Jerry W Stewart

It’s been a while, but I’m back. I’ve had a lot of new things going on my life that are both exciting and equally exhausting.  A few things (like this blog) have suffered some neglect to make way for all my new endeavors, but I’m struggling to find a balance between the old and new. For starters, I’m going to make an attempt to guide this blog out of the wastelands of neglect and back to the fertile plains of creativity and useless information about myself.

I’m not sure exactly what I had going on in the past. Most of my attempts to create anything reoccurring where half-hearted at best, so I’m not going to make any promises to revive those. If I look back and find something worth reviving I may do so, but for now, I don’t have any plans to. All the changes and fresh starts in my life has inspired my to give this blog a (mostly) fresh start, as well.

I’m sure you are all dying to know what changes I’m talking about, and I promise I will tell you all about them in the coming posts. For now, I’m out of time, so check back tomorrow to see what changes I’ve made. Until then, I would love to hear about the exciting things that have happened to you in your life, so post them in the comments.

~~ Jerry W. Stewart

Another year has come and gone. I’m older and not much wiser. But, at least I know that I have friends and family that care enough about me to take time out of their busy schedules to remind me of it all and celebrate the passing of another year of my life.

All joking aside, I really do thank everyone for the Birthday wishes. It has truly been a reminder to me just how blessed and how loved I am. I’ve gotten well-wishes from family, friends, co-workers, and even one of my favorite authors (Rachel Caine) via Twitter. (By the way, Rachel and I share the same birthday. How cool is that?)

My daughters called me this morning from their mother’s house to sing the Happy Birthday Song to me over the phone, and they called a local radio station to wish me a happy birthday over the radio waves. My Facebook page is piling up with “Happy Birthdays”, and my phone hasn’t stopped dinging all morning. Holly, my beautiful wife, got me 3 books by Noah Lukeman. They are all excellent books about the writing process. If you’re interested check them out at Amazon:

• The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile
• A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation
• The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life

I can’t wait to get them in the mail either today or tomorrow, but enough about books…at least in this post. This post is for everyone who has helped me celebrate the last Birthday of my twenties.  The next one will ring in another decade, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, yet, so let’s make this one count.

My Nanny Linda and Alexis, my youngest daughter, have planned a birthday lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, Fuji’s Japanese Steak. In about an hour I’m going to be sitting down with family and eating some sushi, house fried rice with loads of Yum Yum sauce, and filet mignon. My stomach’s growling just thinking about it.

I’ve also received cards (you know what can usually be found in those cards $$$), from family and friends, too. I don’t want to leave you out when sending my thanks. Some of us are separated by distance, and I hope to see you all soon. Thank you for remembering me, today, and thank you for my gifts.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped make this a birthday to remember

~~ Jerry W. Stewart

So, I set out to participate in nanowrimo to help motivate me to get my word count up and hinder my attempts at procrastination. As the title of this post suggests, I didn’t accomplish what I had set out to do. Or, did I? I was about 37,000 words shy of the goal for the thirty day write-a-thon. Do I feel a little disappointed in my results? In honesty, I would have to answer both yes and no. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t manage to turn out the 1,667 words a day that I would have needed to hit the 50K mark in thirty days, but I’m elated at how much about myself and the process I’ve managed to learn over those thirty days.

I’ve learned some things about my style, grammatical methods, sentence techniques, and plot pace, as well as, some of my personal limitations. I’ve learned that I have to sit quietly for a period of time before I ever start tying and think about the scene I’m going to write and how it affects my characters mentally and emotionally. If I don’t, I go the through the motions of writing and look back to find that the spark of life needed to ignite my story and characters went out before it could burn due to a lack of imaginative oxygen. That may seem a little dramatic, but I mean every word. I want my store breath the oxygen of my imagination and catch fire to burn it’s own paths through forest of blank pages. If it doesn’t then I’ll gather my coals that still radiate some heat, throw some new kindling on top, and blow creativity at it until it burns.

Sure. I might eventually find the story if I hack at the keyboard long enough, and sometimes I have to, but it’s usually easier if I get in the mindset of my characters and put myself in their shoes before I type a single word. Most of the time I can read over a few of the passages from my last session and pick right up where I left off in a matter of minutes, but sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes I sit and stare at the screen for a while or let my eyes drift around my office hoping to find an idea somewhere…anywhere. Those times are rare, but they happen.

I fell like I’m starting to ramble on, so I’m going to wrap this one up with some questions. Did you participate in NaNoWriMo 2009? Did you come out a winner or a loser, like me? Either way, what experiences or lessons did the venture leave you with? Please respond in the comments. I’m interested in other people’s writing experiences, and I would love to hear yours.

Until Next Time,

Jerry W. Stewart

So, I’m 15 days into my first Nanowrimo and only 7,200 words through my 50,000 word goal. At this point in the game it’s not looking good for our fearless hero of the blank page (that’s me–in case you were wondering). At first glance it feels like I should just throw in the towel and call it quits, but after running the numbers I think it may still be an attainable goal.

The original goal was to write 1,667 words a day to reach the monumental goal of 50,000 in 30 days.  With only 15 days left and 42,800 more words to go, my daily goals have gone up to 2,854 words a day. That’s 1,187 more words per day than my original goal. It’s going to be a rough count to maintain, but I’m determined to get the end of this month with at least 50,000 words.

I lost 7 days worth of writing at the very beginning of this month, because I was traveling for my job. I found out that it was impossible for me to be creative and focused while being so far from my writing lair. Not to mention that I was in California being trained for a very technical aspect of my job. That made things worse by at least ten fold. It’s hard for me to spend 8 hours of my day trying to absorb very technical ideas and then go back to a hotel room and try to get my creative juices flowing again. I know it’s an excuse, but it’s the best I can offer right now.

Now I’m going to get back to my novel and see if I can bolster the word count some more. Good luck to everyone else in their quest for 50,000 words in 30 days. If you would like to share your Nanowrimo experiences up to this point please do so in the comments.

–Jerry W. Stewart

In my last post I said, I wasn’t going to work on my first project anymore. I had decided to move on to my second idea, because it felt more like a story that I would want to read. Some advice from my writing friend, Casey, has changed my mind. In a reply to my last post, she said that I had to keep writing the first one, but writing both might be an option, as well. I’m going to attempt the latter. I think writing both stories at the same time has some merit. They are completely different from each other, which gives me a reason to write no matter what my mood is at the time.

Manuscript 1 has an All-American hero for protagonist and the other has a darker anti-hero. One is more of your typical vampire/werewolf story and the other has a lot of religious overtones in it. The good boy is harder for me to write, while the anti-hero seems to flow more naturally. The first is being told in the first person perspective from the hero’s POV, and the other is being told in the third person perspective by an omniscient narrator. With the books being so much different from each other, I can switch back and forth depending on what mood I’m in at the time. I used to think it was a bad idea to divide my attention this way, but the more I thought about it, I realized that in my imagination my attention is already divided by these two ideas. I find myself day dreaming about both of them, so I don’t think it is going to hurt either story to write about them congruently.

What are your thoughts on working on multiple projects at the same time? Do you find it harder to focus, or is this your preferred way to work? I’m interested in other peoples writing habits, and I would love to hear about yours.

–Jerry Stewart

Artist: Soundgarden
Album: Superunknown
Song: Black Hole Sun