Countdown to Beltane

Here we are, last day of April, and May Day is less than a day away.  At the imaginary school Annie and I created, the Mórrígan Coven is preparing tomorrow’s Beltane celebration, and Victoria Salomon is getting ready to encourage eager young 1^st Year students to fly to a point 5,280 feet above the 5,268 foot peak of Mount Katahdin.  It’s going to be a lot of fun for all, and a day of relaxation before everyone gets into their finals.

A hell of a lot has gone down in the last 30 days.

I go back and look at what I was writing about on the 1^st day of the month, and it seems I was recounting all the stuff I’d done the 91 days before.  Wow.  I am nothing if not consistent.

I’ve finished the edits on Couples Dance, so over the weekend . . . yes, I was looking for publishers.  I chatted with My Muse while doing a search, and I showed her a few things that I was looking at, and I ended up finding seven publishers that I thought could be good fits for my little–well, not-so-little story these days.  But I have them, just as I said I would.  Now, while I’m editing Echoes, it’s time to start on the query letter, and start sending them out.

This is the moment I’ve been steeling myself for:  the point in the penmonkey’s live when they’ll send something out with great hopes, and get back that email telling them, “Hey, looks good, but . . .”  I’m ready for it.  In another life I’d have burned the manuscript after getting a rejection letter (not unlike someone I know who threw every drawing from their portfolio into the Chicago River when they were told all their sketches pretty much looked the same), but now . . . naw.  Not gonna happen.  I’ll just send it off to the next joint on the list.

Oh, and Scrivener:  I love that you let me pull in the website as I appears, and gives me an active link back if there’s something I need to see.  Then I’ll attach my query letter to the note card of the website, and when I get a message back, I’ll either type “Rejected” and copy that letter to the next site, or I’ll go on my Facebook author’s page and tell everyone the date of acceptance.

Yeah, good times.

It feels so very real now.  I feels like, “Yeah, this is what you should be doing.”  Maybe it’s good that I’m editing Echoes right now, because that’s a story all about what should have been, and what there is, and at the moment that feeling going around in a very big way.  Like I said long ago, 2012 is going to see change for me.  I have a story coming out very, very soon, and that’s step one.  I’ve finished up a lot of writing, and there is that to send out.

And there is more to write, that’s for sure.

Tomorrow I’m going to write about the people who are publishing my erotic story.  How good they’ve been to me.  And how some douchebag is trying to ruin that all.

Yeah, it’s going to be fun.

The Lord of the Little People

I like to get into discussions from time to time with my Muse.  Why her?  She always listens, and she’s pretty sharp.  And she doesn’t steer me wrong.  So when I get confused, I know I can speak with her, and she’ll not give me a non-answer.

I don’t remember if I’ve spoken to her about this subject, though, because my mind is all over the place these days.  Finished the Couples Dance revised edit; found seven possible suckers–I mean, publishers that might be good fits; needed to write queries; started editing Echoes–busy day since late Friday night, and yesterday.  Barely found time to eat . . .

Here goes:  what is it about writers who say their characters are telling them what to do?  Not to sound too much like a guy who collects Porches like I might collect bad habits, but what’s up with that?  ’Cause the last time I looked, my characters, while they live with me, they’re not telling me what to do.

And I have a very long history of jerking my characters around.

Allow me to explain:

It helps if you know that, besides being a writer, I’m also a gamer.  Now, there are very many different kinds of gamers.  Some like cards, other board games, other table top RPGs.  I was in that last category.

When one says, “Table top RPGs,” most people go, “Huh?”  If I say, “Dungeons and Dragons,” most people will usually go, “Oh, that crap.”  Like a person my age could never play that.

Well, really, I didn’t.  I usually played games that were much cooler.

To give you an idea of what it looked like when I played, let me lay it out for you.  You have a group of people sitting at a table.  There are numerous folks all staring at one person sitting at one end, who may or may not be sitting behind a paper screen so players couldn’t see his or her evil die rolls.  That person was the Game Master.  That person was usually me.

The Game Master (or GM, as we like to say), tells the story for the other players, and that allows their characters to frolic and go forth and have fun–and usually kill a shitload of people in the process.  See, the GM is nothing but a story teller, and the telling of the tale determine just how good the game is going to be.  Some GMs will put their story on a rail and let that big train roll on.  Others put a hell of a lot of work into their craft, and come up with wonderful locations and interesting characters for the player characters (everyone else) to interact with and within.

That last sort of GM was also me.

I had a lot of great characters for my games.  There was one couple, they were my favorite, and over the period of a couple of days I ended up with closer to 40 pages of notes about them.  By the time the game was over, that collection of notes had expected to almost 60 pages–all of which are, alas, forever lost, as they were on another computer that suffered a dying drive.  But I’ll keep that memory alive up in my head for as long as I keep that memory going.

See, the thing I usually do when I hear the, “My characters are telling me what to do!” line, is to scratch my head, because my characters are my creations, not the other way around.  I’ll spend time getting into the heads of my characters and try figuring out where they are going, but I’ve yet to have one jump up and go, “Hey, doofbag!  If you think I’m going out with that guy, you’re nuts!  No, no, no!  And when you going to write me up a laptop that rocks?  The one I have is shite!  I’m gonna–ymmmmhmph!”

Yeah, shut your yap, you.  You’re not the boss of me.

Maybe I feel this way because when I was running games, there was something I’d always tell my players.  It was a simple statement, but it was true.  ”In this game, I’m God.  And God will crush your asses if I feel like it.”  See, the game being run was my creation, and my imagination, and all the characters the players would meet were mine . . .  It was my world, and it was all my call when it came to laying a smackdown upon the characters the players were running.

I feel the same way with the characters in my stories.  It’s my world, and they are my puppets–more or less.  I love my characters, though I will put them through a ton of crap if it’s demanded by the story.  And I have killed one character twice–in the same story!  But you know medical technology; she keeps coming back.

I think the biggest different is that I’m not the sort of person who writes by the seat of their pants.  I’m not suddenly ceased by the urge to jot things down.  When I get an idea I’ll make note of it, then start thinking it out in my head.  When it comes time to open up a file on the story, I’ll start doing a little plotting on cards.

It’s during this time that I begin getting into the heads of the characters.  I think about what they are like, what they like, I try to develop their personality . . . it’s all a process.  Maybe I don’t do it as much for some characters as others–I mean, I know my main characters in Couples Dance are no where near as developed as they are in my other two novels–but I put them together just as I would a story–

Which is probably why before I wrote my NaNo Novel I spent almost two weeks on research, and a lot of that research was, one, getting the ideas for how magic worked in my world; and, two, getting into my characters.

Hey, doesn’t mean I’m right, you know?  It could just be my characters are scared of me.  As I’ve had a goddess (yes, a real one) tell someone in a story I wrote long ago, “We’re capricious creatures.  You never know what we’re going to do, or why we do it.”

Maybe it’s not that my characters are afraid of me.

It’s just that they understand I know what’s best for them.

Writing for the Taxman

Okay, this is gonna be one of those rants, so you’ve gotten your warning upfront.  Things might get nasty, and they will very likely get blue.  You can read on, you can go do something else, or your can watch this video of Yamamura Sadako–aka, the original version of Samara Morgan–throw the first pitch at a baseball game.  Watch it, and die seven days later.  You’re welcome.

Also, there is a particular reason for the title, and that reason has very little to do with taxation.  It’s a metaphor, more or less, and I’m more interested in writing that discussing the evils of taxation.  Just so you know:  I’ve read my Milton Friedman (as well as John Kenneth Galbraith), I’ve read For a New Liberty, and I’ve been a member of The Libertarian Party.  Take notice of the past tense declarations in that last sentence, and keep in mind I’m just like Liz Ten:  ”I’m the bloody queen, mate.  Basically, I rule.”  I will lop off heads.

 

That said, onward.

 

I love reading Chuck Wendig over at Terrible Minds.  He’s funny; he’s rude; he’s sometimes very profane, but in a funny way; he’s right when he says the people at Fox News simply make shit up.  The thing I like about him most, however, are his “25 Things” lists that he offers up to other aspiring penmonkeys who want to be writers, opining upon what he’s learned over the years.  When you read those lists, you know he’s been there.  You know he’s suffered, even if the way he says he’s suffered somehow involved tequila and a $10 hooker while he was trying to make a deadline, but the suffering is still there on the blog.

One of the things Chuck goes on about, at length, is the fact that you gotta have a hell of a lot of discipline to write.  And there’s a reason for that, but I’m not ready to go there, not yet.  I know of what he says, because I’ve worked on that very same issue.  A year ago at this time I was a mess.  I talked about writing, but I was doing jack-little of it.  Lots of talk; very little of putting the characters on the screen sort of thing.

Now, a quick divergence here . . .

While I may have a lot of opinions, I’m pretty much not about getting into people’s faces and casting those opinions their way.  Part of the reason is I can go on for hours about something, ’cause I don’t do soundbites very well.  If I have something to say, I’ll say it, and I’ll get into all the various reasons for saying it.

I try not to be a bad guy about things:  a lot of times I’ll hear something that’ll make me cringe and I’ll not say anything, either in person or online, but in my head I’m banging my head upon the desk, search for sharp objects to ram into my eyes.  I mean, if I responded to every comment I came across that I didn’t like, I’d be on the Internet all day long.  Oh, wait . . .

Anyway, I’m not about confrontation–unless my bullshit meter gets pegged.  Then I’ll usually say something.

The other day I was speaking to someone, another writer, about–well, writing, what else?  Said writer struggles with a busy life, as do many of us.  I get that part, and I generally don’t get up on my dead horse about that.

No, it was the other things they were saying that was making me grind my teeth into dust.

See, when I was discussion how important it was to get into certain habits with writing, every so often there would be this comeback:  ”I’m not very big on that.”  Fine and dandy.  Only a few days before there was another discussion about something I do in writing, and the comment was, “I don’t handle that well.”  Or, a few days before that, the answer to one of my suggestions was, “I don’t do that.”

In fact, during one conversation a week before, I was hit with variations of those comment four times in the course of about forty-five minutes.  That led not only to a great deal of headbanging, but to a conversation with My Muse over why some writers are that way.

Let me be clear:  I have sat in that same seat.  I have thrown out every excuse there is about why I’m not writing.  I’ve run them many a time on other people, and I’d done so for decades.  And I continued to call myself a writer while, as I mumbled out of the other side of my mouth, I was mentioning why I wasn’t actually, you know, writing.  And I’ve paid for that inaction.  Truly, I have paid.

But I’ve also learned, and I’ve taken those lessons to heart.  Because I have those lessons in my heart, it bothers me to see others fall into the same pit I’ve crawled out of–like a mule, if you believe one of my fans.

So, being as tactfully as possible, I told them they were spending an awful lot of time bitching about not being able to write, while at the same time complaining about how some of the things they could do to help them write, they just didn’t, you know, “handle well”.  And that they need to do something about that later thing.

I didn’t say it to hurt; I said it to help.

I have my disciplines these days.  I get up and blog first thing in the morning.  Right now it’s 7:30 in the morning on Saturday, but I started this sucker about 45 minutes ago, and it’s taken me this long to come up with something short of one thousand words because of “distractions”.  During the week, I rip off my post before I go to work, which means I usually start between 5:00 and 5:30 AM, and crank out a minimum of 500 words in thirty to forty minutes.

I do that because I have gotten into the habit of writing.  I do this blogging thing because, to take a partial quote from Neil Gaiman, “(Y)ou’re still putting one damn word after another and learning as a writer.”  Being creative at anything is a process of learning, and the more you learn, the better you get.

Like it or not, if you want to learn these truths, you need to take the freakin’ time to do so.  That often means finding a way to fit some time into your schedule, and while it’s not always an easy thing, it can be done.  Talk last night for me:  I get home from the Job, return to The Undisclosed Location, packed up the computer, drove for about two hours and forty minutes back to the Real Home, had something to eat, unpacked the computer, unwound a little, watched Real Time on HBO–then, at 10:00 PM, I started editing the last chapter of Couples Dance.  I was tired, because I was up at 4:15 AM CST yesterday, and nine hours at work followed by a one hundred and fifty mile drive does very little to help you get on top of your game.

But that last chapter wasn’t going to edit itself, so I slipped on my big girl boy shorts and got to work.  It wasn’t a long chapter–about 1,500 words, but when I was finished I’d cleaned it up nicely, and even added another 315 words to the story.  And I was done, finished, fin.  Then I saved the story, then saved all that off to an external drive, then posted my status on Facebook–because I am all about promoting myself when it comes to writing–and then I went to bed, just a little past 11:00 PM.

And I was up once more at 5:30 AM today, once more here at the computer, ready to go again.  Writing, as I am now, a few hours later.

You wanna learn, you gotta take the time.  Time equals you gotta sit at the goddamn computer and tap away at keys in order to get those pretty words to appear on the screen in a way that makes sense, and that means you gotta do it every day if you want to get better at the craft.

Every day.

Oh, sure:  take time off on your birthday and Christmas like Stephen King does, while remembering that he spends the rest of the year in his office writing a few thousand words every day–and at one time his office was a furnace/laundry room in a trailer, and his desk was a board he laid across his knees so he’d have a place to set his manual typewriter.  Yeah, good times.  But you gotta tap those keys, or put a writing tool to paper.  You gotta do it.

You have to teach yourself to sit and write.  You have to develop the discipline to do this every day.  You have to, you have to, you freakin’ have to!  And it’s not just teaching yourself to write.  You want to teach yourself character development; you want to teach yourself how to plot a story; you want to each yourself how to edit; you want to teach yourself the fine art of taking your story and format it correctly so when you turn it into an ebook someone with a Nook or Kindle will be able to read it when they buy it off the Internet.

You wanna call yourself a writer?  Anyone can do that.  There’s hundreds of people all over the ‘net that are saying, “Oh, I’m a writer.  I did something . . . well, that was thirty years ago, and I’ve been working on my last novel for fifteen years now–yeah, I’m a writer.”  That was me last year.  I wuz uh rightur.  I’d done a few things, and I’d posted them to the Internet, and I’d been working on my novel for twenty years–

Right.

Then I started writing.

I started writing in little spurts, but I did it every day.  I set goals.  I gave myself daily word counts to meet.  I got encouragement from people I knew.  I let others read what I was producing.  I got tools to help with my craft.  I learned.  I started blogging every day because it gave me a chance to work my imagination in a way that would help me develop my writing chops–hey, trying coming up with a new title every day.  Don’t think that’s hard?  Give it a try.

When it came time to self publish, I read up on how to format an ebook so it’ll can be accepted for distribution to Nook and Kindle.  That took a little work, but I figured out how to do it.  I didn’t go, “I CAN’T DO THIS, IT’S TOO HARD!”  I got in there and spent a couple of days playing and working.  First time in, the Smashwords meatgrinder ate my 24,000 word book–and accepted it two minutes later.  A few days later I was in Premium acceptance, no errors.

It can be done.

I know it’s easy to say, “I don’t do that very well.”  Hell, I’ve done it a great deal myself.  And it very easy to do with writing.  But there’s one thing you should always keep in mind when you’re writing:

Are you write for the hell of it?  Or are you writing because this is what you want to do for the rest of your life?

Because if you’re doing it for the rest of your life, then it becomes your job.  And jobs are not always easy.  I’ve programmed computers for 25 years, and I understand how hard that can be, and how intimidating it seems to others.  But anyone can do it.

You just have to learn.

So what is my ultimate goal?  It’s the title.

One day–maybe next year, maybe the year after–I’m gonna be filling out my 1040.  I’m going to put down all the pertinent information about who I am and what I do.  And when it comes to that section of the tax form that says, “Occupation,” I want to enter the following word:

“Writer“.

Nothing else, just that.  I want to be able to say, “Ya see that number down there, the one that say how much I made this last year?  I did all that writing.”

I shouldn’t say it’s my only goal, but ultimately, it’s one of the things I want to do.  Correction:  it’s one of the things I will do.

How about you?

I’ve said plenty: about 2,125 words so far.  I hope it’s helped and not pissed off too many people.  Writers tend to do both, you know.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to spend some time looking for publishers.

These stories won’t publish themselves.

Typewriter Mode a Go Go

After a night of strange dreams–one which involved being in some kind of televised contest involving slime where I was dressed like Jasmine from Aladdin for much of the dream–I wake up ready to get through work, and away from The Undisclosed Location with as much vigor as I can muster.

I want out of this town in the worst way.  Not that going home is any better, but it’s . . . home.

The afternoon on yesterday was interesting.  For one, I did my interview for the upcoming release of my erotic story.  It’s funny how “interviews” are performed over Google Docs these days.  I don’t mind, not at all, because I get to show off.  But I really want to have people hear me.  I want to come off as the witty person I am.  Or, the one who’s going to crash and burn all over the internet radio.  It happens, you know?

It was a lot of fun writing it up, though.  I saw Annie last night (Hi, Annie!), and showed her one of my responses, and she was–needless to say–blown away.  Although, for an interview done for an erotic press, I gathered their would be more questions about the number of sexual encounters I’ve had while fixing someone’s cable box, but hey–can’t tell people everything about my life, can I?

I also–hold on to your hats–started looking for publishers.  Yes, finally!  I spent about forty minutes searching the Internet, then realized I needed to narrow my searches a little.  I’ll be looking through Duotrope later, finding likely matches for my stories.  I realize Couples Dance is going to be a very hard sell, but if I do sell it–yeah, it’s going to be a good one.

Speaking of Couples . . . Chapter 9 went came and went fast, like the person sitting next to you at a local bistro that you want to get to know better.  It was a pretty good sized chapter before I started–about 5,300 words–but when I was finished with it, I’d cleaned it up considerably, and ended up adding 760 words.  Some of what was added would fit in with the new chapters, and I did those in green text, so when I start splitting this into separate novella and novel folders, I’ll know what to remove.

Oh, and I learned something new in Scrivener!  I was playing around with trying to set up changes to text (you can do this with Snapshots, but I didn’t play with that), and I came across something I’d seen before, but never looked up:  Typewriter Mode.  What is this?  Well, if you write in Scrivener–or Word, for that matter–everything scrolls to the bottom of screen before text begins flowing upward.  I’ve always had a problem with this, and I spend most of the time with the text display setting in split screen so everything in right in front of my eyes, so to speak.

Typewriter Mode will let you type away from the stop of the text display, and once you reach the center of the display, things start scrolling upward, and the lines you’re typing–or, as I discovered last night, editing–stay right in the middle at what should be eye level.

Needless to say I was having a hell of a lot of fun with this.  I’ve always found a function that I’m going to keep on all the time, because I like having my text right there, and I’m all about the comfort while typing.

Maybe that’s why I was able to burn through editing last night the way I did–because I was comfortable.

Or maybe it was became I knew my Muse was with me, keeping me reassured with words of comfort and love.

We should all be so lucky, you know?

Filler As a Way of Life

First off, I’d like to thank Katherine Gilraine for being brave enough to take up my offer of hosting her guest post.  There was good response from everyone involved, and I clocked in over a hundred views yesterday.  Yes, that might not sound like a lot, but to me it’s impressive, because I’m just a small blog, and a small person, and I’m still growing and getting known.  So thanks to everyone who showed up to say “Hi!” and made it a very busy day.

Now, back to the mundane of what passes for life at The Undisclosed Location.

I know there are people who like to give me props about my dedication to this craft, how I’ve created his routine for gettin’ it done, so to speak.  I have to say, I amaze myself at times that I’m able to keep up this routine as I do.  I mean, look at now:  I was up at 4 AM, turned on the computer at 4:28, and here it is, 4:54, and I’m already 175 words into my blog post.

But lately . . . I’ve had a lot of distractions.

I’ve written before about having way too many shiny distractions, things that keep pulling you away from the task at hand and seeming to push you off the path.  This week it seems like they’ve been everywhere.  All during this week’s run at editing Couples Dance, and it seems like I’ve wanted to run off and do something, anything, other than work on that story.

There is one word I should change, however, and that’s “edit”.  This week I haven’t been editing, I’ve been writing.  I decided I wanted to “stretch out” the story, which was sitting at thirty six thousand words, and kick it into novel territory.  Aye, that I have done, but it’s not leaving me with a good feeling . . .

Don’t get me wrong; the chapters cover things that should have been covered the first time around.  In fact, I think Chapter 7.5 (as I am calling it right now) is pretty kick ass, if not a little sick.  But chapter 8.5, which is a discussion of ideas about things that happened in the story, and a tossing of ideas between characters . . . damn, man, but getting that chapter together has been like pulling teeth with a couple of toothpicks.

As I pointed out to some people last night, this last chapter is almost 6,400 words long.  That, right there, is a short story in of itself.  In fact, after going over the numbers last night, I determined that, as of this moment, I’ve added 15,000 words to Couples Dance.

That’s a hell of a lot of wordage however you cut it.

I don’t know what has caused me to stray during this last week.  Maybe it’s because this particular chapter just wasn’t “coming to me” like so many have in the past.  Maybe it’s because I have not one, not two, but three ideas for stories rolling about in my head at the moment, and it’s starting to feel like a Marx Brother’s movie in there.  It could also be that I’m straight up exhausted, and when I’m doing my night writing (hey, that could be the name of a band!) I simply don’t have the energy to crank out the words like when I was creating the story the first time around.

Or maybe . . . there’s this feeling I’m getting like the chapter I just finished doesn’t sit “right”.  Like I know it’s filler, and it feels like filler, and it’s pissing me off because I know it’s not right.

Sure, I know it’s a first draft.  I even said that last night as I saved it off:  ”I’ll pretty it up in the edit,” is what I said as I saved the document and got ready to copy it to my external drive, and I know I’ll have to do just that.  There is this feeling . . . like I said, it doesn’t feel right.  I’ll fix it up later.

No, really, I will.

Does this mean I’m discouraged?  Somewhat.  I don’t want these to have these feelings that what I’m doing sucks, and what I’m producing isn’t worth a damn.  Or that it’s going to be rejected as crap.  Or, worst of all, it doesn’t live up to my exceptions of what I should write.

It’s enough to get your down.

And then something comes along that keeps you going . . .

Two days ago I get this Facebook IM.  It’s from the publisher who is putting out my erotica story next month–which, I realize, is only a few days away.  She had something for me to see, so I clicked on the link–

And there was the cover for my story.  All professionally done and looking slick as hell.  The only thing that kept me from jumping up and screaming, “Yes!” was that I was at work when I got this IM, and I would have scared everyone in the office.

My first professional cover, staring right back at me, and I know in a few weeks this sucker’s gonna be sitting on the ‘Net with people looking at it.

It’s that kind of filler that keeps you going.

It’s that kind of filler that keeps one writing.

Sympathy For the Dreamer

We get no respect.

Yesterday I was looking about the net–because that’s what I do–and I came across an article on Salon.com.  What it basically boils down to is this:  if you are a creative type person–someone who designs, or dances, or writes music or poetry or stories–as far as 99% of the world is concerned, you’re a leach.  You get no help.  You loose you ability to earn, and you’re not even deserving of someone peeing on you if you’re on fire.

In short, you’re wasting the world’s time.

I came across the article some hours after responding to a Facebook post.  A woman in one of my writing groups, who has decided to go into writing full-time, asked if it was really normal for her friends, once they knew she was taking this great leap of faith, to pretty much abandon her and shun her like she were Charlie the Unicorn.

I told her–as did a few others–that their reaction seems normal, and whenever you decided to “Follow your dream,” and join the cast of The Starving Artists, you suddenly feel alone.  Friends, acquaintances, even family–they all walk away.  They leave you behind and drop you like a bad habit.

It’s their way of saying, “I don’t get it.  I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

There was a time in the U.S. when culture was big.  You could actually make it as a writer or musician or poet–assuming you didn’t over extend yourself and sink into a bottomless morass of sex, drink, and drugs.  You could actually get props for being published; you could get recognition for having something show up in Collier’s Magazine, where your intelligence and natural wit made you a star.

These days, you tell your friends you’re going to become a writer–or worst yet, a blogger–and they look at you and give you that all-knowing glare, then say something like, “But that’s not really work; whacha gonna do for a job?”

It seems as if there’s no legitimacy in having an imagination.  It’s all about makin’ those Benjamins in today’s world–and, conversely, keeping your company’s stock in good shape; something that was actually written up as an employee value at my last job.  And woe be to you if you’re one of those dreamer types who wants to entertain people with your ideas and stories, because you, Madam or Sir, are nothing but a drag on this country–nay, be it the world.

I’m callin’ bullshit on it all.

Though people might seem content with accepting the lowest common denominator when it comes to entertainment–and if that statement isn’t true, explain how three movies based on a toy line from the 1980′s have generated just over a billion dollars in sales in this country–you still need those dreams to feed upon.  They want to feel like there is something in their lives that makes them think a little, or vicariously live through another person, or experience sensations they haven’t in real life.  People want these things–

They just don’t want to give us any help in getting them.

I feel the biggest problem to being a creative person–like, in my case, and the case of some of my friends, being a writer–is that ordinary people, the non-dreamers . . . they don’t get it.  They don’t understand.  They want to consume your dreams, to make them theirs.  It’s like you’re a chef, and your readers are the people who come to your restaurant.  You put your heart and soul into your work, and the customers eat it up.  And all the while, they’ll never understand why you do what you do, or how you do it, or why you have passion for your work, why you feel you put so much of yourself out there every time you prepare a dish.

Naw.  They just wanna eat the damn thing.  And if you’re lucky, they won’t bitch about the taste, or the presentation, or how much it cost.  And if they’re lucky, they won’t have the chance to discover if you’re really Gordon Ramsey–

Normal people–the undreamers among us–they will never get it.  They will never understand that creativity is a job unto itself.  It’s a job; it’s a living; it’s a life.  If you make things, if you put your creativity out there for all to see–be it paintings or song or writing or even crocheting–you will always have people who’ll look at you and say, “Why are you wasting your time with that shit?  Why aren’t you doing something useful?”

But their opinion doesn’t matter, because you are a dreamer–

Why waste your time with mere morals?

Please Welcome My First Guest–

For the first time ever, Ladies and Gentlemen, a guest has arrived!

I’ve followed Katherine Gilraine’s blog, Improvisations on Reality, for some time now.  She is a published writer, an extremely witty and charming person, and an all-around good person to know.  As someone who is, as I like to say, “playing the writing game,” I enjoy her insights into the writing world–and whatever else she enjoys chatting about.

So, without further ado, take it away, Katherine!

 

So a Novelist Writes a Script…

 

I know it sounds like a joke, believe you me.  *rim-shot*.  However, it’s no secret that I’m trying my hand at screenwriting, and I’m in the process of transforming my first novel into a script.

I will not lie: it’s daunting. Of all the forms of writing I tried my hand at so far – journalism, poetry, short stories, novels – screenwriting was the odd man out. I’ve never written a full-scale movie script before, and considering I’ve never taken classes for it, which I may rectify after this experience, I’m walking into the world of movie scripts blind.

But on the other hand, I like the one major effect of transforming my book into a movie script: everything is clearer than ever.

I won’t lie, the opinion of Mages has been mixed. Some people like it, and the nine 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon are testament to the fact that something went right with it. The other reviews, received in private, say that the book is hard to follow, and it’s not really clear what’s going on. The first massive benefit of the script is that whatever was less than clear with the book gets a spotlight (and some key lights) on it with the script form.

The inverse to this is that some of the scenes of the book had to get cut with the script form for the sake of the storyline, and this is something that film-to-book-adaptation fans have been grousing about for quite some time, myself among them (hey, I’ll be the first to admit it). This is the thing: no matter how clearly you picture it in your head at the time you write it, and no matter how great you think it would look on screen, when it’s in the actual script form, it takes away from the story. It’s one thing to butcher a book in the interests of time constraints, as we know, but if you see that a scene, in and of itself, isn’t doing anything to add to what you’re looking to achieve with the screenplay, it has to go. You get a two-hour cap to show your story on screen, and the acronym of K.I.S.S. applies in stereo.

Which, in turn, clarifies the flow of the original story.  Where a novel can get clunky and verbose at times, the screenplay flows along much faster.

Now, while I value learning a new art form as much as the next author, there is a major marketing slant to this. People are visual creatures by nature, and we like to see things in front of us – book, movie, what-have-you. The movie market is just as competitive as the book market, even more so than the world of traditional publishing, but it opens up the writer to a whole new audience.

This is the thing, though. Movie scripts and traditionally-published manuscripts go through quite a bit of rigmarole before they get to their final destinations. If a writer ever wants the screenplay to see the light of day, they have to keep pitching it until they’re blue in the face or until someone is actually willing to take a look at it, whichever comes first. Reminds you a bit of querying, doesn’t it? So then this idea occurred to me: considering that I’m the author of both the source material and the screenplay, why not go the self-publish route with the screenplay as well?

I’m not saying hire an indie director, take out a multimillion-dollar loan, and produce it. No bank in their sane mind would approve that sort of endeavor. I am, however, saying that a potential way to market it is to make it available as an e-book. The existence of sites like SimplyScripts.com shows me like nothing else that people love to read screenplays. So why not tap that?  TriggerStreet.com is a good hosting place for indie scripts, but what about Amazon? Why not treat the Kindle like a book and distribute it that way? Copyright is still with me. But this taps into the audience of people who like reading scripts above books.

And bam! – a whole new door opens.

For anyone who may be asking just how difficult it is to write a screenplay, I will give you this advice: read them first. SimplyScripts.com is a great site for scripts of known movies, such as Star Wars, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the X-Men films. The best thing you can do before starting work on a movie script is to get acquainted with one. What is the structure of it? Do you know the abbreviations? Can you compare the script to the film to see where and how the shots are marked? That is the first step. The rest is to take the step forward.

Kat Gilraine

Caution: Wild-Eyed Dreamer Ahead

Writing:  what’s it about, who did I look up to when I started, and, most importantly, why am I doing it?  This is all very easy to explain.  See, it all started . . . What?  You think you’re getting the wisdom of the pharaohs here? Not a chance, pal.

Hang on, you’re probably going to get something a lot crazier.

I “got into” writing more than a few times.  The first time was high school.  I know it was around 10th Grade–1972, to keep the dates straight–when I started writing my first story.  I had a lot of grand ideas, but the one that remains with me is and idea I came up with was about a co-ed pom-pom squad (yeah, before they became dance teams), that was allowed to protect themselves with high powered weapons from bullying.  As you can see, I was well ahead of my time, as I was either predicting the future of anime, or Colorado in 2012.

The story never went anywhere for many reasons.  One, I couldn’t type, so I had to write longhand.  Two, I can’t spell due to mild dyslexia.  Three, anyone who found out I was trying to “write” went out of my way to tell me I was nuts–and in my school none of the girls wanted to hang with a geeky looking guy, no matter how sensitive he might have appeared.

So, strike one in the game of calling myself a writer.

Now, a lot of my push to want to write came from reading.  When I was a kid a read a lot; by the time I was coming up with the idea that I wanted to tell tales, I owned about 350 books, and had read another 500 or so from the local library.  Most of what I read was science fiction, and so a lot of my mind was geared in that direction.  My biggest geek crush at that time was Arthur C. Clarke, who, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, was the first adult writer whose novels I read.  By 1973 I had read all his work, many times over.  I love his ideas, and loved his style.

Clarke wasn’t the only writer I enjoyed.  There was Asimov, Heinlein, Spinrad, Le Guin, Dick, Simak, Niven, McCaffrey, Bester . . . I bought and read them all.  But one of the things that triggered my writing at that point was discovering two anthology collections:  Dangerous Visions, and Again, Dangerous Visions.

That was when I discovered Harlan Ellison.  And I knew what it really meant to be a writer.

His stuff was imaginative; it was gritty; it was real and fantasy.  There was also a lot of swearing and sex, but hey:  happens, right?  What his work did was open my mind and truly blow me away.  That’s what I wanted to be; that’s what I was going to be.

Just as soon as I could write . . .

I kept reading, but writing stayed on the back burner.  Stayed there until about 1987, or so.  Now, let me preface this part by saying I can be pretty hypercritical of entertainment–usually of the TV and movie variety.  So when I was ranting to my wife and stepson and son about something we had seen on TV, and how piss poor it was, and so forth and so on . . . I was just being me.  As always, I turned what I thought was a cultured eye towards something I’d see . . . and I do remember, at that moment in time, calling Stephen Spielberg a fucking hack.

And my then wife said something like, “Why don’t you try to write something that’s better?”

Boom!  Back into writing I got.

I signed up for one of those adult education classes:  creative writing.  I went at night.  I wrote.  I turned into my stories.  I freaked my instructor out–  Um, let me explain this one:

For our first assignment, she wanted us to put together something “short”.  Quick story, couple of characters, nothing fancy.  Everyone did just that.  They wrote their stories, edited them, and turned them in.  All around 500 to 750 words, maybe 4 pages max depending on spacing.

My story was 6,300 words.

She took the story, and at the next session was really at a lost for words.  So were 3 or 4 other people in the class.  Afterwards I was ask if I wanted to join her writer’s group, and I accepted.

I began getting a feeling for being around others who wrote.  I also, for the first time, encountered that rare breed of writer who hasn’t published, but you better not criticize their work, ’cause you have no idea what you’re talking about!  Yeah, had more than a few confrontations with a guy who was writing a science fiction novel that was, to put it bluntly, deadly boring and full of logic holes.  After a couple of weeks of hearing him going on about his story–really a novel–I started pointing out some things I thought he needed to address.  He told me I was wrong.  I told him I didn’t think so.  He told me I didn’t understand science fiction.  I rattled off the titles of about 20 novels I owned, then asked him he wanted me to stop, ’cause I could kept going for another 30 minutes if he liked.  He left the room, never came back.

Oops.  Happens.

I started writing again.  I tried a couple of short stories in the horror genre, and my then-wife liked them.  But I found myself getting constrained by the format, and suddenly decided I wanted to write a novel.  I took the three characters I created in my short story, added a forth, and started writing my great science fiction novel.

After a few months and about one hundred and fifty thousand words later, I was lost.  I really was.  I tried writing other stories–stuff that took place in an role playing game universe I knew inside out, stories that, these days, would be called “fan fiction”.

This went on for many years.  And then I stopped.  Why?  There were a number of reasons.  One, my writer’s group finally broke up.  Two, my wife told me I was wasting my time, and that the only good thing I’d ever written was the first horror story I’d completed after I’d finished my writing class.  Three, I got divorced, and depression pretty much killed me.

Strike two, and the count is looking grim.

Tried editing my novel in the late 90′s, with little success.  Tried editing it again in the middle 2000′s, but still: there wasn’t any feeling to work on it there.  However . . . I did discover various forms of fanfic on the Internet, and it made me thinks, “Whoa, this stuff is crap!  I can do better than this.”  So I started writing fetish fiction part time.  It wasn’t paying any bills, but it saw me writing, even if I didn’t publish any of this stuff under my name.

It also got me back into working on my novel again, and this time I even added close to one hundred thousand words.  It still wasn’t finished, but I didn’t feel totally lost.  I did, however, feel–bored.  There was little feedback; no one to come around and say, “Hey, you’re doin’ great!”  And, to be honest, I wasn’t happy with the sort of fiction I was writing.  I mean, I was creating erotica for the lowest common denominators, and it felt very limiting.

It wasn’t quiet strike three, but it was close to it.

And then I was laid off from work, and looking for another job became my work.  And it was like that through what was left of 2008, and all of 2009, and all of 2010–

It was in the last quarter of 2010 that I wanted to do something once more.  That “something” was writing.  I enrolled in an online writing course.  I got acquainted with the instructor.  I became acquainted with some of the people in the class.  It was fun to be writing again, to sorta semi be creating.  See, I wasn’t doing a lot of writing, but I was picking up tips here and there, and that was helping me.  I’d been away from The Great Writing Game for so long that I thought anything relating to the gig was gonna help me.

Problem was, when it was all over, I still wasn’t writing.  I mean, I was talking about it, and taking some more classes, but I wasn’t writing.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t spending time talking about it.  Oh, yeah, there were a few people from this online writer’s class that I kept in contact with, and we talked writing, and we discussed what we were going to do, and even a few showed their latest scribbling.  But I wasn’t doing . . . anything.

So just about time for strike three to blow across the plate, which probably would have happened, because I was online, chatting about writing, but not actually doing any, and I was about to go do something else when this message popped up on Facebook–  Let me see if I can remember what is said . . . oh, yeah:

“Ray–RAY!  I need you to come play with me, Ray!  Will you?  Will you come Play with Me?  Please?  I so want you to come Play With ME!  RAYYYYYYY!!!”

That was Annie, coming on a bit like Fluttershy after being fed large quantities of meth.

Annie got me into an online role play.  I started writing there.  We talked about writing.  We got kicked out of that role play and started another.  We talked more about writing.

Then something else came up; I received an email in June about doing a ghost story for a website–something they could publish for Halloween.  I thought, “Why not?” and got the idea of doing the story about a ghost from another country–one that doesn’t have Americans in it, so no guns that won’t work, and no nubile blonds getting naked and showering when they’re about to die.

I wrote that story.  I met Trusty Editor^tm, who helped me make changes where needed.  I wrote.  I finished the story.  I self-published it when the website said, “24,000 words?  Are you nuts?”  That story is Kuntilanak, and it’s sold all of 6 copies.  But it sold, and it’s mine.

Then came NaNoWriMo, and Her Demonic Majesty, a full novel, and a little something that I sold to an erotica press that will be published in May, and Echoes, and Couples Dance . . . and finally . . .

I finished my first novel.  Transporting.  300,000 words.  It’s done, finished, and will be edited.

And published.

What about strike three, you may ask.  It’ll never happen.  I’m writing now.  I may not always feel like it, but I am.  I don’t get all sorts of support, but I don’t need it, ’cause one or two people are about all you need.

I will say this:

You want to write, the person who is going to hurt you the most is you.  You will do the most to stomp on your imagination; you will do the most to kill your dream.

You gotta make yourself understand, this isn’t always going to be fun to do.  It’s a job, and like any other job, it can get to you.  And it’s a job that, most of the time, you have to face alone.

But the end result . . . yeah, you make magic.  Or shoot someone in the knee–either can happen.

You got that pitch coming your way.  You gonna take strike three?

Or you gonna knock that sucker out of the park?

Sleepytime Theater

This must be come kind of record for me.  Since Friday night I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep every night.  Not only that, but I was in bed pretty early both Friday and Saturday nights.

Something is telling me something.

Ever since starting the “real” job in January, I’ve been running about like a madman.  During the week I’m up at any time between 4:30 and 5:20 in the morning, and I get on and write my entry for the day.  (For the record, it’s 5:46 AM right now.)  Then I get ready for work, go to work, “work”–yeah, I know how that sounds–come home, eat, chat, write . . . and before you know it, it’s 11:00 PM and I’m ready for bed.

When you throw in a two and a half to three hour drive every Friday and Sunday afternoons, then you are setting up for some serious tiredness.

Even though I still got work in on the new chapter in Couples Dance, it felt like  struggle.  Last night it took two hours to get 1150 words down.  It might have had something to do with not really knowing what to write, and I was sort of skipping along the path of, “Oh, look!  This happens,” as I was writing.  A lot of times I usually have some idea of what I’m going to write before I write it, though . . . well, that’s not always the case.  It could be my mind playing tricks on me.

My friend, Katherine Gilraine, herself a published writer and blogger, yesterday wrote a post on the pricing of ebooks.  While it is a great post–Katherine is a great writer–it makes a very good point about how insane the pricing of ebooks can be, she makes a very good point about those of us who decided we wanted to be able to write “Writer” on our 1040′s at the end of the year (I’ll have to check if the IRS will allow, “Semi-crazy Penmonkey” as a legitimate profession), she points out something else that I have said as well:  writing is work.  It’s hard, baby, it’s hard.  Yeah, you might only spend a couple of hours at the computer (in my case) actually writing something down so that, after a period of time, you have something to toss to the masses, but you’re always, doing research, be it making notes, or looking up something on the internet, or every working on something in your head.

I did that yesterday.  During the drive to The Undisclosed Location, the traffic was very nice, and because it was nice I was able to keep the cruise control on nearly the whole time, and that meant I could let my mind wander just a bit.  And I talked out a scene that could, eventually, end up in my one-of-these-days story about Annie and Kerry.  I’ve been getting into Annie’s head, and this scene I worked out–yeah, I thought about it the entire drive.  Two-and-a-half hours.  Oh, and I was talking it out between the characters the whole time.

Yes, I’m strange.  I never said otherwise.

Actually, there were four of us in the car, because The Muse was along for the ride, giving me the eye, making sure I went in the right direction, and kept the conversation on the characters at hand.

There is some mental weariness going on, I know it.  I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard since last July, and there is a lot of work ahead.

But this is what I decided I wanted.  This is what I said I would do, and I’ve been doing it for almost a year.  And even after I get published–then what?  Kick it down to the Bahamas and sit on a beach for a while?  Not me, man.  Maybe go hiking in the mountains and give myself a heart attack, yeah–though I would love to do a week at The Stanley Hotel.  Redrum, bitches!

And what I’d do if I went to the Stanley for a week?  I’d work on ideas.  I’d work on stories.

I’d have my computer and I’d probably start writing.

In between the screaming, of course . . .

Possession of My Memories

Rest and rest and more rest.  That was the theme for last night, after the very long day I found myself heading off to bed very early in the evening.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t get things done yesterday.  Oh, no:  quite the opposite.  I blogged, I saw my daughter get her black belt, we partied a little, I came home and chatted, I wrote and wrote . . . yes, it was a very full time to be had.

I was on the new chapter for Couples Dance last night, and somehow, even with all the shiny distractions going in, managed to crank out 1850 words.  It was mostly conversation, but still, it was a lot of good flow, a lot of great energy going into the story.  I was doing a lot of search for–I guess you could call it a hook for the chapter.  I’m trying to explain something, and try as I might to get it down, the feeling kept dancing away from him.  It was like, “Here I am!  I’m what you’re looking for, right?  Ha!  You can’t have me–not yet!”  Bastard plot lines.  Just when I need my Muse to come around and grab them around the neck and drag them closer so I can whip them into shape, she’s nowhere in sight.

But that probably had a lot to do with my mental and physical conditions.  The last couple of weeks I’ve been dragging ass something fierce.  Friday and last night I started writing in a state of what I would call near mental exhaustion.  Friday night a managed to get out 800 or so words before I had to pack off to bed, and last night was pretty much a two hour fight between procrastinating, nodding off, and writing.  The writing won out for the most part, but I was in bed before 10:30, which is something I never do.

I did manage a short chat with Trusty Editor^tm, who was around for about 40 minutes in the afternoon.  We had a pleasant, if quick, conversation, and some of that conversation revolved around my writing.  Trusty (if I may call them that) has seen most, if not all, of the writing I’ve produced in the last year.  So if anyone knows about the changes in my style, it is they.

One of the things they brought up is how I handle relationships in stories, which they commented upon after reading a couple of excerpts from my last couple of stories.  They told me that, in my older work, my characters–mostly female–were either very cold and hard, or only interested in relationships where there was the promise of pleasure, but little else.  And that’s a valid criticism, because it is true.  It can be said that the later occurred because of the sort of fanfic I was writing–which was totally fetish erotica, and geared at a particular audience–but still, I rocked that first meme very well.

An example that came up was a character by the name of Helena.  She’s a particular favorite of mine, at least now, but when I created her–bare bones, she was a hurt person, maimed in a battle, and extremely hard edged.  If she’d stayed on the path I’d originally envisioned for her, she would have been a character with zero personality growth, likely remaining one of those semi-bitter women who would slowly grow to hate everything around her.

What changed was I needed a character for another project, and so I pulled Helena into that project.  However, I needed a reason for her being there . . . and that’s when I created another character, Erwyin, who I’ve blogged about.  Erywin–if I may steal the title of a script written for The Grand Moffat–is The Girl Who Waited.  She met Helena when they were tweeners in the early 1980′s, fell in love as they became teens, and then were separated for nearly twenty years.  She never questioned why her “pretty girl” went off on a path that would take her away from Erywin; she didn’t question why she stopped speaking to her; she didn’t question why, after Erywin discovered that Helena had been maimed, Helena refused to speak to her; she never questioned why, after Helena finally did start responding to her correspondence, it would take her months to write back, and that her words were so guarded.  All Erywin wanted was for Helena to be happy–and that, one day, they’d be reunited.

Erywin would never pressure Helena.  She would wait.  If necessary, she’d wait forever just to hold her hand for a few moments before Helena passed on.  Because Erywin was full of love for her pretty girl.  She could never hate her.

She would wait because she knew, in time, things would somehow work in their favor.  All she needed to do was exert the tiniest of pressure here and there, and fate would take care of the rest.

And that’s when Helena began to change.  Once back close to Erywin, I knew the old feelings would have to resurface.  I knew that, in Helena’s youth, she’d been madly in love with Erywin, and her feelings for her was insanely strong.  One of the bits that came up was that a couple of weeks after meeting Erywin, Helena had the displeasure of encountering a girl who knew Erywin was a lesbian, and didn’t like her because of that fact.  She made the mistake of telling Helena that her friend was a “silly faggot”, and deserved to be treated with scorn.  Calmly, coolly, Helena grabbed the girl–who was older and bigger–by the hair, and proceeded to drag her–literally, she dragged her along the floor–away from her friends, saying to her and all who were watching in stunned silence, “You need to be taught proper manners.”

When you’ve established that sort of relationship as kids, you know where you have to go with them as adults.

As Trusty said, “You’re not afraid to explore relationships, to go deeper into romance.”  All true.  I’ve said that I’ve grown as a writer, that I can go places I’ve never been before.  I’ve pointed out that I couldn’t finished Transporting–which is a love story told in a science fiction setting–until recently, because I couldn’t tap into feelings that I needed in order to write the ending.  As Trusty Editor^tm told me about one of the excerpts from Transporting, “It’s raw and needs to be tightened, but it’s great.”  And I don’t doubt either of those summations.

So with all that in mind, I headed off to bed . . .

You know where this is going, don’t you?  Well, maybe not, but I’m going to take you there–

I know I had several dreams last night, but only one of them is sticking with me.  It’s short and sweet, and . . . well, you’ll see.

It’s me and another person, a female type person that I do know.  She knows I write, and she’s said that she enjoys my work.  Now, in the dream, we’re alone and in a bedroom.  We’re getting ready to turn in, and we’re both in our night clothes.  (Yes, I do have dreams where I’m not naked.  You don’t want to see that anyway.)  There’s a single light on in the room, a lamp on a night stand.  She’s got her back to me and is in the final stages of getting into bed.

It’s at that moment that I say her name.  She stops and turns to me.  She’s standing there looking at me as I move closer, slowly, taking my time in my approach.  When I’m finally standing before  her I take my time looking at her, gazing into her eyes, and she back into mine–

Then I slowly reach up and gently remove her glasses.

I take them off, my eyes never leaving hers the whole time.  Once I have them off, and I’m holding them close, she gives me a faint smile, because she knows why I did what I did, and she knows the meaning behind the gesture.  There is a slight beat, and then I see her eyes moisten, followed by a single tear trickling down her right cheeks.

And then she says something.  She says it in a very soft voice, but one choked with emotion.  Her words are simple, but they cut right to my heart, because I know what she means by them.

She says nothing more than, “Yes, you do.”

I return her glasses to her.  She places them on the nightstand, then turns to me–and we kiss as the dream fads to black.

There is power in my memories, in my imagination.  I know what I can do these days, and that, the more I work at my craft, the better I’ll become.

But I also know that, now, I can go places I’ve never would before.  And I’ll get there.  I only have to let fate do its thing while I give it a tiny exertions of pressure now and then.

I don’t mind being The Girl Who Waited.

Because I know how this story ends.

Better Pick Up or I’ll Leave You Alone

This isn’t going to be a rant, I promise.  I don’t rant unless I’m pissed, and that’s not me.  So bear with me . . . and if it feels like I’m edging into Rantland–well, these things happen.

The other day I was chatting with someone, and we got onto the discussion of novels–in particular, a novel they were reading for the first time.  We hadn’t gotten very far into a discussion when the person told me they were at about Chapter 3 in that particular story, and added, “This book better pick up, or I’m gonna drop it.”

I’m always a bit mystified by statements like that, because I’m not sure what another person is looking for when they’re reading.  I’m looking for a story, and unless we’re talking about a story that is totally off the wall and hard to follow, or so poorly written that I want to kidnap the author and do unspeakable things to them, I’m in the for long haul.

But I’m not “other people,” as I’ve noticed many times, so my perception of what they’re trying to get out of a story is far different from mine.  When someone says they’re looking for a story to “pick up,” I’m guessing they’re wanting to get onto the “action”, and to stop spending time on exposition.  I know the novel we were discussing, and I know that the first third of the novel is all introduction and exposition, and that tends to take time to get across to a reader, because you’re bringing characters onto the stage and showing them off, as well as maybe showing the rules of your world to the reader.

I always fight with this, because it’s something I’ve had to do in a couple of novels.  My NaNo Novel, Her Demonic Majesty, spends all of Part One and the first couple of chapters of Part Two throwing the reading–and the main character–into the hell that had become her world.  Do I feel it was needed?  Yep.  There were no easy answers for my main character, Jeannette, and the only way she was going to figure out what was happening was to spend a couple of days, story time, to figure out her situation.  Good thing she was not only a clever girl, but, being a geek, she understood the Farscape Start . . .

That’s the name I give to any story that begins like the pilot episode of Farscape.  And how did that begin, you ask?

Glad you asked.

Here’s the bullet points:  astronaut goes up in shuttle to pilot experimental ship; he takes off; he musta gone through a wormhole; he ended up in buttend of the galaxy; he comes across a space battle and ends up killing someone by accident; he gets pulled into a big ship; he goes to the bridge; he finds aliens; the big ship the astronaut is on gets away from the battle; he yells, “What he hell is going on?”; he gets tongued and passes out.

That’s the first ten minutes.

The first time I showed this episode to someone who had never seen the show, they said to me, “What’s going on?  I don’t understand what’s happening?”  I look at them and said, “And neither does the main character.”  That’s the whole idea of a start like that; you know as much as the main character, and as they learn more, so do you.  Unless, of course, you’re addicted to Micheal Bay movies, in which case you’re going into Action Withdrawal if there isn’t a smash cut every two seconds, and an explosion every three.

I personally like those type of beginnings, because you don’t know everything.  Even if you are reading a story written in third person omnipotent, you shouldn’t know everything that’s going to happen before it happens.  Again, that’s just me.  I want to find out things as you go along.  I don’t mind a slow burn as long as it gives me some kind of payoff in the end.  And, from my point of view, the slow burn, the exposition and introductions, allow you, the reader, to become immersed within the world the writer has created.

‘Cause, as a writer, if you, the reader, ain’t interested in my world, they you damn sure won’t be interested in the plight of my character, and the struggle that lay before them.

I guess you can say I carry this to the extreme in my story Transporting, which is really the Transporting Trilogy these days.  The first part of the huge story–which is now the first novel–is almost all exposition and introduction, told from a few different viewpoints.  I spend the first six chapters of thirteen getting all the players on the stage–in fact, the way I have the story set up in Scrivener, Chapter 6 is titled, “Meeting With Cytheria”, and even though you’ve met that character in Chapter 2 and 3, you didn’t really meet her.

So how many words am I using to get to that point?  A lot.

Does that bother me?  Yes, and no.  I’m guessing there will be a few people who’ll start reading, maybe start to get into the story, and realize that, in order to learn more, they’ll need to buy another book–well, duh!  That’s why it’s called a trilogy!–and they’ll probably put the book down because, well, it wasn’t “picking up.”

But I also feel that some people will get into the story, invest themselves into the story of my characters, see how they grow and change, and not only enjoy the trilogy, but inevitably enjoy the dozen or so stories that will follow.  (Trust me, that last statement isn’t in error . . .)

I’ve said before:  I write for me first, and the reader second.  I realize the job of the writer is to tell a story, but I’m going to tell that story the way that I feel is, for me, right.  Of course, the idea here also is to build a world in my first story, or stories, and then build upon that later, which will keep the reader entertained and coming back . . .

It’s like that ELO song:  I’m up there on that tightrope, and I need to come down on the ground.  And in time I will–

I just need to get this world built the way I want.

Give me some time.  I promise.  I won’t disappoint.

On Beyond Serenity

No, the title has, in no way, anything to do with any very short-lived TV show and subsequent movie.  So for you who have stumbled into this blog hoping I’m going to talk about The Honeymooners of Science Fiction, sorry.  I can’t give you a browncoat fix.

This is about something else.  This is about a feeling I’ve had the last week or two.  Really about two weeks.  I can pinpoint the exact day, actually, but why get that trivial?  I mean, do you need to know everything there is to know about me?  No, you don’t.  Not yet, at least.

Writing has become, for me, something more than a thing I do hoping against hope that I’ll make the big time and end up sitting on some made money for the rest of my life.  It’s more something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, but when it comes to making the dream work, I’ve worked hard to turn it into a true nightmare theater.

I have derailed this particular dream just about every time I’ve wanted to get it going.  Mental health is something I was never strong on, and it’s done it share of damage over the last couple of decades.

Something hit me last night.  Well, two things, actually, but let me take them one at a time.  First:  of late I’ve been asked for my opinion on things involving writing–and I’ve been asked by other writers.  Now, by no means am I starting to feel like H.P. Lovecraft giving advice to the strangely lovelorn, but it does give me a bit of satisfaction to have someone come along and ask, “Could I get your opinion on this?”  That does make me feel as if I am there, that I can contribute to the dialog with others in the craft.

The other part is that I’m feeling more comfortable with writing in general.  Yesterday I agreed to do a game review for something, something I haven’t done in a very long time because I couldn’t find the time in which to read the product and write it up.  But I felt like, “Yeah, I could do this,” when I saw the require, and so I have said game, I’ll read through it this busy weekend, and write up my views on the sucker.  I’m looking at perhaps contributing to a virtual novel.  I’m thinking of maybe doing a couple of side things . . . but it all involves writing.  Not what I do for a “living”, but rather doing what I want to do.

Slowly, but surely, I’m moving away from being a code monkey, and becoming a pen monkey.

Last night, as I was finishing the last thousand words of Chapter 8 of Couples Dance, I kept thinking, “Damn, you know; this is really good.”  Sure, that’s a strange thing to say about your own work, but then again, when I was writing this story back in February, I didn’t feel quite the same way.  I wondered if I was getting out there too much and I was setting myself up for some fresh hell of misery.

Now I’m finishing the edit, catching my mistakes, cleaning up things, and adding content to the story to make is clearer, and I’m pretty damn proud of this strange ass story.

That’s important to me.

Last Friday the blog hit the one year mark.  Today the blog will, somewhere along the way today, get its 10,000^th hit.  That also means a lot, because it tells me that, as minor as many of these musings may be (say that fast five times), people out there find my thoughts interesting.  And, ultimately, that’s what a writer wants.  They want people to find what they have to say both interesting, and entertaining.

So keep bringing those hits.  I’ll keep the thoughts coming.

I do believe I’m very close to finding peace.