WillShattuck.com

Ok, so you’ll see I haven’t written at all since my last post.  Writing everyday, plus all the daily day-job, family, church, etc. commitments is a very tough task.  I’ve learned that managing all this is difficult.  I’ll get it going though.

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So I want to learn how to write and to write better.  What do you need to do when you want to do something better?

Practice.

Last post I mentioned the interview I listened to with Mur and J.C.  Since then I haven’t made the the time.  So today during lunch I wrote an additional 210 words.  You can see a progress bar on the bottom of the right sidebar.

With this first writing challenge, I’m coming at it from this point of view:  It’s gonna suck, and suck hard, but just get it done.

Writing longer than a couple of hundred words hasn’t been even a monthly occurance, so I’m just going to write and see what happens.  I can make edits later.   I’ll keep track of word counts by putting a post with the subject of "Word Count  - #" where the # sign is replaced by my word count.  In the body I’ll put the current word count and total word count, just to keep progress going.

We’ll see how this works out.  I’ll keep you updated :)

Hi all.  Well I obviously didn’t get very far with NaNoWriMo this year.  However, not bad for a first attempt; 3449 words.  Considering that I never wrote anything more than was expected of me I consider this a WIN.  Not a NaNoWriMo win, but a WIN for WILL none-the-less.

On my way home from work today I listened to a podcast that has begun to inspire me to write more.  It is Mur Lafferty’s "I Should Be Writing".  The podcast was an interview with J.C. Hutchins, author of "7th Son" (a REALLY great podcast novel).  It was fun listening to Mur and JC gush with admiration over each other.  Made me chuckle.

Near the end of the podcast Mur asked J.C. if he had any advice for writers.  The thing that stuck out the most, other than the obvious WRITE, was that you should write every day even if it is only a little bit.  If J.C. didn’t say those words, that’s ok.  This is what I got out of it.   Write, Write, Write.  If you want to be a swimmer you swim.  If you want to be a chef, you cook.  So, if you want to be a writer, you need to write. So, here I am writing my blog post about this, and in a little bit, I will begin writing more on my first book which uses the first 1200 words or so of my NaNoWriMo entry. 

Why only the first 1200 words you ask?

I lost the entire 3449 words.

Yes I know, "Didn’t you SAVE it, Will?".  "Do I need to tell you the ‘Jesus Saves’ joke again, Will".

No, no, no.  I fell to my own assuredness that when i wiped and reinstalled my laptop I copied everything off.  Well, I didn’t.  Fortunately I had copied my first inspirational run to Google Documents so i have that much saved.  The rest was drivel anyway.

So here I sit, posting about writing instead of writing.

I should be writing.  ;)

Nite.