Fanfiction Project In the Morning Light #11

Habit building.

Howdy folks, it’s me, once again, you can start to party now, or never fear because I’m going to do something. Yesterday, well the other day by the time you see it, was odd. I went to work, had a good-ish time at work (when do you ever have a really good time at work), and came home. I went for a walk. Came back to the house and sat down to do some writing, and my brain wasn’t agreeing with me. So, I got a page and a quarter written, and then stopped. I didn’t do anything else. I sat in my chair for like two hours not thinking, not writing, reading, nothing, it was a total zone out for me.

Today (yesterday), however, I was able to get much more done. I had a good day at work, I had a good walk, and I managed to write for almost four hours. True I only got the scene I was working on yesterday done, but the scene is done and that’s progress. Now, tomorrow, I will be working on the next to last scene of In the Morning Light, and I’m wondering if that’s why I zoned out so totally the other day. I don’t know what it’s like for other artists, but for me, and most writers that I know, it’s hard to complete a piece of fiction, anything of substantial length anyway. It’s kind of like post partum depression, I’d say, an empty hole in a part of you, that you know can never be filled. And, it’s strange for me. I didn’t think I’d feel that way about the ending of a fanfiction piece.

Anywho, that’s totally not what I wanted to talk about. Lol.

Yeah, I was going to talk about habit building. Like with the walk I was talking about earlier. For the last few days I’ve taken a walk at roughly the same time every day, and I will continue to do so until it is habit. I’m also going to try the same thing with my writing. Just trying to sit down every day at roughly the same time, and start writing. Then at the end of that session comes the blog post :)

So, if things work out well. And, I have no reason to believe they won’t, I’ll be talking to you all regularly. Like, every day kind of regularly. Lol.

And, that’s all from me.

Later kids.

Ryan

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Fanfiction project In the Morning Light #10

Disappearing Act.

Yeah, unfortunately I’m pretty good at those.

It has been over two months since I posted regularly, and I apologize for that. I don’t know if that means anything, as I have a tendency to apologize for just about everything. Though, I know some of my dedicated readers have missed it. At least my older sister did. Lol.

Other than all that I don’t know what to say about the situation. I’ll try to do better. Now that I have a stable-ish job, I’ll get off around the same time every day and I can start doing good habit things like working on the same thing around the same time every day.

Although, I can tell you that work was one of the main reasons I wasn’t posting. It’s not because my job is mentally hard (its McDonalds, I’m overqualified for the job) but because my job is very physically demanding. I know that sounds crazy. I mean it’s McDonalds, the first job most people have, lazy people, and high school kids. How can it be a physically demanding job? But, you have to realize that I work the grill. I’m making burgers all day, a basic back and forth motion, (which has proven to be a real pain in the back) and I get to truck the heavy boxes of meat around. I think the lightest box I deal with everyday is the bacon box. It’s maybe, three pounds. Not impressive, but when you compare it to the twenty-five/thirty pound nugget boxes, and don’t even ask what the regular patties and the quarter patties weigh. Then there’s the poor job some of our staff has at stocking the things in the freezer right.

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to pull a box of French fries off a stack of twelve of them, which goes over your head by about five feet.

Anyway, I’m going to stop talking about McDonalds before someone tells them, and I get sued.

And, I would really guess that you would like to know about the good stuff. The writing!

I have….finished nothing.

Yeah, when I got to the end of the second quarter of Cold Lunch I started playing WOW again (World Of Warcraft), and that wound up dragging all of my time straight down the drain. And, my uncle died, and WOW became a safer place to be than my own thoughts. It still hurts to think about, but I have to move on.

So, I’ve gotten over the WOW hump and have been writing again, and I lied when I said I finished nothing. I finished Cold Lunch…the short story. Lol. I’ve been meaning to rewrite the short story that inspired the novel since I finished the first draft, and I used that as a spring board back into major writing. I’m thinking about maybe trying to get it published. It might help garner a sell on the book itself, and then help build some steam for the book. Basically, it will be good PR.

As for other PR things, I’ve been working on In the Morning Light, which a lot of people will be happy to see, considering I left them in the middle of a cliff hanger. Lol. But, part of that was intentional too: the cliff hanger part, which was already written in. The break from publishing it weekly was when I ran out of material, the middle of a big pit of depression.

There’s good news though.

I have four of the last eight scenes/chapters written. And, I think I might start reposting today. Or yesterday, considering I’ll have written this on Friday, and you won’t see it until Saturday.

Anywho, I’m going to hop off here. It’s time to get to bed. I’ve got work tomorrow.

Oh Joy! >.>

Ryan

And, as an advertisement, I’ve got the link to the new Chapter of In the Morning Light!

Journal, March 2, 2013

On February 26, 2013 the world lost a great man. My Uncle Larry died sixty-one years to the day; he died on his birthday and to me that sounds like a crappy birthday present , but he’s not in pain anymore. He had been fighting throat cancer for more than a year, and he was going to have a tracheotomy put in sometime next week. But, God knew that was the last thing he wanted to do. He’s smoked for years, and he said he didn’t want a trache.

And, now I feel  so bad, so guilty for what I’ve done over the last few years of his life. I had so many chances to get to know him, so many years to try and be a good nephew. And, now those chances are gone. I know the old phrase ‘you don’t know what you have until you lose it’, and it’s true. Every day, it’s true.

It hurts.

It hurts so bad, know that I could have been a better nephew, knowing what I could have done to be his friend, knowing that just once I could tell him I loved him. I’ve said that or even thought that, he was just a fixture in my life. I would go up to Grandma’s and I could find him sitting at the table on the chair closest to the door, or I’d find him in the living room, watching golf, football, or westerns. On nights when I would stay up at Grandma’s house at night I would see him moving around in the morning getting ready for work, and he was just always there. And, now he’s not, and knowing that hurts so much.

It’s like when my dog Sally died. She would always bark at me when I drug the lawn mower down to Uncle Kevin’s house. It took three days, it took me three days to know that it was real. Three days for me to drag the lawn mower down and listen to the emptiness coming from the kennel. And, it was like that this time too. I live three hours away, and know that he was gone was almost clinical, like it was just one more fact of life. But, it got real yesterday, and it was real today. Because I was here, I was here and the fixture my uncle had become in my life wasn’t. It doesn’t matter how many more dinners I have with my grandmother, he’s not going to be sitting down at the end of table anymore. Not eating his share of the cornbread and the green beans I turned my nose up at.

And, I can’t believe how much that hurts.

Everybody losses people in this world, it’s a fact of life. Everybody dies. But, I don’t think anybody knows how bad it’s going to hurt until it happens. I know I didn’t know how much it was going to hurt. And, when it came down to it, I realized I’ve never given him a Christmas present, I’ve never given him anything as much as I should have. So, when it came down to it I had to give him something. When me and my wife got together, even before we got married, she gave me her lucky coin, and today I gave him that coin. I put it in his hand so that he’d be able to hold on to it forever.

I pray that coin gives him luck across the river and all throughout the ever after.

I love you Uncle Larry. I love you so much. And, I wish I’d taken the time to tell you that in life.

In loving memory of Larry Neil Smith

Feb. 26, 1952-Feb. 26, 2013