Experimentation

I’ve always been pretty secretive about my writing. Basically, I’ve always had a lot of self-doubt in the area. Big surprise, huh?

Here’s another:  since I signed onto Twitter perhaps a month ago I’ve wasted a fair amount of time on Tweeting.

But during the terminal phase of the draft of The Dinosaur Lords, as in just the last three or so days,  Tweeting actually seemed to help.

What happened was I got total Twitterrhea – utterly violating all the canons of how many Tweets you’re supposed to post per day. (Five? Oh, hell, no!)  What I was doing was writing intensely for a while, then taking breaks. Sometimes they were very brief – nothing more than a quick time-out to do a little research online. Since I stayed keyed up, really in the zone, I tended to let the hyper leak out onto Twitter. Some of the posts were pretty random and weird (in other words, like most of my Tweets.)

Others, though, amounted to progress reports. Or even brief snippets on what I’d just written. One mentioned how one of my viewpoint characters had just killed a zombie woman trying to scale a Triceratops. That got some interest.

Which doesn’t hurt. As Cory Doctorow, whom I follow on Twitter, says, a writer’s chief problem is obscurity. One of the things I’ve embarked on doing, once I got within actual sight of The End, has been trying to find ways to attract eyes to the novel.

At the time, though, the immediate effect seemed to be to help me build and keep momentum on the writing. Giving periodic updates actually gave me an incentive to drive on. The expressions of support I got in real time from various people like haikubica and catnip_martini helped a lot, frankly.

Also it kind of bound me to it. I’d tried Tweeting a vow to finish the draft by March 1st. Obviously that didn’t happen. Reset: keep trying. And, well, I did.

And, well, it got done.

I’m processing now, trying to figure out what works and what’ll help me write ever more freely, hence more – and better.

Thanks to everybody for your help. You do help. Please don’t waste your line doubting that.

Hit dinner last night with some of my ASFS friends: Steve and Kathy, Roslee, Craig and Jessica. Steve went so far as to buy me dinner by way of congratulations, which was marvelous of him. Thanks, Steve!

We adjourned to Casa Kubica and watched some classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, then Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Which was a hunk o’ steamin’ fun, even though the songs, while very well done, were none of them very catchy – unlike, say, South Park – Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Try to tell me you don’t have “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” or “Blame Canada” playing your head right now! (Unless you haven’t seen the movie. If that’s the case, why not give yourself a treat and click on the title and buy it?)

I’m continuing to find my way here. Particularly I’m learning how to promote myself and my friends. I believe every activity we undertake is a skill and can be learned.

I’ve already learned a lot from my friends and fans here on the blog and in my Forum. Larry in particular has given me some splendid advice and encouragement. You’ve already seen some of his suggestions incorporated here on Sense of Adventure.

I’ve gotten some wonderful responses to yesterday’s post. I’m inclined to follow Scott‘s suggestion to blow through a quick clean-up so I can get it out to those, like Larry and L. Neil and some of my Critical Mass cohorts who’ve asked to look at it. Thanks to everyone for taking the trouble to comment!

Right now I’m drifting a bit. And that’s okay; I planned for a bit of downtime after finishing the draft. I want to clear the decks on DinoLords for a short space and come back fresh. I need to hop on my Deathlands novel and start making serious progress there.

I want to sit down and really learn to use the Campaign Cartographer mapping software I popped for a couple years back. It’s really cool beans, and I badly need to generate something better than a handful of sketches of the land of Nuevaropa for DinoLords. I’ll probably see if I can figure out the Atuahualpa theme for WordPress, finally get three columns going on here. I’m catching up on the great webcomic Schlock Mercenary. And strange as it may seem, I need to devote some line to learning how to let myself just play.

And in a few days I’ll hit the dinos like a rogue asteroid.

I want to make you proud of me. I want to learn enough to be able to help you follow your own endeavors by imparting what I’ve learned. And of course – always! – I want to entertain you.

Thank you all again for the help you’ve given me and the help you’ll give me in the future. I’ll do my best to live up to it.

Oh – please give a thought to hopping over to Bookspotcentral to vote for Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and the Silver Bullet (Kitty Norville, Book 4) in their latest Tournament. She’s a fellow Rocky Mountain writer plus, of course, a Wild Cards author. Plus she’s good!

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