Doggy Drama and Writing

Last time I posted Molly was a puppy in training (and still is), but Amy and I hit a snag as "pack leaders" (been watching 'Dog Whisperer'). It turns out while Amy's allergies at first were slight in regard to Molly, the began to get worse. Long story short, Molly has turned from the time-share dog to full-time dog with my mother-in-law who lives around the corner. We're still like Aunt and Uncle to Molly, but she's not all ours anymore. Anyway, since we (mainly Amy, but I've warmed up to it) had caught dog fever the search was on for a dog that would not send Amy over the edge in allergies and be a little more chillaxed in relation to Amy and I's personas. Another long story short and an Austin-Houston dog transport we got to know Maggie (originally known as Valerie, but she's not a Valerie). After Amy spent significant time with Maggie, she realized her allergies would not go crazy and we both loved her discipline and demeanor. So next month, Maggie will be added to our "pack" where Molly once was and hopefully Molly will except  a new older cousin.

Now onto writing... or rather more delays. Now that school is over I can finally relax and take it easy, but I'm also realizing that my book(s) need more attention if I ever plan on writing them for real and maybe (in a hail-mary pass) get them published. So far I've been content with jotting down notes and story outlines here and there as they come, but honestly I know I need to buckle down and do some hard, disciplined writing. A few posts ago I talked about testing out my writing chops with a short story that would connect to my story and a few weeks I mapped most of it out, but still had a few gaps.  Realizing I needed to tackle it rather than retreating back to random notes and ideas here and there for my main story I am here... posting. Now, that this post is nearly done I'm doing my best to think of the next distraction. I need to buckle down.

Writing Crazy

Over the last couple of years I have been slowly and gradually working on a book series. When I step away and look at it, it's a massive beast that I have barely scratched the surface on, but I feel confident that it can come to be. My wife tells me that planning it out, coming up with characters and story is just the beginning. Sitting down and writing it is the hard part, she says. I think I agree, but I can't be for certain seeing as that the extent of the series so far is a series of notebooks filled with notes, stories, character profiles, drawings, and various other ideas. I have a few references chaotically thrown in and I have just recently expanded to a flash drive to better organize it all in Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. One of my big hiccups right now is character naming (as well as being in school and not being able to devote a lot of time to it). I have a ton of characters and have no idea what to name them. Do they have generic Americanized names, culturally relevant names, symbolic names, or make up some random gibberish/new language and go all Tolkien on them (not something I really want to tackle by the way)? Or maybe I create some sort of hybrid of those ideas without the new language creation seeing as normal English grammar still makes my head hurt.

OK, so you're thinking, "Shouldn't you be writing or working on your book rather than posting about it?" Yes, I should and taking a little advice from my wife, the English major and bookaholic, I'm trying to exercise my brain through a little normal writing. Also, I was thinking I might also throw in a few short stories that connect to or scenes from the book online to kind of get a feel for it and maybe get some feedback. Of course I still need to name a few people first. I don't think anyone would be interested in reading a story that starts out with "After a long journey through Land #4, Main Guy walks into a pub and after glancing around the room, spots his arch nemesis, Main Guy's Nemesis..." That's just no fun and yes, I would have a better start than that, but you get the idea.

So my hope here is to make strides with this thing and at the very least end up on the random paperback shelf at Wal-Mart... that or go crazy.