Project Typist Day 2.0 – Scheduling - The best laid plans... This is one of the major reasons I don' believe creating a schedule for writing is a functional system. Things come up; little things, important things and things that need to get done. While writing is important, and to a certain extent I consider it my job, there are tasks that must be completed in order to live. So today I didn't write. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last time I planned to work and so...
Project TypistDay 1 – Scheduling – Today I'm am working on scheduled writing. I began writing at 1pm, like I planned to do over the next couple of days. Just prior to getting to work I fall asleep for an hour long nap. I almost didn't wake up. Despite feeling exhausted I got to work. Since I watch TV during the control I decided to watch TV during this session. I wrote for nearly an hour, a lot of dialog, then I hit a plot point I hadn't thought through. Trying to figure out w...
Project Typist Day 3 – Control – Drinking and writing just like the masters. I’ve read several theories that drinking doesn’t help the artistic mind and may actually hinder it. I may not have written as much as day 2 but I felt like I was on a roll. I was still watching Robotech while working. I Wrote for an hour but was distracted for nearly 30 minutes. 484 words typed.
Project Typist Day 2 – Control – Still working on Rhodes still watching Robotech. Listened to music while working. Worked for an hour and a half then got bored and worried that the plot line was getting confused. Spent a good while re-reading the end of Rendered Fat to remember what was going on. Also it felt like there was too much dialog. I’m also hungry, the cat wants attention and I want to cut my hair. 730 words typed. For anyone who doesn’t know t...
Day 1 – Control I’ working on the sequel to Rendered Fat which is currently called Rhodes. Before I set to work there were 7,113 words. I sat on the couch watch TV as I typed. It had been a while since I last wrote so I didn’t expect it to go well. I lasted 30 minutes. Brought down by distractions and sleep. After browsing the internet briefly I decided to nap. It’s debatable whether or not my distraction and sleepiness could be a psyc...
“Writers block” is defined as a writers inability to form words into sentences and sentences into information, either fictional or non-fictional. This experiment does not intend to discover the cause of this issue, whether biological or physiologic. The purpose of the experiment is to find realistic and efficient solutions to writers block. There will be 3 section in this experiment. Section 1st will be the control, writing unaided by any systems. The 2nd will contain the...
Ah, if it wasn’t for the kindness of strangers he thought not for the first time in his life as he perused the subject lines of his spam folder. Funny thing, but it seemed they were forever wanting to either make him fabulously rich or add length to his penis. Sighing, he drummed his fingers impatiently on his knee and took a slow sip of morning coffee and resumed clicking down the long list of emails one by one. There was nothing but more, more, more, of the same, same, same, but nary a s...
“Absence thinking.” Now there’s an interesting sounding creative writing exercise: to think and write about what is not there. Its purpose is to maybe shake something loose and get something down on that empty screen. But one has to wonder a little something about that. How on Earth exactly does one go about thinking and writing about something (something?) that is not there? Puzzling. The answer (or at least the answer that finally shakes loose) is: brainstorm a l...
After this operation completes, the tool will provide you with a report of the malicious software that was detected. “Now wouldn’t that be just too cool for school,” he said out loud to his laptop as he watched the tool on his screen in action speeding through the files of his computer at a dizzying pace. But what he really meant by that was -what he was really thinking was- what if there was a way to run such a program like this on himself. Yes! Exactly! Be too cool f...
Meet Franklin Bartholomew Innis, fourth generation law man. His father is a fully decorated agent in the FBI for going above and beyond the call of duty, while being exemplary in portraying the FBI’s motto: fidelity, bravery and integrity. His mother, Madge, stay-at-home-mom extraordinaire, aka , Madge with a badge, ‘cause she keeps all her family in line while her husband battles evil. His Parents thought it would be fitting to gift Franklin with the acronym FBI. You kn...
Remembering the advice he read on line somewhere that there was really no such thing as writer’s block because all one simply had to do was just lower one’s expectations, he began to type. “You can tell these things are marketed to men with a statement like that on the package,” she told him as he crawled back into bed beside her. She was holding the torn open –and now empty- package scrutinizing the label and smoking one of her long, feminine cigarette...
The truth was… he knew he was stuck again. It reminded him of those times in his youth of traveling sandy roads out in the big middle of nowhere and the sick feeling he got when his old truck would drag down in the deep sand and slooooooow to an inching crawl and then come to a final, painful, ego bruising, stop. When that happened it was usually all pretty much over but the cussing. Yes, he would be stuck. Of course he would attempt the usual quick fix tr...
A picture had gelled in his mind of a disheveled street beggar sitting cross-legged on a busy intersection holding up a cardboard sign bearing the words WILL WRITE FOR FOOD. Yeah, now wouldn’t that be something? He smiled at the mental image, imagining the looks on people’s faces at such a peculiar sight. Will WRITE for food? He paused, daydreaming over his laptop for a moment if there would be the usual types that hate giving handouts with a purple passion approach him with the o...
Even though it had been sixty-two years, he could still remember that day he first held the weapon he was now holding in his hands with absolute perfect clarity. It was a spring day in 1943 when he, while seeking refuge from sniper fire from a yonder tree line, found the dead American lieutenant behind a crumbled garden wall somewhere in southern France. “I think I’ll be having more use of this now than you will, sir” he remembered hastily whispering to the dead officer when he...
It was one of those rare moments that happen from time to time in life that is like a snapshot the brain takes –whether you really want to get the film developed or not- that you’ll never, ever forget: One minute we were enjoying a nice breakfast of waffles and coffee and discussing our love/hate of the writing process (and how one really doesn’t have a choice in what one commits to the empty screen) and in the next Jordan was confessing to me that he knew he was gay since the ...