Arisen

Every year at Easter, the executed corpse of Jebus rises from its tomb to feast on the living and we ward it off with talismans of chocolate and marshmallow.

In a similar vein, I'm rising from my blogging-coma to catch y'all up with what's going on.

1) BURIED (the work-in-progress) is *very* nearly ready to go out to the Tiny Dynamo and the Beta Readers. (sounds like a band, doesn't it?) I've taken the story as far as I can. Now, the readers will tell me what's missing, what's too much and what (if anything) just plain misfires. After that, it'll be the marvelous Agent Anne's turn, followed by the Eventual Editor. At least, I do so hope.

2) My day job has changed. After six years, my gig at Planet Tattoo is over. The owner and I had been doing business on a handshake agreement, and a couple of weeks ago I found out that a handshake is worth the paper it's printed on. So that was it for us. For a time there was talk of me buying the shop off him, but wiser heads and random signs writ in the heavens all pointed a different way...

The Ink Spot opened its doors for the first time yesterday. Sonja and Betty and Jay and I are all there, and the new place is really, *really* nice. I can't believe how much we did in such a short time. But then, look at the blog title: I pretty much live with a brick dropped down on the accelerator and the steering wheel snapped off in my hands. And the brake pedal? As shiny and new as the day I got it!

Once Jebus has been chased back into his grave for another year and this mandatory holiday is over, we'll be able to get back to normal. Or to figure out what normal is in the shiny new tattoo shop we all just built:

The Ink Spot
205 Hills Road
(across from the Mad Butcher)
385-2334

For my Christchurch readers, drop on in. I'd love to see you! Anyone out there who wants a beautiful portrait tattoo, something photo-realistic, cartoonish or other high-quality illustration in skin, I'm your man!

And for the rest of you who miss the days when I wrote about writing, I'll get back to that too!

Shouts

All right, all right, I admit it: it's been awhile. How are you doing, anyway? Have you lost weight? You look great!

Until I get this current pass done (the last before the new work goes out to the Tiny Dynamo and all the Beta-Readers), internet time is strictly rationed. Strictly. Rationed. My apologies, and you really do look great. Something with your hair, maybe?

The lovely and talented Shauna Roberts and Barbara Martin *both* awarded me the Premier-Dardos. I feel humbled that you find something of worth and value in the clicks of my keyboard. I'm supposed to pass this on to other worthies, but there are simply too many of you, and too few of me doing the typing. Please feel free to accept one on my behalf...

Speaking of worth and value, I recently finished Where Serpents Sleep by our very own CS Harris. Holy Smoking Joes, it was like a master class in how to write a thriller, and how to keep a series thrilling. Pace. Suspense. Action. Intrigue. Heroes. Villains. If I were the type to teach Creative Writing classes, my students would find her work required reading.

And on the heels of my godawful incoherent post (I humbly promise never, never, NEVER again to drink and blog), Candy's historical thriller shows *exactly* how to make research feel authentic without bogging down. Bloody marvelous.

There's more I want to talk about, so much more. Sidney's new podcasts. Wayne's offbeat, lyrical and poetic photo essays. The way that like the cartoon mouse Savoir Faire, Charles Gramlich is everywhere.

Sadly, I'm out of time. I doubt I'll even get to the 103 unread messages in my Google Reader at the moment. Yup, 103. I blame the rationing.

And the war. Always good to blame the war.

I know what it is. You've been working out, haven't you?

More Than a Blog Title...

It's a lifestyle.

Besides, it was my birthday!

Big Rocks First

I could swear I saw this done in the 80's, but my Google-search seems to attribute this anecdote (mostly) to Stephen Covey. Either way, it's a good lesson.

In First Things First, Stephen Covey tells a story that one of his associates heard at a seminar. The seminar presenter pulled out a wide-mouth gallon jar and placed it next to a pile of fist-sized rocks. After filling the jar to the top with rocks, he asked, "Is the jar full?"

The group replied, "Yes."

He then got some gravel from under the table and added it to the jar. The speaker jiggled the jar until the gravel filled the spaces between the rocks. Again, he asked, "Is the jar full?"

This time, the group replied, "Probably not."

The speaker then added some sand and asked, "Is the jar full?"

"No!" shouted the group.

Finally, the speaker filled the jar to the brim with water and asked the group the point of this illustration.

Someone replied that you could always fit more things into your life if "you really work at it."

"No," countered the speaker. The point is, if you don't put the big rocks in first, " . . . would you ever have gotten any of them in?"

As you start the new year, think of the "big rocks" in your life as the things you can do to make this a healthier and happier year for yourself and others. When making decisions during the moments, days and months of the year ahead, ask: "Is this a big rock?"

Say "yes" to your "big rocks" first. Don't feel you need to explain each "no" when the smaller gravel and sand try to fill your time. "No" can be a complete sentence!

I get a fair amount done every week. And that includes a fair amount of that slack, do-nothing, hang-out-together time that the Dynamo and I enjoy together. I don't tightly schedule *anything*, but I do keep my Big Rocks few, and make them my priority.

1000 words a day on the novel.

Say something sweet to, do something sweet for and generally enjoy the Tiny Dynamo.

Read an hour or two a night.

Work enough to keep the doors open.

That's it, really. Just those few things. The smaller stuff, the gravel, fits in easy enough: surfing the net, painting for fun, writing the odd blog post, drinks with friends, etc. Like sand and water, the *really* small stuff has to fit in where it can. I don't sweat it.

I know some of you are thinking about your bigger job commitements, the time that children eat up, that sort of thing. Cool. Those are your Big Rocks, and they do deserve your time. And if your job is a Bigger Rock for you than your writing, expect the appropriate results.
You'll need to go slower, or to push some sand out of the way.

Right now, CS Harris is writing despite some serious, and unavoidable, upheavals. I have faith in her. After all, this is the same woman who wrote Why Mermaids Sing in the middle of Katrina. Now me, I tend to think, "Oh no, XYZ popped up and I won't get what I need to done." Then I think of Candy and feel inspired. I drop some other, smaller rock and get back to work.

I'll offer three important tips:

1. Get the must-do stuff done first. Little fires ignite all day long. If nothing else, they're going to take some energy to put out. It's easy to end up too tired at day's end to do your best. Some folks are exceptions to this, your mileage may vary.

2. Clarity. Be clear and honest with yourself about the size of those Big Rocks. Sometimes, the answers may be a little painful, but in my book a little pain's better than decades of lingering hollow misery and nagging doubt caused by living an untrue life.

3. Focus. The fewer Big Rocks you have, the easier it is to focus on them. A person with only ONE priority in life is (yes, likely to appear slightly deranged, but also) virtually unstoppable. A person with five #1 issues is a fool.

As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

And let's see, on Day... hm, Day 38 (had to take off my shoes to count that one), the Full Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 40,900 words. And I'm one scene away from my Great Big Tentpole Plot Development. Fun!

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.

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.

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.