstimating it will clock out at somewhere around 100k words, but that’s just right now, it could change), but it won’t be as complex. There are only two main characters and two viewpoints, and they are the antagonist and protagonist.

My goal is to finish the book in its entirety by the end of the year. That includes all my editing drafts, getting people to read it and give me feedback. So I need to have the first three drafts done by October at the latest. I think I can hit that, but as my plate fills up, it gets harder to make time to write. Doing one article a week can be a bit much too, in fact I’m considering dialing it down to an article every other week so that I can make more time to write. But, I’m not fully committed to that yet.

A big reason why I think the progress is going so slow is because this is my first big project I’ve undertaken. I’ve written a couple of stories that were not good and that I am not proud of at all, this one is gonna be different though, I can promise you that.

I have already added several, several characters and scenes that I had no idea about when I jumped into this draft. They have all worked out splendidly and I’m pleased with them, but we’ll see if they survive the next few drafts.

Another thing you may be wondering, “Why does he still keep referring to the book under these dumb hashtags? Just tell us the name!” And to that I say, it’s coming, eventually. I don’t want to reveal a name until the book has been accepted by a publisher or until I self publish. I will be submitting the book to publishers first and then if that goes poorly, I will try to do another draft, try again, and then if that fails, I will self-publish the book. So I’ll still have it done before the next book in a couple of well known series have come out.

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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On My Writings On Writing

Learning From Our Detestation

Unfortunately, I started my Chemistry class today. I have never been a big fan of Science in general, but have always done fairly well in it (I finished Biology with a 93% a couple of weeks ago). I have heard from friends and family that Chemistry is the worst one of them all. So I have been dreading the arrival of doing it.

But today, I decided to have a different perspective on it. It may not be my favorite subject, in fact, it probably will be my least favorite subject. But, I am going to commit to learning it the best I can and doing the best I can in the class.

You may ask why? Well, my Dad wisely advised me to look at the subjects I dislike in a different fashion. He said that I should look at everything I learn as giving me more knowledge that I can put towards writing. Take Science for example. I am learning Chemistry right now, and this is giving me an opportunity to think about how a Chemist thinks and works. So if I ever write a character that works as a Chemist, I will know how to write that character better. And if I ever write a Science Fiction Novel (I actually have had the wheels turning and have been thinking about that lately, no promises on when), I will be better equipped to write the Science in Science Fiction. I believe that my writing will greatly improve from this decision and I look forward to seeing how.

So I have decided I am going to put more effort into the subjects I dislike. I’m going to see what I can learn so that I can write things I may not care about now (such as a Chemist), but things that I may need to know in later novels. It’s gonna be hard because my tendency is to hate the subject I dislike and just complain about it, but I also look forward to challenges, and this is gonna be a challenge.

Please comment below! I want to hear what you guys think about this!

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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