The Ready Writer

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear, is the fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft Horror is a fascinating genre for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of its relationship with other types of fiction or literature.  Horror is most often held on the bottom of the ladder.  Most of this is due to the fact that history does have a long history of being pulp, or cheap (think of the penny dreadfuls, horror novels that were literally sold for a penny), and yet many grand works of literature, stories that are on reading lists in high schools and colleges across the nation are also horror (Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and all of Poe.). Hell, even Alice in Wonderland had some horror elements in it, and it was written FOR CHILDREN. But even so, even with so many great pieces of work within the genre, whenever I tell people that I write horror, especially other writers or people in the literature ...

So... I don't have any writing stats for this past week because...well...I didn't write. Here are the quick excuses: I devoted a lot of time to working out, picked up extra hours at my library job, and finished 2 books.  But the real excuse: I felt burnt out. Some of you who know me, know I've attempted to write books, and tend to get burnt out in chapter 2, and give up only to start another project and do the same thing again. This is why this project has gotten me so excited, because I've made it almost to the end of Act 1, and until this week I had no plans on giving up.  But coming back from my break for my wrist, the words just weren't flowing.  And I was terrified.  I was thinking I was gonna burn out and give up...again. As I sat down to try to write I kept thinking "this isn't scary enough" "my characters aren't deep enough" or the usual "are people even going to like this??" But instead of giving up, I just decide...

Just a reminder to all you readers, no stats blog this week because I took last week off from writing to heal my wrist.  I've been pain free all week and am excited to get back to writing tomorrow. So I am taking this day of blogging to kickstart a series of posts in which I will be talking about the horror genre.  But before I can even do that, I have to talk about what brought me to that genre and why I write it, and my journey to accepting the fact that I write horror. This post is just a brief intro into my writing and reading habits as a kid through adulthood.  The other posts will be a mix of information and my own experiences with the genre. But here is the start: I got interested in reading much like most kids: with the Goosebumps novels.  Sure, they weren't THAT scary, even to me as a kid, but they were still "darker" than some of the books I was supposed to be reading.  I read Babysitters Club, and The Boxcar Children, and the like, and they were fi...

Can I just post a picture of a lemon for this week?  That's how I feel this week went. Anyway, here are the numbers: Monday: No words Tuesday: +180 word Wednesday: No Words Thursday: No words Friday: No Words Saturday: +145 words Sunday +427 words Total words written this week: 752 Total project word count: 7454 So why no writing?  CARPAL TUNNEL. I honestly didn't write on Monday or Wednesday due to just not making time, but I woke up Thursday morning and I couldn't move, or put any weight on, or hold anything with my right hand.  It was feeling better on Saturday and Sunday, but I think I overworked it.  Today, typing this, I am in some pretty terrible pain. I am not going to make any goals for the week.  If my wrist is up to the task of writing, I'll write.  But I think I'll make the goal for the week to catch up on some much needed reading.  I'm a firm believer that if you want to write a lot, you need to rea...

Okay, here are the stats: Monday August 22: +100 words Tuesday August 23: No Writing Wednesday August 24: +107 words Thursday August 25: +100 words Friday August 26: No Writing Saturday August 27: No Writing Sunday August 28: +325 words Total words written this week: 632 words Total project word count: 6702 So this week wasn't my best.  I worked 6 days and 2 of them were 13 hour days, and right now I am not good at fitting writing into stressful days, which I know is something that I need to work on.  But this last week was much better! Monday August 29: +175 words Tuesday August 30: No Writing Wednesday August 31: +158 words Thursday September 1: +115 words Friday September 2: +126 words Saturday September 3: No Writing Sunday September 4: +124 words Total words written this week: 698 words Total project word count: 7400 Okay, so I didn't do as well as I thought, now that I've counted the wor...

Sorry guys! No writing stats this week. I did write though and will include counts in Monday's post! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone