Give it a read I’ll be deleting this site soon

Well unless many of you have been living under a rock for the last couple weeks, it’d be hard to ignore the catastrophe that has stricken the East Coast of the United States. Hurricane Sandy has devastated my entire area and finally after the last two weeks of recovery, power outages, and massive quantities of overtime- life is returning to normal. In the past (and upon almost all of my previous publications) I’ve used a tagline that states simply that I’m a writer from a small town on the Jersey Shore. Well now that most of the Jersey Shore is in ruins I think this holds true more than ever. I’m proud of my communities for aiding each other in this dire time of need.

Lucky enough for me I received little damage compared to my neighbors. The people who constructed my house almost a century and a half ago knew what they were doing and when the 12 feet of water consumed my street the water went around my house and swept out the rest of the street. During the early hours of the storm, waves were reaching my deck 16 feet up and destroyed my backyard. 

I stayed inside the majority of the storm only to sneak out at night once or twice to observe the storm surge that had made its way fifty feet or so up my street.

Sorry a bit blurry was hard to make out.

I awoke the following day to absolute carnage on my street, but even through the damage we were lucky. The two towns over Union Beach and Keansburg suffered the brunt of the destruction and rumors of the many dead were being whispered by those who had indeed tried to rescue them; the fire fighters.

This poor car was torn from its garage down the street and thrown into the midst of the storm.

An entire array of tools lands forty feet away from the garage that vanished. Damn.

Looting began before the storm even ended.

After Sandy had left she left behind ruin and homeless. My small community while we suffered physical damage we were very lucky. The town over Union Beach is still devastated with no power and National Guard on duty. Madness. Well just posting in to let you all know why I haven’t been on the inter-webs  but now I have power and my tons of overtime (supermarket with no power is hell. 300 lbs of stinking hell. Rotten ice cream is foul) has come to a close. While I’m still working two jobs, I’m back spreading this writing knowledge to you lovely folks who give me your time by reading. Once again Nanowrimo has been ruined for me, I guess I could hop in now, but I have some short stories to finish first.

Thank you everyone for being patient and to those who are still suffering keep your head up and don’t be ashamed to ask for help.

Damian

This blog has been around for a long while, a couple of years now, but this is my most dedicated approach to it. There are thousands of other bloggers who blog about being writers and that may be a very conservative estimate. This time I’m going to start expanding this blog in a more communal way; guest posts, interviews, blog tour events, and tons of more things.

Want to guest post? Have a new book out and want to be interviewed? Want to just say hello? Go to the Contact Page and drop me a note.  We can even collaborate on a project or anything, just drop a line.

Blogging is a communal thing and I’m going to take it on headstrong.

Na-no-wri-mo: National Novel Writing Month. Every November, writers from around the world attempt to craft a 50,000 word novel in a mere 30 days.

It’s a daunting challenge. Essentially it breaks down to about 1600 words a day. Of course writers have their own methods like writing 3000 words every other day or diving into the madness of 10,000 words a weekend. Craziness.

I explained here my previous attempts at this challenge. My previous failures. This year I am working two jobs and am starting a brand new diet so my attempt at Nanowrimo will be another item to juggle. I will still charge into the battle with a pen drawn and a paper shield wielded. Alright enough with that. I’m going to take a swing at it this year and I hope I succeed. My trials to build up my word count have been stressed at best. Though tomorrow and Sunday I will have plenty of writing time.

This is all an experiment to see if I have what it takes. This year I’m going to do a new idea and not plot it at all.

WHAT? NO PLOT!?

Shh, I have some ideas in my head, but I’m going to let this character driven story tell itself. Let’s see how it goes.

Anyone preparing for Nanowrimo?

Damian

Bam! Bringing Romance to The Gray Pen

I tweet to my girlfriend, oh yes romance is not quite dead contrary to some of your views. Anna is amazing, beautiful, and very supportive of my writing endeavors, but she’s not a writer. Now I know what you’re saying- “ah no! You can’t romanticize outside of the literary population”- well maybe you’re not saying that at all, but there is a significant hurdle in discussing let alone dating someone who doesn’t share the same interests as you. While this may keep the relationship engaging, it may be a shock to some of you at first.

Here’s some of my advice and observations:

1. Don’t Let it Hurt You 

When Anna talks to me about lifetime movies or softball I could careless. Sure I engage; I listen, I reply, but I’m sure I don’t seem over the top excited. Sometimes I’ll be swelling with story ideas- I will tell her of wordplay I’ve concocted that i think is clever or funny passages. While she’s interested, I know she is not as enthused as I might be. Every person’s interests are different, and that’s what makes us human. If we were all the same and all were in love with the same things than creativity would be stifled and life would be a big boring mess. Know what I mean?

2. Give Them Time to Chew

Don’t just jam your stories down their throat and expect them to keep it down. Anna subscribes to my blog and reads my new posts. If I write a new story she’ll take her time reading it over (occasionally catching my spelling mistakes) and will tell me what she thinks. She especially likes my poetry when I do end up writing one I can have the guts to show to her. The key is that if she was in love with sports and I was queasy about it, I wouldn’t expect her to toss me a football everyday and expect me to run the ball. Patience is a virtue as the cliche goes.

3. No Competition

Last year when I attended the AWP conference in Chicago I noticed something: an intermingling of the writer folk. Tons of people had their significant other on panels beside them or in opposing panels( like literary here and science fiction there; eek!). Dating someone in the same craft may be a virtue, but can you really see yourselves with novels competing on the same lists? Maybe some would like that, but I like to separate my personal life from business (if writing is business after all). While this may seemed bias, I’ve also met some good people who genuinely love being together and writing together.

All in all love the one you’re with. Life is too short for fighting and sorrow. Peace and love man.

How do you deal with being involved with someone who’s not a writer?

Damian

This image was used alongside my short story at http://www.absentwillowreview.com/ Since the site has been closed- I can’t find the artists name. This isn’t my painting, but someone extremely talented.

Whoah, that’s not right, is it? Ah, you thought I was going somewhere else with that right? Well setting the mood is also a great activity to do when you’re working on your draft. Music and atmosphere can resonate through your ears and out through your fingers letting out some of the most passionate writing you can muster or it may just distract you. Different strokes for different folks they say. I’m 50/50.

I remember when I was thirteen a friend of the families gave me my first Mp3 player; that was sometime in 2006. The world had opened and gone be the days where a bulky portable CD player would hog up my pocket space. This 512 mb gadget housed eighty or so songs and I quickly used it to add a soundtrack to my reading of the time. The latter Hogwarts years blasted by alongside the ferocity of Disturbed, the darkness of Marilyn Manson, and the angst of Linkin Park. This also led me to write many rip-off poems and lyrics that still loiter on crumbled notebooks pages buried somewhere in my desk. This sort of music helped me shape the world I was reading.

Now for creation; for many years I wrote in absolute silence. I was under the impression that any song with lyrics may influence or distract my writing, so I instead pursued a pure environment void of outside stimuli; essentially a step up from an isolation tank. Though sometimes it’s hard to enter the mood of a dark tale when the sun is blaring through your windows and the sounds of neighborly children are chirping outside of your windows.

My current wip (ah, you’re saying that at 1000 words a day I should be done. Shush, I fell behind.. a little.. bit.. shh), is dark. Vampires and such. It’s a rewrite of my short story “Cycles” that I had published last June. This story is now much darker and has abandoned much of the comical or outlandish nature; it’s gruesome, morbid, and real. I have begun to write this with my shades pulled down, candles or in-cents burning in my bedroom and dark heavy music blaring through my headphones. I’ve found that the Korn Pandora station offers some of the best mix of the type of atmospheric tunes I desire.

Does music help you write scenes better? Do you have any specific rituals you do before you write? Leave your comments below!

“I Ride my bike, I roller skate, don’t drive no car. Don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far. For somebody who don’t drive I been all around the world. Some people think I done alright for a girl” – Melanie

Or so goes an old song that one of my coworkers in the meat department sings as he cuts meat and gets dressed in blood. He talks about the 60s and 70s when times were different. When people smoked pot in public and the world almost changed, but didn’t. He talks about Vietnam and the VCs and the racial hostilities back home. It’s quite interesting, but that’s not what this post is necessarily about. It’s more about the song by the folk singer Melanie.

I don’t drive. I ride my bike when I need to go far and I walk when I’m feeling like I need to. I’m pushing 20 and for some reason driving itself has eluded me. I didn’t get my permit until I turned 18 and the reasons behind that lie in my foolishness throughout high school and the pointless endeavors I followed. I tried to take a legit driving test last year and failed. Wah.

Driving has been something that I haven’t found as necessary, but now it’s a goal to strive for. I am saving money from my two jobs to buy a new car by December and a license before that too. Twenty is coming by in a matter of days and my adolescence will be gone forever. So here goes adulthood.

I’m bringing back my health blog as I dive into another journey of health and weight-loss, but I am not abandoning this ship. The Gray Pen is getting more and more content each and everyday as I discover the path to publication and success.

Damian

Journals are also great for writing lyrics. Yessir

No, I’m not talking about the government or some conspiracy theories that are likely true; thank you Patriot Act. No. I’m talking about the internet and its social implications. Everything we do online is available for the world to chronicle, archive, and read forever. I love blogging. While this blog is more niche` than others, I still find that many of my ideas I am able to share and explain without the need to feel insecure. However, there is also downsides to this public nature: the decline of journaling. Journaling?Yes their may be a better verb to use, but I like the word. How many people actually write in a journal? Too few.

I just picked up a cheap composition notebook from the dollar store and I’ve started some writing. I barely hand-write anymore, so this is a pleasant change. I found an article 101 Reasons To Write a Journal, and it goes over 101 different reasons to start writing in a journal. Some of them are obvious: recording ideas, expression emotion, and plan future things. Others are less obvious: learning to trust yourself, discovering hidden talents, and unraveling romantic confusion. It truly is a great list of things, very enlightening.

This new journal of mine is like a safe haven. I can write whatever I choose, without sharing it with the world. I’ve began to to jot notes about story ideas, poetry lines from my brain, my inner thoughts, and blog ideas. More and more I will write just to ease my head and get the load of worries off of my chest. This is also for general ideas  that pop up from time to time. I think this is actually a first step in a longer journey of success and a healthy lifestyle.

The End Result

Don’ She look Pretty

Pretty much I’m taking writing more and more serious. I try to write 1000 words a day of fiction, read for a half hour, and now hand write in my journal for a half hour as well. I’m hoping that my anxieties and imagination can both benefit from burrowing my ideas in these pages.

Do you journal? Do you think that writing in a journal benefits the modern writer as doing so becomes rarer and rarer?

Would love to hear your answers below in the comments section!

Remember to subscribe to stay in touch.

Budget Your Time and Eliminate Pointless Tasks

While I hope to only work these two jobs until the end of December, I have started a trend of eliminating the pointless things in my life. I very rarely watch television or play video games too much. Instead I write and read and relax. Within the few hours of leeway time between jobs I take a crack at a blog post, article, or do some much needed reading. Like that new Justin Timberlake movie time is money; literally! I don’t sleep in too much anymore, I set my alarm early enough to guarantee me a full night of sleep, while still guaranteeing me plenty of time to accomplish the things I need to do.

Set Aside a Special Time to Do Your Writing

I have read plenty of blog posts and books from authors who discuss that a special time for their writing benefits both their schedule and their writing overall. My writing times differentiate throughout the week; on my easy days Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I like to write early in the morning. While on the other three days I take a swing at writing at night. Setting a side a special time to silence your phone, turn off the internet, and dive into the prose will guarantee you a better product with less stress.

Just Relax

Sometimes life is tough. Having a full schedule is difficult, but everyone needs a break. Pick one day out of the week or even a couple hours out of a busy day and just kick back. If you find solace in writing (I hope you do) then do that; if your brain is too crowded then just lay back on the couch and watch some TV. Writing is an important extension of ourselves and while I’m sure many of us want to pursuit it full time, we can always day dream and squeeze it in until that day comes.

Working two jobs sucks, but trust me it’s not the end of the world. Calm yourself and write; you’ll be thanking me later.

How do you cope with your schedule?

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Thanks,

Damian

The other day on the blog I mentioned how I wanted to build my writing pace up in preparation for Nanowrimo, which if you don’t know is a writing event where writers around the world attempt to write a novel in 30 days. I began my pace at 1000 words a day and have been on and off with that. Definition? I’m only at 3000 words! I know, I know. I’m working my way back up to 1000 words and will be writing 1000 words tonight, tomorrow, and the day after. In On Writing by Stephen King, he mentions a writer who everyday of his life would write for several hours and when he would finish a manuscript, he would toss it aside and start another piece of work. This is the routine I want to start myself on and I know I will succeed with hard work.

Over the next couple days and weeks you will notice massive changes in The Gray Pen. I am hard at work at solid content, a domain name, new pages, special events, author interviews, guest posts, and tons of other good stuff. Keep your eyes pealed.

Thank you to my readers for sticking through the ups and down with me. How’s everyone doing with their own writing? Would love to hear it.

Damian