I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 48th: Hiatus

Boy howdy and howdy to the boy who takes no prisoner's and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B Miller, where it's been a little busy on the homestead this month.

As I mentioned at the outset of my previous post, things in my personal life have taken a turn for for the normal, in that the twin themes of annoyance and motivation (or complete lack thereof)  have now come into play,

Annoyance: things at work are starting to blow up big time. Not so much due to the day-to-day trivialities that encompass my work wee, but more due to the state/office politics of the day.

As Sherlock Holmes has often stated, "The game's afoot!" (I'm probably misquoting here), so the working word of the month is "marginalization", and although I would love to elaborate on this, the blowback received so far with me ranting about this on other socialized media says I should be a bit more stealthier about it, so....I shall for the time being.

Motivation: as you can probably tell, with the almost two week gap between posts, the motivation to blog isn't quite there. I've been concentrating on doing the writing thing during my down time these days, and between that, the upcoming holiday and getting child situated for the 2nd half of the 1st semester of college, the call to blog hasn't been there.

To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure if it'll come back with any kind gusto. After about 10 1/2 years doing this blogging thing, I don't think that there's anything else left to blog about. But, I'm hoping that this blogging break will do the trick and motivate me just enough to get into the blogging ritual again, even it it's on a bi-weekly basis.

So my friends, I wish a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I hope to see you again in 2020.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 11th: IWSG

IWSG

Welcome to that time of the month, where the entire writing community, such as it is, comes together to commiserate in a raucous gabfest called the IWSG blog hop.

This particular post for me, kicks of an upcoming month of work-related nonsense that will a} culminate in a brand new roll-out of a seriously expensive payroll system in mid January 2020, and b} require a major reassessment of how I use my limited down time.

With that being said, let's get on with the post, which for a change of pace, will actually use an original writing related prompt instead of the killer optional questions presented in the monthly newsletter.

Some time in early November, I finally got my act together with my writing and began work on one of my partial slushies. I dutifully applied the editing notes and carefully made the point of view jive with the main narrative thrust of the story. Once I got that done, I actually got some original writing down.

Score!

One of the tangible results of jump-starting my writing is that now I'm giving serious thought on where I need to go with this story. I know exactly how I want to end it (this has been the one constant for the past 5 1/2 years with this story), so what I need to do in order to get there from here is starting to be the constant reminder/tickler when I write.

For those of you who haven't probably figured it out, 98% of the time, I'm a pantser when it comes to writing. I only plot stuff out 2% of the time, and that's only when I need a basic bullet point outline to get me back on track in a story. I normally print everything out when I write and stick it inside a three ring binder, and 98% of the time it works quite well as a breathable outline. But there are times when I need a little bit of help to get back on track.

I'll probably write out another bullet point outline sometime in the next month, so at the very least, I'll have a basic idea on what I have for characters (3-4 MC's and very peripherals), overall plot and where that particular plot is heading in a particular chapter.

So consider this to be a three cheers and a Tigger for me, in that I managed to find a tiny little writing groove to use as an oasis from the total chaos that is presently the real world.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved