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Ok I’ve taken some time off from writing after vacation. Mainly to get my head clear and open to some new ideas. Having now done that I need to sit down and get to writing. My biggest problem is that I never finish anything. I get started and all excited and then I have a bit of trouble, and lose the excitement and stop. My biggest problem is losing the story. I lose where the story and characters are taking me and I’m not sure how to get back on track. I also find that writing a novel is a bit daunting. I know that I should just not look at the big picture but how can I not. Writing your first novel, without having written anything longer than a role-playing adventure, scares the crap out of me. I think what I need to do is reconnect with the story, and just write. Don’t worry about how long it is. Don’t worry about anything but getting the story out. As every writer that I’ve read about or heard interviewed, you need to get your butt in the chair and write. How can you be a writer unless your write? You can’t. Plain and simple. So it is time to do just that. Sit down, butt in chair, and write, write, write.

Yesterday I had laser surgery on my feet. Everything that I and my wife had found on the internet about it stated that it doesn’t hurt. In fact I found one that said that it was nearly painless. THEY ALL LIE!!!!! The procedure was very painful. I liken it to having a scalpel jammed into your foot over and over again. The pain after is probably the worst. My feet both feel like large bags of useless flesh hanging off my ankles. That is when they aren’t shooting stabbing pain up my legs. At least the technician didn’t pull the old doctor trick, “Don’t worry you’ll only feel a slight pinch”. He told me straight out it was going to hurt and that it would be painful for a few days. It just bothers me that I’ll have to do this every 2 weeks. I figure in two months time my feet will just fall off anyway.

I found this story starter on Slushpile.net. I think it takes all the creativity out of writing but it might be fun to use one of these wacky sentences as a story starter and see where it goes. I will do it once I finish the two stories I have going right now.

Ok My sentence is: The attractive toy designer caught a fish above a secret passageway for the grandmother.

This ought to be fun! NOT!!!!

This is really cool. I just wish that I had thought of it and did it first.

read more | digg story

Ok this is too funny. I know the Apple ads were funny but I think the PC is taking it to the extreme.

read more | digg story

It has been really tough, juggling all the things life throws at you. My wife has been a bit overwhelmed with the kids lately. I feel like I have to do more at home. It also makes me feel as though I don’t do enough. I set up a schedule to do the weekly chores around the house. I also wanted to see what would happen if I stopped doing them all. I know that I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I guess I needed proof. I did them all and worked every day, and a few times I had to take care of the kids as well, because my wife had end of school stuff to do. So once she was home, I figured I’d let her do it all like I had been. Well, things have not gone well. She is off schedule, does too much one day not enough the next. I just don’t think that she can follow the plan. She says the kids are too much on top of the chores, maybe they are, but I did them, and too care of the kids and worked. I guess I’m just bitter. She lets things overwhelm her. She lets things get her down on herself. I’m not wired that way I guess. I don’t let things bother me as much as they do her. I used to, don’t get me wrong. I let things bother me so much I was a candidate for a heart attack. So I changed. I stopped letting things bother me, what was the point of worrying that my boss might get upset if I make the call. If I make the call and it is the wrong one, I get reprimanded, I learn from my mistake and move on. I can’t worry about it. There are more important things in the world. I have been getting involved in playing Xbox games again. I’m using it as an escape, I realize that now. I’m upset that she can’t make the schedule happen, and that I’ll have to take over to make it work again. I know that there is probably a middle ground that can be reached, but I also know that when she goes back to work, it will fall squarely on my shoulders to do it. Sometimes I feel that she thinks that my job isn’t as taxing as hers, or that I’m inferior to her. I hope that she doesn’t feel that way. I just don’t know. I guess I just have to take it back over and get the house back in order. Hopefully somewhere in there, I’ll have time to do the things I want to do. I hope that my writing and reading won’t suffer, but I suspect that they will.

I know that it has been a while since I posted regularly. Part of that was vacation and then returning to a ton of work to do at work. The other part was that I wanted to redesign my blog Thoughts of a Simple Man and I wanted to redo my other personal site Scott Phillips Dot Org. Now that I have accomplished both of those as well as updating my son’s and my daughter’s sites with pictures from vacation, I can now sit back and get busy reorganizing my free time. I want to get to the point where I have enough time in a day to do all the things I want to. I’m realizing that there isn’t enough time in a day. I really need to cut back on the podcasts that I listen to. I have a lot and I’ve fallen so far behind in listening, that I’ll never catch up. There are a few that I have kept up with, and these will probably be the ones I keep. It is just hard to eliminate them, most of them are really great. They just add up to a lot of time, and seeing as my commute to work is about 8 minutes if there is traffic, I’ll never be able to fit them in. I also need to set aside time to read and to write, and I don’t mean in my blogs. I have to find a way to fit it in, but I think that everyday may be too much. I may need to stagger them out so I’ll be able to have time for family and friends.

Speaking of friends, I definitely want to make more time for them. I haven’t been in touch with most of them and I feel awful about it. I know that it is a two way street and if they wanted to talk to me they could make an attempt. I’m just so bad at making the effort to contact them. I need to also do more things with my family. Other than just sit around the house. I have to admit that I have a great job, I work somewhere between 30 to 35 hours a week. I get paid for 40 regardless. It is a pretty sweet deal. My boss also takes care of the other employees here with free hours. It just amazes me that they complain about it. Ok went off on a tangent there. I have plenty of down time, time that I’m not working. I want to make some quality time for my family and my friends. I need to evaluate my free time and just put it to better use. I’ll let you all know what I come up with.

I have to say that Patrick McLean is one of the freshest writers that I have had the join of listening to in his podcast The Seanachai. His spin on the world of superheroes and super villians is a great change from most comics out today. I hope you all have to the chance to enjoy it as much as I have.

“How to Succeed in Evil is not a self-help page for the maladjusted. It it is the story of Edwin Windsor, Evil Efficiency Consultant. He’s like Arthur Anderson for Supervillians. How to Succeed in Evil began life serialized as a regular feature on the popular podcast “The Seanachai”, by Patrick McLean. Now it’s being made into a comic book!”

read more | digg story

I have had a glorious vacation and now I am back. We spent the last two days at home unpacking and getting things in order so we can live. I had a great time though the baby didn’t sleep very well, it really didn’t detract from having an enjoyable two weeks. I got a lot of reading done, and writing in my “analog” journal. I started a new story, using the ideas that I got from Mr. King’s On Writing. I don’t know my word count on it or even how many words I expect it to be when I’m finished, I’ll leave that as a mystery for now. Well I have a lot of work to catch up on, so I better get cracking. I took a lot of photos that I will share when I get a chance to put them online. I announce that they are up, and where, when I do.