My Writing Journey

Hello, writers!

I want to open up this blog with some information about myself so you can decide if I’m someone you want to listen to or not. After all, if you don’t know me then how can you tell if my opinions and thoughts are even worth listening to?

I introduced myself in the last post, so I’d like to take this one to tell you a bit of my background. I’m 28 years old. I’ve been writing fiction since I was in middle school, so around a decade and a half or so. But honestly, I spent a lot of that time not really practicing or researching how to become a better writer because I never thought it was something I could achieve. I’ve worked in marketing, then in an automotive factory, then went back to college for a while, and now I make yoyo strings and paracord accessories on my website, badwolfeco.com.

A few years ago, probably around 2017, I started getting more interested in writing again. I had spent many years just coasting through life, not sure what I wanted to do with my time on this earth, but I knew I wanted to do something more than just sales. I spent a lot of that time listening to podcasts about writing, including She’s Novel (now Well-Storied.) by Kristen Kieffer and I Should be Writing by Mur Lafferty. These fantastic ladies talked about writing in a way that I had never considered it before: rather than building a world through the course of one’s lifetime like Tolkien, or being struck by a muse and furiously cranking out the next American Classic, these podcasts instead spoke about writing as a process. A goal to work toward. And in de-mythologizing the art of fiction, they also made it feel attainable.

Since then, I’ve been working to become an author myself. Sure, it would be awesome if I can someday publish my work, and I have long-term goals and stories I’d like to get out into the world. But first, I need to actually write. And that’s been the hardest part for me. I read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts and videos about writing, but for a long time it was still just a pipe-dream, something I’d get around to eventually, someday.

Then National Novel Writing Month 2020 happened.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve built up a shop starting on Etsy, then moving over to my own website earlier this year, and that’s been my main job. It’s awesome having flexible hours, being my own boss, all that jazz. So when COVID-19 hit the USA like a Mack truck at highway speeds, it honestly didn’t mess with me too much. I was already a homebody, working from home, spending a lot of time with my dogs and my thoughts and the internet. Suddenly I was forced to stay home more, and really all that changed was that now my wife was working from home with me. Yay!

So when November 2020 rolled around, I was ready to rock. For those who may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (shorted to NaNoWriMo), which is a challenge to write 40,000 words in one month. I had attempted NaNoWriMo twice before, and failed each time. But 2020 was different: now I worked from home, so I could make time to write a lot easier than in previous years, and I knew what it would take to force myself to do it. I made a meal plan for the month of November so I didn’t waste time figuring out what to make for dinner. I set daily word goals on a calendar, adjusted to account for days I thought I would write less and giving myself a few break days in case I fell behind or needed time off. I set rewards for myself at certain intervals, and I told myself that if I succeeded, I would buy myself a new yoyo as a reward to commemorate the occasion. All those tricks worked, and in just under a month, the day before Thanksgiving, I hit my 40,000 word goal.

I had proved to myself that I had the capacity to write. I could begin with nothing and create 40,000 words worth of story. Of course, I like science fiction and epic fantasy, which tend to be more like 100,000+ words per novel, but at least it was a big start.

Now here I am nearly a year later, and NaNoWriMo 2021 is just around the corner. So I wanted to start this blog for two reasons:

1) To help anyone else like me who wants to write but struggles with actually getting it done.

2) To have a record for myself of the things I’m learning so I can reference this when I need help.

I’ll be blogging about everything from equipment I find useful, to writing tips, how to beat writers’ block, and worldbuilding. Basically if it has to do with writing, you can bet I’ll have a blog about it at some point.

I’ve started blogs or challenges in the past, but I’ve always failed because they’ve been just that: challenges. I don’t really do well with goals that are just “post every X days because I said so.” I need rewards, or at least it needs to be something I’m passionate about, which is something I’ve learned about myself as I’m learning to become a writer. Fortunately, this blog is something I’m passionate about because it’s not just a challenge for the sake of challenge: this is my notebook of things I learn, laid bare before the world so anyone else might learn from them too.

In the next post I’ll stop jabbering about myself and start getting the nuts-and-bolts of writing tips and techniques. Thanks for sticking with it if you’ve read this far, and I promise future posts will be far less rambling.

Until then, have a great day!

- Michael Wolfe Price