Wednesday, June 29, 2016

On the Road Again

Why the school bus?  Tune in next week
Wow.  I really need to get on the road again with this blog.

I see that I haven't posted since January.  Why; you ask?  There are several reasons.
  1. I wanted to shift my focus to getting enrolled in a Masters program
  2. I wanted to hold posting until I had several post pre-written so I could post on a regular schedule.
  3. I wanted to work out a story-line that I could work into a serialized set of stories
  4. I have some stories I wanted to write for submission and they took priority
  5. I didn't just want to write about feelings or rants.  I want this blog to be about stories, mostly my fiction writing, but also some of my personal "war stories."
I think five reasons is enough.  Why am I posting now?  Several reasons as well.
  1. I have used #1 above as an excuse for too long.  I have dragged my feet in getting enrolled and I will no longer allow myself to use it as an excuse
  2. I have now, finally pre-written several posts
  3. I am still working on what story-line will work best, but I have several in the works, and I have gotten on a roll of writing SOMETHING every day for the  last two months.
  4. I wrote those stories (or a couple of them at least) they were rejected.  I'm moving on.  I will probably post one of them here broken into a couple posts.
  5. This is the beauty of my new plan.
I felt that if I were to write my "war journal" here I would have to do it in chronological order, and/or this blog would become only that, and my fiction would suffer.  My new plan is to help me write and post on a regular basis, regardless.

I have spoken before about the schedule the Mickey Mouse Club from the 1950s used:
  • Monday is Music Day
  • Tuesday is Talent Day
  • Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day
  • Thursday is Circus Day
  • Friday is Guest-star Day
I thought about doing that and modifying it a bit, but still keeping a daily schedule.  I realized now  that daily is far far too ambitious.  I'm going to go with weekly.  I will cover a different topic each week of the month,  This way I can work on things for several months, but always keep writing and posting.

The other new idea is that I'm going to limit my posts to about 500-1000 words.  This may seem very short, but I think it will help me conceptualize and realize the goal.  If I'm thinking I only need to get to 500 words I won't be too intimidated by it.  The other thing I'm going to do is break posts up.  It won't be blindly at 500-1000 words.  I'll search for a natural break, but I will break up longer pieces so that they will provide multiple posts, rather than one long one followed by longer and longer breaks between posts.

Why do I want many posts; why do I want them regular?

Well, this is 507 words so you'll have to wait until the next post,  You will also find out what my new weekly schedule will be.

I hope you're curious.  What would you like to see in my weekly schedule?