Morning Owls - Writing In The A.M.

Recently, I've had some trouble keeping up with my daily writing schedule. I usually leave my writing to the last minute, so that I'm trying to be creative and do something I enjoy when I'm exhausted and spent. It's like spending a day at the beach with a bad hangover.

In addition, I'm not a morning person, and the habit of staying up late trying to write just makes it worse. I'm lucky that my current job allows me to roll out of bed around 8:30 to make it to work by 9. However, I often find myself pushing the limits, trying to stay safely ensconced in my bed for just a few minutes longer. And it's not just me; many creative people I've met share this tendency towards loving the night.

Luckily, I just discovered a new goal that I hope will help alleviate both of these issues: write first thing in the morning! This might sound like crazy talk, given that I already push the limits of how long I can stay at home before leaving for work, but just bear with me for a moment. Before I started writing first thing in the morning, my train of thought upon waking would look something like this:

Ugh. Morning again. Stupid dog kept me up last night. So tired. What do I have to do today? Let's see, get up, shower, then go to work. I've got some people to email, then I have to call people and try and sell them a product they're not interested in. I wonder if the software manual needs updating? I wonder if this is really the kind of work I should be doing at this time in my life? Maybe I'll just stay in bed today.

After I started writing first thing in the morning, my thoughts changed to this:

Morning again. Stupid... Oh yeah, gotta turn on my laptop and write something. But what? Let's see, Elish just ran into Eydie the Unbearable, and she's trying to figure out if the girl is the Wise One she's looking for. Hey! Wouldn't it be interesting if I had those evil women find her at Eydie's house, and then there'd be a chase? That would definitely spice things up.

Writing excites to me. I love it; I enjoy it. It's so much nicer to wake up to something you enjoy than to something you dread. Until I can support myself as an author, I have to stick with my day job, and this helps me do that without going crazy.

Now the only hard part is putting away the laptop so I won't be (too) late for work...

More Concept Art

Here's another view of Elish by Dino. This one has more of an anime flavor to it. I like what he's done with the hat; the inhabitants of Gre, aka Grelings, are quite fond of unusual hats. Also drawn using the super nifty Copic Markers.

Concept Art for The Hidden Land of Gre

Thanks to emerging artist and industrial designer Konstantinos Tsiopanos, aka Dino, for agreeing to work on some concept art for The Hidden Land of Gre! I have to say, it makes a huge difference seeing some of my concepts come to life like this. It makes the character seem even more real to me than she did before (this is Elish, by the way.) I do have some small skill with a pen myself, but Dino is simply amazing. And he even used his brand new Copic Markers to draw this, which makes it even more special.




Check out more of his work at KDT Design.

About Gre

My fifteen minutes a day is paying off! I'm almost to 13,000 words already. Which means that, if 50,000 words a novel makes, I'm more than 1/5 of the way there!

Since The Hidden Land of Gre started me on my current adventure, I thought I'd put a little synopsis here to whet your appetites (also available on my website ).

The Hidden Land of Gre is set in Gre, a world between the worlds of Day (aka Lume) and Night (aka Nock). Long ago, enemies of the Grelings stole the source of Greling power. In return for not destroying the source, the enemies demanded the right to all male Greling children, whom they enslaved. To preserve their race, the Grelings began a tradition of kidnapping human boys from Lume.When the book starts, the tradition has fallen out of favor because the humans have grown fearful and destructive of the dim places that overlap with Gre into which their children disappear. A Greling named Elish defiantly resurrects the tradition by catching Cade when he ventures alone into the forest near his school, and thus their adventures begin...

Stay posted for more about The Hidden Land of Gre!