New Year's Resolutions

I wanted to make public my New Year's resolutions again this year. Last year, I made a number of them, but I only fulfilled two. I read 37 books (goal was 35), and I finished the screenplay for the western that I had been working on. I think there were maybe ten other goals that I had set for myself, but I accomplished only the two.

This year, I would like to once again set goals. I know that we are already more than two weeks into 2013, but I am still going to do it now. Better late than never, right?

Okay, let's start with literary goals.

1.) Read 38 books. I've already read 3 and I'm half done with a 4th, so I'm on my way here.
 2.) Review more books. Okay, this one isn't as quantifiable, but I joined a review group on Goodreads, so this should be a gimme.
3.) Write two (2!) novels. I wrote 2/3rds of a novel in the last two months of 2012. This is pretty lofty, but I honestly think that this is completely realistic. I started writing a new project a couple weeks ago and I am at 21,000 words right now, so I really think two novels of 65,000 words each is completely doable.
4.) Write 4 short stories. About half done with my first already. Again, really doable.

Fitness goals.

1.) Run 400 miles. I ran 310ish in 2012.
2.) Run sub 6 minutes in the mile. I ran a 6:09 last July.

That's all. I think 6 goals are going to be hard to hit all of them. On their own, any one of these would be pretty easy, and I think it will be possible to do all 6 (or else I wouldn't have set them), but it's probably not going to be as easy as I am currently thinking. We'll see.

Football and Infidelity

I commented in another place why I have had so much trouble following football lately, but here's yet another reason why I am giving up on the sport.

Football owners and GMs are perhaps the most fickle people on the planet. Take the Phildelphia Eagles, for example. There was a report earlier today that head coach Andy Reid was going to be fired after 14 years with the team. Did the Eagles have a rough year? Yes, they went 4-12, one of the worst records in the NFL. They have been struggling for a while, in fact. But I fail to see how that is one man's fault. Michael Vick and the faith the team had placed in him is also a big reason for this failure. It was known that Vick was a high risk player before he was even signed with the Eagles in 2009. He took over the starting position in 2010 and had a 10-6 record.

2011 was a bit worse at 8-8 and Reid received a lot of pressure then. He knew that if he wanted to keep his job he needed to do better. 4-12 is not better. So did he expect his firing to come? Probably.

But look at Reid's entire record over the last 14 years. The Eagles made the postseason 9 times in those 14 years and had one Super Bowl appearance in 2004 which they barely lost.

The NFL is notorious for having ridiculous standards for their coaches. Reid has shown us though that he has a talent for motivating his players. One mediocre season (2011) and one bad season (2012) before getting the ax basically shows how short sighted NFL owners and GMs are.

Success is important, and if a coach is not successful they don't deserve to have a position in the NFL. But the NFL has such a high amount of variance associated with it, one or two bad seasons should not be used as a definite litmus test, especially with a coach that has shown his worth in the past.

There's no easy solution here, however. Bad coaches need to be weeded out as quickly as possible in order to give teams as good of a chance as possible. Good coaches need to be given the right settings to capitalize on their strengths, though. Relying on a high risk player like Vick can have good rewards, but obviously it can have bad results, too.

Is it Reid's fault that Vick had so much playing time? Partly. It needs to be noted that this is not only Reid's fault. Other participants in management play a huge role too. If owner Jeffrey Lurie didn't want Vick to play, he could have easily made this happen.

Reid had a tough year. His son died early on and this must have had a huge impact upon him.

The point I'm trying to make is that owners are so quick to make managerial changes and it shouldn't be like this. As a fan, it really makes me mad to see things like this happen. I like watching football, but moves like this make me furious and I have absolutely no interest in watching the postseason this year. Good job, NFL.

Twitter, or the lack thereof

I deactivated my Twitter account today. Before I get messages telling me that this was stupid, let me explain why.

I had 55ish followers. I think 1 of them was someone I actually knew in real life. The others were sports figures and a couple literary agents I didn't know. I can't pretend that I am really concerned about what Drew Brees or LeBron James has to say in 160 characters.

I never use Twitter for anything worthwhile. I put links to things I've written every once in a while, but I don't think I've ever tracked an incoming click to my blog from Twitter. Obviously my followers do not care much about what I'm blogging about. I'm assuming that other links I've put up have had slightly better results (they definitely cannot be worse). I don't run my own site anymore and the precious few clicks I was getting on the sites I ran before didn't come from Twitter, either.

I don't ever update it. When I update Twitter, it's ALWAYS as an afterthought. I really don't like the medium and everything on it seems awkward to me.

Twitter might be worthwhile to some people, but I really saw no benefits from the site. I am not saying that this will apply to every person, the Pope and Justin Bieber probably get a lot of web traffic because of it, but I saw no sense in continuing the facade of remembering to put stuff there. One less site I have to worry about.

Disclaimer: I am still using Twitter for my client's web sites. This is not my personal writing, but rather a Twitter page dedicated to helping health and senior care professionals get more information. 

Lazy. But not really.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, but I've had some good reasons. Well, maybe not good reasons, but they were reasons. I have been writing constantly, both for myself and for my clients, struggling to meet deadlines. You know, the usual work stuff.

But I've had a lot of excitement. For NaNo, I made a serious effort and finishing my first novel. I made a lot of headway: 40,800 words. About 2/3 of a complete manuscript. But maybe 10K of those words were forced and the story didn't flow right to me. With a week left in November, I gave up on it. It was a cool concept; a mafia/fantasy thriller with a few really unique twists. I like the overall concept a lot, and might use it in the future, but for now it isn't working.

That leads me to my December project. I started outlining a short story at the beginning of the month. Then I realized that this was a really complex suspense novel that I could easily stretch into 20k words. It wasn't going to be a short story, then. It was a novella. But the more I wrote of it, the more I realized that it wasn't a novella, either. I cannibalized a few fragmented ideas and stories I had written, including the main plot of my Annuity novel, and threw them all together. I have a full blown novel on my hands now, I figure this out about 4 days ago and I already have 1/4 of a novel down on paper.

So have I been lazy when it comes to blogging? For sure. But that's about it. I'm really happy with this story and if I keep working at this pace, I will have a completed first draft in a few weeks. Pretty exciting.

I've never actually completed a whole novel. Right after college, I attempted an epic fantasy, and I got it up to about 45k words. It was a good story, actually, but it wasn't a good novel, if that makes sense. It had an exciting plot, but the characters were lifeless and the main character was so unlikable by the end of the book that it disgusted me. There's some stuff in it that I've included in the graphic novel I'm working on, but that story is long gone. It was good  practice, but it wasn't good, if that makes sense.

I've rambled a bit here, but my point is this: writing something good requires a lot of time and a lot of false starts. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting better and learning every day. You can't expect to write a good novel on your first try. It's like training for a race. The only way you can become a better runner is by running. The only way you can become a better writer is by writing. Will you win your first race ever? Probably not. There's always a few freaks with the natural talent to excel on little training, but the vast majority of us need time to develop the skills to be successful.

A Brief Tutorial on Serial Storytelling

By no means is this article definitive, it's just what I've observed and learned over the last several years. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments!

Telling a story is something we are all good at. This is why we became writers in the first place. We have good ideas, good plots, and good characters. And we enjoy translating these thing down onto paper. However, sometimes we stay confined in our own little writing comfort zones. There’s more than one way to tell a story and this is often lost, even upon experienced writers. Storytelling is definitely an art, and there are many ways to approach this. Serial storytelling is very different from what we might be used to, but this doesn’t mean we should avoid telling our stories this way. Varying your method of telling a story can be a great way to find a new audience.

Serial storytelling has one big difference from your standard novel: the story is broken up in to several sections and each is published separately. Your story is told over the course of many different publications, and this means you will have to approach it differently. 

You need to approach each segment of your story as if it were a standalone piece. For example, your second installment needs to assume that at least some of your readers are finding your work for the first time—even though it might be the middle of the piece. Assuming that your reader is just beginning the piece is a tough thing to do, but there are a few simple things that you can add to your story in order to accomplish this. Having excitement and action throughout the piece is an easy way out here. Instead of bogging your story down in description and detail, keep the plot progressing.

I have been writing comic books for about 7 years now. These might not be considered the most reputable of literary works in many circles, but they are one of the most obvious places where serial storytelling comes into play. Think about the Spider-Man comics you read when you were younger. It wasn’t necessary for you to read all the back issues to enjoy the story. If you’re like I was, you only read the comics that you bought when you had saved up your allowance long enough to get an issue. This wasn’t exactly the most conducive way to immerse myself in the overall storyline, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the story that I did read. To enjoy serial fiction, you don’t need to read the whole story. It helps, but it shouldn’t be the only way to enjoy the story.

So you want to tell your story, but you want to tell your story so that people will enjoy it and understand it from wherever they begin it. Having story arcs inside other arcs is key here. You want to tell your story, but you need to make sure that there are stories within the story, too. 

The hardest part of serial storytelling is that you need to keep your plot advancing. It’s really easy to write a bunch of short stories and string them together. This is a good thing, but the pitfall is that you need to keep the plot moving forward. For a true serial story, the next issue of your story needs to take the story further. My favorite trick for accomplishing this is to tie up loose ends at a later point.

Here’s an example. My work in progress starts with a full chapter as the first installment. In this chapter, we are introduced to the main character and the main plot line. However, the second installment has no mention of these things at all. Still, this subplot is important down the road because the characters and plot revealed in installment #2 is an important part of the ending of the story. Installment #3 goes back to the main characters and then #4 briefly hints at the connection between the two story lines and the reader starts to understand how they relate. They aren’t yet connected, but there is a thread that makes the reader say “Aha!” 

Each installment on its own is a complete story, but it’s when they are read sequentially—as a piece of serial storytelling—that the reader truly appreciates the story as a whole. 

Of course, that’s my hope anyway. It’s still a work and progress, of course, but this is the formula I am attempting to follow.

Graphic Novel

Those of you that know me probably also know that it's really hard for me to finish a project. Well, I never quit on something, I just set it aside for a while!

Take my current work in progress, for example. It is a graphic novel that I started originally working on in 2005. I have about 65000 words of notes and outlines, which is a full-length book in itself. I have been working feverishly for the past few days on expanding the script and I have over 75 pages of finalized material for the graphic novel.

I've been working with an artist on this for about a year, off and on. We have a cover almost set and will be working on the interior very soon. I will post pics and whatnot as they are available. I am also going to be creating a separate website for the graphic novel before the first digital issue is released in order to help create a little bit of buzz. It will probably be at least another year before the full length graphic novel is completed, but I am hoping to have issue #1 out by the end of the year! Stay posted and watch as this exciting project unfolds.

7 years in the making and I'm finally starting to see progress!

We run, we swim, we do the other thing

Wowzers, it's been 3 months since I've posted here. A lot of things are new: I started exercising regularly--finally! I even have injured myself, taken time off, and recovered since my last post. I have come up with a whole new set of life goals and I am losing weight quickly. Things are going really well.

My running is still struggling a bit thanks to an IT band injury in my right knee, but I am slowly improving here. I had a long run of up to 10 miles pre-injury. I was attempting a 12 miler when the injury got to the point where it hurt too much to continue. I stopped at 9.5 miles and limped on back home. I then took 3 weeks off and started swimming and biking a little bit to supplement my running.

Guess what? I fell in love with those two sports all over again. I was a competitive sprinter in the pool back in high school (24 second 50y), and I started biking a bit back in 2004. I did a duathlon back then, finishing 7th overall. I haven't been biking a lot, but the little bit that I've done I absolutely love. I am really excited to be back on the bike and realizing some of my long term fitness goals. I joined a local cycling club recently, and I will begin training with them this weekend.

I started running a bit again a little over a week ago. I've increased the distance up to a 3 mile long run, and I can complete this distance without pain now.

Anyway, I am aiming toward a good winter full of running and maybe some swimming thrown in a day or two per week. The ultimate goal is to compete in triathlons next season. I am super excited about this and will undoubtedly post updates here once in a while