Bi-Weekly Writing Update 2

Today's Ear Worm: David Bowie "Lazarus"
Date: January 29, 2016

Ever since I learned of David Bowie's passing on the 11th, I've been doing nothing but alternating between listening to his last song Lazarus, knowing that it was his goodbye to the fans that he had through the generations, watching Labyrinth, and listening to Youtube playlists of his songs.

It...hurts knowing that this amazing man who was everything that was amazing about the world around us, has left us. Left his family. Left so much to do but never able to do it.

Then of course we lose Alan Rickman. Which just hurts even more.

But these last two weeks have proven productive, my muses taking inspiration from these talented, wonderful men who were taken from us.

January 15: Wrote chapter 4 of Honey Drops book 1, finishing at 1,433.
January 16: Wrote  chapter at 1,431 and edited another, adding 533 words to it
January 17: Rewrote a chapter and added 293
January 18: Nothing
January 19: Wrote a 1-shot at 1,905 and rewrote a chapter, adding 397 words to it
January 20: Wrote on my "Ages" Series, chapter 11, falling at 1,534 (The "Ages" Series is my superhero book series)
January 21: Rewrote 3 chapters, adding 178, 313, and 353 words

January 22: Wrote a chapter, ended with 1,401 words
January 23: Wrote a chapter, ended with 1,365 words
January 24: Wrote a chapter, ended with 1,298 words
January 25: Rewrote a chapter, added 434 words
January 26: Wrote a chapter, ended with 1,484


Bi-Weekly Writing Update 1
Bi-Weekly Writing Update 3

Praise the Writing Gods!

Today's Muse Feeder: Porcelain Doll by Megan Mccauley

Date: January 25, 2016

Praise be to the muses!

Why do I say this? I say this because I got bored while I was trying to figure out an ending to a gift fic for a friend for Valentine's Day, and found some of my old originals that I thought I had lost when my old flash drive re-formatted on me. I can tell you it took me three run throughs with a file recovery software to find most of my files.

Still lost three really big files that I was working on, had to go around and find my friends who had copies of things.

Apparently I hadn't lost these files though, just tucked them into a folder within a folder.

Shoot me, I'm OCD and I break down stories according to fanfictions or originals, and then further by world, chapters, edited chapters, and posted chapters (for fanfiction) or by world, chapters, rewritten world, edited chapters, and various copies as I rewrite and edit each story.

Anyways!

I found them. One is called "All You Need" which is about a man who can shift his looks. He's pretty much a one man escort service (no sex is expressively stated in all contracts, which I'm going to be going into further in the rewrite) and has had his fair share of heart break. At least until he meets his newest client and finds himself falling.

Hard.

I'm going to be building the world from right around when he turns 16 and meets his first boyfriend, and goes through his life.

It'll end up a M/M romance, but will have M/F pairings in there to.

The other is just known as my Lex/Rose story. They are both males but Rose's parents were kind of on the hippiesh side. The base story I have now has them meeting, getting to know each other, and starting to date.

I plan to expand it from like the 11 to 13 chapters it is now up to at the least 20 to 25 chapters, really get in there in regards to the neighborhood stalkers and the bs that they have to deal with.

Build up their pasts some more, less information dumping, more spreading it out.

I need to name the cat in the story to. *pulls out legal pads and sets about planning for things*

Wish me luck as I tackle these? I'm hoping to actually have some kind of outline done by the end of January.

Here goes nothing!

Comments are love and responded to. Anonymous comments are moderated, just warning you guys. 

I shall update as I go along with this.

The Writing Process: Settling Down to Write 1

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on anything. I do not expect you to take my words as the gospel of writing. What I do expect is for you to take some time and think if my words lead you to where you personally need to head to. Or if they help you at all.

All sources are linked at the end of the post along side the links to other posts are a part of the series. Thank you.

So, now that the disclaimer has been taken cared of, I thank you for coming to my first official blog series. This post will start that series by going over what I'm hoping to cover in this series.

The following list is what I'm hoping to cover.

1. Setting Up Your Work Space
1. Area
2. Utensils/Writing Tools/Note Taking/ect
3. Lighting
4. Sitting
5. Keyboards/mouses 
6. Music/Shows/Movies
7. Internet access/Tabs opened
2. Types of Writing Tools Available 
1. Pen and paper
2. Computers
1. Types of software offered to write on
2. Outlining software
3. Note software
3. Drinks and Food
1. Types of food
2. Ideas to think about
3. Drinks 
4. Plots and Outlines
1. Preparing the plot
2. Preparing the notes
3. Preparing the world
4. Preparing to outline

I'm sure that I will come up with more as I go along and depending on how long each post turns out to be will depend on how many posts there will be about them.

Do you have a question or suggestion that you would like to see covered over this first series? Comment below and I shall add it to my list if I haven't already covered it before hand.

Do you have an question or suggestion for future series or parts of series that you would liked covered? Again, please comment below and I shall figure out where to put it on my list. 

Enjoy all.

Links:

The Writing Process: Settling Down to Write 2

Note as of 1/18: I actually have a total of 3 of these written out. This is the first one and I have the following two written out. I need to edit and fiddle around with them before I post them but I'm hoping to scatter these out among other posts as we go along.

And hopefully have something out ever Monday. Cross our fingers!

Bi-Weekly Writing Update 1

Today's Ear Worm: Kesha "Die Young"
Goes from January 1, 2016 to January 14, 2016
Weeks: 1 and 2

So what exactly is this? Well this is to keep me on tract and to give you an idea of the day to day life that I live in regards to my writing.

Mind you there are some things that I won't label in regards to what I'm writing but that's because I have another line of stuff that you won't be seeing any time soon.

Anyways, let's get down to it.

Week 1 kind of sucked for me.

But I did get some stuff done.

January 2: Wrote 1,181 words on book 1 of my "Hero's" series.
January 4: Edited a story and added 842 words.
January 7: Wrote 1,698 words on book 1 of my "Hero's" series.

Week 2 looked a little better.

January 9: Wrote 1,321 words on a story
January 10: Edited a chapter and added  words.
January 13: Edited chapter, added 152 words, Wrote 1,460 words on another story
January 14: Wrote 1,452 words on a story

So all together these last two weeks, I've gotten 8,746 new words and spent 4 days editing some chapters.

All together not bad. So here's hoping that next weeks round will treat me better yes?

A New Year, A New Start

Please click on it to watch. Links provided down below.

Twitter: @SLStrailo
Facebook Page: S.L. Lewis Writing
A Peek Into a Creative Mind Tumblr
A Peek Into a Creative Mind/S.L. Lewis' Writing Youtube

2016 is my time to Write and Live!

This is actually a post on another site but I thought it would work best here to. There are some edits to it to flesh out the information and get it out.

Ear Worm: Unknown Man "E": The Most Mysterious Mummy in the World Documentary

Okay, I think that it's time for this writer to get going on some of the things that have been sitting around and mocking me.

More than time actually.

It's 11 days into 2016 and already I've been triggered into a near panic attack 3+ times, written very little due to said panic attacks, and want to drop the whole world down a hole while I get some actual sleep.

So what do I do? I go for a walk, Slipknot's "Snuff" in my ears and the cold buffering at me so I can clear my head and think of what I really truly want in my life this year.

Time to break it down into easy to bite pieces so I can learn a new routine. Which will help my mental and physical state.

January:
1) Plot out a few more chapters of Honey Drops series book 1
2) Maybe actually give it a working title?

3) Plot out a few more chapters of A Delicate Thread (Don't Look Series book 1)
4) Write out at least 2 chapters of both Honey Drops series book 1 and A Delicate Thread

5) Plot out some more chapters of the book that I started of Nano 2015. Let's call the mean little bugger Mean Bunny or When My Eyes Close.
6) Figure out Bellamy (from Mean bunny) and what his story in the book will be.
7) Write out at least 2 chapters of Mean Bunny

8) Create book bibles for Don't Look series and Honey Drops series

9) Buy more composition notebooks for other book bibles.

Feb
1) Repeat without 8 and 9

March
1) Repeat without 8 and 9

April

1) Repeat without 8 and 9

2) Do Camp National Novel Writing Month Round 1 (might work on When My Eyes Close)

July

1) Do Camp National Novel Writing Month Round 2

Sometime in the next 6 months:

1) Talk with friend about shared world (Her series A Demon's Toy and my series A Butterfly's Life) and get some kind of headway into that full on rewrite.

2) Plot out a bit more/write more on A Butterfly's Dance.

3) Plot out a world I'm currently calling Magical Girls.

Please see below at the very bottom about the stories that are mentioned here.
 

That's about all I'm willing to plot out for this year so far, but I'll probably add more as I go along.

For my personal life...I just have a general list. And I'm sure you've seen some of these in my post New Years Resolutions of a Creative Mind

1) Go back to therapy for the depression and see if I can't find something to help me when I have panic attacks.
2) Get rid of the toxic people in my life.
3) Ignore the idiots. They cause me stress. I have enough stress.
4) Put in SSI paperwork (I'm unable to work due to a variety of reasons)
5) Go in to the doc to find another type of pain killer that will help me control the chronic pain and won't cause more problems.
6) Get new asthma rescue inhaler since the ones that I had I have a 50/50 chance of having a reaction to. Which send me into panic attacks. Which is just a nasty cycle.
7) Get a desk.
8) Get a new chair.
9) Recreate my safe space. I need to do this for my health and sanity
10) Clean my safe space. *nudges aside notebooks*

Let's just hope that I can do this yes?

I have word goals of about 5k a week, if not more, and editing and/or rewriting once a week.

Let's see how this goes.

*rolls up sleeves* *pulls on comfy clothes* *gets to it* Charge!

Honey Drops series: This series is a kind of fantasy sci-fi with elements of romance. It's slated to sprawl over about 6 books, 3 of those books about brothers, two about family connected people, and the last one is to wrap things up. I have a 7th but that's going to be all the side bits that didn't make it into the actual books but help fill in details. 

That book shall come out around the second book when I get around to putting them out. 

When My Eyes Close: This one is just horror and death. I grew up on a killer killing off the stupid people kind of movies. I wanted to see if I can translate this into a book. It's going well so far. 

Magical Girls: This one actually started out as a Sailor Moon Prompt fic for a friend (she love's sailor moon just as much as I do), but it kind of took on it's own life. 

I'm currently thinking out the plot, how to change things around, and characters. It'll be fun, to say the least. 

Don't Look: Another series that started out as something else and turned into a full on story line. I have 3 books thought of with the possibility of more. I hope to get things going on this one but it does take time. Here's hoping.

A Butterfly's Life: Dream is book 2 of the series but I'm working on book 1 right now so I can figure out where I'm going with this story. It'll be interesting, to say the least. *sighs* *headdesk* We'll have to see how it goes. 

I just might take the plot and create a new world based off of it while keeping this story line as an online thing. 

We'll see how it goes in the long run. Cross your fingers. 

New Years Resolutions of a Creative Mind

Theme Song: Song of the North by BrunuhVille
Today's Date: January 4, 2016

As I sit here and think about the world as it is and all that is going on, I find that I have to remind myself to just...stop.

Stop and look at myself.

Stop and think about myself for once.

Stop and put myself first before others when it comes to my life.

I think that, 4 days into the New Year, that I am doing pretty darn good all things considered.

But I'll be figuring more out as I go along to. I'm still young even though I'm in my early 30's. I have time to really figure out who I am without worrying about others for once.

Because I am S.L. Lewis. And I'm an writer.

And I like that.

But I'm not really here to talk about that now am I?

No, I'm here to talk about what I'm going to do one way or the other this year.

My New Years Resolutions.

Let's go over them shall we?

1. Find my mental stability stability again.
2. Remove the toxicity in my life and get past it.
3. Finish at least one rough draft.
4. Write at minimum 5,000 words a week.
5. Get at least 260k words for the entire year.
6. Get in some much needed paperwork.
7. Do at least one blog journal a week about various things. 

Okay so I have a list, but what does this all mean?

1) Find my mental stability stability again.

Unfortunately for me, 2015 was not kind to me. I've fought depression for many, many years, since back in...Gah, about 1998 actually. This year was just not happy with me so I need to head back to Therapy again. 

And find a place that doesn't have people who I want to vent about following my every move. Disparaging everything that I say. 

I might actually start another tumblr blog with that in mind. We'll have to see how things go in the long run. 

2) Remove the toxicity in my life and get past it.

This is connected to Goal one actually. I can't get rid of some of it right away due to the fact that I need the person (as much as I hate to say it) but I can limit contact and the amount of time that I actually spend with them. 

But there is other toxicity that I can remove. 

And I shall.

3) Finish at least one rough draft.

I actually just found a wonderful site and I'll be talking about them more later on this year, but it's because of the wonderful Jennifer Amriss that I found this site just as I restarted my love affair with a good romance book.

So I'm trying my hand at romances again, but I need to finish off a few stories first though. I'm actually thinking of working on Book 1 of my Honey Drops series. Here's hoping that I get that going yes? *crosses fingers* 

4) Write at minimum 5,000 words a week.

I do this every year. It's a thing that I like doing. I did hit the goal, mostly, for 2015, but I'm hoping to keep it going this year.

5) Get at least 260k words for the entire year.

This ties in with number 4. I got well over 260K in 2015, but I'm going to keep going for as many words as I can this year. I'm actually hoping to reach closer to 300k. Who's with me in doing this?

6) Get in some much needed paperwork.

Personal goal since I can't physically work. Which sucks but eh, it happens. Between my body not liking me and my mind screwing me over in every which way, I need to get this stuff in.

But, nice thing, my insurance has labeled my asthma as a chronic illness. Hurrah.

7) Do at least one blog journal a week about various things. 

This one will be fun and MOSTLY easy since I can sit there and work things out as I go along. Set up scheduled posts and the such. Edit said posts before they come out.

Doing my thing on various series. 

Which reminds me, I need to get things ready for my first series.

Either way, everyone, THANK YOU. For everything. It's nice to know that I have friends who are willing to help. Thank you all. Seriously.