Goals

I did a bit of thinking today and I decided that I should set some goals.  I was thinking that with my schedule the way it is, I could get a lot of work done every other week.  So after going over what I've already written I've decided that a max of a thousand words a day isn't too hard a goal to achieve.  It just means that I'll have to keep pushing myself to write something, even when I don't feel like writing.  My minimum is about five hundred words.  This way no matter what I write something and I don't feel pushed.  The challenge will be balancing my writing goals with life in general.  That's where things get tricky, as we all know.

Another goal I decided to set was the amount of reading I haven't been doing.  I have stacks and stacks of books and most of them haven't been touched.  It's either that or I've gotten halfway through and I never finished it.  I listen to plenty of audio books but that's still no excuse for not finishing the books I have.  Just recently I picked up The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova for about two bucks used.  I've been wanting to read it for a while and snatched it up as fast as I could for that price.  Hopefully it's worth the read.  So the goal for reading is a minimum of one hour every day, including work days.  We'll see how well I can accomplish each goal.  Also I'm not sure if comic books should count or not...

Just finished writing a scene between Galen and the angel.  For everyone unfamiliar with the story the angel is the one who God sent to Galen to recruit him as a warrior.  I'm trying to decide whether to post character profiles and put in excerpts from my book.  Just another one of those trying to decide what to reveal and what not reveal problems.  We'll see how it goes.

And here we go...

First official blog entry ever.  First serious blog entry ever anyway since I have attempted this once before.  This time it isn't about time limits or finishing as fast as possible.  This time it's more about getting my voice out there, talking about my writing and seeing how people respond. 

So far my novel Harbinger has about 64 pages, 8 chapters, and 22,756 words.  So far so good.  Listening to an interview with Neil Gaiman recently gave me the kick I needed to keep going.  I need to write a little every day even if I don't feel like it.  Like he said my first draft is just that, my first draft.  It doesn't matter if it's full of errors and doesn't always make sense.  What matters is I get my story on the page and finish it.

So a little bit about the book.  I've been describing it as a kind of science fiction, post apocalyptic, western type story.  Western makes people think of the past, when really this story takes place in the future.  War, disease, natural disasters, and all manner of catastrophes have caused the world to revert to the chaos of the past.  There's no real form of government, ready sources of electricity and gas are a thing of the past, and the major cities have been abandoned.  Mankind has been struggling to get back on it's feet for a long time now and they're still struggling.  In the background of all this, God and Lucifer have been playing their eternal game.  God is getting bored and he's ready to start over again.

Galen Kilburn is my main character, a chosen warrior who couldn't care if he lived or died.  For him it's just a day in day out job of capturing or killing demons and rogue angels to keep everyone around him safe.  He's ready to have things end, but there are those who won't let him give up, including Lucifer himself.

That's probably the best description I've ever come up with and I hope it whets your appetite.  I hope to use this blog to muse about things I've learned about writing.  I might even post excerpts and writing exercises on here.  I'm planning on trying to churn out a couple of short stories for the Halloween season.  If I finish those I'll post them here.  They should be interesting, covering a couple of my favorite horror topics: zombies and haunted houses.