gankylosaurus

I know he was using a GoPro for a long time, which is why his older videos have that weird fisheye distortion thing going on with them. I think he's upgraded, though. Hopefully @Cam Adair will come around and fill us in.

Good to know that your wife's on your side in this endeavor. What happened with the car, by the way? Even before you mentioned the alternator I was thinking that might be the issue. If that's true, shop around a little. My ex had to replace hers and the shop bought her old one from her, so it brought the overall cost down considerably. Hope you feel better soon. I know I get in a funk when I get sick around the holidays. Don't overwork yourself - sometimes your body needs a rest.

Funny how those quick fix games can so quickly turn into gaming marathons, huh? I used to play Hearthstone, too. In fact, it used to be part of my pre-writing ritual. But I realized eventually that it was a waste of time. It's fun, sure, and a challenge, but in the end, what do I really get out of it? Either frustration at a losing streak (except when I was defeated in a clever way - I always appreciated that more) or a false sense of accomplishment. Good to see you have very specific goals. I got pretty good at some Autodesk programs back in high school, they're pretty intuitive. What do you plan to do after you've mastered Inventor?

Welcome to the forums. Seems like you and I had a lot of the same gaming habits - mostly single-player, CS, and WoW. It's hard to imagine just quitting them, I know, but you'll do fine if you remember what's at stake and you realize that your games aren't gone forever. Just take a 90 day break from them and see how you feel. I've read The Catcher in the Rye, too. It's an interesting book, I liked it. Not a terribly difficult read, either, so it's a good place to start.

I'm actually sore this morning. From a seven minute workout yesterday. How pathetic does that sound?

Day 8 I did slip a little. The game is off my computer again, though. I don't really have anything profound on my mind right now. I'm 11,000 words deep into this edit, which is a quick one because I don't really have a lot of new material to write for it. The hardest part is adding a bit of mystery to it, and I'll only know after another read-through if the scenes I edited to reflect the changes I wanted need to be completely rewritten. I'm also trying to re-envision the story as a series of TV show episodes. I don't know if this story will really work well with that, though, since it's become a kind of ensemble story where several characters have large roles that contribute to the story. They overlap and intertwine a lot and some things might not work if I retool them in this TV show format. I've played with it in other stories, but writing a novel as a series of interlocking short stories can be difficult. I'll figure it out as time goes on. In the meantime, I'm grouping scenes together into potential chapters. The ordering of these gives sort of a pleasing psychological feel if done right. It can also help to get the chapter lengths right. In other news, I got a pretty good initial response from some of my friends on that video blog I posted above. Maybe once I can afford to rebuild my computer I'll be able to produce better quality videos. I forgot how it felt to start out a YouTube series. At first you're just posting just because. Eventually you're posting because people are counting on you. But I'm starting fresh, which has its pluses and minuses. I don't just have to start fresh, I get to start fresh. And that's an important distinction. Clean slate. I also watched some other YouTubers who talk about books and writing, and I went back to their very first videos just to see where they started. It gave me a slightly better perspective on what I can achieve. All it takes is determination and a will to keep thinking up topics to talk about. One of the channels, actually, is done by a girl who wasn't published when she started, and in later episodes has a published book and is working on the sequel. I still haven't gotten to the part where she published the book, but I'm watching them in order now. This brings me to another point. I need to be a nerd for writing again. I mean, I already am. But when I sit down and pull up YouTube, it was never BookTube or any videos about writing I was looking up. It was gaming channels. I used to be much more passionate about learning the craft. Which reminds me of the topic I wanted to talk about today. First, a quote: That's from the second page of The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell, reflecting on twenty years of experience in the publishing business. I sometimes feel like a fraud still reading books on writing, because at this point, I've read all the advice before and internalized it. I don't need it said to me again and again. But I agree with Mr. Bell. Occasionally I find something new, and sometimes I get a new take on something I already knew. And all those other things that I already knew? I don't skip over them. I keep reading them, because if so many people share the same beliefs on the different aspects of writing, then they must be the most important parts. Plus, repetition can serve as a reminder and also helps to more strongly internalize these ideas, strategies, practices, etc. Finally, I decided to try out the 7 Minute Workout app at @LuxoLamp's suggestion. I figured I keep putting off exercise, and I can handle seven minutes. And boy were those an intense seven minutes. I'm sure I'll ramp up to doing multiple cycles of it in the future, but for now, while I'm still out of shape, I'll stick to seven minutes. It's been three days of writing every day. A decent start, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I welcome it, though, because I'm starting to fall back in love with writing.

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I did a YouTube. The Thousand Foot View

Hey, @LuxoLamp! Thanks for stopping by. I've actually used that app before. It's great, and I love it. The track isn't nearly as convenient where I am now, though, and I'm waiting for the nearby gym to have a discount for the New Year's resolution folks in January. Then I'll start going to the gym again. Right now, I'm actually considering doing Wii Fit again. But man, that one can get dangerous to people like us. At the very least, I've been keeping my weight down by limiting my alcohol consumption. Day 7 It's unfortunate that the day that marks the end of week one is the day I showed weakness. I remembered there was an update to a mod for a game I played (but hadn't for a long time anyway, even while I was still gaming) and I decided to check it out. Not long enough to get hooked, and not long enough to really even experience it at all. Just long enough to realize that I was wasting my time. Anyway, I just wrapped up an hour-long editing session. It's looking much less daunting now that I'm in the thick of it. I'm here with Scrivener open, a notebook full of notes I made while reading the second draft, and another notebook open so I can jot down an ongoing summary. I haven't gotten to the parts that are going to need serious changes, yet, though, so I might be speaking too soon to how much fun I'm having. I did, however, come up with an idea for one of the subplots I was cooking up, which is sort of a romance plot between two side characters who I plan to make more important later. I think I got through a little over 3,000 words today, and I kind of want to keep going. I know when I'm reading I can typically get through 5,000 words in a half hour. The editing part is a bit slower because I'm making notes about little details and character descriptions as I go now. I guess I ought to go clean up a little bit and then get back to editing. 8,500 words down, 80,000 to go.

Day 6 This challenge is about changing who we are. And a large portion of who we are is in what we do. So I need to change what I do. I recently finished Page after Page by Heather Sellers and this was one of the things that stuck with me. It took her some getting used to, but writing is just one of the things she does now. It used to be difficult for her to run and to write. But she identified that the first bit of discomfort was in crossing the threshold. As long as she could make herself leave the house, she could run for miles. As long as she could get herself in a chair and writing, she could write for hours. I'm like that. I hate getting ready for a run. I even hate the run sometimes. But even on the days where I hit the shower with a breathless "that sucked," I knew I'd done a good thing, and I knew I would do it again. (Disclaimer: I haven't run in a long time.) I go back and forth on the advantages of writing every day. The way I work, I like to have clear goals to look forward to in my stories. So when I sit down to write, I know what I'm writing, and where the stopping point will be. It's not a time requirement or a minimum word count. It's a case of "here's what I want to get done today" and I go until I'm done with that. The exception to this is when I end up writing way more than expected. It's a good thing when this happens, don't get me wrong, but a 6,000 word writing session will have me in the chair for a minimum three hours of nonstop typing. I can't keep that pace up every day, which is why I refuse to do it every day. But in Heather Sellers' case, writing and running (as well as parenting) are just part of what she does now. It's as automatic as making breakfast. It's something she needs to do, not because of a program or someone telling her she has to do it, but because it's what she does. It's who she is now. It's natural. It's her daily diet. I'd said that I wanted to start waiting until after I did some writing before I posted in this journal, and today's the first day that I've stuck to that. And boy was it hard crossing that threshold. I even binged on a YT gaming series beforehand (while trying to nap because I was in a pitiful feeling-sorry-for-myself state). The YT binge is a taste of what I do in my natural state now. The writing is what I want my natural state to become. I just hope it doesn't take three years to catch on and I also hope that I don't keep doing it at ten at night. I'm going back to my thirty minutes a day regimen. But this time, I'm not using a timer. Timers make it too stringent, and they make it feel more like a burden. Like all I have to do is put in the time. But this isn't a nine-to-five. It's my life. It's what I do. If I use a timer, then I know from experience that I'll only do thirty minutes. If I don't, I'll keep going until I'm comfortable stopping. And now that I'm in the editing phase, that endpoint is going to have a lot of different criteria. This story's not half the mess it used to be, but I've got a few drafts to get through before I'm comfortable with its quality. On the plus side, I finally ironed out how I want this process to work, at least from an abstract point of view. As I said to a friend who is currently reading it, I want to get the thousand-foot view to an acceptable level. That is, I want to work out the overall story idea so that when you take it all in and step back and think of the story as a whole, it's a pleasing experience. This has little to do with the writing, which is allowed to be imperfect (bad, even) in this stage. As long as the story is good and remains intact through the editing process, the writing can be fixed. So I have a list of story changes on index cards. Some are about individual scenes or characters, and some are things that affect the whole story. I'll work my way through them until they're all taken care of, then I can read through the story and see how I feel about it. If it needs any story adjustments, I'll make them and read it again. Once the story is where I want it to be, I can finally polish it. It's possible to have a good story that's written poorly. It's just as possible to have a weak story that's written well. The former is much easier to deal with, as the latter is fundamentally flawed. So, a good draft can be written poorly. The next step is a good story that's written well.

Day 5 Today was another travel day. Got up early, had breakfast, packed the truck, hit the road, and drove for six hours. So again, another day where it was totally effortless to avoid gaming. The one moment of almost-weakness was when I was looking forward to sitting down at my computer and playing games. When I remembered I wasn't going to be playing any games, I realized I should probably remember to grab the book I've been reading out of my truck. But I think I need to shift over to the more difficult step. This whole thing is about taking back lost time and one of my weaknesses is YouTube gaming channels. At the very least, I watch them on 1.5x speed, so I get through them in two-thirds the time, but I need to just quit them. At least for a while. Might be difficult, since I've been keeping up with a couple of series here and there... Oh well. No one said this was supposed to be easy. On the bright side, I got the dishes done. Mainly because somehow after being in the car for six hours, my girlfriend's first instinct was not to relax, but to clean like a madwoman. I almost joked that she might as well take down the Christmas tree while she was at it, but then she took down the Christmas tree. I stuck to my comfort zone. Which is fine by me because dishes is one thing she refuses to do. We were both being productive then. (He said while she kept organizing stuff in the background.) Maybe I should see if there's anything I can help with...

I second the book recommended by @Shine Magical. I'm not really a fan of Christmas either. I think for me, though, it's mostly because around this time of year I don't have a lot of money, so I can't reasonably buy things for people. Add to that the fact that my mom often coerced me into coming to spend Christmas with her when I lived just 300 miles away. I worked full time for a low wage so I was losing a few hundred bucks taking a week off and driving 600 miles. And she never quite realized just how much money I needed in order to get through the holiday after that. For reference both my parents (divorced and living a thousand miles apart from each other) make good money, but I'm fairly independent and I don't ask them for anything. So I was too proud to tell anyone that I needed help. I spent a week living off buttered noodles with $12 in my account at one point there. Long tangents aside... I laughed out loud at the Big Box Store Worship imagery. It's too real. And I forgot to disable emails from my PC gaming sites, so I got flooded with deals today. Every single item in my wishlist is on sale. I almost bought some of them just so I'd have them when I started playing again. Then I came to my senses.

Day 4 They say that procrastinators are never bored because they always have something to do. But really, we still somehow find ways to be bored. Why do we procrastinate anyway? Because we're bored, of course. And, well, because we don't want to do all the things we need to do. Right now I'm on vacation, so either I'm doing things when others have plans, or we're watching movies. I hate sitting around doing nothing all day. It makes me antsy. But people want me to be with them, spending time with them in the most antisocial and shallow way possible. Okay, it sounds like I'm trying to vilify them. It's not that bad. Everyone's just taking the day off. It's Christmas after all. Merry Happy. Back to the point I was getting to originally. I wish I had nothing to do again. When the house is clean, I can think more clearly. We're still getting the house set up because we only recently moved into it. The most difficult part has been getting things organized, figuring out where everything goes and all that. I know a solid day of organizing is all I really need. But damn is it hard to stay motivated when all the things are rearranged and the miscellaneous clutter that's hard to arrange gets overwhelming. I've done it before. You know that old expression, "A stitch in time saves nine?" That's super relevant here. It's so much easier to clean a couple of plates than to say you'll do it later, then watch as the dishes pile up on top of those two plates. The amount of effort required to clean a full sink can be crippling to think about. But when you've got everything clean, and when you do little things here and there to keep it clean, it can be freeing. You don't have nothing to do. You have nothing you need to do. So everything you want to do moves up in priority. This goes especially for writers. We're famous for putting off writing to do productive things. It's easy to sit down to write and instead say "I should be productive now and clean the dishes." Easier to do that when you're planning to write than, say, when you sit down to play a video game. But sometimes it's okay to make plans to be productive and clean. You need all that clutter out of the way, after all. The important thing is to not clean when you were planning to do something else. You have to plan to clean, organize, or just generally pick things up. Then, when everything's out of the way, you don't have it nagging you while you're working on other things.

One thing I've realized is that if I don't game (and I don't spend hours on YouTube or watching porn or whatever else) I end up giving myself more time to do the things that matter to me. I get bored enough to clean. Then when the house is clean, I feel accomplished and I can sit and watch a movie. Then when the movie is over, I'm bored again, so I go read or write or draw. Whatever I'm feeling at that moment that isn't any of my vices, I'll go do. I'm away from home now, which helps because I'm away from my gaming devices. Sometimes that little extra boost of being away from the things that make you weak is a good way to get started, because you end up with a sense of accomplishment without even having put in any actual effort. You were just on vacation, giving your time and attention to other people, and not doing things that you know are bad for you. Hell, you might not even miss those things.

Woo @dandielionous, never give up! If you want any suggestions on books about writing (I've read a lot of them) then just ask. You might be interested in Write. Publish. Repeat. by Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt. It gave me a lot of insight into the self-publishing gig. Chuck Wendig's blog is also a great resource, though you might need to have a high tolerance for profanity. I also have my own list of great resources on my website. It needs an update. I'm currently reading Page after Page by Heather Sellers. About halfway through it. I'd recommend it if you can find it.

I hope you're only referring to our thoughts on the self-pub industry or writing in general, @dandielionous. Even if you're not, I'm just gonna talk a little more about self-publishing. I'm only trying to be realistic about it because I've done a lot of research into it, and for a time, I thought self-pub was definitely the way to go. Pros: Write what you want.You get to keep 70% of all proceeds through Amazon if you price between 2.99 and 9.99 (and outside of that it's only 35%, which is still much better than the upper-end of average for trade publishing at around 15%)You don't have a publisher telling you not to deviate from the genre of your first novel.No deadlines.No chance of a publisher dropping you and voiding your two-book contract because your first run on your first book didn't sell well.Your readers are the only gatekeepers, and they're the folks who matter.There are probably more, but that's what I can remember being notable off the top of my head. Then I did more research. Cons: Write A LOT. Like seriously. You need to put out at least four books a year if you want to see an income. It varies on your popularity and price point, though.Amazon has been known to drop authors and remove their content from their store without warning, thereafter banning the author from ever publishing through KDP ever again. They often neglect to inform the author what went wrong.If you want to publish in multiple genres, especially if you have works that are vastly different (like middle-grade fantasy and more adult technological thrillers) then you're probably going to have to use a pen name to separate out your stories. This is mainly as a courtesy to your readers, but it's also because if someone loves one of your stories and goes to grab literally any other one of your stories without looking too much into it, they might be seriously disappointed, and that could result in a bad review. Especially if suddenly there's more adult material not suited to children and your readers on a particular series are usually younger and then parents just buy more books by you because their kid seems to like your stories. Suddenly you're the reason someone's kid learned several new uses for the F-word. Also, using a pen name can sometimes mean you need to start over from scratch building your reader base.You have to pay for everything. Cover art, binding, editing, structural editing. It's all out of your pocket.And don't even think about saying you don't need professional editing. Everyone needs professional editing. At least just to have a trained eye that's not yours go over your work for any glaring mistakes or confusingly worded phrases. Maybe this isn't a con so much as a common misconception.Being active on social media is not optional.Anyway, that's all I wanted to add. Unfortunately, I'm at that stage of not feeling well where I just want to curl up on the couch and watch TV. And we're leaving for the girlfriend's parents' place tomorrow, so that'll be fun too. Not sure I'll be around much this weekend and I doubt I'll get any editing done. I'll at least take the laptop with me. I'll probably get bored enough at some point to work on my novel. Hell, if I was able to work on it when I was in a hotel for a wedding weekend, I can do it over Christmas weekend.

I love your entire post, @Robert Arctor. Especially the crutch metaphor. I had a lot more to say in response last night when I read this post on my phone at work, but I've forgotten most of it. Which is just as well because I have to leave for work soon anyway. When I started writing, we had dial-up Internet. The computer was in the center of the house, and we didn't leave it running all the time like I do now (albeit with sleep mode). So getting to the writing was a process. I had to wait for it to turn on and warm up, and then there was no "I'll just casually click over to Facebook and see what my friends are up to" because first, Facebook and Twitter didn't exist yet (I had a MySpace), and second, there's nothing casual about booting up AOL. So when I sat down at that computer to write, I wrote. A lot. It wasn't very good, in fact it makes me cringe to look back at it, but it was fun. I enjoyed it. When someone was using that computer and I wanted to write, I paced up and down the house waiting for my turn. Or I went for a bike ride so I wouldn't have to watch while someone else ate up my writing time. Now my computer is always connected to the Internet. Everything is a click away. And you're right, most of the content available online is like potato chips: They know just how to hook you with the right amount of salt, and a potato chip is too small to enjoy just one, so go grab a handful. I had a point there, I swear. I'm on cold medicine now, though, so the energy to go back and find the point is just not available at the moment. But the same kind of thing has seeped into fiction writing, too. Self-publishing is great, and it's become a great new way to connect with an audience. The best part about it is that your readers are the discerners of quality, rather than an agent, editor, publisher, etc. So if you write shit, your readers' reviews will reflect that, if they review it at all. But if you blow people away, you could go viral. However, it's become an industry where only the most prolific writers get by. And even then, only just. There are a few giants in the self-pub gig, and they're doing well. Those who do best are the hybrid authors who self-pub and trade-pub, like Chuck Wendig. There's the occasional surprise hit like Andy Weir, whose novel The Martian was originally available for free via his website as a serial. Readers wanted a version they could carry on their Kindles, so, as he tells it in an interview, he slapped an open-domain picture of Mars on the cover, loaded it up to Amazon, set the price to 99 cents (the cheapest you can make it) and was surprised at the money that poured in. As much as I'd like to become a book-or-two-a-year author, the quality of some of the more prolific self-published authors can be spotty. I don't like to name names, but there's one series I'm reading from an author I like which is kind of hard to stay interested in because I feel like it's just kind of going through the motions. And as a writer who's in the editing mindset since entering the third-draft phase of my novel, I can see all the missed opportunities within the story. He also wrote a prequel to the series and seemed to forget that in book one, the protagonist wasn't comfortable with a pistol, yet he's a pro with it in the prequel? I should add that all three books in the trilogy plus the prequel were released in 2016. And he's written other books this year, too. A lot of these kinds of authors have the mindset that they can either work very hard on one novel and end up with a great story that will make a lot of money, or they can write a bunch of stories with a little less care and each one will make less money than a masterpiece novel would, but together they will make more. In a way, the latter option is the same amount of work as the former (if not more), but the former option has more dignity in it to me. Few self-pubbed books will ever be remembered as classics. Traditional publishing has its own issues as well, but that's why I'm looking at becoming a hybrid author somewhere down the line. For now, I just want to make sure I tell good stories. I sent out a few early copies of this story to friends, and one of them breezed right through it and loved the characters and surprisingly hated one character who I thought was completely benign. It was great feedback. Anyway, I was going to try to get up early today and work on stuff before work, but I took the night-time medicine last night and it wasn't easy getting out of bed. In the future, I don't want to post an update on here until after I've worked on my novel for a bit. But today, it's questionable whether I'll ever even get around to that today. Working late, though I might get out early. Either way, I'm probably going right back to bed after work tonight.

Day 0 To sum up my introduction, this is the beginning of a 90-day detox. And here is today's post. I have one simple goal which GQ does not directly affect but can facilitate. I want to get my novel published in 2017. There are three main components to this. 1. I need to get this novel up to publishable status. I was going to work on another story, but the pull of this first one (after taking a break from it after working on it for 180 days straight) won out and I decided that I can't get caught up in new projects right now. This one needs to get done. Then I can work on the other one while simultaneously coming up with ideas for the sequel (since the story will probably ultimately be three or four volumes long and I already have some damn good ideas for the second and third parts). 2. I need to make my blog more active. Part of this requires me using social media effectively, which is probably the most difficult part to me. I had an issue with my blog for a while because I couldn't decide what to do with it. I don't just want to write about my day like I'm twelve. But I also don't want to just write about writing. I've been reading the Hyperbole and a Half book and it made me realize something: I want each of my blog entries to matter. They should each be about something. I might even use this journal (this one here on GQ) for a little freewriting to help conjure up some ideas. I might even remove my backspace key while I do it. The biggest issue I've had with my blog lately is that I've gone back and forth between writing blog entries and writing more thought-out articles. I'm considering splitting up the pages a bit so that I can have shorter, less important entries appear on one page while the articles are separated out on their own. At least then I won't feel obligated to spend a lot of time working on a single post that never ends up getting posted. Also, I need to save some of my material for my own website because in the past I feel like I've written some pretty profound things on here that I should have been writing on my blog. Last aside about the blog: I've been considering going back to YouTube to make a video series. I'm not as good at organizing my thoughts verbally as I am on paper, though. The two reasons that I think YouTube could be a good move are the larger community (and a community which is centered around one website at that) and the fact that too many people don't have the attention span to read. I have a friend who's really good at the YouTube thing and wants to be a writer, but never writes, and even stops talking to me if I ever bring up writing. It's weird. I know I'm not being annoying about it. He just seems to choose that moment to ghost. Anyway, point is, I'm kind of bitter about how the writing community works online because there are so many mediums where you can sit back and enjoy it. Reading requires a little more work. 3. I need a mailing list. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous two components. By making my site more active, by getting readers to it, I get more potential readers for my novel. Those early people who sign up for my mailing list can become potential beta readers when I'm almost ready to release my novel, and then they could turn into first-reviewers with free advance reader copies if they give me feedback. I have to admit right now that I'm terrible at keeping up with other people's journals on here. I'd like to say I'll try this time, but it would be a lie. I'll at least look, I can promise that much. But if I don't have anything to say, then I'll keep the shallow well-wishings to myself.

Damn I almost typo'd that to "Third Tim's the Charm" and now I think that'd be a great memoir title for anyone named Tim. Especially a Tim III. Anyway, I don't think I've ever introduced myself officially on this site, and seeing as I think I should come back, now's as good a time as ever. I was in the middle of installing a really big game I used to play today, when I realized two things: first, it's going to run like shit on this computer; and second, I'm giving up all the time I got back from school being out to play games again? So I uninstalled all my games, uninstalled Steam, and unplugged my keyboard to go clean it. That last part was just something I've been meaning to do. It's drying now while I use the wireless keyboard (which is super uncomfortable to type on, why did I choose to do this now?) I'm a writer. Not a published one, but I've learned to accept the term. Fake it 'til you make it, right? I'm 27, in college to become a high school English teacher, and a lifeguard. I have two dogs and a girlfriend of three years. I can have a temper, but I've learned to channel and control it and especially to recognize it so I know when I need to more carefully consider my words. I run a blog, but "run" is an unfair term since I've barely touched it in the past couple years. I write a post occasionally and sometimes those posts are good. Ever since I wrote a post about how the Internet has changed me, I've been beating myself up for not following through with any solid efforts at making a change. I've been here a while, and those who remember me will remember that I'm often long-winded. It has since occurred to me that this is probably a stupid thing to do because I should be focusing my writing on my novels and not on a blog entry. Journals are extremely easy to write. Just write about your day or something that's been on your mind and voila, done. Working on a novel (especially getting started on the third draft like I am) takes a bit more psychic energy. Journaling is kind of a shadow activity sometimes. It makes you think you've done well with your writing because you at least wrote something. But it's just a white lie we writers tell ourselves. I'm doing it again, aren't I? I should impose a 500 word limit on my actual journal... I'll cut to the chase. I want to do a 90 day detox. I thought it over and realized that despite all the games I still enjoy, I can take three months off. And starting now is perfect because two games I'm interested come out in March or so... However, whether I get them when day 90 hits or wait until the end of the semester is going to depend on how school is going. Also, one of them depends on my building my new computer. Old motherboard fried and took the CPU with it. But I don't want to be a taskmaster to myself. I don't want to punish myself for not writing, and likewise I don't want to reward myself for a good day of writing. Writing is its own reward, especially since I've tapped into what made it so much fun before. I used to make a daily checklist to get things done and it worked, but there was something a bit lifeless and robotic about the work. What I've found works even better is taking all my vices and locking them in a drawer. Not... literally, but by making it so my vices aren't even options, I'm forced to be creative about how to go about occupying myself. When I can't play games or watch gaming channels, I end up reading, or organizing the house, or even writing. I do have a list of reminders on a whiteboard by my desk, though. To me, they serve as a reminder for what my office is for. I have one simple goal which GQ does not directly affect but can facilitate. I want to get my novel published in 2017. There are three main components to this: Get novel to publishable level.Make blog more active.Set up a mailing list.That's my goal. For more, check out my journal.

It's upsetting because of the dismissal of my own personal judgment about things pertaining to my own life, as well as a question of the trust I have for my fiance. I'm not mad. Just would rather let resolved situations stay resolved, rather than have people try to drudge up paranoid feelings of mistrust. And I'm still trying to work out the "You've got some tough times ahead of you" comment, like my fiance is actually cheating on me and I'm blind for not seeing it yet. Like this isn't over, like I'm bargaining with my perception of the situation or something. It was, ultimately, a funny miscommunication as well as my fiance's misunderstanding of what she had intended by me spying on her "date." Eventually she realized that she wasn't going to need to be rescued from the situation, so she told me she didn't need me there. It's a non-issue now, and I'm sorry if you feel attacked and that's why you're going to refrain from commenting again. I only meant to clarify, not to antagonize.

With all due respect, you're wrong. I appreciate you looking out for me, but this anxiety thing isn't an isolated incident. I wasn't angry. I've been diagnosed with anxiety and I didn't do anything about it. I want to do what I can to at least see if medication helps. If it doesn't, I'll go back to handling it on my own. The situation was weird, that's all, and he's not trying to screw my girlfriend. And if he is/was, I trust my fiance. Also, "friends with benefits" refers to a friend you have no-strings-attached sex with. They're just friends now, and she wants me to be friends with him as well. I'm also not a possessive bang-my-chest going "that my woman!" kind of guy. So, I just really don't appreciate the subtext I'm getting from your comment. I didn't want to focus on that part of those 2,000-odd words. I have a solution to that, a solution that works for me. This was just not the best thing to wake up to. Chalk it up as one of the things that made me upset today. What am I gonna do about it? Well, I'm going to submit this reply and get ready for class, because I know my stance and hopefully I've made my opinion clear.

Thanks, Cam. I just wish I knew how to take my own damn advice. I think I've realized that I'm getting in the way of becoming the person I want to and need to become. I second-guess my actions all the time. I discourage myself and postpone change. I make excuses. I think my fiance's family dog being added to our household was terrible timing, because I'm just now trying to get used to school, and maybe it would have been better to wait. But that's probably just another excuse for my feelings of inadequacy, of feeling lost. I'm stressed, plain and simple, but the only real thing that should be stressing me out is a bill from the clinic where I went for a tetanus shot and some antibiotics after being bitten by a dog. I think all I have to do is call my insurance company and it will go away. The pharmacy claim appeared on my account, after all, while the visit to the clinic did not. The verbiage is weird, too... it says that my insurance company notified them to say I wasn't covered by their plan. Does that mean that my insurance didn't cover the visit? Or did they plug in the wrong information and use a User ID that didn't belong to anyone? Hopefully it'll be cleared up easily, and if I really just wasn't covered for that visit, I may have to pay a visit to the owners of the dog. I don't want to do that because I told them we were square, but they were adamant that if there was anything they could do to help that I shouldn't hesitate. Anyway... I feel like I need to make these journal entries more journal-like. So far, it's felt more like a blog. Anytime I write, I'm always thinking of what kind of flair I can add to it. What cool hook can I use to grab readers' attentions. And it's been cathartic to me because I've been able to let some things out, but at the same time, those can get verbose, and I end up leaving a lot of my grievances on the cutting room floor. Not only that, I don't pay much attention to the positive. It's an afterthought. Not to say that I'm going to focus on the positive. I think I actually need to start talking about what actually bothered me about the day and what I think I might be able to do about it. Then, I can go into the positive parts of the day. The surprises and just general happy things. Let me cover a few days here, though... This past weekend was the last weekend before school started. I spent Saturday trying to put my computer back together since I'd bought a replacement motherboard for fairly cheap. It took a while to get together (including two trips to the computer parts store, one of which was to return an item I didn't end up needing because it didn't fit) and after all was done, I got ready, turned it on, and... nothing. The fans spun, the lights glowed blue, the hard drive made the mechanical sound it always makes when it starts up, and then nothing else happened. It stayed quiet, and the monitor never came to life. Turns out, when the old motherboard fried, it must have short-circuited the CPU as well. I was pretty let down by all this. I just want my desktop back. It had been reliable to the end. And after helping a friend build a brand new PC with all new parts, I just wanted a desktop again. I took the whole thing apart again and repackaged the motherboard. I have it ready to be shipped back, and I'm going to lose $20 between restocking fees and shipping costs, but I'll still get $50 back. My old desktop is basically no more. The only parts I've decided I'll still salvage are the hard drive, disk drive, and maybe the power supply, though I think that may need an upgrade too. When I can afford to, I'll build a brand new computer. In the meantime, I have all I need. In fact, until I try to do anything graphically intensive, it's like I'm using my desktop. I think I already explained the whole laptop hooked up to the monitor and everything else situation. This is already getting verbose. I'm sorry. I'm just letting everything out. The good stuff comes later, I promise. My fiance started talking to an old... boyfriend? Not sure how to describe him. She was sleeping with him while he was engaged. She justified it because she knew they wouldn't work out. He messaged her a few months ago, but she didn't see it until recently because it was in her filtered messages on facebook. He told her that she was right about everything "with creepy accuracy." Turns out he got married, had a kid, and they divorced. She'd been in a weird part of her life then and it was all awkward because she had a falling-out with the roommates before blah blah blah eventually she met me and she's happy. Anyway, he messaged her a lot. And she complained about it all the time, but she kept indulging him. And she admitted he was probably crushing on her. He wanted to meet up and catch up, and I had no objections. Especially if she ended up with a friend that I actually got to meet. (Longer story there, more nuanced and less relevant). Then she decided she wanted me to go on a man-date with one of my friends at the same restaurant to spy or some shit. I was like okay, sure, I'll go out for a beer, whatever. We had a weird argument the night before what she kept ironically referring to as "the date." She got of work in time to go meet up with him, and she told me and my friend to just stay home, because she can handle herself. In any other circumstance, this might have been fine. But immediately following an argument... Well. I trust her. But a girl's cheated with me when her relationship was in a weird place, and I didn't know where her head was at the time. I guess "her" could refer to either woman in either situation here. So when she met up with him at 8, and then suddenly it was 11, and then almost midnight... I'd already been having a panic attack for a couple of hours. She came home and she understood why I felt weird, why my anxiety had gotten to me, why my heart had been racing for so long. I mean, I broke the freaking bathroom scale with my foot. I felt... I don't know. Powerless. In the end, she realized that she had regressed back to that time when she'd been with him, when she'd been less mature and surrounded by drama. She hadn't known what to expect going into this "date" but she decided that she thinks he and I would actually get along and that he'd fit in with our circle of friends. I'm fine with that (and don't you get on me about that "fine doesn't mean fine" shit) and I knew and still know that I was just freaking out for un-knowable and uncontrollable reasons. So, I've decided to call up my doctor (after dealing with the insurance thing) and schedule an appointment. I need antidepressants and/or anti-anxiety meds. Particularly the latter. I wanted to deal with it all on my own, but it's become more difficult. I was watching TomSka's weekly video blog and at a convention, he realized that he had lost the ability to smile. That was when he also realized he'd been off his meds for the previous three days. There was a day when I felt like that, and I don't like being that way around people I love, when I know I'm perfectly capable of being happy. And if I can do anything else to improve that, I will do it. If it doesn't work out, I'll know in the future, but for now I have to try. Onto the happy shit My MWF classes had been worrying me at first because I have a two and a half hour break between classes, but that actually forces me to get some shit done. Make calls I've been putting off and get my writing done. And by the time my second class ended, I was left with a feeling of "that was it?" It had moved so quickly. Then today was my long day, the one that has an extra class, and all my classes together go from 8:30 to 3:50. Between the first and second class, I have fifteen minutes to get from one end of campus to the other. That'll be difficult in the future when the teacher doesn't end class a half hour early. But all my teachers today were fun, more or less. My Intro to Fiction teacher seems to have a pompous air about him like my creative writing teacher when it comes to literature versus genre fiction, but I can move past that. One of my teachers looked like a student when he walked in in bluejeans and a gray t-shirt. I was late for both my first classes, missing half of the entire lecture yesterday and having to stand in the doorway because it was basically standing room only at that point. But in today's class, after everyone had introduced each other, I had to introduce myself. But when he asked me for an interesting fact about myself, he changed the question to how would you survive a zombie apocalypse. I of course have thought a lot about this, and I gave him my answer promptly: Giant hamster ball. He laughed and there were a few shy chuckles in the class and one girl even said, "That's actually not a bad idea." So it was a fun morning. But the best part, the most surprising part, was my last class, the one I'd been least looking forward to, because it's the one tacked onto Tuesdays like a tumor making my day two hours longer. It's Intro to Teaching. Or that's what the teacher called it; officially it has a different title. She used a lot of different teaching techniques to get us to meet each other and participate in the class, and then like a magician she revealed that she'd basically been playing us like middle schoolers. She revealed the smoke and mirrors and showed us how all these different tricks could be used to re-focus students and keep them engaged. It was clever, actually. And afterward, I talked to the professor about how to officially get into the Education program and she helped me a lot. Even told me that the six-year limit on test scores could probably be waived. I told her I'll get it taken care of tomorrow when I have a two and a half hour break between classes. It's kind of the last thing that was really stressing me out about school, especially because I have to pay for a background check. In two of my classes, I revealed that I write sci-fi and fantasy novels. After one of them, a student actually got my attention to talk about fantasy, though at first he asked if I said I write high fantasy. We talked a bit about favorite fantasy books and authors and even talked about D&D. In the other class, the aforementioned Intro to Teaching, when we had another little ice-breaker moment between students and we'd completed what we needed to do for the lesson, the guy I was talking to turned the conversation toward my writing. It was really uplifting, though I hadn't realized it at first. I feel weird telling people I'm a writer, because I think they think I mean I'm published. The girl who introduced me, when she said I was working on my fifth novel (might be sixth, actually, but I wrote fifth on the card) she added that I'm... I can't remember the word she used but I'm pretty sure she said accomplished. I quickly pointed out that none of them are published and the teacher said, "That's five more novels than I've written." All in all, good day. Nice to end on a happy note. Nice to be noticed and recognized, without putting on my old arrogant airs that I always used to have walking into writing classes. I was always the best, I knew it. That arrogance actually made me try harder to prove it, too, so it served me well. Still I came off as an asshole, I think. These past two days, I was just myself. I didn't try to lord my experience or age over anyone. In fact, I only once hinted at my age when talking about the SAT that I took ten years ago when I was seventeen, and that was when talking about the education program requirements with a teacher. I look younger than I am and I feel like I'm hiding a little bit by not telling people my age, but I feel like I fit in better this way. I'm approachable and a good listener and my age only serves to make me a better person through experience. Everyone just assumes I'm a mature twenty-year-old. I don't know why I'm going on about this. I feel like it's just another insecurity. I shouldn't be proud of my age, especially with where I am in life. Where I am is fine, but I'm not much better off now than I was when I was twenty. I've just spent more time here and had more time to figure things out. I just don't want to tell anyone I'm a twenty-seven-year-old college Junior. I think that's enough for tonight. I had a lot to air out, and I actually really do feel better. I think focusing on the crappy parts of the day first and coming up with solutions, then following up with what was actually nice about the day, helps. I should keep doing this. Though maybe in fewer words next time.

I feel like I keep expecting things to just fix themselves. I look ahead toward milestones, scheduled things in my life, and I go, "When that day comes, everything will get easier." School started today. I thought that that would change something for me. I did my two classes for the day, and during my two and a half hour break between classes, I got some writing done. There isn't really any homework to get to just yet, and the pool's shut down for maintenance. I could go in and help, but the times when they need the most help are when I'm in class. Next week we'll have a slightly more normal schedule, but until then, I'm out of work. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed. I came home to find that the fiance had done laundry, but hadn't folded it yet. We had clean laundry in a basket for a week and never did anything with it--a group effort, mind, especially while we were both working together on a project that had us driving hundreds of miles every day. So now the place is a mess again. When it's clean, I can keep it clean, especially if I'm home alone and only have to keep track of my own mess. When we prepare a dinner that requires a lot of cookware and plates and everything else, things get out of hand, and the place becomes a mess again. I'm not quite sure how to fix this. I really kind of wish I were doing online classes again. At least then, I didn't have to show up at any specific time, and I don't have to worry about missing half of my first class because traffic was stop and go the entire way, turning a twenty minute drive into an hour long drive. I could write down the assignments that needed to get done that day, do them, keep the place clean in the meantime, and still manage to get in some reading and writing. I know I can do this because I've done it. Now, I don't know what I'm doing. It'll probably take me a couple of weeks to get through all this and just get used to the routine. I also have to find a better place to take my laptop so I can write. I just hate coming home to a place that needs a couple hours' worth of cleaning, and I need to get this shit sorted out before I actually give my life over to schooling. But as I've learned before and I've said before and I'll continue saying, the best time to implement a change isn't tomorrow, it's right now. I just wish it didn't have to be so hard.

Didn't add anything new to the story today. Just changed the POV on one of the scenes and rewrote a bit of it, as well as some typical editing. Still got my time in at the old word processor. As for the goals I listed above, I did the cleaning I said I'd do and my writing, and I'm mostly done with the account migration to my newer email addresses. One is more for my writing stuff, and the other is everything else. Gonna have some trouble with the google drive stuff. Seems like I'll be downloading a lot of really big zip files and uploading them again. Hopefully the format won't change (ie. change to word format which won't reformat back to docs format easily). The bookmarks will be easier, but that's nearly the last step. As for chilling out, I kinda failed on that one. I slept in until 1 somehow and then watched more Youtube than I care to admit before getting around to cleaning. And my Kindle seems to be dead. The screen was blank and I managed to get it to start back up again and my books came back automatically, then it went blank again. Then black, then blank, then it tried to load and it's been stuck frozen on the loading screen ever since. I don't think it's repairable. Oh well. Maybe I'll upgrade to the Paperwhite sometime soon. I'm not going to list out any goals for tomorrow because nothing's really pressing and I work 9 to 5. I'll write, and I make no promises beyond that.

Day 6 A slight dilemma: I'm not going to finish this book before school starts. But that doesn't seem to be a big deal now. I have a two-hour break between class three days a week, so I'll be able to get a lot done then, especially during the first week when I probably won't have a lot of homework (though I bet I'll have plenty of reading. Yay for being an English major! I'm not even sure if that's sarcasm.) Today I did my requisite thirty minutes of writing and kept going. I had two scenes to combine together because I changed the POV of one of the situations. That new scene is going to need a rework to flesh it out, but that's fine because of what I call the Helter Skelter method where I work my way through to the end and then go back to the beginning (because "when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide.") It doesn't do well to stop mid-draft to go back and make big changes, mostly because that whole time I'll be thinking of all the progress I'm not making by going backwards. Forward progress is key. It keeps it moving, and it can be quite uplifting, especially when I check the numbers and see I'm right on track. Act 1 of this novel came in at just over 25k by the way, which is perfect. I recently re-read an article on writing that reinforced my ideas and gave me a new perspective. The first point it makes is that you should finish your writing in one sitting, whether that means a whole short story, or a scene/chapter in a novel. I've stopped in the middle of a scene where I felt like I was on a roll (usually because I had to leave or do something else and was only doing my writing during a brief span where I was able to snatch up some time) and it really sucks when you go back to it the next day - or even just a few hours later - and realize that you've no idea what you'd planned on doing next. Usually when this happens, what I'd been planning to do was really deep and was going to make the story a bit bigger, but I end up with something much thinner. The second thing that really struck me was the point about slow drafts and fast drafts. If you write slow first drafts, working quickly through your second draft can help you give the story some cohesion. I write fast first drafts, though, so my second drafts should be slower so I can develop the characters and relationships and settings better. That's been the case with a lot of scenes that I've kept but edited for continuity, foreshadowing, writing, and level of detail; all those scenes became bigger and better. However, for the new scenes (or radically different new versions of old scenes) I'm still in the first draft phase, so those are being worked through quickly, just to get them done so I can flesh them out later. It was comforting reading about the fast then slow method, because I'd been discouraged by the number of writers on forums and such who lamented about having to cut a lot from their novels just to get them town to a readable, non-epic length. I was always just like "I wish I had that problem." Anyway, tomorrow I plan on getting the apartment back in order. The past three days have been a little chaotic, between getting bit by a dog and having to go into work late, then having a night shift followed by the morning shift, which immediately led to falling asleep shortly after getting home today. Tomorrow's my day off and I plan on using it effectively. So let's write all my goals out for tomorrow: Wash dishesFold laundryWriteContinue getting all my accounts on my main two emailsFollow-up step: Move Google Drive materials over, export bookmarks, change Chrome login to new primary email. Might not happen for a couple days.Chill the fuck out.