Day 118: All About Eve

I'm extremely proud of myself to have made it through the end of 2011 while still on my 2,500 word a day writing challenge. Here are some numbers I'm proud of:

Books completed: 1
Books started: 5
Longest book: 1,000 Character Writing Prompts at 150,000 words and counting
Total words written: 295,000+

Here are some things I'd like to take care of in early 2011:

- Finish Ted Saves the World and 1,000 Character Writing Prompts
- Publish those books and my six workbooks for grades one through 12
- Do a big marketing push for The Post-College Guide to Happiness

Here are some other goals for 2011:
- Write and publish 10 books in total over the course of the challenge
- Continue to improve blog traffic to the point of getting 1,000 visitors a day for an entire month
- Continue to improve ad conversions to the point of earning $100 to $500 per month
- Continue to write 2,500 words a day after the challenge has concluded, to go over one million words in total

I realize that these are some big goals to live up to, but I definitely think they're all possible. I'm especially excited to see how well received 1,000 Character Writing Prompts is received. The bar has been set incredibly high by my first book and I hope that the increased length and the sheer amount of work I've put into it will pay off. I'm working on a major promotion for The Post-College Guide to Happiness and one day I would like to reach the goal of selling one million copies (though that may be a far off goal, since I'm around 20 right now).

Today I wrote a blog post about how you should trust yourself when you're writing a book. I also worked on a sort of rant about how religion should be more focused on love than hate in my living in the future book.

For those of you who have followed my challenge so far this year, I really appreciate it. I hope to gain more followers in 2012, but I don't really care that much if people follow this one as long as I can keep up with it every single day. Have a healthy and wonderful 2012!

Day 117: We Built This City

I was thinking today about the hard work you see everywhere around you in the city of Chicago. You may look at an apartment or an office building and all you might see is "a building." In actuality, these buildings required hundreds to thousands of hours of planning, followed by hard labor. If you look closer at an office building, you see the businesses inside that are keeping our economy alive through the hard work that was required to found them, up through the many hours that employees work today to keep it afloat. If you walk into a library, you might just smell and see books, but I think it's more productive to see little collections of hundreds of hours of writing and research before there were such things as spell check and Wikipedia.

We built this city on hard work and a lot of dedication. The reason these books and buildings have lasted is because of all the work that was put into them in the first place. If you want to create something that will stand the test of time like all of these things have, the best thing for you to do is to start working hard. You need to put in the time to plan out what you love and then you need to make it happen. Spending your time playing games or checking Facebook is not likely to contribute to your work. Push past things that will give you pleasure or leisure and start putting in the blood, sweat and tears necessary to create something worthwhile.

Today, I worked on my living in the future book and wrote about purpose. I also created a blog post entitled, happiness and pleasure, about how important it is to understand the difference between immediate gratification and true fulfillment. Let's keep building this city, y'all!

Day 116: Good Taste

I wrote a blog post today on the subject of good taste, but I thought that it was worth following up on here. I listened to part of an interview with Ira Glass from "This American Life" and I thought it to be so important to writers who are just starting out, I figure I'd blog about it twice.



In this interview, Glass refers to the fact that we get into writing initially because we have good taste and because of our love for great television or books, we get into these creative art forms ourselves. This good taste, however, can be our downfall confidence-wise though, because it makes us feel like we aren't as good as the people we aspire to be like. It's obvious that the first few things you write aren't going to be Pulitzer Prize winners, but I've never quite heard it like Glass puts it.

You need to create as much work as you possibly can to narrow the gap between your taste and your talent. If you keep working hard (for Glass, he says it took him more than 8 years), you will eventually be able to create creative work that you consider to be something special. This is an extremely important message and I hope that all beginning writers learn about this in some way, shape or form.

In addition to writing about this awesome interview, I worked a bit on a new screenplay and played around with the living in the future book. Off to new adventures in narrowing the gap :).

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 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 114: Before Sunset

As I sit here on my Southwest Airlines flight, I can look out to my left to see a beautiful setting sun washing across the North Carolina sky. I've had a wonderful holiday trip and I can't express my gratitude enough. Last night, I was even able to see several friends from college and this morning I was able to go on a rainy day run with one of them. Running is one of my favorite activities to do with a partner because over the course of four or more miles, you can run through a lot of different conversation topics. You learn a lot and you get to share a great deal of yourself as well. Having the added dialogue never hurts when it comes to thinking up writing ideas, and I always appreciate the extra support.

For Christmas/Hanukkah, I gave out about 15 copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness to my relatives and friends and I'm really excited to see what they think. My friend's sister flipped through a copy and told me she enjoyed my writing style. It's great to hear a specific compliment here and there so that I know I'm doing a halfway decent job.

I'm trying to formulate my goals for 2011. Obviously, I'm already in the midst of a few challenges with this writing challenge and the Tundra challenge (which I'm more than halfway to the goal of 100 miles at this point). I've been challenged by Amy's family to a weight loss challenge, which might be some good motivation for the new year. I sold between 6,000 and 7,000 books in 2011 and I'd love to try to double or triple that in 2012. In addition, I'd like to get in some more weight lifting to go with my running. Just a few thoughts that I'm brainstorming out here!

In writing news, I worked on the "exercise" section of living in the future and I wrote a blog post called how to finish a book. Happy last night of Hanukkah, y'all!

Day 113: Another Day in Paradise

Well, maybe Chapel Hill isn't paradise, but it's been a particularly nice getaway from the city for a while. Whenever you have someone cooking your meals for you and you have a lot of wonderful presents to sort through, there certainly can't be too much to complain about. In addition, it's great to see people that I haven't seen in a year or in years!

I have a great little setup in Amy's mom's quilting area and I've been able to hang out here every morning while getting my writing done. If you are on vacation or if you're staying in an unfamiliar area, this is the best thing to get locked down early on. Find a spot where you won't be bothered so that you aren't hunting for it at an odd hour of the morning or night when you don't have a lot of light to go on. For me, this was obviously a priority, being in a 2,500 word per day challenge.

Today, I continued to work on the living in the future book, talking about one of my favorite subjects: happiness. I also wrote a blog post about indefinite productivity titled, the goal beyond the goal.

Day 112: X-Mas X-ing

So far so good on a wonderful Christmas Day with the West family. As I did on Thanksgiving Day with my family, I got up excessively early this morning to get most of my writing completed. After finishing 2,000 out of 2,500 words, I was able to open a plethora of wonderful gifts. What I'm most grateful for this year, however, is the fact that I've been able to stick with this challenge all the way through December 25th :). I even wrote a post about being a grateful writer on my website today. I also worked on the living in the future book.

I gave out a few copies of my happiness book as a gift to some people this year and thus far it has been very well received. I have no idea if people will read it, but those who have opened it up seem to be pretty happy with what they've gotten! Maybe by next Christmas, I can get a ton of strangers to open the book up as a present as well :). Sounds like a good goal!

Happy Christmas everybody!