Posts tagged: NaNoWriMo

Focus ain’t a 4-letter word, but it should be

By , February 25, 2019 9:54 am

Big old wall of words coming at you to talk about writing, and planning, and doing both poorly, and also an update on the sad but inevitable fate of Happy Friday. Take a look, if you dare…

Arizona

Arizona

Longtime readers — and you know who they are because they’re the ones who run in the other direction at the first sign of the phrase “longtime readers”; I mean, Carolyn’s read so many of these things I think she gets on a plane to another country any time I start a paragraph with the letter L just to be safe — may recall back in 2015 when I tracked my daily writing with a countdown from January 1 to December 31. When that ended, I still tried to keep up the daily schedule but missed a day sometime in January, then missed another day, and eventually lapsed back into my usual writing schedule of doing something when I felt like it or when I had a deadline.

Which is why when 2017 rolled around, I did the same thing. I wrote every day and did a little social media countdown to keep myself honest. And again, on December 31 I stopped, figuring I’d made my point. And maybe I did, because this time I didn’t stop the daily writing. Sure, some days it was revising old stuff instead of all new writing. And some days it was a few sentences or paragraphs. But other days it was a couple thousand words. The point is, I didn’t stop when the countdown stopped. I still haven’t stopped. I’ve done something writing-related every day since January 1, 2017. This had been good and bad.

It’s been good because, hey, it’s always good to get the words down on paper, or on the screen. But it’s been bad because it’s hard to stay focused every day. It’s hard to stay goal-oriented when some days you’re just too tired to put the words in any kind of order. It’s too easy to focus on whatever you’re working on at that moment without seeing how, or even if, it fits into some bigger plan. It gets easy to abandon any sense of a bigger plan because you can always say you’re working every day and therefore of course you’re being productive.

But over the last 2+ years, I realized that the daily work is worth a lot more if it’s directed at a specific goal. It doesn’t mean I’m any better at doing it that way, but at least I know when I’m doing something constructive and when I might just be spinning my wheels, and that’s a start.

My pattern for the last couple of years has been pretty consistent. I shoot for a story for The First Line every quarter, depending on what line they’re offering, though usually I take a shot no matter what the line is. Sometimes I just don’t end up with a complete story, and whatever I wrote sits unfinished in the archives unless and until I find some way to repurpose it. I also try to shoot for The Last Line and Tales from whatever industry they’re highlighting that year. This keeps me working on at least 6 short stories a year, and I usually find another couple of places to submit to, which helps to give me things to focus on.

I also do NaNoWriMo every year, which forces me to bang out 50K words in a month. I’ve written several awful books this way, and I’ve also written a couple of books that might be worth something if I put in the work. And that’s been the dilemma I’ve faced the last few years. Do I bail on the short stories and put in the time on one of these novels, or do I stick to the somewhat instant gratification of the short stories and hope that somehow I’ll squeeze in time for one of the novels someday? The last few years I’ve mostly been doing that second one, and it hasn’t really worked.

So when it came time to figure out the plan for 2019, I thought I’d put the short stories aside for a bit and focus on a novel. Last year I’d picked this space opera thing that was mostly a love letter to the Star Wars and Star Trek of my youth and that wasn’t completely awful. To fix it I’d need to do a lot of world building and to be honest I got lazy about it. Instead I moved to another book that was kind of a suburban noir. It also needed work, like it needed at least one new character added in there so that the ending made more sense, but that level of work seemed a little easier. So I picked that as my 2019 work.

Punch it, Chewy

Punch it, Chewy!

Then, while flying the red eye from Arizona in early January, I had an idea for a project. Four parts, spread out over the year. Four stories. All stand-alone and all taking place in Arizona. I sketched out a few ideas and went to work, because the first story had a February 1 deadline. I started a story, ran out of steam, started a second story, ran out of steam, figured out how the first story was supposed to go and went back to that, all while trying to live a life and do my day job.

It didn’t work. I was still standing up and punching as late as 11PM on January 31, but I just couldn’t make the deadline. So now I have to decide if I walk away and go back to my original plans for 2019, or if I take a crack at the next story anyway and see if I can make it work with a decent amount of time to dedicate to it. The cool thing about the idea, for me, was that the stories would be stand-alone, but when they were all finished, I’d add some common thread to the ones that didn’t sell and maybe try to self-publish a little novella. And that’s the thing that keeps me considering this idea at all after last month’s failure.

I’ve still given up on any other short story work for the year unless some amazing idea comes to me, because it’s past time to get serious with editing and revising one of these novels to try and sell. I’ve done some work on that suburban noir already, and that space opera thing never completely leaves my brain, so I’m gonna devote some time to that one as well. The goal is to have at least one of them more closely resembling an actual book by the end of 2019. There’s still a ton more that would have to be done after that, but it’s a huge first step I’ve never quite achieved before. Now I get to see if I can do it.

Of course, if the opportunity to write a reboot of happens to come up, all these plans get thrown out the window, so if you’ve got any casting ideas for 2019’s Sheriff Lobo, feel free to send them my way.

Hey there where you goin’...

Hey there, where you goin’…

The problem, though, is my brain is like a magnet for questionable story ideas, and just last week something I wrote to someone in an email got me thinking, and now I have several pages of notes I’m writing to try and convince myself to write the damn thing, or to not write the damn thing. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes. All of which is kind of a long way to say that planning is hard and almost never works. There’s a little free hard-earned wisdom from your Uncle T.

And since people have asked, I suppose I should give an update about the only writing of mine some of you folks care about. Happy Friday. People want to know if Happy Friday is ever coming back. And the answer is that I used to think it was, but since it’s been dead and gone since Trump’s 100th day, it seems obvious that Happy Friday is official done for. It had a good run but everything has to end sometime, and that last Top 100 List was as good a way as any to wrap things up. So yeah, Happy Friday is finished. More than wenty years, on and off, is nothing to sneeze at, but that’s enough. If I was ever gonna write a funny joke, I’m sure it would’ve happened already. So Rest In Peace, Happy Friday.

Which, of course, means it’ll be back at some point to cover the 2020 election season. I’m feeling pretty confident this election is the one that’s gonna finally break this country, and I would hate to miss out on that. So I just have to get some momentum on the fiction writing and then we’ll all get to see if I’ve got anything left in the tank to document the absolute fucking circus I expect 2020 to be.

2020 is coming

2020 is coming…

T “this was way too many words to have to read on a Monday morning so I don’t blame all of you for never making it all the way down to here” green

There’s no “I” in “Quit”. Oh, wait, yes there is; it’s right there: NaNoWriMo Day 27

By , November 27, 2012 12:42 am

If you understand nothing else, understand how much I hate to quit. How much I hate to quit just about anything, really (though I’ll admit to enjoying it when I’ve quit a couple of jobs during my career, including probably one more than most of you realize…). It’s just not in my nature to quit easily, and I’ve fought some damn stupid fights for some really lost causes in my day. I don’t even regret most of them, because fighting’s better than quitting.
That said, there are some realities that even I won’t fight, and so it’s time to face the fact that this year, NaNoWriMo kicked my ass. Kicked it worse than the Patriots handing a beatdown to the Jets.
For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is simple — write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November, win nothing but the feeling of accomplishment at actually writing a book in 30 days. I’ve tried it several times and I’ve won more often than not. But not this year, no sir. This year I suffered a good old-fashioned ass whupping.
I knew it was coming too. Could see it real clear real early, but I had to try anyway. The storm threw me off pace at the start. Not because my house was damaged or anything — I was real lucky there — but because I took in some displaced house guests and, most importantly, I was stuck working from home for that first week. So much of my NaNoWriMo writing gets done during my daily commute and I didn’t have one of those for nearly a week. And when I finally did, those buses were too crowded to get much done.
I think by the end of Day 1, I was about 1,000 words off pace. Turns out that was the closest to being on schedule I was ever gonna get this month. I was still making a decent effort, though, until my trip to Disney. That’s what blew the whole plan out of the water, and if I had any sense in my head I would’ve figured it out by my second day in Florida. I didn’t figure it out, and instead still was making an effort when I got back. Even after barely writing 1,000 words that whole week, somehow I thought I could still pull this off.
So today, I quit. No NaNoWriMo book for me this year. The idea I was working on was halfway decent. It had some potential. I could’ve done something with it under better circumstances. Don’t believe me? Here’s the first paragraph that I came up with late on November 1:

I spoke to the doctor after the storm and he gave me the worst news I could’ve imagined. He told me I was fine. Perfectly healthy for a man of my age and station. Which meant I was gonna have to find another way out. You see, I couldn’t just leave. Couldn’t just quit. If I wanted out there was only one way to do it — feet first in a box. And the doctor’s report wasn’t cooperating.

This narrator was caught up in a bad real estate deal. Oddly enough, a couple of days in I decided it was the same real estate deal that was a major plot point of another NaNoWriMo book I wrote several years ago. That year I hit the word count but never got to the ending. Maybe this real estate plot point is cursed and I should stop trying to use it. Maybe some day I’ll crack the code and end up with two semi-connected novels to sell. You just can never tell, which is why I do any of this to begin with. And since after a few pages I dragged in a character from last year’s winning NaNoWroMo novel, I could end up with 3 books. Or not.
As lousy as it feels to quit, it’s a little easier this time because I’ve already got a December deadline for something I think I can sell, and selling’s better than fighting’s better than quitting. Plus, I’ve got 2 other plans in the pipeline that might get me 2 more sales in the first half of 2013. I wouldn’t say no to either one.
I’m not used to quitting, so I’m not quite sure how to end this. Maybe with the last couple of paragraphs before I pulled the plug. In the end I kind of want to know what happens to my main character, so maybe I won’t leave him here. I hope not, anyway. I hate walking away from something like this, a mere 12,752 words into a 50,000 word story:

Jim crossed the room with careful steps. His head swiveled as he tried to see everything at once as he approached the stairway. He peered up into the blackness and frowned. Then he rapped the flashlight against the wooden bannister. The hollow metal-on-wood sound rang out.
“Anybody here?” he called. “Anybody need help?” He banged the flashlight twice more. “Anybody here who doesn’t belong?”
“You think that will work?”
“Might trick one of the dumber ones,” Jim said with a shrug. “Wait here. I’ll check upstairs.”
“No, this is my thing. I’ll go with you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Jim aimed the flashlight beam up the stairs. We could see nothing but dirty carpet and a blank wall at the top. I remembered a large framed painting up there, but it was gone now. Jim started up with slow, careful steps and I followed. The steps were slippery so I grabbed the bannister for support.

And that’s all there is. There ain’t no more. To be honest, I’ve got no idea who’s up those stairs. I’d like to find out, but that’s not gonna happen this month. November kicked my ass. Let’s see if I’ve got a comeback in me for December. Like the song says…

There ain’t no shame
In just giving up and walking away
Walking away
In just giving up
In just giving up
And walking away

NaNoWriMo Day 1: Ticket to Ride

By , November 1, 2012 7:53 pm

Day 1 of November’s 50,000 words in 30 days writing challenge and here’s the update:

I’ve got nothing.

The day isn’t over yet, but right now that’s my update. With the following addendum. I took a little time today to finish off a story to submit to The First Line, something I’ve been unable to accomplish for more than a year. I’m not sure the story’s any good — I’m suspicious of anything I write that doesn’t have any dialogue even though I like to try a story like that every now and then — but it’s good to get back in the game. I’m hoping that accomplishment gives me some momentum for this month. I’m gonna need all the help I can get because if you haven’t heard, right now I’ve got nothing.

And to prove my point, here’s a quick excerpt from Secret Identity, the story I submitted today:

Yes, the movie. Plenty of words have been written about the Multyman movie, a few by people who actually knew what they were writing about. All I’ll say about it is yes, it was a bomb, the biggest bomb of the half century according to the people who track such things. It was done on the cheap and yet everyone involved still lost money. It ruined a half dozen careers, including my father’s, and it still tops almost every list of bad movies no matter what the list’s conceit happens to be. It’s never been released on home video and probably never will be. I have access to a copy but have never watched it all the way through. And honestly, if even half the people who claim to have seen it in all its glorious awfulness during its brief run had actually plunked down cash for a ticket, that movie would’ve been a modest hit and maybe some careers could’ve been saved.

The movie fiasco was all my father’s doing, too. He made a bad deal and let the pack of amateurs at the studio step all over him. He didn’t see it that way, though. He went to his early grave claiming they’d done a fine job and if anything, their biggest mistake was being ahead of their time. If that movie has a time, we’re nowhere near approaching it yet.

And now, on to NaNoWriMo!

But It’s Kept Me From Going Insane

By , October 15, 2012 7:04 pm

NaNoWriMo’s coming up in a couple of weeks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing a novel in a month, besides the fact that it’s a terrible idea to write a novel in a month, it’s that to survive National Novel Writing Month, you need to be a little bit crazy. But just a little bit. Start November too sane and you quit in four days. Start it too crazy and by December 1 you’re proudly mailing your 50,000-word manifesto to the authorities and before you know it you’re on the no-fly list. And so once mid-October rolls around I start getting my mind ready to be just a little bit crazy.

Which is where this post comes in. I’m trying to get some of the crappy writing out of my system now. I’ve actually got a project I’m trying to finish this month, but I’m not as far along with it as I should be. So in dull moments commuting and in meetings, I’ve been messing with a scene that’s not really part of anything, and not really meant to turn into anything. It’s just one of those scenes I get in my head from time to time that I need to write down just to move on to something else. So as I’m fine-tuning the crazy, this is what comes out. Figured I’d share. Some of you Facebook friends already saw the part I wrote on the bus. The part I wrote in the meeting came after.

This Yank character has turned up in a few other stories, most prominently The New Guy Starts Wednesday from the first Workers Write collection. I’ve dropped him in a few other stories since then, and he’s one of the stars of the late, great(?) Greetings from Shokanaw strip. Oddly enough, this is the second time I’ve written about him wanting to start a religion. I figure this means someday I’m either gonna write a book where he starts one, or I’m just gonna start one myself. It’s a win-win, right?

So here’s a little bit of nothing that I’m hoping is helping to fine-tune some crazy into my brain. Again, it was written on the bus and in a meeting, so have mercy. Maybe you’ll like it, and maybe you won’t…

“Okay, Ohio, it might be time for Plan B,” Yank said. He paged through the short stack of papers on the table and then dropped them with a dull thump in front of him. “Yeah, definitely Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?” Ben asked.
“The thing you do when Plan A doesn’t work out, obviously,” Yank said.
“I don’t think I have one,” Ben said.
“How can you not have a Plan B?”
“I didn’t think it would be necessary.”
“Plan B is always necessary,” Yank said. “Nothing stays good forever. In fact, the average shelf life of something good is about six days. Six days, Ohio. How can you walk through life without a Plan B when at any given moment you’re less than a week away from everything going to hell?”
“If that’s the case, then I’m even more screwed than I thought,” Ben said.
“How do you figure?”
“I don’t think I have a Plan A either.”
“Funny thing about life, Ohio. If you don’t choose a Plan A, one will be chosen for you,” Yank said. “Plan A never lasts, anyway. Plan B is what gets you where you’re going.”
“So you actually have a Plan B?”
“Of course I do.”
“Even though I haven’t seen any evidence that you’re capable of making any other kind of plan, you have a Plan B?”
“Exactly. Why waste my time on any other kind of plan when Plan B is the only one that counts?”
“Then what is it?” Ben asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Yank said. “But rest assured it involves at least one border crossing, a bag of unmarked bills, a case of good tequila and a tight red dress.”
“You’re not wearing the red dress in this plan, right?”
“God, I hope not,” Yank said.
Another small group walked past the conference room, deep in an animated discussion. Ben didn’t recognize any of them, and he was pretty sure Yank didn’t either. When Yank recognized someone he usually shared a nasty comment, so his silence spoke volumes. Ben looked down to the other end of the table where Scott sat engrossed in his smartphone. Ben had no idea if he’d even noticed how long they’d been left waiting.
“Does it always work like this?” Ben asked. “Do you always have to sit around just waiting for him to show up?”
“Not all the time, but mostly,” Yank said. “Sometimes he’s got better stuff to do in the afternoon so he makes sure he’s on time for us so he can get us out of the way.”
“Kind of insulting, isn’t it?”
“What’ve you heard about this guy, Ohio?”
“That he’s an idiot,” Ben said.
“Hurtful.”
“You’re the one who told me he’s an idiot.”
“Still hurtful,” Yank said. “But it’s true, this client is an idiot. I’m sure he means well, but he can’t help it, he’s an idiot. Drove everyone who ever had to work with him crazy. I’m like the fourth or fifth person in charge of this job. He ran all the others off.”
“They have problems with this guy and they put you in charge of him?” Ben asked.
“Hard to believe, huh? But that’s what they did. I think they did it because they wanted me to blow up the relationship so he’d drop us. They got sick of him but they can’t drop him, so they put me here to force the issue.”
“There’s no way that happened,” Scott said without looking up from his phone.
“You can’t prove I’m wrong,” Yank said.
“You can’t prove you’re right. Your theory would require everyone we work for to have no business sense whatsoever.”
“I thought you said I can’t prove I’m right,” Yank said. “You just did it for me.”
“I’ll admit, I can’t think of a single reason why they’d put you in front of a client,” Scott said. “But there’s no way they did it so you could drive him off.”
“Yeah, that makes no sense,” Ben said. He probably wouldn’t have said anything if it were just him and Yank here, but Scott’s presence and comment gave Ben some cover.
“Oh, please, it’s passive/aggressive leadership at its best, which is something we specialize in,” Yank said. “If I piss off the client, he drops us and we’ve broken free of a delusional gasbag without getting our hands dirty. We love not getting our hands dirty. And as a bonus, since it’s now officially my fault we lost this guy, I’ve got a huge target on my back if someone decides they need to cut some salary from somewhere.
“But for some reason me and this idiot get along, so not only do I not kill the relationship, I get him to throw three more projects our way. Which means I’ve now done the exact opposite of what my bosses wanted me to do, but they can’t touch me because of all the money I brought in.”
“Wow, I knew you lived in a fantasy world, Yank, but I never realized just how far from reality it is,” Scott said, his thumbs now typing something on his phone. “You could practically ride a unicorn to work at this rate.”
“At least look in my direction if you’re gonna insult me like that,” Yank said. “What’s so damn interesting on that phone?”
“Just Facebook.”
“Come on, I know for a fact you don’t have enough friends to spend that much time on Facebook.”
“You’d be surprised,” Scott said.
“I’d be surprised if this idiot showed before noon.”
“If he’s this much of an idiot, why didn’t you just kill the relationship?” Ben asked.
“Ohio, this guy is an idiot, but he’s an idiot with money, which makes him the best kind of idiot you can find,” Yank said. “I want to keep him around in case one of my plans ever makes it to the financing phase.”
“What plans?” Ben asked.
“Much as I love working for the mouth-breathers we work for, I’m not staying here forever. I’m always on the lookout for something better. So when I’m ready to spin off my own company or franchise or religion, I might need to grab for a piece of this idiot’s checkbook.”
“Religion? You can’t start your own religion,” Scott said.
“Sure you can. You need the right business plan and infrastructure and enough backers with deep pockets, but it can be done.”
“And maybe some theology for your members to believe in,” Scott said.
“Sure, I guess. After the money, of course.”
“Of course.”
“This isn’t your Plan B, is it?” Ben asked.
“Of course not,” Yank replied. “It’s way down there on the list. Like Plan N or O or one of those other letters you run together when you say the alphabet fast. I’ve got lots of details to figure out before I can seriously consider it.”
“At least you’re putting the right amount of thought into it,” Scott said. “I hope work isn’t getting in the way.”
“I will say, however, that Plan B and my religion may end up having tequila in common,” Yank said, ignoring Scott.
“Now you’re talking,” Scott said, ignoring the fact that he was being ignored.
Ben looked past Yank and saw that the hallway was empty. Almost creepy empty, like the kind of empty that exists right before the zombies show up. He realized it was time to start shuffling his calendar around. They weren’t leaving this room any time soon.
“I’ll tell you, the biggest problem I have with the whole religion plan is that I don’t actually believe in religion. Any religion,” Yank said. “So I’m thinking that the instant I start this religion, I’ll stop believing it.”
“Tell you what, Yank, I’m way out ahead of you on that,” Scott said.
“Heretic.” Yank turned to face Ben. “I’ll be in the market for a few good disciples, Ohio. Keep that in mind.”
“Do disciples get health benefits?”
“Do not encourage him, Ben,” Scott said. “He’ll never stop if you do.”
“Ye of little faith,” Yank said. “If you stopped to consider the sheer amount of money out there waiting to be dumped into a new religion, you wouldn’t be talking like this. You’d be begging to get in on the ground floor.”
“The Book of Yank, chapter 3, verse 14,” Scott said.
“I’ll clean it up for the bible,” Yank said. “Ohio, write that down. And maybe start transcribing my other bits of wisdom. You never know how much stuff you’ll need to fill the holy books.”
“As soon as I hear some wisdom, I promise I’ll write it down,” Ben said.
“Et tu, Ohio? Keep it up and I’ll make you run this meeting.”
“That’s cruel and unusual punishment,” Scott said. “Maybe you are ready to start a religion.”
“I learned from nuns,” Yank said. “I know how to go hard core.”

The Unknown Stuntman: NaNoWriMo Wrapup

By , December 6, 2010 1:25 am
If I held my breath in the morning
would I wake up for a lifetime
Lose my job in this depression
well I don’t care ’cause I got your love

I squeaked in just under the wire this year, I’m not ashamed to admit. This year’s NaNoWriMo was a tough one. As I previously mentioned, I started the month more burned out than I realized, with barely the energy to come up with an idea in the first place. Then I fell behind after the first couple of days, and spent the rest of the month struggling to keep from falling even farther back. The job tossed me a couple of curveballs too (though not as bad as the ones they’d already tossed me in September and October), and I’ll admit I considered quitting a couple of times. Not too seriously, because nothing happened that really justified quitting, but it was an option I considered.

When you’re racing to finish a novel in a month, you will grasp at the thinnest of straws more than once. For me, the first set of straws was all about the plot. I didn’t have one, but I had some ideas. I started with a guy who gets fired from his job while the job keeps a dead guy on the books. I thought the dead guy might end up being more important to the story than he ended up being. He gets mentioned a lot, but, not surprisingly I guess, he doesn’t do much to advance the story.

For a little while I thought maybe the story would be about the fired guy and a friend of his giving up on the whole work thing and starting their own religion. That possibility gets mentioned several times, but becomes more something they plan to do after they finish doing whatever the hell the book is supposed to be about than something the book could actually be about. So that was no help. To get the whole religion thing started, I needed a character to suggest it, and for that I thought it would be easier to drag in a character I’ve used in a couple of other stories, since he’s been published before and has proven to be the type of character who would naturally be planning a religion as his next career move.

Since this character, Yank, besides being used in a couple of stories, is also one of the main characters of my previous(?) comic strip Greetings from Shokanaw, I thought he’d be a good source of comic relief. And maybe he was at first, but eventually he started turning from comic relief to the damn conscience of the story. I was too tired to stop him. As I followed the characters deeper into their plan to fight back against the inconveniences of unemployment, Yank became less punchline machine and more man with a point to make. I knew for sure I’d lost all control over him when this happened:

“You say you’re concerned about the people who work for you, but the first lie every employer tells himself is how much he cares about his employees,” Yank said. “It’s a lie they have to tell, and that they have to believe. They couldn’t get any real work done otherwise. Tell the lie, then believe the lie, and then you can go about your business. It’s how the world works. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

It was an important point to make in the story, and by that point Yank was the only one who could’ve made it, but comic relief? Hardly.

When this is over, over and through
And all them changes have come and passed
I want to meet you in the big sky country
Just want to prove mama, love can last

This book only got written because I got my upgraded copy of QuickOffice for the iPhone. No doubt my fellow commuters thought I was texting away like a 16-year-old girl every morning and every night. That actually would make more sense than what I was really doing. Who in their right mind writes a book on a cell phone during a crowded commute? Nobody in their right mind, I’ll tell you that. The bulk of the rest of it was written using Pages on the iPad. A small amount was written in Word on my MacBook, but rarely was I in the mood to sit in my office and type. Last year that’s where almost all the work got done. This year I’m so out of the habit of working in my home office, it was the last place I wanted to be after a long day at work.

And those long days at work, they were long. There probably weren’t as many of them as there were last year, but when they happened, they were like a punch in the face. There’s a reason for that, and I’m not going to explain it here today, but eventually I will. But basically, any time I got stuck with a long work day, besides having to do the work, I had to deal with the fact that it shouldn’t have been me stuck working late. That shouldn’t be my responsibility anymore. But it was, and it kept me from home a lot, so those long commutes became the place to write.

I think I would recommend the commute-writing for anyone who just wants to get into the rhythm of writing without having to think about it too much. Because if you try to think about it too much, I doubt you can get much done on a bus or a subway. When you’re sitting at home, at your desk, computer at the ready, you can afford to sit back and contemplate that next perfect word you’re about to release unto the world. When you’re jammed into a seat on the bus, half the time you’re typing to spite the situation you find yourself in. You’ll be damned if you’re gonna let your stupid commute to your stupid job keep you from getting something done. You’re a writer so goddammit, you’re gonna write. That’s how I did it. I’d sit down in the bus and within a minute I’d be banging out the next scene. Was it great stuff? No. But when you’re racing to 50K, nothing you write is great. The bus stuff was as good as the couch stuff. For what that’s worth.

And I’m not strong
And you’re not rich
And we’re not lost
Where we don’t live

For awhile I thought my main character was going to cheat on his girlfriend. Possibly with one of his coworkers. Maybe even with one of his girlfriend’s friends who was hanging around the story looking for trouble. No cheating ever happened. Stupid character had more integrity than I wanted him to. That happens sometimes. Possibly because the original plan for the book had him getting very little support from his girlfriend over his sudden unemployment, and ultimately that’s not how that part of the story worked out either. What’s the point in even trying to plan these things, even if the planning only happens a day or two before the writing, if nothing ever goes according to plan? WIsh I could answer that one for you.

So in the end I’m left with 51-or-so thousand words, and a story that turned out almost nothing like I planned. Par for the course, probably, if you’ve ever heard me discuss any of the other NoNoWriMo books I’ve written. As usual, I had some periods where I didn’t know what day it was, didn’t know when I was getting any sleep, didn’t know why the hell it was 2AM and I was still writing, didn’t know why I was bothering, and didn’t know if I was ever going to finish. Was it worth it? Not sure. But a couple of things happened at the end of the month to make me think maybe it was.

First off, the last couple of days of writing went better than they should have after the month leading up to them. It’s like some raw, creative part of the brain finally shoved everything else aside and took over. Every scene that needed to be written to get to the end jumped out at exactly the right moment. It’s as if I finally found the proper amount of exhaustion, frustration and anger to fuel the last 10,000 words. And then there was the other creative project I had going on in November, though “going on” is way too charitable a way to refer to it.

We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds

You see, there was a December 1 deadline for a short story collection that I wanted to be in. The short stories had to be about people who worked in the courts, I had a big story about the courts, and figured all I had to do was edit out a piece of that story. I even knew what I wanted to use, and several months ago had pulled out 3 scenes that I thought I could edit together to submit. Then somehow I managed to blow several months’ worth of lead time and, if this submission was going to happen, would have to do this editing, and any rewriting, while working on the NaNoWriMo story. Somehow it took until well into November before I realized this was a bad idea. Then I read the submission guidelines again and convinced myself that the stuff I’d planned to use wouldn’t fit anyway, and gave up that idea.

Cut to November 29, when I remembered another part of the same story that might work. I ignored this revelation, because I was busy finishing the NaNoWriMo book. But the idea wouldn’t leave, and when I finished writing on the 30th, I was in such a creative frenzy I decided I’d see how much work it would take to Frankenstein something together out of this new idea. So I went back to this old courtroom story (coincidentally, my 2005 NaNoWriMo book), hacked out 3 pieces, put them together with just a little bit of new writing, and mailed that sucker out. This whole process took maybe an hour.

Do I think this story will get bought? Probably not. But I needed to feel like I was in the game somewhere, and this was my best chance. It was odd taking 5-year-old writing and stitching it together with new writing, because I think I’ve learned a couple of things in the last 5 years. I hope I have, anyway. But the insane creative part of my brain wanted to keep working, so I let it, and assuming the story gets rejected, I’ll post it to the Treetop Lounge eventually.

This last-minute frenzy taught me something, though. It taught me that if I take the time to work on something, crazy things happen that I wasn’t expecting. It also taught me that the stunts, like writing 50K words in a month, are fun but not enough. I need more. I need to be working on stuff that might lead somewhere. That might turn into something important. I know I can’t abandon the stunts completely, because that’s not in my nature, but I have to put in more time when there’s no stunt going on, because if I put in the time, I’ll get something good.

Previously, I’ve done this November mad rush and then sat back for weeks to rest from the abuse my brain took during the stunt. This time I’m trying something different. There’s a writing project with a February 1 deadline that I’ve wanted to try for a long time. Have tried, in fact, and failed. It’s time to take another crack at it, so this week my brain is gonna have to start being creative again because there’s another story that needs writing, and time is short. Unlike this blog post. Is it possible to write 50K words about a 50K-word story? If so, I may have just done it tonight. Damn.

T “if I’d stuck to Twitter this post wouldn’t have gotten so long” green

And I know that it’s been hard
And it’s been a long time coming
Don’t give up on me
I’m about to come alive

Inconceivable! NaNoWriMo Day 21

By , November 22, 2010 2:10 am

A few big events happened with this alleged novel this week. First, on the 15th we reached the halfway point of this contest. Second, on the 17th I actually reached the halfway point to 50K words. This officially put me 2 days off pace, but since I usually aim to write as many as 60K words, I was about 4 or 5 days behind. Still, given the odd directions this month has been taking, I’d take 2 days off the official pace.

The two other big events were probably the biggest ones since I first sat down at the keyboard on November 1. I started writing on my iPhone during my commute, which saved me from slipping even further behind. And somewhere around Day 19, I finally figured out what this book is supposed to be about. You might think that 19 days of writing is a lot to do before figuring out what the hell it is you’re writing, but I might say in response that this time around, 19 days was a goddamn bargain.

You see, last year my NaNoWriMo novel was almost entirely plot-driven. I knew that early on and wrote accordingly. I didn’t know exactly where I was going or exactly how I was going to get there, but I had a plot and any time I had my doubts, I had that plot to cling to. This year, I had some situations and some characters, but no driving force behind them. Not that I knew of, anyway. My characters liked to talk, though. They talked and talked and I let them do it in hopes that they’d get somewhere. And on Day 19 they did. On Day 19, one character looked back at all that had come before and proposed a plan. And another character went along with that plan. And before I knew it, I had a plot.

Best of all, it wasn’t like I’d stumbled on something that would require massive changes to the previous 18 days’ worth of work. Nope, this plot grew more or less organically from what had come before. I’m still not sure how that happened.

There’s one last event from last week that counts toward the full NaNoWriMo experience. I spent a couple of minutes at the bus stop Thursday morning trying to figure out exactly what day it was. Last year that happened several times. This year so far, only once. Still plenty of time for a repeat, though.

With just 9 days to go to the end of the month, my current word count is just 1 day off the pace to 50K. I’d like to think I can make it, what with the days off for Thanksgiving coming up. And now that I know what the book’s about, the writing itself should come easier. There’s just one problem, one flaw in the plan. When I figured out where the book needed to go, I worked it over and over and came up with a roadmap to the end that I was happy with. This lasted half a day before I realized that if everything happened the way I thought it should happen, the climactic action would take place without my point of view character present. He actually couldn’t be present, and if he couldn’t be there, I had no way of letting the readers know what the hell was going on.

And so I find myself with 9 days to go, maybe 18,000 words to write, and a plot that, if the reader is going to be there to see it, now requires my main character to go against everything the plot’s supposed to be about. There are worse ways to stack the deck against yourself, but maybe someday I’ll figure out the easy way to do things. And now, a bad excerpt from approximately the point where the plot reveals itself:

“Okay, we need to set some ground rules,” Walt said.

“Seriously? What do you think you have here?”

“Ground rules. What we discuss today doesn’t leave this table unless we mutually agree otherwise,” Walt said.

“Come on, is this really necessary?”

Walt just stared across the table at him, saying nothing. Kyle believed he’d sit like that all day if that’s what it took to get an answer.

“Okay fine. I accept the ground rules,” Kyle said.

“I’ll warn you, this might piss you off,” Walt said. “The first part, I mean. Don’t let it. Keep your head clear and hear me out. This is not a day for rash decisions.”

Kyle nodded his understanding.

“The company, it appears, is throwing in the white towel,” Walt said. “After years of mismanagement and braindead errors, the management team is giving up.”

“You guys are folding?”

“In good time, I’m sure. But first, they’re hiring a consultant to tell them every stupid mistake they’ve made. Every error and miscue, laid out for all to see. You wonder why they’d do this when they have an office full of people who’d do the same thing for free, but there you have it. Management is basically admitting they don’t know how to manage.”

“I wonder if this is why they want my severance check back so badly,” Kyle said.

“Probably, but not for the reason you might think. I’m sure they can afford to pay for this whether they have your money or not. But if the check is still out there, it’s just one more black eye that they don’t need their new consultants to see. One more question they have to answer. One more buck someone has to pass. But get the check back and, at least in their minds, it’s one problem moved to the solved column. Or more likely, one problem that never happened at all.”

“And just when I thought there couldn’t be any more reasons for me to hold onto that money,” Kyle said.

“Attaboy. But if you want to screw them, would you be interested in maybe a more proactive way to do it?”

“Like what?”

“The way I see it is, if they can afford to blow money on this, they could afford to not fire people like you. Their priorities are screwed. But if they want to blow their money on this, I was thinking maybe we could find a way to get that money for ourselves.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, Kyle, have you ever had a burning desire to be silent partner in a consulting firm?”

Oh yeah, first draft writing fresh from the morning express bus. How can you not love it?

Be back soon. Gotta write.

We’re Not Gonna Make It, Are We? NaNoWriMo Day 18

By , November 18, 2010 2:54 am

I’d planned to write a couple of these updates before now. Perhaps as we ease into this one, the mysteries behind their absence will reveal themselves.

I hit NaNoWriMo Day 1 with the best of intentions. It was a Monday, so I spent part of the preceding weekend thinking in the most abstract terms about what I might want to write. I did this knowing full well that no matter what I thought about, until I started tapping the keys, it didn’t matter what was going on in my head. Nothing counted until the word count moved north of zero.

What I did not realize until my fingers hit the keyboard that night is just how burned out I actually was. I was running on fumes. Actually my fumes were running on fumes, which were running on fumes of their own, which were running on whatever caffeine- and sugar-high they could squeeze out of a vintage Reggie bar someone was selling on eBay. I had nothing. And this was a special kind of nothing that I recognized from my college days. I was burnt. Toasted. And my creativity had, as they say, left the building.

This didn’t stop me from writing, of course. Days 1 and 2 followed a pattern similar to last year. Wake up, go to work, work too hard, get home late, scarf down dinner, and write 2,000 words before going to bed at an obscene hour (there have been nights when I could’ve watched the closing credits of any permutation of a Conan O’Brien show before I wrapped for the night). It was Day 3 that jumped the track.

The math of NaNoWriMo has always been deceptively simple. A 50,000-word novel in a 30-day month equals about 1,667 words per day. I’ve always aimed for 2,000, a nice round number that would help me build a cushion against future delays. The problem this time around was that on Day 3, I only wrote about 1,500 words. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but on Day 4, I was going to a concert, so there would be no time to write that day. And as it turns out, drinking your face off then dragging yourself in to work a full day does not get many creative juices flowing. Simply put, by the end of week 1, I was so many days behind I’m pretty sure I was technically already a day or two behind for next year.

To make matters worse, I quickly learned that I don’t type nearly as fast on the iPad as I thought I did. Plus, the iPhone app I’ve previously used to write short stories nom longer worked due to an update gone wrong, so there would be no catching up on the bus or during a bathroom break at work. It was bad enough I was so burned out, but now my tools of the trade were abandoning me too. It was a given that I’d have to quit. The only question was how long it would take for me to admit this.

Then things took an unexpected turn. I found a chunk of Saturday where I got to write a lot of words in a row. And the app makers sent me a code to a new version of the app that didn’t crash every time I tried to type something. I suspect the original app was updated by longtime Happy Friday readers. Combine these two events and, well, I’m still so far off pace it’s no sure bet I’ll get to 50,000 words this month, but the chances are better than they were on Friday. This is good, since I hate to quit.

I’m hoping to find time for a couple more of these updates this month to talk about the huge difference between what I’m writing this year as opposed to last year, which also helps explain why there’s a much better chance of failure this time around. Until then, here’s a really bad excerpt, so you’ll understand that the literary world won’t be missing out when this novel never gets finished:

“Kyle, thanks for coming,” Tony said. “We didn’t call you away from anything important, did we?”

“No, don’t worry, I have the time.”

“Good, good,” Tony said. “I just want to let you know, you’ve been doing a heckuva job lately. Really great. Hitting it out of the park.”

“Yeah, Kyle, the company really appreciates what you’ve been doing. Excellent job, really. Kudos.”

“Thanks,” Kyle said, unsure if he should say anything else.

“You’ve been an integral part of what we’ve accomplished the last few months,” Tony said. “Couldn’t have done it without you. You should realize that.”

“I was just doing my best,” Kyle said. “It’s the only way I know how to work.”

“Oh, yes, I know that, Kyle. You’ve been like that since we hired you, and don’t think it’s gone unnoticed. You work hard and you get the job done. That’s the kind of thing we appreciate around here,” Tony said.

“No doubt,” Paul added.

They shared the same bland smile too, which Kyle wasn’t expecting. He looked down at the blank page of his notebook and then back at his boss, whose expression was unchanging.

“Thanks,” Kyle said.

“You should know this,” Tony said. “Too often, especially in today’s environment, we don’t let you guys know that we appreciate your efforts, and we really should.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s something we need to do more often.”

“Really? Wow. Thanks again. I have to say, when I got your email I was sure you were going to lay me off.”

“Oh, we are,” Paul said. “But we thought you should know how much you’re appreciated around here.”

“What? Appreciated? How is this showing me that?”

“Well, in a perfect world, we would have had this conversation a few weeks ago,” Paul said. “That’s what we need to get better at. The timing.”

“I can’t believe this. I thought we were done with this.”

“We are now,” Tony said.

“Not to sound like too much of a ghoulish ass, but I really thought that after Rudy died, we’d get a break from all this.”

“If only it were that simple,” Paul said.

“This has nothing to do with your work, Kyle,” Tony said. “This is just a math thing. We had to get the group under twelve, that’s all. It’s just math.”

Kyle had always hated math, and this wasn’t going to improve that relationship. It took him another couple of seconds to work through the list of his immediate coworkers to come up with a number already less than twelve.

“But without Rudy, we’re there right now,” he said.

“We’re keeping Rudy,” Tony said.

“How can that be? He’s dead.”

“Yes, that’s true. But Rudy’s a rock around here. He’s done amazing work for us. You know that. You learned from him. We all did. That’s not a resource we can just walk away from,” Tony said.

“Walk away from? He died. How are you walking away from anything?”

“We just want to respect the man,” Tony said. “He’s got an enviable work ethic. His attendance record is impeccable.”

“Not anymore,” Kyle said.

“Kyle, that’s hurtful, and frankly beneath you,” Tony said. “Rudy gave his all to this company. He had his surprise heart attack while working at his desk after hours. How do we just forget about all that just because Rudy’s dead? He’s left behind a legacy, Kyle. We have to honor the legacy.”

“But he’s dead. I have three projects due this week. How is Rudy’s legacy going to help finish those?”

“That’s something I’m going to have to figure out,” Tony said. “Of course I’d rather have you here to finish those off, but we can’t just walk away from a resource as important as Rudy.”

“If anyone walked away, Rudy did. Except he didn’t walk away. They wheeled him out. I was here. I saw it.”

“Kyle, please, don’t be rude. Have some respect,” Paul said.

“I just don’t understand. I’m a living, breathing man who can bang out those three projects in a couple of days. I don’t understand how I can lose out to a guy who died two weeks ago. Can you understand why I might have a problem with that?”

“Fair enough,” Paul said. “Just please believe me when I tell you that Rudy brings some intangibles to the table.”

“intangibles?”

“Yes, intangibles. This decision wasn’t made lightly. It was very close. We almost chose you.”

“Oh, good, I came in a close second to a corpse. Is there any chance I can get that written in a letter of recommendation? That’s bound to get me lots of interest out there.”

“Kyle, really. Have some respect,” Paul said.

“Respect, really? Why don’t you have some respect for me, Paul? You tell me you think I’m a good worker, so why not pick me over the dead guy? Maybe Rudy has intangibles, but at this point I’ve gotta beat him in tangibles, right?”

Tony chuckled. “That’s actually pretty funny,” he said to no one in particular.

Paul sighed and leaned forward until he was slumped on his forearms, which were crossed over each other on the table. He shook his head just enough to be noticed.
“You have to understand something, Kyle,” he said. “Your group has to have fewer than twelve people in it. There’s no way around it. That’s the new company policy. Non-negotiable. However, on the flip side, you can’t have fewer than ten. This is an old guideline and for now it’s equally non-negotiable. We’d love for you to be one of those less-than-twelve, more-than-ten, but there are a couple of reasons why Rudy is the better bet right now.”

“Seriously?”

“For one, Rudy no longer draws a salary,” Paul said. “That’s a huge savings right there. No salary, no retirement withholding, no taxes paid because of him. And even more important than that, Rudy doesn’t need any health benefits. That’s another huge savings right there.”

“It’s not a really good health plan,” Tony said. “I’m not sure if you ever had a reason to find that out, but it costs you and the company a ridiculous amount of money any time you have a health issue. So this is potentially huge.”

“Maybe if the health care plan was better, Rudy wouldn’t have died in the first place and you wouldn’t have to use his corpse as a way to save money on it,” Kyle said.

“We’re aware of the irony, yes,” Paul said. “But in the current economic climate, Rudy’s a better employee dead than you are alive.”

Kyle looked again at the blank page in his notebook and saw that it now mirrored his immediate future — big and empty. He wanted to take his pen and slash through this depressing page, but his arms were frozen from the shock he was still experiencing. His hands began to shake so he pulled them under the table to make sure no one could see.
“Is there any math that swings things back in my favor?”

“You’re single, right?”

“I live with my girlfriend.”

“Kids?”

“Not now.”

“You own your house?”

“Rent.”

“Any credit card debt? Other loans? Gambling habit?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Are you prone to sickness?”

“No more than average.”

“I see.” Paul looked off into space as if he were calculating something in his head. After a few quick seconds he snapped back to reality and shook his head.

“Sorry, but no, there’s no way. Rudy saves more money than you bring in. We have to go with him. We’ll provide a generous severance, though. It’s more than Rudy got.”

“That seems fair. Rudy left on his own. He didn’t deserve a severance,” Tony said.

“Good point,” Paul said. He looked back at Kyle. “See, Rudy isn’t getting the best deal either. These things happen.”

“This? This insanity never happened anywhere else, I can promise you that.”

“Kyle, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out. You’re a good worker. You have lots to offer plenty of other companies.”

“Not as much as Rudy,” Kyle said.

“Fair enough,” Paul said.

“I bet you do better on an interview, though,” Tony said.

“Oh good, there’s the second paragraph of my recommendation. This thing just writes itself.”

“I’m real sorry, Kyle,” Tony said. “If things get better out there, I’d hire you back in an instant.”

“Could I work for Rudy?”

“That would be up to him, I suppose.”

“Okay, we’re done here,” Kyle said as he pushed back from the table.

“We still have to work out things like your severance and your last day,” Paul said.

“This is my last day. And you can mail the severance to my house.”

“There’s also some paperwork to sign.”

“What do I have to sign? You guys just gave me the boot. Do I have to sign my approval of that boot?”

“It’s boilerplate.”

“Did Rudy have to sign it?”

“Kyle, this is not your finest hour,” Tony said.

“No kidding,” Kyle said. “Mail me whatever you need me to sign. If the check’s big enough, I’ll sign it.” He backed toward the door, leaving behind his notebook, since it was technically company property.

“Kyle, I was serious about hiring you back,” Tony said. “A couple of months, this all blows over and I’ll give you a call.”

“That sounds great, Tony. Should I send my resume to the morgue or the cemetery? Which one makes it more likely I’ll get rehired?”

Tony shook his head and sighed. “Good luck, Kyle.”

Who doesn’t love the smell of first draft in the morning? I’d better figure out how to get some vampires in there soon or I’m screwed. Thanks for reading. Be back soon.

30-Day Sentence

By , October 13, 2010 4:41 pm

If you’ve ever read this blog before, you’ve probably seen some mention or other to National Novel Writing Month, the writing “competition” that asks you to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I put the word competition in quotes because this isn’t a contest with a fabulous cash prize and it’s not some kind of writing fight club (though if it was that last one, I probably wouldn’t be able to talk about it anyway, but it’s not). Sure, there are tens of thousands of other writers out there doing the same thing all month, but the only one you’re in competition with for NaNoWriMo is yourself.

On one hand, this is good, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Especially one that doesn’t involve running or throwing. But on the other hand, it’s bad, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Maybe looking at this as a you v. you battle royale isn’t the best way to go about it. You’ll have yourself psyched out before you even write a word, and if you can’t write your first word, you’re never gonna make it to word 50,000.

It might be best to just drop the word competition completely. It’s not a competition. It’s a task. A difficult one, because those 50,000 words won’t write themselves (believe me, I’ve tried to make that happen and it never does), but not an impossible one. Hell, I’ve done it 3 times already. Got 2 actual books out of it, and 1 that had more than enough words but never quite made it to the end of the story. None of this work was any good, and I’d probably have to shoot anyone who tried to read any of it, but at the end of each month I at least felt like I’d accomplished something with my writing, and that feeling doesn’t happen too often anymore.

All of that said, as November 2010 approached, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try again. Even if I didn’t remember how tough it was to do this last year while holding down a full-time job, I could read about it in the blog archives. Plus, I just tried something very similar with Script Frenzy this past April (another one where I wrote the pages but didn’t finish the story) so maybe another marathon of writing wasn’t what I needed. And if that wasn’t enough, I could recall the 2 times when I didn’t reach the goal. Didn’t come anywhere close, in fact. Those times I got my ass kicked by the month of November more thoroughly than the Cleveland Browns do every year, and it wasn’t a feeling I was in any hurry to recapture. I figured I’d just not think about it and see what would happen on November 1. I’d either write 2,000 words that day or I wouldn’t, and however that went down would dictate the next 30 days. A simple solution, I thought.

Then I realized that even if I hadn’t consciously decided what I was going to do, somewhere in the back of my brain I’d already made a decision. You see, about a month or so ago I stopped reading fiction. I didn’t stop reading. I still read magazines, and the biography I’ve got as an iBook on my iPad, and I still dragged books along on my daily commute, but they were all nonfiction. And the only time I eliminate fiction from the equation entirely is when I’m doing a big writing project. I used to think I did this because I didn’t want to accidentally swipe from whatever I was currently reading while writing. And maybe this was true on some level. But over the years I had to finally admit that the real reason I didn’t like to read fiction while writing it was because reading stories that were better than mine (which is basically all of them) just knocks the legs out from under me and makes it nearly impossible for me to finish what I’ve started.

(Sidebar: You may recall the post I made over the summer about Catch-22. I still haven’t started rereading that book for both reasons outlined above. I hold the book in so much regard that it would intimidate me enough to make me quit writing by November 5 or so. Plus, there aren’t too many parts of that book I don’t want to steal, so reading it while writing would probably be a horrible idea. It probably won’t be until early next year that I get to crack it open again.)

Long story short (as if), it appears that I’ll be trying to write a novel in November. Even though the little part of my brain that has made this decision may also be the one in charge of Jack Daniels consumption, road trip menus and career planning and therefore never has my best interests at heart, I’m gonna put it in charge and see what happens. And of course, this blog will document the whole ugly process in more detail than last time, because I don’t want to be the only one suffering. In other words, if you hated last November, after another 2 weeks it might be best if you don’t check back again until December 1. No idea which part of my brain will be posting to the blog on that day, but maybe it’ll be able to write a decent joke.

I mean, the law of averages says that’ll happen eventually, right? Why not December 1?

T “writing fool” green

Proof? I’ve Got Proof: NaNoWriMo Update

By , June 18, 2010 1:52 am

So after spending a month lost in a writing frenzy, all I had to show for it was a pile of words that may or may not have all fit together and a little picture I added to a blog post to show that I “won”. And that was pretty much it, except for one other cool thing. I could also get a free copy of my book from CreateSpace. An actual, honest-to-God, you can hold it in your hands printed book. I got one one before, when I won NaNoWriMo 2005, and even though I won in 2006 too by writing more than 50,000 words, I never finished the story so I never got my book. This time around, since the free book offer was good until July 2, I figured I’d edit the book, make something presentable out of it, and then get a free copy of that. And so during the week after Christmas, when I was off from work, I went to Staples, got some paper and a binder, printed the whole mess out and set to editing.

Cut to June and I have a binder full of paper I haven’t even finished reading yet, much less started marking it up with red pen. Though honestly I think I’m gonna need a box of red pens to get through this one. But the point is, July 2 is roaring down the tracks, aimed straight at me, and I’ve got nothing but the same pile of words I had at the end of November. So this week I formatted them, slapped together a cover, and sent the whole thing to CreateSpace to turn it into a book. I finished that process tonight, so in a couple of weeks I’ll open my mailbox and find a 122-page pile of words that may or may not fit together, but at least they’ll look like something real. It should be cool, and I’m hoping that reading through this book will finally get me working on this story that at one point I’m sure I thought could turn into something decent. I’ll probably post a picture of the book when it shows up, and maybe I’ll post one of the 2005 book as well. For now, here’s a quick look at the artwork I submitted for the cover:
Rememories Are Made Of This
And you know what the scary part is? With one simple click of a button, I could have this thing on sale at Amazon.com tomorrow. I won’t, because it’s a steaming pile of bad words right now. But I could. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The thing is, now that I’ve spent all this time learning how to design and format a book, I feel like I should find something profitable to do with that knowledge. Hmmm, if only I had a backlog of material that could be slapped together into some kind of book. If I had something like that, like a bunch of emails and blog posts from the last 15 years, I could do something. If only.

All In? Script Frenzy Day 4

By , April 4, 2010 12:21 am

Okay, so against my better judgement I did in fact start up my script for Script Frenzy. It was not a trouble-free process. If you recall back in November when I started up Nanowrimo, my main point, other than the fact that it was a bad idea, was that I went in with nothing. No idea as to what I was going to write. No characters, no setting, no plot, no nothing. And this did not worry me, because I’ve been writing fiction for years and feel that if nothing else, I know how to work my way into a story even when I’m starting on fumes.

Turns out script writing is different, at least for me. Probably because I’m not used to the format, when I sat down on the night of April 1st to write, it was awkward. Maybe not quite “oh crap, I think I’m accidentally writing an episode of According to Jim” awkward, but it was pretty awkward. I dutifully banged out my 4 pages of script, powered down the computer for the night, and went to sleep. The thing is, though, I wasn’t itching to start working on page 5, and one thing I’ve learned from my several attempts at Nanowrimo, once I get started I can usually at least keep myself interested for the first few days or longer. If my script was boring me on day 1, how was I going to get through something like day 20, when no doubt I’d be several pages behind with a half dozen work deadlines kicking my ass?

Now, if you’ll hang on for just a second — a side trip. I mentioned the other day that I knew going into this thing that there was no way I’d be able to write 100 script pages in April. This is because I’ll be headed down to Disney World for a week, and I don’t expect to get a whole lot of writing done while I’m down there. But since I wasn’t going to let 4 lame script pages sink my month before it had even started, I looked for a way to get some writing done while on vacation. Since I wrote some of my Nanowrimo story on my iPhone, I went looking for a script-writing app and sure enough, I found several. One of them offered a free trial version, so on Friday I downloaded it and gave it a try. I didn’t pick up on page 5 of the script I was working on. Instead, I just started a second script and wrote about a page or so. It was no better than the other 4 pages, with no big prospects to get better.

If you’re keeping score at home, by day 2 of Script Frenzy I had 2 different scripts that I didn’t like, with barely a plot between them. What could I do? Would I have to give up on the 2nd day? I thought about it, sure. But then while I was at work another idea came to me. I did have one particular story kicking around the back of my head the last 2 years or so. It’s heavily music-based and most of the climax involves a singing performance, and from back when I first thought of it I knew that if the story were ever going to survive outside the confines of my brain, it would only work if people could hear the song, watch it being sung, and experience what the characters experience as it happens. This meant screenplay, which explains why the story got exiled to the back of my brain, called forward only when I played a particular sequence of songs on my iPod.

But I was thinking, maybe I’m not good enough to try and crank out a script by starting from zero. Maybe if I’m writing a script, I need the comfort of some pre-considered ideas to get me over the unfamiliar terrain of script writing. So I went home the second day of Script Frenzy, planted ass in seat, and instead of picking up the script from the night before, or the script on my iPhone, I decided to start my 3rd script in less than 48 hours and I wrote this:

INT. HOLLY’S WORLD STORE #8, NIGHT
BRIAN JONES, late 20s and dressed in business casual attire gone wrinkled and sloppy after a 12+ hour day, walks the empty floor of the store one last time, scanning up and down aisles for any activity as he heads for the bank of light switches past the checkout counters near the front door. NEIL, mid-20s and dressed in shabby jeans and a Holly’s World smock, slouches by the front door waiting for Brian. Brian hits switches in sequence as he passes, and a click is audible as a bank of lights goes out each time. When no light remains but the emergency lights pooled near the front door, he shoos Neil out the door and follows him.

CUT TO:

EXT. HOLLY’S WORLD PARKING LOT, SECONDS LATER
Brian and Neil walk to opposite sides of the wide entrance area and wrestle down the metal security grating. Brian closes the padlock on his end, then walks to Neil’s end and closes the padlock there as well. He blows a small cloud of steam into the cool night air as he and Neil survey the parking lot, empty except for Brian’s car and a minivan that just finished pulling up several spots away from them.

NEIL:
Oh Jesus, this isn’t a customer, is it? It’s like 2 in the morning.

BRIAN:
This is what happens when you cut back from 24 hours. People forget but they still need stuff.

NEIL:
It’s not our problem this dumb bastard showed up after the store closed. C’mon, let’s go.

BRIAN:
Let’s at least wait until we find out what he wants. We can point him toward the 24-hour store by the Interstate.

NEIL:
If we don’t freeze to death first.

Nothing Oscar-worthy, to be sure. But all of a sudden, I was writing a script for a story I’d thought up maybe 2 years ago. I’m on page 14 or 15 right now, and while I’m not even up to the first scene I’d imagined for this story, I’ve already introduced a character I never imagined lived in this story and who turns out to be pretty cool. And I’m looking forward to sitting down and writing this one every day, to see if I can make it to that last scene with that last song. I’m going all in on this one, and I hope it pays off.

Expect to see more script excerpts throughout the month, and also soundtrack listings, since for once I’ll be completely justified in making a soundtrack for a story. Thanks to my vacation I doubt I’ll make it to page 100 before April 30. But if it all works out, I’ll find a way to get this whole story down. Thanks for stopping by and indulging a more-than-slightly-burned-out writer wannabe.

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