Pearannoyed Press

My HTTS Walkthrough blog (among other things)
  • .: I’m not paranoid… :.

    But I AM pearannoyed. I'm learning to Think Sideways, find my sweet spot, listen to my muse, and write until I'm finished. I'm defeating Safe, Perfect, Victim, and Feel. I don't know where I'll end up, but I'm headed there with enthusiasm.

    If you are a member of How To Think Sideways, you will find the password for my protected posts on the HTTS Walkthrough Blog Forum.

  • January 2012
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    Why I hate NaNoWriMo

    Posted By on August 1, 2011

    The idea of writing intrigues me a lot. I’ve found in my own experience that good ideas can roll around in your head for ages, and sometimes you can get some of those ideas on paper, but actually writing a complete story is extremely hard work.

    Enter NaNoWriMo. For the 3 people on the planet who haven’t heard of it yet, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a challenge to anyone who has ever wanted to write a book to actually set time aside and write. There are only a couple of rules:

    1. Start a new work from scratch – this is about fresh writing, not picking up something you’ve been beating to death for years.
    2. Make it your own work – no collaborations
    3. Write fiction – novels are not autobiographys. Fictional autobiographies are an exception. :)
    4. No editing – you can edit later. NaNo is about getting words on a page (digital or otherwise), not about those words being good.
    5. Crank out 50,000 words in 30 days (31 if you’re doing Camp NaNoWriMo in July or August)

    For most of us, that doesn’t sound too hard… it sounds impossible.

    I am not exaggerating. I said impossible, I meant IMPOSSIBLE.

    And yet, I continue to torture myself and attempt the impossible.

    My best effort so far was to produce around 25,000 words toward a Y/A novel. I actually wrote around 35,000 words, but 10,000 words got eaten by a hard drive crash so only 25,000 words remain as proof that I can write. And let me say here that I actually can write. I like the 25,000 words that I wrote and look forward to one day reading the end of the story.

    Therein lies my dilemma and the reason I titled this post as I did. I’m finding that I’m pretty good at starting stuff. I can write an introduction like nobody’s business. I can create a tantalizing scenario that will make you drool with anticipation at reading the rest of the story. But I have several documents that range from a few hundred to a few thousand words, and zero completed manuscripts.

    Why? Because I desperately need structure, but I’m horrible at creating it. I’ll do what NaNo recommends – sit down and begin to type. But when I don’t know where I’m going I never actually arrive anyplace.

    There’s probably a sermon in there somewhere. Maybe a self-help book.

    But never a novel.

    Now – off to start my NaNoWriMo non-novel for Camp NaNoWriMo, August 2011. And for those who might care, here’s my Camp NaNoWriMo non-novel for July of 2011…. All 469 words of it. Needless to say, I didn’t win.

    Let’s get one thing straight. I’m a skeptic.

    I like the idea that there might be a God and a Heaven, or that there might be aliens, monsters, magic, whatever. I like the idea that there’s something to believe in – to really believe in. Not just made-up fairy stories and nonsense.

    I’m trying to say that I hope there’s something out there bigger than us. Bigger than me. Bigger… and better too.

    But I doubt it.

    I remember sitting out on the porch after dinner when I was a kid, listening to Grandad tell stories. And he had some whoppers, let me tell you. Some were without a doubt true – like about how he pulled his buddy to safety on the beach at Normandy, with guys dying all around them. His buddy got shipped home, not quite in one piece. Grandad stayed and became a hero. He just called it doing his job, but he was a hero for sure.

    But I think some of his other stories are pure fiction. He told about a girl he met who turned out to be a spy. Like something out of James Bond maybe. He told about little people – fairies or something – sneaking out of the woods to bring them presents sometimes. He claims that’s where he got his gold teeth. And he talks about really crazy stuff like seeing a guy hit by mortar fire who should have been blown to bits. When they were able to get to him, there was a hole burned right through the middle of his shirt, front and back both. But the guy himself wasn’t hurt at all. A little dirty and singed, had his bell rung like crazy… they said he could barely hear anything for the next couple of weeks. But other than the hearing, he didn’t even need to see a medic to get a band aid. Not a scratch on him. Apparently the guy claimed he’d just gotten a letter from home saying his whole church was praying for his safe return. That they’d lost too many boys already and didn’t want to lose another one.

    I don’t know if I can really believe in the power of prayer like that. I think sometimes things just line up that are dumb luck coming together with wishful thinking and people take it way too far.

    That said, I have no explanation whatsoever for the story I’m about to tell you. Like I said, I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe in magic. I don’t trust religion. I don’t think the brownies come to clean up the house while we’re sleeping. And I think people pretty much get what they deserve whether they are willing to admit it or not. Not always though. Not always.

    Other Endeavors

    Posted By on July 28, 2011

    A friend of mine turned me on to a creative meme called Index Card a Day or ICAD for short. The idea is to do something creative at least 6 days a week. The goal is to use an index card – just one. Anyone can find time to do a single index card.

    It can be a drawing, painting, poem, prose. Anything you choose. I like the idea so I’m jumping on board. I don’t know if I will actually get it done every day, but I figure it’s worth a shot. Hopefully it will help me tap the creative process for writing as well.

    My cards today are a flower and a butterfly. Both were painted with cheap watercolors on 4×6 index cards.

    20110728-113946.jpg

    20110728-114017.jpg

    And one more, done with Flair markers.

    20110729-122032.jpg

    Interlude… What I’ve been doing

    Posted By on July 21, 2011

    Obviously I have not been blogging for the last several weeks. That is not because I am uninterested in keeping in touch with all of you beautiful people. Really, it’s not. And yes, I think you’re all beautiful.

    I haven’t been here blogging because I’ve been somewhat … unfocused … on my writing project. And horribly busy in other realms.

    The writing project, AKA my Work in Progress (WIP for all you writerly types who already know what that means), has changed completely. This is partly because I don’t know what to do with my YA project, and partly because, due to the ongoing changes in the publishing environment (Locke method being a key factor, but honestly probably more of a symptom of the changing environment than the actual agent of said change) I need to write something that I think will lend itself to being self-published in the e-book environment. So, temporarily, my YA project is going back on the back burner and I am trying to gear up to write a series of loosely connected works of fiction. I thought these would come later – it was always a project I had in mind. But I think it’s going to be better to start there and work towards other things rather that starting with the other things and working towards this series.

    For those interested in the genre and/or tone of my new project, I plan for it to be Christian fiction. You could probably call it Contemporary, it is certainly set in the current day. It will be about “real” people – those who are mostly like you and me. It will not have Christian “Barbie & Ken dolls” … the kind of characters that nobody in real life can ever measure up to. They will be everyday people from all walks of life: some will be believers; some will be running from God; some will be outright skeptics. And the key, unifying factor in each of these books will be that there is a real God. A God who is active. A God who interacts with His creation. (That would be us.)

    I am a little bit afraid of this project. It has a huge potential for being boring, pedantic, trite, and ridiculous. I intend to make every effort to steer myself away from any foregone conclusions about what will happen, how God will interact with my characters, and what the final outcomes will be. I don’t think I can reasonably write every book to have a happy ending … if I did they would be basically just like all the other Christian books I’ve read and that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. HOWEVER, not having a happy ending doesn’t mean that everyone is going to end up miserable either. Not getting what you think you want doesn’t mean you have to be left without hope.

    Anyway, that’s a little bit about what I think I’m going to be doing.

    The reason I haven’t been doing it yet? I’ve been busy helping to spread a little hope in my own corner of the world. In the last month I’ve helped teach at two seminars about Sozo Ministry. Sozo is a Greek word that means saved, healed and delivered. Sozo Ministry was developed at Bethel Church in Redding, California and is focused on revealing the lies people have lived with, replacing those lies with the truth, and connecting in a personal way with the God who is truth. Think of it as a personal prayer ministry on steroids. It’s cool stuff, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. If you want to know more, check out the Sozo website.

    So that’s what I’ve been up to, at least in a general sense. Here’s hoping that I’ll have more time in the coming weeks to really focus on moving forward with my writing project. Here’s hoping I figure out what it takes to get and stay organized and put the random pieces of my life (and writing) into some semblance of order.

     

    Protected: Lesson 5: Dot and Line … sort of

    Posted By on June 27, 2011

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    Protected: Lesson 4: The Sentence

    Posted By on May 23, 2011

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    Administrata – fighting the spammers

    Posted By on May 20, 2011

    Both my ME and my MUSE get quite put-out at spammers. Since a good 80% or so of the comments I’ve received so far have been spam (despite having the obvious spam – comments with multiple links, etc – automatically blocked) I have changed my comment settings.

    I still welcome comments from all readers of this blog. However, first time commenters will have to have their first comment approved. It should only happen once and after that your comments should post automatically.

    Protected: My Muse Mind Map

    Posted By on May 17, 2011

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    Protected: Lesson 2 – The Sweet Spot Map

    Posted By on May 17, 2011

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    Protected: Lesson 3: Wisdom and Whimsy

    Posted By on May 12, 2011

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    Protected: My ME and my MUSE

    Posted By on May 10, 2011

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