Category Archives: Writing

Works in Progress

I’ve been patterning my brand on an anti-social, starving writer.  He doesn’t like to do social things, but gets pissed off when he’s not invited to them.

Okay, so he’s like Dan in Dan Vs. (This show, for the first fifteen minutes, is hilarious.  After that, it gets cartoony stupid, but guys would like it.)  My kid turned me onto this show.

I think I’m going to have to change his attitude, especially if he’s going to sell any books.

I finished up Scrivnering (is that a verb?  If “Google” is a verb, then yes it is!) up my novel from 1997 about the Taurin (changed to Torin due to World of Warcraft, thank you).  I’ve also Scrivnered up Grim’s rewrite.  I have ten very painful and concise chapters.  I’m trying to put Grim into one novel instead of three, and I’m almost sure I can do it.  Right now in the rewrite I have him going home, and then he gets chased out of there, goes to Salem, meets Barrett – oh, shit, I forgot his name!  We’ll call him Barrett, screw it.  After he meets Barrett, gathers up his zombie army and attacks the Academy to become (spoiler) the First Archmage in over 200 years.

I’ve only so far written that he meets Barrett … damn, what is his name?  Barrett is the guy from West Wing.  I’m going to have to look it up in my old stories.

I no longer have access to my blog at work, so any updates will be after work or on the weekends.  This puts a big cramp on NaNoWriMo.  I will have to escape my desk during lunch hour in order to write, or bring my iPad and try typing on that – but it’s so slow and I lost my Bluetooth keyboard.

I’m looking at my old novel that I wrote a long time ago that I printed out, and I think I’m going to take some time this weekend and scan it to a flash drive.  I’m not sure what novel it is.  I guess I’ll find out when I do it!  I think it’s Hunter’s Realm‘s second draft, which I Scrivnered.

Now, about NaNoWriMo.  It’s going to be about one of my characters that I play online, Sidewinder.  However, I have to pull him out of the context of the game, and figure out something other than his history.  There has to be a purpose to the story, a mystery maybe.  Finding his parents is old and overused.  That could be a subplot.  It’s through Sidewinder’s POV, and takes place in the early 60’s, during a traveling freak show.  Like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not but much, much smaller and with a few fakes.

As always, the plot needs to be about something the main character wants.  Yes, he wants to find his parents.  But there has to be more.  The story can’t turn on just that.

So, Muses, if you could chew on that and come back to me with something, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Character books

I am a hoarder and a collector.  I have found out that I have way too many composition books (and it takes a lot for me to NOT buy them, especially this time of year when they’re on sale).  I use composition books for my writing journals.  There’s too many pages in them to last one a month, so sometimes I have two months in there.  I try and write my 3 pages in there daily, but sometimes I don’t.

I also now collect small college-ruled comp books – and now small “fat notebooks”.  These are for character explorations.  I always feel guilty using a regular notebook for character stories because I don’t think I have enough information to put in there.  These smaller books don’t make me feel as guilty, and I can carry them around with me.

The problem is, I can’t come up with the questions in the same order all the time.  Like some times I want to write about demographics, other times about their motivations, other times about their relationships.  Rubicon, I’m itching to write out his college years, but I’m still stuck on his “motivations”.

Most of these characters, also, are possible throw-aways – in other words, for work only in game and stories that I write, but nothing major.  Like I haven’t done one for Nybbas yet, and he’s a very important character in Grim’s novel.  Or Pathfinder.  Or Ritter.  Nybbas has a lot of dark secrets that I have in the back of my mind – he and Grim are too much alike.

I’m still trying to make Grim a “pawn” but a pawn that breaks out of the mold.  I know it’s been done, and I don’t plan on being very subtle about it – my character, after all, is not subtle.

This should be for a YA audience.

Hemmingway needs a desk

I bought a journaling book, and the first question it asked was what was my goal.

I wanted to write down, “To have a published book.”

I almost did, but I wasn’t being realistic.  If that was the case, then my life, my whole purpose, would be for that.  I would be writing in my novel every moment I could, thinking about my novel, planning it in my head constantly.

Instead, what takes up most of my time and creativity is work.

At work, they’re constantly asking me questions where I have to think.  I have to make the computer system do things that are not normal.  Some of these clients come up with the craziest things, I swear that someone in the board room is saying, “If they’re an executive, for their oncology they pay half, but for Joe Schmoe, he pays double.  How can we do that?”

Or, “Before they use Viagra, they have to use a generic ED enhancer.  Twice.”

Where do they think up this shit?  That’s the nature of my job; to make our limited computer system do those kinds of things for specific classes and to come up with different ways to screw you, Mr./Ms. Cog In The Machine.

But the point of this blog is not to vent about my job, but to vent about writing.  And one thing I noticed: I haven’t been living the writing life.  THE JOB gets in the way.  However, if I didn’t have THE JOB I wouldn’t have money to pay the bills to keep the computer on.  (Though I should follow Anne Lamont’s dictate and have only a pen, paper and a candle if necessary.)

Hemmingway, my writing computer, needs to be put on a desk.  Not on the kitchen table.  The computer is always there, reminding me of what to do, but when I sit down here, it’s for THE JOB.  I bring home my computer, disconnect Hemmingway, and plug in the company computer.  This space becomes the company’s for 16+ hours a week, when I really should be spending a goodly amount of time down here, with Hemmingway, drinking iced tea and writing Grim’s novel.

I am at the middle of Grim’s novel, I think, the point where, “It can’t get any worse” but it can.  And it will.

I’m not sure if Grim is going to be a pawn or a leader.  That will change the whole dynamic of the novel, of where I planned on sending it.

And maybe there will be only one novel.

Oh, yes, they call him The Streak! (Boogitty Boogitty)

I have a streak.  I had eight days of writing 800+ words.

(Oh, by the way, that title came from “The Streak” by Ray Stevens, from the ’70’s when humorous albums and songs were all the rage.  None of that stuff around anymore.)

I blew it on the weekend.  Why, I don’t know.  Didn’t do it Tuesday because of work and trying to help a friend through a trying time with her loser of a boyfriend.

By the way, her loser of a boyfriend will be immortalized as Grim’s father in my novel.

I told my CA-friend that I was writing stories, and I have about 25 characters – actually, more.  He asked me (jokingly) if I was doing an epic.  Hmmm.   HMMMMM.

What if I gather some of these stories, make them slightly interact with each other, and make it an epic superhero story set in the modern day?  What city?  New York would be big enough for them, I’m sure.  I know nothing about the West Coast.  Or Washington DC?  Miami, Florida? Or an entirely new town/city off the eastern seaboard.

I started organizing 800 Words’ website to make it easier to get at the characters that are “live”.  Instead of tags, they are now categories.  Knight no longer is under the Champions banner, because I actually plan on taking him and Mal and Scott out and writing an epic novel.  Probably to Samhain publishing.  Should I include Blake, Mike, and all the other guys Scott is/was involved with?  Nah, then he’d look like a slut, and I don’t want to do that to him.  So not ALL the other guys.

I might do the Knight story for Nanowrimo.

My God, that’s only 3 months away!  I need to kick up my daily average.

Description, description, description.  And exercises.

I have allowed my journal to become an initial place for stories, where I start the stories and hope to finish them online or something.  I’ve noticed I don’t stray much from the first draft.

I’m also noticing I’m manic.  All I want to do is write.  Why am I manic?  I’m taking too much of my happy pills, 10 MG more than I should.  Why, you ask?  Because I’ve gotten samples from my shrink, and they’re 15MG.  I take 20.  Of course they don’t have 5MG samples, and I’m not going to fart around with the pill cutter to cut these itty bitty things into quarters.  Or thirds.  Whatever.  Anyway, I don’t have time for that.  So I put in 2 15MG pills.  I’ve done it for 2 weeks now, and WEEEEEE!

Heh, maybe I should save them for Nano.

Scared and tired

On my twitter account, I said, “800 words for 3 days in a row.  I’m tired.”

The worst part for me is getting started.  Once I get started, however, it’s like I can see different threads that show the end.  I pick one of those threads and I write toward it.

Most of the stuff I’m writing is bullshit.  It’s not even a story, or if it is, it meanders.  Toxicon’s story was horrible.  It started in one place and ended up in another.  Holder’s went all over the place before ending where it began.  And Jack’s – well, it was an all-of-a-sudden thing with him.

It’s crap.  It’s garbage.

But it’s writing.

Getting past that editor in my head is the worst part.  The one that says, “You have an audience, you know, and they’re reading this shit – they’re not going to read your stuff anymore because you’re not staying with one thing that they know.  They want to know about Knight and Mike, maybe Toxi – but who are these other guys you’re writing about?  They don’t care.”

I’m not sure.  But it’s my blog, it’s a raw blog, and it’s meant to have garbage.  I only hope that they stick with it – or if they want to skip over it, that’s fine with me, too.  The idea is to get 800 words out, and I feel that I need to put it somewhere where people can see it.  Otherwise, my feet are not held to the fire and I won’t do anything.

I’m reading Bird by Bird, and finding it to be fun and true in parts.  I got to the “Jealousy” essay and I was thinking, “Yes, YES, that’s so me.”  To read someone else’s crap and say, “This is crap.  Why did they get published and I’m not?”

Well, I can answer that pretty easily:  Because I don’t submit.    I’m too scared.

I want to submit to Samhain Publishing.  I wish WD would put together a “small publisher” book instead having to push us to getting into the BIG THREE.  Grimaulkin is not going to be a best seller.  I’ll probably be on independent podcasts (though I think I’d refuse, because I don’t want to disappoint the readers who are reading “Jacob Logan”‘s stories).   I still think of 50 Shades of Grey and know that the only reason that sold is it’s fanfic of Twilight (another story that should never have seen the light of day).  What if I try to sell Grimaulkin as fanfic of Harry Potter?  Will it hit the bestseller list?  No, because we need sex in it.

Some of my other characters are epic and I want to write their stories – Knight and Mal, for instance.  Casey, my first love.  Mike and Scott (as opposed to Grimaulkin).

Meanwhile, I’ll still be ADD and write character stories all over the place…

Last month

Ok, so last month was pretty shitty when it came to output, compared to June.  June I wrote consistently in my journal and on 800 Words, a lot.

July I put out 8000 words on 800 words, compared to June when it was just over 10K.  Being that I can do a novel in a month, I know that I can do better than this.

So, a new month, and as punishment, I’m not getting a fresh notebook, but using June’s.  I haven’t even got halfway through it, so nah-nah, you’re not getting a new one.

A new month, and I need, NEED to write 800 words a day.  How hard is it?

~~~~~~

I read Stephen King’s short story in Esquire.  It was short.  In my opinion, it was a character exploration, not unlike what I do on 800 Words when it comes to writing up a new character.  Hell, he went into things that I didn’t care about with this character, and the end – he just dropped him at the curb.  Literally.

Call me old fashioned, but I was waiting for the end.  Something happened to change the man’s life, and he did nothing.  Where’s the story there?  What am I missing?

Of course, this is Stephen King, the man with the golden, bloody pen, and anything the man writes is considered pearls of heaven (or hell, as the case may be).  In my mind, he’s getting lazy.  His books still sell, his name still causes people to swoon, but if this is the best he can do, then God help me, even I can do better.

That’s always been the fire in my belly, “I can do better than you, published idiot.”  Same thing with the last book I read, Daywalker.  What a horrid book.  But I kept reading it because I said, “It can’t get any worse – oh, yes it did.  No, it can’t be any worse – oh, no, it is.”  The writer is local.  I’d love to go to his house and say, “Dude.  Dude, this book sucked.  But the world you created…man, it’s awesome.”

I might do some fan fiction.  Hee hee.  Take his Railwalkers and work it up a few notches.

I’m rewriting Grim, and it’s going so far off the beaten path that I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore.  It’s not staying in lane.  It’s like I’m writing it from scratch again, and it’s irritating the piss out of me, because I’m never going to get it done.  It’s a YA with swear words, and maybe sex once I get him together with someone.  Can I get away with that?

Just write the thing and pigeonhole it later.

Well, there goes my break.  I’m going to write more.  Somebody hold my feet to the fire.

Sneaking around

Why is something sweeter when you have to sneak it?

Like an office liaison, my dates with writing are when no one is looking.  I write in between doing real work, and I write at home between gaming times.

But why is it, when I get the nod that it’s okay to write, the muse runs away?

I have trained myself all these years to sneak.  I first started writing during school, when I was supposed to be taking notes from the teacher.  I wrote stories.  In college, sometimes, if the subject was boring, I did the same thing.  I wrote when the urge struck me, except during a five-year dry spell.  Then I picked it up with a vengeance and have been trying to write more often.  Since last October, I’ve been trying to write daily.

I’ve been sneaking writing at work since 2007, when I started here.  Short stories, scenes, that kind of thing.  Not novels.  Novels are too big.  Too unwieldy, especially when I have to use my head for some things.

I was out on leave and wrote Grimaulkin’sfirst draft in a month.  Pantsed it before I knew what Pantsing was.  It’s how I wrote all my novels, so I never thought that it was “bad”.  (According to Writer’s Digest, it is.)

Came back, and the writing dried up to daily stories for the game.  So it is now.

Although I’ve been writing Tamerlane these last few days, and a bit of Grimaulkin.  But today, nobody’s around, and those who are around don’t care.  So…why can’t I write?

Because the muses know that they can’t whisper in my ear during the hectic moments of the day.  They know that I am receptive, able to listen.

They’re not trained for that.

They’re trained to drop little things, hints.  Teasers.  In the back of my mind, they’re working on the full story.

Like I got to a point with Tamerlane last night, and thought, “Oh…OH!  I know where you’re going with this!  But will the reader know after I dropped this hint?”

So I have an idea consciously of where we’re going, but will I end up there?

I’m going to go back to Tamerlane, see if I can write more.

Where’s the time?

No time for writing much yesterday.  Or this morning.

I’m feeling guilty.

Usually about this time in the morning, I have a story in mind or I’ve already written it and posted it.  This morning, I’ve been working.  At home, I was doing some packing for my trip to AZ (for my day job).

That means all the writing has to happen tonight when I get home.  Unless I can squeeze some time here at work.

I was talking to someone here and she said, “You write an awful lot.”  I said, “You run, I write.  It’s the same thing.”

The thing is to make the time for it.  I need to write every day.  It’s as important to me as taking a shot.  More important, actually.

I MUST write.  And I will find the time to do so.

I started doing the planning stages of Tamerlane, and then I decided, “Screw this.  Why don’t I just let him happen?”  So instead of planning out his idiosyncrasies before the page, I’m going to do it as I go along.  Tamerlane is in my head at the moment; what I need to do is to let him out in dribs and drabs.  That will make it fun for me, and even more fun for the reader, I hope.

 

Pantser or Plotter?

Julia Cameron makes writing sound so easy.  That’s because, she’s a pantser.

This is an ongoing argument in the writing community.  Should I plot or should I write?

I wrote Grimaulkin 1 Version 1 in a month.  I had an idea of what I was writing from (a Grim much older and wiser, admonishing the reader of the follies of power).  My idea was that the following things would happen:

He’d find out he was gay

He’d get a boyfriend

He’d go to the Academy

His boyfriend would break up with him

He’d get angry and do a deal with a demoness

Who would burn him and mark him as his own

He would get great power

Others would be afraid/jealous of him

He’d escape the Academy

He’d find someone new

He’d return to the Academy with this new man

He’d take over the Academy

He would bring magic to the masses.

The end.

I realize now, writing this plotline, that the whole Salem excursion (Grim 2) is worthless.  Well, not worthless – it was making the point about power and being responsible.  But most of it has nothing to do with this plotline.

I need to work on Grim 3.  I tried to plot it, but here’s the problem with plotting with me:  I write to hear the story.  If I plot it out, then I’ve told myself the story, so that’s it.  But the good thing about plotting is I can change my mind when I do write it (and often do).

So what’s best for me?

PANTSING.

I don’t care what the rest of the writing world says.  They’re talking about getting things done FAST.  “How to get your novel done in 30 days/90 days/1 year/overnight” is like that.

I think I have time.

The YA market (Grim might be going to that market, I’m not sure) is not going to go away any time soon, and the paranormal is going to be around for a long time.  Harry Potter-copy books – which is what I’m pushing Grim to be (“An anti-hero Harry Potter who’s gay”) will remain a big thing.

I’m thinking of writing for Samhain (A gay small press) using the Tamerlane stories.

Speaking of which, I need to write his novel.  Hm, who should I emulate?  Jim Butcher/Harry Dresden?  Alex Venus?  Drood?

Self-Promotion

It’s one of those days that my meds are actually kicking in.  It’s a day that I want to promote myself.  A day I want to show off.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any tank tops to show off all my tats.  Nor can I really show off that I’m an American and I’m probably going to be the only person who speaks English at the Vocational Meeting that I’m going to.

But mostly, they won’t see my writing ability.

In reading the many how-to-write books I got, I found one thing common to them.  The authors there pushed their own books.  Only one book did I not find that: Writing as a Sacred Path.

Are they showing us an example of what they mean by using their own writing?  Or are they trying to promote it?

Being the cynical person that I am, I’m of the opinion that they’re self-promoters.  Holly Lisle is notorious for this.  “In my novel this…  In my novel that…”  Do you only read your own stuff?

James Scott Bell also doesn’t self-promote, but his books are starting to sound the same.  Just get his “Art of War for Writers” and be done with it.

At least when I read Creating the Novel and Short Story, only a few authors referred to their own work.

I can’t wait until I read “Now Write” for Sci Fi and see how many people refer to George R R Martin versus Brandon Sanderson.  And heck, Holly Lisle who’s written so many books I’ve never heard of.  I’m going to count how many times authors refer to their own work and get back to you.

Meanwhile, I’m going to look for a tank top.  I want to promote good tattoo art.