Much To-Do About Everything – Progress Report #2

Hello! This post is a progress report, details of my endeavours elsewhere, talk of running a blog for profit, considering other ventures, a call out to any frustrated would-be entrepreneurs, and a request to those of you following the blog/on the mailing list.

What I’ve Been Up To

It’s been a while since I paid the world of wordpress.com any attention, with good reason, but it’s still a shame. All my efforts have been going into my other site over at TravelUnmasked.com, so I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs!

Trouble Posting

Pondering effective practices and self-imposed obstacles.

“It’s better to be fast and good, than slow and perfect”

Why didn’t someone tell me this when I was young? I spent my first 20 years of existence trying to get everything perfect. But this minute distillation of wisdom only perculated in my direction long after I’d grown. I see the logic and advantages of this approach now, obviously there are disadvantages too, but in many situations they are out-weighed. Too late for me though, I can’t change the habits of over two and a half decades, no doubt the derivatives of a slight tendency towards OCD, extreme perfectionism as it were, and a finely honed expertise in procrastination.

I’m not a defeatist – I am constantly trying to be faster, and happy with good – but the quality/quantity arguement rears its damn head. Photography is different, in that I’m always aiming for quality, but I like to click lots.

3am Fishing Trip, Białystok, Poland

This week brought a form of light balm to my pains;

Progress Report #1 – Success and Failure, Laid Bare

It’s time for a recap of my progress to date! It’s almost exactly the middle of the year, and this should have happened sooner, but c’est la vie.

I started this blog on 6th September 2011, much to my surprise, I thought it was mid-November.

So far I’ve posted 18 times (19 including this one) with no real routine – an average of 2 posts a month, but not even managing 2 posts in February, and this will be my first blog post of June too.

My Stats have slowly but steadily climbed, although June has not continued the trend. A lot of my views are directly related to how active I am on twitter, both finding good people (hopefully real people) to follow and how regularly I tweet.

Absolutely everything I can possibly plug-in to twitter, I have done, so for example if I Like a video on Vimeo or Youtube, it automatically tweets.

On Reading as a Mind Altering Substance, Inspiration, and Murakami

This post is an introduction to a new series of posts I am working on, and features some excerpts from Haruki Murakami’s ‘Kafka by the Shore’.

I have a theory. I’ve been realising lately that certain books and authors have had a much bigger effect on my life than I appreciate. I’m not sure I would have tried an iota of the things I’ve been doing in the last few years if it weren’t for their influence.

Good Reasons Not To Write

Or, How Not To Complete NaNoWriMo…

NaNoWriMo happened in November as it does every year, and once again tens of thousands of WriMers wrote millions of words to achieve their individual target of 50,000 words or more. Personally, I failed abysmally and barely got started. That’s ok though, because I found there were other things I wanted to focus on, instead of churning out 50,000 amateurish words without a real goal in mind.

50,000 words is too much to practice writing. Good typing practice tho

I did think a lot about what it is to write, while otherwise occupied, and came up with an interesting analogy. I started to think of creating a novel as much like creating a patchwork quilt. A novel is a collection of moments or sequences, spun together to create a larger piece of work. Some writers create incredibly intricate and detailed work, skillfully making the smaller pieces into a whole with a clever plot or premise. Others can choose to create short exciting pieces which stand alone, or a lengthy focused story that has no plot outside its narrative.

Riddle Me This

Or, I should really say ‘tell me a Wrime’.

The close of Day 4 of NaNoWriMo, and my word count stands at about 30, but triple it if you count another couple of lines that I have in my head. Unfortunately that is 49,970 words short of the target, and only 0.0045% of the way to Day 4’s pro-rata amount. But I’m not worried! I have never completed a single piece of work in a remotely orderly manner, so why should writing (an art form no less!) be any different. In fact, without a grenade up my behind, I just can’t sit myself down.

On Writing, And Murakami

I read a really interesting interview with Haruki Murakami in last weekend’s edition of The Guardian. A very timely piece, possibly part of a build up to NaNoWriMo next month. I will be taking part and I think more people should have a go!

In the interview with Murakami, he talks about how he sometimes feels like he is living in a parallel world, and in the other world he never became a writer, and kept running a jazz cafe instead. He would have had quite a content life either way, especially as he is so easily pleased by cats (apparently)…