Daily Archives: July 1, 2014

Is your writing stuck?

Anybody stuck out there – just write one more sentence.

Just take it from that first capital letter to that final punctuation mark.

Take a breath.

Pat yourself on the back.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Now write one more.

Every journey starts with one step. Every step takes you a little closer to your destination. Don’t worry about looking pretty. Just take one step down the road – one word, one sentence – and just see if your feet figure out how it is truly done.

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

First Day of Camp NaNoWriMo – 2014

Well folks – for those who follow this blog you will know that I have signed up for the July write-your-fool-head-off Camp NaNoWriMo summer extravaganza.

Camp NaNoWriMoThe deal is I have to complete a 50,000 word manuscript by the end of July.

That’s 1612 words a day – according to the folks at NaNoWriMo.

Well, I have got off to a very good start with 3200 words written today – that’s two days worth of work. I want to give the rest of the day over to just spending some time with my wife – but it felt good to get things rolling like this and she has given me her blessing on this project.

THe cool thing is that means that my quota of 1612 words a day has now dropped down to 1510 words a day. I know that it will not always be this easy for me – but if I can keep ahead of my quota everyday it will make things easier for me later in the month.

I should tell you that I have an awful lot of this novel already roughed out – but by the time I had written the very first page something very cool happened. I found out something about the protagonist that took the book to a whole other level of realism and I’m pretty excited about that.

I can’t say anything in detail because at this stage of the game I need to keep everything under my hat.

But a good beginning is always a promising start.

A lot of writers get flustered about beginnings. They want it to be perfect and beautiful but sometimes it is just important to get your ass off of home base and run like a mad bastard.

Remember – an iris starts out looking like this.

You give it a little time and a little rain and a little sunshine and it grows up to look more along the lines of this.

Graduation & Iris 008

This is a shot from outside of my kitchen window.

So all of my fellow writers out there who feel yourselves losing hope over what seems to be a real futz-up of a first draft manuscript do not lose heart. Take a look at the iris and remember that funky weird alien-like rhizome that it sprouted up from.

I don’t know if I will be able to blog every day about my progress. Might bore you after a while and I cannot sacrifice any writing time this month – but I will do the best I can to keep you folks informed of my progress.

You want to follow along you can keep track of my progress at the Camp NaNoWriMo website.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

 Cool – I just realized that this is my 500th entry to this blog.

Time for a beer.


Hey – if you got something out of reading this how about helping a fellow out? From October 11, 2015 to November 10, 2015 my book A BLURT IN TIME will be in the running for a Kindle Scout contract and I could REALLY use all the nominations I can get.

Just click right here.

Click this banner. Nominate A BLURT IN TIME for the Kindle Scout program. If the book makes it into Kindle Scout you will automatically receive a free Kindle copy of the book.

Click this banner. Nominate A BLURT IN TIME for the Kindle Scout program. If the book makes it into Kindle Scout you will automatically receive a free Kindle copy of the book.