Check the Crowd Reaction

I remember way back when, playing Gabber in Canada and Oregon state. With live performances gauging the audience is part of the task. Your job is to get the crowd stoked, and you can gauge how you are doing in real time. This is great, you can adjust your performance in response to what is going on in the crowd.

Writing is a totally different animal. I have to try to become the audience myself, and look at what I've written from that perspective. If I am stuck on parts of a story that I am bored with, does that mean the reader will be bored as well? Or would it be intriguing to them, since they don't know what I - as the writer - know?

I am a hobbyist writer, so you probably don't want to listen to me - but...
What I do when I hit a slog in a story is I ask myself if it furthers the plot, or develops a character, or sets a tone, etc. If so it may be useful to leave in - unless it slows the story down, or maybe it reveals too much too soon.

I used to get stuck and situations like this would infect my feelings on the entire story. At that point I would usually just ditch it. But lately I've been localizing that feeling. I'll ditch just the part I'm struggling on, and do so quickly. Then I'll rewrite it - or maybe it simply needs removed. The key is I don't linger.

I just get it did.

Collaborate and Prosper

I have been toying with writing for many years now. Most projects start out strong but fizzle out. My latest efforts have been done in collaboration with a fellow scifi fanatic and I have to say it has made all the difference. Putting multiple heads together allows you to work out your ideas in ways you would have never thought of on  your own. When you hit rough patches in your work you can talk it over and work through it together. I know that my current project would have been abandoned long ago if I were working on it alone, and it wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

How I Roll Blogger

I use Blogger because it's easy. Of course. I can spin up a simple blog with minimal effort. All I'm really interested in is sharing my nerdy thoughts and networking with people who are smarter than I am (I firmly believe I will become smarter via osmosis) - AKA all of you.

I typically write all my posts on my phone, in VIM then publish them via the official Blogger app. I don't have a need for much beyond that. But if you've left me a comment you may notice that my reaponses are slow. That's because thr Blogger app has no concept of comments.

Due to the lack of comment ability in the official Blogger app, I've decided to try some other clients. The first one I'm trying is Bloggeroid. So far it seems - interesting. I don't like the way you have to re-load your post if you save it. I am an obsessive saver so that's not going to work for me - but I do write in VIM so maybe it's Ok. The cool thing is it does have a comments interface, so I should be able to stay on top of them.

I also use Blogger Stats on my phone to look at the numbers. When I don't get direct feedback I can see which topics seem to be of the most interest etc and keep that in mind. I'm not sure about how accurate it is, but good enough for my purposes.