What I've Been Up To

While I haven't touched this blog since I took a break from the 365 Day Writing Challenge in February, it doesn't mean I've stopped writing. On the contrary, I've been writing up a storm. One of the reasons I took a break from the challenge was because I had several books I'd completed that I couldn't find the time to publish. Since that time, I've published 13 books! I didn't complete all of those during the challenge, but I'd love to bring attention to the books so that you can all check them out if you're interested.

1,000 Character Writing Prompts - This book took a great chunk of the challenge as I invested over 150,000 words into this bad boy. It's a great deal at $2.99 on the Kindle for that number of words and I'm currently working on developing a cheaper paperback edition so I can get it down from $10.25 to $7.99. If you need some help with your character development, this is the place to get it from.

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts for Holidays - A compilation of five of my holiday writing workbooks, this collection contains prompts for over 20 different holidays that delve into the origin, the traditions and the delicious food of these wonderful festivals.

 First Grade Writing Prompts for Holidays, Second Grade Writing Prompts for Holidays, Third Grade Writing Prompts for Holidays, Fourth Grade Writing Prompts for Holidays and Fifth Grade Writing Prompts for Holidays - My collection of writing workbooks based on the most wonderful holidays of the year. Each book contains 200 prompts and some space for your kids, students or self to write under each prompts. Great for copying and using for the classroom!

The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 1-2, The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 3-4, The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 5-6, The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 7-8, The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 9-10, The Writing Prompts Workbook, Grades 11-12 - My first collection of workbooks made up of prompts from my first two books, 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts and 500 Writing Prompts for Kids. The books give kids and students the opportunity to write below each of the prompts in convenient 100 page paperback workbooks.

Phew, so that was a lot of links, but I'm happy to start putting them out there. I still need to find a balance between writing, publishing and promotion. One of these days, I'll get there. More life updates forthcoming. Until then, happy writing!

Day 153: Super Bowl 2012

I'm very excited to be hosting a Super Bowl 2012 party that will rival all others! Well, it will probably be smaller than some, but at least it's a pot luck and it's also serving as a housewarming for Amy and myself! I'll be making at least 60 wings and buckets of fries for people to scarf down and it should make Super Bowl 2012 a memorable one :).

As with all holidays during this challenge, I will have to get all of my writing done early on in the day. Holidays haven't been the biggest challenge though. Editing has. I've been having trouble getting my ducks in a row to edit my book, 1,000 Character Writing Prompts. I've been so focused on the writing and also my exercise routine, I've had trouble getting around to getting the book out. Considering it was finished in early January, I have a cover and I'm well-versed on everything having to do with formatting, it should be out already. I need to push myself to find an extra 10 hours in the next few days to get it up and out. Super Bowl 2012 weekend probably won't be the best time to fit that editing in, but there's no time like the present!

Today, I worked on my new secret project a bit, I have yet to work on my blog tour post yet, but I have posted a character writing prompts blog post about laborers. Happy Super Bowl 2012 weekend all!

Day 125: Marilyn Monroe

Yesterday, Amy and I went out for a friend's birthday to see the independent flick, "My Week with Marilyn," and I have to say it exceeded my expectations. It was great getting to understand the soul of the character by essentially seeing a month long sliver of her life. I thought that the actors were impeccable and that the writing could have been much more heavy handed than it was. While I think that anybody writing a memoir about Marilyn Monroe might have exaggerated a bit about how...ahem, intimate, the two of them might have gotten, it was regardless a great story to tell. I can't wait until I get to write a fantastic memoir with wonderful tales of the people I've met and loved. Until then, I'll just keep on working on the silly one, Why I'm Not Famous Yet. Today, I also wrote another creativity conundrum about what to do when you miss the boat.

This week will include much editing of my 1,000 Character Writing Prompts book and some work on the workbooks. Hopefully I can get all of them out and ready by the end of January! Have a great weekend everybody!

Day 124: A Friendly Dream

I won't name names here because I want to maintain the innocence of the innocent, but last night I had a dream about an old friend who I effectively had a "friend breakup" with about three years ago. She had been one of my best friends in college and though we moved to different places after school, we kept in touch frequently via phone. I'd visited her in her city and she'd visited me in mine.

There was never a truly clean break in the friendship for me. After my girlfriend and I visited her and her boyfriend one summer, she completely cut off contact with me and never spoke to me again. There had been signs that it was impending, as she didn't attempt to contact me that much in the months leading up to the visit. She also seemed extremely put out to have me there and I felt the entire time as if I was inviting myself (even though we'd put her up in our home a year or two earlier).

I wasn't the best friend to her and I regret not being more loyal and trustworthy. She would send me birthday cards and all I would do was post on her Facebook wall and call her (if I remembered). During my crazy period of trying to raise funds for my Web series, I pestered her for money, because she had a real job, I figured "of course she'll give me money, she's one of my best friends." Friendship and money doesn't always mix well and I regret having pushed her so much, especially for a project that failed so spectacularly.

Every so often, I send her an e-mail or a Facebook message, but since that fateful trip to her neck of the woods, I've never gotten back a single reply. This truly was a break-up and I should probably get the hint that she never wants to hear from me again. But I'm a sentimental guy and I have a tough time letting go of things sometimes. During college she was incredibly supportive of my artistic endeavors and she loved seeing the plays I was in. She wanted to read the things I wrote. Since college, I haven't had too many people that were so invested with what I did. Maybe I miss the friendship with her because of that, for a selfish reason.

But I also miss listening to her. Her life was so different from mine and it was really cool to hear how much it was diverging after school.

After the dream I had last night, in which the two of us talked about why she cut off contact between us, I looked her up in real life and found out she was recently engaged to her boyfriend. I'm extremely happy for her and I hope that the two of them have an amazing life together. I'm grateful that she's doing well and I'm grateful for the time the two of us were able to have as friends.

I think that's the best way to avoid getting stuck in the past as I tend to do. Be grateful for that part of you that's been shaped by your time with that person. Even if I never speak with my friend again, she will always be a part of me in that way. How can I not be happy about that? :)

Today, I began work on a new book after finishing 1,000 Character Writing Prompts yesterday. This book is my first attempt at straight up humor and it's currently called Why I'm Not Famous Yet. I also wrote a blog post about the creativity conundrum of talent.

Day 123: Upping the Ante

I have taken on a new freelance assignment including an additional 20 articles per week. This is meant to continue to boost my finances (by approximately $560 per month) so that I can get out of debt quicker. This will make the challenge a little more difficult, but then again...

Don't people always say that when you have more work to do, you end up getting more done? Considering that I'm also planning a blog tour at some point in early 2012 and I have a lot of editing to do of my other project, I will certainly be putting this belief to the test :).

If my sales also continue to increase, I'm hoping that I can kick this debt to the curb even sooner than expected. As I've said before, life without debt is something I'm extremely looking forward to. If I can continue to live below my means and make sure that mo' money doesn't equal mo' problems, I should be OK.

I came up to the brink today in 1,000 Character Writing Prompts and I should be completed with the book entirely by tomorrow. Woo! I also wrote a blog post to continue my creativity conundrum series, this one about how age has no effect on creativity.

Onward and upward people! Keep kicking some butt this year on your resolutions :)

Day 122: Mercury Rising

This has been a wild month so far, and it's only been 3.5 days! My book sales are following a trend set last January by nearly doubling from December to January. The only thing is, I sold about 200 last December, but this December, I sold over 900! I've enjoyed the trend, to say the least :). It makes me proud of all the hard work I put into these books and I'm very excited to release my 1,000 character writing prompts book when I finally get it out to market. Who knows if the trend of selling 40 books a day will continue through the whole month. If it does, it'll take a nice chunk out of my debt. If it doesn't, it will still have been an exciting few days to have been a part of :).

If it continues throughout 2012, well, let's just say my debt will be toast by the winter :).

In addition to coming oh so close to finishing the character prompts book, I wrote another creativity conundrum article about being cool. Hopefully everyone who has been bullied for their artistic gifts can get something out of it!

Day 121: Creature Comforts

I'm not always as grateful as I could or should be about all the wonderful things I have going for me. I live in a beautiful apartment almost completely furnished by my amazing girlfriend. Our location is near several convenient lines of transportation and multiple grocery stores. We have a cushy leather couch to collapse onto at the end of a tough day and most importantly we have each other. I may still have debt and a lot of work to do every day to keep up with my various challenges, but I know that I have many wonderful things and people to make my life worth living. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I am about two days away from finishing my final writing prompts in my character writing prompts book and I can't wait to feel that sense of accomplishment upon getting the final word on digital paper. I also wrote a blog post today about the creativity conundrum that is emotional maturity.

Day 120: An Iron Will

Today, with an iron will, I pushed myself back into finishing 1,000 Character Writing Prompts. I really do love writing these prompts and prompts in general, and today I once again thought about my goal to do 1,000 prompts for each of Shakespeare's plays (and one for the sonnets of course) and how crazy it would be. It's possible that none of them would sell a single copy and yet, that doesn't matter as much to me as the achievement of it all. It all starts with getting this book completed first and seeing if the sales from that and the happiness book can give me even more freedom to do whatever I want, such as this silly challenge :).

It is extremely cold here in Chicago today and as a result, I'm planning a seven mile run (because that's what you do). This will jump-start me through the rest of the month of the Tundra challenge and it will take off some much needed weight that I've been carrying around. This wouldn't be possible without the awesome cold weather gear that I've received from my girlfriend, so a major shout out :).

Also with an iron will, I wrote a blog post today about last second motivation, a collection of tips to use when standard motivational methods aren't working and a deadline is impending.

I hope everyone is having as great a start to the year as I am! Happy writing and creating!

Day 115: Where the Heart Is

Amy and I returned back home to Chicago yesterday and it's been nice settling back into our apartment, especially with the wonderful wall art, kitchen tools and other awesome gifts we have been able to bring home. I had such a successful time getting my writing done in Chapel Hill in a limited amount of time, that it was odd coming back to a full day with nothing to do but write. I dawdled a bit, but here I am coming close to the end of the 2,500 for the 115th straight day.

Home may be where the heart is, but it's going to take all the heart I can muster to keep my exercise plan going, now that we're really into the full swing of winter. I think I'll take a break today after the speed up, slow down, rain run that my friend Vince and I took part in yesterday. As we drop below 20 degrees here, I'm glad that I have a little additional running gear (thanks Amy!) that will get me through it.

Another struggle has been finishing the 1,000 Character Writing Prompts book. This 150,000 word juggernaut is so close to being complete, but I needed a week off from it. I've enjoyed working on Living in the Future, though I'll have a hard time saying that I practice what I preach unless I push through the end of that character book and put it out to market. I already have a wonderful cover lined up, now I just need to finish and edit the dang thing :).

Other than working on "Living," I wrote a blog post about creating some writing resolutions as we approach the wonder that is New Year's Eve.

Now let's all eat some leftovers and write! :)

If you are interested in finding out more about my work, check out my author page on Amazon, on which you can check out all of my books. If you have a book blog, I'm currently looking to do a blog tour starting early next year. Feel free to contact me at my Build Creative Writing Ideas website. Thanks!

Day 86: Home Sweet Home

Coming back after Thanksgiving was like a breath of fresh air for my writing. It was awesome getting back into the routine of my exercise biking freelance writing and for my creative writing prompt creation as well. Since I've also integrated housework into my daily writing routine, I'm already unpacked with a much tidier house than I woke up to this morning. Now, there are drawbacks, like the 20 degree drop in temperature from Pa. to Ill., but there are always benefits of detriments of any situation. I'm all about concentrating on the benefits :).

Still trying to figure out how I want to release this character writing prompts book. I may wait on Amazon, etc. entirely and just put the first part on my website, before doing a big launch of a BIG book (over 150,000 words big) some time in February. We shall see what happens, but I better make a decision soon. I also need to decide what I want to do about Ted Saves the World, which requires some serious revisions.

On the writing front, I worked on some character writing prompts about vegans and I put together a top ten list on writing prompts online.

Day 81: Turkey!

I have to be quick here, because we're about to dash off to get Amy from the airport. I'm particularly glad to have gotten all of my writing completed before 9 a.m. because it means I can focus on cleaning, preparing and eating today instead of the writing challenge. That's the best part about this 365 day challenge, I can do it whenever I want to, and after 81 days of practice, I can finish it in a reasonable amount of time. Some days go by extremely quickly and if you don't put in some effort to add to your life's work each and every day, you might find 10 years have gone by without much to show for it purpose wise. If I can keep this going for those 10 years, I would have over 7 million words to show for it, and hopefully over 50 books. They might not all be masterpieces, but it's better than waiting for the masterpiece to come to me :).

Today, I wrote a blog post about using your leftovers and I continued to work on part 2 of 1,000 Character Writing Prompts.

Day 77: Keeping Things Interesting

Last night, my girlfriend and I checked out the movie The Descendants, starring George Clooney. I thought the movie was fantastic, but the reason it's worth mentioning here is because it is such an intriguing story. There are so many books and movies that come off like bad knockoffs and copies of movies that were previously successful. How many movies do you have about a man dealing with the inheritance of 25,000 acres of Hawaiian land at the same time as coping with his dying wife's previous transgressions as she slowly dies from a speed boating accident? I would have to say, none!

Of course, it's important as a writer to put money in your wallet, and more often than not people tend to buy what they know or recognize. Every so often though, if you create something completely unique, that can have some major benefits as well. Keeping things interesting and yours during the writing process is imperative to writing something that will truly stand out.

Today on the writing front, wrote some more prompts for 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 2 and wrote a blog post of journal writing prompts. Have a fantastic weekend and start getting excited for turkey day!

Day 76: As You Go Along

The thing about a challenge like this, one that I've never taken on before in my life, is that you kind of figure out things as you go along. Today, as I picked back up with part 2 of 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, I did some housework between prompts and ended up finishing 2,000 words in an hour and six minutes. That little break between each prompt allowed me to figure things out much more quickly than if I was staring at the screen. For me, it's just another trick in the arsenal to throw into the toolbox. These are the tricks that I will use on days that are difficult or crazy in order to get myself through my 2,500 words. It's encouraging that I keep finding new tricks and it makes me think that maybe I can exceed 365 days and go on for a lifetime :).

Today, I also wrote a blog post of journal writing topics that focus on writing about your life from someone else's perspective.

Day 70: 10 Weeks

It's official, I've been doing this challenge for 10 consecutive weeks. It's by far my longest writing streak of all time and here are some of the things I've accomplished in that time.

- Over 100 blog posts on Build Creative Writing Ideas
- Traffic increase from 422 visitors per day in Aug. 2011 to 706 per day in Oct. 2011
- Completed two books: The Post-College Guide to Happiness and 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1
- 70 blog posts on this blog, my first successful attempt to write a more personal blog
- Nearly doubling my AdSense income from August to October
- Writing 175,000+ words in total!

I'm very excited to see what else I can do in the next 42 weeks. I have several extremely awesome projects coming up including my novel, the second part of my 1,000 character prompts book and a journalistic look at a long-lost love story in North Carolina. All this and more coming your way :).

After working on Ted for a bit today, I wrote a blog post on quotes on happiness on the blog. Go Eagles!

Day 60: Writing Challenge

After approximately two months, I think it's time I took some extra time to reflect on my writing challenge. I am just four writing prompts away from finishing my second book of the self-generated competition, which will have been my longest book of all time at around 70,000 words. I'm extremely proud of myself and I think that I've grown since I began 60 days ago.

Starting a writing challenge like has caused me to think outside the box about what was directly affecting my writing productivity. I knew that I needed some extra oomph, which caused me to purchased the Fit Desk X bike. Since I bought it, I've used it over an hour each morning to get the oxygen necessary to my brain to complete my daily task. In addition, I know now for a fact that having an office for my very own with a door I can close has been extremely helpful. The days in which I finish my writing before noon have tripled in our new apartment because of the office and the added space.

I was a little worried about splitting my writing between the three sources: my books, my writing blog and this blog, but I've learned it was a great decision. Not only is my web traffic up, but my book sales and advertising clickthroughs have gone up as well. This helps me a great deal in the challenge because I can immediately see my results having an effect. If I was writing the books alone, it would be a bit tougher, since you can't make money off a book until it's edited, designed and published. Even though the books are likely to bring more "pudding" in the long-term, having that short term reminder that, "Hey, your writing pays!" is a welcome reminder.

Now that I've finished The Post-College Guide to Happiness and have come quite close to completing 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1, I have proven to myself that the longer I go with this writing challenge, the more books I will write. If I can keep up the same pace, I'll end up 12 books completed by the end of the challenge with another book on the way. In addition, I'll have over 450 blog posts completed (since I'm posting parts of the books along the way), which should help me to reach my website traffic goals.

In other words, life is good, and I'm glad I've embarked on such a journey! Continue to follow along to see if I can make it to the end :).

In today's writing, I wrote a blog post of short story topics and post a page of character writing prompts on landlords.

Day 59: Next!

One of the reasons that I decided to split my 1,000 Character Writing Prompts book into two parts is because I've gotten a bit tired of prompts for the time being. This will allow me to take a break with the prompts and focus on another book for the time being. I will be just about finished the first 500 prompts tomorrow or Friday, at which time I will have to pick something new.

I have a few ideas in mind, including revamping a few of my old books in time for the wonderful gift-giving holidays coming up. I've always been very proud of my book Writer on the Side, but one of the issues is that it's too short and doesn't include enough information. I'd like to beef it up from 32,000 to at least 50,000 and give it the most up to date information I can. I really think it could be one of my top sellers if I can make it as amazing as I'd like it to be, and get it out to as many reviewers as possible. Then again, I'd also like to go back to my Ted Saves the World series because it's so fun. I've got 24 to 48 hours to decide, let's see what happens!

Today on the blog, I wrote a post about my favorite free writing prompts and I caught up on posting a few character writing prompts pages like this one on the subject of royalty.

Day 56: 8 Weeks!

Here we are about to head into week 9 of the challenge. I'm feeling pretty strong about how well I'm able to finish my workload each day and I'm pleased to announce I got a callback for the Cripple of Inishmaan show I announced yesterday! I'm feeling pretty good about today and I was happy to celebrate a bit last night with a drink and a boatload of candy at a party last night.

Even if I say it more than most, I still may not say it enough. I'm really blessed to have the people and things that I have in my life and I'm very grateful. I used to wish that I could be someone else, be in someone else's shoes so that I wouldn't have to continue living the life I'd been leading. There are pangs of wanting to escape every so often, but for the most part, I know that I was born into this life for a reason and I'm quite thankful.

Today I came close to being halfway done the 1,000 Character Writing Prompts book, which I've decided to split into two volumes and I wrote a page of descriptive writing prompts.

Day 37: Classical Music

When I first woke up today, here in N.C. for the last day before traveling back to Chicago tonight, I didn't feel much like doing work at all. And yet, here I am by 9:30 a.m. almost done the 2,500 words. What is my secret? Classical music.

I plugged in my headphones, partially to drown out the television Amy's parents were watching downstairs, and went over to the classical music station on Pandora. I clicked into my 1,000 Character Writing Prompts document, closed my eyes and started typing. I love using instrumental music for this purpose because music with words tends to trip me up. Classical music relaxes me and lets my fingers flow freely.

I've been a bit lazy with posting my character writing prompts and now I have over 10 pages to post. There are 22 sections complete with 78 to go! Making progress :). I also wrote a post about measuring happiness and how it's important to wait till the right time to do so. Lots of air time today and I'm hoping to use it to format the happiness book for Kindle, Nook and Paperback form. Very excited!