Welcome to Optional Irony. What you’ll find here are largely going to be posts of a personal nature related to the subject matter, process, and goals of my writing. I’m an aspiring novelist, and believe in moving forward, it’s something of a catchphrase around here- as well as “whatever your grind is, be about your grind,” because that’s the underappreciated part of getting through projects: sitting down at the desk and grinding it out, day after day, page after page, project after project.
That being the case, I’ve already self-published a pair of works, which you can see in the Novels section and jump over to Amazon to support an indie artist. My thoughts on writing both from a technical approach to an emotional/spiritual one can be found in the On Writing section.
This blog is a part of my ongoing discipline to maintain a steady habit and routine of writing. It is both the outlet to put that discipline on display, as well as a form of discipline in itself. The results of that discipline are stories which (I hope) will amuse, entertain, and share in some of the beauties we hopefully all taste in life.
There are things you are guaranteed to take and appreciate from life, but the irony? That’s always been optional.
Questions, concerns or possible topics you’d like my discussion or thoughts on? Feel free to contact at optional.irony@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter: @Why_Balloo
You have a lot of good advice that I find to be very inspirational. A lot of the challenges in writing you cover under On Writing are things I find myself faced with when I try to write, especially the post about motivation!
Thank you, I’m honored that it resonates with you! Finding motivation to not only write, but also to outline, edit, rewrite and continually improve one’s work is always a challenge. It’s a misconception that art should just “flow,” sometimes we need to conquer ourselves to produce it and that struggle makes it all the more important to continue working at it with discipline until it’s in a state where we can say that it is as good as we can make it, it is the story I wanted to tell, it is finished. Keep at it, and stay in touch!