With a New Story Done, I Continue

The latest story I finished, In Queue, was posted last week on Monday. The amount of view it has received was phenomenal! As well as the amount of positive feedback has received was jaw-dropping for me. Such feedback just keeps fueling motivation to continue writing. I think I found my place in this world: Creative Writing. I may have gotten my Bachelor's in Game and Simulation Programming, and I do enjoy what I do for a living. However, it has become just another job for me. Working the Unity Game Engine has been giving me good experience that I could use to get another job in the near future working with indie game companies. In the end though, I'm a creative writer, I am absolutely in love with writing. I create these worlds, characters, and scenes that people enjoy reading.

Now that I have finished In Queue, I have moved onto my next story which is nearing completion by the end of tonight. Proofreading and editing will commence tomorrow afternoon during my lunch break. This brings me to my next topic: My grammar sucks. It is absolutely horrible. How am I bettering myself as a writer? I am taking a grammar class at USF to amend my grammatical mistakes. I never liked editing my own work because I am one of those stubborn people who feels when I finish writing that I'm done. This is why I love my last story because In Queue opened a door I kept lock. For the first time I sat down to proofread and edit my work. For nearly a decade and a half when I wrote papers for school I would never ever edit it. I blame my stubbornness for the grammatical mistakes of now. I want to better myself as a writer to garner more fan base among people.

Now that I am proofreading and editing my own work, I decided to go back to read my first real venture into writing. I read The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter which is my work of genius in my opinion. That is what I thought until I sat down to read it, and I could not get passed the first page. It was so horrible! I kept stumbling through sentences, running out of breath with run-ons, and noticed common splices. The first page alone was riddled with grammatical errors! No wonder people I knew did not want to read it. For those who pushed themselves to read it from beginning to end; I thank and apologize for doing so! For almost a year now I been trying to get someone to proofread and edit it for me. But The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter is quite honestly beyond editing. When I was editing In Queue, I was able to edit 20 pages within a few days. The Departing Tale... is a little over 70 pages, so there is no excuse for me to sit down and edit it myself. Honestly, I'm not going to bother editing, I'm going to sit down and rewrite the entire novella. Logically it makes more sense because of all the grammatical errors is just too much.

I'm going to end this blog with thanking you all for stopping by and reading my endeavors in writing. I implore anyone out there to go after what they are passionate about. Peace and Love.

PS Just one more thing to mention: two people have messaged me saying I have inspired them to start their own writing projects. Hearing that just made me feel all kinds confident because to inspire people to go after something is an amazing feeling!

My Continuing Endeavors

I am working as hard as ever to make something myself both career and hobby wise. In a previous post I had mentioned that I would follow the example of acclaimed author Stephen King. He read four hours a day and wrote in the other fours of the day, he easily wrote 3,000 words on average. Following that, I would read chapters/passages of a book after work and then write to meet a quota of a 1,000 words before going to bed. There have been days I meet the goal, some days I got beyond 1,000 words, some days were I am shy of a 1,000 words, and there some days I do not write at all. And that is okay because this is a new venture in my life I am now focusing on. Over time I will get better and better as I continue this focus on my serious hobby.

It's a Constant Inspiration

Exactly what it states, I have a constant inspiration to write now because I read so much now. Let me put it to you this way: my PlayStation 3 was recently fixed back in early July, and I have only turned on average about 3 hours during a work week and 8 hours on the weekend. What does that mean? It means I have no distraction nor a desire to play video games as much as I used to. I would rather read a book than play video games. Do not get me wrong I will turn the PS3 and play some downloaded games or 3D Dot Game Heroes but in the end I do more reading. When I do this leisure reading it helps give me an idea how I would write my own stories. At this very moment I am a little over 8,000 words in my new short story. I should be working on it now, but I want to update my blog because this is basically where my writing began.

Recent Reads

Under the suggestions of my good friend David J. Sushil, to read the books The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and On writing by Stephen King. Strunk's book I have thumbed through to get ideas of how I should word my sentences, paragraphs, etc. However, with Stephen King's book I cannot for the life of me put it down. I bought it on Friday (July 29, 2011) after I finished the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, which I finished around Monday or Tuesday (July 25 - 26, 2011). With this book On Writing by King is hands down a great read. I am only over a quarter way close to half way now through the book and I had started yesterday (July 30, 2011).

On Writing is such a page turner because it is part memoir depicting King's experience in writing and how his experiences influenced his writing. Then it is part a guide of how authors should write. Sushil is just like my father when it comes to Stephen King. They are huge fans of his work, and I, for one, never read his work until recently. My father had a large number of King's books and I remember growing up I would thumb through them, but I lacked the attention span to ever read them. Recalling my earliest memories to relate to my father, Louis Dieppa, I would watch movies based on Stephen King's work and I have always enjoyed them. The same day I started On Writing, I decided to call my father and talk to him about this book. As soon as I told my father I was reading a King book he went off talking about how much he enjoyed his work. The other week I asked my father to send me some of his Stephen King books, specifically The Dark Tower Series which I do not know is a good place to start, but I want to read them.

Reading the Stephen King book, I am noticing how much he and I relate as authors/writers. On Writing just really resonates with me in the way how King draws from his experiences with people and life in general that influences his writing style. Some of his habits I can relate to as well. I never had a drinking problem or a drug addiction, but there was a point I was addicted to playing video games for a while. Especially became addicted to playing an MMORPG by the name of Final Fantasy XI. I never wrote as a kid as King did, but I did have a very active imagination and I used to improvise stories when I was at school. Stephen King's book has really resonated with me and I am taking everything he says to heart. Love him or hate him, Stephen King knows how to write a book and capture a reader's attention.

Opinion Time

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I recently finished a book titled Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This was quite an interesting book and for the simple fact I purchased on a whim after reading the description of the book on Barnes and Noble's website. I bought it and downloaded it onto my Nook (loving that piece of technology). The book has a sense of quirkiness and eeriness surrounding its text. The book recently came out over a month ago and it is the author's first attempt at writing a novel. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Have to say the whole thing like A Tribe Called Quest) really captured my attention from the get go. It describes a boy named Jacob who heard these stories from his Grandfather about this home back in Wales of this children that were peculiar. One child had bees living in him, a girl that can levitate, a brother and sister that can lift more than their own weight, a girl who can create fire, and a boy who is invisible. These children were watched by a little bird who kept them safe from people that would not understand them.

Here comes criticism time, the book has a solid plot, but its story was pretty predictable. I pretty much knew the ending less than half way through the book. However, I really enjoyed the main character's interactions with the other characters such as his father, his psychologist, his mother, his grandfather, Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children. All of that was very solid writing. The characters were not mundane, but full of color (or life). Another place where I felt like faltered but I ended up forgiving it was when the main character fell in love with the female protagonist rather quickly. Like I said, I forgave it because the main character is 15 years old, and I remember falling in love too quickly with girls when I was his age (Holy shit that was 10 years ago....smh). Overall, if you have time and looking for an odd book to read, then I suggest you pick up Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

As always thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Peace and love! Be Good!

Best of Orlando Weekly

Recently I have received the honor of placing 3rd as Best Local Author in Best of Orlando 2011. For the past weekend I have been very much in disbelief, but I'm pretty damn elated as well as proud of myself. Even though it is 3rd I feel pretty damn proud of myself. At this moment, I want to go ahead and thank everyone who voted to get me to that place! THANK YOU EVERYONE! The two people that bested me were Jana Waring in 1st place and Bob Morris in 2nd place. I want to extend my congratulations to them. Interesting fact is this is the first time Orlando Weekly has done Best Local Author. Furthermore, the two people that best me were also published authors. As seeing I am an unpublished makes this an even more of an accomplishment to me. The feeling that I have garnered a pretty good fan base of people who want to read what the stories I write is simply fantastic.

What's next for Dieppa

I have taken my writing of fiction pretty serious, but after receiving this honor I am really going to take it more seriously. I am going to do a condensed version of how Stephen King does it, which means when I get home after a workout I will read passages from what I am currently and afterwords I will write. The daily goal to write about a 1,000 words at the end of the day. Still going to keep working on main career because that is logical to me, but writing is serious hobby for me at this point.

My readers have told me many times that I write such great and colorful characters as well as paint a picture with the narrative. What is the only problem? My grammar is pretty horrible. Something I have difficulty with and past editors have given up on trying to fix it up. Then again I been finding people I associate myself with to kind of fall through. I need to find an editor who can edit my novella The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. There is a lot of potential in that novel to be a fair success when it is released.

Little Opinion Here

I have recently purchased the Nook and I have to say it is hands down a fantastic purchase. I am getting a lot of reading done and it is such a convenience to have it around. First book I finished was John Dies at the End which was recommended to me by my Professor Sushil. The new book I am reading I will talk about later when I am further into it.


As always I want to thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Hopefully get more fiction out soon. OH! Thanks for reminding me you can read my works now at http://andrewcdieppa.pandamian.com/ And once again thank you all for your votes it was real confidence builder for me.

New Direction

It has been a while since I last posted any content on my blog, but I been really busy with work and finding a new place to move to for the last few months. I am now settled in Tampa, closer to where I work, so I have a lot of free time on my hands. Work at Technology Transfer Services (TTS) has been work. Developing in OpenSim is not an ideal development environment for someone that learned how to do game/simulation programming. On the lighter side we are slowly but surely migrating to something better; Unity Game Engine. Hopefully, things will get progressively better working at TTS.

Web Fiction

It has been made clear I enjoy writing a lot as seen through out my previous post. I especially enjoy writing fiction; as last year I wrote a novella for the National Novel Writing Month. I really want to participate in that event again this year. My one problem with the novella I wrote is the grammar and I want to get it edit, but I don't think I am the one for th job. I'm looking for someone to edit it on their free time for me while I can work on some other projects. One project I have in mind is posting fiction online. Recently I stumbled onto a website that gives people advice on being an author, but specifically on the web. In this one website called NovelR pointed me to another website called Pandamian which is meant to work as a blog but for online fiction. Via Pandamian a web author is able to have a place to post their written work as one whole web address and publish it to Amazon as well as other ebook stores. I would be stupid not to look into this and attempt to take full advantage of it. I have began posting on the website with a collection of short stories that come to my head and I dubbed the collected works as The Macabre Vaudeville of Franz K. Dieppa.

I have also taken it upon myself to set up an Author Page on Facebook to promote the website as well as me. This is the direction that I am being pointed in, and that is to be a fictional writer. I enjoy making up stories and telling them to people. The only thing to do is now focus my energy into making it happen

As always, thanks for reading and for following my blog. Enjoy yourself! Love and peace

Best of Orlando Weekly

Hello to all my readers out there please vote for me Andrew C. Dieppa as Best Writer/Author and Enigmatic Brain Mind as the Best Blog.

You must include your name and address along with a phone number and/or e-mail address where you can be reached. This is for verification only and the information won't be shared.
Everyone who correctly fills out a ballot is eligible to win two tickets to our super fabulous Best of Orlando party. (You have to be at least 21 to attend. We like to drink.)
You have to vote in at least 15 categories.
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Please and thank you! You guys make me awesome!

Diving Into Concert Photography: My Meeting with Jim Carchidi

This weekend starts as any other before it; Friday after work I'm back in Orlando having a drink and smoking cigars with my old boss Joe Adams from Adam Jones Productions. The time is 8:00pm EST sitting with me are my best friend Dillon and Joe's date Alex. Dillon has recently been taken under the wing of Ben Sawinski an artist and upcoming curator as well as a good friend of mine. Dillon, Joe, Alex, and I are sitting down around this table at Corona Cigar Bar smoking and having a drink (non-alcoholic for me) all conversing about what we are doing in our lives. Dillon spoke about how he happy he is working as a personal assistant for Benjamin. For the first time in a while I never heard such a passive voice of content tone in such a long while. I was happy for him as I was happy for Ben who needed someone to do some of his workload. I was happy for Ben who had found a very cool girl to have a relationship with named Kayla who is an artist as well. In the midst of our conversing a waitress who is pretty regular for me accidentally spills water on my arm and my mobile. She was quite embarrassed and I was a bit shocked from what occurred. I explained to her it is not a big deal that the water just spilled on my left arm and only on my phone and nothing else. My phone is still working, so thank G*d for that. However, the waitress explains to me she has been having an off week and not just having an off day due to a family member passing away the other week. I gave her my sympathies, but it felt like she was trying to make me look like a jerk in front of my friends.

At 9:23pm EST Dillon and I decided to make tracks to an event that was taking place at Taste Orlando featuring a photographer, belly dancing, and a burlesque show. How could I resist a temptation to see the works of a professional photographer and attractive women dancing, so off we went into the night. Arriving at Taste was a short drive and I noticed I was running on one bar of gas in my Toyota Yaris (The Yaris gets 29/36 MPG, and is now affordable at your nearest dealership). The first person I see is the artist Cake, but he was engaged in a conversation, so I let him be and not bother him. But there I see Ben, Kayla, Tracy, and John Snapp. I shook hands, hugged everyone, and then sat down with them to converse about our weeks. Funny story about Tracy Brown is I chaperoned her children during the The Muppet Art Show where they became fans of my little novella The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. I told my friends to give me a moment I was going to go inside and check out the set up with Dillon.

Entering Taste was a gentleman managing the podium taking entrance fees and donations for The American Cancer Society. I gave the man $10; $5 for the entrance and $5 for a donation. Entering through Taste and making our way down to the event section to see walls and walls of photographs of musicians during concerts. The sight of these photos were breathtaking! All these photographs were taken by a gentleman named Jim Carchidi. In the back of the room I see someone looking like King Diamond, but I recognize the woman as Anna who sold me the painting that Cake did of Morrigan from Darkstalkers (Vampire Chronicle in Japan). Anna gave me a hug whilst wrapping me in her cape. I asked her who took these fantastic photos and she pointed at a man wearing a snazzy ensemble. Anna introduced me to Jim Carchidi who took almost a decades worth of photographs of bands and musicians performing live. I told Jim Carchidi that I was very much blown away of how he captured each moment of these performers. Jim was humbled by my compliments and here is the part that got me; all he wanted to do is hear about me. I explained my back story to him of how I'm a simulation designer at an e-learning company, and I'm a writer as well. He then asked me about my book, and I explained it to him.

Later on in the night the performances began first starting with the belly dancers who moved their bodies to a very relaxing melody. I was in tranced by how they moved and coordinated themselves to the background music. After they finished my friends and I recessed outside to smoke cigarettes and joke around. During the conversation I brought up how I been looking for someone to edit my book for a price so I can then self publish the novella already on some online stores. Enter John Snapp who offered his services and would do it in one day. I gave him a number, shook hands, and verbally agreed he would edit The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. A man came out by the name of Matt (the husband of Anna who I also met earlier in the week when I picked up my Cake painting), informed us Grotesque Burlesque was about to perform, and we proceeded inside to watch the ladies perform. The women performed to such great tracks of music and baring their skin for the audience to see. Of course this was all tastefully done. I talked to the technical coordinator between the performances how I enjoyed the two acts, but I had not money to tip them. Katia was her name and she informed me I can also purchase them drinks which I was more than happy to oblige to. As her and I talked waiting for the drinks to come up we watched the next performance of two young ladies doing a silk performance. Once again I blown away. The night was fantastic filled with humor, friends, beautiful photographs, and pretty women. I could not ask for such a great night on Friday.

The Writing Technique of Andrew Dieppa

What Motivates Me to Write

I been ask how can I just sit down and just crank out a short story in such little time. The answer is quite simple I enjoy writing. I log onto Grooveshark, put on a playlist of music, light up some incense, and open up Microsoft Word. It does not matter what I end up writing, as long I write something by the end of the week. This may sound corny, but I feel like my friends and family are another element to my motivation of writing. This is because I like to weave them stories of my experiences, and my thoughts projected onto paper (word document). Everyday I wake up from in Sunnyville Florida my mind percolates many ideas that may or may not come to fruition.

Sometimes the people or the situations I write about are not just drawn from real life, but from the depths of my imagination. I am a very observant person and the world is my muse. For example the weekend nights of Downtown Orlando features a menagerie of characters. I'm talking about friends going out to celebrate, a woman with her friends on a bachelorette celebrations, and the Christians on the megaphones calling everyone sinners. Observing how these people act and interact with another always catches my attention.

Humble Beginnings

As far back as I can remember and according to my family I have always made up stories. When I was a child I would make up far fetched tales to entertain my family and friends. Even to this day I still make up stories and people can never determine if they are true or not. People end up calling me a liar, but I don't think I am a liar. My real life is boring, why not make up a story to make me sound interesting. I like to think of myself an Improvisational Story Teller. I recommend you try it sometime because it can increase your creativity.

The Inspiration

My inspiration just draws from pondering of several things: life, death, love, relationships, religion, existence, and social interactions. I like to feel these things should be the motivators of our daily lives. These elements occur several times in my head throughout a given day. Quite honestly, I fall in love with different women and I think about different ways I can die and a daily basis. When I see a woman, observe how she acts, how she articulates when she speaks; then what follows a love story I create in my head and see I can use it for a story down the line. When I think about death, I think about different ways of dying. I'm not talking about taking my own life, but how I would just die from an accident or being murdered. For example: I cross a street to run an errand during my lunch break at the Bank of America. I had enough time to make it ac across the street before the light changes but it changes green and a guy was speeding down the street but didn't see me because his view was blocked by a semi truck. The guy who struck me with his car was a 18 year old kid going to see his girlfriend to ask her to go see a movie this weekend, but now his life is ruined because he killed me with his carelessness.

The Writing Process

When I am finally inspired to write something I go through this process to put it into words for someone to read. One of the approaches I take is I think about a situation, then I think about the characters who are going to be involved within the situation, and then I think about the dialogue between them. I feel it is important to write about the character first before writing the story because what happens when you write the character it evolves itself and forms the story. For example: I thought about a little boy who lost his mother, he had no other friends, and would do anything to see his mother again. This how Christopher Lamont was born. Another time I was given the idea to write a story about a zombie boy that falls in love with a living girl. However, I ran with the character and decided to think of the zombie boy as an outcast who suffers through bullying by living kids. This is why when people read one of my short stories they feel the characters are pretty identifiable. I put a lot of concentration into developing a character

The part I write about is the scene. One of the thing people most likely notice about my writing is how I over describe a scene in the text. The reason why is because I like to imagine myself as someone viewing everything. I then ask myself a series of questions: what am I seeing; what do I hear; what do I smell; who's there in this scene; what are they wearing; do they have a scent; etcetera. I want to paint my readers a picture that allows to see a vivid scene in their heads. Doing my best to leave no imaginary stone unturned for them.

The last thing is the dialogue between the characters. This one takes me a bit of time to write because I have this odd approach of taking on the persona of my characters I write about. One character says one thing and then I think about how would I react if someone said something to me in a given situation. Very often I catch myself talking to myself in different tones. This makes me look very crazy, but the end result is hopefully good dialogue that progresses a story.

Challenges

Some of my challenges happen to take the form of overwhelming thoughts of ideas to write down. Another challenge I face is when someone request I write a story about them. As much as I want to; I feel like in the end I will disappoint them. One of the last thing that challenges me is sometimes I just don't feel like writing. I want to write; I have this story in my head I want to write, but I cannot bring myself to write it.

Hopefully this might shed some light on how and I write. I thank you for being a reader and following my blog. This is Andrew C. Dieppa saying Love & Peace.