One Leg at a Time No Longer

or, Oops, I'm doing it again.

I held off as long as I could, but frankly, I'm addicted. And it's time for the next fix.

I'm writing again.

This time, though, I'm not flying by the seat of my pants. I've got notes on the forces at work before the heroine shows up. As promised before, I've got my Golden Spine (also known as the premise or Story Question):

The loss of her brother forces Kera Slade to the one thing she swore she'd never do: return home. Can she find the truth about his death when two gangs of murderous thugs and a tough-as-nails sheriff all want to make sure the past stays buried?

I've even... I've even got an outline:

Those are my heroine's two plots (conscious goal and unconscious goal) and the main subplot on the left, Act climaxes and approximate word count along the line. Easy.

A new leaf? A strange experiment? The next 90 days will tell.

This time through, I'm writing 1000 words a day, and no internet access until I do. So far, so good.

I've even dusted off the trusty old Full Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter.

At Day 3, we stand at 4200 words.

Constant Conflict

So I'm writing along, a variation on stranger-comes-to-town. I've got these six characters, each with his or her own agenda and all on a collision course. There's been one terrible crime 'out front' where we all see it, and others happening in the background, where even I'm not entirely sure. Before long, there'll be blood on the walls...

One reason I write 'full throttle' is that I really, really want to find out what's going to happen. What sorta sucks about writing is that I HAVE TO write my way, one word at a freakin time, up to the end.

Yesterday I wrote a phone call. Yup, a phone call.

My hero on this one's a bit of a drifter, so there's not a lot of point in him carrying a cell phone. He needed to reach out to another character, and it seemed worthwhile to show that he needs a landline. I know, I'm yawning already.

But I followed my golden rule:

Nothing, nothing without conflict.

My hero went in to the bar where he's working. I put the relief tender (ten words in a previous chapter) behind the bar, still on from the night before because the morning guy never showed. The low-key stoner stuck on a double shift wanted the hero to clock in. The hero wanted to use the phone and get the hell out.

The character he was calling saw the work number on her cell. She's pretending to be sick to keep from covering that shift too. I got a nice bit of three-way conflict out of that one phone call.

Somehow, I doubt that call will end up in the final draft. But I did learn a couple things about my characters by watching them handle this situation, and writing it got me through to the next scene. I also got to add in the extra layer of tension when the relief tender mentions that the cops are asking about what happened behind the bar last night...

Now, the hero and his coworker are having lunch. They've got conflict on several levels:

Overt: She has information he wants. She doesn't want to give it to him.

Covert: She's making like she has his best interests at heart. He's not sure he trusts her.

And deeper: She wants something bigger from him, and it makes him wary. I'm not even sure that she's being honest about what she wants.

And further: There's a three way love triangle going on as well. That way, just the fact of these two being alone together is a move against the woman who isn't there. And the two women hate, hate, HATE each other, for reasons I can only suspect.

One thing about this story: my characters aren't telling me much. My heroes usually don't. Male or female, I gravitate to quiet, tough characters who don't see a lot of point talking about their pasts. They're action-oriented for a reason, and that's as it should be.

This time though, everyone around the hero is dodgy. They tell me their motivations, and I don't believe them. Where the hero just isn't talking, these people are actively hiding and lying.

Just like the eventual readers, I have to look at what they're doing to see them with any honesty at all. It's maddening, intriguing, and kind of fun!

In other news, Butler Dynamo continues to help. Here he can be seen turning his hand to literary criticism...

I thought the book was more interesting than that!

Tell It, Pablo

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair


DON'T GO FAR OFF, NOT EVEN FOR A DAY
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Pablo Neruda

(Steve here)

Man, could this guy write! My own current work is shaping up okay. No word counters this time, but I've got the players on the board and they're each starting to give me a sense of what they want. Two or three of them are just an absolute blast to write, constantly surprising me.

Of course, there are two characters who act like they want one thing, but I'm pretty sure they're lying...

Butler continues to help.

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.

A Novel Fifth

status: 20,000 words (a milestone!)

I always start a new work with a light heart. 'Bit of a lark,' I say. 'How hard can it be?' I say.

Of course, I always find out!

Those first few chapters roll off, and the going is easy. I feel like I've done so much, but that pride deflates when I realize that all my good work is only 2-3% of the finished novel. Urk.

In these early days I navigate by milestones. First five thousand. First ten. By the time I hit twenty, I've got a feel for the driving conflicts and the key players. It's shaping itself into a book.

20k is a very good day.

It also doesn't hurt that I spent the day at a Wildlife Park and wrote my thousand in about an hour and a half when I got home. The previous day's labor had taken six or seven hours for the same number of words.

Forty thousand tends to be pretty good too, but strangely, around the 50k mark, the milestones started to turn on me. I tend to think I should have gotten further by now, or feel like I'm too close to finished. What if the whole story's only 60k?!

It never is. By that point I know my characters, and can go deeper and deeper with them. I love to write tough, resourceful characters and aim them at each other. They never give up (especially the villains), and before I write 'The End' I can count on a lot more twists and turns than I had planned.

For now, the momentum's humming along. I'm excited to sit down in front of the keys every day, to find out a little more Baker and that daughter of his, about Sarah and her troubles, about how Michelle will deal with the problems I've handed her.

That's why I try to knock out the first draft fast as I can.

Back in the Saddle Again

So I'm writing again.

After five graphic novels and three novels, you'd think I'd be prepared for all that a new book involves. And maybe I am, enough to blog about the process while I'm going through it, anyway.

Writing a book is an emotional rollercoaster. I know I'm in for at least a few long dark nights of the soul, and a moment or two where I ring the sweetest bell in the universe. I've done it often enough to know that the only real changes are the insecurities involved.

The good days, it's like being master of the universe. The bad, well, nobody likes the bad ones.

My first book (an out-of-print graphic novel called Leather Tales), I had to deal with can-I-even-finish-something-so-long. Then for a while, it was about refining the process. Then I turned to novels and had to face what-if-it's-only-my-drawing, what-if-my-writing's-no-good.

That first 'real' novel wasn't bad. Wasn't great, either, and the sad fact is that not bad isn't good enough for a new writer to break in. So in the drawer it went and back through the long ride I went with the second novel.

It was worse than the first. There were bits and pieces that sang, but that's a bit like Frankenstein pointing out the good job he did with the monster's ears. So in the drawer it went, and all through the third novel I had to wrestle with maybe-I'm-really-not-cut-out-for-this.

Well, that one was good. At least, I thought so. My brand new agent, Anne Hawkins at JHA Literary, thinks so too. I'll let you know how things go with that one on this blog too.

So here I am, back in the saddle again, this time with what-is-that-one-was-a-one-off.

My most effective technique for beating down those insecurities is something I call 'maybe, come back later.'

For instance, back in the beginning when I worried about even finishing the first book, I'd tell those worrying voices, "Maybe you're right, but I'm doing this page now. Come back later." When I was doing my first novel and worrying that I was an art guy getting ahead of himself I'd say, "Maybe, but if nothing else this'll be a good script for another graphic novel."

Now when I'm tempted to waste time worrying about making lightning strike twice I say, "Maybe this one won't be up to snuff, but in that case I'll write another one."

One advantage of experience is knowing that I'll look back on the finished work and have no idea which days were good ones, and which bad.

And the more I do, the better I'll get.