Reboot

*sigh*

The inimitable Mighty Proctor, She of the Many Names (CS Harris, Candice Proctor, CS Graham, and many, many other aliases) was right: The godawful slowdown I've been suffering was in fact my subconscious trying to clue me in to certain, um, *problems* in my story.

Of course, the subconscious mind being the Creepy Wee Beastie that it is, the poor thing has trouble communicating with this thin skim of gray matter that walks in the light and believes it is all that exists. In short, I got bad sleep and bad dreams, bad writing and no writing, all of it getting worse and worse until finally I was at my wits' end and the Creepy Wee Beastie was able to speak clearly.

My problems were three. And they were important.

One. My protagonist was not outsider enough. Not by half.

Two. One of my subplots stank. Really, really stank. That is to say, it contributed nothing to the central thrust of the book, and if anything muddied the waters of the themes as I see them.

and Three. My Act I climax *needed* to hit A LOT sooner. Which meant collapsing some of the early 'action' (which, frankly, could afford to be collapsed), which led to old characters saying and doing different things, and to new characters coming in to make things happen.

Of course, fixing Problem #1 meant amplifying and creating problems, and fixing #2 meant writing out a character I was rather fond of anyway.

Needless to say, the result is a complete, from-page-one reboot of my manuscript.

I think I may be able to save a few paragraphs here and there.

So it goes.

Topsy Turvy

This is nuts. I can't say if it's the plotting, the stresses of month five of small-business ownership or those of life in general, but writing this novel is completely wonky.

Normally, I sweat and strain and shear gears loose in my head trying to handle sequels and quiet moments in general. It's a real effort to do my 1000+ a day, until I get to the fist fights, car chases, gun battles, etc. when the work simply flies along.

Not this time.

I've flown through these early stages. As this one's a mystery, I'm introducing suspects and red herrings, planting false leads, all that good stuff. I'm even, thanks to having a handle on my plot first, able to think about stuff like vision systems and imagery as I work.

Until I hit the Sequence 1 Climax. It's a small thing, a fist fight. It serves to:
a) establish the hero as at least somewhat tough (to qualify the later stompings he'll receive)
b) frustrate his Plan
c) show a few of his flaws and issues, and
d) wake up those readers who haven't had enough action in the last 5000 words.

Normally, I'd fly through a scene like that. Instead, it was a horrible, painful grind. Best I could manage was 200-300 words a day. For five days!

Once I got past it, I was back on 1000+. Freaking ridiculous.

At any rate, on Day, let's see.... Day 12, the New and Improved, Steam-Powered Daily Wordcount-o-Meter stands on 11,200 words. Not happy.

Ozymandias
by Percy Shelly

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

A confluence of events:

The third anniversary of Katrina.

My own halting efforts to finish the Serina trilogy are resumed.

A hurricane once again threatens New Orleans.

Any of these would be enough to get me thinking. All of them force me to acknowledge that while a city of New Orleans still stands, and will stand (and will rebuild again if necessary-- we're a damned stubborn species, and I love us for it), but that the city I loved, home for a powerful and seminal period of my personal history, is gone.

Likely, that particular city was gone before the storm. Much of the Minnesota I knew vanished under bulldozers, name changes and the cupidity of minor officials. Things change, life moves on.

I've lived in constant motion for a long time now. Full throttle, as it were. And I've had to accept the places and people I've loved being lost behind me. Fuck it.

My generation may well live to 120. Some of the more optimistic gerontologists put our life expectancy at 300 years or more.

It occurs to me that I will live to see a great deal more vanish beneath waves and sand.

Next post, I'll write about writing again. And of course, the work continues.

On Day 24 the trusty Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 25,200 words.
Full throttle and... you know the rest.

Write Your Last Novel

My painting teacher was asked once how he planned the stages in a multi-session painting. His reply, "I try to get to a point where, if I died before I came back to it, you'd kind of wish I'd finished."

My skin chilled. I knew I had just found an important life lesson.

In theater circles they say Dance your last dance or Act your last scene.

Walk the Line dramatised this nicely. Maybe the most powerful scene in the movie is where a young Johnny Cash stands in front of Sam Phillips. Sam doesn't want to hear the same old derivative Gospel music, he wants to hear something that Johnny, and only Johnny, has to offer.

Sam puts it beautifully: Imagine you've just been in a car wreck, your body lying broken on the ground. You got just two minutes to sing one last song, something to make the world give a damn that you ever lived.

Or words to that effect. Johnny sings Folsom Prison Blues (In real life it was either the bouncy Hey Porter or the even bouncier Get Rhythm, but that's not good drama), and a legend is born.

Joaqim Phoenix does a fine job of showing the fear and hesitation in Johnny's face at the start. He's utterly convincing as he gradually finds his voice, his assurance, his pure and burning purpose, in that moment of song.

I'm willing to bet that Mr. Phoenix acted that scene like it was the last thing he might ever do.

Because that's the key to success in your art: total committment. Blind, unreasoning, insane committment to let the work be what it must. No holding back.

Money. Fame. Attention. These are not success. These are possible side effects. Success is a piece of work that you wouldn't mind leaving behind when you die.

The only way to do that is to let your work be itself. Let go of all the crap and all the worry and do your best to let the work come through. Quit caring about what people might say, or how silly you'll look. People *will* talk. And you *will* look silly, at least to some. For your art, that's the price you pay.

Some days, the work is crap. It just sucks. Just make sure it's the best you can do, and that it's honest. And come back tomorrow (should you be so lucky) and try again.

Make every novel, every story, every day's session worthy of being your last.

Cardboard Box Blues II

So we're shifted out of our former Secret Headquarters: a sunny and lovely, though all too small, flat.

Our former surroundings were horse pastures and orchards, and it was delightful.

Yesterday saw the last of the boxes move into our new Secret Headquarters.

The new house has its own, peculiar, charms and delights. Not unlike that house in Anne Rice's The Witching Hour.

I'm still armpits deep in boxes and trying to figure out where we packed the towels, etc. but I'm still writing, still revising, and I'll blog properly again tomorrow. Promise.

Meantime, I now live in a place where there are no right angles, the floors slope like the deck of a ship, icy drafts curl through the air even in the middle of summer, and dark shapes flutter behind the surfaces of mirrors. And this house has a lot of mirrors...

Will this have an effect on my work? We shall see. Certainly all those stairs will be good for the exercise!

Meantime, I really should go see about that noise out the window. A bit like the flap of leathery wings...

An Unnecessary Mess

Right now, the Smart Bitches are tearing through a certain author's works. They found pages and pages of 'marked similarity' between the historical fiction of Cassie Edwards and various dusty volumes of non-fiction published between 1902 and 1937.

The Smart Bitches cry plagarism. Signet Books shouts fair use.

I mutter, "Sloppy writing..."

Historical fiction's tough. It's as tough as science fiction or fantasy world-building, but with the added bonus of other people being able to shout 'Anachronism!' at the top of their lungs if you screw up. Research, accurate research, is soooooo vital!

And since the appeal of historical fiction is the chance to be transported back in time, we the reader know, or at least really really HOPE, the wrtier did her research.

The Bitches' issue with Ms Edwards doesn't seem to be the accuracy of her research. It's that her authorial voice changes when she wants to show that research off. Changes so much, they googled those odd bits. Then googled some more... It becomes clear that the writer's awkward info-dumps (if your readers notice the change in voice, that's awkward) were literally scooped up and dumped from source material to novel.

"Plagarism!"

"Fair use!"

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Lazy.

By contrast, yesterday I started 'Why Mermaids Sing' by CS Harris. It's a murder mystery set in Regency England. September 1811, to be exact.

I'm reading with a sort of sense of wonder right now: beautiful language, flowing dialogue, local dialects that actually work, a deft hand with characterization and a cracking good pace. Seriously, this writer belongs on the bestseller lists.

So it should be no surprise that her research and historical texture are spot-on as well. And restrained.

Marvelously restrained. Her characters move through their world without feeling the need to stop every few pages and 'break the fourth wall' explaining it to us. Yes, it took me a few chapters to figure out what a 'tiger' was, but it was worth it. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and not a single info-dump narrative or 'As you know Bob' in sight!

It's a walk along a knife's edge, giving the reader enough information without giving too much. And it's a bloody magic act pulling it off without the seams showing. Mermaids does it, and damned if I can quite see how...

Doing all this research. Ignoring it while you write. Using facts sparingly. And then doing it in a pleasing and entertaining way: it's a lot of heavy lifting. A lot. And as a guy with a lazy side myself (for two years I hired a lawn service rather than mow my own), I can understand the aversion to heavy lifting.

But here's the thing. We love what we do. Otherwise, we'd do something else. And love means doing the heavy lifting.

Hard Resolution

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau

"Move with purpose. The world will meet you, or at least get out of your way." -- Steve Malley

Tis the season for new year's resolutions.

All around our Western Civilization, gym memberships are swelling. It's hard to find a chair this month in Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and all those other diet programs. Online dating sites are doing a booming business.

In a couple of weeks, maybe a month, most of those new faces will be gone. We used to see it all the time in the martial arts gyms of my youth. Every January, and every time a new action movie came out, the new folks piled in, most of them six week wonders.

Kate has a list of her new things in her life, and they've been happening. Candy has four well-thought resolutions. Charles, only one (but it's a goodie - cut down on the computer games). Timothy Hallinan has a beauty of a list for any writer.

I don't make New Year's resolutions. For some reason, my off-beat life makes them impractical. Instead, I make my resolutions for the next twelve months in October.

This year I don't have any new ones. I'm too busy with year three of an old resolution: Move from comics into prose.

That meant my life needed to change. I finished out my comics commitments and did not take on new ones. I work fifteen hours a week in the tattoo shop, a compromise that gives me money enough for books and time enough to write.

And I do write. I write and I read and I study this strange craft. I'm in for a long haul.

The best things in life don't give instant gratification. Being in shape is great: sweating in the gym sucks, especially those sore first few weeks. No matter what Beyonce's doing with maple syrup, weight loss needs to be gradual to endure. Loving and being loved is awesome, but it's work, every day. I didn't expect life as a writer to be an exception.

I suspect that's where the six-week wonders go wrong. At the end of the day, it's easier to chase the quick fix pleasure than to hunker down for the bigger reward.

8 Days Later....

Five pounds lighter...


Twenty hours of sleep total...


The work stands at 68,238 words.


Events took some unexpected turns. Things that baffled me (why is that girl Irish? Why is she in here at all? What's with the horses?) have become clear. An encounter I'd been expecting the whole book never materialized. There are notes scattered through the text telling me what I need to add earlier...


The final showdown is underway.


The end is so close I can taste it.


Oddly, the Minor Bastard is still alive. I'm starting to wonder if he'll make it through the whole book. For that matter, I'm kind of wondering about the Hero and the Main Bastard as well. Both are more resourceful than I would have thought, and nothing is as simple as it seems.


I'm not quite finished, but I *am* having the time of my life!


Of course, once I'm finally done, I do plan to sleep for a week. That too will be most enjoyable!



In other news, the birthday was much fun.


The Tiny Dynamo provided me with some very nice gifts and a truly ginormous chocolate cake!

After all, I do have some missing kilos to put back on....

I May Be Some Time

I'm just going outside and may be some time. Though hopefully not as long as that nice Titus Oates...

I've got a week left til my birthday. The novel's current incarnation is on 41,500 words. From what I can see of the road ahead, I expect to come in around 80-90,000.

Like that kid on the left there, I've got a daunting task. But hey, slugging out of my weight is practically second nature.

I've also got some kind of summer cold/virus. Given that I thought I saw a white horse in the back yard just now, I may have a bit of a fever as well...

At any rate, my only prayer of finishing this beast involves unplugging the modem. I do promise to check back in on the 3rd and let you all know how everything went.

Meantime, here's a painting by Robert Bailey with a title close to my heart!

Rest assured that this week will indeed be spent at full throttle!

Getting My Thanks On

Woohoo, Thanksgiving morning! My first in ten years...

Bought the turkey yesterday, should be about defrosted now. Even found cranberry sauce!

New Zealand simply does not get this Thanksgiving idea. Of course, they don't get Rammadan or Passover either, probably or the same reasons.

The turkey: Biggest turkey I could find was 14lbs. That one was $90. I settled for an 11lb. bird for $60. The Tiny Dynamo was spitting tacks.

Cranberries: Apparently only grow in America. Or something. One market in the city center carried some jars of Ocean Spray. I snapped up what I needed.

Pumpkin Pie: Canned pumpkin? What's that? Why on earth would anyone want a can of pureed pumpkin? For pie? That's just wrong. Sick and wrong!

I boiled and mashed and blended my own damn pumpkin and made my pie last night. Yup, I'm a night-before dessert guy, always have been...

And of course, celebrating the autumn harvest on a sunny summer's day (think early or mid-June) doesn't help, either!

But enough ranting. I'm having a BLAST!

I do love cooking, much to the Tiny Dynamo's surprise. Thing is, I lack her flair and artistry in the kitchen. That and my 'risk tolerant' personality have barred me from cooking for her!

It's a *great* day out here, and we might get up into the hills for a walk in the woods.

Later tonight, a few members of Clan Dynamo will gather to share the bounty.

And every day I am thinkful for the many blessings in my life. It's a chain of minor miracles and bold actions that brought me to this time and place, and I'm grateful for every single one of them. My life right now is paradise.

Official More-Daily-Than-Usual

Wordcount-o-Meter:

40,066 words

Zipping right along!

Bad Words

I'll be brief.

There. Then. Somehow.

Bad words: naughty, naughty, naughty. The first two are flabby, the last one lazy.

There: This one's actually the least offensive to me, which only tells me it's my own bad habit. Nine times out of ten, there is nothing but filler. It takes up space that might be given to more, well, useful words.

That tenth time? Remember, there is a direction, and an indeterminate one at that. If it's going to remain in your story, it'd damn well better be important. And if that direction is so important, *why* did you use such a vague one? Successfully defend your answer and you're... there.

Then: One of the flabbiest words in English. Ever since we all decided to read from left to right, causation has been indicated by sentence order. Bob started the car and (then) backed out of the driveway. Okay, who thinks we need 'then' to let us know that Bob moved the car *after* he started it. Ninety-nine instances out of one hundred, then is useless.

Don't believe me? Put your thumb over the word and see if the sentence still makes sense.

One Important Exception: 'Then' can be a good way to build rhythm, especially in a string of complicated, related actions. In that case, the word is used, not once, but a few times, each repition building the chain of action. It can also build a sense of procedure, of actions performed many times. Lee Child uses this technique to good effect.

Somehow: Laziest. Word. Ever.

All somehow tells us is that the writer couldn't be bothered to consider the action. I just read a book by an author whose work I *love*. So it ground my gears all the more that said author had all sorts of things 'somehow' happening.

Bodies were 'somehow' moved. Small children 'somehow' climbed up the sides of walls. Guys hit by cars 'somehow' found the strength to crochet afghans as Christmas gifts for the entire family. Etc, etc, et-bloody-cetera.

I'm not advocating spending a million words on a trivial action, nor on explaining an action in a way that kills narrative flow. I'm just saying, DON'T USE SOMEHOW.

Bob somehow fit the corpse in the trunk. He kept to the speed limit heading out of town.

Bob stuffed the corpse in the trunk. He kept to the speed limit heading out of town.

Now how hard was that. 'Stuffed' implies how Bob did it, and we're all happy. Easy! Of course, if it was me...

The body was heavy, and dead-limp. Bob wrestled it for ten minutes, praying no one walked past. He had to slam the trunk to get it shut. Something inside crunched.

Bob kept to the speed limit all the way out of town.

But what can I tell you? That's just me. That's also a value decision on the narrative importance of any given action and the usefulness of building tension there. I seem to've decided Bob is an amateur, and very nervous. If he was a seasoned pro at the body-disposal game, I'd treat his efforts with more workmanlike prose.

NB: These rules apply to narative voice ONLY. Dialogue has only two rules: get the point across and keep it natural. People *say* there, then, somehow and all sorts of stuff when they're talking...

In parting: Back in my wayward youth, I used to know a talented martial artist. The man was a morbidly obese chain-smoker who hated to work out. He was also a technical genius and mean as a snake. I learned what I could from him, but I didn't bum-rush the buffet with a Camel hanging from the corner of my mouth.

There are bestselling authors who have these bad habits. Like that martial artist, it's sometimes possible to be a flabby, lazy success.

But this race to the reader is hard enough *without* our bad habits...

Slowing Down to Speed Up

The new work is somewhere between 37,000 and 40,000 words. Hard to tell, these days.

This story's been a real trial. I've had two false starts and multiple 'sudoku moments' before it found its feet.

In the end, I had to slow down to move at any speed at all.

I want to blame the laptop. The bloody thing is quite the window onto the world. It's got the email, minesweeper, various card games and even that interweb the young people do go on about. ;) heckuva lot of ways for a writer to waste time.

Of course, the laptop doesn't *force* me to distraction. I do that all on my own. But putting this nifty gizmo down has been great!

It all started one night. It'd been a busy day at the tattoo shop, and there were still drawings to do for non-needly clients when I got home. By the time I sat down to write, the eyestrain was bad. I was in no mood to stare at a screen, no mood to hear the exhaust fan come on or the processor tick over.

So I picked up pen and paper. The screen resolution on the paper was fantastic, 1200dpi at least! And though the pen was slower than typing, it still wasn't as slow as thinking up what to say, so I was fine there. At the end of the night I had a tidy pile of respectable work in front of me.

And so it began. Three dead pens later, I picked up a 40-odd year old Skater fountain pen for cheap. There's a lovely sensuality to writing with a good fountain pen (not unlike the soft pat and slide of a loaded brush across canvas, but that's another story). And I can refill the pen whenever it runs out.

From time to time I stop and type in what I've written, hence the dubious word count. I do miss the editing tools in Roughdraft, but I'd miss not knowing how this story turns out even more!

A Lil Rudyard For Ya

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

(Steve here:) This poem found me at a formative time in my life, twelve years old and desperately trying to figure out how to be 'a man'. Time like that, these words went straight to the bone.

Looking back, I could have done a lot worse. This poem's done all right by me.

So Quiet

I've been quiet of late, I know. There are a few relatively juicy blog essays banging around in my head, but no time to write them.

Y'see, I'm writing again. Working title is This Rusted Cage (TRC), and it's shaping up to be a fair bit of fun. At least, I can't wait to see what happens. But it's autumn in the book, and autumn here on the ground, so I'm really trying to boogie while the impressions are all nice and fresh.

I dashed off maybe three or four thousand words on that earlier idea (the guy in handcuffs), but it wasn't there yet. I like his story, but this one needs telling first. Oddly, this story is one I made a couple of false starts on before starting (and finishing) the previous novel.

That one's still marinating. Another month or two, I'll print and edit.

In the meantime, I've put up the bones of a site for my writing. There's even an excerpt here. Of course, I'll have to do this all over when the publishers insist on a name change and I end up writing as Winter Fallon or some such.

On the home front, Midge has gone from staying outside to sleeping in the same room with Butler. On top of the bookshelves where he can't reach her, of course, but it's progress. They've also eaten at the same time, which is rather social for the Duchess Midge.

When the laptop's not handy (supermarkets, lines, waiting rooms, etc.), I've been working longhand in a notebook. Later, I transcribe those scenes in. Butler has also been most helpful in this regard.

Ass Glue

75,000 words (grinding along)

I can't remember where I came across this Bryce Courtenay anecdote, and I heartily apoligize for any details I get wrong. I will stay faithful to the spirit of the story, though.

It seems he's a bit of long-distance runner, marathoner, something like that. Running like that is a mental game as much as physical, and it takes a particular kind of toughness.

He was in a race and, not feeling it was competitive enough, decided to pick on the guy next to him. He started asking questions, trying to throw the guy off his stride, and it turned out the guy next to Bryce was a writer too.

Bryce knew he had him. He asked the one question sure to do the poor bloke's head in.

"What's the secret to writing a good story?"

The guy never dropped a step.

"Ass glue," he said.

Bryce knew he wasn't going to beat this guy. He shared the only real secret to writing.

They helped each other finish the race.

Of course, that anecdote was longer when Bryce told it (as are his books), but the moral's there all the same.

Tenacity.

Stubbornness.

Call it what you want, but put words on the page. Then some more. Feel like they're no good? Put a few more on there. You won't get better without practice. Write something bad. Then write something better.

You weren't born knowing how to walk. Imagine what your life would be like if you looked at your first unsuccessful attempts, decided you obviously had no walking-talent and gave up.

One of my cartoonist heroes/mentors once said, "You've got a thousand bad pages in you, but you've got to draw them before you get to the good ones." John D. MacDonald had a similar thought, but put it at one million words.

My writing pace is a compromise. I don't have the time to do more, but if I take much longer than three or four months on the first draft it starts to go stale on me. After that come several months of revisions before it's ready to step out into the world, but hell, it took me seventeen years to leave the house.

As Michelle said in her blog today, talent comes out of hard work. Glue your ass to the chair and practice, practice, practice.