The Ready Writer

Hello hello! I'm trying to figure out a blog schedule that will work best.  Tuesdays and Thursdays don't seem to be good ones for me most of the time. I might just go with once a week on Saturday's until my schedule clears up a little. Expect some more book reviews, and some specific writing updates coming up. Camp NaNoWriMo is next month! I'm preparing by participating in the #Instawrimo project on Instagram. Filling up my "creative backpack" in preparation for Camp NaNoWriMo. You can follow the tag, or follow me @bgstrong and see what is in my creative backpack. More to come tomorrow. Until next time, B Strong &; PS new sign off! This one is less depressing, and more positive.

Hey all! This week has been a little bumpy for me in regards to blogging. I'm working on my first grant! I have to submit it ASAP so I've been devoting all of my brain power on it. So, I'm gonna use this post as a quick update. I've been editing works on Scribophile . And soon I'll be posting flash fiction there to see if any of them can grow into short stories. I finished a short story! Currently looking for places to submit it. I am also writing/editing another short story. I'm 700+ words into my novel :) I'm also reading a couple of things: & Check me out on goodreads to stay updated on what I'm reading! Anyway, that's all for now.  I'm working hard, but in a frenzy.  Regular posts should resume next week. Until next time, Memento Mori &;

Okay there are so many places I want to take this post, and I'm not sure where I want to start, so I'll just start with cover art and a quick summary of the book: This story focuses on the adventures of 5 Americans on an uncharted island.  It starts during the American Civil War, where 5 northern prisoners of war decide to escape by hijacking an air balloon. After flying through a storm for several days, they finally land on some unknown island. They name it "Lincoln Island" as tribute to their president, Abraham Lincoln. The five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin (!), iron, an electric telegraph (!) a cliff side home, and even a seaworthy ship. Throughout their time on the island, there seems to be a deus ex machina at work, delivering chests of goods and rescuing them when in danger. Eventually, they find out the secret of the island and the gifts. Captain Nemo.  Yes, that Captain Nemo from 20,000...

Today's post is gonna be a short one guys. I am not feeling 100% but I am still determined to get SOMETHING out there...even if it is short and sweet, and late. So I just recently celebrated my 30th birthday.  I am no longer in my 20s! This of course means that I am full on heading into "adulthood".  Now, I don't really know what that means.  There are some adulty things that I'm good at, and have been good at, since my early 20s (doing taxes, paying bills mostly on time, not going completely and utterly broke), and there are still some things that I don't think I'll ever get the hang of (like doing the laundry on time, or what I should be doing to prepare for my retirement).  Being an adult means something different to everyone.  For some it means settling down, having a family, and for others it means not getting drunk on a Tuesday. So for my birthday I was gifted this book: If you aren't familiar with Sarah Andersen's work , I highl...

It is 2018! There will be some exciting things happening here on the blog. New Things: Book reviews! If you're not following me on Goodreads yet, you should be.  I will be posting reviews of the books I read both on Goodreads and here on the blog.  If you wanna be a writer,  you gotta be a reader. More Flash Fiction! I'm on Scribophile now so if you want small tastes of my spooky short writing - you can find it there or here on the blog. Updates: Twice weekly posts! These will be updates, movie reviews, video game reviews, horror history, and whatever other nonsense I want to post. They will be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am going through this book  so I will record my progress here on the blog too during those Tuesday or Thursday posts. Last thing: 2018 is the year of the (online serial) novel! The first chapters will post THIS YEAR. More teasers to my online serial novel later. Share in the comments what your reading & writing go...

Happy Eclipse day Y'all! In Southern Oregon where I am we got about 93% totality.  Got to watch it with my SO and then have a nice breakfast date before we both had to head to work. I know I've been absent for the last month, but I've been working really hard on my library career. The children's librarian position is open at the library I work at, and as someone with my MLIS in Youth Services, you can bet that I'm gonna apply! Though I am a published writer, it doesn't pay enough for me to quit my day job, so I have to make sure I have the day job of my dreams so I'm not too burnt out to write. But, in the meantime, that means that I'm spending so much time prepping for the interview (and for my first time doing story time tomorrow!) that I haven't been writing like I should.   I'm using prepping for the interview of my life as an excuse. But that can't last forever. I'll elaborate later.    Also, I'm not sure it'...

I've been thinking a lot lately about creative nonfiction - and that's probably due to the fact that for the first time in 7(?) years, I have been inspired by people.  Real life people. I took my first creative nonfiction class in community college because it was a term I had never heard before.  How on Earth could an essay be creative? But it opened up this new world to me, a world of memoir and a level of thought that I needed and ended up thriving on. the first creative essay I wrote landed me a spot reading in a swanky art gallery surrounded by middle aged, well dressed academics drinking wine (which was, and still is my measurement of success). I continued taking creative nonfiction as a writing major at Southern Oregon University. I got A;s, I was told I could easily be a biographer or a memoirist, or essayist writing for any number of journals, and yet, for some reason, I stopped. I attended Grad School where I studied Library Science, not just because I wanted to b...

Get ready folks, this is gonna be kind of a long one. Also, for those who only prefer to read about my writing and not so much my political and spiritual life, scroll down.  I'll get there eventually. So I've been thinking a lot about water lately.  My dreams have been full of it, I've been drinking a lot of it, and since it's January in Oregon, there's just a lot of it around. Water has a lot of symbolism. America's new President was sworn in earlier this week and as it was happening, it started to rain.  Many people thought it was a sign from God.  A positive thing.  Of course the reason behind this wasn't something divine.  It has to do with precipitation and clouds, I remember at least that much from public school science class (I also did an interpretive dance about the water cycle in Outdoor School when I was in 6th grade). But even so, the first thought I had was a divine one.  I thought about John 11:35: "Jesus Wept." Counter th...

I can't believe it is time for another writing update! I hate to say, but I've been in sort of a slump.  I haven't worked on my main project in a few weeks, and I've been writing sporadically on a short story in 50-100 word chunks. Part of it is because I'm working a lot, so I just write when I can squeeze in a few moments, and its easier for me to work on my short story in tiny chunks than my main project. But another part of it is because I'm just...tired. Between my 2 jobs I've been working full time, and when you work one job that you hate, and another job that you feel stuck in, it feels like a LOT more than 40 hours, and all of that leads to writing resistance. At the beginning of the year, I did a tarot card spread for myself and it told me that the one thing that will make this year successful for me is moderation.  For me, this doesn't necessarily mean cutting out things that I want to do, but rather it means allowing myself to not do ...

Hello Readers! Just a quick update to let you all know that I am taking a hiatus for the rest of 2016.  Right now I am working on a short story and spending holiday time with loved whens during the times that I am not swamped with the extra hours I picked up at both of my jobs. I have some plans for the blog in 2017.  Writing updates and horror history will continue.  But what do you all think of some sort of book reviews? Not on any sort of regular schedule, just as I finish reading books? Just a thought. Anyway, have a Merry Holiday, a Happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2017!

So I am still on hiatus from my main project, but that doesn't mean I'm not writing. In order to keep my horror writer brain sharp, I am doing the following: Working on my "affair" or "backburner" project .  This allows me to distance myself from my main project so that I can come back to it ready to edit critically (and next week I'll talk about what those edits will entail). Reading.   I'm a firm believer (but not the only one that believes it) that in order to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader (and by good, I mean participating in the act of those activities). So I am reading a lot of horror and seeing what the greats (as well as the newbies) are doing in the world of horror.  If you want to see what I'm reading, you can friend me on Goodreads.  You can find me under my full name: Brystan Strong. Research. This may fall into both the previous category and the next one, but I'm doing scholarly research on the genr...

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...

Hello Readers! I know I have been gone for a little bit, but I was on vacation!  I had brought devices to blog as I was there, but then decided once I was on my vacation that I would enjoy being with loved ones and not worry about blogs or even writing.  So this post is sort of going to be a quick 3 for 1 blog post: Stats, Writing stuff, and Faith. I won't go into specific writing stats for the week of May 30-June 4 but here are some major updates: I typed up Chapter 2 of my Haunted House project.  The chapter itself is 1667 words but I want my chapters for that project to be 2000 to 2500 words so I have some work to do on that chapter. I also did some more work on the handwritten draft of Chapter 2 of my Haunted Hotel piece, but haven't finished chapter 2 or anything. There will be NO stats blog tomorrow, as I didn't really do much writing over my vacation.  The only writing I did do was on a short story.  The prompt was given to me from a fun fact th...

Hello Readers! So I am officially done with school, which has me thinking a lot about my life as a writer.  I don't have school work or anything to deal with, and though I will be picking up more hours at work eventually (that's the goal, right? To work full time? That's what adults do?) writing is now my focus.  I am working on some writing goals and deadlines, but one of them is this blog! I want to post as often as I can, so here is my schedule: Monday: A Quick Writing Update.  This will be me just briefly discussing how many words I've written, what kind of editing I've done.  That kind of thing. Friday:  Writing Blog.  This will be a longer post, discussing me as a writer, my method (do I even have one of those?) and other writing related things. Sunday:  Faith Based Blog.  This blog is about my writing and my faith, because I believe they influence each other.  So Sunday's blog will be faith centered. Part of the reason for ...

What I Did This Week... This week has been super busy!   Sunday:  Had a meeting at Job #2 suuuuper early in the morning (I am NOT a morning person), and then it was off to church for the Palm Sunday service, which was awesome.  The church was freshly decorated for the season, and the children had a Palm Parade, where they walked around the block, waving their new palms around.  Super cute.  Then, I went to the coffee shop to TRY to get some writing in (that didn't go too well, but I had a delicious pot of green tea). And then I came home and worked on school work (I get my Masters in 2 months!). Workout and Meditation. Monday:  Worked at Job #1 (the library), ran errands, workout and meditation. Tuesday:  Worked at Job #2 (corporate job, ew). Had a TERRIBLE day, but that was made better by these beautiful flowers from my SO: Wednesday:  Worked on my Grad Portfolio ALL DAY (Did I mention I get my Masters in TWO MONTHS??) ...