NaNoWriMo day three is in the bag, and the word count has risen slightly. My one day of outside-the-house work was today, so the laptop was left behind. To compensate, I used pen and paper to scribble out some of the characters I’ll be introducing soon. Making the characters gave me better insight into their cities, which in turn gave me more insight on interactions between and among the cities. Feels good to scribble things out, to scratch out the bad and write in the good and see everything remain on the page. That’s one thing word processing has against it – once you delete, it’s gone (normally, of course; I’m not talking about seeing draft and crossing out and blah blah blah).
Tonight was writing night, the night I get out of the house, hit up a Starbucks, and caffeinate myself into creativity. Hey, it works. As long as I can ignore the people around me, I’m good, and that’s why God made headphones, right? One quick aside – why in the world does a tutor take up residence at the nice table in the back every freaking time? Same guy, same bunch of high schoolers, and I’m still not sure exactly what he tutors. He’s always eating or stepping away to get a drink or hit the restroom or just chatting and laughing with the high schoolers. If I were paying for these sessions. I’d better be getting more out of it than watching him eat his soup from a thermos!
Just a bit over a thousand words today as of 6: 30. I blame my kids…awesome little things that they are.
The hardest part about this challenge is creating things on the fly with less planning than I normally like. To make things smoother, I’ve decided to suck it up and use the modern convention of seriously short chapters with mildly detailed headings. Not what I’m normally comfortable with, but isn’t that the point of a challenge?
Among the elite of the idiotic, my stature is massive.
The National Novel Writing Month of November is upon us, and I have foolishly decided to attempt..nay…succeed in the naive venture of completing an entire novel in the course of a single month. Obviously I didn’t have enough to do, what with being a husband to my wonderful and supportive wife, stay-at-home-father to three children, finding an agent for my other ready book, and dialogue writing for Black Chicken Studios. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll be fine.
For my project, I selected the skeleton of an ancient outline – skeleton because it was more timeline than outline and ancient because it was BC (before children). The Twenty Three Cities, by Colin Donahue. Just grabs you and makes you go, “Huh?”
Update #1. Rocked it yesterday. Totaled 247 words. Goal of 50k lookout! In all fairness, it was Sunday, day of rest…and The Walking Dead. Don’t judge me, just buy my stuff and blindly applaud!
Officially submitted “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem” to the Steve Laube agency today. Looking forward to hearing back that they loved it…cause if they didn’t, I won’t hear back from them at all. 🙂
Finished the first editing pass on TDaC 1 last night – many thanks to those who sent in their edits and thoughts. Still have a few changes to make in the next six days, but am still on target for my official completion of the end of August. Assuming nothing major pops up between now and then, I can put this one “in the books” and move on to the next project.
That brings me to my next quandary: do I go straight to kindle, or do I at least give an agency a swing at it? There are agencies that specialize in Christian themed books, and I know these sell pretty well, but is it worth the time and anxiety to wait? My current thinking is to blanket the agencies between now and November and see what I can get; if nothing pops, go kindle in December. Gonna have to pray on that one and see what comes out.
As far as my next project goes, Kevin and I are still working on book two of our series. Ball is in my court for chapter nine, but TDaC has really eaten my time. Makes me hesitate a bit on whether to start book two of TDaC right away or squeeze in something shorter while the plot finishes percolating. I knew way back what the big deal with TDaC 1 was, but I haven’t had that full AH-ha moment with bk 2 yet. Sigh…the tough life of the creative minded 🙂
In and amongst the multitude of positive and negative/constructive comments I received in the feedback stage of “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem,” I was also blessed by several outstanding compliments that flat out made me blush. While these were being delivered, I did my best to nod and smile (albeit verbally, since most everything was over the “phone”) and say thanks, but all the while on the inside I was churning with fear. Was this for real? Would someone really want to see this book on their mantle, or was that something just nice to be said to someone who had done so much hard work on a project? I know…and I mean I KNOW…that the compliments were/are sincere, but that massively insecure past of me continues to scream that it was all a lie, that someone was just being nice, that they didn’t really mean it, and on and on and on.
Giving sincere compliments is a joy, so why is it receiving them is so hard? What’s wrong with me that my first response to a compliment its to self-deprecate? Seriously?!
Example:
You: Nice haircut.
Me: Thanks, I got tired of spending money.
See, mocking myself already. As it should be. Enough about me, though; I’d like to hear from you instead. How do you take a compliment? Do you say something nice in return, do you self-loathe and mock, do you smile and stay silent, what? Comment below, leave something on my Facebook post, whatever, but I’d love to hear just how you react when someone says something nice about you or your work.
If I like it, I might even compliment you just to see it in action.
And so it came to pass that the writer received (most of) his feedback and armed himself for the next great leg of the quest: the editing.
With most of the feedback in and ideas for fixes firmly growing in my mind, I find myself ready for the daunting task of editing. This is where I take my beloved book, stare it right in the face, and for the first time openly say, “Baby, you are UUUUUGLY! I’ve seen some ugly books in my time – yeah, I’m looking at you [NAME REDACTED FOR FEAR OF DESCENDING HORDES OF FANS] – but you, little Mr. “TDaC: AH”, you take the ugly cake!”
In terms of people, all babies are beautiful, especially yours.
In terms of writing, all books are flawed…none more so than yours.
Editing is tough. It means approaching your work with a fresh set of eyes, a task that is fundamentally impossible to do when you’re the one who actually wrote the thing. Yes, there are tricks, but in the end it’s still your baby, your work, your mental blood, sweat, and (sometimes physical) tears. Taking any type of instrument, be it blunt or sharp, surgical or broad, and applying it to your work can be painful. It can be a good type of pain, like that you feel after a serious workout, or a bad type, like when you stub your toe at one in the morning on your kid’s bouncy chair right outside his room and don’t want to scream for fear of waking him and subsequently his mother who would have to feed him to get him back to sleep so you have to hold it all in until it passes but that only makes it hurt worse so you sit down right on top of a naked Barbie doll from one of your other kids and…well…that kind of pain, yeah. Regardless of the type, pain is pain, and no one likes to hurt. Except maybe editors. Or dentists. But let’s be honest; the giving side and receiving side of pain are two different kinds, so let’s move on.
On the positive side, being in edit mode is like being in the seventh inning of baseball. I’ve had my time away – my stretch, so to speak – and now I’m ready to get back in the game. Gonna take this one all the way home, leave nothing on the field, swing for the fences, add in a few more spots metaphors…whatever it takes to get the job done. Shouldn’t be too hard; most of the game has already been played. I once read that Joss Whedon said to do the fun stuff first and then do the dog’s work of connecting everything together, because that way you have something you already like when it is finished. For me, the editing is d the dog’s work. I already have something I like; now it’s time to polish it up and let it shine.
Important as it is to finish this game and log it in the play book, it’s even more important to remember there’s another one waiting in the wings to be played.
P.S./Note to self: writing a book on writing in the form of a tongue-in-cheek fantasy quest would be hilarious. Do this…next season.
An official half of all beta readers are finished with rough draft number one! Huzzah huzzah! With readings come critiques, and as requested, they are painful and unforgiving. My stomach is in knots, my heart it is a’racing…yeah, the picture should be an easy one to draw. They burn, they burn!
GOOD!
These bodyblows help strengthen the writing, find flaws that I was blind to, and suggest trimming or plumping of certain areas or thoughts. Cool. Of course, that means more work for me, but what’s the point asking for critiques if you don’t listen? I’m not taking all suggestions to heart, mind you; after all, these are critics, not co-authors, so I’ll do as I please. It just so happens top please me to do most of what’s suggested.
Among the best suggestions thus far are the addition of several chapters increasing the relationship between the three main characters, so that’s what I’ll be working on while the other half of my beta readers finish their copies.
In other pointless news, one of the exorcists whose book was influential to my writing “just” (May 2015) participated in the first ever recorded (so written) COUNTRY WIDE exorcism. Target: Mexico. Why? In part, this heinous death cult of Sante Muerte, or “Saint Death”. Evil, evil, evil! People hesitate to turn to God but THIS gets their attention? Tell me again how Satan isn’t real or isn’t operating in our world?
Alright, end pointless rant and not coincidentally pointless news update. More as it comes!
Now that beta readers are starting to send in their feedback for “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem”, I feel like it’s time to send a message to those who have always wanted to write a book but aren’t really sure how (because clearly I’m an expert now). There are tons of great strategies out there involving character-first development, plot organization, visualization, chunking…if you can think of it, chances are someone’s used it as a writing method. As for me, whenever anyone asks, I try to always give the same advice. Ready? Here it is:
Put pen to paper.
Conversely:
Put fingers on keys.
Got it?
Seriously, that’s about it. I mean, that’s a start, and the journey of a thousand steps and all that, right? I once read that the best way to succeed at something was to fail over and over again until you stopped failing, and so it is with writing. You can have the best idea in the world, but until you put pen to paper or fingers to keys, you’ve got bupkis. Want to write a military thriller but don’t know how it’ll end? It won’t if you don’t start. Have a great romance novel all bottled up inside looking for the perfect meet-cute? Put fingers to keys and let the characters tell you how to get there. Need a third example to really drive the point home? Write it you’re darn self!
Here’s the thing: appreciate your failures, because every stop on that road is a milestone on your path to success. As to those milestones…they aren’t telling you how much further you have to go, they’re telling you how far you’ve already gone. To quote Brandon Sanderson, “Journey before destination”. It’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there.
See, the place you think you’re going to doesn’t exist anymore…if it ever did. Success as a location simply doesn’t exist because, well, it’s always moving. If I could just get an agent, if I could just get on that top Amazon list, if I could just sell 1, 10, 100 books, then I’m a success. Problem is, success is always moving. To me, it is like light from a star born billions of years ago but just now getting to us; that star as we see it no longer exists and, in fact, is likely already dead and gone, exploded into something magnificent or collapsed into something dense and impenetrable. (Note to self: do post comparing success to stars like this.) Either way, the point is simple: success isn’t where someone else tells you it should be, it’s wherever you are in your journey on the road. Putting pen to paper or fingers to keys gets you on the road; the sheer act of writing makes you a successful writer. So stop reading and start writing.
After weeks of primping and crimping and preparing and panicking and etc and so forth, the first official Rough Draft of “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem” is finally in my beta readers’ mailboxes. May God have mercy on their souls.