“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”- Mark Twain

I am feeling pretty good today, a little over 2k words into the second chapter. I find that setting myself little writing goals helps me out tremendously. My goal is at the least 1,000 words a day. A chapter a week for us, maybe even two weeks. We don’t want to burn ourselves out or let our ideas get tired and cranky. We want to nurture it slowly, and raise it right. We started out with just a little idea, broke it down to characters, and now we are taking it chapter by chapter. Hell, I don’t even think we know our true ending yet.

Writing is easy once you have something to work with, it’s keeping track of all the ideas and twists that becomes a pain in the butt.

Collaborating with someone is great for me, Eric keeps track of those things that get lost in the raging sea of my mind. But like Eric’s last post said, things aren’t always easy for us though. We have worked together before and great things have happened. (World of Warcraft, League of Legends) We expect nothing less of this book collaboration.

While he may aggravate me, make me mad or we have a disagreement (like I am certain I do to him as well)… I know that if I drop it and walk away and forget about it, I will think it through more clearly and see the path of compromise. What makes Eric and I good friends and great collaborators is not that we both like the same games or writing, it’s because we are so different from each other. It reflects in our writing and our ideas… and how we defend them. We are both so different that we WILL clash, and sometimes it may not be pretty. No one is perfect, we will always have a stupid argument or disagreement, we will always not talk to each other for a small period of time until we patch it back up over a good video game. It is important for you to take what I said and just understand this simple concept:

A simple friend thinks the friendship is over when you have an argument. A real friend knows that it’s not a friendship until after you’ve had a fight. – Unknown (If anyone knows who said this, feel free to tell me!)

So, take what I said to heart and find yourself a friend who likes writing. Start with a notebook and write a story until you get to a good part, pass the notebook to a friend, let them do the same. When that notebook is full sit there and read it to each other. Become imaginative and just have some fun!

Love,

Ness

P.S. For those who are combating writer’s block… this site is one of my favorites for prompts, ideas, and virtually anything. I just look at the prompts or randomly generated names and ideas and it just gets my creative juices pumping. Check it out: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/