B.R. Black

Thriller and Horror writer

Tag: productivity

  • What to do? What to do?

    I fully resonated with Sarah’s post, “When You Realize You Don’t Want to be a Writer After All.” I’ve gone back and forth over the years thinking that if I really wanted to be a writer, then I wouldn’t have any issue pursuing my goals.

    But that’s not how it works.

    The writing world is full of stories of the writer who’d written their whole life and never wanted to be anything else. Not all of us are struck with such certainty at a young age.

    Many of us have to put the desire aside for pragmatic reasons. Or self-doubt forces us to ignore our feelings and go for a safer route.

    We all travel different paths as we approach the page, and each one is as valid and important as the words you write.

    Doubt, declare, then get back to work. We’re all waiting for what you’ll write next.

  • What in tarnation is going on?

    I’m working my way through the third season of Wound when something unexpected happened.

    I can’t tell you what it is because spoilers, but it threw me for a loop.

    I was sitting comfortably at a nice table with a view of the beautiful day outside. I’d done my chores and eased into Episode 4. This is a Paul chapter, and it’s been a while since I’ve written in his voice. It took me a while to get back into his head and I have to admit, I struggled.

    Part of me wonders (at least now, as I write this I wonder) if that struggle is what caused the unexpected. Did my brain say “Hey! You’re just not feeling this guy today. What if this and this happened?”

    Maybe, I’m not sure. I know that when I sat down to write, I didn’t think that was going to happen. Then it happened. What a world.

    I’m just as shocked as you are.

    Writing was a little slower than usual today. Normally I just sprint away at the keys and try not to back track for spelling mistakes. Part of the trick is to just look down at the keys as I type. I can touch type, but I get too wrapped up in how the words look on the page instead of writing the next word. Whether I look or not, there will be spelling mistakes, but I’m much faster if I watch the keyboard.

    Typing with my eyes closed works too, or looking, really, at anything else besides the screen. If I stop reading as I’m writing, the writing gets faster. Is this just me? Anyway…

    The writing wasn’t difficult today, but deliberate. It felt like I was spending time with each sentence, making sure it was right.

    I don’t know if it’s right. I’ll find out tomorrow when I edit and post the episode. But for now, let’s just say, Paul’s in a situation.

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿

  • The struggle to write consistently

    Something I’ve talked about before is my issues with consistency. Mainly, I will have long stretches where I will distance myself from a story and then, whether pressure, guilt, or a newly ignited desire to finish the piece rises up in my gut, I come back to the keyboard and go, “where they heck was I now?”

    I’ve had this with each Season of Wound. What started out in 2021 as an experiment to see if I could consistently write and publish a horror serial on the at-then-new Kindle Vella platform quickly ended when I discovered, no, I cannot consistently write and publish a horror serial.

    Or anything at all.

    My whole life has been a push and pull between half-finished works and new ideas and, from the sheer amount of reading I’ve done about other writers’ processes, this isn’t’ unusual. When I was finally diagnosed with ADHD, this seemed to be a feature and not (necessarily) a personality flaw. So, in the year since my diagnosis and treatment, what have I learned?

    Not much? I still struggle with shiny object syndrome, object impermanence, and distraction. BUT I have realized that if I start – literally just start writing a sentence, the rest will come. It may be slow, sloggy, weird, and not quite what I want to say, but it does come.

    I also am starting to understand what my triggers are and doing better at avoided them (particular voices or sounds).

    My goal for the second half of this year is not a writing goal, but a working goal. I aim to strengthen whatever skills I need to work fully remote (my day job lends itself to this), to make the effort twice a day to start that sentence, and – most importantly – work on being able to come back to the page immediately after a distraction.

    I know what I’ve tried before, systems, apps, web sites, etc. But this time I’m going to try bull-headed determination. RAWR!

    Do you have a secret sauce to being consistent in anything? I’d love some advice!

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿

    Banner by B.R. Black | Background image by Markus Spiske from Pixabay

  • Flippity, floppity, back on the com

    I can’t count the times I’ve gone back and forth between a self-hosted WordPress site and being on WordPress.com, but it’s been a fair few. I’d like to blame my brain and its unwillingness to deal with minor obstacles while I’m on a deep dive into site building, but I won’t, even though I just spelled out the problem in detail.

    This back and forth has also cost me a sum of money. Let’s not talk about that.

    This last flip has been on the back burner for a while. I used to be a web developer, particularly of WP sites, and that instinct to DIY the whole thing is powerful. But it’s also deceptive, since web development (I’m obviously not much of a designer) is a skill that needs constant updating and refreshing and, well, I got all these books to write.

    And since commitment to myself and my goals is a project I’m working on this year, I’m going to commit to staying here for a full six months. I give myself permission to reassess on January 1st, but not a day before.

    Because I have declared it in my blog, I am now legally bound to do this.*

    I’m working on Season 3 of Wound, right now. I’ll be ending the serial after Season 4, which should be around Halloween. My plan is to write the prequel novella in the winter and the release the seasons as individual novellas, revised and with added scenes. Excited for that!

    What commitments are you making to yourself this second half of the year? Let’s root each other on!

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿

    *not actually binding

  • A small sum of words about always online

    I read a lot, but I often forget to “log” it on sites like Goodreads or other social media. I wonder if that means I’m not actually reading a lot since I don’t have some sort of public-facing proof of my accomplishments.

    I think back to my earlier days on the internet and the sheer joy at “winning” or “earning” a small gif that would live near my avatar, under my username, somehow highlighting me as an elite, chosen one, or able to afford $5/month. We have giffed1 life, I think. Making all accomplishments meaningless unless accompanied by a publically acceptable emoji.

    If feel like we’ve surpassed the dystopian vision of Black Mirror‘s “Nosedive” episode and the trends of “cottage-core,” “slow-living,” and “quiet-whatever” are an aesthetic response to hustle culture and digital achievement. Influencing a slow life is still hustling, but at least we can tell ourselves that it’s a lifestyle we can achieve, if only we didn’t have to pay rent.

    I prattle on in an attempt to not work more on my revisions to Art History because I am enjoying it and have an appointment in an hour. If I work up until I have to stop, then I’ll be annoyed and I want Seb and Derek, and Woodlawn College as a whole, to be my happy place.

    In the meantime I’ll see if I can finish reading something to get that achievement online. Ding!

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿

    1. You can pronounce that any way you please. I do not care. ↩︎

  • The new setup up, same as the old setup

    In which I fall out of love with Ulysses, rebound a bit with iA Writer, and finally just go back to Google Docs.

    What is it about spring cleaning your “systems” that feels like work, but is really procrastination? 

    It’s the feel of my fingers flying across the keys, typing out what I’m doing instead of what my characters are doing somewhere else.

    I’m not nearly as interesting as they are, but still, here I am.

    I have been wanting to keep my files as close to plain text as possible. Being able to access, export, import, and move simple text files somehow makes me more secure in saving them in, say, Google Drive or Dropbox. 

    I’m pretty sure this desire comes from a place of fear as if being able to control the format in which I write will somehow allow me to control the writing. Writers don’t talk enough about losing control during the writing. We call it “flow” or the “zone,” but it’s scary. I digress…

    I’ve been testing out a few different applications and am working on a trial with iA Writer. I have to say, I’m intrigued.

    The interface is pretty bare-bones, but I’m not looking for a publishing app (I have one of those). I’m looking for relatively distraction-free writing. I want a visible word count as I go and the ability to take my laptop offline.

    I know I can do all these things with Google Docs or Office 365, but mostly I want a simple text editor that recognizes Markdown.

    Future Betty here: I’m editing this in Google Docs because I am fickle and I recognize a diversion when I construct one. This is a blog post because there are a lot of already generated words that I can use, but also because I see you, writer, who is interested in writing apps.

    I often wonder why we can be so particular about the software we use. We have a near-infinite ability to adapt and adjust, yet, here I am, squirming around trying to find something that is almost Notepad, but not Notepad+. Perhaps I am still yearning for the old Word Perfect days.

    FB: I am, in fact, not yearning for those days. I am currently sitting in a beautiful library writing this on my laptop, in a cozy chair. These days are better.

    I’m rambling and I’m only hitting 250 words. What on earth am I talking about?

    I can write in Markdown and preview its output on the right-hand side of the screen. That’s nice, but I wonder why I have to hit Return twice to get a proper paragraph break. Will I have to remove a bunch of extra returns later on? That’s odd.

    I can preview hidden characters and while there is still a single return, the paragraphs wrap together. Not just stacked on top of each other, but wrapped together as one paragraph. I don’t think that’s a Markdown thing. 

    A lot of these apps have some sort of “typewriter” feature, whether it’s part of the focus or the way the page scrolls. It’s fine, but as someone who spent time with actual typewriters, I have little nostalgia for them. I will turn this feature off.

    What happened to underlining things? Is it because hypertext links are natively underlined? 

    I exported this document into Word and the “double” returns render as single returns. The space is there, but fixable by removing space before and after paragraphs in the line height selector. That’s good. Double return for readability and minimal formatting adjustments later. I can live with that.

    FB: I could not live with that.

    I think iA Writer could be a good fit for me. I particularly like that they have Mac and Windows options. Though, I think for a while I’ll just keep this trial on the home computer.

    I’m not completely sold yet–and that has more to do with my quirks than the software–but I’ll let you know if I pick up iA Writer or stick with Notepad as my writing workhorse.

    I never really used iA Writer again after that, nor did I stick with Ulysses. Both of these are fine apps and have their advantages, but, I was kidding myself that the plain-text file was what I wanted.

    What I wanted was to feel like I was writing, without writing. I see what I did there. I ended up switching back to the old stand-by so I didn’t have to think about it anymore. It’s easy to export a plain-text version as a backup. 

    Stop fiddling about and get writing. You too!

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿

  • Dear Kindle Vella: It’s not you, it’s me.

    One of the first decisions I made this year (aside from my “Late Start” post) was to remove myself from Kindle Vella and admit that it’s not the right platform for me. I enjoy writing serial fiction. I loved discovery writing with it and coming up with interesting cliffhangers in each episode. The problem is that to make the platform viable, I need to be a much more consistent writer. And more prolific.

    Perhaps I need to be a better writer, as well, with a better idea.

    When I first started, I was surprised by the bonuses Amazon handed out, and for a couple of months, it felt like I was really earning some money with my writing. But I still didn’t keep up with the pace and found that with each episode that went without comments or feedback, without a sense of people actually reading my story, the little bit of bonus money wasn’t enough to keep me writing. I may have dreams of supporting myself with my writing, but money has never been the motivator for me. 

    I’m like an old Chevy in the winter, hard to start, but put me at the top of a hill and I’ll keep going.

    So, my specific goals for January are: Getting the first Season of Wound revised and extended a bit to be published as the first novella in the series. Finishing up Art History and getting that ready to be published as well, because the sequel, Lacrossed Lovers is just itching to be written. Both of those titles will be released on Kindle Unlimited (at least at first). I’d like to finish up a couple of short stories and post here, and I need to hop into my new weekly flash fiction as well (I’m adding another tier just for that. Stay tuned!)

    I have no idea what I’m going to do with Just a Blue Moon Phase. I like some of the characters, but first-person present is not something I enjoy writing.

    In other words, I’m trying to align my practical goals with my year-long theme of “FINISHING!” I’m even writing this blog post nearly a week early! Go me!

    How do you take your big ideas and break them down into workable goals? I could use all the suggestions!

    *swish* (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃━⭑･ﾟﾟ･\*:༅｡.｡༅:\*ﾟ:\*:✼✿

  • Keeping those dry spells short

    I find that when I spend a day doing writing-related work, but not writing, I go into the wrong rabbit hole and get away from my story. This is a pattern I now recognize.

    And as with all patterns, we can look at them as self-contained little programs: they have a trigger, they execute certain actions, and they have an (often elusive) off-switch.

    So, now that I am finally recognizing this pattern, I can expect the off-switch, in fact, I can accelerate the program by eliminating many of the repetitive strings of behavior that take place before despair forces a new action (and a new program).

    My writing program can be overwhelming at times, and I’ve come to understand that if I relax some of that binge-writing behavior, I can sustain a writing practice for longer – or, more realistically, I can keep the distraction program at bay. It will still appear and it will still run, but knowing that a thing has an ending makes it easier to endure.

    Like all that advice when you have a bad break-up that boils down to “this too shall pass,” while feeling like nonsense in the moment, is 100% true (if you let it, that is).

    So, I saw the end of the thing, I made some good use of the distracting functions within the larger program itself, and now I’m heading back to the writing program – literally and figuratively.

  • Wound Season 2 Finished – phew

    I originally started writing Wound back in 2021 to try out the new Kindle Vella platform. I’d been posting some other stories (The Shape of Us and others) with other venues and enjoyed the process of writing an episodic story. While I’ve had some qualms about the Vella platform (no one knows about it, the top stories rarely change) the biggest issue has been my inconsistency with publishing. I’m the Togashi Yoshihiro of Vella authors. Though, without two beloved franchises and a large fan base. I’ve just got the intermittency down pat.

    But this week I wrote the last three episodes of Season 2 (ep. 48-50), and the last episode will be live on November 10th – this Friday. Boy, am I happy.

    The trouble was episode 47. There was a lot I already had written about Paul’s experience in the Town Hall, and some of the most important dialogue I’d already worked out, but I couldn’t’ see how I could move into nor out of that episode. It was as dark to me as it was to Paul, though he can see in the dark now, so whatever Paul, you jerk!

    Then I realized that I could use that to my advantage and, as Dean Wesley Smith says, just “write into the dark.” It didn’t matter what I wanted to happen, or how the next scene would start. I just needed to write the next sentence and let the characters figure it out.

    It worked–because of course it worked. It’s even worked for me before and it works every time I re-remember that this is what writing is about. Not plotting or scaffolding or snowflaking, at least not for me. Writing has to be fun and scary and unknown.

    I dove in and let Paul tell me what to write. I fought with him a bit here and there, mostly to get him angry, but then we went somewhere I didn’t expect, someplace not on my story GPS. It scared me. And because it scared me, it scared Paul. Good!*

    So, if you’d like to read Wound, all 50 episodes so far, I’d love to hear your comments. Season 3 is bubbling up in my head right now, but I’m not going to let it stew too long. I’m gonna jump right in and drown.

    *Don’t worry about Paul. He’s an ass, but I love him and will celebrate and torture him as much as possible.

  • Getting out of my own way

    I’ve been trying to work through some small blocks that I’m putting in the way of getting my writing done. I had some low ambitions for October. I decided to remove myself from the Prep-toner nonsense by getting another book done before I start the one for NaNo.

    I have, of course, not yet finished the book.

    I don’t want to talk about fear or anxiety since I’m not sure those are my particular issues at the moment – though fear is always an issue when you endeavor on a creative journey. No, I think this is something else.

    I am having too much fun and it feels like I’m doing it wrong.

    I’d decided to use Dean Wesley Smith’s advice in his book ˆWriting into the Darkˆand just go with the flow, focusing on starting and cycling back a bit here and there to make sure threads are followed and tied up. While I already had a loose idea of the steps in the plot (it is a murder mystery/thriller), I decided to stop trying to figure out my characters first and just let them tell me their story.

    it’s gone in a few weird directions, but I’m having a blast. I think that’s why I’ve been hesitating.

    I don’t want to write a junk draft and then go back and revise. Like Smith, I feel like I’ve already been down that road. Granted, I don’t have the years of experience, nor the bibliography to back this up, but it feels right for me.

    But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m supposed to be suffering. (I’m typing this on a tiny, Bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone – it’s hugely convenient, but my wrists are suffering, so there’s that.)

    I’ve got a pretty creepy scene coming up and I’m excited to write it, but I’m worried that my excitement will build up my expectations and I’ll be disappointed with what I produce. When I write that out, it sounds absurd, but inside my head it’s perfectly rational.

    My brain is just trying to protect my ego. I wish I could tell it not to bother. Well, in the meantime, while I procrastinated on the creepy scene, I’ve written this blog post. Thanks for reading this far and I wish us all luck!