Welcome to The Wood Log

Welcome to The Wood Log. A place for the Wood family to share anything and everything. As social media becomes harder and harder to use, not in a complicated way, but in a way that makes you wonder why you’re even spending time on such an evil platform, I’ve decided that maybe I should keep a family blog—a place where I have full control of what’s shown.

This year my friend Adam and I have been traveling to interview authors for a documentary that we’re making, called Indie Author. Our travels have taken us to the home of Michael J. Sullivan in Virginia, to Chicago to interview Andy Weir, and to Canada to interview a fairly new and upcoming author, Emilie Nikota, who went by the name Delemhach, and most recently to Florida to meet and interview Will Wight and his wonderful family.

After talking to all these authors who’ve found success in writing, it’s inspired me to continue writing myself. All my life I’ve been a visual person. I need to see things. If it’s possible to read a book full of pictures, I would do it. But I’ve never enjoyed the writing process. Not that I’ve tried to write a novel, at least not yet, I’ve just never enjoyed the mundane and tedious task of putting words down in sentences. 

But, for whatever reason, I’ve been told I’ve been good at it, and not by my friends and family. In 8^th grade, I won the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) award for writing. When they announced my name at our graduation, I could hear my classmates gasp, because I wasn’t known to achieve such feats. I’ve also placed in the top 90% in the state of Illinois on standardized writing tests for multiple years. Or top 10%? I never know which way it goes. I wish I had those essays back to even know what I wrote about. But back then, it was all written by hand, no copies were ever made, at least that I’m aware of. 

And here we are. I’ve tried starting a blog a few times, but I’ve never been able to keep up with it. This time is different though. I’ve been surrounded this year by influential writers, and have read a few books about writing. The one thing that I keep hearing is to keep writing. Many say to write 2000 words a day. I’ve also seen that if you’re just starting out, make it 1000 words. Stephen King gave this advice in his book, On Writing. 

Listening to a podcast this weekend with Dax Shepard interviewing James Patterson, Patterson said that he doesn’t have a goal. While he never gave this as a specific reason, something I’d been thinking about if I were to set this goal was that I feel it would be distracting. Have you ever watched the clock just waiting for a certain time and when that time hits, you’re whole body shuts down knowing you don’t have any more work to do? I feel this is how trying to hit a certain word count would go. I’d constantly watch that number slowly rise as I write; when I hit that number, I’d call it quits. 

But for this blog, I’m not going to pay attention to those numbers. This is just for fun. Some stories may be long, some may be short. Either way, I’ll be writing more than I had been previously.

Here’s what to expect. Don’t expect my writing to be perfect. I said I won an award when I was in 8^th grade. For all I know, I still write like an 8th-grader. I know I make mistakes. Grammar, spelling, proofing, and typos. Stick with me. I’ve been making pictures since then. I have to learn to write again. My wife is a proofreader. She says she likes to read my stuff, but she also very busy.

I’m also going to go back and write up some posts from my previous year. A lot has happened in my life. Got married, bought a house, had a baby, shot a trailer for our Kickstarter for the documentary, lost my job, had a month-long fever, traveled to shoot video for the documentary, and all the funny stuff Rosalie has been doing.

Hopefully, this journey is a fun one for both me and you. See you in the next post.