Working on a Book

I have not written here for a few days because I have been working on a book. I am writing a novel about a kid that hooks up with Frankenstein's monster to search for the Stones of Eternal Evil and Dark Sciences. S.E.E.D.S. for short.

Each stone will be hidden somewhere on the planet and it will have a guardian. In order to find the stones, our heroes will need to find where they are hidden and then defeat the monster that protects them. The monsters are classic monsters like vampires, werewolves, mummies, swamp creatures etc. I'm looking at it being kind of a young adult book.

So far, I am at about 3500 words, so I'm really just getting started. I have been averaging a little over a thousand words a day. That takes a couple hours each time. I'm hoping I can up that production as I get better at writing. It's not always that easy. I am also thinking about starting another class at the Lighthouse Writers workshops in Denver.

The Lighthouse Writers workshops are great. It is a place where you can take classes on how to write creatively at a fraction of the cost of taking a class at a university. Plus, the classes are very hands-on type classes where you get to work on your own stuff. If you've ever taken a writing class at a university, you will understand that this is a bit different than what you will do there. In fact, most universities don't even offer creative writing. It's always geared towards the academic writing instead. I think it has a lot to do with it being almost impossible to grade someone writing creatively. Of course, there are no grades at Lighthouse. You simply do or do not as Yoda once said.

Anyway, that is what I am doing right now. I have taken the first step on a thousand mile journey. It is not easy to write a book, as I found out once upon a time, but I think I have a good foundation for getting this one going. Maybe I can sell it and write the rest of the books in the series too. Oh, did I forget to mention that? It is a five to seven book series total. Yep, nothing like jumping all the way into the deep end.

What? It's only been six days.

I know I said I was going to come right back to this, but clearly I didn't. That's okay. We all need hard to attain goals or we won't strive hard enough. (wow, really spun the narrative on that one to make me look good) After missing two years, six days is almost great. (said no one ever who has been waiting 5 extra days for something that was supposed to happen in 1 day)

That's not even the full depth of the crappiness of this post. I'm writing on this thing instead of starting my new book. I have a fully formed outline and direction and everything I need to go ahead and write my first novel, but instead, I am procrastinating by writing this. It makes my ridiculous justification of not writing earlier that much worse, huh?

Anyway, I was in the middle of letting you all (all? who are we kidding, nobody is reading this) know what I have been doing over the last two years.

There's really not much more to tell. I got a freelance job covering sports for a small newspaper in Niwot, Colorado. It is called the Left Hand Valley Courier and is a free weekly. I get paid per word to go to Niwot High School sporting events around the state and write about them. I probably get paid less than a dollar an hour based on how much time it requires to get a small article done. It is so little, I have flirted with just not even billing them because it is an annoyance. Of course, then I think about how ridiculous that is and send them a bill anyway.

I guess it is time to get to wrapping this thing up. I need to go pick the boys up from school soon. The biggest thing I've got going (if you can call it "going" after all this procrastination) is that I am writing a novel. It's not "Gatsby," but I'm really not going for that. I'm writing a tween novel about kids battling the classic horror monsters like vampires, swamp creatures, werewolves, zombies etc. I think I have finally cracked the code on how to get it started. It will be a series of books and if all goes well, I will sell it to a movie studio so they can hack the thing to pieces. As a freelance/technical writing background person, I'm not into it for the art. I just want to get paid. Look for my stories to hit the theaters in 2030, haha. Hopefully I'll write another blog post before then.