After a long day work

I've been revising the "Chick" story. (It's about a ravenous little chicken)

I corrected a many spelling and syntax error, I can now honestly say it reads much better. Story wise I added a little here and there making it a bit more fleshed out and the story now flows a bit better.

The story is now ready for my wife to proof read and detect the missed spelling and syntax errors. After she is finished I will go over the work once more, before I allow my daughter to read it.

In the meantime I had planned to continue writing a short story for a contest, but I noticed I am past the admission date. I may still finish the story later and try get it published. I really feel bad forgetting about the due date, it should not have happened.

Besides the short story I will continue with another story I started writing during my vacation time. I got the first chapter finished and it's begging me to finish the rest. If I keep my current writing speed and actually write every day, I will have a first draft finished by November 22nd. I work best if I put a deadline out for my self, off course this only works as long I remember the deadline.

Me, my car and my wandering mind

I want to start with telling that yesterday I finished typing my "Chick" (A little chicken not a little woman) story. Besides typing I had also done some rewriting including corrections, it was ready for my beloved wife start proofreading.

I said "...was ready...", because now I don't feel it's ready anymore. What happened? Me and my mind happened. I sometimes have moments I get lost in my mind while driving to work and back. In those moments I think and fantasize about a lot of things, including about stories I am writing or plan to write. Sometimes I have whole dialogs happening in my head, stuff I often put on paper later.

Today it happened again, this time I thought about many things. I began thinking about my doubts if the "Chick" story was suitable for kids and if so for what age. After concluding I still had no answer, I thought about some other story in my head about a Vampire and a Werewolf and sixteen year old maidens. A story I intend to write in the near future. My mind being a jumble as it is went from thinking about that story back to the "Chick" story.

I thought that in my current story the "Chick" is a total evil creature with no redeeming qualities, just pure evil. I thought that's not the way the story is supposed to be. Indeed he needs to be a monster but not by free will, at least not in the beginning. I got a picture of a scene in my mind and almost simultaneously the story of the sequel loomed in my head.

After my mind wandering moment passed I made an earnest attempt to singalong with the music playing out my radio speakers. My singing is horrible, it really is, believe me you would not want to hear me, though horrible it may be I love to sing in the privacy of my car.

Once at home sitting at my desk while searching for information online about publishers, the idea my story was not complete kept gnawing on me. I realized at that moment, that the story was not ready yet to be published, that I should rewrite it and make it be what it's supposed to be. I'm certain the story will be better after doing so.

This decision jumbled up my planning for this year, I'll have to make do.

Languages

I finished the first draft of a children book I'm writing. I'm now busy typing it from longhand onto digital file.

My typing speed is deplorable compared to my longhand, my longhand skill is as bad as my typing. I'm going at a crawl having to figure out what I wrote, fix the errors within and do a bit of rewriting at the same time.

I've always found editing to be boring I much prefer creating and fantasizing new stories. Writing a new story flows more easier and faster than correcting and fixing it. One day in the future, I hope a near one, I will improve my writing in such a way that I need less fixing. It would be a great day however that day isn't today.

I'm now struggling and crawling at it, thank God it is just about 15k words that I need typed and corrected and I'm midways. After finishing I will do another round of correcting.

The children story is written in Dutch. My wife having excellent dutch grammar and spelling will churn out the last mistakes. I'm very optimistic she will do so because she is great and smart, she can do everything, even fixing all my horrendous errors and bad writing. (I'm sucking up to my wife so she does the work, please don't tell her.)

English is not my native language, still my grammar and spelling is much better than my Dutch. I've noticed the way I write Dutch sometimes it is a direct translation from English. It makes it a bit more difficult for me to write and it's weird.

In my daily life I talk more Dutch than English, though I write and read more English than Dutch. From time to time I also talk, read and listen in many other languages. I am afraid that because of the multitude of languages I was/am exposed to, that I've lost having a native tongue. (or I just suck at all languages)

I used to think in just one language, though a few years ago I noticed I stop doing that. When writing I now think in English, when at work I think in Dutch, when at home it's a mix of a plethora of languages but mainly Dutch, sometimes for odd reasons I even exclaim some French. My French skill being the worst, I've gotten many a mean look the few times I tried talk to a Parisian. It's a beautiful language but oh so difficult for me to learn. (nah reality is I've become too lazy to learn proper French.)

My point is that I am a jack of all trades and master of none in languages and actually in everything I do. I may be good and maybe even great in most things I do, but I will never reach that point I can call myself a master. This could possibly make writing a bit more difficult for me.

Writing is hard and often times difficult work, but I know from experience that if I make the effort my work will be good to great. I may sound arrogant, but it's just my experience with knowing myself. I am above average in anything I do and when I put some effort in it I may be good to great. (Maybe it's indeed arrogance.)

About the children book, it's about a chick born from within a black egg. He's born with a never satisfied hunger, he wants to eat and eat and eat. A children horror story about a chick and his food, with toned down violence and gore. I'm not even sure about the age group it would fall into, I suspect it to be between 8-10.

I started writing the story at request of my daughter. Being the kind dad that I am, I complied. When finished I'll try get it published. I even might do a sequel and an English translation.

Besides writing for my daughter I started with another story. I just finished the first chapter last weekend. Like I previously said editing is boring so I need the diversion of creating. If all goes well this year I may finish the first draft of the new story by years end.

My neglect

I've neglected this blog for almost a month now. Not long after my last post before this one, I finished the first draft of my second manuscript and started on a third manuscript.

My time in June and July I spend watching the world cup 2010 in South Africa and working on my front yard. By the way the world cup final was the most horrendous match I ever saw and Spain won.

I chopped down and uprooted a dying tree that stood on my front yard. I do not like ending a life be it an animal, insect or plant, it felt like chipping off a the innocence from my soul with every chop I dealt to the tree. (I may be over dramatizing.)The tree was down within a hour the uprooting took more time.

To get the root out required a lot of digging and chopping and yet more digging and much more chopping, on and on till my shovel broke. Lucky for me I was almost finished, the last bit I did bare handed, it took me about two hours to get the root out the ground.

A few weeks after I planted some buxus at the border of my front yard. It's still a work in progress just the start of something that one day will be beautiful the same like the stories I try to put on paper.

Besides watching sport and trying my hand at gardening I've been writing, albeit less frequent. I am finishing a children story at the time, I've just got a few chapters left. I put a deadline for myself for august 17th and I'm well within my schedule.

I've taken two weeks off work, my free time I'll use to garden, spend time with my family and write.

What does "Alpha Protocol" have to do with writing

What does "Alpha Protocol" have to do with writing?

What is "Alpha Protocol", well it's a PC game off course. I myself am an avid gamer (though the eight hour long game sessions are long gone now)I love to play computer games, Alpha Protocol being the latest I played till it's finish.

I loved playing it despite it's many technical shortcomings. The game has some jerky mouse movements bug(Hope they patched it), making it at times frustrating especially in tense moments full of action. Besides that, it has some problem with glitching and the occasional getting stuck through a crate or wall. The AI is stupid at times , though in my play session it was more often okay to good. Not many shooter based games exist where the enemy succeeds in flanking me, here it happened a lot, so I guess the AI mileage may vary per session played. (I suspect that when the system is low on resources it kind of ease on the AI.)

Now the good. The game has an interesting, intriguing story that may very well suck you in, I fell victim to it's mesmerizing call. What I love is that your own actions or lack of affects the way the story progresses and the ending of the game. The dialog you chose may affect how the characters relate to you and by that open/close up other possible options, that's why game played a second time may be much different than the first time played.

The game-play itself is above average. It being an RPG/TPS the action, at start, is not as smooth as an FPS, though the higher you level up the closer it gets to that level of game-play. What I like is that there are many way you can do the missions, you can opt for stealth or Rambo your way through or use a combination.

Now back to the question about what does it have to do with writing. The game is based around a story, being that the story is the focal point, makes the game more like an interactive book where Instead of reading you play it.

It's well written, I loved the story more than the game-play, if not for the story I would not have finished it.

Update Week 24

Week 24 I spend my time working, eating, writing, watching football (soccer) and sleeping. I am near to finish my draft and that excites me.

This week results:

Monday 1164 words
Tuesday 720 words
Wednesday 1704 words
Thursday 1888 words
Friday 1909 words
Saturday 2031 words
Sunday 978 words

Total:10394 words

It's been a great week for the work done on my WIP. I've to say I could have done more. Tuesday I had to work overtime at my job, hence I wrote less. Sunday I decided to take a bit more time off, because it was Fathers-day.

Father-day was great, my children made me breakfast on bed. They gave me presents they made at school, I think these are best presents one could get. Everybody can buy something out of a store, but something self-made you know the person put love, effort, creativity and time into it.

I had a very productive week, I'm not sure I will be able to repeat the effort this week.

Update WIP Week 23

My progress this week had been a bit better than the last one. I've done my best to write more frequent and pushed myself to write the words needed.

Here's the result:

Monday 1226 words
Tuesday 0 words
Wednesday 1322 words
Thursday 1173 words
Friday 925 words
Saturday 1093 words
Sunday 1679 words

Total: 7418 words

It could have been much better if I had written Tuesday. This time it was not completely my own fault. I had the full intention to write that day, but something did happen. On my way home from work there was a traffic jam caused by an car accident, so a one hour trip turned out to be a three hour trip. I came home late, I ate diner and immediately helped the kids to bed.

The kids asleep at eight o'clock, I wanted to spend some quality time with my wife so we took place in front of the television and popped in a movie. The movie ending at about ten, this being still early for me, I intended to write before turning in.

Watching the movie my wife fell asleep, after this fact I deliberated with my self if I kept watching or started writing. In my endless debate with myself about what I should do, I myself fell asleep. So hence no words written on Tuesday, Tuesday being a tiring bad day for me.

I guess we all will have our bad and good days in writing, when despite all our genuine good intentions all goes bad. Though I have to say this week was a good one for my writing despite that one bad day. For the coming week I hope to do as much or more. (And try to write every day.)