Knowing For the One

Yesterday I was hanging with my crocheting buddies (yes, I have them, stop laughing), when I get this Facebook invite from The Queen of Crocheting.  (Which reminds me, I didn’t accept it.  I better go do that, because she gets . . . upset when you don’t.)  The invite was to make sure I join all the other crocheting buddies in watching The Walking Dead, tonight, when it returns to whatever channel it’s on (I know what channel it’s on; that’s called pulling your leg).

After that, The Queen–or should I just call her Queenie?–began engaging other members of the Crocheting Empire about the show.  People started asking questions about characters, giving opinions and such, and since I was there, I started pointing out some of the differences between what’s seen on the screen, and what has come before in the graphic novels.  This inevitably led to the comment that always comes in this case:  ”There’s a book?”

Of course there is; let me tell you about it . . .

When we get right down into things, though, it turns out that I don’t watch the show.  Not that I haven’t tried:  I watched two of the first season episodes, and while well made, I couldn’t get into the story.  That’s just me; I either get caught up in things, or I pass.  It’s very rare that I fall back into things after initially dismissing them, though it has happened.

It was somewhere beyond the hour point of me laying out information for my hooking peeps (because I am totally Hufflepuff, and I was in a roleplay, my Annie and I, so bite it, Huffles Rule) that Queenie made the comment, “You know everything about the show, and yet you don’t watch it!”

Yup, that’s me.  Little Miss Know It All.  I’ve always been this way.

I’ve made my feelings about zombies known on this blog, so it should come as no shock that, right off the bat, I wouldn’t be into the show.  The thing is, that doesn’t mean I don’t respect the original story.  And in respecting the story, I’ve wanted to find out as much about it as I can.  Robert Kirkman’s story is brilliant in its bleakness of society totally gone to hell, and not looking as if it’s ever going to climb out of the pit into which it’s fallen.  The characters seem real, the situations bleak, the violence real–oh, yeah.  There are also zombies.

I’m like this with a lot of situations.  I’ll find myself getting interested in something, and then I start my research.  I find as much as I can, then look for more.  If nothing else, I’ll find some reservoir of data I can latch onto and use that as my philosopher’s stone to help transmit knowledge from it to me.

Then I store it away, ready to use it when I least expect to bring it out–like, when my crocheting buddies start talkin’ zombies.  No, please, stop laughing . . .

Is this a good thing or bad?  Am I the sort of people who just like to have this information around so I can show off?  Or does it serve a greater purpose?  For as Queenie said, were it not for me, she might not have gotten into The Walking Dead as much as has.

Hey, if I help stir someone’s imagination in any way, I’ve helped the greater good.  That’s good enough for me.

At Home With the Insane

Lets get this out of the way right now:  I have mental illness.

I was in therapy at ten because I was lonely, frightened, depressed, and didn’t like the company of others.  Well, there were a few reasons leading to that, but part of my problem is that I was bi-polar.  My therapist then was starting to get to the root of things, then my parents pulled me out of there because, one, they didn’t see improvements, and two, they thought the woman who was working with me was putting “strange ideas” in my head.

Let me tell you, she didn’t have to:  there were plenty of strange ideas there already.

I had friends when I was in school, but not a lot.  I started smoking pot in 1972, and drinking a couple of years later.  These days the behavior is called “self medication”; back then it was just getting high.  And I did it quite a lot.  Mostly because it felt good, mostly because it kept whatever demons were chasing my ass away.  I had my books and I had my music, but I also had my “medication”.

There were some incidences of bullying in school, but nothing really physical.  It was all mental, all designed to wear you down and break you.  At the end of the day, when I walked home from school–because after a while I was afraid to take the bus, and I didn’t want to be with other kids–I’d sometimes find a moment, while alone in the woods, to cry a bit.  I did that often, and it bothered my parents when they saw it happen, so I only allowed myself the chance to do this when I was by myself, and there was no chance of being discovered.

There was a place where we used to get our drugs, and sometimes even our booze.  The home was owned by a husband and wife, with the husband’s brother living with them as well, and they seemed to be able to get their hands on just about any kind of drug you wanted.  For the most part I was interested in pot, but they let it be known that they could get their hands on just about anything . . .

And not just drugs, either.

There was one time when a friend and I stopped over to see them, to buy a bag, and the brother wanted to show me the latest acquisition–which were not drugs.  I didn’t get a full tally of what they had, but I do remember four M-16′s, a couple of boxes of grenades, and . . .

See, the story they were giving us was they’d knocked over a National Guard armory a few nights before, which may or may not have been true.   This was 1973, Vietnam was winding down, and who the hell knew what was being kept in some of these places?  In all likelihood they’d traded a lot of kilos of drugs for weapons, but since I knew these guys were a bit crazy themselves, it was just as likely they’d knocked over an armory.

But lets get to the payoff, the item hinted upon.  The brother opened up as case and said, “Hey, I got twenty kilos of C-4.  I’ll let you have it for $250:  I’ll even throw in the detonators and det cord.”

So lets review:  a guy I knew was offering to sell me about forty-five pounds of high explosives, along with the means to use it, all for $250.  Which I happened to have.

I said no, because . . . well, what was I going to do with twenty kilos of C-4?

Let me also state this:  I was very smart and very imaginative back then.  I was also pissed off and scared and upset a lot as well, and for a few weeks after that incident my fevered little mind thought up all sorts of shit that I could have done with that sort of stash.  The only reason I didn’t?  Stephen King put into words many years later:  ”If you take yourself out, you’re a hero.  If you take out others when you take yourself out, you’re chickenshit.”  I hated myself, and a few other people, and if I really wanted to get back at those I hated, I’d get after them, and that would be that.  Anyone else who’d get caught in your madness would just notch you a little higher on the Chickenshit of the Year list.

I won’t say the thoughts of revenge and getting evenness vanished after that time.  Oh, no.  They aren’t there as much any more, but they still show up from time to time.  These days I chalk up thoughts like that as “Research”, because you never know when you’ll need to know, like I did in 1991, how to bring down a very tall office building–say, 125 to 150 stories–with everyone inside.  I spent a few days looking over the office building I worked in at the time, and understood that, if you have the right tools, it’s not that hard.

I did that because I needed a scene for a game I was running.

I don’t act upon any of these ideas–which are research, remember, because I do write; you should see the really bad ones–because I’m not that crazy.  I’m bi-polar, but I can tell the difference between right and wrong, and as ignorant as I have believed most of my co-workers to be from time to time, I’d never do something that would eventually see me labeled as a “disgruntled worker”.  (Does this mean there’s a grunted worker?)  As an atheist I long ago created my moral compass, and have worked at doing the right things because they are right.

Taking out others just because you’re nuts and pissed off at the world is the wrong thing to do.

Probably is, a lot of people don’t have the same moral clarity as I.

If you are mentally ill, getting help is damn near impossible in the U.S..  You are stigmatized because you have a “problem” that you can’t “handle”, and if you just “sucked it up”, you’ll work through it.  That was what I was taught as a kid; it was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.  It is easier to get access to treatment these days, particularly if you work for a large company, but that’s only come about after more than a few large companies have had their offices shot up by disgruntled workers, and they’d had to go through the hassle of hiring new people.

That was how I got treatment.  The company I was working for had a program, and I basically had to tell my manager I was loosing my shit, and bad things were going to happen if I didn’t get help.  They told me to call the help line to set something up, and then let me go home for the day.  Let me repeat that:  I professed to suicidal behavior, and they had me call a help line, and then sent me home.  Now, I did get in to see a counselor a few days later, and while she was a great person, she couldn’t get me medication.  The only person who could do that was a psychiatrist, but it might be weeks before I could get in and see one of those.  She told me the easiest thing to do was go to the local ER, tell them I was suicidal, then have myself checked into a facility for forty-eight hours–at which point I could get on meds.  Oh, and lets point out:  she couldn’t commit, even with my permission.  I had to do it myself.

That was how I was able to get on medication to help me with my bi-polar disorder, and all it really took was . . . maybe two weeks of speaking to, or seeing, different people.

Good thing I wasn’t having any serious problems.

You wanna have a discussion?  Lets talk about why we have the worst system for mental health this side of the old Soviet Union.  Lets talk about why if you need help, it’s a culture of “Go see them; I can’t do anymore for you”.  Lets talk about why people are vilified and made to think they are even worse than they are if they profess to being sad, or depressed, or if they feel like they have no choice but to hurt themselves.  Lets talk about why we have so many people with mental health issues in the first place, brought about by stress, by over-work, by being made to feel that if they are LBGT they are scum and should probably die anyway.

Lets talk about why it is every time someone who is mentally unbalanced, who isn’t getting help, flips the hell right out and does something horrific, we act so surprised that something like that can happen here.  Lets talk about the idiots who, upon hearing about said horrific thing carried out by the mentally unbalanced, believe the one thing that will fix this problem is arming everyone . . .

Those of you who think that last is the end-all solution to everything, there’s this thing called “Cause and Effect”.  You fix the cause, the effect becomes diminished.  It does work.  Reaction to the effect does little good, because you didn’t prevent the effect from occurring.  That is what the kids these days call Epic Fail.

There needs to be dialog.  There needs to be discussion.  Without discussion there are no solutions.

Without solutions there is no future.

All Dressed Up and Nothing to Write

NaNo 2012 is over.  Not in the sense that, “It’s over when I say it’s over!”, but in the sense that about ten PM last night, I typed “The End” at the bottom of the last chapter of my novel, and that was that.  Everything that’s been said is said, and it’s time to move on.

The novel is finished, there’s no more writing to do . . . and I’m feeling a little lost at the moment.

When I started the chapter last night, I was feeling a touch weepy.  It wasn’t that I had written some heartfelt prose about my characters that left me an emotional shell–no, nothing like that at all.  It was more the realization that I’d come to the end of the story, and I had maybe a couple of thousand words to write, and there was nothing more after that.

After finishing the chapter, and the novel, I felt pretty good.  It’s always a good feeling when you finish writing seventy thousand words into the computer, and there’s a bit of a rush that hits you like a soft breeze on a warm spring days.  It’s a good feeling, and you close your eyes and take in the wonder that is life–

But come the next day–which, if you’re reading this, is now–you start thinking about what’s coming next.  You have editing ahead of you.  You start having thoughts about if you’re going to send your story to a publisher for consideration, or if you’re going to try and self publishing–with each having their own particular issues one needs to hurdle.

But the biggest one comes–well, it comes about now . . .

What’s next, Sunshine?

I have an idea for a story brewing; hell, I have a few ideas brewing.  There are a couple of things that are pulling me towards writing–but there are also a few things that I want to finish up before moving on to something new.  I mean, it’s great to have a slush pile, but as we know in Northwest Indiana come winter, you gotta clear that slush, or you’re gonna track it into the house.  And right now I have maybe three projects I should get out and get published, but to do that I have to set aside time from writing new material . . .

It’s one or the other, kids.  You gotta do the work, you know?

Doesn’t mean I can’t do other things like prep work while I’m editing a story, or getting it ready for publication.  But I have realized that I need to keep at this game, because as much as I feel like I may be spinning my wheels, I also feel that I’m gaining ground.  This isn’t something I’m doing for a hobby, it’s something that I’m working towards as a career.  Doing it as a hobby is fine, but why not do it for a living?  There are worse jobs, right?  Yep, there are, because I’ve worked them.

It’s never a question of what you’re doing, it’s what’s next?  What do you want to do?  What are you going to work on?  Keep it going, baby, ’cause someone just might be waiting for that story you got bouncing about in the back of your brain–

Only they don’t know it.

Yet.

Two For Two

There usually isn’t anything important about 18 November–though Jim Jones and a few hundred of his craziest followers killed Congressman Leo Ryan on this day, then decided to make the phrase, “Drinking the Kool-Aid”, part of our lexicon, even though they were drinking Flavor Aid–but for me, it was another day of work, fun, pleasure, and writing . . .

It’s also the day that I pushed my story, Kolor Ijo, over the fifty thousand word total, thus winning NaNoWriMo for a second time.

Two for two, so to speak.  I won this last year, when I wrote Her Demonic Majesty, and now again this year.  Do I get extra ice cream now, because I’ve written over one hundred thousand words in two consecutive NaNos?  I mean, I should get something, right?

It’s actually a bit interesting.  Demonic Majesty ran eighty-six thousand words after the final edit.  Kolor Ijo is going to run about sixty-five thousand words, so ad it up and–yeah, one hundred and fifty-one thousand words written within thirty days over two years.

In terms of production, I’d have to say November has been my best.  Though I’ve not finished the current novel, I will, and it’ll join my growing collection of literary masterpieces.  The urge to write more stories is there, but something’s missing–

I want them to get out there, to be found, to sell, to be read.

More than anything, I want to be read.  There is a feedback loop in this business, where you do something, have other people take it into their mind, absorbing it, then sometimes telling you what they thing of your effort.  Sometimes it’s a good reckoning  and you feel great about what you do.  Other time they go on about how you suck, and you can either wallow in misery over it, or kick it away and move on.

I’ve had this conversation with others, weighting the “exposure versus publication” values, deciding out what you want to do with your body or work.  I’ve been writing for a while, though most of the time I was spending my time putting stories together, then throwing them up on a website for others to read.  Sometimes there was feedback:  most of the time, there was none.  When you’re posting your work for free, feedback is your currency, so if no one has an opinion on your work, you’re not getting paid doubly so.

Now I have two novels created during the month of NaNovember.  One is out being considered for publication, and the fingers are so crossed it makes it difficult to write.  When I’ve finished Kolor Ijo, I’m likely going to self publishing it, though I may just send it out to a few houses as well.  There is a reason for self publishing, however:  I have to ebooks stories out now, and perhaps this new story will draw people to my others.

2012 was about the writing, getting better at my craft.  2013 is going to be about getting noticed, getting out there, getting published.  I can write all the stories I want, but if they aren’t seen by anyone, did I actually write them?  Do they actually make an impression on people if they are sitting on a hard drive somewhere, unseen and unloved by anyone save me?

Money is nice, but I want people to enjoy my stories.

Maybe by the time I’m finishing my third NaNoWriMo, I’ll have at pleasure.

The Emptiness of False Dreams

The last couple of days I’ve been running on little sleep, but not really feeling it.  Well, not much, that is.  I felt it last night when I was writing.  Or, should I say, struggling to write.

I had stuff to do yesterday, then there was time spent trying to get a fire going in the outdoor pit–note to self:  you need an hour to get that sucker going–then, about eight PM, it was time to write.

Maybe it was the moon coming out of newness, or my hormones are freaking on me, or I’m just cold.  I don’t know.  But last night, I was really down.  I didn’t want to write.  I felt like I was spending this enormous amount of time cranking out words, then I’d do a check of my progress, and discover I’d written maybe two hundred words.

I had to look stuff up.  As prepared as I was, I’m still finding things to research, and for about twenty minutes I was looking for one damn acronym so I could use it for a line in a chapter.  I needed a date, and I couldn’t find the sucker.  I needed the name of a town . . . screw it.  This is what comes from working in the real world:  you have to use real things from time to time.  So not fair.

Then I got caught up in some social media drama.  Someone posted something that they did a, “Oh, is this real?” then when you say it is, the comeback is misquoting something you said weeks before, and that they aren’t going to debate anything with me, ’cause obviously I’m a bad person.  You keep thinkin’ that, love, and, just like last night, I’ll walk away because–wait, what’s that quote?

 

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Mark Twain.

 

Yeah, that one.

It seems like that quote has been coming to bear a lot of late.  Not just from “things”–whatever those things may be–but from people I know in the writing biz.  It seems as NaNoWriMo drags on, you begin to get a very good feel for those who are writing because they are serious about being writers, and those who are writing because they think it makes them writers.

I was telling someone the other night that in the run-up to NaNo, I received a bit of–shall we say, shit, about all the work I’d put into getting ready to write.  It seemed there was a palatable poo-pooing hanging in the air before me from people who were aghast that I was doing something like–research!  For a novel!  Oh, heavens above, where is the fainting couch?

So bad had it become that a couple of people were insinuating–nay, insisting!–that if you had to plan things out in advance, you were some kind of formulaic hack, and damned if they’d go that route!  And that’s fine if you want to do that; far be it from me to say my way of writing is far better than yours.  And if you want to say your way of writing is far superior to my puny human efforts, Loki, that’s cool.  Though don’t expect me to give you mad props any time soon, because your mind is a bag of cats, and despite the hype you’re yappin’, I ain’t seeing the end result.

There seem to be a goodly number of people who, while some seem to be trying to walk the walk, they spend more time wiping up drama about their very comfortable walking shoes.  They go on an on about needing to sprint with people, when they could have been, you know, writing during the three hours they bitched about not having people around who can sprint.

Writing is hard, and last night it was very hard for me.  But, around eleven PM, something kicked in.  Something made the fingers fly.  Something made what I was writing make a hell of a lot more sense than it had before, and when it was all said and done, I made my NaNo Count, I made my Personal Daily Count, and I was about thirty-five words short of forty-four thousand.

You don’t own me, Novel:  your ass is mine.  So saith the Muse and Me.

Keep talking things up, and keep living those empty dreams.  I have other plans.  When you’re bitching about not getting in quality sprinting time, I’m struggling through my two thousand words, but I’m finishing that total before I head off to bed.  And just as a heads up:  a few of the folks who sort of turned their nose up at my prep work–they’ve crashed and burned their Air NaNo plane, and I’m still here.

And this story will be published.

You can count on that.

A Night at Ghost Beach

After fifteen days on the Crazy Train, my spreadsheet tells me I’m 83.6% complete, with 41,801 words banked.  My own stats tell me that, after looking at the average word count per chapter, I’m on pace for a 63,930 word story.

It’s a lot of numbers at the moment, but there’s a story in there.  You gotta trust me.

I knew, based upon what I was planing, that this weekend would be about the point where I’d cross the fifty thousand mark in the NaNo marathon.  When I look at last year’s stats, I cross that particular Rubicon on 14 November, when I finished the day with 51,061 words.  If I look at my numbers for the last ten days, there is a possibility I could end up at fifty thousand on Sunday night.  To do that I’ll need to probably have one three thousand word day–

If not, then I finish on Monday.  No big deal.  I can see the stadium off in the distance, so the race is almost over.

As for finishing the story?  That’s a bit trickier.

The chapter I’m working on today–and the chapter that follows–could get into some wordage.  A couple of the chapters that follow could be pretty short, and by that I mean maybe a thousand words, or so.  All that aside, I could still end up with a sixty-five thousand word story.  With a bit of editing, I could get that up to seventy, but lets get the story finished first.

For a while I’ve had this feeling that I’m not writing with the same speed and urgency as I did with last year’s NaNo.  Well, yes and no.  I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with The Muse last night–she’s still around, looking over my shoulder, rubbing my shoulders when necessary–and I’ve discovered the followed:  I’m not in a mad dash to simply throw words upon the page, but rather, I want to have it go out as a clean first draft, rather than a, “What the hell is this crap?” first draft.

My goal for NaNo was to get two thousand words a day behind me, and I’ve held to that.  There was one day when I just barely made that total, but numbers be met, and I’ll take what I wrote.  But as I told the Muse, this has also been one story where I’ve had to dive into the well and pull up research as I was writing, and unlike last year, that’s slowed me down.

Last year it was all about fantasy; this year it’s still about fantasy, but fantasy that exists in a real world wrapper, and there are names, there are weapons, there are streets, there are locations . . . hell, there’s even having to check what the stars are going to look like next year on a certain night on the other side of the world, and how one would eat pressed grilled bananas covered in sauce when your character are at the beach.

That’s where I was last night:  I have my characters waiting to see someone, they’re standing on a beach front in the city of Makassar, and I wanted to set a mood . . . so I’m looking at how the sky looked at the time, and I knew what they were going to eat, but I wasn’t certain how they’d eat it, or how it would be packaged–and therein is the need to run off and look things up.  Which I did.

So even among the writing, even with all the research, there’s work to be conducted, things to find.

And find them I do . . . that’s why I’m a writer.

Where the Darkness Ends

I hate when I wake up in the middle of the night with something bothering me.

Allow me to explain:

Last night my two thousand words and change I wrote for my NaNo Novel involved an attack by a supernatural creature.  The scene is still on-going, and I may, or may not, finish it today.  But I had a great set up:  a street section going dark, something that looks like a big cloud of badness, and one of my main characters getting knocked about.

Yep.  Just another exciting night in the city of Makassar.

The computer was acting up bad last night, and I finally shut down once I hit my goal of hitting thirty-five thousand words.  I was tired, so I figured I’d fall right asleep–which I did–and . . .

I can’t tell you what was really happening throughout most of the dream, but I know at the end, I was driving a van, someone else was with me.  We parked, and they got out.  And then . . .

The darkness closed in on me.

That’s just how it felt.  I was sitting there, I looked back, and everything turned black.  Not only that, but I felt something touch me, and remain in the room as I woke up.  With a huge pain in my left leg.

This isn’t the first time something like that has happened, but it freaked me out plenty.  Plus, the pain I had in my leg wasn’t doing a lot to help me get back to sleep right away.  I couldn’t find a position that was comfortable.  I tossed around for maybe thirty minutes before I dozed off again.

Only to wake up with this song going through my head.  Which was going through my head when I went to sleep.  Damn it all, why does this have to happen to me?  I just want a good night’s sleep, and pleasant dreams.  I don’t want demons of the darkness coming after me when I’m really hoping for is to have Christina Hendricks to show up and model lingerie.

It’s a tough world out there; show the creative types a little mercy.

That’s it, though:  creative types have this shit going through their heads all the time.  We go to sleep, and our dreams are usually full of insane things.  It has to do with how we keep ourselves occupied.  As Stephen King pointed out in his book, Danse Macabre, the kids that read books and comics grew up to be bright, intelligent, imaginative people, and the kids who didn’t grew up to be soulless, no talent hacks.

I saw a lot of this during the Go Go Reagan 80′s, where everyone who was hellbent on cashing out as a millionaire by thirty-five didn’t read anything as kids, much less science fiction and comics.  One guy I worked with in 1985 would have licked the ground upon which Donald Trump was going to walk, and actually refused to speak with me after I pointed out that Trump inherited a ton of money, which was one of the reasons he was able to succeed in business without really trying.  I wish I knew where he was today, because just imagine the fun I could have pointing out the insanity of his hero today . . .

You lay down with ghosts, you’re going to dream about them.  Can’t be helped.  It’s the way our minds work.  Even when we don’t want them to bring the horror, they’re going do it anyway.

I’m going to start writing about Christina.  I deserve a break tonight.

Coralation Street

The weekend is over, and many things happened.  Oh, yes:  writing.  It was a lot of it, actually:  about seven thousand, four hundred words total.  NaNo Fever:  sometimes you catch it.

I won’t say I have it completely, because at this time last year I’d bested that total by quite a bit.  But never the mind:  I’m doing well, I’ll probably hit the NaNo total this coming weekend, and I’ll finish the novel before the end of the month.  Pat yourself on the back, honey, you did it again.

The funny thing is, I still have people who ask me, “What are you getting out of this?”  I was having a discussion with someone last night, and that was the question they asked–for the third time since November began.  Which is something that puzzles me, because are they just trying to make conversation, or is it they never listen to anything I say?

Yes, I’m spoken of this once already, but last night I just shook my head (which they couldn’t see, as this conversation was occurring over the Internet) and told them the same thing I’d already said twice before:  I’m getting the first draft of a novel, from which will come a couple of drafts, a final polish, and then submission–no, not that kind of submission.  I’m not writing erotica here, okay?

But that’s another tale for another time, and I’m off onto something more chapterlicious.  That is a word; I just made it up, so it must be real.

Someone else also asked me a question last night:  why is it that when it’s time for the blood to fly, then the writing comes quickly?  I think my answer made sense; it’s because you’re making it up, but you’re seeing it in your head as if it were something visual, like you have this movie playing in your mind, and you’re writing the novelization.

I’m very visual when I write.  It might not always show up when I write, because if you tried to put every insane detail in your mind onto the page, you’re no longer showing, you’re telling to the point where you don’t want to leave out a hangnail. I think that helped, because it allows your imagination to roam, and it help you decided what it is you need to tell within your tale.

I’ve said that I don’t like writing action scenes, because what you say is never going to match what’s playing in your mind.  But they can be fun, and if you want to get bloody, if you want to get violent–and you are getting into the story to the point where you make Micheal Bay look like an amateur, then the words fly from your fingers.

It’s happened with me–not in a while, because there are only a few instances where I’ve had to kicked major ass.  But when I have, it’s been fun.  Deep down a lot of writers like to bring the exciting, whether it be violence, or love, or action, or the sexy, and when we like it, we want to get it out as quickly as possible.  Because it doesn’t want to stay locked inside:  it’s like the Alien getting ready to burst out of your body, only not as messy.

So stand back, ’cause if you’re not careful, you’re going to catch a face-full when it come tearing out.

Which reminds me:  I’ve got a demon attack to write.

Get ready for the pain . . .

Phoenix in Retrospect

A day of raving and resting does wonders.  It was a case of doing a few things that I wanted to do, and to relax and get away from the computer for a while.  Sometimes that happens:  you need to recharge the batteries, and sometimes the best way to do that is to disconnect and be a real person for a while.

Writing is a good thing, but as William Gibson has said, if nothing is coming today, don’t force it.  Do something else, and let the writing relax.  And I did.  I got out for a bit.  I did a little window shopping online.  I put the NaNo book away for a bit.

Then I came back at 8:30 PM and started writing.

I had a bit to day, and I started saying it the way I thought my character would embrace the words.  And she did.  She was like my little phoenix, rising up from her ash funk, and returning to that pretty bird she was at the start.  It was personal, and it didn’t hurt to write.  Probably because it was meant to be a cleansing moment for her, to allow her to understand who she really is at this point.

When I had originally envisioned this scene–and this is something I’ve done many times before–I had my main character having a bit of a freak out due to her being seen, in the story, as some kind of Queen of the Supernatural.  But then I remembered how I’d created her, and how she’d grown in the first story.  Now I’m taking two years between that story and this one, and thinking about how she would grow even more . . . and she still wouldn’t rant.  Maybe have a tearful moment alone, in her home, wondering why she is walking the road she is upon–but she would eventually realize this is her jihad, and she is there for a reason.

That means less raving, more introspection.  It’s her way.

That’s how I went with the chapter last night.  I pushed the story up over twenty-five thousand words last night, so I’m over one NaNo hump:  The Fight for Fifty.  I’m half way there after eight days.  Tomorrow I should hit the thirty thousand, and that puts me over the hump for My Novel is Finished, Time For Ice Cream.  With a cherry on top.  That’s really important.

My view of what I’m doing this NaNo is slightly colored by what I did last NaNo–or what I think I did.  If I check my page, I see my word count as of 11:30 last night was 25,275.  By Day 8 last year, I’d reached 30,617.  But two days earlier, I was at twenty-three thousand and change–and Day 5 I was at twenty thousand.  I’d had a huge bust of creative energy during that three day period, and I was The Girl on Fire, figuratively.  Couldn’t have been literally, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to tell you this right now.

We’ll see what happens in these remaining days, and in particular, this weekend.  Last year I averaged 2,889 words a day.  This year, so far, without any input this day, I’m at 2,808 words a day.  So I’m at the same pace, which means there shouldn’t be a panic that I’m burned out and tired of this crap.

Keep moving, keep writing.

And keep thinking about that cherry.

Hangin’ Out the Van at High Speed

Yesterday . . . what can I say?  Well, I could say it sucked, but that would be unfair.  The day didn’t suck, but I sure felt like I sucked.

It was a day of big-time headaches, and there were a few times when I was almost yelling due to the pain.  I mean, remember Tony Dogs gettin’ his head put in a vice in the movie Casino?  I felt a little like that, only my eye didn’t pop out of my head.

Brutal, I’ll tell you.

But, just like the time I was turned into a newt, I got better.  By night time I didn’t feel that bad.  If anything, by the time I went to bed, I felt like I was doing pretty well.  But during the day–no.  Not feeling good.

However . . . I kept writing.

I wasn’t blazing through the story as I have been.  In fact, it was a real struggle.  I think some of the headaches are coming from having to copy street names found in Makassar.  Here is my document notes for the chapter I finished last night:

From the square at Jalan Pasar Cidu and Jalan Tinumbu, down Jalan Lamuru to Jalan Mesjid Raya, to Jalan Jenderal Urip Sumoharjo, on to Jalan Perintis Kemerdekaan, to a road past Rumah Sakit Bersalin Daya Grasia Hospital.

Ya got that?  You spend part of the day typing “Sumoharjo”, and your head is gonna hurt, too.

It was an interesting chapter, though.  I had my main character chasing another van that was being driven by . . . no one.  Ooooooh, spooky.  Really, they not only chased it, but they managed to get next to it, and one of the characters decided she needed really good video of no one driving a van, so I had her hanging out of her window for about a half a kilometer.

I liked the scene.  I could see everything in my head, and the flowed nicely.  The chapter ended up running four thousand, three hundred fifty words, which was a good run, and my biggest chapter yet.  I know I’ll have a few more that will be this big, and a couple will even be larger.  When I run the numbers, Nate Silver Style, I find that the story is inching toward fifty-nine thousand words, which is the goal I’m aiming towards.

Thing are going according to plan–yessssss.

I’m actually a bit surprised that the story is going well.  There was some concern before NaNo that I wasn’t going to have enough of a story to fill out sixty thousand words.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case now.  I know where I have ahead of me, and when I look at the places where the novel is going to stretch out a bit, I see that sixty thousand isn’t going to be a problem.  I’m actually thinking that sixty-five thousand isn’t out of the possibility of reality, either.  But I’m not going to count my words before they are written.

Just let them come, one at a time, and the story will end when it’s time.

Ghost Whipping the Ride

Since this is the 5^th of November, there is only one thing to say:  ”The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.”  Or something like that.  Get the bonfires ready:  it’s time to celebrate those Catholic terrorists.

Speaking of ghosts . . .

Really, I said I was going to set a goal of two thousand words a day for NaNoWriMo.  I said, yeah, that’s all I gotta do, just two thousand a day, and I’ll have my goal by the end of the month.  Sure, no problem.  And I’ve been hitting that sucker.

And more.

Four days in, and I’m already close to fifteen thousand words.  I probably could have hit it last night, but that would have meant writing about five thousand words in a day, and who wants to be a show off?  Not this girl.  So I held up just short of that total, mostly because my mind was running out of steam, and I knew if I started writing the following scene in the chapter, I’d have cranked off another thousand words before bumping my head against the desk.

After putting my characters through a little mental hardship, I put them in a van so they could chase a ghost ride.  I mean that last:  at the moment, they’re zipping along the streets of Makassar following another van that is being driven by . . . no one.  Oooooh, spooky.  Then again, maybe Jamie and Adam are in Asia, and they’re trying out a new radio control unit on suckers.

I did have one of those moments when I realized I screwed up.  Yep, even with research, I find that I can, and do, make mistakes.  Anyway, I finished Chapter Six–which is also the end of Part One–with a taxi van coming at the main character, and doing a bootlegger turn in the middle of the road.  ’Cause, hey:  ghosts gotta get your attention, you know?

Problem was, in the next chapter I was writing about the main characters chasing said ghost van, and I noticed something:  the road they were on was a one-way street.  Which means, if my ghost van was coming at the character so it could pull a cool bootlegger, that means it was driving against traffic.  If you’re ever been on any main highway in a city in Asia, you’d know driving against traffic is pretty much an accident magnet–but then, what isn’t there?

Then again, I could always use the old fallback:  ”Sure, it’s a one-way street, but the van was only going one way!”  *chirp, chirp, chirp*  Damn, tough crowd.

So I need to fix this before I forget all about the goof.  Then, I’ll finish off Chapter Seven, and then . . . I should rest.  I should do something else.  Actually, I do have other things to do, but this writing thing has my attention.  Because, you know, this is what writers do, remember?  We write.

I had someone ask me the following yesterday:  ”What do you plan on getting out of this?”  This being NaNo.  I told them I’ll have a first draft that won’t be perfect, but it’ll be good, and then I edit it, and edit it, and edit it, so that a few months down the time line I’ll have a novel I can either submit or self-publish.  They were impressed, because I’ve known this person for about six years, and for about four of those years they saw how I tended to fall apart whenever anything bad happened, with “bad” being very much like the lyrics from Temporary Beauty:

The world is full of little people like you
They have to read a book to learn what to do
They hang around in second hand stores for clothes
And every kind of pressure steps on their toes

Now they’re happy that I’m doing something I love.  I’ve got my issues, and pressure still steps on my toes, but I deal with it better.  Much better.

At least I’m writing during NaNo.  Not to point fingers–because moi would never do that–but it seems like there’s more than a few people in the NaNo threads who are using November as an excuse to hang with people and call themselves “writers”, and this thing called “writing” is to be done in little chunks where you can shout “Go!”, then hang with your peeps twenty minutes later, talking about the four hundred words you just scribbled down, and hey!  We should do this again in four hours!  Yay!

Or they might do this:

Me?  I’m writing.

Though I might let you know when I’m going to take a nap . . .

The Quiet of the Roaring City

Oh, so as I go, so goes NaNo.  I figured out the cause of the headaches I’ve had the last couple of days:  coffee.  More likely, the caffeine within the coffee.  Stress + NaNo Novel + three thousand words a day = huge stress headache.

I said I’m having fun, right?  Just checking.

I’ve also noticed something else with this novel in progress:  having to check things, like your note, like a location in a city eight thousand kilometers away, is more time consuming than I could imagine.  Last year was just write, write, write.  I had terms for magic, and an idea for my Modern Stempunk Chicago.  No big deal; just crank words.

This year, I have a real city.  I have things that I need to look up.  I have hotel rooms to check.  I’m still adding a few notes here and there while writing.

Yeah, it keeps me busy.

This is the thing about setting up your story in a real location.  You want to try and get things right.  I think I have as much right in the story now as it’s ever going to get, and I’m noticing that there is now more writing than checking.  Oh, sure, I know I’m going to have to get into my timeline at one point and recheck something before writing up one chapter, but that’s not going to happen for a week, or more, so I have time to crank out the words.

I had one curious moment last night.  I was writing about how the city seemed to grow quiet around one character, and another who was speaking with them was thinking about how the first character came from a city that was much bigger than the one they were in.  Well, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking out my posterior, because someone would fact check that information at some point in the future, and . . .

Oops.  I was wrong.  The home city of the character talking about how quiet things had become, it was smaller than the city she was investigating.  Much smaller.  Maybe by a third.

It’s little things of that nature that will kill you.  Sure, I could have checked that in my edit, but I’m not like that.  Also, there was the possibility that had I left that incorrect reference in, it would have snowballed had I used it again.  And again.  And another time . . .

You see the problem:  try to get it as right the first time.  Do the editing you need, but keep writing.  Keep pushing forward.

That’s what I’m doing today.  I’ve almost finished Part One of my NaNo Novel 2012, and getting three or four thousand word in today will likely do just that.  I’m not quite at the same levels for production I had last year, but I’m doing well.  I’m doing a few checks on word count versus the number of chapters in the novel, and I see that I’m coming up short on the count, but I know there are going to be a few chapters that are going to run long, and a couple that could hit eight thousand words each.  Once those are in place, I won’t have to worry about making my counts–either for the NaNo Fifty Thousand, or getting the story over the sixty thousand I need.

Right now it’s quiet in the city.  Give it time; that’s going to end.  Oh, and I have the perfect music today:  The Who–Thirty Years of Maximum R&B.  The full box set, five hours of music.

That should keep me and my green demons busy for a while.