Dabbling without a plan

I'm about three-quarters of the way through this wonderful gigantic bottle of beer. It's a Grand Teton Brewing, Double Vision Doppelbock. One of my favorite beer styles.

I spent most of my evenings dabbling with my new social media. Most but not all. Thursday was critique group. The gang is pretty happy with The Yak Guy Project thus far.

I'm ready to get the first draft finished. I have four more events that have to happen, and the story is finished. I'm loving the character arc here, and so is my critique group.

Yak Guy Ted, has to travel a bunch between these four points. This poses a problem of balancing. He's a little over 57K words, and I want it over 80K when I finish. So roughly 20K words to get to the end. Travel is an odd thing in fiction, so let's discuss it for a minute.

It takes time to ride a yak as far as Ted has to go. Too many authors have horses running full speed for days on end without food or water. This isn't realistic, and yaks are slower than horses. This means some dedication to the time involved in the process.

I can't make it completely realistic, or readers will be looking at mountains and grass for several chapters. I need to get the idea of time into the story without boring my readers. It would be a mistake to just skip to the key points without paying homage to the travel time.

I will use dialog with the yak to fill some of this in. The yak is a mentor, so there is some decent opportunity here. I will have to skip ahead, but I don't want to dwell on too many campfires and what's for dinner every night. I can probably get away with “Five days later, we rode into XXX,” about twice. After that, The events need to unfold.

My normal method is to simply write it. I'll spend more time on the events, because they are important. There will be some more action, and possibly a lesson or two along the way.

I've been known to crank out ten-thousand words in a writing session. (Once. Damn this is good beer, and I'm probably kidding myself.) In theory, I could finish in two good writing days. In reality it's going to take a couple-three weekends.

My short story project is in the same shape. I'm nearly done. The Enhanced League has passed the mid-season break, and we're headed toward the playoffs. There are several more stories to write before I get there. I have a great twist for my semi-main character planned after the season ends too. The struggle here will be to handle the playoffs without giving an inning by inning account. That would bore readers. I've already walked readers through one game, and managed to make it pretty interesting. Doing it again would be a crime. I'll probably use my sportscasters to update the playoffs, and move right into the championship. Even then, a seven game series will get old for readers. I'll have to skip ahead to the last innings of the final game. Those will be exciting. I'm happy to be this close, but probably won't get it released on MLB opening day.

Thinking about The Enhanced League, MLB opening day is April 2nd. I need to finish, beg for beta readers, order cover art, and Lisa Burton art, and it's already mid-January. I'm not rushing it. It will get done when it gets done, and so will Yak Guy.

Meanwhile, back at the social media ranch, I'm not overly impressed with Google+. It seems harder to use than Pinterest, and I don't yet see the value. I'm out there giving a +1 to posts, but only one of mine has seen the same benefit. I'm sure it takes time, but I'd love to see Lisa Burton in the top row when I search for images of her. She makes it into the fourth row right now. Tim Burton's ex wife, Lisa, is tough competition. (She didn't even take the Burton name, and I still have to compete with her.)

Pinterest is a lot more fun, and seems easier to get into. I've made multiple boards, and people seem to be finding them. I created two boards for future projects, and it's pretty handy for that. I hope these two stories will turn out to be novellas, but they'll be as long as they need to be. One of them is shaping up to be wonderfully character driven, and it's going to be a buddy story. I've even made some musical pins to go with it. After finishing Yak Guy and Enhanced League, I'll probably outline it, and the imagery makes a great reference. My Pinterest guru says more boards is important, so I'll probably start a few more.

There you have it. It's Friday night, and I don't have a weekend plan. I'll use any available writing time to add to The Yak Guy Project. My more disruptive time will probably get dedicated to Google+ and Pinterest. We'll weave in date night and some family time too. I won't deal with my critiques until later, but Monday is a holiday, and I might make a few edits.

The Weekend… ends

Back to the paycheck job for me tomorrow. I had high hopes for some writing, but it never happened. At least not to the degree I had planned.

I spent most of the weekend working on social media stuff and expanding my footprint out in cyberspace. After a lot of fussing and fiddling, I now have sites on Google+ and Pinterest. I have no idea exactly what I'm going to do with them, but I have my reasons.

Google is the biggest search engine on the planet, and I've been told that a presence there helps increase your chances of getting found on a search. So I signed up, and figured out how to push these blog posts onto G+. If any of you are interested this might be my profile https://plus.google.com/117501282560056017429

Pinterest is one I had to be talked into. Nothing is a silver bullet in the world of discovery, but many of us are quite visual. I've written entire stories because I saw a piece of artwork, and this one seems like a good fit for me. If it doesn't expand my footprint, I'll still use it for inspiration. I still don't know how either of these work completely. And like with G+, I'm not completely sure if this is my profile https://www.pinterest.com/entertainin0737/

Part of the issue is my dependence on an iPad. These two seem to want to work best on an app. In fact Pinterest wants to drive me to the app, even when I want the browser version. I kind of slapped it around and tried to force it to give me the link I needed. If anyone is interested, I'm Craig Boyack on Google+. I wanted to be Entertaining Stories or even C. S. Boyack, but Google wants it to match my gmail address exactly. I wound up using a business site on Pinterest, and got to be Entertaining Stories over there.

I'm content with Entertaining Stories, because of branding. I also spent a considerable amount of time hunting for that image that eludes me. I saw it on Facebook around Halloween, and never grabbed it. It's going to be the basis of a shorter story after I finish up some projects. (Even if I never find it.)

So, I'm open to some comments and even critiques on these sites. I've been told a pin board for coming books can create a lot of interest. I'm too late in the game to start for my current projects, but will probably try it for the next wave. I created a small Lisa Burton board, and added some select images with links. Do you think I should do a cover gallery and link those too?

Obviously, I need some friends on these sites. Social media takes a ton of time, and I'll dedicate what I have to the forms that seem to be working or more interactive.

I also assembled and scheduled the next two Lisa Burton Radio spots, built and posted the Rave Reviews Book Club Spotlight Author post, and spent a considerable amount of time at Story Empire.

Just to make sure I wasn't slacking, I printed, read, and marked up critique submissions. We meet Thursday night again, and I'm ready.

Yak Guy got left to his own devices. Today, just to keep my hand in, I wrote another “anthem” piece for The Enhanced League. Regulars will remember one I shared, and they're in second person point of view. I really want to call this one Superman, but titled it Super Man in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit. Do you think this might be safe? It's about a guy trying to steal a base in a baseball game and flying through the air like… well you get it. It's 850 words and I'm counting them. Not much for three days.

We have one of those phony gas log fireplaces. I couldn't care less about it, but my wife scheduled it for service today – because I'm home. (Wasn't that sweet of her.) A big part of my writing time went to keeping Otto out of the guy's toolbox. That meant I didn't have enough time for much more than an anthem piece, but I'm counting it as progress anyway.

So there was my weekend; Otto, snow, fondue, more snow, Lisa Burton Radio, snow, Story Empire, snow, Superman, below zero temperatures, service man, snow, Pinterest, snow, and Google+.

How about it peeps? Do you use these other social media? How do you use them? Do you have any tips or tricks for us in the comments? Am I going to get sued by DC Comics? I know you can't copyright a title, but the title is Action Comics that Superman appears in.