Category Archives: Written Work

Toolbox Fallacy

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It’s still weird to me to have my words translated onto a page by way of a microphone. This sort of thing is going to take some getting used to. I need to learn to speak louder and more clearly when I do these things. Having said that, I hope to be able to create many more words very quickly over the next few weeks.

Oddly, when I’m speaking into the microphone like this, the flow of consciousness helps me to organize thoughts. Sometimes, however, one thing that it does is make other thoughts and other patterns of memory more evident. I was telling somebody the other day about the toolbox fallacy. Is this a philosophy?  Perhaps it’s a school of thought? Is that the same thing?

Anyway, the thought here is that people who are creators, in whatever form they create,  simply create. The tools are just that, tools. If I want to say that I am a writer, I should write.This should mean that I write without regard to what tools are available to me. If I need to use a marker and a napkin, or a piece of cardboard at work and a pencil, whatever it is, if I have an idea I should be writing.  Editing, compiling, composing all of those things come after. The most important piece is the actual creation. Get words on a page. If the page is blank, there’s nothing to react to.

The caveat here is, I need the time in my schedule to actually sit and make these things  happen. I’m hoping as we move forward through the end of this year that I will be able to make more time for my creative pursuits. I really do want to finish the first full novel that I have been writing for a very long time. I have world building, I have characters, I have story arc, I have villains, I have plot twists, but what I don’t have are words on a page. Hell, I’ve got as much “marketing tool writing” as I do actual, written story. Can’t buy it if it’s not actually there.

 So, I’m going to take this stream of consciousness as a starting point, remembering the toolbox fallacy, and try to create more and get these words out of my head faster so that I have something on a page that I can then go and edit and say yes I have completed this thing.

 I’ve stated this before, but I’m hopeful that perhaps, this time it will stick. Only time will tell.

Check out this video – it’s part of what stuck in my head about making my work real:

New / Old Tool

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I’m going to test out an old/new tool again. I had tried using voice to text previously and one of the things that slowed me down was always the amount of time that it took to edit these things.  There’s no way to actually say, “hey that’s the end of a sentence”. The Voice to Text tool will actually spell out the word. Punctuation is the bane of voice to text. Pauses are not recognized.

Interestingly enough I think someone complained about that and if you pause long enough you can actually say. and get that actual result (see how that worked right there?)

I’m going to try this again. I can speak faster than I can type. The real question is how much editing do I need to do when all is said and done. I think it will be an interesting experiment. It will force me to look at the words that I create in a much more conversational format as well as giving them something of a flow that they might not have otherwise.

Maybe I get these stories, these words, these things to come crashing together faster and hope the editing process is easy. Maybe I get results that amount to a stream of consciousness that don’t really work out as good stories. Hopefully one of the things that I can do is make this stream of consciousness thing work for me and use my ability to tell a good story to actually create a good story on a page. Typing in this way, which isn’t really typing, I suppose I should at least be able to pull together words faster and more completely than I could do in a traditional typing manner. If I’m lucky I will be able to produce more, and do it more quickly.

I think this is going to be at least, in part, something that I’m going to have to learn and I’m going to have to spend time working with. Based on an articleI read recently, it was suggested that what I really need to do is learn to live with an absolutely terrible first draft. I tend to want my story to come out as close to finished as it can right from the start. I don’t like the editing process. Not that I think anyone likes the editing process, the editing process sucks.

This is the test and we’ll see if my production speed goes up. One of the things I really need to get better at is my speed. There are so many things going on that I really need to make the best use of my time and use tools that maybe I wouldn’t have thought were positive or useful or even for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Time to edit this post because I can already see a giant mess.

Do you have any tools that are your favorites? What tools help your productivity?

Submission Away!

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It’s not easy to write in multiple places at the same time. I know there are folks out there who do it all the time, but I am not that good, nor am I that prolific.

A friend chanced to point me at a publisher searching for rejected stories. The requirement was that the story needed to have been rejected at least three previous times before it qualified to be sent. I have a number of stories that fit this category, but one in particular has always been disappointing to see rejected. Expectations of Speed is a good story. It’s really short at just fifteen hundred words or so, but it packs a lot into that short space.

So, off it went. I’ve made a small step back into the world of sending my work out there (and hoping it doesn’t get rejected again). They site said to query them if I hadn’t heard anything in 4 months. Hopefully it won’t take until November to see results!

I will be sure to post it here when I get an answer.

Unispired

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This is when the real work of writing happens. When there’s no muse. There’s not a ‘special thing’ going on or any sort of ‘hey – look at the shiny distraction’ moments.

Putting words on a page isn’t an easy thing… or more correctly it’s not an easy thing to do well. Like any other muscle, the ability to write efficiently and effectivly requires practice. Anyone can splash words acorss the empty screen, but it’s a challenge to create.

I’m certain I’ve talked aobut this before, but I will again because that post was likely lost here (but my irritation clearly was not). There was a time when I was reading the ‘paper’. Not technically on paper anymore, but same idea. There was a column – written by a PAID columnist – that basically said “I’ve got nothing to say” in about 500 words or so. It was infuriating. That’s absolutely terrible – a columnist holding a position and potentially bumping some other important story and having NOTHING to say, and writing exactly that.

So, as a writer striving to be an author of a published novel (someday), this is where the work is. There’s no muse here. Just a blank page looking for more words in the story.

There is work in progress, but writing there means not neccessarily writing here. We shall see how it all shakes out…

What do you do when you’re not feeling inspired? How do you push past it?

It’s Away…

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For the first time in at least a year, I have made a writing submission. I’m glad I did it. I’m working hard at reviving my creativity and planning the time in my day for it.

It’s not easy to put yourself out there and wait for judgement. I admire people that have developed a thicker skin than I have.

It was a very small risk, small reward submission, but it went.

As I stated on social media – back in the game!

Scripted

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Writing scripts – the list of what I want to say when starting off a video – is now a thing.

Yes, I tend to color code my pages so I can find various info quickly / easily.

I suppose I’ve been doing that for quite some time actually. I never really thought about it when I was playing in my friend’s game and he was twitch streaming it all. It was just our little group doing their thing. Then I started running my D&D game. That was when I realized that I was making little things to say at the start of each session. I’ve never thought of it as “script writing” really, but I suppose that’s exactly what it is.

Until now (and maybe still beyond now) I’ve been physically writing down the things I want to say using a color coded piece of graph paper and sort of reading from that. Even when I write the words, the things I say don’t always line up with what I wrote. Sometimes that works, sometimes I “out clever” myself and screw up what was a funny written line. Of course, recording live, it’s not like I can just say “cut” and do it again. We’re live, and getting ready to play.

Our little videos are not production pieces (clearly).We don’t have makeup, wardrobe or sponsors. Nor do I expect we will have those at any point in our lives. It’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get a group of friends together and have fun.

So, I’ll keep writing my little intro bits but maybe I’ll make them electronic and post them up along with the videos of my game sessions. We’ll see. This is a learning process. It will take time for me to figure it all out.

The Point

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I’ve discussed many times over the years that I don’t believe you need a date on the calendar in order to make meaningful changes in your life. If you chose to change and stick with it, the change will happen.

I picked up an idea during that time when everyone else is making resolutions. It was the D23 challenge – create one room per day during 2023 and by the end of the year have a 360+ room mega dungeon. I don’t do resolutions, but I do D&D so this caught me.

UPDATE

I’m happy to report that things are going strong. I decided rather than a dungeon room I’d create a building in the Free City of Lithia for my world building. Here we are in the middle of February and I’ve got more than 40 buildings in my sketchbook… and that’s the point of the whole exercise. I haven’t gone to any great lengths, nor have I significantly changed my schedule. I have just grabbed my sketchbook and plopped a single thing each day in there. It takes 5 minutes or less (generally) and that’s it. Sure, there’s lots more development to be done on all these locations, but I *have* all those locations now.

Make a change and stick with it. Keep on creating! Day after day and you will see results!

Some entries are more detailed than others.

Flash Prompt – The Doorway

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artist: Douglas Murakami – https://www.artstation.com/dougmurakami

It was a warm day, but not a hot one. Carrying the bag of tools, the mapping equipment and the supplies was an effort, but not an extraordinary one. The quest had almost become routine. Almost.

Endless searching. They couldn’t say that anymore. They’d finally found it.

Now they could step through.