October Writing Projects

October 3, 2016September 30, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Let me be straight about something. I have been in a writing fog for the last several months. It’s one of those things in which my head is crammed with ideas, but none of them have any immediate use. I want to execute them all, but none of them really further any of my immediate goals. And that’s been kind of frustrating for me because, obviously, it’s the immediate goals I need to be focusing on.

I have to produce dammit!

My business mind has a tendency to clash with my artist’s heart and it does my hellscape mind no favors.

So, in other words, I haven’t been making a lot in the way of tangible progress on certain things lately.

I have done some things, though.

I finished the first draft of another script called The Hitman’s List. I was emboldened by Open Christmas Eve receiving an honorable mention in the contest I entered it into to finish this one because it was my second choice for an entry. I’m pretty pleased with it, though I have no idea what I’ll do with it.

The victory also encouraged me to enter a couple of poems into a poetry contest. I actually got second place in a state contest back when I was in high school. It was an assignment/entry. I’m still bitter my teacher made me change the last line of that poem, even though I can’t remember what it was about (I can’t remember the theme of the contest). She made me all-caps the last line because she decided I didn’t have enough poetic devices in it. I don’t know if that change won me second place or lost me first. Now I’ll know if I win, it’s all me, baby.

The serial idea for Patreon plods on. I’ve got the first draft of the first two “episodes” done and I’m well on my way to completing the first draft of the third. It’s moving along a lot more slowly than I thought, but I think I might be comfortable enough to have something going by November maybe. Of course, I might be overestimating myself once again. I have a great talent for doing that when it comes to time. The planning fallacy. I has it.

Looming around the corner is NaNoWriMo. I should be planning what I’m doing for it. And I will.

Just as soon as I figure out what that is.

Oh, the scares October has for me.

August Writing Projects

August 1, 2016July 30, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s August and I’m thinking I’ve hit the dog days of summer. Or maybe it’s just a bit of floundering on my own part because I’m not sure what I want to do this month.

I finished the revisions on Open Christmas Eve so, while not spectacular, the script is long enough to not be considered bullshit and I’m good with that. I no longer feel like a fraud, just a hack, and that’s my default, so it’s fine.

I also got the Storytime Jukebox up and running, which was a thing that I wasn’t sure I could or should do, but in the end I felt like I didn’t have a choice. The response I’ve had in the few days it’s been up is more than I actually hoped for and I hope it continues. I so appreciate the help.

It’s times like these, when the malaise and scatterbrainedness hits me, that I’m glad I have an epic To Do List of Doom. I may not know exactly what I want to work on, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have plenty of options.

So at some point during this month I will probably-

-Revise a couple of more stories for the jukebox and/or

-Write the first drafts of some short stories for the next anthology and/or

-Finish the first draft of one of my other test scripts for practice and/or

-Something else I can’t remember even though I just looked at the To Do List of Doom like four minutes ago.

Yeah. The scatterbrained malaise is that bad.

But August won’t be. I will be productive.

I will get at least one thing done.

I wonder what it will be.

May Writing Projects

May 2, 2016May 1, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

April turned out to be quite a productive month for me, quite unintentionally really.

I finished the latest round of revisions on The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys as well as the first drafts of all five of the potential script contest entries (first fifteen pages and one-page synopsis) before I left for Chicago. Part of the purpose of going to Chicago, besides seeing friends and eating orange chicken, was to be able to work on my writing without interruption or distraction. I found myself in a hotel room with no major writing project demanding my attention as I was still undecided what script to do for the contest. I ended up polishing “What You Don’t See” and “Short Hallway” (I polished a haunted hotel story in a hotel room while watching 1408 because my commitment to a theme cannot be denied) and got about a third of Voice polished before I left. A productive short trip despite the anxiety troubles I had.

I finished polishing Voice after I got home. I then turned my attention to the script contest. I ended up picking one called Open Christmas Eve and did my best to get those first fifteen pages perfect. I hit the “What the fuck am I doing? I can’t do this! I have no idea what I’m doing. This is pointless” wall Friday night, got my “Fuck it” second wind Saturday afternoon, and after a few more tweaks and some polishing, I submitted it Saturday night. I recognize that it’s probably a waste of an entry fee (and only with extreme luck will I even win that entry fee back), but I still did it. There is some kind of accomplishment in pushing myself to explore different forms of writing.

Speaking of, April was National Poetry Month and as an exercise I made myself write at least four lines of poetry a day. They’re just scraps of poems, nothing glorious, and I have no idea what, if anything, I’ll do with them (I posted one on my Instagram at the end of the month to celebrate), but it was a fun little project.

After all of that in April, what’s to be done in May?

I’m going to completely finish The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys. It needs a little more revision (just some tweaks), a beta read, and a polish. Once that’s done, I’ll get to work putting together the ghost story collection. I’m also going to work on finishing the first draft of Open Christmas Eve. Now that it’s submitted, the rest of the script should be easy to finish and I’ll feel like less of a cheat having the whole thing written.

I sort of feel like spending the summer writing a short novel. I’ve got the idea (actually, I have two ideas, but I think I’m going to save one for NaNo) and I think I’ll spend some time this month working on fleshing it out.

No worries about getting bored. Still plenty left on my To Do List of Doom.