Been quiet for a few days due to stuff.
Job Stuff. Still nothing on the job front. Aside from figuring out how to make my resume flash with red and blue lights, I don’t know what else to do to get someone to take notice.
Unemployment Stuff. After letting me go, my former employer challenged my initial unemployment claim. An investigator called and asked me a bunch of questions. While the investigation was ongoing, I received zero benefits. Following my conversation with the investigator, they found in my favor, said that I did, in fact, lose my job through no fault of my own, and released my benefits. I thought this was the end. Apparently, the former employer has appealed this decision and now I have to go in for a hearing. I am upset by the way I have been treated following 4 1/2 years at that company, especially given the fact that I have continued to help them with projects and writing training documents for my replacement in the months since my last day. They call, I help. Yet behind the scenes, they work to keep me from receiving unemployment after kicking me to the curb. Hence the quiet.
Writing Stuff. Hit 80,000 words on the epic fantasy. Moving along at a nice clip. Happy with the words on the page thus far. Everything in the story is coming to a head soon, and that’s the best part to write. Can also be the most difficult to write because you want that pay off to be huge given the investment.
New Blog Thing. In the lower right hand corner of this blog, I have added a new counter detailing the total number of words I have written since the year 2000. This includes every piece of fiction, but not blogging or technical writing. I intend to update this counter once a month. We’ll see how long I stick with it.
Book Stuff. No news is no news, as they say. (no one says that) The agent continues to try and sell Sam Kane, but there are no nibbles as far as I am aware of. Which sucks.
Marketing Stuff. I am in talks to do a couple of presentations at a local author networking event thingie… One would be on social media marketing, the other on podcasting to build your platform. If things firm up, I’ll detail the event here.
Reading Stuff. Finished The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe. Highly recommend. Started (finally) reading something by this guy. (should never have taken this long to start – it’s amazing) You may have heard of him. He may have tried to set me up with his sister. Or was it his sister in law?
Memory fails.
~P
4 Comments
Hi Patrick.
Glad you liked Heir of Night. Helen is good people. I still need to read the second book myself…
Oh, and I’ve not yet read Mr. Weeks at all. So you are ahead of me on that score.
Hey Patrick,
That Unemployment stuff sounds like some grade A BS on the part of you former employers. I guess unemployment\employment insurance\benefits must work different in the US than in Canada, I’ve never heard of such a thing (ex-employer fighting it). What is the benefit of a former employer going after a worker’s benefits like that?
On a less sour note, I really like your new counter. As I’ve only started seriously writing this year it’s an idea I might like to incorporate on my own site. Is that something that could be found through searching WordPress plugins or is it something you’ve created yourself? Also, do you count the number of words written each day, regardless of what you toss out editing or do you just go by the final word count of each finished piece of writing?
Jeff,
The Sidebar widgets are courtesy of a plugin called ProgPro: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/progpress/ I take my word counts from Scrivener’s Project Targets and manually enter them into the widget.
As for the new piece on the bottom right, I’m using ProgPress and a spreadsheet for that. WAY BACK IN WRITING JOURNAL 241, (http://www.atfmb.com/2011/11/02/writing-journal-day-241/) I talked about a lack of focus. Sometimes, when it comes to writing, I can have ‘alt-itus’, an affliction most commonly associated with the World of Warcraft. This is where you create a character, play for a little while, create a new one, play for a little while, and before you know it, you need to either delete someone or jump to another server cuz all your slots are full on this one. I kinda do the same thing only with writing.
When I mentioned this, I was linked to an article on ‘How to start what you finish’: http://writetodone.com/2011/06/09/how-to-finish-what-you-start-a-five-step-plan-for-writers/
Based on that, I decided to create my spreadsheet and track my progress. I came up with 58 writing projects totaling 568,124 words. I prioritized and have tried to stick with the project at hand rather than bouncing around. I update that sheet with the word count from the day (I also take a screen shot of the Scrivener Project Targets screen).
~P
Cool, thanks for the links – I’ll be checking that stuff out.
My alt-itus comes in the form of reading. I have so many books on my kindle or digital comics from comixology in various states of being read. I plan on sitting my butt down and making some reading goals and plans sometime this week and am trying to put a moratorium on new purchases until I’ve actually polished off at least 80% of what I’ve already paid for.
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