Hello everyone.

It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I don’t have a particularly good reason, or excuse, as to why. I do have a day job at which I am full-time and often full-time jobs drain whatever energy people have. The same is true for me.

Its been over two years since I have posted anything. During that time, I have not been writing. Not one word. I do not have a magnum opus waiting in the wings to publish and unleash upon the world. Simply, I have been distracted.

Within the past week or so, my grandfather passed away from Covid-19. Pawpaw, as his grandchildren called him, was a loving, charitable, funny, and supportive man. He was a man of many hobbies: sailing, railroad models, and even Flight Simulator. He was also a writer. 

When I was younger, I would often send him stories for him to read. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I needed to grow. He would offer me feedback, all of it taken to heart, and I tried to improve my writing skills. Over time he gave me sage advice (as he did with any number of topics about life), he gave me books on creative writing, and he offered encouragement and motivation when I really needed it. 

But we buried him yesterday, and he can’t be here anymore to offer more advice, feedback, or encouragement. I can’t send him anymore stories. And as I sit here and mourn his death, I feel drawn to start writing again. Not for money or fame, but just for me. For him. 

Thanks for reading.

My readers might have noticed that I have been absent from my blog for about a month. I don’t have a particularly good reason for that. Maybe I’m just burned out from things going on in life and I needed a break to just chill.

I’m slowly getting back into things. I’m back to writing about 250 words everyday or couple of days for my newest short story. However, I do have some problems with it and I need to work on it a lot more.

Furthermore, I have been looking at getting a new computer. My down-arrow key does not work whatsoever. Also, my computer is having some performance issues and I need to update it constantly. I’m hoping to get a new computer soon. This doesn’t have a significant impact on my writing itself, but I am thinking ahead.

A short blog post today to just remind people I’m still here, still writing, and still continuing my mission to be a successful writer. I just needed a month off or so to refocus.

Thanks.

You might have noticed I haven’t blogged in a couple of days. When I said I was back to my writing career, I meant it. I’m serious about it now.

But if you remember my last post about stress relief, I said writing was perhaps my favorite way to relax. But I’ve had a particularly stressful couple of weeks in my personal life. Sometimes you need to step back and chill out.

I don’t want to become the writer who makes excuses when I don’t write. I like writing, but I will probably take a day off a week or so to focus on other things.

Also, I said I would blog everyday or mostly everyday. Due to the stresses going on in my personal life right now, I will probably reduce my blogging to a couple of times a week. I can use that extra time to focus on the short story I’m currently writing.

Until next time.

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I don’t know about you guys, but I have had a pretty stressful week. We all have different ways of coping with stress in our lives. I wish stress didn’t exist, but that just ain’t happening.

Over this past week, I have resorted to writing to relieve this stress. I don’t keep a daily diary or anything, but when I write I am focused on something positive. I’m refining my skills as a writer this way, even though I might not want to write at that particular moment.

I can put all of my feelings of frustration and sadness into my writing and transform in that process. I feel better after I write. I might not write very much on a daily basis. But when I do, the fact that I am sitting down at my computer and typing something out, I am rewarding myself after a long day, or week, or whatever.

It gets your mind off of what is happening in your life. I can sometimes really sink myself into my imagination. Exercising my imagination through my writing is probably my favorite coping mechanism.

How do you deal with your stress? Let me know in the comments below!

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Hello everyone!

Today I will be blogging about different story lengths.

One of the first dilemmas writers face when they begin working on their fiction is deciding whether or not they intend to write a novel or a short story. There are pros and cons to both, but fiction writers tend to choose the medium in which they feel comfortable. They want the length to feel adequate enough to show the plot and character progression in the best way possible.

So which form of fiction do I prefer? While I like to think I’m a novelist, I am definitely a short story writer. Four Firewoods (available on Amazon here) was 4400 words long or so. That is a pretty sizable short story for this day and age, but it isn’t anywhere close to novel territory.

At the moment, I feel incapable of writing a novel. That isn’t my expression of self-pity; it’s the truth. Whenever I wrote research papers in college, I struggled to go the required page requirement simply because I got to the damn point on the first page. I take the same approach when writing fiction. It is difficult for me to sink all of the effort and time into writing a novel when I can resolve the central conflict in less than 5,000 words.

Maybe there’ll be a day when I am able to write a novel, But today isn’t the day!

Until next time.

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Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 2 of my Writer’s Restart.

Today, I will be talking briefly about the different writing styles I try to use.

When I started writing seriously while I was in college, I kind of went against the grain of “serious” literary writing. I often wrote quirky and offbeat stories because I am a quirky, offbeat kind of guy. I even had a professor say that I was the one person in the class that could write in that manner with success. That claim made me a bit uncomfortable, since I knew many people in the class wrote humorous stories.

Later on in college, I had a professor who specialized in writing short stories. He fancied himself a serious literary writer (and he was), but he also said that students lacked the capability to write funny short stories. Then he challenged me to write in the literary genre.

Literary fiction is the slow, sometimes boring fiction that is taught in literature classes. It also happens to be published most often by reputable literary magazines and journals. Basically, in order to get published, I needed to write in this literary style.

Once I was out of college, I decided to give literary fiction a real shot. Getting published was my main goal in life. I wrote and self-published Four Firewoods more than a year after I graduated. But I still haven’t been published by a magazine or journal.

But I have to keep trying. I can write offbeat or serious stories, and I will strive for excellence in both. Right now, however, I’m working on literary fiction because it is a bigger challenge for me. It is how I grow as a writer.

Until next time.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu

Yesterday I announced my return to my struggling writing career. I outlined a couple reasons why I failed to follow through on my writing, one being the lack of discipline. I did not write everyday like I should have. But I am here to correct that.

Starting today, and hopefully continuing everyday until I am way too busy to continue, I will be publishing a blog post each day. I will write my thoughts on writing, on books I have read, movies seen, and whatever comes to mind. It is paramount for writers to write everyday, and this is but one step for me to continue in that direction.

Today’s post is basically an introduction to this series. And since it is my “Writer’s Restart,” I am basically starting from scratch. I can say I am working on a project that will be at least a short story, and perhaps a novella if keep with it. But I won’t reveal anything beyond that since I have decided to have a finished first draft before I start marketing and teasing my stories. That was something I failed to do in the past. It was an error I aim to correct.

I will be working on this story while continuing this blog series. I need to get used to writing again and to flex my prose fiction muscles as much as I can.

Thank you for the support. I hope I don’t let you down.

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Around this time last year, I published a post wherein I said I returned to writing. I had every intention of sticking with it, but real life got in the way. I found that I had shifted my priorities to the point where my writing became nonexistent.

I didn’t know what my problem was until very recently. I lost my writing discipline and my drive. I had the worst case of writer’s block known to humanity . But perhaps my biggest problem was my lack of accountability. I would tease what story ideas I had, marketing things that I had not even completed, and then disappear off the face of the earth. I lacked follow-through.

Recently, I learned that I needed to get serious about my career. I considered going to grad school, switching jobs, learning a trade, doing SOMETHING necessary for me to grow as a man. The thing is, perhaps the only skill I can be proud of is my writing. So now I’m back at it. I have to be back at it. And I need to excel at it.

So I’ve decided to become a serious writer. Novels, short stories, comic books, whatever it takes. I know I can do it.

To coincide with my writing restart, I have decided to start a Twitter page @martinrustwrite.

So please follow me on Twitter, I’m literally just getting started on it. In the next few weeks, I will be establishing a Patreon page for myself. So keep on the look out for that.

Until next time.

Hey everyone, sorry that I’ve been MIA for the last couple of months.

I wish I could say that I’ve been working on my World War One story, “The Green Cross,” during that time, but I haven’t. I’ve kind of let my enthusiasm for that story fizzle out. I feel a bit ashamed about that.

But recently I’ve been dealing with my job and really intense writer’s block, which meant that I barely worked, if at all, on any writing projects. Now I have some time on my hands and what better way to spend that time than to get back to writing!

I’m putting “The Green Cross” on hold for now, but I am working on a new, yet-untitled project that I’m excited for. It takes place in the same place as “Four Firewoods” (available here), the sleepy East Texas town of Langston.

Unlike “Four Firewoods”, the project I’m working on is more of a mystery-thriller than a traditional literary short story. I hope to finish the first draft of my story (and get a title for you) by the end of March.

Thanks,

Martin

Hey everyone,

Its been around 3 months since my last post. I wish I could say that I am hard at work on my World War I themed story “The Green Cross”, but I have been unable to find traction or a direction for the story. So, it appears that this story is delayed. Probably indefinitely.

In other news, it has been precisely one year since I self-published “Four Firewoods” on Amazon. “Four Firewoods” is a great read for the fall season, what with the autumn ambiance of the story in a sleepy east Texas town. So click here, and you can download the story to Kindle, or any Kindle apps you have on most devices (iOS, PC, etc.).

I’ll try to keep working on some of my other writing projects, but with my retail job gearing up for the Holiday season, I cannot promise much headway. I will keep you posted.

Thanks,
Martin