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Almost a month ago I wrote about the need for a Novel Blueprint; I was frustrated with my lack of success at just starting my book without having done much in the way of planning or research. Well, I’ve done some reading, made some notes, and I thought I was on track at getting this thing started. And then I made a mistake that I wonder if any real authors have; I went back and opened my folder of story ideas and false starts and read the whole lot.

While I did this, I realised that the story I was currently working on just wasn’t as good as I thought it was. It just didn’t capture me the way that one of my ideas that I had previously discarded did. And so I was left pondering, do I shelve this current project and return to my old premise, or do I forge ahead, with the constant buzzing in the back of my head that I’m writing the wrong story?

I wonder how established authors deal with having more than one story idea in their head at once. Do they write more than one book at once? Do they flip a coin to decide which to write first and then continue making notes for the other when thoughts occur to them? I wonder….

I figure that’s what I’ll do. I’m going to write the one story, and then if any ideas present themselves for the other, I’ll just add them to the growing notes. Then, hopefully when I’m finished book one (how long have I been trying to write a book now?) I’ll have amassed enough material to start book two right away. Yes, I live in a place of high hopes and few realised expectations.

I was talking to Carolyn the other day, and she pointed out the obvious; unless I stop talking about all these different ideas and just settle down and write one of them, I will never see this dream realised. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to just do that. I suppose I’ve never believed enough in myself or my ideas to sit down and write; or my ideas have not provided me with the inspiration to make writing fun, it just seems like a chore.

So I have finally made my decision. The story I’m going to write I will refer to under the working title of Song of the Seraphim. I’m not sure if that will be the final title. In fact, at this point I’m sure it won’t be, but I’ve always thought that would make a cool title, so I’m using it for now. I’m hoping as the process goes, I’ll find the true title.

In the meantime, so the work of the past has not been completely for not, I’m using some of the research I did for my previous idea in SotS. In fact, one of the reasons I abandoned SotS in the first place was that I couldn’t come up with a compelling villain. Well, my research for my previous story (Which was under the working title Ashdale) has provided me with one. So, that’s a big hole filled. I also liked the name of my main protagonist, so I’m going to use it in SotS, I’ll just have to find a new one if I ever decide to write Ashdale.

So, where to start? Well, I have some ideas plotted out for the start of the book, so that should hopefully get me underway. Then I think instead of trying to plot everything ahead of time, I’m going to let the story take me along, and show me where it wants to go. While planning ahead is a great pursuit, and probably works really well, right now it’s just something I’m using as an excuse to not get any real writing done.

I’ll update as I go along….

Several months ago, I created a Twitter account. I admit that I did it during a phase where I felt compelled to sign up for everything I thought might promote this here website. I suppose that drive came from an insane idea I had that by putting links for this site in numerous places, I might

a) Drive more traffic to the site

b) Improve my Google Pagerank

c) Make mountains of money from Google Adwords and Paid to Post programs

Well, I no longer do Paid for Post (as I stated back in May) and when I started using the new layout, I decided to fore-go the Google Adwords (no one was clicking them anyway), so all that linking was redundant.

According to my pagerank counter, I don’t get shit in terms of traffic each week either, so that was a huge bust.

And last but not least, my Google pagerank currently sits at 0, so that was about as big a bust as could be!

Now, this has been a long winded-round-a-bout way of getting to me being on Twitter. I never did use it until I convinced Carolyn that it might be a good networking tool; once I saw how much she was using it, I decided to join the fun.

One of my watches is Writer’s Digest. They’ve got a great mag, some really useful online content, and provide some great insight into the craft of writing. So they just posted a few tweets that I had to share.

The first is a cool little idea that could provide you with some much needed inspiration during those dry periods of creativity. It is to type a few words into Google and see the results that the autocomplete suggests. I’ll let them tell it in their own words, go check out How to Write a Novel Using Google’s Autocomplete.

Secondly, is a great list that might entice you to Twitter (if you want to be a writer). Meryl K. Evans (@merylkevans) wrote a great article called 50+ Writer Uses For Twitter. This one got me pretty psyched about using Twitter, and I added her to my following list.

I suppose it’s for links like these, and hopefully a whole bunch of others from Meryl’s list, that I’m trying to increase my Twitter presence. If you feel so inclined, you can Follow me on Twitter (@Lousypoet).

It takes me an inordinate amount of time to work my way through magazines. While I can digest an engaging book within a day or two, it usually takes me several sit-downs to manuevre my way through a magazine. Such was the case with the edition of Writer’s Digest that I picked up several weeks ago (I think it was brand new on the shelf at the time and it say to only display to June 19th, so I guess there’s a new one out now…).

One of the articles I just read Tuesday night, in the wee, quiet hours at work, was about developing a platform. To over-simplify the point of the article, it’s about getting noticed. One of the sections listed a couple of writer websites to check out, in order to demonstrate the author of the articlel’s point. This, I know it seems a long time getting to the point, led me to the website of author Allison Winn Scotch. Now I admit, I know nothing of her writing; I don’t know if I would be even the least bit tempted to sit and read one of her books. Her blog, however, had some immediately useful insight.

Perhaps one the most daunting aspects of being a writer is sending out queries to an agent. To help with this, Allison has written a great article on her blog about Querying Dos and Don’ts.

If you find yourself at that stage in your writing career, do yourself a favour and check it out.

So I weighed in on Wednesday. In the two week period, I lost 10lbs on Dr. Poon’s diet. And to be honest, with the number of times I strayed, I might have done even better. Still, 5lbs per week is pretty sweet!

The doctor said we should stay on phase one for at least two more weeks. This is fine by me, cause I’m really finding this diet is enjoyable. And the thought of losing another 10+ pounds by my birthday sounds down right fantastic! That would put me at 229 lbs, about 35 pounds away from my target.

Eating this way has been very eye opening. I never truly appreciated how the food that was going into my body was affecting me. Truthfully, it was nothing for me to eat McDonalds on a weekly, if not several times weekly, basis. Now, I wouldn’t touch that stuff unless I had no other choice. In fact, I’d rather deal with a growling stomach than eat McDonalds. Who knew that the body would accomplish such a quick about-face?

For me, the Dr. Poon diet is the way to go. If I were counting calories or points, I would still eat the same crap, I just would starve myself to do so while staying within my point allowance. By being told what to eat, and what not, to eat, I am clearly changing not just my weight, but the health of my body as well.

So my diet journey continues. I am looking forward to seeing how I do on July 7th (our next appointment).

Oh, BTW, Carolyn lost 12 pounds! Once again, great results!

In Case of Landshark T-Shirt Design

Here’s another great new shirt. We based this one on a sign at a hotel we stayed at. It was a standard In Case of Fire Use Stairs sign, but the flames had all broken off except one, which looked oddly like a shark fin. Between Carolyn and I we came up with this handy new sign to help survive Landshark attacks while on upper floors; ’cause we all know those land sharks are pretty slow on stairs!

Your Evil Is Showing T-Shirt Design

So I just created a new T-Shirt design. It’s based on something a friend of mine posted as a Facebook update, and I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind. Something cute to wear! I’m going to try and create a more male friendly design as well!

Remember to check out my Zazzle store at http://www.zazzle.com/lousypoet.

So I decided not to go to the grocery store last night. Instead, I found some chicken breasts in the freezer, and decided to barbeque. So, I barbequed 2 breasts, then I cut them up. One of the breasts, I mixed with some Shiritake noodles and spices for a quick little sudo stir fry. The other I put some chili lime splash on and mixed with some mixed greens. Both meals were really good, and I felt quite spiffy being all self sufficient.

However, I once again felt pretty drained. I’m wondering if it’s because I’ve spent the last 3 years having really big, heavy meals and then not eating too much throughout the night. I guess monkeying with my system has some down sides. But I still feel better, and I’m glad I didn’t cheat.

One thing I’ve noticed though, is I think I need to work on getting more fibre. I’m finding my stomach got really queesy eating just the chicken, but felt a lot better after I ate one of the high fibre cookies we’re allowed. I’ll have to work towards a fix.

We just got back from the Low Carb Grocery store. We’ve got lots of goodies we’re going to try, so hopefully this last remaining week of phase 1 won’t seem as painful.

So I did feel pretty rough last night. Mind you, Carolyn, the boys and I had spent the day at the beach and I only crammed about 2 hours of good sleep in.

While two hours might have gotten me through the night, the kids had me out of bed at 6:00am in the morning, and I had stayed up until 1:00am working on Carolyn’s website. So I think I was over tired. I got a solid 6 hours of sleep during the day today, so we’ll see how my night shapes up tonight. It’s going to be a little rough. We’ve worked through most of the food we had prepared and Carolyn’s left the house with the kids to go to a Doctor’s appointment in Brampton. This means I’m sitting here with $20 in my pocket and nothing readily available for dinner. Do I try and make something, or trust myself to go to the grocery store and try and buy something I can eat? Admittedly, the temptation to just go through a drive-thru is burning at my insides, but I’m doing my best to quash the desire. I swore I would not cheat again for the remainder of this two week phase. It’s hard when you work this damned shift work. You have to turn your nights into days and vice-versa and then on the flip of a coin switch them back again. Not the easiest when you’re trying to stick to a rigid diet regime. Last night was tortuous, the crew at work ordered from a BBQ place that I really enjoy. The smell was damn near overwhelming. I had told them all I was on a diet and I couldn’t eat any of it, but that didn’t stop some from poking a bit of fun and offering it to me. But I was strong. God help me, I was strong.

So I need to wrap this up and figure out what the hell I’m going to take for food tonight. There’s still some of the soup that we’re allowed to eat, but after three days of it, I’m pretty sick of the stuff. I’ll let you know tomorrow how well (or bad) I did.

So on Sunday I cheated.

I’d been really good with the diet for several days, and I admit, I was craving french fries like nobody’s business. So on Sunday, we headed out for a trip to Markham. Ironically, it was to visit a low carb grocery store to pick up food that we’re allowed on the diet. Now, we didn’t plan things very well. We left just before lunch, so neither the kids nor ourselves had eaten anything. By the time we were finished at the grocery store, we were starved. We ended up at a chip wagon and I got an order of fries and a hot dog. This has often been one of my favourite meals.

I started eating, and I won’t lie, it was heavenly! Every bite felt as though I was a starving man sitting down at my first buffet. But then a shocking reality crashed down on me. I felt horrible. Not guilt, an actual physical sense of sluggishness, bloating, and discomfort. I suddenly realised that I had been feeding myself meals like that virtually every day! It suddenly made such perfect sense to me as to why I have become so fat! Needless to say, this cheat renewed my resolve. I haven’t been tempted to cheat at all within the past two days, and I have to admit, I did notice a huge energy change at work. Usually around 3pm, I’m ready for a nap. But the past two days, I never once had that dragged down feeling. I’m really looking forward to tonight to see if there’s any change in how I feel during a night shift. I’m hoping so, ’cause I’m no fan of the crappy, sluggish feeling I get in the wee hours of the morning. I’ll let you know.

So in all, I see the diet as a positive thing. I think I’ve lost a little weight, but our scale seems to be a bit on the unreliable side. We’ll know for sure when I get weighed in on June 24th.

So Funimation films have completed their english dub of the first of the Evangelion movies (the re-release movies that is).  And to celebrate they’re putting the film out in a limited theatrical release!  What has me hyped about this is that there is actually a pretty wide release here in Canada!

On September 30th, numerous cities across Canada will be showing this film on their screens!  Funimation’s website has the details on where the film will show.  I actually have several sites that are near to me, so I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to check this out.  I don’t know if I’ll manage to convince Carolyn to go, she’s not that big on mecha anime, but Evangelion was one of the first series we watched together, and she certainly didn’t dissaude my obsession with the series, so maybe for old time’s sake

Anyway, the dates in the US start in July.  If you can go, do so, cause the more successful events like this are, the more we might see similar events in the future.