Busy.
Another open-ended project landed in my lap last week, so I have three projects spanning September and October.
I'm reading again. Nothing heavy. Reading Eragon, and while I agree it's somewhat of a rip-off of several older fantasy series (Pern, for the most part), I have to admit it's a pretty damn good read for coming from a 15 year old kid. With that being said...the writing is fairly atrocious, and he makes mention of the fact that the book underwent heavy restructuring at the hands of his mother and then again with a professional editor, but the story itself is entertaining.
So entertaining that I caught myself the other day 30 minutes past my break, still engrossed in the story. It's true what they say...if there's a diamond in the rough, a good editor will be able to polish that sucker up until it shines.
With that being said...we are ordering some books this month. I'm going to be ordering Brandon Sanderson's trilogy, as well as the Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe. Amazingly enough I've never read anything by the man, despite him being considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. I've been doing a lot of research in the past few weeks on refinement of my style as I continue to evolve, and I figure this man is well worth my time, given the credentials he has and the amount of respect he has earned among his peers, despite lacking best-seller status.
Short story revisions are on the order for September. I have one that's been sitting for 8 weeks. I have two other short stories I started last year that I want to finish up. I had a long talk with Evy and...you guessed it...I'm probably pushing back my personal deadline on the novel from Christmas to an undecided time. Why?
Firstly, my writing career is doing great. I've got more work than I can shake a stick at. I'm happy to be doing what it is that I always wanted to be doing. Even though it's not fiction, which is my primary desire, I have to admit that I'm making great money doing what I do, which is mostly content work with a little bit of journalism thrown in for fun. I've got several short stories in circulation. I have outlines for 4 novels for this series, and I'm 11 chapters into the first book, or around 75k words, including the prologue. I'm not in a rush. I'm not a starving artist desperate for a sale. I've sold a couple of short stories, I have more in circulation, and I'm sure they will sell eventually. In the meantime I'd rather focus on further refinement of my style so I can make this first book as good as it can possibly be.
It would be stupid of me to focus more on fiction and less on the paying work right now, especially given the fact that the entire world is a recession, yet I'm blessed with an over-abundance of work. And it's not like I don't enjoy what it is I'm doing...I've been blessed to have clients that are wonderful to work for. I'm getting to write about food, wine, travel, games, and other things which are hobbies for me, so it's really not work at all...it's simply getting paid to write about the things I enjoy in life in the first place.
So while there's no doubt that fiction--specifically fantasy and science-fiction--is my long-term goal, I see no reason to rush. I'm successful at what I do, there's no doubt about that, and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunities I've been awarded. I've had close to half a dozen talks with Evy about the subject and I've come to the conclusion that while I'm going to keep working on the novel in my spare time, it would be better for me to further refine my style with another year's worth of short stories or so while continuing to build my resume through content and journalism writing.
At the end of the day I'm still a writer, regardless of the genre I happen to working in.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Little Things Part VI
My profile pic here is a few months old. My goatee had gotten quite long (about 8 inches when braided). Yes...it was long enough to braid. It started off as an experiment, then it turned into a great way to fend off Gypsies and beggars on the street, because I looked like I was a person who wanders the streets and eats little babies. And it was funny, because I'm not a big metal fan, but everyone I met on the streets assumed I was a metal-head.
I cut it off yesterday, revealing my baby face. Damn baby-face!
The little thing that made me laugh was today, when Evy's friend Dessy came over. She took one look at me and said "Tim! What happened? Parts of your body are missing!"
:)
The little things that make you laugh.
I cut it off yesterday, revealing my baby face. Damn baby-face!
The little thing that made me laugh was today, when Evy's friend Dessy came over. She took one look at me and said "Tim! What happened? Parts of your body are missing!"
:)
The little things that make you laugh.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
An Environmental Piece
For those of you who haven't watched it, I present this video about our Planet Earth.
It's a bit over 1.5 hours, so consider it a feature-length film.
Shot entirely in HD, this video gives a close-up look at the world, humanity's effect on it, and how far out of balance things have become in the past 50 years, and what needs to be done to help move things back towards a proper balance.
I know not all of my readers are green-thinkers, but this is an educational piece even if you don't subscribe to my particular belief. It offers some fairly stark evidence as to how badly we (humans) have treated the earth over the years, and some pretty scary numbers which, believe them or not, at the very least motivate people to think a little harder when it comes to excessive consumption and out-right gross mismanagement of our resources.
Enjoy.
It's a bit over 1.5 hours, so consider it a feature-length film.
Shot entirely in HD, this video gives a close-up look at the world, humanity's effect on it, and how far out of balance things have become in the past 50 years, and what needs to be done to help move things back towards a proper balance.
I know not all of my readers are green-thinkers, but this is an educational piece even if you don't subscribe to my particular belief. It offers some fairly stark evidence as to how badly we (humans) have treated the earth over the years, and some pretty scary numbers which, believe them or not, at the very least motivate people to think a little harder when it comes to excessive consumption and out-right gross mismanagement of our resources.
Enjoy.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Focus!
Hard to do so when vacation is looming just around the corner :)
May be dealing with my first ever no-pay client. Thankfully it was a small project, but still...it's been 30 days since my last article was accepted and put up on their website and I haven't received payment, and the last e-mail I had was nearly 3 weeks ago with the editor who said they had a new CFO who was trying to cut back on the budget. We'll see. I'm giving them until the end of the month before I pursue legal action.
Other than that...kicking arse and taking names. Work for the month of September and October is planned out nicely.
I put the cook-book on hold. It just wasn't realistic to have it done by this point. I have all the recipes, but I don't have all the pictures I need. After talking with Evy about it, I think we'll spend the rest of the fall/winter cooking more dishes and getting more pictures, and then look at it for next spring. I'd love to do it, but I've simply got too many other irons in the fire at this point.
Found an accountant here in Sofia, recommended by the Embassy. Will be giving them a call next month and working out the intricacies of filing from overseas with non-US income and otherwise. Should be interesting.
That's a quick update. Evy's family opened up their 15th store yesterday. We left at 8 a.m. and didn't get home until 8 p.m. Lots of food, wine, and otherwise. Were at the restaurant from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Great fun :) I love living here.
May be dealing with my first ever no-pay client. Thankfully it was a small project, but still...it's been 30 days since my last article was accepted and put up on their website and I haven't received payment, and the last e-mail I had was nearly 3 weeks ago with the editor who said they had a new CFO who was trying to cut back on the budget. We'll see. I'm giving them until the end of the month before I pursue legal action.
Other than that...kicking arse and taking names. Work for the month of September and October is planned out nicely.
I put the cook-book on hold. It just wasn't realistic to have it done by this point. I have all the recipes, but I don't have all the pictures I need. After talking with Evy about it, I think we'll spend the rest of the fall/winter cooking more dishes and getting more pictures, and then look at it for next spring. I'd love to do it, but I've simply got too many other irons in the fire at this point.
Found an accountant here in Sofia, recommended by the Embassy. Will be giving them a call next month and working out the intricacies of filing from overseas with non-US income and otherwise. Should be interesting.
That's a quick update. Evy's family opened up their 15th store yesterday. We left at 8 a.m. and didn't get home until 8 p.m. Lots of food, wine, and otherwise. Were at the restaurant from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Great fun :) I love living here.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
What's on my mind?
I bookmark and save a lot of news articles to talk about with friends and family, and I sometimes link them here on my website. I thought I'd give readers a chance to see what's been making the rounds on my table lately for reading/thinking.
Iran blaming Google and Twitter for corrupting their youth.
We Have More To Offer. Classic humor from German politicians. Too bad everyone has to be so up-tight.
Asian woman caned (see flogged) for drinking a beer in Malaysia. Are we living in the 21st century or back in the stone-ages when women didn't have equal rights?
Those are the three "hot topics" on my mind lately. In addition, I've been looking into experimenting/further refining my personal style for fiction. I've been dabbling quite a bit, and I think my personal style is a cross between third person limited and stream of consciousness narrative. To-date I've written a few first-person shorts (which Evy says are my best pieces), and while I enjoy writing short fiction in first-person, I just don't see myself writing a novel from that perspective. Unless it's a stand-alone, perhaps. As far as the fiction series (I've refined the 5 book outline down to 4 books) that I'm working on first, I am largely doing this as a "testing" ground to refine my personal style, learn how to properly create/define/write characters, plot elements, and so on and so forth, without worrying too much about whether or not I become a best-seller. I'm doing this primarily for a paycheck, true, but to be honest, my freelance work is paying the bills, and I'm fine with that for as long as it takes to refine myself into a sellable fiction writer. A few short stories sales do not a fiction writer make, and I've got a lot of refining to do. To that end, I'm ordering some new books in September to further research my personal style and tailor my writing a bit further as I begin to (finally!) make more progress on the book after so many months off. I started working through the first 11 chapters yesterday, and I've been making some small edits and getting ready to start on chapter 12, finally. I'm just over 70k words in right now, and the outline calls for 30 chapters, or around 200k words. Still a *lot* of work to get done by Christmas. Then there's edits, revisions....
That's the mid-week blurb.
Iran blaming Google and Twitter for corrupting their youth.
We Have More To Offer. Classic humor from German politicians. Too bad everyone has to be so up-tight.
Asian woman caned (see flogged) for drinking a beer in Malaysia. Are we living in the 21st century or back in the stone-ages when women didn't have equal rights?
Those are the three "hot topics" on my mind lately. In addition, I've been looking into experimenting/further refining my personal style for fiction. I've been dabbling quite a bit, and I think my personal style is a cross between third person limited and stream of consciousness narrative. To-date I've written a few first-person shorts (which Evy says are my best pieces), and while I enjoy writing short fiction in first-person, I just don't see myself writing a novel from that perspective. Unless it's a stand-alone, perhaps. As far as the fiction series (I've refined the 5 book outline down to 4 books) that I'm working on first, I am largely doing this as a "testing" ground to refine my personal style, learn how to properly create/define/write characters, plot elements, and so on and so forth, without worrying too much about whether or not I become a best-seller. I'm doing this primarily for a paycheck, true, but to be honest, my freelance work is paying the bills, and I'm fine with that for as long as it takes to refine myself into a sellable fiction writer. A few short stories sales do not a fiction writer make, and I've got a lot of refining to do. To that end, I'm ordering some new books in September to further research my personal style and tailor my writing a bit further as I begin to (finally!) make more progress on the book after so many months off. I started working through the first 11 chapters yesterday, and I've been making some small edits and getting ready to start on chapter 12, finally. I'm just over 70k words in right now, and the outline calls for 30 chapters, or around 200k words. Still a *lot* of work to get done by Christmas. Then there's edits, revisions....
That's the mid-week blurb.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Latest MMO Hub Article up
Latest MMO Hub article up.
Hopefully this gig continues. I have a slew of ideas and have already discussed with the editor several of them, but as a newer company there is some restructuring going on. Apparently the payment agreed upon several months ago, which is in my contract, isn't kosher with the new CFO, who just came on board in July. As a result, my editor is (supposedly) trying to convince him as to why Feature writers (like myself) deserve the rates we were getting paid for our articles, rather than things being farmed out to some content farm where they will write the articles for 5 dollars a pop.
Now, while I understand there is a varying degree of quality on this site (some of what people are getting paid to write kind of shocks me. I'm beginning to see why gaming journalism has such a bad reputation in the industry), I think it should very much be looked at on a case-by-case basis.
In any event, if I don't hear back from the editor what I want to hear (that my rates are gtg), then I'll be moving on and pitching ideas to another 'zine. This was the last article per my contract, so we just have to wait and see what we see.
Hopefully this gig continues. I have a slew of ideas and have already discussed with the editor several of them, but as a newer company there is some restructuring going on. Apparently the payment agreed upon several months ago, which is in my contract, isn't kosher with the new CFO, who just came on board in July. As a result, my editor is (supposedly) trying to convince him as to why Feature writers (like myself) deserve the rates we were getting paid for our articles, rather than things being farmed out to some content farm where they will write the articles for 5 dollars a pop.
Now, while I understand there is a varying degree of quality on this site (some of what people are getting paid to write kind of shocks me. I'm beginning to see why gaming journalism has such a bad reputation in the industry), I think it should very much be looked at on a case-by-case basis.
In any event, if I don't hear back from the editor what I want to hear (that my rates are gtg), then I'll be moving on and pitching ideas to another 'zine. This was the last article per my contract, so we just have to wait and see what we see.
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Little Things, Part V
What are you grateful for?
I'm grateful for a thriving career. A loving, supportive wife. My abilities as a writer. My friends. The Internet. Technology. My health.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to live a fruitful life.
It's amazing the way your mind changes from the time you are a child to when you are an adult. When you are younger, everything is simple. There are no gray boundaries, there is only black and white. Your inquisitive mind may question the "why" behind things, but you really only begin to understand those "whys" with time and the wisdom of old age. The philosophical begins to make more sense. The signs along the way, which had previously only been muted signals of half-garbled gibberish, are now clear and concise.
I'm grateful for the experiences I've had along the way. They have taught me how to succeed, and how to be the best at what I do. They also taught me how to deal with the problems that arise, and I've learned which ruts are you drive around, and which ones you stick it in 4-wheel-drive and drive over.
I'm grateful for the community aspect of the Internet. I've met some really amazing people in the last few years, through both our MMORPGing and our networking via our separate blogs.
We booked our hotel yesterday. Picked a small place in old-town Nesebar. We'll be out of town for 5 days around the first of September, enjoying a much-needed seaside holiday. Taking the train, rather than driving/taking a bus. Give us a chance to see more of the countryside, and enjoy a (hopefully!) nice, relaxing trip through the Bulgarian country.
Work is going good. Wrapping up a large project today and tomorrow, and I just started another large project for a new client that spans the next couple of months. I'm staying busy, and I love what I do. I look forward to a busy winter, and hopefully enough spare time to actually get my novel draft done by Christmas. I've lost nearly 3 months worth of work due to being too busy as a freelancer. The pull of the paycheck has been greater than the pull of my artistic desires, and I need to make sure I don't lose sight of what it is I set out to accomplish in the first place: transition to full-time novelist. I'm just having so much fun doing what I'm doing now, and making good enough money, that I haven't really felt like I"m losing out, if you catch my drift.
Here's to the latter half of 2009 being as good as the first :)
I'm grateful for a thriving career. A loving, supportive wife. My abilities as a writer. My friends. The Internet. Technology. My health.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to live a fruitful life.
It's amazing the way your mind changes from the time you are a child to when you are an adult. When you are younger, everything is simple. There are no gray boundaries, there is only black and white. Your inquisitive mind may question the "why" behind things, but you really only begin to understand those "whys" with time and the wisdom of old age. The philosophical begins to make more sense. The signs along the way, which had previously only been muted signals of half-garbled gibberish, are now clear and concise.
I'm grateful for the experiences I've had along the way. They have taught me how to succeed, and how to be the best at what I do. They also taught me how to deal with the problems that arise, and I've learned which ruts are you drive around, and which ones you stick it in 4-wheel-drive and drive over.
I'm grateful for the community aspect of the Internet. I've met some really amazing people in the last few years, through both our MMORPGing and our networking via our separate blogs.
We booked our hotel yesterday. Picked a small place in old-town Nesebar. We'll be out of town for 5 days around the first of September, enjoying a much-needed seaside holiday. Taking the train, rather than driving/taking a bus. Give us a chance to see more of the countryside, and enjoy a (hopefully!) nice, relaxing trip through the Bulgarian country.
Work is going good. Wrapping up a large project today and tomorrow, and I just started another large project for a new client that spans the next couple of months. I'm staying busy, and I love what I do. I look forward to a busy winter, and hopefully enough spare time to actually get my novel draft done by Christmas. I've lost nearly 3 months worth of work due to being too busy as a freelancer. The pull of the paycheck has been greater than the pull of my artistic desires, and I need to make sure I don't lose sight of what it is I set out to accomplish in the first place: transition to full-time novelist. I'm just having so much fun doing what I'm doing now, and making good enough money, that I haven't really felt like I"m losing out, if you catch my drift.
Here's to the latter half of 2009 being as good as the first :)
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