Episode #163: You Must Challenge Yourself To Win

Yello Bear knows good eats when he sees them. If you like good burgers and dogs (and anything else for that matter), take some time to visit your local hole-in-the-wall to partake in some fantastic eats, no matter what the cuisine may be.

Today's post will be a mish-mosh of writing related topics, and we'll try our best to keep the political snarkiness out of it. It won't be easy, since today's political environment offers so much cannon fodder for me that I simply don't know where to begin {note: I'm an equal opportunist here}

On the current writing project front, my trilogy with the generic tag of Hot Mess, is now in a temporary holding pattern. Having finished volume 2, I have put it on the back-burner for three reasons: tax season, wanting to work on a re-written manuscript in order to have it republished, and needing to thinking about how best to complete the trilogy, as I have roughly a minimum four plot-lines that need to be brought together for satisfactory conclusion.

I won't elaborate on either the first or third reasons, since those are very self-explanatory, but the second reason is this basis for this post.

I have basically challenged myself as a writer almost from the very beginning. When I'd first started dabbling around with the written word, I had basically decided from the get go to write what I thought would everyone would want: sex and violence.

That quickly became an epic fail as I quickly became the caricature of what every bad writer who had an over inflated opinion of themselves. The only other lesson learned in the long run, besides being applying more restraint and selectivity when using those tropes, was that if my writing career failed, I could easily switch to writing scripts for adult movies.

Having realized that I needed more realistic ways to challenge my writing self, I buckled down to do just that.

Serious personal note: Throughout my entire life, I've always challenged myself in some particular way to stave off serious boredom of whatever topic I was engaged in. Currently, it's listening to podcasts. I will elaborate in a future blog post, but you get the idea.

Challenging myself with my writing would soon prove to be a very interesting, and sometimes problematic, pastime. Example #1: writing a clean G-rated story.

Since my preferred writing preference was and still is adult fiction with very adult themes, this was going to be quite the mountain to conquer. But I did manage to pull it off. I started off by using as a base my burgeoning descriptive writing skills, by writing a story about my local mountain, Cedar Mountain, and wrapping the four seasons around it. After about a couple of days of intense writing, I wound up with a story roughly 1,500 words in length, about a person who experienced the four stages of life with the four seasons on the mountain. The story itself, aptly titled Cedar Mountain, can be found in my short story collection entitled, What Is Life? (clinking the link will give you all the details).

After conquering that mountain, and to date that is my only clean G-rated story written, I started looking for other challenges. One day I was going through a bunch of short stories, when I started thinking about how I could tie them all together. I thought about writing a few short intros to tie them together (I had seen this done in a few romances that I had the great fortune in reading), so I decided, let's do this with a seldom used point of view called 2nd person.

I actually wrote 3 intros before deciding that pulling my hair out with a pair of tweezers was a much better use of my time and promptly called it quits. Epically spectacular fail.

Which brings us to yet another challenge that I have no choice but to make stick.

Present tense point of view.

I figure with this chapbook/novella, I have the perfect opportunity to experiment with this particular form of writing. Granted, after reading the definition on what kind of fiction it's used in, it's not gonna be something that I will use going forward, but it should be fun to write just the same.

As a matter of point, after reading the first few pages, I will have to rewrite at least 50% of the story. Don't get me wrong, I love me a good challenge, but this particular challenge is going to test my current skill set. As a matter of record, I am not, nor ever will I be, a member of the Grammar Policia. But I will have to be a temporary member just the same.

Trying to re-write the story so that it makes logical sense to the reader is also another challenge that I will have to step up to as well. On the plus side, when I decided to do this back in 2021, I was part of the way there, as I had large swathes written in the present tense sprinkled in with tinier patches of the way that most people write.

In any event, the path to success is often paved with challenges that were met and conquered, or met and partially conquered. This will be a challenge that I must meet and conquer, especially since my 1st draft has blue ink pasted over all 48 pages with notes galore, the most popular being "redo this sentence."

I'll keep everyone updated on my progress, but should you hear the very faint sound of Charlie Brown screaming in frustration, it's just me doing my very best interpretation of said cartoon idol.

Have a great rest of your week!

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved