Writerly Update: Getting back into gear.

After NaNoWriMo my brain slipped into vacation mode. I stopped writing, I recorded the season finale and did several interviews. I acquired new roommates and spent some time adjusting to the new house dynamic. In this little break I’ve been taking, I’ve gotten new creative ideas for both writing, and my podcast.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get back into school due to lack of funds. That, however, is where the power of the neterwebs kicks in. There’s all sorts of information that I can learn myself online. A plethora of open courseware. And I’ve always been somewhat of an autodidact. All of the skills that I use on a regular basis I’ve taught myself, anyway.

I have a whole mountain of audio that I need to edit for the podcast and I’ve got to fix my car, but after that I think that you’ll be hearing a lot more from me.

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Writerly Update: Plans for the BOaC Hiatus

OK, this is kind of podcaster update. But I’m a writer and a podcaster so I’ll count this as a writer update. As I stated in my earlier post I’ve chosen to put my writing on the back burner while I spend the rest of this year and an undetermined amount of next year learning and finding ways to improve my knowledge and my show.

One of the ways I can improve it is to keep the content coming. One of the ways I plan to do that is with interviews. So, if you are a podcaster and I have not talked to you at all this year, send me a message on facebook, twitter, or my email and set up an interview with me. I will do the interview and put it on my feed during the next few months that I am on hiatus.

So if you want to talk about your current podcast, a podcast that you’re about to start, a podcast that you’re just finishing up, to talk about your new book, or anything send me a message.

I also plan to record some of my short stories that have not been seen before as well as see if I can get a couple of debates or round table discussions going. If you’d like to get in on that action send me a message. I plan on starting the next season in March.

Make sure you keep an eye on the showblog. You never know what I might post next.

Writerly Update: Post NaNoWriMo

My last post sounded a bit shitty, I was having somewhat of a bad day when I posted that one. But it summed it up pretty well. The week before NaNoWriMo ended my friends were getting ready to move out of their apartment and into my spare bedroom, and another one of my friends had just gotten out of the hospital and didn’t want to be alone, so I had to help my friends with getting ready to move and I spent time with another while she recovered. And the next week was spending time with my father and my sister and having a nice thanksgiving on Friday. We had chicken on Thursday (real Thanksgiving). And even though I didn’t meet the 50k word count like I said and hoped that I would I’m fine with it. I was a little bummed out when I first realized that I wouldn’t be able to do it. But helping and spending time with my friends and my dad was totally a fair trade. Last week and some of this week has been really hectic with helping my friends get all of their stuff moved in and I’ve just gotten to where I feel like I have room to breath. I’m not feeling too into writing now but I will finish M.E.R.C soon. I feel more like learning now, so I’m probably going to try to find some way to get back into school and if I can’t do that immediately then I know of a site that has open courseware in various computer, programming, and web development. So it’s win-win.

I feel like I haven’t expanded my knowledge in a while, I feel the need to learn something again. Hopefully I’ll be able to sign up for the next semester of school. That would be so awesome. And even if I get to go back to school or not I can expand my knowledge by teaching myself. I’ve always been a hardcore autodidact. After I dropped out of high school I used to sit at home on the internet and look up stuff and learn new things. There was a college website that had an open virtual library and I could read some text books and I’d go online and read psychology medical journals and stuff. And I can spend the rest of this year and the beginning of the next year improving my podcasting skills.

So even though I didn’t meet my goals I’m going to take it easy and soak up knowledge for the next few months. I won’t stop writing entirely, I’m just going to put big projects on the back burner for now. I’ll still write my essays and my short stories and I’ll post them here. I’ll keep you updated on my writerly pursuits and the occasional glimpse into my personal life-like I always do. And I’ve thought about starting up a little podcast for this blog, but I won’t bore you with the details on that now. I’ll wait until it’s more than just an idea in the back of my mind.

Anyway, I’m drawing a blank. I’ll see you next time.

Writerly Update: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo has officially kicked off. For a majority of today I thought that I’d have to postpone my writing. My goals for last month was the creation story for Great Hites, My essay, a few short stories, my novel outline, fixing a neighbors computer, and recording a promo for my show. I accomplished all of those goals except for the creation myth, the promo, and fixing the computer. I didn’t really find a whole lot of time to write the creation myth with all of the other projects that I had going. I have all the lines I need for the promo except for the one line from Kyle, and I would have had my neighbors computer fixed were it not from some hard drive issues.

Now I have a promo for the show to finish this month, I’ll spend tomorrow fixing the computer, and I have something to record for something I’ll discuss near the end of this post.

I made time after dinner for writing. I sat down for about an hour and with the help of techno I cranked out 1,995 words. If you’d like to keep track of my NaNo Progress my page can be found here. At least until the writing widget thingies start working, they you will be able to track my progress in the sidebar to the right. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year I encourage you to add me as a Writing buddy. You might feel the urge to top my word count and that will keep you motivated through the month of November.

What’s keeping me motivated for this year is the rivalry I’ve set up with my nemesis. Keep your eyes posted on my show blog for more information about that in the form of an audio promo.

Also if you’d like to read what I’m working on I’ve added a two chapter excerpt on my profile on the NaNo site.

Another interesting piece of shameless self promotion is that this weeks episode of BOaC. The feature for this week I chose to talk about NaNoWriMo and had Scott sit in on the feature with me and we discussed some domestic things that can get in your way during the month of November. The distractions that the internet poses, as well as some of the issues you face as a novice writer. And after each one of these pitfalls we describe ways to get around them so that you can achieve success this month. It can be found here.

We can do this people, lets keep ourselves and each other motivated. And, Scott, I will destroy you.

On Procrastination

This post has the propensity for becoming quite long. I won’t know until I’ve finished typing it up. So regardless of the fact that you may or may not have the attention span for it I’d stick around because I feel that I might cover some relatively important stuff. So, if you feel the need grab a snack. And while you’re up, could you pour me a drink?

I’ve been neglecting this blog in general as of late. Mainly because I feel that this blog should be exempt from the goings on of my personal life. Because if I start talking about the things that I encounter on a day to day basis what’s to separate me from all of the whiny emo kids and their livejournals?

I only try to post here when I have something worth posting. Something intellectually stimulating that you will either find informative, entertaining, or at the very least will make you think or give you an insight on how things work in my mind. And to do that I have to sit and gather my thoughts as I approach the keyboard.

My self confidence and personality aside I’ve never quite enjoyed the thought of allowing said insights on such a public scale, because hell, I’m the loud, brazen, and insensitive drunken Irish host of Banter Over a Cigarette. Most all of my friends introduce me to new people simply as “The Asshole”. Who would have thought I’d be capable of such deep thoughts, or intriguing insights?

Regardless of any aforementioned statements or preconceived notions here I am again to pour out my mind onto this blog in the form of noun and verb soup.

For those of you who’ve not already checked the show blog expecting to see fresh bonus content, and new episodes of season three only to find nothing short of a few posts that should qualify as blatant cop outs, I apologize. Events spun into motion that I could not control, as I’ve described at length in in recent posts regarding my ineptitude on the show blog.

But as I’ve had time to think about it. I’ve come to realize that these events would not have been allowed to spin, let alone slowly rotate, into motion had I not lacked the foresight to get to work earlier than I did.

I was planning on spending the month of February working on all of that fun stuff and then launching the first Monday of march. But I’d get home from work and think to myself, “Oh, it’s no problem. I’ll have plenty of time to work on it.”, Until one day I woke up and noticed that I’d found myself at the very last day of February with no work to show for it. So I pushed the release date back by one week and got to work. I had everything all ready to go, and as I’d previously explained on the show blog, my file hosting server just plain refused to step up to the task.

Had I gotten to work sooner on the launch of season three, this would have been something I’d have noticed back in February when I’d originally intended to release the first episode of bonus content. But instead I sat around and did no work on the show and didn’t find out until it was too late to fix. The show has been delayed due to things I cannot control, but had I stepped up sooner I would never have lost the reigns to that mythical creature that none of us really have command over, known as “control”.

Everyday I learn something new, some of those days the new thing I learn is something about myself. I’m big enough of a man, metaphorically and literally, to admit when I’ve done wrong.

Sorry, I fucked up. And now I have the knowledge to prevent this in the future, lets hope that when the time comes I’ll have cultivated the skills to act upon it.

Back in December after my ex left for Texas I came home to find a box sitting on my coffee table. This box had contained an advanced, first edition copy of Scott Sigler’s newest novel “Contagious”, the sequel to his novel “Infected”. They are both good reads and I hope you’ll check them out.

I’d recieved this book ten days prior to its release date for the sole purpose of doing a book review. This is a promise that I’ve yet to make good on. At the time that I’d gotten the book I didn’t have a computer to do the review on. And when I finally did have a computer I had technical difficulties setting it up, a new job that I had to perform for money so that I could buy myself nice things, as well as personal drama in my life that I had to sort out. Now after all the dust clears, the only reason that I have left to not do this review is procrastination. I’ll have this review written and up by the end of tomorrow. In this day and age a man’s worth and a mans word don’t count as much as they used to. Which is why I use every opportunity to keep mine. I’ve been neglecting to do that as of late, it’s something I’m working on.

I was going to insert a small update of what’s been going on with me lately, but I’m almost one-thousand words deep in this post and I don’t want to wear out your attention span anymore than I already have. Anyway, I’m drawing a blank so I’ll see you next time.

Season Three is almost ready

I was planning on making the rounds on all my blogs and updating all of them a couple of weeks ago but then I ended up only updating the the show blog. And then I ended up procrastinating for a couple more weeks. I’ve been spending the last couple of days getting everything ready for the show. I’ve gotten the intro, and outro all ready to go. The songs from both as well as some other bonus content will be hitting the feed soon. I’ve got to re upload the episodes from season one and season two to my new file server and change all the links to fix the RSS feed for the show before I can add any new to it. So I’ll be doing that for until I go to bed and then finish it off tomorrow. I doubt that I’ll get past the first few episodes from season one before it becomes too tedious and I become too tired.

I’ll be sitting down with the guys and recording a new promo for season three tomorrow.

I’ve also got a new sound technician and chief editor for the show. He is one of my personal friends just like my two cohosts. I wrote a little about him on the show blog and you’ll learn more about him if you tune into the first episode of BOaC Season Three, which is launching on March ninth.

I could take this time to update you on whats been going on in my life but I’ll be doing that in the first episode of the show.

I’m pretty sure that there was more that I wanted to talk about but it’s late and I’m starting to get a little tired. I might just have to save all the link changing for tomorrow. I might hit the hay after this post is done being edited for spelling and such and then published.

There’s a good chance that might happen anyway.

“Checking In” to NaNoWriMo

From November 1st to November 30th it is NaNoWriMo. Well for the last ten years or so anyway. Oh, I’m sorry. “NaNoWriMo” is short for National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo is an event where tons of writers gather to try to write a five hundred-thousand word work of fiction during the month of November. And whether they be seasoned, new, or somewhere in between all of these novelists gather for that one goal all over the country, the world even. I heard about this last year when I started listening to P.G. Holyfield’s Murder at Avedon Hill. And this year when I caught wind of it again I decided that I’d participate.

You might be confused by this, unless you came to this blog through my mentioning it in a blog post over at the BOaC Blog.

But for all of you that don’t already know, I’m an aspiring writer. I’ve tried many times to put together a work of fiction, but I never quite finish it because I run out of steam on the project, or because i simply don’t like what I’m writing anymore.

But that is something that I cannot do with my current project. Shortly after moving to Indiana I decided to dust off my original manuscript for this project and work on it again, and then when I had regular access to a computer I decided to take my type-written manuscript and type it up on a computer and then work on it from there.

At this point in time I was wondering what people around me thought about it, so I decided to let a few people read it, those few people absolutely loved it, and passed it on. And so it began, that every week I’d have five or six people wanting more, and so I was printing chapters as I wrote them and it was all very well received. But by the end of the semester I’d hit writers block. I haven’t made much progress since then and that was about a year ago.

So therefore, I’ve decided, that for NaNoWriMo I will try my best.

By midnight on November 30th eastern standard time I will have finished my project “Checking In: Book One of the Heaven Hotel Series”. Or at least meet the 500,000 word finish line.

Wish me luck.

And if you’re interested in my project, I recorded the first fourteen chapters as bonus audio over on the BOaC Blog. You can find the audio here.

Stay tuned to this blog and I will keep you updated on my progress.