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!

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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.

My Novel Is Finished

NaNoWriMo

As of November 28, 2010 at exactly 3:08 AM I have finished writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month. It was a grueling 28 days of solid writing. Well, technically It was 24 days because there were days I did not write anything at all. However, that is neither here nor there. What matters is I have officially finished writing the rough draft of The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. There were times I did not feel like writing, and there were times I could not stop writing. All in all I am satisfied with the book and I cannot wait to post online for everyone to read it. That is it everyone that follows my Blog I want to thank you for reading.

Thank Yous

Before I end this I want to go ahead and thank some people who supported me in my efforts to write this book. I want to thank all my friends Jevon Alexander, Tiffani Franco, Pierre Borges, Roderick Hossack, Gil Barrett, Kimberly Sushil, Lara Savage-Bukens, Katie and Robert, Ron Marrs, and May Marrs. Honestly, David gets a special thanks for being the one to tell me "fucking do it man." Honestly, thank you all for supporting me and you all have my love :D

Looking for a Job; 4 Projects; NaNoWriMo

Up to Speed

It has been a while since I have done a blog post on here. Lately, I have been busy with a few projects and looking for a job as a software developer. There are four projects that I am currently working on at the moment which include two fictional writing projects and two game development projects. One of the writing projects involves a friend/colleague of mine by the name Jordan A. Card whom we teamed up to finally making one of our many comic book ideas into a reality. The other writing project is for a novel I am up with a few weeks ago in early October.

National Novel Writing Month

The book is about a little boy who journeys through the afterlife to see his departed mother. I decided to write the book during National Novel Writing Month in November. I already finished writing the first 1,700/50,000 words of the book. I am thoroughly excited to write the book, and I am encouraging my friends to pester me to make sure I am on top of writing it. I remember the day I came up with it was during the mist of writing some game design ideas for Sushil and my game we are working (Another section). I ran the idea through Sushil and he said I should go for it. Also, I have received numerous encouragement from other friends to write it.

A Game Project with Sushil

One day I get an e-mail from Sushil while I was at work about he had this game idea that sound similar to my idea. When Sushil ask me that both game ideas were too similar that if he should back off. Proceeding to giving him the go ahead to develop the game on the condition we both team up to develop the game. As of now my responsibilities are to find an artist to work on game assets and to do cut scenes. My other job is to program the menu and the world map of the game.

Well, readers that is it for now. I will come back soon for another update halfway through month of November. I will not leave you hanging because I am going to leave an excerpt from The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter.

Prologue

Where does this story begin: once upon a time, or a dark and stormy night? How about if this story ask the question: what would you do if you had one more chance to see a past loved one? Would you go through great lengths such as sleeping in the bathtub with a toaster; make a deal with the devil; conduct a seance; pray to God?

Well, there was one little boy who wanted to see his mother again, and went through one perilous journey to see her. The little boy was only ten years of age, and only knew very little of the world around. However, he would go through the spiritual world known as the Hereafter to his beloved mother. This little boy was not aware of the risk, but he would endure everything for just a few moments with her. The little boy I speak of is Christopher Lamont, and this is tale of journey through the Hereafter.