Yeah I know, I’ve been absent from doing as much Flash publishing for the second half of July after a strong start in the end of June. The good news is that this isn’t because I’m not writing, it’s because I’m working on another project (or three). The biggest project will be finished by the weekend coming up. The other projects are on going but will take a back seat once August crests the month line.

So what is FlashWriMo to me? FlashWriMo is taking the rules of NaNoWriMo and applying it to writing a ton of flash fiction. That’s 51,667 words in 31 days (NaNo is 50K is 30 days, do the math). At under 500 words a story, that will be at minimum 103 pieces of flash fiction to create in 31 days. Since my plan was 104 pieces of flash fiction this year (two a week), this will meet my quota for the year, my quota for the special post year project, and allow me to possibly twice to posting three stories a week. If that happens that I work on 156 pieces for the year, I’ll up the special project at the end of the year to 200 pieces of fiction. If you’re counting still, that’ll be 100,000 words. Hrm, that sounds familiar… like it’s the length of something else you’d put in book form.

If FlashWriMo works out, maybe I’ll do a repeat come NaNoWriMo time and just get the first half of the stories done for 2011 ready. What? Did you think I was only doing the flash project for a year? Oh no, this is a lifetime project. So long as I can still interact with the written word, you’ll always find flash fiction on my writing site. Flash fiction is fun, and even if my writing career never really picks up, I’ll continue writing the micro pieces.

I… just would prefer… you know… if it did take off.

Okay, so expect new fiction starting August 1st (or technically the 3rd, since that’s Tuesday). There’s a post highlighting this on the fiction site if you want details on knowing which stories started in FlashWriMo.

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So the breakdown:

Work – They kept another person, reducing my work load by a 1/3. Awesome. They also activated the program they were testing and things were wonderful. Awesome. I’m shifting to an 8am-5pm work schedule. Not awesome, but I’ll deal with it. These three points combined make life a hell of a lot better.

Home Life ­– Some issues, but progress is continuing. The new desks arrived and I built one of them (pictures to come later). Too big to have two in the office though, so we’re giving one to Trish’s dad. Sounds good too as he’s moving closer. That will make life easier with just being able to interact with them on a regular basis as opposed to being two hours away. A few things I need to touch on in the coming weeks, but overall, things are on the up and up.

Writing – New life blog today, new flash fiction tomorrow! That’s right, the flash fiction is returning as of June 1^st, and so help me I will never have a break again unless I end the project. I’ve only completed yesterday’s work but I’ve resolved myself to write a piece a day. It’s going to take a bit to get my groove back but everything is rolling. I’m not sure how often I’m going to blog here over the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to keep this place in the know regarding the big things like, when I’m going to be at D*C, any conventions I’m heading to, and where my writing it going. Life marches on.

That’s it for the update! Expect more! Demand More! Communication! End!

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The primary source of my busy state is the paid gig. The day job has been taking up a great deal of my time and effort, spilling into over time in the last two weeks. Whereas work five weeks ago was relaxing, focused, and allowed me a certain level of mental groove; the most recent iteration of work since the 19th of April has been epic in the amount of issues, assistance, and general size of my work pool. Frankly, I haven’t felt the desire to do anything after working these past few weeks beyond mental simplicity. It’s just been that kind of month. That said, things with the job should begin to change come the 31st of this month. Hush-hush on the details but work should be more back to a stable structure instead of the madness that engulfs the current focus.

There has been some progress at home though during this cycle. Trish and I started having weekly meeting regarding the standing of our household, finances, and things that need to be acted on. It has really made her happy as she feels like I’m more “involved” with the house and I agree. It makes me feel like I’m more involved. We’ve even started doing more with the house because of it. I bought some new desks and they should arrive this week. I can’t say putting them together will be fun, but it will be great to have the change of scenery. We’ve had the same configuration for the past 3 and 1/2 years.

On the writing front, these are the first words I’ve written since the 27th, when the last post showed up on the writing side of the blog.I missed a great deal of days in April and all of May. I won’t have June ready by the 1st of the month I believe. I’d like to, but it’s just unlikely. I do have a plan for continuing the flash project. I even know where, oh, about 40 stories are coming from. I’ll share the inspiration later once I have it rolling. The goal, right now, is to be up to date by the end of June and have July rolling. Be the end of July, I expect to have everything up to Dragon*con ready. By Dragon^Con, I expect to be done for the year except for the stories I’m going to add to the purchasable book.

Like I mentioned, it has been a busy time. Life is stabilizing though, and within the next week or two, I’ll be into my new routine.

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Even managed to complete something like 5000 words on brainstorming for the new D&D campaign. Did I mention that? Yeah, turns out I managed to recruit five people to be a part of a 4^th edition dungeons and dragons game. Awesome.  The story concept is familiar, very Romanesque in a magical realm. Think it’ll work, we’ll see though won’t we.

Fun note about last Thursday’s flash fiction, Corporate World: I ended up being inspired to make this piece after listening to the first few episodes of Nathan Lowell’s Quartershare. So far the book is pretty good, looking forward to how it ends, and the inevitably the half dozen sequels.

Woo, getting tired. I suppose that exercise is catching up to me.

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Starting with my fiction, I’m currently working on a piece of for the Escape Artists Flash contest. While I can’t provide any details for the story as that would be against the contest rules,  I will say that I’m really enjoying the piece I’ve put together. You’ll get to see the piece on the writing site regardless if I win or not. The story has been trimmed down I just have to give it one last editing sweep before submitting it tonight.

The year of Flash continues with my Tuesday/Thursday posts. Still going strong, and now I’m all caught up except for three remaining posts in January. I should have that corrected by the end of this week which will let me move onto the next phase of the project: Getting ahead of schedule. In order for me to have the book ready by the end of the year, I have to have the fiction written long before December. Ideally, I’d like to be a month ahead of schedule by the end of April or May, two months by the end of June/July, and be finished with the year by the end of August/September. This would let me work October through December preparing the book while getting ahead of schedule for the next year.

Finally, I’m working on a short story based on a writing assignment from the March FWA meeting. The outline is complete and I just need to put meat on those bones. The goal is to have a final draft edited by the end of April, and then have a finished copy ready to go for submissions by the end of May.

Outside of fiction writing, I’m back at working on an RPG system. This one is very similar to one I worked on years ago with one of my best friends. She had wanted something akin to an Alice In Wonderland rpg, so it had to be based on cards instead of dice. I’m now further into the new development on the project than when I was working on it ten years ago. The current timeframe is to be able to run play tests by this weekend. Going to hijack my wife into playing the game with me for a bit. Ideally I can have something ready by the end of Spring.

Moving on from writing, the recording of TDC3 is tonight. I’m sorry that the second episode isn’t up yet, but hopefully things can get rolling soon. Haven’t had much chance to talk to Andrew over the past two weeks, so I’m assuming he’s been very busy with work. Happens I guess. I’m still debating starting my own show, but I don’t have the editing expertise Andrew has. We’ll see how this tonight goes.

I’m happy to see that productivity is abound. I see 2010 as a great year for my projects and while there have been set backs (see my posts about the post-apocalyptic Shadowrun project earlier this year), one thing I’ve learned from that project is that I can’t get too hyped up about the project until I’m certain it’s something I know I will love.

We’ll see just how well that goes with the current cooking pots.

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I’m also considering picking up a webcam for the recording as that seems to be a growing trend in podcasting these days. Not certain if that’s right for us just yet, but we will inevitably get it rolling.

Oh quick update on the writing site, we are on schedule this week for two new pieces Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll be preparing some backlog stories this week to fill the rest of Jan, Feb, and Mar. Hopefully I can be finished with the backlog before April. I’ve got a week and a half so I need to get in gear.

Writing Goal for the week: 500 words written or edited each day not counting blog posts.

That’s it. Just a quickie on what’s happening this week.

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Despite issues, though, I’m pressing on. There’s been a few hiccups but I’m fixing these holes, at least in terms of the fiction writing. As of this post’s writing, the last entries that have appeared on jsamueldiehl.com was on February 4th. To catch up, I’m post-posting these items, so feel free to check the website on the normal Tuesday/Thursdays for new backlog items. I’m actually reaching into my archives for these stories too, so you’re seeing things that have been around for years but no one has ever read.

I’m determined to keep up with two pieces of flash a week for this year. So far, when I’m lagging behind I’ve been able to catch up. Keep with me, and I’ll make sure to keep these stories rolling.

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Last week there was a lot of work done on the blog. In terms of content, design, and usability, hiddennode.com has undergone a great deal of change. The new theme and plug-ins I’ve selected have turned this from a project that looked like I did care about it into something that has a little push behind it. The new content I’ve managed to post on a fairly reliable schedule has also increased traffic and hey, we had a few comments show up (hi folks and thanks!).

With all this effort put in it is time to continue my activity here. I’m going to attempt something of a schedule for posting here and on jsamueldiehl.com. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be the days you’re going to see posts here on hiddennode.com. Tuesday, Thursday, and occasionally Saturday will be the days that you’ll see new flash fiction on jsamueldiehl.com. Sundays I’m taking off.

The occasional Saturday posts lie on the fact I’d like for Saturdays to become days I post longer pieces of fiction, not just flash fiction. Because of that, I might just post every other week on Saturday so the content quality will be better. That is until I’m a better writer and know I can do more in a shorter time than I can now.

There’s no perfection to this system. I will miss days. I might even miss a week if things are tight. It’ll happen but once whatever is keeping me from posting is resolved I’ll be back and ready to go.

Going out on a note on the future; in the coming weeks you can expect a review of Star Trek Online (it goes live next week), might actually get to hear a podcast I take part of (if we ever record), and hear about my plans for Dragon*Con (bought my ticket yesterday). I’m looking forward to sharing these with you and hearing your comments.

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Thinking about the writing when looking at the archive, I also notice most of my blog posts are about two-three weeks apart. One wonders why the readership here has never really “sparked.” Perhaps I can change that. I can make enough time in the morning to exercise and write if I actually go to sleep when I’m supposed to. There isn’t a single thing that should keep me up past 12am on any given weeknight and that would let me wake up around 7.

So maybe that’s what I have to do now. Write and exercise. It’s a good combination and I think it’ll lead me to a more fulfilling place in terms of my desires. Now, mind you, I won’t be writing a blog piece every weekday. There is only so much I can write about without focusing more on reporting on things. Yet, there are pieces of flash fiction I could write every other morning, posts to write over at TDC, and projects tied into my game creation work. There’s always something to work on available, so I frankly don’t have a viable excuse to not do something creative each morning.

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Welcome to 2010, the year we get our shit together. At least, that seems to be the overall view many people have been presenting over the last few weeks. It’s a common thread that with the change of the Gregorian Calendar we like to set new goals, new ideals, and new resolutions for the coming 365 days. Most won’t make it, but we at least put that initial effort out there. The fact it’s also considered by many to be a new decade also helps convince us that we need to have this change of pace.

(Just a quick aside at December 31^st, 2009, at midnight, the second it became 0:00:00 am, it’s 2010 exactly and the end of the decade. The microsecond it becomes 0:00:00:01 am, it’s now the second decade of the year. To those who use the “We count to 10” argument, you’re right, at exactly 2010, it’s still the first decade of the century, but a second later, it’s not. 10.00001 isn’t part of 10.)

I’m no different. There are a few ideal things I’ve got planned for the coming months. My biggest bit is that I’m focused on sharing a piece of flash fiction weekly on my website. Admittedly, I’ve already fubbed this last week so to make up for it I’m sharing three pieces this week. One story has already posted, a set of three “One-Hundred Word Stories” have already been written for Wednesday. I just need to write one for Friday. Next week I’ll be back at the once a week schedule.

Going forth with the idea of resolutions, what have you been considering for this year/decade? Have big plans that are unique to you or going with some of the classics like “lose weight?” Always interested to hear from you all.

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