Preparation Great

Oh, my my my, was Sunday a fun day for a writing day.  Got my blogging, got my article, got my editing, got my ideas–

What’s that?  Ideas?  What are you talking about?

As I said, I had writing to do.  I knocked off an eighteen hundred word article on the wonders of powered armor, which is probably being edited as I write this–or not, who knows, because I know it’ll get done and get posted, and I’ll be allowed to work on what is pretty much part two of the same article.

Then there was some editing for Replacements, which involved a lot of cutting of words so issues wouldn’t arise between what I’d once written, and what had been newly written.  It was therefore necessary to do some cutting and adding, to rearrange words and make sentences whole, where once that didn’t exist.  I’d worried that I would somehow screw things up, but some thirteen hundred words later–no problems.  Handled it the way it was meant to be handled:  like a pro.  Or, semi-pro, if we want to get technical.

I thought I was finished for the night, but it was eight-thirty, and I didn’t feel as if I needed to laze about doing nothing, so I looked at the next chapter, thought, “I can do this,” and jumped in.  It wasn’t difficult, it wasn’t trying, and with the focus I still had, I was able to find some obvious mistakes and rewrite some clumsy sentences.  It’s all part of the editing game, where you learn to read your material, and find the stuff that either doesn’t make sense, or is flat-out wrong.

But what’s this about ideas, hum?  Not a problem:  sit down and let me tell ya . . .

During a lull in all the thing that were going on, I decided to take a look at my ideas file.  I have my ideas set up in Scrivener  so when I need something, I made a new folder, give it the meta idea name (like “Orion Story”, which tells me the basic idea), and then set up a text file with a little more information as needed.  For a few of my ideas I already had notes written, so I copied them into the various folders where they can set until I need them.

One idea that I’ve worked on in the past has to do with my Indonesian horror tales.  Kuntilanak is the first, and during NaNo 2012 I wrote Kolor Ijo, the second.  When I was close to finishing Kolor Ijo, I started wondering if there were more stories that could be writing about the horror that is supernatural Indonesia.  The answer was, “Hell yeah”.

I already had some idea about these other stories, and some idea about where they would take place, so . . . all that remained would be to give them a title and some time frame, no?

So I copied out some cards, added titles, gave a time frame, and there I was with four more stories . . . really, four more novels, perhaps three hundred thousand words to work on–

No problem, right?

This is what I get when I say I don’t have ideas.  They come after me until I write them down.

It’s when they make me want to do something more that I get into trouble . . .

Resonance

With Replacements out of the way and waiting for the next time I pull it out to perform an edit, it was time to do cleanup on my computer drive.  This is a very simple process where I take my Scrivener projects and move them over to my external drive.  I have a couple of folders over there that designate if the project—also known as a story—are in process, or in edit, and depending where that story is in the hierarchy of work, they go in one folder or the other.

I moved Replacements over, and I also moved Kolor Ijo over, as it’ll see an edit coming here very soon—well, in a few months, anyway.  But while I was moving things about, I saw a story that I hadn’t thought of in a while—Echoes.

Life to Mars

NaNo grinds on.  I’m over fifty-five thousand words, and to say I’m going to his sixty-five thousand is a forgone conclusion.  With ten thousand words to go–or there about–I can finish up by Sunday.  I felt good about the writing last night, with the chapter flowing very nicely.  I was also using the Document Target function in Scrivener to hit my goals, and to push myself a little–as in, once I hit my goal, I see the counter for another hundred words, then I hit that and set it for another two hundred words . . . Yes, those programs can help you move along, and get to those word counts that you want to hit.

There was something else that happened to me–in my dreams, of course.  It wasn’t triggered by the news that something “Earthshaking” is coming from Curiosity, or the vision that Elon Musk has for getting to Mars . . . but I think it was Mars that called to me–

Or to one of my characters.

It was just a quick vision, not a real dream, one of those things that comes to you in the hinterlands between sleep and awake.  The things that came to me . . . well, it was food for the story mill.

It was a woman, walking through a desert.  She was in a long coat, and her face was wrapped to keep the dust out of her face, and goggles to keep her eyes clear.  The sky was dark, the sand red, and in the distance there was a city, rising up beyond the rim of something–maybe a ravine, maybe a crater.  The woman stopped to take in the vista, then unwrapped her face–and smiled.

That was all I got before I woke up.

Some time back I had a dream about a woman who was also a mecha pilot, and probably a Muslim as well.  It was an interesting dream, because there were things happening in the dream I didn’t expect.  Since that dream, I get something like a little nudge about the story, but not much beyond that.

The vision that came to me, however–it was related to this story, and to the character.

For some reason I’ve thought of Mars these days, probably because I’ve always found the place interesting.  And with Curiosity now there, more is going to come to light about the Red Planet.  I still have my copy of the Arthur C. Clarke novel, The Sands of Mars, with the famously now-wrong-after-all-these-decades line, “There are no mountains on Mars,” because we know a lot better these days.  The Mars I know these days is not Barsoom, though someone has taken the opportunity to place Barsoom on today’s Mars, which is a very cool thing–though I’m damned if I can find the link right now.  Woe is me.

Perhaps this is the direction my next story is suppose to take:  a tale of struggle upon a Mars that looks slightly terraformed, or maybe with people who have become transhuman, and for whom walking upon the surface without breathing apparatus isn’t that big of a deal.  It’s possible it’s both.  I don’t know at this point–

Because I haven’t started building my world.

Our Lips Aren’t Sealed

First, lets give credit where credit is very much due:  the idea for this came from a post on Ink Out Loud, another great blog about writing and how it makes us, the writers, feel.  Go check it out, and follow.

As for the post in question, I found it waiting for me this morning, a short discussion of The Bechdel Test, and whether your current WiP passes.  If you are somewhat remiss in having not heard about The Bechdel Test, you can find a primer here.  When you’re finished there, you can go check out the movies that don’t pass.  Go ahead, look:  I’ll be right here . . .

All done?  Great.  Let’s move on.

The Test came about because, lets face it, most novels and movies end up being sausage fests.  Look at some of the books that don’t pass The Test:  Lord of the Ring trilogy, eighty percent of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond stories, a lot of the Golden Age science fiction I have on my book shelves, damn hear all of the Dirk Pitt stories . . . and on and on.

When you get into movies:  forget about it.  The original Star Wars trilogy fails like a boss.  Fight Club–are you kidding?  Since the LotR novels failed, it’s a given the movies failed.  And when you’re speaking of the most popular movie of the summer of 2012, you have to put a big “F” on The Avengers because when did you ever see the named women speaking to each other?  (Though I have to laugh when it’s pointed out that Hawkeye has the least screen time, gets brainwashed by the Big Bad and is in need of rescuing, shows the most skin–evening doing a butt and boobs pose in official promo material–and runs like hell when shit is about to get serious–therefore making him the Strong Female Character of the movie.)

Well, then . . . what about the stories you’re working on?

Reading the above post today started me thinking about my current NaNo Novel, Kolor Ijo.  Actually it got me thinking about all my work, but since I’m cranking away on this novel at the moment, it came to mind.  I began looking at the story, and the characters, started thinking about who says what, and came to the conclusion–

It fails.

Why does it fail?  Well, lets look.  One, I do have more than one named female character.  Two, there is a conversation between two of the women–in fact, the entire chapter I worked on last night was all about Indri and Sari having a conversation.

However, when I get to Number Three, that’s where things get shaky.  See, the conversation is about a murderous spirit, and the why for these murders goes back to something one of the women’s father did when they were in the military twenty years before.  Since they are marginally speaking about a man, it sort of fails.

Then again, they were speaking about killing ghosts and the whatnot as well, so I can score a plus–yeah?

I’m not worried about it, because given the places this story goes–and considering the characters–the few times I can get a couple of women together to discuss something besides the XY’s they know isn’t easy.  Then again, I seem to do pretty well on my stories:

When I look back at what I’ve written in the last year–or twenty–I’ve been very good about having female characters in my stories.  Transporting have seven named female character and two male, and the women talk about things like saving a planet, making love in a sub-dimension of reality, and showing a person what their planet looks like from orbit while Rocket Man plays in the background.

Echoes and Diners at the Memory’s End use many of the same characters from Transporting–as well at a couple of added ones, all women–and their discussions tend to be about things other than women.  In Echoes, in fact, you have something along the reverse of The Bechdel Test, where I have two men talking for a long time about a woman.

What of the others?  Couples Dance almost fails until the very end.  Captivate and Control fails, only because there are two characters in the story, a man an a woman–and they’re talking about some stuff that you may not think of as romance, but whatever works, right?

Her Demonic Majesty:  six named women, three named men, several secondary characters of both genders–and at one point I have four women talking about gargoyles and how to blow up a building.  Yeah, that sucker passes by with eyes straight.  And when there is a discussion going on about relationship, it’s between two of the women about their relationship.  No boys allowed, ’cause it’s icky.

And two shorter stories I wrote for the Storytime Trysts blog are very female-centric.  Gotta love those ladies.

Some people may wonder if something like the The Bechdel Test is needed.  If I look at my current story Kolor Ijo, and then got back to the story that first featured these characters, Kuntilanak, I see that The Test is pretty much dead.  Does that make either stories bad?  No.  And if I want to push it, Kuntilanak did have more than one named character, and in a way two of those characters did speak about something other than guys, so–there win there.

But I’ll tell you why something like this needs to be looked at.  It’s because you still have pantie stains like Frank Parlato, Jr., an editor for the Niagara Falls Reporter, who told his film critic Michael Calleri of his feelings for being a manly man, and how he wouldn’t have ever let his sons see any movie that had Strong Vagina as a lead.  (By the way, when I create a band, I’m calling it Strong Vagina.  Taken.)  It’s because you still have people who believe that movie goers won’t watch a film unless it had “two white male leads”.  It’s because there are a lot of people around who think Don Draper is the man because he’s a true believer of “Two C’s in a K“.

It’s because it’s the second decade of the 21^st Century, and a writer reduces women to a stereotype in their stories at their own risk.

As for me?  I just write what I know.  And I know women are amazing.

Just ask.  We’re more than willing to tell you.

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 Final Days and Nights of Abandon

Writing in the morning; writing in the evening; a lot of shopping in between.  That was Day 17 of NaNoWriMo.  Something I’ve done before, but first time this month of writing.

Today is Day 18, and I’m just about to the finish line.

Whereas the night before the words struggled to get out, last night I found it necessary to shut down after finishing the current chapters.  I ended up a couple of hundred words short of three thousand for the day, and I could have written more, but I’ve been pushing it hard for a couple of days, working through something that was kicking my butt, and I didn’t want to get into a chapter, then shut down a couple of hundred words in before heading to bed.

Why mess up a good thing?

That’s why this morning finds me thirty-two hundred words short of fifty thousand, and one of the finish lines is in sight.  I stated a long time a go that NaNo is a marathon, where you keep a steady pace and don’t worry about sprinting your way across twenty-six miles of copy.

When you hold it up to that light, then you can say:  the end of your story is the finish line, and the fifty thousand point is the wall that some runners hit.

It’s a very rare occasion–at least to my way of thinking–that when you write fifty thousand, and some plus, for NaNo, that’s it:  you are through with your novel.  I don’t mean through as in “I’ll never have to edit this sucker and make it presentable,” I mean through as in, “That’s it:  The End, put this damn thing to bed for a while.”  You’re going to go a little beyond the Fifties to get to the Endies, and that’s where the Wall is gonna come in.

Something like this happened last year.  I stared out, but before I started writing, I knew I’d venture beyond fifty thousand.  I figured, at first, maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy thousand, but not much beyond that.  Then once I was through with Part One, I was thinking, “Oh, this will be seventy-thousand,” and it wasn’t long before I knew the novel was going to hit eighty thousand . . .

At the end of Day 17, I was a little over sixty-one thousand words into the novel, and would end up writing another twenty-five thousand in the next eight days.  By the time I was into the last few chapters, I wanted it over.  Sure, I’m like that with every story–I want to write “The End” and go off and do something else–but reaching the end of Demonic Majesty was a trial.  I made it though, but it wasn’t the easiest things I’d done.

This time–not so much.  I’ve written far more in the last year before this NaNo than I had before doing Her Demonic Majesty.  That was the first real novel I’d not only written, but completed, and the experience taught me quite a lot.  This time around, there have been a few bumps in the path, but nothing that I haven’t be able to work though.

The end is near . . . but the moment has been prepared for.

And I didn’t have to fall off a radio telescope to learn that.

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.

Writing Down With the Uptown

Thirteen days into NaNo 2012, which is always NaNo Number Two, and I did something I’ve never done before:  I went to a write-in.

Hey, some times you have to.

I’ve written at the Uptown Cafe before.  When I was writing last year, and I began coming down with a hard-core case of cabin fever, I packed up The Beast–aka, my six year old laptop, which was once the Official Laptop of the City of Atlantis–and headed out for a little snack and some coffee, and the hope someone might come over and ask me what I was doing.

That last never happened, but I liked the vibe I got from sitting there, surrounded by other, while I pecked away at the keyboard.  Good times, all.  There were even a few times when I brought the daughter along, to engage in some creative bonding.

I’d never been to a write-in before, and wasn’t certain what to expect.  I knew I’d write, and I figured others would as well, but beyond that I had no notions of what would come.

But I needn’t worry about it long, as it was pretty obvious it would be writing, while chatting up a few people, and being able to ask questions about NaNo, and get into things like, “First NaNo?  What are you writing?  Do you come here often?”  No, that last didn’t happen, either.  Probably because I don’t look like the sort of person who hangs out in cafes that often.

For me it was the chance to get down and sling words.  I’ve had more than my share of distractions while at home, and thought my word count is respectable–I am ahead of the curve by a good margin, and should hit my fifty thousand goal this weekend–I felt like I could do more.

So I was ready to go.

How did I do?  It was like old days–sort of.  Had two sessions, because I needed to get my daughter to her Science Olympia (Official Motto:  ”Don’t Call Us a Science Fair!”).  So I did a quick thirty minute run, got Miss Iceland off to the school for study, then returned for a second session, some coffee, and forty-five minutes of word cranking.

How did it all turn out?  I managed to get all but twenty words of the NaNo Goal of Millennial Satanic Goodness Plus One, or the 1,667 you have to write each day to get that fifty thousand in by the end of November.  Then I came home, told a room full of Indonesians about my Indonesian Horror Novel (yes, you read that right), and setup The Beast for a little more writing.  By the time I stumbled off to be, I’d pushed my final word count to just short of twenty-five hundred words, and felt all was good in the world.

At least I didn’t have bad dreams last night.  To be honest, I don’t remember what happened in my dreams, which is probably good.

There is another write-in tomorrow, and I may give it a shot.  Not because I need to attended, because I be a writin’ fool, and I do it every day, no matter what, but because I like the feeling of being out somewhere different than the place that I call my Writing Spot, and I get to see other people, and maybe even communicate with them.

If nothing else, I can pretend I’m back in Paris, sitting in a small cafe, having an espresso while I ponder the fate of my characters.

These are feelings I like having, if for no other reason than to say, “I’m one of you; I fit in.”

Go try it and see if I am speaking the truth.

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 . . .

Dawning Through the Night

Believe it or not, last night was the first time in over a month for me to actually get out of the house and go hang somewhere other than home.  Yes, I stay at home and hang in front of the computer all the time–well, not literally hang, because I’m not a bat, or even Hank McCoy.  But I’m always here, working on something, playing a game when I’m bored, or looking for Ugg boots and getting pissed because, one, they are so expensive, and two, they make nothing in my size.

It was dark and windy.  The south winds were blowing all day, keeping it warm enough to let people walk about in long sleeve shirts and leave the windows open in homes and cars.  The moon is almost at the new phase, so it was plenty dark driving along the back roads.

But I didn’t think of scenes, or of characters, or what I should do next.  There wasn’t any need.

I’ve busted past both my goals for my NaNo novel, Kolor Ijo.  Thursday saw me brush past twenty-five thousand words, so I am half-way to the goal of “winning”.  Yesterday, before blowing out of the house to go visit someone, I just squeezed over the thirty thousand mark, which gets me half-way to what I think will be the word count for the finished story.

Except I’m not certain if sixty thousand is the end.  I know I might need another thousand words to finish this current chapter, which is the thirteenth chapter of the novel.  I’ve laid out twenty-six chapters, so now I’m edging up the count, and may be looking at a total of about sixty-two and change.

And the next chapter is going to be a bit wordy as well.

I’m not complaining.  If I get over sixty-five thousand words, or even get up to seventy, then the better chance the novel has of seeing publication, since most houses won’t consider anything below sixty thousand to be worth their while.  So onward today.  I need to finish up an in-story interview, then . . . fight!  Yeah, it’s that time in the story to have a throwdown with the supernatural.  How does it turn out?  Well, I do have Part Three to write, so it’s not that bad–

Or is it?

Why didn’t I think about things as I drove through the night, as I have done so many times in the past?  It’s likely because I don’t need that at the moment.  I know where this story is going, and I know where many of my other stories are headed, so I don’t need to go all head cannon there.

It’s as I told a friend last night:  at this point I know I can write, and I can polish, and I can produce a good story.  What I need is to sell . . .

Notice, that’s not the same as “exposure”.  I have exposure for the most part.  What I need is for that exposure to turn into dollars.  I need to get publishing in to the forefront, and as The Good Doctor said, keep sending out those manuscripts, and not let them get cozy on my hard drive.  Exposure is no longer needed; it’s time to kick out the jams and get that name known to the right people.

I will “win” NaNo, but the novel won’t be finished in November.  I may complete the first draft, but it’s not finished.  There are other stories to write after that, and thing to edit.

I didn’t need to speak in the voice of my characters last night–

Because I know I need to speak for myself so I can start the next phase of my life.