Tag Writing

The Concept

As a family, we make it a point to explore something new and intriguing wherever we go, often seeking out historical sites or unique points of interest that are off the beaten path. However, not everything captures our children’s attention equally. This inspired me to conceive a project: what if I created a story to accompany our adventures, bringing the experiences to life and sparking their imaginations? After all, much of the excitement lies in how an experience is presented. And so, our adventure stories were born, eventually evolving into a collection that we now proudly call our family adventure journal!

The Approach

Initially, I aimed to create several stories to get the kids excited about activities like nature walks or visits to places that aren’t centered around games and activities they usually gravitate toward. We crafted simple stories to highlight points of interest in a fun way, featuring talking creatures and a touch of innocent magic. These elements, familiar yet tailored to our real-world adventures, helped bridge the gap between the digital and natural worlds.

By focusing each story on an adventure, I began directing their attention to specific things, like the wonder of a natural feature or the significance of a historical event. To make these moments even more special, I included related materials. Initially, I worked in reverse, matching these materials to upcoming activities and adding Adventure Journal entries and artwork afterward. The plan is to prepare these stories in advance, creating a collection of potential adventures for them to explore as we embark on our next journeys.

Engagement and Follow Through

This project requires dedication, so I’m developing a background for the journal itself, ensuring a seamless transition from fictional characters to stories tailored to our family activities. I’m also finding ways to capture our children’s experiences in their own words as they grow, creating a cherished family keepsake that we can enjoy for years to come.

The Beginnings … 

It begins a little something like this…

• Start with a Journal that will last for some time, have space to expand and is something that you find aesthetically pleasing. Etsy has some great Handmade Journal options if you need some inspiration! Remember size does matter, smaller journals that are more for personal use may not work. Here is what we chose to use. The one shown below was purchased from reimaginedonline.

• Having already created the backstory, I can weave some of those elements into the initial pages, for this please visit our Adventure Journal Page.
• Create your first set of adventures but base them on fictional characters your children can relate to.
• Make the Journal into an Art project!

• Be sure to leave room for your kids to add their thoughts and experiences, whether this is a set of pages set aside for them, or have them write a short letter that you can insert into an envelope pasted inside the pages. (Note: if you are starting this with very young kids, you may have to complete this part until they can do it on their own, may be a fun way to capture your memories as well.)
• Share with your kids, and let them help you plan the next set of adventures that they will get to participate in.

The last several weeks have been very hectic with work and the writing schedule, so I am condensing the previous 3 weeks into a single update as we are working to close out Preptober. As I have stated before, I am expanding most of the work that has been completed to this point, focusing on shoring up my main character and working to better define support characters so that they fully enrich the story progression.

It just goes to illustrate that even when an idea is already in progress, there is always more we can do to help improve our writing process and the details of our stories.

Week 2:

Week 2 has come to a close…

Closing out Week 2, I am considering what my ideal November writing experience would look like, this step is very important. Just with training for world-class athletes, visualizing how the process should flow and what to do when things are not in that ideal state helps you to find ways to overcome challenges and reach your Goals.

As for me, I have seen that the end of the year is hectic, work, kids’ events, and family obligations are always demanding time, so when would I write? In the past, I have tried to do this in the evenings, but the lack of motivation and the desire to stop making decisions does not make that time well spent. Moving it to first thing in the morning has some merit and may be part of the answer.

It essentially boils down to the ability to focus for a set amount of time. In short, I will be leveraging the Pomodoro technique and using some time during the day to nail out as much detail into the story as I can, using the off hours as a planning period or buffer if I am trying to complete an idea.

Week 3:

Wrapping up Week 3, Some Thoughts

The end of Week 3, brings a lot of focus to your main characters. You have to have quite a bit of interest in your characters for them to develop well on the page, you must care about them in some way and essentially form a relationship with your invisible friend that no one else can imagine until you share your work.

With that said, part of what draws me to my main characters, is that I found myself curious to see how their pairing would evolve, the interactions, the dialogue. Strong personalities, I am very used to working with them, but putting those same patterns into the story form makes for an interesting writing experience, which I am hoping will translate well to the reader at the end.

Having such a duty-focused MC who is challenged constantly by his companion, helps them both to evolve their world perspectives. It forces me to consider many more aspects of the dynamic than is shown in the writing and has such a varied effect on how they make decisions and interact with those around them. To say I am fascinated would be quite an understatement.

Week 4:

Do you feel ready, well, do ya?

As we draw near to the end of Preptober activities, I am left with the question, Am I Ready for this? I already know that I am not, though I do feel like I have a plan and a reasonable chance for success to close out this NaNoWriMo experience. What I have experienced in the past is the many varied ways that life can get in the way, not an excuse by any means. Its reality, there is always something that will need attention, and since this is not my only focus, there will be other demands on my very limited time.

I have put years into considering the aspects of my story world, how the different groups, ecosystems, and patterns will interact, and surprisingly that is not what concerns me about my story world. My concern lies in that I feel many authors rely on the external factors of the environment to push the story with a focus on many of the esoteric aspects of their creation. It is effective in many situations, however, I want my story to be able to stand alone without the need for those components, that they add flavor but are not the meat of the experience for my readers.

While I have planned and visualized different ways to ensure success, I know there will be challenges for me to agonize over, but at the same time… Why would I let that stop me?

Don’t be a stranger!

Hopefully, you are ready for your NaNoWriMo experience, please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences as well!

Something a little different:

This year my Preptober will take a different path than it has in previous years. I am not starting a new project during this period which feels a little off to me, though finishing an in-flight one is just as essential. Some of the normal milestones that I would typically be working through are already set, which alleviates part of the prep work, and with the time that is freed up, I will repurpose to expand and enhance the current project.

With this week’s activities completed we will be moving more into the prep phase for the activity that is coming up in November, training if you will on how to handle the low motivation and writer’s block events that are sure to happen. Stay tuned!

Each and every year, I sit down to do a final review of what happened and determine how I want to improve in the year to come. While I use this time to frame out some general goals, I do not hold any stock in New Year’s Resolutions, they are notoriously unreliable. This is a time of reflection, a chance to center yourself back onto the path you have been traveling, and should be taken with the seriousness that should entail. After all, we are all striving for something, moving from point A to B and figuring out all of the steps in between.

Previous Years:

• 2021 New Years Goals
• 2022 New Years Goals – (Missing Due to Baby Arrival planning)

What a Year, Let’s Review

This year has been very impactful for me, with the birth of our second child, significant changes in the professional arena, and also some remarkable strides in the development of my art. They say that one of the only constants in this world is change, and I have never heard anyone able to disprove that, so we must take that variability in life and circumstance into account for everything we do. The thought that anyone could ever become so complacent as to be comfortable is hard for me even to fathom.

The environment that we live in is too complex and dynamic with all of the different content sources and technologies working to grab and keep your attention it forces even the most stagnant of people to realize that change is constant all around us.

While I am sure you could choose to ignore it, which seems detrimental to your personal growth, the choice to lean into the changes and see what opportunities await is by far the more desirable choice. So it comes down to this, What are you going to choose to do?

Goal Time

Personally, I am focusing my efforts in several different directions so as to take many small steps towards improvement in as a well-rounded approach as I can.

Starting with skill improvements, I am going to continue to develop my writing practices and abilities, improve my digital art skills and of course, use this as a medium to share my progress in all of those arenas.

Personal growth areas, finding new ways to connect with people is a goal of mine in the upcoming year, finding a way to deepen connections and work to further my cherished relationships.

I think almost everyone these days is looking to establish additional financial income streams and I am no different in that, so spending some additional time working on items/services to utilize will be a large focus item for me.

Shameless Plug: Check out the Etsy Store!

Faith has been a very important part of my life and deepening my understanding and keeping myself on the path will also get more focus in the upcoming year.

While I am sure there will be many more goals, large and small that organically develop throughout the upcoming year I will be working on these four main ones as a roadmap for my improvement activities.

Observations and Positive Intent

Most of the challenges this year have been external, though I can be sure that not all have started that way. Home repairs and maintenance are expected, the amount that we have had to do this year was excessive. We were fortunate enough to line up the work and get it all done, or at least all of the major items, and are now lined up for the next set of projects in the new year.

Personal creative efforts have been up and down this year. Sheer personal motivational challenges are where the fault lies here, I know that it is completely within my control to manage that part of the endeavor. All I can say to that is that I failed this year in this regard. I am going to strive to do better this upcoming year and am actively planning on how to improve my efforts in this regard, so I am marking where I am currently at this year and seeing what progressive milestones I can set for myself on a monthly basis.

Professionally, it seems that I have been slowly burning out with all that had been asked of me, so this recent change in role is going to be a time to reflect and improve on situations that I struggled with before. I feel the drive to be better and do better, which has not been this strong in years and I am excited for the new challenges ahead, even the political ones. No, I am really serious about that part.

I am typically an optimist at heart and lately I feel as if I have a cynical filter on the world. To that I am going to make a concerted effort to assume “positive intent” on the actions that I don’t have evidence of to the contrary, this is to not only lighten my personal outlook on the world, but hopefully also temper my responses that result.

Onward to 2023!

Making this another transformative year and working towards the goals I am setting for myself, leveraging the data and metrics to validate the progress as the year moved forward is what I am committing to, Time to Get Creative!

Realizing your goal.

Week 3 is wrapping up and the realization of the extent of the task in front of you is starting to set in. You may be thinking about how much you need to do, feeling daunted at the challenge of meeting writing goals coming up next month, not sure if this is something that you will be able to complete and of course the ever-present imposter syndrome. This is normal, we all feel overwhelmed but the amount of detail that you get as you start trying to piece the montage of details into a cohesive whole is. It is actually a good thing that you are feeling this now, versus in a couple of weeks when you are in full swing of trying to write during NANOWRIMO. 

“Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.” 

Paul J. Meyer

Taking the time now to work through those emotions and realizing what is triggering them will help you manage those same feelings as you work through your project. Spend the time and come up with some strategies to break it down into smaller chunks that you need to consume, write or research. Write it all down to keep the details out of your brain so that you can free up as much mental capacity as possible for creative endeavors. 

Character Week

This week was Character week, you hopefully have spent quite some time getting to know your primary cast of characters. What did you find surprising about them as you started to figure out what makes them tick? This is one of my favorite parts of writing since you can let your imagination develop all of those friends that you used to play with when you were a kid come back alive and in a way that you will be able to share with others. 

Did you focus on the personal or physical dilemma that was facing the protagonist of your story, or did you stretch and also evaluate the moral struggle that you are expecting them to deal with? Hopefully you did both. It always makes for a more relatable character if they are not only changing due to outside pressures but also illustrating how their behavior and thought patterns shift as a result of the development as well.

Don’t forget to support “You”

You should have also spent some time this week working on some mental health strategies for the month of November. Such as how to find more free time to address things that could distract you from achieving your writing goals or how to keep yourself motivated through the writing journey that lies ahead. DO NOT let yourself skimp on this activity set, the energy that put in now will ensure that when you find a challenge in a few weeks you already have the plan to help you overcome it, and that is more valuable than waiting and wasting time later. Procrastination here is not your friend.

You have just 1 more full week and some change in the time left over before the NANOWRIMO kickoff begins and this upcoming week will be all about preparing to make your writing month the most successful that it can be.

Woo hoo! You just completed Week 2 of Preptober!

Hopefully, you have made it through the slog of details that start to flood your mind when it comes to how your story is starting to take shape. The nebulous form is starting to become clearer in your mind, characters are starting to solidify, the scenery is starting to take form, and the events are taking shape. 

It is about this time, that the feelings of being overwhelmed really start to take hold of me. I can sense the looming wave of detail that is hovering on the edge of my writing brain, waiting to slip in and drown me in minutiae that will distract me from my current goal. This is where newer writers start to awaken to the sheer depth of their craft, and also give them an appreciation for the effort that has gone into some of their favorite books. 

This week was all about setting up your game plan for the month ahead, getting the bare-bones frameworks in place so that you can continue to expand on the different aspects of the story that you will eventually need to bring together to create the final product. It should all be building on the work and effort you put in last week as well.

After completing the activities in this section, you should have the following:

A list of Topics to research:

This list is very important, this should be the details that you need to nail down to bring a sense of realism to your story and make the actions and environment of your world more relatable to your audience. Once you have a list, don’t leave it for another day either, start working on each topic throughout the rest of this Preptober session so that you can clear that dependency from your path to creating your story.

What are some examples from your list? Here are some of my own for this session:

• Non-motorized means of transport and the nature of how that was successful.
• Animal behavior and abnormal traits in predatory species.
• Weather patterns that are specific to my setting’s geographic profile.

A clear vision of a breathtaking story setting

This is most important to yourself, it will help you to describe the small details, creating the same image in the mind of your readers, it will also help you to further immerse yourself into the story. I can picture myself walking down the same streets, interacting with some of the same people, and really getting a sense of the lives that your characters live. If you are artistic enough to draw or visually create your own setting, that is amazing and can serve as a concrete example of your world. Most people though look towards creating a map of their world, luckily there are some handy web-based options for those that don’t have the time or talent to draw these out from scratch. Check out Inkarnate for example.

Initial Development of Characters

Like all of the other tasks that you have worked on so far this month, this is only the beginning, getting a sense of who you want your characters to be is where you need to be at this stage. You don’t know all of the interesting aspects of their personalities and how they will interact with the world around them. That will come in time, right now you should be focusing on the core of the character, what is making them the driving force behind your story and how their own challenges fit into your broader narrative.

Brainstorm on how to get unstuck

When you get stuck during your writing and you will get stuck, what is your plan to get back on track? Are you going to attack a different aspect of the story-writing process, go for a run, cook something, watch a movie or read a book? There are many ways that can get your brain back on track to follow those creative pathways that are unfolding in your story. The one thing that I can guarantee is that whichever tactic you choose it should always come back to getting words on the page, otherwise it will more likely than not become just another distraction or temptation to procrastinate in doing what you need to be doing. Procrastination is not something you can allow in the NANOWRIMO process, you don’t have time for it.

Outline your Top Ten Scenes

Mapping out your scenes is a standard way to keep track of the numerous plot threads that will start appearing all over your story scape, starting with the basic framework will also help to create a more comprehensive story as you write. Don’t skimp on this step, really spend some time here because most of your challenges in making your story flow can be caught if you have a well-designed plan in place.

Plan to attend a Write-in session

This is a beneficial exercise for those that are struggling to get started, a write-in session will bring you closer to your local writing community as well as give you some additional eyes and ears on potential issues while you are working through your story. Networking with other writers will also be beneficial, especially if they are kind enough to commiserate on their own challenges, their struggles, and how they overcome them. I personally believe the organic interactions that you get from a physical write-in bring a significantly improved experience, though if you are still uncomfortable being around other people, the virtual option may be a better fit.

Clear visualization of how your successful November would appear

There is power in positivity, and you should take advantage of it when describing what your successful NANOWRIMO month would look like. How would you achieve and/or break your word count goals to produce the best, most compelling story that you have ever imagined? Take yourself through exercises where you perceive setbacks and periods of inability to write, visualizing how to overcome these situations and feelings will give you some practice for when the actual events occur. Professional athletes do this type of visualization all the time since it is when things go wrong that you need to continue to perform and push forward to reach your final goals. You are actively working out your mind to do something similar so why not take some inspiration and try it out in your own writing practices?

Where to go next?

As it really starts to sink in the level of the challenges you have chosen to overcome, you will start moving from this awakening period, and into the realization of what is needed to take yourself to the next level of skill in your craft and writing profession. Keep pushing yourself, don’t be satisfied with the surface level of the process, dig deeper and find what works for you so that you can really develop your story into something magnificent. After all, it doesn’t happen by accident, it takes effort and a lot of it.

Coming to the close of Preptober Week 1 and we are already seeing positive traction in moving our story from concept closer to reality. The excitement can be intense, however, the journey has only begun, regardless of your experience level, whether it is a first-time practitioner or a seasoned veteran. 

Oh, that initial excitement!

At this point your energy is high, and you are excited about getting into the mix of writing your scenes and interacting with your characters, sharing in their experiences as you build the journeys/events that dominate their world. Take a moment and revel in that feeling, it is something that will not last, and before you get deeper in and the newness begins to wear off, make sure to remember the feel of it so that you can tap into that when the struggle to get the next word down on the page and get that boost needed to reach the next milestone.

Right now, crafting a complete concept model for your story should be a long-term goal, it is not realistic to expect that you will complete this process before you begin writing. Nor should you expect it to remain the same throughout the process. Your story, characters, and writing journey will shape all of that as you get closer to editing time. Don’t add that un-needed pressure on yourself at this point, there will be more than enough time for that later. 

Now that I am done pontificating on the process, let’s get into the guts of what is going on in my own process. You can find these prompts and more on Instagram every day this month, Make sure to follow!

Announcing my Word Count Goal for November 2022 :

Genre

Plot Formula:

Story Idea:

Synopsis:

Point of View:

Keep a watch out for updates and posts as this story evolves: Mission Reports

Remember this level of excitement

The stories that are being planned, written, edited, or published are all starting from somewhere, where does your own begin and what are you willing to do to make it a reality? I don’t think that anyone starting a writing project could not be excited over the ability to create a reality all their own, and try to maintain that through the hard days to come. The time will come when you are faced with that question and hopefully, by the end of this month, you will be able to answer it.

Cursed to experience the “perfect” day, you find that you have to repeat each day until it is. After completing several weeks of this, you realize that the repetitions required are becoming shorter…

Artistry and Coffee

You have lived long enough to see the old proverb “history repeats itself” come true, except this time you are on the opposite side than you were in the previous series of events.

Artistry and Coffee

You have just finished writing your latest chapter the night before, while listening to your child’s latest adventure with their imaginary friend, you have the sudden realization that their adventure is the same story you just completed…

Artistry and Coffee