The Ready Writer

I really think that in order to write productively you need to have your own space. Maybe your space is the couch or at a specific table at your favorite coffee shop, or locked in the bathroom while your kids are screaming on the other side of the door. That’s okay. You don’t need to have an office to write. This is my space: Sure the furniture is mismatched, and the view isn’t great, and it needs some better storage (and a good vacuuming and dusting) but it’s mine. I can go in there and close the door and write. I can make it smell however I want, I can organize the furniture however I want and I can put whatever I want on the walls. It. Is. Mine. And I hope to use it a lot more in 2018. I spent a ton of time in there during my grad school years doing work and writing papers, but I haven’t done a ton of creative work in there. My resolution is to change that. Words will be written in there. My words. Memento mori &;

Hello Readers! It is October, which as we know is Halloween Month!  This is any horror writers favorite time of the year for sure. I'm no exception.  But! October means a couple of other things: 1. Freaky Flash Fiction Fridays!  That's right! For the second year in a row I will be posting freaky (more like spooky, but that doesn't work with the alliteration) flash fiction stories on Fridays. This allows me to keep writing short things while I work on a novel, but it also allows you to get a taste of how I write (a little, admittedly the stories I post are unedited first drafts, but still). 2. October also means we are 31 days away from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  This year, I am participating in Preptober (#preptober).  Now, if you participate in NaNoWriMo and are a pantser, you can disregard this rest of this post.  However if you are a plotter, or a mix of the two (which is what I am...though I want to be more of a plotter) then kee...

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'...

Hello! I'm hard at work working on my nano/serial project (5419 words in!) but I've also been working on a vision board project for my main YA novel that is my precious brain child. No real post today, but I thought I'd share with you some pictures from my vision board. I think they are vague enough that it won't give too much away, but will give you all some fun things to look at :) Post what you think I'm writing about in the comments! I'd love to hear your guesses ;) Until next time! Memento Mori &;

Hello! I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, just busy with 2.5 jobs and trying to get some writing in.  Actual writing trumps writing ABOUT writing.  But here is where I currently stand. I haven't touched my main project in months which has actually been a good thing for me. I've been reading, working on short stories, and generally just thinking about who I am as a writer and that has done me a lot of good. As I grow older, I find myself really trying to take the time to think introspectively and to think about who I am now, and who I want to grow to be.  This is especially good for me while I try to craft and create my writers "voice."   So, let me introduce myself: I am a horror writer. My influences come heavily from American Southern Gothic literature and American Spiritualism.   And knowing that now, my writing is taking shape. I'm finding my voice. All this time I didn't think I had a writing voice, but I do! I have ...

I have written about writing resistance before, but seeing as I am currently in a slump, I thought I would bring the topic up again. I'm having some troubles with a short story. I wrote one for a deadline and because I had only finished the draft the day it was due for submission, I didn't get a chance to edit it.  It got rejected (which wasn't a huge shocker to me), and quite frankly I was a little relieved because that meant that I could polish it. I found another place that was accepting submissions, so I thought "Perfect!" and I got to editing. Only I wasn't really editing.  I was just cutting. My story was well over the word limit for this particular journal, so I just started cutting.  I chopped and chopped and chopped and eventually I just had a collection of fragmented sentences that were sort of going in a direction, but not really telling a story.  In the midst of all of this cutting, I missed the deadline for that journal too. So I scr...

Hello Everyone! This is Part II of my Scary Video Game series.  We are talking about Resident Evil 7, which is one of the newest, and one of the scariest video games to come on the market. Before I go on, I'm gonna post this first: THIS POST WILL CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS If you haven't played the game, or watched someone play it, you may not want to read on. Okay. So the reason that I want to talk about this game is because it surprised me. All I had known about the Resident Evil franchise was that it had zombies in it.  And while I am not offended or even dislike the zombie genre, a lot of it relies on the fantastical, gross, and the jump scare.  However, Resident Evil 7 doesn't rely on that. That isn't to say that it doesn't  have those things, in fact, it has a lot of those things, but when I think of "what kind of horror" this game is, I would have to say that, at least for the first 2/3rds, it is an atmospheric horror. Why? Because for th...

So I have to confess that I haven't been the best at writing so far this year.  And yes, I know that the year is still young.  I DID submit a short story in January, and that is exciting, but I haven't done much else. Here are my excuses: -New Years Party -Grandfather Passed Away -Water Heater Leaked -Been working lots of extra hours since my SO lost his job -Applied and interviewed for a job that I really wanted and then didn't get it (which put me in a bad place) -My Birthday Okay. Got that out of the way. But things are on the upswing. My SO starts his new job in March, I'll be back in town (I'm going out of town to visit family in a couple of weeks) and my hours at both jobs will be back to normal (ish). I know I already stated my writing goals in a previous post.  But I'm committing to it (again). Right now. I'm in the process of re-writing the ENTIRE first act of my novel so it works with the plan I have for the next 2 third...

It's a new year! While there were a lot of bad things about 2016, I made some pretty big strides in figuring out who I am as a writer and what I want to write about. I finally accepted the fact that I write horror, and while some people may not think that it is "real" literature, I do.  And that is all that matters. I finally accepted that I also like to write Junior and YA fiction, and they too are valid, and that they can handle scary stories too. So, with these revelations in mind, I made some 2017 writer goals: Finish my main project Draft 1 Write 6 short stories and have them polished to final draft quality. Revamp my website.  It is in MUCH need of a makeover. Keep working on my side project during the 3 Nanos throughout the year (November, April, and July).  I have been having a lot of fun with that project, and it is a nice break in between my bigger projects. I have A LOT to keep me busy this year.  What are some of your goals and resolut...

Hello Readers! Sorry I have been away.  Last week was sort of...well...not great.  But I did get a little bit of work done. I am in the process of typing up Act I.  I have typed up chapter one so far.  As I type up Act I, I have some goals I want to hit: Delete all of the other POVs except for one of them.  I was attempting to do a multiple POV thing, and I didn't like it, and so I have decided to do it from a single POV.  I know this means that I am going to be deleting like, half of what I have hand written, but that's how writing goes sometimes.  And overall, I think it will help my book be better. Change one of my characters from a mystical/fantasy type character to more of a mortal psychic character.  My character needs to be "gifted" but she was feeling a little too deus ex machina for my taste, so I'm tweaking her a bit. This doesn't seem like a tremendous amount of work, but I'm not quite ready to do big edits yet.  I'm j...

So its the last day of NaNoWriMo and while I am nowhere close to 50,000 words, I am proud to have written close to 4,500. Why? Well, I started working on my main project in July,  and I finished the first Act in October at AROUND 8,000 words. I have written over half of what I wrote in 3 months, in just one. That's because I am working that writing muscle. It isn't a surprise that writing everyday is the best thing to do if you want to be a writer. But as someone with 2 jobs and somewhat of a social life, that can be hard. So I try to write as often as I can.  I used the fun frantic energy of NaNoWriMo to test myself, and to see if I could still squeeze writing in at any possible moment I could even if that meant just taking 5 minutes to write 50 words as opposed to sitting down for an hour and seeing how much I could write. And it helped! I find that I am getting better at getting focused faster, words come a little better, and my writing chunks are getting a litt...

So on Election Day (or the day after, rather), I expressed the thought that I may have to scrap my main project because of my villain. I have since decided against that. I think now more than ever, I need to write this story. I am going to make some pretty big changes to the story.  I'm taking out some of the fantastical, making it less traditional apocalyptic horror and more occult horror.  My villain will be less of a political ruler, and more of a religious one, that was able to take over the government, and instead of doing it from multiple points of view, I'm picking one character to tell the story from. However, I still think that this story will be an important one.  I'm separating it from my original idea, because honestly I don't know if I can write it.  It's not that I don't want to, or am too scared to create a political rift, but I just don't think I'm strong enough.  This election is a very emotional one for me, and I'm already har...

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...

So I finished Act I of my novel! Yay!  It's somewhere along 8,000 words.  My last 2 chapters are more notes than actual prose because I realized that I needed to make some shifts, so I didn't want to write chapters that would ultimately most likely just get thrown out.  So, now I'm taking a month off from that project (so I can distance myself a bit from it, and be able to edit a little more critically.) In the meantime, I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and working on my "affair project". Here's the thing.  I love NaNo. I have participated in it off and on since I was in high school, I was a municipal liaison once, and have made a lot of friends doing it, but I have NEVER made it to 50,000 words.  I've always burnt out.  And I won't make the wordcount again this year either.  But the issue I was having before was that I was using Nano as a means to finish a project. And I just don't work that way.  Not onl...

So I have been having a few people ask me some questions about my specific outlining process, and I always have to remind people that I didn't have one.  I don't know if I DO have one.  I'm working on the first project I have ever outlined, so I can't say I have a "process" but here is what I did. I started with a "what if" question.  This isn't anything different from my normal writing process.  But with short stories I come up with my "what if?" question and then start writing.  With a novel, I went a little further. Next, I wrote a quick plot summary. If someone were to ask me "what happens in your book?" This is what I would tell them. It contains all the big parts, but isn't very exhaustive. Then, I wrote the detailed plot summary.  This goes beyond just the "what happens" situation.  This is the summary you would write if there was a book report assignment for your book. After that, I wrote out all ...