To fill you in on my novel progress: I’ve been writing chapter 3 for several days now. It’s going slowly, probably because I’ve been writing in small blocks of time. I’m concerned that my writing time will be further diminished now that I am starting a new job and will need to focus a lot of time and energy on that. Free time for writing will have to be scheduled now, that I know for sure, I can’t let my writing time slip away because this is the most confident that I have ever felt in my ability to actually write a novel.

This leads me to two ideas for future blog posts:
1. My love of reading and writing–how I grew up with it, let it fade away, and have now brought it back into my life.
2. The process of finding time to write, fitting it into your schedule and so on.

I also need to spend some time updating this blog a little bit more and perhaps make posts not solely about writing, but some posts involving books, movies, creativity and the like. That’s a good idea, I should write that down. Oh wait, I just did.

When I begin to read a novel that has a prologue the first thing I usually think is: Can’t we just skip the prologue and get right to the action?

There have been plenty of times I have wanted to skip prologues because I’ve read so many before that were dull and slow. I never felt like they did anything to bring me into the story that was worth my time reading them. I swore that when I started writing a novel I would never write a prologue.

Guess what? I’ve written a prologue.

I’m only into the first chapter of my novel and it’s been sort of slow going as I figure out how I want to tell the story and what information I should be including this early and what I should be saving for later, what narrative mode should I follow and should I show what another character is doing, what are the right and wrong things to do in a first chapter, and so on.

But with all that going on I knew I needed a prologue. Why? Because I felt that there was a scene which takes place in the past, without the protagonist, which I felt really sets the stage nicely for the book’s style and genre. I personally don’t consider this book to be science fiction, but it will contain an element that goes beyond what is scientifically possible in our “real world”. So by those standards it will probably be categorized as science fiction. The protagonist however, doesn’t discover that sci-fi element until maybe chapter 2 or 3 (I haven’t gotten that far so I can’t say for sure). Since he doesn’t discover it in chapter 1, I felt that a prologue was necessary to give the readers a sense of what they were in for before they got a couple chapters in and say, “I hate science fiction, I just wasted my time reading this.”

So that’s why I’m writing a prologue. I should have more to share on my book very soon. Stay tuned.

I’m starting to work on a novel. I’ve tried to do it before and I wrote a lot of words. However, as I look back at those words, they aren’t very good. It was basically me rambling in first person. I’ve learned a lot since then.

The problem now is that when I try to start writing I get more ideas. I have an idea for three novels now. Crazy, I know.

I’d like to have a name for the book already to help inspire and give me some direction. It’s like when I start designing a website I begin with a logo and work out from there. I let the logo dictate the direction of the website. I’ve tried naming this book and have successfully named another novel that I might write next. Ugh.

I found a good blog post about Naming a Novel.

Ok, time for me to start writing today.

I am someone who is constantly looking for writing contests. I scour the web in search of short fiction contests where I can get my work read and judged in the hopes that it will end up being published somewhere.

Writing contests are a great way for writers to gain exposure. This is why I am personally excited about this new start-up website called Fiction or Non.

Here is a brief description from the site itself:

It’s a simple but powerful service where you can publish and promote your own writing contest, and participate in others. Stories, essays, interviews, speeches, or other kinds of written expression in 1,000 words or less.

Currently the site is in development and it isn’t much to look at (that’s the web designer in me talking) but the functionality is coming together.

They are offering a pilot writing contest for everyone who has signed up to the project launch newsletter. I am currently working on a short story of my own for this contest so that I can be part of the beginnings of this new site.

If Fiction or Non is able to put together an attractive, user-friendly experience for writing contests, then this just might be the service that writers have been long looking for.

When it comes to anything related to the web I look at it through the eyes of a website designer. For me to have my own personal blog has been a struggle between the writer in me and the visual designer in me.

The writer said, “Just start writing and get your words out. Don’t worry about what the website looks like.”

The designer in me raised one eyebrow, stared directly into my soul, and said, “You know that you need to create a custom design for your blog and have it looking beautiful before you even think about writing anything.”

So like I said, it was a struggle. In the end the writer won. I don’t know exactly how he won, and to be honest, the designer in me still winces in pain when he sees that I used a generic pre-made template for my blog. I guess the writer finally convinced him that I didn’t have time to design something new from scratch and the compromise would be that I would slowly update the site. That seems fair to me.

Now you are wondering what I’m going to write here aren’t you? I plan to use this space to write about writing, to write about books I’m reading, brainstorming, share cool things I’ve discovered, and of course some of my fiction.

I’m going to have a lot of fun with this blog and I hope you enjoy it.