Small Accomplishment

Sorry I haven't posted anything lately--I got caught up in the mess of the last weeks of class and finals. There was a bit of a mess as to me trying to figure out what finals I actually had to take, and how and when I was supposed to get home. I'm on break now, though, and have been enjoying it by sleeping whenever I feel like it.

I'm still fairly caught up on a block on the novel--the one that it's my goal to finish by the end of next summer--but I've had an idea for another story and at the moment I'm rolling strong on my short stories. I finished one on Monday titled "Be Good", and now I've moved onto working on another two that will tie into a longer tale along with "Be Good". I've found that with shorter tales, once I've figured out how to start it, if I write the ending before anything else I have a relatively easy time working through the rest of it.

I hope that I can get these non-novel-length stories finished and get another anthology out sometime around the middle of next year. I plan on including poetry in addition to short stories in this one, and this one should have more variety in it than Odds and Ends does.

If I don't update again for a while, it's likely because I've lost myself in the bliss of break. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, have a beautiful winter, best of luck, and have a great 2015 once that rolls around.

Tschüs!

A Beautiful Amount of No Progress

This isn't much of an update; sorry about that. As I thought might happen, I ended up not writing at all during my time off. I relaxed, had some fun, made some stuff, and I did have a few ideas for potential future story-things, but I didn't do any work on any of the things I've been trying to finish.

I think my next few weeks should be a little more open for me, but the problem is while I'll have more time to write, I have Christmas gifts I need to work on putting together. If I get going on those, though, they--hopefully--shouldn't take me long to finish.

Tschüs!

Distractions, Distractions

During the week, I was fighting every day to make it through, and the way Friday went made me want to rest my head on my desk and not move for the next year or two, but I got over that bad day. A little. I got over it enough to do some writing.

I've made a small amount of progress on the novel that I've been working on due to its promise to be something I can actually finish. I have the entire plot figured out, so now it's become only a matter of me being in the right mindset to be able to get good amounts of work done on it. I'm heading home for a week this Friday, which either means I'll be in a relaxed enough situation for my mind to kick back into creative gear or I'll completely disregard writing in favor of doing something purely for the purpose of relaxing.

On the other hand, my mind is currently caught up in a set of short stories I plan to finish at some point, which I would love to be able to finish in order to add them to the second compilation I'm trying to put together. The problem here is that I have four short stories that all contribute to the slightly longer short story that my brain wants me to be working on--but I can't really work on it until I've gotten the details ironed out in the four stories, and if I do finish and publish this set of stories, I want to put them out all at the same time so people can follow along the path I intended for them to be read when first imagining them. While this is not my first attempt at trying to tie different stories in with each other, this is the first one that seems like it will work out and get published, and it has me all excited. I always love it when authors reference things that are occurring in the same universe but different books, and I've always wanted to do something similar myself.

In a perfect world, I'd like to have finished writing another book by the end of next May, or at least next July. Whether that will happen or not depends on a whole slew of things, some of which are entirely out of my control, so we'll just have to see what turns out.

Tschüs!

Progress! Sort of

My goal this weekend was to start and finish a short story in order to get the idea cleared out of my mind, and the mission was accomplished. Often when I'm working on stories, I'll get ideas for all sorts of other, completely unrelated plots and characters--some of which end up being fruitful while others are destined to simply clutter my documents folder--and if I have an idea that I really like, it can lead to a lot of distraction from the main project I'm trying to finish. That's the issue I've been having this past week.

However, despite all of that, I have made progress on the story that is at the top of my priorities list to finish. It's still nowhere near being done, but I have moved it forward somewhat, and any victory, however small, is still a victory.

I'm currently in the middle of trying to balance my time between a lot of things (a.k.a. classes and tests), and those things are causing me so much stress that even when I have downtime, I don't want to do anything with it. I feel an utter lack of motivation. I've got twelve days and three tests standing between me and going home for a week, and it's all I can do right now to not just stare at the wall in my free time, so I see this weekend having been quite an accomplishment. What makes me sad is when I realize how sometimes I used to write every spare waking moment. I'm just so tired right now.

I'm doing my best to get in a post once a week, whether or not I have a lot to say. Most of them are probably going to be writing updates in a similar style to this one, though if I have anything exceedingly exciting happen to me, I might share that with you guys.

Tschüs!

Past the Block

I got over my writer's block. Of course I would, given that I had just recently posted about it.

Other than that, there aren't many new developments on my end. I've begun work again on the new story that's taken up most of my literary attention. It'll probably come out as a novel with all of the things that I want to work into it, but if it somehow manages to fall short then it'll end up being thrown in with some short stories and published that way. The story itself is a romance--it has been a while since I've actively written one of those, or at least it feels like a while--with dashes of light fantasy throughout. It's still early enough in the plot that I don't actually love the characters yet, as they're still a little stiff with each other and what usually makes me like characters is they way they interact with each other.

That's really all there is right now. Happy late Halloween, and I hope this starts a good November for you.

Tschüs.

Block

I am in a fairly deep writing rut that has been going on for two months or so--a.k.a. after I finished writing my sixth book, which was the goal of my summer. Since then I had a small burst of inspiration that caused me to begin work on a new idea for a novel and stole my attention away from my attempts to finish off a few short stories that are half-finished. I managed to write the ending to one of said short stories, but not the middle connecting chunk, which is, admittedly, a bit of a  problem. My main issue, however, besides not being able to come up with the information necessary for me to move my stories along their plots, is that I simply find it near impossible to be productive when I have free time--which is weekends ninety percent of the time. There is something about living on campus--along with campus itself--that causes me to have an incredible amount of difficulty in performing non-necessary activities. Most of the time I can study and do things for class without much difficulty, but when I try to get other things done, such as reading, writing, or cleaning, I don't have the will or energy or attention span to complete them. I end up wasting my time on other pointless things. There are times when I sincerely want to write, have the document up and my environment set up as I normally would for writing, but can't seem to get going on the part of the story that I need to be working on. I have been able to write out parts of later scenes, but currently can't move the main part of the story forward.

I hope to be able to get past this soon, and am planning on putted concentrated effort into working through it and making progress on some literary piece, whatever it may be. Hopefully I will have something more interest to post about for you next week.

Tschüs.

My Process

A lot of writers get asked about their writing process, which I think can potentially be helpful to people who write or want to write but haven't quite been able to figure out how to go about it. I figured I would go ahead and share with you how writing works for me.

Inspiration can come from nearly anywhere for me, but once I've got enough of an idea of what a story is going to be, things usually follow roughly the same pattern. At some point I spend an hour or two picking out names for the main characters and then move on to writing descriptions of these and other characters. Normally these descriptions are rough notes or endless lists of things separated by commas and full of misspellings. What is also normal for me is to alter or add on to these notes as ideas come to me about the characters while I am working on writing the story.

Typically I write out rough ideas of what I want the story to be about or how I want the plot to develop, and depending on how much inspiration I have, I might write out semi-detailed descriptions for scenes or dialogue that I want to show up at some point in the story. Often, due to characters or plot developing in different directions than I had originally intended or foreseen, it is not possible to work all of these notes into the story.

Once I feel I have enough of a rough idea of what I want and when I feel driven to work on that particular story, I start writing. I just start from the beginning and go. I keep a running tab of notes at the bottom of the document I am writing in so I can scroll down and check things as needed. Inevitably I spend an hour or so putting my notes in chronological order--and this is about as close as I get to actually outlining the plot. I never outline the plot. I know that a lot of people say that it is really helpful to do so, but I have tried it once or twice, didn't get much out of it, and decided to keep doing as I had done before.

There really isn't more to it than that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Tschüs!

A Decidedly Unremarkable Beginning

Welcome, one and all, to my new writer's blog--a blog that shall, in theory, be devoted to my literary endeavors. 

My first order of business is simply to state that my name is Skye Tackkett, and I write poetry and prose. At the time of this post I have six self-published books, five of which are novels of varying lengths and the other of which is a novella and three short stories.

I write fiction that, generally speaking, I find difficult to categorize. Some of my stories fall into the genre of paranormal, others potentially verge on some form of fantasy, other lean towards science-fiction, and yet others end up getting referred to simply as general fiction.

The final piece of my agenda is to give a brief history my experience as an author. I first starting writing in middle school solely out of a desire to bring to life a character, or rather a concept, that was floating around my head. After one failed attempt with a story that I have to admit was going nowhere very quickly, I wrote a book. Well, I started writing the book in middle school and finished it in my first year of high school, and that same year my parents helped me self-publish it. Writing a novel is an experience, to say the least.

During the writing of this first novel, I had ideas for other stories, some of which I worked on, others whose fate was to lay in the corners of my computer collecting dust. The first book was a gateway into the world of writing, and seeing the thing I had written in physical book form only drove me to keep writing. I wanted to take all the ideas in my head, all of the things that I wanted to read about but which I could never find in books, and put them on a page. Essentially, that's what I did, and what I continue to do.

That's it for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I put up a link where my books can be found.