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By Tgreen, November 17, 2009 1:07 am

Things are getting weird as the month rolls on. Weird, or just worse? Let’s go with weird for now, with the option to change later if need be.

So traditionally, Friday is a rough day at work because by the time I show up I’ve already worked close to 40 hours for the week and my energy and motivation are quite low. As it turns out, dropping 2 or more hours of writing per day into that schedule doesn’t make things better. It makes them, what did we agree on again? Oh yes, weird. Like how last Friday I started the day getting called up to see my boss. And how, totally unprovoked, he tried to explain how the company’s default setting is not “Screw Tgreen”. And how later that day the company did, in fact, screw Tgreen once again.

Friday basically helped me discover the exact amount of sleep deprivation that takes away my creativity and replaces it with exhaustion. I banged out maybe 1,000 words that night, half of what I schedule myself to write every day, and I passed out. Not to worry, though, because it’s the weekend now and there’s always extra time over the weekend to catch up. Except not when I’m taking a long-overdue trip up to my dad’s and I don’t want to spend the entire day being an antisocial writing prick. So Saturday I bang out zero words, which is considerably less than the 2,000 words I schedule myself to write every day, and go to sleep wondering if I was too tired to even enjoy the beers I was drinking, because I didn’t enjoy them very much.

Which brings us to Sunday. I was back home that evening with plenty of time to write. Except I still hadn’t slept enough the past two nights and there was stuff to watch on TV and maybe the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month is as stupid as it sounds. Quitting sounds like so much fun. Sleep, TV, reading, relaxing, no stumbling around like a zombie — just some of the things open to anyone smart enough to quit this contest. But I decided I wasn’t ready for that and my excuses were lame.

The thing is, that mind-fuck I mentioned last week? It taught me a quick and hard lesson. If you’re gonna try to pull a fast one on your audience, you’d better be ready to follow through on it. I wasn’t, and so after busting ass to get to that point, I had no idea what to do next. It was almost like Day 1 all over again, but worse because for several days I’d been craning away without any problems, and then suddenly I was at a dead stop. That’s why quitting seemed so attractive. Sure, I was tired and stressed out and the idea of some relaxing sounded so nice. But the truth was I was scared that I’d written myself into a corner and wouldn’t be able to get out of it. That’s why quitting seemed so attractive. And yet that night I stumbled to the keyboard, banged out another 1,000 words, and then stopped when I realized I was falling asleep sitting up, and also continually referring to one of my characters as “Ray,” which was weird since there’s no Ray in this story. Not yet, but maybe there should be. But I digress.

So the final score after the second full weekend of NaNoWriMo was that I was officially 4,000 words off schedule. Still at the halfway point for the contest and still technically ahead of a schedule that would get me to exactly 50,000 words in 30 days, but behind the schedule I’d set for myself. This sure felt like the Lost Weekend I was worried about last week. I needed to make a comeback and I wasn’t sure how that could happen.

Cut to Monday. Monday’s are hard to predict in my job. Sometimes there’s such a mad rush to get things out the door after a weekend that the day starts of like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, and sometimes I could almost slip into a boredom coma due to lack of projects. Today, despite the fact that my official schedule said I’d be busy as hell, turned out to be a boredom coma day. This could be the comeback I was looking for.

Small problem — I’ve never found a way to write much while at this job. Our desks are all out in the open and a piece of fiction doesn’t resemble the work I do at all. Plus, I didn’t even know if I could write any extended amount while sitting at that desk waiting for a project to appear. But I figured I had to at least try. And 4,000+ words later, I have to say I succeeded. By writing more than twice my scheduled word count, I made up half the Lost Weekend. And even better, I managed to write myself out of the corner, pull a second mind-fuck out of the hat, and set myself up for at least a couple of days of writing where I know more or less what I should be doing. Not bad for a Monday.

Things took an ugly turn at the end of the day. The “Screw Tgreen” policy was once again in full effect, and I ended the day on a bad note that may come back to bite me in the ass. I’m sure I’ll find out early Tuesday if that’s the case. For now, I’ll bask in the glory of a word count that’s only 1 day off schedule, not two.

Coming next, another excerpt. Probably no less crappy, but hope springs eternal.

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By Tgreen, November 12, 2009 1:35 am

If I had to do a self-critique of my writing, I’d say that plots are not my strong point. Anything I’ve written of any length tends to meander. It’s like I kind of know where I want to go, but I’m in no hurry and so I’ll take the scenic route. In my case the scenic route usually involves lots of conversations with lots of punchlines that don’t really do anything for the story, and long observations that are supposed to let the readers get to know the characters but are mostly there to show off the shit that I’ve noticed in my lifetime. This can be a problem with my shorter works too, but usually I don’t have enough space in those to show off my lack of plotting skills.

The thing about writing a 50,000-word novel in a month is that you’re not supposed to have too much time to devote to these kinds of diversions. Somehow I found a way, though, the last two times I won this NaNoWriMo thing. The first time, I offered so many small, pointless diversions that I had to leave out huge swaths of what the story was supposed to be about in the first place. And I still needed 84,000 words to do it! The second time, I wrote way more than 50,000 words that month but was unable to actually get to the end of the story. Still haven’t.

And so, plot. What you’re supposed to be doing when writing a novel in a month is, I think, do everything you can to move the plot forward. You’ll push and shove and poke that plot forward if it kills you. Even if moving the plot forward is a lot like trying to help a fat man climb a fence, you’ll prop yourself at the bottom and shove that fat ass up and up and up every day. Plot is king when you’re in a hurry. You forget that at your peril.

This year’s novel is different from my last two in that the basic plot presented itself to me by the time I’d finished my first 2,000 words. And every night as I’ve sat down to type, I’ve kept that plot focused and I’ve shoved that fat ass for all it’s worth. Snappy dialogue? Only if the snappiness contributes in some way to the plot. Observation on the lonely life in this world? Maybe only a little, again only if the character needs that lonely observation to push that plot over the fence today. I have no illusions that I’ve turned myself into a lean, mean plotting machine, but I’m trying.

Which brings me to tonight’s batch of words. A few days ago I realized that the nature of my story, a light science fiction tale that really only asks you, dear reader, to accept one out-of-the ordinary situation while everything else remains grounded in reality, allowed for the possibility of a major mind-fuck somewhere near the midway point. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to execute the mind-fuck, or if I’d be able to pull it off, but it was in the back of my head as a possibility. And as I continued to write and continued to shove that fat ass over the fence, I realized that whether I should have or not, whether I could keep the mind-fuck from totally derailing the book, I wanted to try it. Hell, I needed to try it. The only problem was, I didn’t know how.

You see, my main character refused to accept the mind-fuck gracefully. He was all for it if I could make it happen organically in the plot, but I couldn’t. For the last 2 days my writing slowed to a crawl while I danced around the scene that would lead to the mind-fuck. There was no way I could think of to get my character to do the one thing he needed to do to get me there. This was dragging me down and making it harder to write. My mood wasn’t helped by some of the antics at work, where everyone I work with seems determined to make me hate them all by Friday. Things got so bad that by about 5PM today I figured I’d get home so pissed off and burned out and exhausted that I’d get no writing done, and maybe it would make more sense to just give up on this 50,000 word plan.

And before I could even complete the thought, I figured out the one way to get my character to do what I needed him to do. The plot and its fat ass was shoved over the fence for another day. And tonight, I got home pissed off and burned out and exhausted, but eventually I put my ass in the seat and executed the hell out of that mind-fuck. I’ve got no idea where to go next, but I like my chances of figuring something out tomorrow.

So, remember, plot good. Mopey emo observations about the world, bad. And, if I learned any lesson today, it’s that one should never underestimate the things a redheaded woman, even a fictional one, can get a man to do when she sets her mind to it.

Today’s musical inspiration (while working, not writing since I’m still going music-free once I sit down at the keayboard) comes from Nick Lowe’s All Men Are Liars:

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By Tgreen, November 10, 2009 1:22 am

I’m not sure how it took me 9 days to notice this, but I’m not listening to any music while I write this month, and that’s something that hardly ever happens. Not only do I usually listen to music while I write, but I also usually make up soundtracks for stories as I write them. But not this time. Not so far. I’m sure it could all change tomorrow, but for some reason the thought of listening to music while working on this story never even occurred to me. Very strange.

It might be a good thing, though. On previous writing projects I’d sometimes find that I’d be writing scenes to the pace of what I was listening to. Sometimes I’d even work in lyrics or ideas I got from lyrics as I listened. I never gave any thought to whether or not this was good for my writing — it was just the way I’d done it since college, basically. And yet this time, silence. It’s too early for me to say if the writing’s any better or worse for the absence of music, because I haven’t read any of this thing yet and I have no plans to until I’m done.

One difference brought on by the lack of music is that I’m not using the songs I’m hearing to help me shape the theme or idea of the story. I’d allow myself to be very influenced by whatever I was listening to, and so it’s no surprise that it was a song that made me realize I hadn’t been listening to music this time around. While working today, I heard this lyric from Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust and I saw that my main character was potentially being influenced by it:

I got God on my side
I’m just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear’s a powerful thing

That will probably be kicking around in my head as I work though this week’s section of the plot and what’s driving my main character to do what he’s doing. Right now the story’s at a bit more than 19,000 words, which is probably the most I’ve ever written without headphones on.

After my mini-revelation about music, I got into a conversation with a coworker who needs me to do some work for him on Wednesday. It’s not a huge project, but to do it right it takes more than half a day. And I told him that I already have another project for Wednesday that will require almost a full day to do. So all of a sudden I’m booked for potentially a day and a half worth of work, and I’ve gotta squeeze 2,000 words in there as well. I can’t wait to see how I pull that off. I can guarantee I’ll be blasting something out of the headphones while I’m at the office.

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By Tgreen, November 9, 2009 1:15 am

So, while work is apparently the big hurdle during the week, it’s also likely to screw up the weekends too because by Friday night I’m way too tired to want to write. I’d managed to write more than 2,000 words per day for the first 5 days of this month, which put me out ahead of my schedule by day 6. At which point the long week and the bad work schedule and the very concept of Friday and therefore a decent night’s sleep all conspired to knock me off track. I wrote that night, but basically I only wrote the difference between whatever I had and the 12,000 words I needed to be at by the end of the day. And that meant that if I wanted to stay on track, I had to bang out 2,000 words on a Saturday where I had moving-in-related work to do all day, and a surprise birthday party to go to that night. A birthday party with an open bar and a bottle of Jack Daniels, a combination that’s practically my own version of kryptonite. And then I’d have to do it again on a Sunday where all I wanted to do was relax, turn my brain off, and watch football.

This coincided with a weird writing block that hits me sometimes. I’d started to figure out where the plot of this book is supposed to go, and I even knew how I wanted to get there. And yet, once I knew this stuff I had no interest in actually writing any of it. It’s like I’d figured out the puzzle, so why did I have to fill in the boxes? I don’t know why this happens, but it does. In fact, if it hadn’t happened I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have slacked off so much Friday night. This was a potentially huge trainwreck, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to avoid it.

Turns out the best way to avoid it is to put ass in seat and write anyway, which is what I did. I managed to write enough to hit my word count and still get a couple hundred words ahead again. I still know where the plot’s supposed to go next, but I’m trying not to think about it too much when I’m not at the computer. It helps if the words are fresh when I hit the keyboard. But I have to think about things a little so I keep my enthusiasm going. This is harder than I thought it would be, and I’m starting to remember just how twisted one has to be in order to create things like this. It’s still a lot of fun an exactly the thing I’d want to be doing if I could afford to ditch work and do it, but there are more daily challenges in the process than I remembered.

And so, this weekend turned out to not be the lost weekend I thought it might be as I walked home on Friday night. I’ll be out of town for part of next weekend, though, so already that one’s not looking so good. Add to that the fact that I’m pretty sure I only know the plot of this book until about Wednesday or Thursday, and next weekend could be an even bigger trainwreck than I thought this past one would be. At least it’s not boring.

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By Tgreen, November 6, 2009 1:59 am

So yesterday I wrote about how a crazy work schedule could be the one thing that might sink this whole enterprise before the month is through (even more so than a lack of actual writing talent, an affliction I’ve lived with for many years). Well, today’s schedule was slightly better, though I spent half the day trying and failing to pick a fight over yesterday’s fiasco. I used to be way better at picking fights like this. I’m out of practice. I’m also out of practice at writing over 2,000 words per day, but so far I’m still managing. The story’s at 11,420 words right now. I cannot complain one bit.

I think what I should do is organize some kind of betting pool to decide exactly when the sleep deprivation will start kicking my ass. With a side bet as to whether it screws up my job first or the book. I think it could go either way now. And frankly, the only reason it hasn’t already happened is that my job has basically zombie-fied me over the last 2 years. I could do (and probably have done) my job in my sleep, and eventually I’m sure I’ll do some writing in my sleep. The question then will be, will I even be able to notice a difference in writing quality? Perhaps not.

And now, as promised, a shitty excerpt:

“After the war I wanted no part of marriage. I’d seen some things that to this day make no sense to me. Did some things I’m maybe not so proud of too, you know? The idea of falling in love and even worse, getting married, well, I couldn’t reconcile that with what I’d seen in Europe during the war. This is how I came to not realize that a knockout like Kay was essentially throwing herself at me for several years after I came home. You ever know a woman who wanted you so badly she’d chase you down no matter where you tried to hide?”

“No, sir, not even a little bit,” I said. I was embarrassed to say it, but it should’ve been obvious to anyone who took a look at me that this was the truth.

“Me neither,” Abe said. “My wife usually acts like I’m lucky she ever gave me a second look.”

“They do that sometimes, women,” Hiram said. “Sometimes it’s completely justified. But mostly they’re just playing. Believe me, young man, if she’s playing with you like that, she’s still interested. You’ve got a good thing going there, I’d wager.”

Based on the stories Abe liked to tell, I’d wager that Hiram was totally off base. But since no one had actually met Mrs. Abe, no one could say for sure. All we had to go on was Abe’s word, and there was no telling how reliable that was.

“Did you know your wife during the war?” Abe asked. I was finished snapping our equipment together and now had to prep the aerosols that were the key to the process. If Hiram were already primed to think about the person in this memory, the whole thing would be that much easier.

“Oh no, no. We met years later. It was 1949, at a New Year’s Eve party. I was back from California and visiting an old high school buddy up in the Bronx. Neal, he was a writer. I think he was writing super hero comics or some such at that point, he had an apartment and was always throwing parties.”

“You had a friend who worked on comic books?” I asked. I don’t think I’d ever sounded so enthusiastic about anything at one of these sessions.

“Yes, Neal wrote for the comics for years back then,” Hiram said. “I don’t remember if he was still doing it in ’49. I don’t even remember what he wrote. I wasn’t into that sort of thing. I was happy for him that he had a good job, but that’s as far as my interest went.”

“So you met your wife at Neal’s?” Abe asked. He was shooting daggers at me with his eyes because I’d knocked Hiram off track. Rookie mistake. I knew better than that.

“Yes, yes, near the end of the night. It wasn’t quite midnight yet, but we were all hanging close to the radio to hear the countdown when it came. I was on the fringe of everything, by the kitchen, because I didn’t know a lot of people at the party and I was kind of shy. A bit like our young friend here.” Hiram gestured toward me with a lazy wave. I had to admit I liked Hiram for the sole reason that he kept calling me ‘young man’. I was on the wrong side of 40 and couldn’t recall the last time I’d been referred to in that way. It was a nice and unexpected ego boost. Maybe Abe and I could nick Hiram from Manny and Annette’s schedule. They were usually busier than we were anyway. They might not even notice.

“I can remember it clear as anything,” Hiram continued. “I’d backed into the kitchen to freshen my highball when the tallest, thinnest young blonde girl asked me if I knew how to make a dry martini. Now of course, I knew nothing about martinis. All I knew is they were hard to make. But this beautiful young thing needed a martini to toast the new year and by god I was going to make her one. So I screwed up all my courage, courage I hadn’t used since the battlefield in France, and I engaged the most enthralling woman I’d ever met in a conversation while I set about mixing the most perfect martini known to man.”

“How did it turn out?” Abe asked.

“The drink was horrible. A crime against humanity, in fact. But somewhere in my stuttering, stumbling patter, Kay heard something she liked. We shared the first kiss of the new year, a polite friendly thing, not like the slobbering stuff you see kids do on the streets these days, and when she was leaving she gave me her number and made me promise to call her before I headed back out west.”

“And you did?”

“We wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t,” Hiram said, shrugging in Abe’s direction for my benefit. “Now come on, it’s been two months since I last went to Paris with Kay. Are we ready?”

“Yes, sir, we’re ready,” I said. I approached and swabbed a patch of skin above his left elbow and then stuck a small electrode on the spot. I did the same to his right arm, then I slipped a pale blue gas mask over his nose and mouth. I began reciting the standard list of instructions, but Hiram had done this before and he knew the steps almost as well as I did. When I was sure he was ready, I flipped a few switches on the console I’d constructed, then hit the gas. In seconds, Hiram’s eyes fluttered and closed, and then his head lolled back and the widest smile I’d ever seen spread across his face. He even looked less wrinkled in this position. Abe tucked a small pillow against the left side of his face to prevent his head from falling into an uncomfortable position.

“How long is this supposed to take?” Abe asked.

“Not sure. Manny’s notes didn’t say.”

“Goddamn Manny, he knows better than that.” Abe gave Hiram one last check, then crossed the room and plopped on the left end of the couch. He flipped on the TV and the two of us watched the local news while Hiram and Kay toured Paris in 1952.

Ah, I love the smell of bad first-draft writing in the morning.

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By Tgreen, November 5, 2009 1:48 am

So as I move deeper into this crazy plan of writing 50,000 words in 30 days, today I hit the big hurdle that could totally dump the whole thing into the toilet. No, it’s not lack of talent, though I’ve got truckloads of that lying around. I’m talking about my job.

Tonight I got stuck for an hour longer than I wanted to, mostly because we were delivering too many projects in one night, but also in part because when one of those projects was called off until tomorrow, nobody told me. I had to find out by accident about 15 minutes after that call had been made. This happens more often than you’d think, and definitely more often than I’d like it to. And frankly, staying only an hour late is not so bad when you consider some of the 10, 11, and 14 (yes, that’s 14) hour days I’ve worked these last 2 years. So yeah, horrendous work schedule + 2000 words per day writing schedule = Tgreen’s headache. It wouldn’t be easy to write at work, but I may have to figure out a way to do it.

In better news, the book’s up to about 9,400 words, and the story’s still flowing. Yee hah!

Coming soon, an honest-to-god excerpt. I promise.

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By Tgreen, November 4, 2009 1:49 am

Okay, so I’ve survived Day 3 and I’ve got 6,749 words written so far. I’m well ahead of schedule, which is a surprise considering I’ve thought about quitting pretty much since I first started writing on Sunday night. But I figure, I think about quitting my regular job at least once a day, so this is completely normal.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really want to quit. I’m just already feeling the lack of sleep and lack of down time that comes from working a full day, commuting, and then banging out 2,000+ words every night. The television calls to me, that bastard, but so far I’m fighting the urge to give in. I even sacrificed a hockey game tonight for my 2,000 words, but I just checked the score and it looks like I didn’t sacrifice all that much after all.

What’s keeping me going is the one thing I least expected to see so early. I’ve actually got a story already. I figured that since I came into this on Sunday with exactly no preconceived notion of what I might write, I’d spend a couple of days screwing around with a character or two in hopes of coming up with something. And yet before I even reached 2,000 words the first night I had my story idea. And it’s the desire to see what happens next that’s going to help me ignore the TV when it calls. It’s going to make the sleep deprivation worth it. It will, I believe it.

I expect it’s only another couple of days before I’m feeling beat and I’ve got nothing to write and I’ll be on here complaining about that, but for right now, for tonight, it’s working and this was the best idea I could’ve had for the month of November. 6,749 words in 3 days. How cool is that?

Excerpt coming soon, I promise.

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By Tgreen, November 2, 2009 1:48 am

So there’s this thing that goes on every November called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple — spend 30 days writing 50,000 words and at the end of the month you’ll have a completed novel on your hands. It might not be anything you’d ever want to show anyone else, but at least you can say you’ve written a novel, which is more than most people will ever say. So even as you read this, writers the world over are furiously banging out words in an effort to actually pull off this feat. And I’m one of them.

Yes, once again I’m attempting to start November with zero words and zero ideas, and end it with 50,000+ words and at least one idea. This isn’t my first time, either (that’s what she said). In 2004 I started my novel, worked on it for maybe 10 days or so, and then gave up, hoping to never speak of it again. In 2005, I tried again and this time I blew way past 50,000 words by the end of the month, and ended up finishing my novel on December 6th or so, with more than 80,000 words. The next year I also had more than 50,000 words by the end of the month, though I never actually finished that one. In 2007, I made a feeble attempt several days into the month, then gave up almost immediately before taking a job that would suck up most of my free time for the next two years. in 2008 I don’t think I even considered it for a moment.

And yet here I am, back for another try in 2009. I like the idea of this challenge because even though there’s no prize and you’re not competing against anyone else, it’s a good way to jolt the creative part of the brain into action. It comes down to a fight against yourself, the worst opponent of all, and what better feeling is there than to be able to face down all your self-doubt and fear and accomplish something that on first glance may seem simple, but on second glance actually seems pretty much impossible? Plus, even though writing is such a solitary thing, it’s nice to know that there are thousands of other idiots out there just like you who are kicking their brains into overdrive to get to their daily word count. It’s like I’m alone in this room fighting the good fight, but I’m not actually alone.

I don’t know how much my job, or my love of bad television, is going to try to screw up this plan. But I’m going to do what I can to write 2,000 or so words a day to win this thing. “Win”, of course, does not mean there’s any kind of prize at the end of this. Doesn’t matter. I want to win anyway. I’ll be posting regular updates in this blog, and maybe even excerpts. This may mean that Happy Friday takes a rest until I’m done. We’ll see how things go. I hope that somehow my updates can entertain you (at least in that regard Happy Friday sets the bar pretty low). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do.

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By Tgreen, September 2, 2009 12:52 am

So I’ve got two new bits of writing news to share here.

First off, I’ve got a story, Black & Blue, coming out in the Fall 2009 issue of The First Line. The First Line is a literary journal that’s published a couple of my stories over the years, and I’m happy to have a new story in their current issue. The way The First Line works is they provide the first line of the story and the writer takes it from there for 3,000 or fewer words. If you’d like to purchase a copy, you can do so here. If you’d like to know what other publications available on that page have my work in them, drop me a line and I’ll clue you in.

Now, if you’re not interested in parting with $3.50 and would instead enjoy seeing an example of a story The First Line rejected, I’ve got you covered there too. Floating Home, a story I submitted for the Spring 2009 issue is now available on the website here. There’s a short explanation leading into the story to give you an idea of what might have been if I’d maybe worked a little harder at the end of 2008.

I’m hoping to avoid that pitfall at the end of 2009, and plan to have some more writing news coming up soon. Until then, happy reading!