Robbery vs. burglary, writer's intro to guns, words of wisdom - 040

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transcript:

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, Steven Pressfield calls it the resistance. It's that, "I just don't want to," feeling. It's the negative words of self doubt. It's procrastination. It's imposter syndrome. It's laziness. It's a lack of mental discipline. It's being tapped out of willpower. It's a list of really convincing sounding excuses to let yourself off the hook. It sucks, and we all experience it.

The resistance is inside of us, and a lot of the time, it wins. It wins when we don't feel like showing up. If you follow me on Facebook, you may recall me posting about having two 18 hour work days this week that were punctuated by three whole hours of sleep. It wasn't the plan, but it's what happened. It kicked my ass, because I don't bounce back from a lack of sleep or all nighters like I used to.

School's also quickly approaching summer, and if you didn't know, I actually teach at a community college as well. This week, I get hit with 40 research papers to read and to grade. Here I sit, at about 11 o'clock at night, and ... Oh wow. Actually, it's already 1:30 AM on Saturday. Well, I've been putting this together, this week's podcast together since 11 o'clock. Time flies when you're under the gun.

But I've been putting it together on the evening it's supposed to be pushed out to you. Clearly, this wasn't part of the plan. I had to beg and search to find things to talk about for this episode. Normally, this podcast, it just feels a lot easier, but this, this is the test. Do I listen to the inner dialogue that says, "You can get this out tomorrow. It's already tomorrow. No one's going to care if this late. It's not a big deal. Do it tomorrow when you feel more motivated and you're more rested."

Does any of this sound familiar? How many of you listening right now are doing so knowing that you should be writing? "But I'm not at my computer. I don't have my hot tea. I need to clean my desk and my sock drawer and all the things before I can write. I just can't write right now." I get it, but to succeed, we need to show up. We need to show up consistently, whether that's 100 words every day or 20 minutes of talking into a mic every week. Whatever our schedule, we must show up. Showing up consistently beats down the resistance. Showing up consistently breeds confidence in ourselves. Showing up consistently brings results. Are you with me? Let's do this.

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau: Robbery versus burglary, a writer's introduction to guns, and words of wisdom for investigators. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.
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This is Episode #40 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction. I want to thank Gold Shield patron Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, and Gold Shield patron C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, and all of my loyal Coffee Club patrons for supporting me month after month. Find links to all of these author's websites in the Show Notes at writersdetective.com/40.

And you've heard it before: If you have your own author business, please consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating their on Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon.

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Chris Moody, @chrisamoody, asked, "What's the difference between a robbery and a burglary?" "My house got robbed," is one sentence that will make every cop cringe. We hear it all the time, usually from a distraught homeowner that came home to discover their house was burglarized, but why do we cringe? Well, we're writers too, you know? And we know that houses never get robbed. Technically, banks are never robbed either. Bank tellers are robbed. Robbery's the crime of using force or fear to commit theft from a person. Section 2.11 of the California Penal Code defines robbery as, "Robbery is the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another from his person or immediate presence and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear."

Burglary, on the other hand, is "Every person who enters any house, room, apartment, tenement, shop, warehouse, store, mill, barn, stable, outhouse or other building, tent vessel, floating home, railroad car, locked or sealed cargo container, whether or not mounted on a vehicle, trailer coach, any house car, inhabited camper vehicle as defined by the vehicle code...                                                              Continue reading...