The book is inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s list of thirteen character virtues that he had devised and had intended to create a secret society based on. Franklin never did get the chance to create his secret society but his ideas live on. The Society of Virtue is an original work that pays tribute to Franklin’s ideas and carries on the spirit of them with improved personal character through adherence to thirteen virtues.

The Society of Virtue is currently available from all of the major online book retailers and will soon be available in some of the smaller ones as well. Here are links to purchase the book:

Buy it on Amazon

Buy it on Barnes & Noble

Buy it on iTunes
(currently only available in the iBooks app, not on their website)

Buy it on Diesel eBook Store

Buy it on Smashwords
(in a variety of eBook formats)

Through the month of February at least, I will be keeping the price at only $0.99. Sometime thereafter the price will increase so buy it in February for a good deal. As a special bonus for people who buy The Society of Virtue I’ve included in the book a special password that will grant access to a members only area of The Society of Virtue website. Once there, readers can enjoy downloading a variety of special bonus content.

I hope that you will consider buying a copy of The Society of Virtue. Not simply because I want it to be successful from a sales point of view, but also because I believe there can be real benefit to in the lives of those who choose to follow through with the pursuit of the virtues.

My last post way back in July mentioned that I was going to be moving and that move finally happened in late September. It’s amazing how long it can take to find a house and then you’ve essentially got another month’s worth of waiting while all of the other paperwork is taken care of. But we finally did move in September and the ensuing months have been kind of crazy with getting settled in and then leading into the holidays after that.

Life is getting back to normal though and that’s where today’s post finds me. I generally come up with some kind of theme for my life for every new year. Sometimes I post that theme publicly and sometimes not. Most times I don’t know what that theme means until something happens through the course of the year that makes it plain to see. 2012 is a little different though. I knew what my theme for the year was going to be back in November some time.

Unlike previous years, it’s not some vague nebulous concept that could be fulfilled in any number of ways. No, this year’s theme is direct and challenging to myself. This year’s theme is The Year of Accomplishment. What that means to me is finishing up writing projects that have been hanging around for awhile. It means recording a new music album for the first time in over five years.

I debated for awhile whether or not to publicly share this year’s theme for myself because it’s very goal oriented and relies on my working very hard to achieve those goals. But in the end I decided that not sharing it would make it easier on myself to not follow through. Of course, random life events or God’s intervention might completely derail these plans but I’ve found that most often in life if I don’t accomplish something it’s because I didn’t really put the effort into it that it needed.

As 2012 unfolds I hope to be able to share many completed creative projects with you. There’s at least one that I will be sharing on here in the next couple weeks. I was working hard to start the year off right by finishing up a writing project and that’s part of why this post didn’t happen sooner. Stay tuned.

I work in retail management. It’s what I do for a living but it is not who I am.

This is an important distinction that I need to keep clear in my mind at all times.

For the sake of the well being of my family I pursue career advancement whether at my current employer or at another company. This is only because my current employer doesn’t pay me very much. I have no choice, I must try and seek greater financial gain for the sake of the long term security of my family.

With that in mind, during the past couple years I have applied to countless job openings and only once have I even been called for an interview. I know that the job climate is tough but I didn’t know it was that tough to even get an interview. This makes me thankful that I am employed at all.

I came to a realization tonight though. That all of that wasted time and energy directed towards trying to get a better job has gotten me nothing. Meanwhile I put very little time in to my writing and music. I’m not a great writer but I’m a decent one and will writing ever make me money? I don’t know but a sure way to not make money writing is to not write. Likewise, I’m not a great musician, but I’m a decent one and will music ever make me money? I don’t know but not making music is a sure way to not make money at it.

I used to have a friend that felt that my focus with my creative pursuits had too much of an aim at making money with them. This friend didn’t have a family to take care of though. I don’t choose to focus on money with my creative work because I love money so much. I focus on the financial aspects of what I am doing because unless I treat my music and writing as a business that needs to be grown and nurtured, then it will whither and die and all that I will have left is half written books that no one will ever read and dozens of songs that no one will ever hear.

I will write. I will make music. I will not give in to the “do nothing and be happy” mentality that seems to permeate society. There is a fire in me that will not burn out. At times I’ve maybe had to shelter that fire from the storms of life to ensure that it continues to burn, but it has never gone out.

That’s what happened to me. I’m now somewhere around the middle of writing my first novel and I’ve only got vague ideas of a few different scenes in it. This problem happens to a lot of writers but I think it’s probably worse for first time writers who unlike top tier published writers don’t have the time to work at their writing endeavors on a daily basis. So bigger gaps between writing progress can quickly drop you out of the writing mindset.

The other issue for aspiring writers that goes along with a larger time frame for trying to write a novel is that the brain is given too much time to reconsider what has already been written. Through the chapters I’ve already written I have a lot of re-write ideas in mind to improve upon them. Which is great except for the fact that if I continually go back and re-write what I’ve already done then I will never get the entirety of the novel finished. I haven’t allowed myself to start doing that but the flip side of that is that everything I write going forward has to be filtered through what has already been written and what I likely change about what has already been written.

And so that is where I find myself. Two of my main characters are traveling on a road together towards some vague destination where something that I haven’t figured out yet will probably take place.

I think that also gets into another aspect of writing skills: World building. Creating the world in which the characters live. I find that I can easily write an action filled scene in a book but when the action is at a low point, I really struggle to describe the world around my characters in any kind of interesting way.

So there you have it, my little writing update. I wrote this post in hopes that getting all of this stuff out of my head and onto the screen would help open up some road blocks in my head. I guess I’ll find out how well it worked.

After it ended I let the website go offline and the domain name fall into the nefarious hands of the guys from Water. They seem to have finally relented in their fight against us and let the domain name go. So the other day I picked it up and have decided to put the archives of the comic up for the world to enjoy once more.

I’ve always enjoyed writing and one of the things that I appreciated most about doing a webcomic was that thanks to Matt’s artistic abilities I was able to experience writing in a medium that I would not have otherwise had the opportunity to do.

Exactly six years after The Office Comic began, on January 25th I will begin publishing the archives in the same way that they were originally published, following a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. Go to TheOfficeComic.com to experience it in all it’s lost glory.

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Pennsylvania’s budget impasse left many libraries without state funding. Frequently, local news programs have featured one library or another telling a sad story about how they have been forced to cut back.

Thanks to Benjamin Franklin, we can take pride that Pennsylvania was the birthplace of public libraries. In the mid-1700s, when Franklin created the first public library, he did so with the intent of making books available to low- income people in his community. As a result, the common person in Philadel phia had access to a depth of knowledge previously only available to the rich and the powerful. Those without access to a good education could take personal re sponsibility for educating themselves and their children.

In recent times we have seen public libraries largely abandoned, and I be lieve that there are two main reasons for that.

The first is the Internet. The vast amounts of information readily available to anyone with a connection to the Inter net has caused many to use it as their sole source of knowledge outside of formal settings. I love Google’s Book Search feature. The ability to search thousands of books, especially ones con temporary to any historical time period, is a resource that local libraries cannot hope to match.

Many people, however, cannot afford an Internet connection and rely on free access at their local library.

The other reason is the public school system. Its creation has removed much of the sense of personal responsibility in regard to education. Many people, kno wingly or not, view schools and colleges as the only means of learning. When ed ucation is handed to you, in fact mandat ed to you, then you have no sense of appreciation for the education you re ceive.

Schools have their place, but how much money should taxpayers provide to educate others’ children? Shouldn’t each set of parents bear the responsibili ty for their own children? It is simply a matter of whether we want to take per sonal responsibility for our education.

My hope is that we as a society can be a little more like the people of Frank lin’s day and see and appreciate the great gift we have been given in public libraries. Politicians are fond of telling us how poorly our children are doing in their schools and telling us we need more funding for those schools.

I would suggest though, that that funding would be better spent on public libraries where people can rediscover a sense of responsibility and joy in learn ing new things.

National Novel Writing Month is when writers all across the country attempt to write an entire novel in one month. It’s an admirable goal and one that I don’t intend to achieve. I am however going to put a renewed focus on the novel that I am currently writing. That means that there will likely be a few less articles on I’m Not A Rat this month. I love writing on this website but the reality is that it sometimes cuts into my creative writing a bit much. I have a certain goal in mind for how much I would like to have finished on the novel by January and if I’m going to achieve it then I need to shift some of my writing time around to put a little more emphasis on fiction instead of non-fiction.

I hope you, my loyal readers, understand and cheer me on in this endeavor. I’ve got some great articles coming up, they’re just going to be a bit more spaced out.

I’ve read a couple books on the subject of writing now and the best so far and by far is Holly Lisle’s Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love and Money. I have never read any of her other books but reading this one made me want to. She so eloquently describes the nature of being a writer through the sorrows and joys and the triumphs and failures. She is a woman who has had more than her fair share of troubles in her life and has really poured that into her writing and made something very positive out of it.

I mentioned many months ago in an article about another writing book I had read titled $30 Writing School by Michael Dean. While Dean’s book has some useful information in it and I did enjoy reading it, so much of the contents of the book are fluff. He comes across as being a bit stuck on himself and a little preoccupied with sex (more than a little, which is apparent to those unfortunate enough to go to his website). Dean also had his share of troubles in life but most of those were of his own doing.

My point here is to simply draw a contrast between two writers of writing books. Holly Lisle’s book has left me feeling inspired in my own writing and wanting to spend money on her other writing. Michael Dean’s book was informative but self-indulgent. I don’t even remember how many times he tells you to buy his other books and plays it off as seeing examples of how he did things.

Dean does give more specific details in regards to dealing with editors than Lisle does. The one very minor drawback of Writing Fiction for Love and Money is that when a subject is approached that the auther has no experience with, she simply states that she doesn’t have experience with it and moves on without any further help to the reader. Honesty is great but in Lisle’s case it doesn’t make a comprehensive book on writing. It would seem that thing to have done would have been for her to consult someone who was an expert in the areas she was inexperienced with. But these were only in very minor industry related items that for most people probably wouldn’t be applicable anyway.

So if you are looking for a book on the subject of writing that is written by a real writer that has fought and struggled and climbed her way to a respectable status in the writing world then Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love and Money is for you. If however you want a book that is more of a “punk rock” approach and has some useful information then you might want to check out Michael Dean’s $30 Writing School, but only if you pay much less than $30.

And while 3,988 words over the course of several months probably doesn’t sound like much at all, I feel the need to mention that during that same time period I wrote more than 20,000 words on this blog. So I’m not quite as lazy as it may seem. But those kind of lopsided numbers do call into question how I spend the time I have available to write. I enjoy writing non-fiction but I love writing fiction. There’s something about crafting a good story that lights a fire in a person’s soul.

At this rate I will probably have the novel done by the year 2012. Which is no good at all. I do hope to increase my writing productivity but I’m also realistic. I’ve seen some authors say that a book should take about six months to write. That’s fine if you make your living as a writer. But for us aspiring writers, we have to keep normal jobs that pull us away from writing if we would like to continue to eat. It took me four months to write the first chapter. I’d like to write the next one in a month. That would be like quadrupling my productivity. Ask me on September 1st if I achieved my goal.

Several years ago while attending a small music school outside of Memphis Tennessee I was taking a creativity class of some sort and wrote a short story for it. A couple days later the professor offered to take me out to lunch where she then encouraged me to think about going to college to be a writer. This was meant to be a compliment to my writing skills, not an insult to my musical abilities. I was pleased with the compliment but I never did go to college to be a writer though being a writer is something I’ve wanted to do most of my life. I don’t believe that any one needs to go to college to accomplish this task. You simply need to be reasonably good with spelling and grammar and be able to craft a good story. There are dozens of good books available on the subject such as $30 Writing School by Michael Dean and On Writing by Steven King. In addition to books there are many more resources available. A few that I like are Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy by Jeffrey A. Carver, Fictional Discipline by Stan Man X, yes I borrowed the idea for the title of this article from him, and Writing Excuses.

Taking a disciplined approach to your writing is the best way to improve your writing ability. I spent years thinking up great ideas for stories but then never getting those ideas out of my head and onto paper. That’s not writing, that’s day dreaming and anyone can do that. Without dedication to see an idea through to completion you won’t ever be a writer. I used to always struggle with story length. I could come up with great ideas but somehow couldn’t expound them into anything approaching the length of a book. I always felt like I was trying to add fluff to my stories just to make them longer instead of actually having any real content. Something strange has happened though as I have started to write on a consistent basis: The length of my writing has consistently increased without even noticing the change. If you want to see some proof take a look at the first month of posts on this blog and compare the length of the entries to the length of entries I am doing now. Like any other skill you must work at writing consistently if you want to see improvement.

I’m not going to pretend to have this writing thing all figured out because I certainly don’t. I’m just trying to find my way in this craft and hoping to help other s along the way. Of all the things I’ve written only one piece was ever published beyond self-publishing that I’ve done on the Internet. And that was a poem about 5 years ago in an Art festival’s literature magazine. If I ever do get out of the rat race, I certainly hope that writing is a key element in that but it will take consistent dedication and perseverance for it to become a reality. Spending all your time saying that you want to be a writer without actually writing anything will never get you anywhere. Put the effort in now not later. You’ll be happy you did.

Writing Tip: Something that I have found very helpful while writing is to not look at the screen at all. I find that I get easily distracted and what I do write seems to come out slower than if I simply stare blankly at the keys. I don’t need to see the keys to type but it’s the best place I’ve found to look while writing that won’t encourage outside distractions to slow me down.