I was writing a blog post a day for the entirety of 2022. That stopped because I didn’t want to punish myself anymore :P
Fiction Story 1 — Part 1
I learned to start a tire fire after college. I don’t remember all the details. What I remember is you can’t light it on fire with just a kerosene and a match. You need to burn kindling underneath to get the material hot and dry enough to catch fire — much like with wood or coal. Tires take ten minutes to burn. You’ll know it does when you see black smoke and the flames take the form of bright orange curtains.
Take your time
What’s interesting to me is that he had the same excuse we all have as writers (aside from, uh, World War II): chores, jobs, hobbies, and our unchecked curiosity do, indeed, pull us away from our writing. They can drag the process on longer than our patience can tolerate.
The best we can do with all of this is to keep plodding along.
Longer than the original
There’s a lot to talk about. And I want to give it the same amount of thought and care as the review. Hell, if I do it right I will do even better this time around.
A post about nothing (aka another update post)
And I don’t want to give myself a hard deadline this time around, at least not until I write the first draft. One thing I learned that I can share here is that I have no idea how long something takes until that draft. There are a lot of things I come up with just in the act of writing it out. In this case, the amount of subtopics that came up in the draft exceeded the ones in my outline and my mind map. Writing really is the act of trying to suss out ideas.
Hiking blog post update #4
You gotta learn to kill your darlings when it comes to writing. I’ve always been told this. This is one of the few times I have had to practice it. Part of me thinks it’s a waste of time, but I know it’s for the best. And that knowledge makes me feel good about my process.
So, this officially puts me in the editing/2nd draft phase of my process. I’m stoked!
Well, it was a good try. This is the end, though.