Successes & Failures

It's always surprising -- though not shocking -- how things come in droves when they do come, whether good or bad. So here are some updates -- both the good and the bad -- and don't worry, there's some writing-related bits at the end.

1. After a very long and packed Spring planning for WriteCamp, we were rewarded with a great turn-out for the event and an even better response to it this year than last. There will most certainly be a continuation of the event for years to come, which has been my hope since it's inception.

2. After six years of marriage, my wife asked me for a divorce, which I must say will be on the biggest changes in my life to date. It's been a year filled with family tragedies, and this will certainly be something more to add to my list of life experiences. Life gives us a lot of hurdles to jump over; this is but another of those, and I will prevail.

3. For those who don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter (and you should), I had another story published on 365 Tomorrows' website. It's my first Steampunk piece, and I'm very happy about it. It's probably one of my most polished and experimental pieces.

4. With the success of WriteCamp -- as mentioned above -- I've decided to turn The Milwaukee Writers Workshop into a full-fledged organization, and I'm in the process of incorporating it in order to apply for non-profit status. That way (I can hope), we'll have a much easier time next year and years to follow to get more and bigger sponsorships from folks for WriteCamp and other events we might hold.

It's always friends and family that help me through the ebbs and flows of my life, and I thoroughly appreciate their presence right now. While many things in my life seem wildly out of control, at least I am kept sane by the continued mental benefit of my writing. I'll write again soon -- I promise.

Updates & More

Hello everyone. So it's update time.

First, there's WriteCamp Milwaukee 2. The event of the season is closing in fast, and we're all very excited. We're getting retweeted and forwarded and mentioned all over the place, and we're hoping that means an even better turn-out than last year -- which was, to our surprise, amazing. If you're in Milwaukee on June 5 of this year, please visit us. Here is the info: www.writecampmilwaukee.com.

In other news, writing has been going extremely well. Some of the pieces I have finished are as follows:

"The Village With the Hole in the Sky" -- 2043-word magic realism piece
"Lou in A Coffee Shop" -- 2005-word contemporary piece
"In Reynolds" -- 3171-word near future zombie story
"Adon Saldori" -- 6144-words steampunk story (part of a series)

I have two others I haven't yet typed up. I'm proud of the work I've put out lately. I think it's good work. I'm also working diligently on the YA Steampunk novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year. I think it's on its way to being a solid, complete work.

So that's it for now. I'll no doubt be busy with WriteCamp coming up, but I'll do my best to update a few more times in the next month.

Recovery & Bouncing Back

January was a bad first month for 2010 -- at least emotionally. Without getting too sappy and divulging too much, I had a relative pass away and my dad went into the hospital. I don't deal well with tragedy sometimes, and this time was worse than usual. However, I feel like I've come back with a vengeanace, and I'm working hard to get back into the swing of things with my writing, which fortunately has been easy because of the significant downtime I get at work.

So I've been working on a few short stories that take place in a world I create two years ago for a NaNo. While the NaNo was not a success (I did complete 28k on it, but it wasn't very coherent or cohesive), I believe that the world I built for the story was memorable, and I've been trying as hard as I could to come back to it, but I've just not had the opportunity or spark of "what to write" until now. I also feel that my knowledge and understanding of the genre has expanded immensely in the last four months, having read three steampunk novels and two full collections of short stories (and I just started a new novel today). So as I learn, I have begun to understand my own take on the genre, as well as how to blend it with my unique style and method of storytelling.

I have also begun to incorportate a very loose collection of stories I started years but never completed. I think that the stories I began to tell within them is very much a part of this world -- perhaps even the promulgator of this particular incarnation -- and things are going along nicely. Over the course of four days writing only at work I pumped out 5000 words on one story, and I've already started a second one, both of which I'm pleased with after the first draft.

Planning for WriteCamp 2 (or WriteCamp '10, we haven't decided) began this past week. While part of me has become a little disallusioned with the writing community in Milwaukee, I am eager to get this event squared away in order to produce something as memorable as the first one. I will, no doubt, update as often as I can regarding the status of said event, as well as my own increased writing schedule.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Writing as Healing

I am always moved to write when someone I know dies. I feel like it's the best way for me to cope: to put my emotions onto the page and hope that in the process I work through my pain is the goal. It helps, though. A friend of mine -- a therapist and a good one at that -- once talked to me about coaching people suffering from depression and other things to use art as their outlet for their emotions. I've found it to be thoroughly useful, and I'm working through things right now.

I'm producing a short story that I'm rather proud of. It's painful, and strong, and emotional, and I think it's going to be something I can feel satisfied with sending out to some of the more mainstream publishers out there.

I recently read a letter written by Kurt Vonnegut after he was liberated from a workers camp in Germany during WW2. It was powerful to hear his thoughts on the series of events that led him from capture to liberation. The pain -- both physical and mental -- that he endured, the strength that he had to deal with it, and the emotion that he poured into his writing years later fascinates me and compels me to follow in his footsteps. To be so strong is admirable.

I think it is that harnessing of one's past that allows a writer -- or any artist -- to create something truly memorable, meaningful, and powerful. Those are the things I strive for in my own writing. To be forgotten is worse, to me, than death: that is what I fear the most.

Sorry for the bit of personal outpouring. It's a personal blog -- so I reserve the right to get personal sometimes :-)

Polishing It Up

So it's nearly Christmas, and I'm in full swing on the editing process of the novel. It's going well (or at least I feel it is), and I'm working on adding in some material that I passed over during the initial writing of the piece. I've also had a big breakthrough in how the magic works in my world, which has become a much more important aspect of the story than I'd originally thought. So I'm pleased overall.

Editing has always been something I enjoy. A lot of my colleagues (fellow writers) loathe the editing process, finding it boring and tedious. To me, it's the editing process that really brings out the brilliant parts of the story. The time and effort that gets put into editing really brings out the writer in every writer, because it really utilizes the skills of looking at the story in a broader sense, taking into consideration characterization, theme, plot, and everything else on a global scale, rather than scene-by-scene. It's a process I like, and I'm eager to be going through it with a novel that I feel has some real potential (moreso than my previous attempts at a novel).

I'm hoping to finish -- or at least have a good portion done -- before the end of the year, as January will be very busy. I'm working to change a bunch of things in The JB Dryden Company that I hope will bring in some more money. One of those things is to bring The Milwaukee Writers Workshop under the fold of the company and start offering a variety of services geared toward the writers I already serve. I'm both excited and nervous, because it's a big step for me to charge for things I've given away for free for so long, but I think it's a good step for my company and my career. At least, I hope it is.

I've never been one for resolutions with the new year, but I believe my goal for 2010 is to get this novel sent out. Having spent years sending out short works, I know the feeling of rejection but also of acceptance and having people read your work. It's a great sensation. Doing it on the scale of a novel is something entirely new to me, though, and it scares me more than sending out short stories ever has, so I've been hesitant to do it with the other piece I have (which is complete). So we'll see how that goes.

Best wishes to everyone for the holidays. I'll probably see you next year. Cheers.

Keeping Motivated

November has been a busy month with NaNoWriMo and with just three days left until the end of the month (a little less given the time of day on Saturday that I'm writing this) it's gone very well. I've neglected a few things -- like blogs, Facebook updates, Tweets, etc. -- in favor of getting my word count, and I'm proud of the progress that I've made.

Come December I will be reviewing my work and beginning the polishing process, as well as revising an old novella of mine to finish it off. It'll be a nice combination because they're both pieces inspired by the same time-period: one is an homage to Charles Dickens (complete with a main character whose name is Charles) in a city not too dissimilar from London in the 1800s; the other is a steampunk story in a city very like a mid-sized one from America or Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

I've had some battles with myself over the course of the month -- the worst I've had in a while -- over the validity of my work, the worth of it, the reason for it all. It's frustrating to doubt yourself; it's even more so to produce so much and question why you're even doing it to begin with. I've been lucky to have a lot of support from friends, writing colleagues, and my girls, so that's helped. I just wonder sometimes how plausible it is to really move forward with a work like this.

I enjoy the editing process, though, and I hope that will invigorate me as I begin to piece through both works and try to find what it is I love about them. I haven't done much with "the Charles story" (which is what I call it because after six years it still has no title), and I'm eager to delve into it again and fall in love with favorite character.

Things That Make Me Cry

I've been running a writers workshop in a town north of where I live. Last night was the third meeting, and it went well -- as have all the others. We are working on characters and character development, because the majority of the writers there are new to the craft and have a lot to learn. I think creating believable characters are always a great place to start to write memorable stories.

As a good example of character development, I read Mary Robison's Yours, which is a poignant story about a man and his wife carving pumpkins before Halloween. I've read the story a dozen times, or more, and yet something about it at that reading nearly made me cry in front of the group. There's something about short stories -- and I suppose novels are the same way, only they take longer to read -- that hits you at a certain time and strikes a chord. That's part of why I love short stories. Each reading gives something new to the reader; each new interaction with the story sheds some new light on the reader's perspective of the world. It is that moment -- that personal revelation -- that I really strive to find in others' works, as well as my own.

Writing has been going well lately, though, which I'm happy about. NaNoWriMo is in full swing and even with folks in town and a new niece, I've been happy to have reached my word count every day (plus a little extra).