NaNoWriMo 2011 - Post Mortem

2012-01-15T16:49:00.000-06:00

Now that the craziness of the holidays are mostly over and we come to the part of the year where we're supposed to be contemplative and introspective. I thought it past time to do my write-up for this year's nano.

In many ways things went better than last year. I still didn't make it to any of the events though, which was somewhat disheartening. The local public libraries even got involved, but half their events were on the south side of town where nobody lives. (At least nobody participating in the local nano forums.) And not one official event was held anywhere near me. None of my friends who normally endure nanowrimo with me participated or else they dropped out early in the month so that, once again, I basically had to go it alone. I even considered dropping out and just doing my own thing, but I guess I'm too stubborn. Well, that and the five free prints were still an incentive to keep going.

There were a few bright spots however. Though there were a few rough days where I just couldn't meet goal, for the most part, the writing came easier. This was the first year (aside from The Ascent where I was basically following an outline written by Xenophon) that I didn't get to the end of the outline before I hit the 50,000 word mark. I guess I'm getting better at guesstimating my word counts. The one really fun thing I engaged in this year was a thread on the local forums where we posted the line of the day. It forced me to sit back and pay attention to my voice. While each one may not be a gem, exactly, I really think it helped. I'm starting to feel like a lot of the intangible parts of writing art coming together for me. I may even post some of those lines on this blog.

I did, however, decide to take a little detour in my writing. The piece I was working on, is NOT going to be ready by the June deadline for the free print copies. I decided, instead, to work up a novelette I had done some time back. I even decided to dust off my much neglected pencils and do some sketches for it. If you like the idea of zombies in space, this might be a good book for you.

However, now I'm going to have to decide whether to save this story and do part 2 for next year's nano or go ahead with the military science fiction piece I was planning. Perhaps I'll have a better idea after I finish detailing the remaining scenes, but first, I got a more work to do getting ready for June.

Week Two....and most of Three

2011-11-19T18:00:00.001-06:00

Week two is when the new shiny wears off. It's also when a writer is most likely to abandon their work to try something else. By now the initial excitement has dulled somewhat and the writer begins to realize how much actual work lies ahead. Second guessing their decisions, they think that if they can write about something more exciting, they'll be able to quickly recapture lost word count and continue on. Never a good idea.

Writers already have enough trouble dealing with the "am I crazy's" when they realize they are sacrificing an awful lot of time creating something that, at best, two or three friends and/or family members will ever read or appreciate, and then they're probably only being polite when they say they like it. This is ten times worse during NaNoWriMo because of the shear volume of time that must be sacrificed, including important family time during the holidays. Only a healthy dose of narcissism, combined with an anarchic disregard for social (and literary) conventions and shear bloody mindedness, can carry one through at this point. A writer has to write entirely for themselves and anyone who doesn't appreciate their greatness can go critique themselves.

Week two, for me, was a constant dance on the edge of mental burnout. I suspect one danger of lots of pre nano preparation is increasing the risk of such. About half the time I thought I wasn't going to make goal for the day. Most of the time I pulled it out, but at least one day (when I was about half a day ahead) I only got halfway to the daily goal of 1667. That may not sound so bad, but I am not a sprinter. I know some writers can easily knock out thousands of words a day (A surprising number are actually published writers, so it just might not be all crap) I, however, cannot do that. My strategy is simple. Just hit goal every day and try to do a little more. Thanksgiving is a bad time to be writing so a little cushion, if possible, helps.

Week Three was much the same. I did get a little game time in (after making goal of course) last weekend which may have helped reset my brain. I was hoping to do the same this weekend, but I've got packing to do. Strangely enough last Wednesday was both my worst and best day. I was facing total burnout. I'd just got to the part where I knew what I needed to write next, but I didn't care anymore. Instead I went back and wrote scenes that weren't on my outline, scenes that I had thought about, but had skipped over. It turned out to be some of the best writing I've done this nano. And despite the enormous weight of apathy I still manage to beat goal.

Today, though I got a late start, was a pretty good day. I did over 3k (which is about my peak performance right now) and it wasn't too much of a struggle. I'm hoping I've gotten to the point in the story where things just sort of take off. That tends to happen as you near the climax. I'm also hoping I don't run out of outline before I run out of 50k words. And I'm also a little concerned about both pacing and uneven voice.

Ok...I've got to go think about something else for awhile and calm down.

Week 1 - The Panic Is Normal

2011-11-08T21:12:00.001-06:00

Last night was day 7 of NaNoWriMo and so far I've been able to stay on top of my writing quotas. There were a few days where I was forced to stay up late to pull it out, but at this point I'm very slightly ahead of the game.

Last Thursday, I think I was fighting off a virus or something. I had a very hard time focusing, but I managed to still make goal. So far my detailed outline has kept things on track. It means I don't have to worry about what happens next, though I still have to sometimes figure out how I'm going to make it happen.

Last weekend I was hoping to hit goal early and take a break, maybe play a little DDO and do some favor grinding. Something mindless to turn the brain off. Instead I was persuaded to pull the chainsaw out and trim the trees since brush pickup is this week. I also finally got around to mowing the thicket in the backyard where the faucet leaks. By Sunday I had serious brain-fry and could barely focus enough to make goal.

To make matter worse I had an entire chapter that was all transitional scenes. I did have some important ground to cover, I got to trickle out a little more character/cultural/setting background, but it was mostly about getting the characters from point A to point B to set up the next situation. In fact I have often suspected I have a tendency to gloss over such things, just hit the important conflicts and move on--certainly last year's nano had much more action in it at this point--so I made myself develop those scenes more fully. Hopefully I didn't overdue it.

I'm definitely going to need beta readers on this one.

Beta Readers Wanted

2011-10-16T16:42:00.006-05:00

Well, it's done--more or less. It went through a rough edit, then through the hands of my alpha readers, then a second edit. The next step: agent submissions. But before then, I thought I'd do like software vendors do and have some beta readers look at it.

If you're interested in checking it out, I could use some additional feedback, not just typos and bad grammar (you'll probably find some) but also anything you think I can do to make the characters more engaging or the action more interesting. I can't promise I'll implement it all, but all constructive feedback is welcome.

If you're interested, you can obtain a copy for yourself at my store at CreateSpace or you can get a copy at Amazon. If you do the latter, please consider buying another new fantasy book from another popular author, that way if someone else buys that book there's a chance my book will also pop up on Amazon's suggested books list. :-)

21 Days and Counting...

2011-10-10T15:22:00.004-05:00

So, I've decided to do the inadvisable and write a sequel to an unpublished novel. I am, optimistically, about half finished plotting the thing, though I still have some hard decisions to make that could slow things down. I am, however, already seeing some interesting connections developing between characters. The act of discovery is probably the most satisfying part of writing. I can understand how Tolkien would talk about his world as if he weren't creating it, but exploring it. I am both excited and a little intimated about the journey coming up next month. I hope I can finish planning my itinerary by then.

Preparing for NaNo 2011

2011-07-23T11:43:00.004-05:00

Every year I tell myself I'm going to do a better job preparing for NaNoWriMo. So far I've been able to do that, but each year I feel I should have done a better job. It is now the end of July and I've already started that agonizing search for this year's story.

I started with a short-short story called Panacea about the accidental creation of a mutagenic plague. (I wrote the whole thing with my thumbs on my iPod as a lark. :) It was intended to be a bit of back story for a far future post-post-apocalyptic story involving mutants, primitive tribal culture and lost technology. (Were not talking X-men mutants here, but more like Beneath the Planet of the Apes type mutants.) Unfortunately I don't have a handle on the main character, so that story really needs to sit and gel awhile longer.

I also wrote a potential first chapter for a YA zombie apocalypse told from the POV of a 15 year old girl who has to travel through a zombie infested metropolis to get her family back together. I think it has a lot of potential and the dramatic irony of the first chapter was a lot of fun yet, somehow--despite living with a 15 year old girl, the voice wasn't quite right. I may have to backburner that one as well.

I have lots of other stories rattling around in the back of my head (not all of which are apocalyptic) including a lovecraftian horror romance story I was toying with last year. I may even violate one of the basic rules for writers and write a sequel to an unpublished story.

I never really finished A Kingdom of Stone. I mean, I did--and it's a pretty solid ending, but there was a whole second part to that story that would have been included if I hadn't hit the 134k word mark. In Arthurian terms, part one deals with the rise of Merlin while part two deals with the rise of Arthur.

(No, this is not an Arthurian tale! I'm actually somewhat tired of those. I'm using Arthur as a metaphor here so I don't have to explain the actual story--though I will be borrowing from the Fisher King and other parts of the Mabinogion so there will be a resonance there. :)

The ending for part two is pretty well mapped out, but the rest of it is largely up in the air. That's because it's really the ending of the first book that's just been chopped off. That means I've got to craft a new beginning for part two and finish working out the middle bits. We'll see how close I come before October and the pre-nano panic kicks in.

Nanowrimo 2010 Postmortem

2011-04-25T11:04:00.007-05:00

I know nanowrimo ended for most people in Nov, but for me it doesn't really end until I'm holding my proof in my hot little hands. The actual writing ended about April--yes I know most people finish in November, but then most nanos are only 50k or so long. This year, mine came in just under 90k, a little shorter than last year's. Each year's attempt gets a little easier and this year's was no exception. I think this goes to show, if nothing else, that I picked the right story after all.

Otherwise, nanowrimo was a bit of a bust. We didn't have the usual midnight kick-off write-in and I didn't go to any of the events which were almost all on the other side of town, so I didn't really feel like I was a part of things. In fact I barely even got on the forums. Though who knows maybe it actually helped me meet goal more quickly. :)

If all goes well, the free print should be arriving in about a week. Sometime after that I'll be looking for beta readers. If anyone thinks they might be interested in reading the thing or even just willing to help me out, I could use some fresh eyes on it. I'll be posting more info then.

Halfway There and Two Days Early!

2010-11-13T18:53:00.002-06:00

It's been an odd week. Week Two is normally Hell Week for most nanoers. It's the point where the story's shiny newness has begun to wear off and the characters stop cooperating. It's also the point where people who didn't plan often find out that they don't really have a story in any meaningful sense.

Tuesday I had my first short day. I came in 350 words short. Strangely enough, it was followed by a record word count day on Wednesday and even more on Thursday. Then Friday I had another short day. That however was something of an accident. I was only about 100 words short and I had forgotten that earlier in the day I had penned a snatch of dialog that takes place near the climax of the story and so wrote in the back of my notebook. Had I remembered to add it, I would have (just barely) made quota that day.

My cast of character's is exploding! I have two and a half main characters and the two (full) main characters are each surrounded by more than a dozen supporting characters too many of which are developing personalities and expressing opinions unworthy of background characters. The character that I thought would be the main character's nemesis sort of redeemed himself. At least he's slight more sympathetic than he was. And a new character has arisen to make the MC's life miserable. Unfortunately my MC has just been yanked out of that situation into a better/worse one. Who knows if either of the earlier potential nemesis will reenter his life later.

I have enjoyed discovering unexpected facets of my main characters though. That sort of things always makes writing fun and really helps with the word count.

Having spent all day writing. I'm going to go stand up now (if my legs will still support me) and then go play some DDO to unstress my brain.

NaNoWriMo -- Week 1

2010-11-08T20:40:00.003-06:00

This weeks went surprisingly well despite the usual attacks of doubt and a disappointing lack of involvement in the nano community. I haven't attended a single write-in function yet (I at least went to the last 3 kickoff parties--this year they didn't have one) and have barely made an appearance on the forums. As a result, I don't really feel like I'm in NaNoWriMode right now.

The only thing that's saved me so far is that (until now) the story is pretty well-tread ground (in my head.) I've had a good feel for what's going on up to this point, though that will change as soon as I bump up against the edge of my outline.

I still get surprised by my characters, though. For example, my main character (the mage who accidentally defeats a giant and gets recruited in a mercenary warrior guild) was supposed to acquire a minor nemesis from within the guild. In fact when they see that he's not the usual big and strong type, many of the older students will take great delight in beating up the "giant killer" in practice. As I'm setting this up, I introduce a character that I thought would be his friend. Another new recruit that can at least sympathize with the MC while they go through this brutal training, only he's turning out to be quite the jerk. The MC has just met his romantic interest and this guy is making all kinds of rude suggestions as to why he shouldn't be interested in her.

I think he's found his nemesis, only it wasn't who I thought it was.

Anyway, if I can keep my motivation up, I should be Ok, but things will definitely get tougher over the next couple of weeks. The only good thing is that I'll have some time off coming up, hopefully I can use that to put some more numbers on the board (I do expect things to slow down a bit).

Unfortunately, you won't be able to follow my day-to-day progress that well on this site. The old widget, the one that showed the daily totals, no longer works and the new one only gives a running total. I don't know why that is. It's a little disappointing, but I've got other things to worry about right now.

Commit or be Committed

2010-10-09T12:56:00.003-05:00

I want to thank everyone on facebook who posted their comments on which story I should write. I like all three and hope to write each of them eventually, but I think I've chosen my poison—so to speak.

I had all but decided on the Hell gate story which a majority of you seemed to prefer, and had even done some pre-writing, but eventually decided against it. Those characters just weren't ready to be written yet. I ended up going instead with story #3. Digging through my notes, I'd already written two short stories pulled from this story idea (though I had swapped the characters around and changed their names) so it seems my subconscious just felt there was more meat there to work it. (Yeah I know it probably means I'm committing myself to another 100k work. Yes I should be committed.)

I've tweaked my synopsis and even worked up some cover art for the curious. You can see them both at my writer's profile page on the nano site at: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user%252F200847 just click on the Novel Info tab.

Wish me luck. The roller-coaster is nearly at the top of the first hill. The anticipation is already killing me.

Preparing for NaNo 2010

2010-09-01T08:36:00.002-05:00

I need help. NaNoWriMo 2010 is right around the corner and I need help deciding what I'm going to write.

I know I haven't posted on this blog much (and yes ddo going free to play is part of the reason and yes I'm afraid/excited about Lord of the Rings Online goes F2P--who doesn't want to go running around the shire, or the mines of Moria, or Helmsdeep, or Minas Tirith, or...) but I have been working on the writing...some. I've even received my proof copy of The Ascent from NaNo '09 which I'll post picture of here in a bit.

But back to my problem. After writing two 100K+ novels and not having any time to edit them, I thought I'd write a YA novel in the 50-65K range. (I'm trying to buy time here.) I've got three rough ideas to choose between and I'm putting it up for a vote. (I realize most of the replies will be on facebook, but you can also reply on this blog.) I'm working on more detailed synopses, but until then, these are the thumbnail sketches:

Story#1 Good girl must do bad things to rescue family after zombie apocalypse.

Story#2 Boy must take over his eccentric family's vocation guarding one of the seven Hell-gates to save cursed girlfriend.

Story#3 Rejected apprentice discovers plot to infiltrate mages' guild and develops knew form of combat to stop half-dragon shapeshifters.

I refer to #1 as The Breakfast Club meets Dawn of the Dead. It would probably be the easiest to write.

#2 I sometimes refer to as the Adams Family story. Much more character driven and harder to get right but could be very fun. It was originally intended to be a horror romance (horror more like Poe and Lovecraft than modern slashers and romance more like P.G. Wodehouse than common bodice rippers.)

#3 is a pretty straight-forward fantasy story. The thumbnail synopsis doesn't really do it justice since a lot of it involves the main characters trying to track down a mysterious group assassinating mages. This one would probably require more work to plot out than the others.

So which is it--or do you have a better idea? I'm open to suggestions, but I've got to decide in the next four weeks and start marking out scenes as soon as possible.

NaNoWriMo 2009 = 51329

2009-12-05T14:35:00.004-06:00

I had a nice thoughtful post mostly written all about this year's NaNoWriMo and lessons learned and all that and, quite frankly, even the idea bores me.

In some ways this year went better than last. I certainly felt more prepared. In other ways it was a little more of a struggle. I think I'll go back to gritty hard-core fantasy next year. I also think I'll do more pre-writing so I can hit the ground running even faster.

Including the stuff I wrote before NaNoWriMo, I have somewhere around 80,000 words so far. This means I only have about 20,000 left to finish the story.

At this point in the story, I've adapted everything in Xenophon's account up to the greeks' journey through western Armenia. Next I have to decide how much of their wanderings through the Greek frontier and the political machinations that follow I can squeeze into the space I have left. I also have to figure out how they find out about the aliens' plan (in my adaptation) to attack the now defenseless Earth.

(Yeah, I decided the story needed to end with more of a bang. Xenophon's account just kind of trails off with the break up of the army, it's partial reformation and his hand-off of the troops to the Spartans. I decided to make his little excursion where he captures the rich Persian a little more significant though it will, unfortunately, lose all the humor Xenophon had in his version.)

Week 3.5 An Interesting Discovery

2009-11-25T10:29:00.004-06:00

I was going through my posts cleaning things up and discovered this incomplete post from NaNo 2009. Even though it's not complete, I thought I'd go ahead and hit the publish button. The tension between character-driven and plot-driven stories is still something I wrestle with.

There are many ways to divide people up. One way to divide writers is between those who write character-based stories and those that write plot-based stories. I have long wanted to be the former type, but have secretly feared I might be the latter.

Plot-based stories tend to be pretty exciting. Lots of things happen and the story keep moving along, but the characters don't necessarily change much and in the end you're left with something entertaining, but not necessarily meaningful. They're often the types of books or movies you enjoy once, but probably won't care to read/watch again.

Character-based stories tend to move a little more slowly. You get into the whys and wherefores so that learning the character's background and motivation--why the character is going what they're doing--is at least as important as what they are doing.

I have long enjoyed character based stories, particularly quirky characters like those in the works of P.G. Wodehouse's stories or Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. (For this I blame an early exposure to the works of James Blaylock and his friend Tim Powers.) I also particularly like (and this will expose the truly pedestrian nature of my tastes) the method of character reveal in some of the better anime like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. (Here I'm talking about the anime, I haven't read the manga yet.) I particularly like the reveal/transformation of Vash's character in Trigun.

But... I've long feared I lean more toward the plot-based type stories in my writing. Part of that, I think, just comes with maturity. When I was younger, it was all about the action. Also, I didn't like hurting my characters. (I think a lot of young writers start off writing Mary Sue type characters to some degree.) Having grown older, I can now appreciate implications of character that probably escaped me when I was younger.

So what does all this have to do with NaNoWriMo?

This story is more of a plot story and I'm having more trouble with it than last year. I spent half the book just leading up to the war when most adaptations of the Anabasis begin about the time Cyrus gets killed. Why did I do that? It's because there were all this cool interpersonal tensions between the generals and the Greeks and the Persians as well as the fact that Cyrus was obviously lying to them as he led them to Persia.

At this point the Greeks are marching towards home. They've just left Persia and are halfway through Kurdistan. Now don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of interpersonal conflict, but there's just so much more plot to get through. (Xenophon himself describes their trek through Kurdistan as seven days of non-stop fighting.)

Week 3 Down and Moving Into the Final Stretch

2009-11-22T22:54:00.003-06:00

This week has been a bit of a struggle. Although I've stayed well above the running total I should have for each day, I haven't always done my full 1667 for the day. For some reason the word widget at the side of the blog isn't showing the three days at the end of the week where I came up short. As a result, my cushion of words has dropped a little.

Story wise, I'm well into the "mushy middle". However, because the story naturally has a nice plot twist around the true middle, for me its more like a "mushy three-quarters".

Sudden disaster has led to political conflict and unexpected betrayal. Now Kenneth Phon has to step up and get the fleet back home. At this point they're wandering around deep in alien territory just trying to find a way out and have just learned their best option may be through the territory of a backwards race so aggressive that even the empire won't mess with them.

Ironically, the thing that's holding me up in this story, is not what you would expect. Perhaps I'll blog about it tomorrow. I'm taking all of next week off so I can try to power through the 50k mark. I may just have time to blog this before the end of the week.

Week 2 Down, Week 3 Begun

2009-11-17T22:12:00.003-06:00

This is where things often get hard. Story wise one tends to be stuck in the muddy middle. NaNoWriMo wise, this is also where the lack of sleep starts to catch up to you. Yes, I miss my free time and I miss my family time, but to tell you the truth at this point I mostly miss my bed time. I've had a couple of days where I really just wanted to say screw the writing, I'm just going to take a 12 hour nap. But, so far, I've managed to gut it out.

I crossed the halfway mark two days early and I'm within two or three hundred words of the 2/3 mark. Assuming disaster doesn't strike, I should cross that tomorrow, two and a half days early. Sure, I could probably do that tonight but, A) I'm going to bed as soon as I post this and B) I just ended a scene at a major turning point and if I start the next scene I probably won't stop for a couple thousand words at which time I'm sure it will be well past midnight.

I know a few of you sick and twisted people are thinking, "So, when am I going to get to see this thing?" Well, the answer is probably not for a long while. But if you really are morbidly curious, I posted the first chapter on my profile at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/200847

I should warn you that it is a VERY ROUGH first draft. Also, it begins a little weird, but then you should expect that from me by now.

Starting Week 2

2009-11-08T21:45:00.004-06:00

Well I've completed week 1 with a mostly unqualified success. I had a couple of days where I failed to meet my goal of 1667 words, but I've always at least kept the running word total above what it needed to be for the day. You can largely ignore the "word widget" at the side of my blog. It should read 14,448 as of the date of this posting, but it's at least a couple of days behind. It took them over a month to even get it working, but it is apparently still not correct.

It's probably just the normal tricks of memory, but it seems like this story is resisting me a little more than the last two nano projects. This despite the fact that the story is already pretty much laid out for me. In some ways I've been living with this story for decades. Perhaps that's why this story feels more like a re-write than a discovery draft. Still, the only reason I even made goal tonight was because I already had the next scene well mapped out. At least I don't have to stare at a blinking cursor and wonder what comes next. I just have to figure out how I'm going to get to the next scene.

The big battle has just begun and Kennth Phon's (Xenephon) employer, the alien "Shines Like the Sun" (Cyrus the younger) looks to be winning. I've completely manufactured an incident in the battle (since the real Xenephon hardly mentions his role until after the disaster befalls them) that would be worthy of a good action movie's opening stunt. Let's hope I don't introduce any plot complications I'll later regret.

Beware Greeks Bearing Spaceships

2009-10-08T22:26:00.007-05:00

NaNoWriMo is here again and I'm getting geared up for another 30-day mental marathon. This year I'm returning to SF with an adaptation of the Anabasis. I've wanted to do a military SF version of this classic greek military expedition gone horribly wrong for a very long time--now I've got my chance.

Since 50,000 words is basically half of a real novel, I've got a bit of a jump start on the project. I'm writing everything up to the war between Cyrus and Artaxerxes, saving the big action scenes for November 1 so I can start with a bang. Some might feel this is a violation of at least the spirit of NaNoWriMo, but when I get to the end of NaNoWriMo, I'd like to actually reach the end of the novel and 50k just doesn't cut it.

When I was just a kid in grade school, I would often find myself with a half-dozen volumes of The World Book encyclopedia spread across the living room floor open to some subject or other. At one point I made it through to the "X"s where I found an entry for Xenophon and this picture—

—entitled: Xenophon Gave Thanks to the Gods as his “Ten Thousand” Finished Their Long Retreat to the Bosporus.”

I can't say precisely what it was about this picture that so capture my imagination, but after reading about Xenophon and the “March of the Ten Thousand” I would—even years later—bore people with a passionate recounting of those historical events. I know others have done a SF version, but all the ones I know about involve some military force crashing on a planet and having to march around to some sort of spaceport or something. This version will be the first (that I know of) that takes place entirely in space.

The interesting thing about the writing so far is that I've got so many words written and yet all the politics leading up to the initial war is just a tiny fragment of Xenophon's account. It seems strange that such a minor part of his account should be so rich in potential conflict.

At least it doesn't look like I'll run out of material before Nov. 30. The real trick will be injecting the personal transformation of the main character into the story which might be hinted at, but certainly isn't addressed in Xenophon's text.

Done! ...mostly

2009-05-30T18:59:00.004-05:00

This is what 134,761 words looks like--the result of NaNoWriMo '07 & '08 and a little bit more. I just finished formatting it, photoshopping a new cover and uploading everything to Amazon's POD. Hopefully it'll get verified soon and I can use the free proof coupon before it expires.

I'm looking forward to working on something different for '09, but the truth is this still isn't the end of the story. I resolve the most immediate conflict in part one, but the over-arching conflict is still left largely unresolved. I had hoped to do it all in one book, but what I have now is already ambitious enough. I'm sure I could do part two in a fraction of part one's length, the question is whether I can fit it into a the existing book or stretch it into a second full-length novel.

Either way, around October, expect to hear about a far future science fiction space opera based on the work of an ancient greek.

One Proof down...One To Go

2009-05-23T11:25:00.009-05:00

I haven't blogged on blogspot in months, for which I entirely blame facebook. Fortunately, unlike last year, that doesn't mean I have stopped writing. In fact I've written pretty much non-stop since then except for a break in March and part of April where I had to do some editing, formatting and some graphic art work to take advantage of my free proof from Amazon. (Which I won from completing NaNoWriMo in 2007.)

I was fully prepared to be disappointed by the free proof copy, but I was pleasantly surprised. The quality of the print and binding surprised me. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have a standard paperback book size, but I was quite happy with the quality of what they produced.

Now I just have to finish the thing to take advantage of the free proof for NaNoWriMo 2008. My current word count is 126,805 and, judging by my outline, I have another 12 or 14-thousand to go to finish the story and I only have until the end of the month to take advantage of the Amazon deal. (Can you say PRESSURE?)

Getting my life back

2008-12-15T21:08:00.004-06:00

I've often said that NaNoWriMo is something like a mental marathon. Having never actually run a marathon, this is all conjecture, but it does take a tremendous amount of single-mindedness and mental endurance to crank out nearly 2,000 words a day for 30 days.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the relief one feels when it ends is nearly as great (I imagine) as ending a marathon. This is the reason why, though I had told myself I would finish my novel over the summer last year, I somehow never got around to it and so I've had to put my SF novel off again. In fact, now that I've put in another 50,000 words into it and somehow only reached the second of the three main climaxes of the story, I'm getting a little concerned.

Though December has killed my word count (last I looked it was 1/4th November's average--I'm afaid to look now). I am, however, determined to finish this thing once and for all. In fact since the crew at NaNoWriMo have worked out a deal with Amazon's POD publisher to give winner's free proofs of their stories (only good for six months) I have some incentive to finish the thing. I just have some hard decisions to make about how far I'm going to take this thing, to say nothing of a month's worth of messages in my inbox and all these friends requests coming into my facebook page...

Go! Go! Go

2008-11-08T11:08:00.002-06:00

Just a quick post. Things have been going very well so far this year. I checked my logs and by last night I was 1,124 words over where I was last year. In fact I've not failed to meet goal yet (averaging nearly 2,000 words a day so far) whereas last year I'd already had one day where I'd failed to make goal and was averaging about 160 words a day less.

Maybe, despite all the editing I've done over the last year, I've learned to turn the internal editor off and just write this year. I think having a more detailed outline has certainly helped as I no longer have to stop and ask myself what happens next. Of course I still have that nagging fear that I'll run out of outline before I run out of story again this year, but I guess I'll burn that bridge when I get there. :)

One interesting thing I've discovered is that when I'm nearing the end of a scene, but still haven't made goal for the night, but I'm close enough that I don't want to start the next one, I am forced to be creative. At least a couple of times now, it's forced me to dig deeper and discover aspects of characters and their relationships that I hadn't suspected until I decided I needed "something more" before I was done with the scene. I'll sometimes do this sort of thing in revision, but it's been a nice surprise to be able to unearth this stuff while I'm frantically sprinting toward my goal for the day. I'll have to spend more time thinking about this...when I have time to think.

Ready! Set! Wait For It!...

2008-10-22T23:08:00.006-05:00

Ok, I'm going slightly mad waiting. I REALLY want to write but I'm making myself hold off until November. I've drawn up a list of about 60 scenes which is about 1/3 longer than last year so I shouldn't have to scramble too much for ideas when it comes time to write. (I hope.)

I'm a little concerned about the scope of the story though. I've already dumped 50k into it last year and I expect anywhere from 50-80k yet to go before the story is done. I tried really hard not to pad it with unnecessary stuff, so it's even possible it will grow when I get to the editing stage. I'm afraid it may be a little large for a first-published (hopefully) novel.

My big fear, other than the usual disasters such as hard drive/computer failures, holidays and families and who knows what else might be lurking next month, is that I've got this not so little web design contract on the side that has been delayed and delayed and though I had hoped to finish it by the end of this month, probably isn't going to be finished. My coding partner may get stuck with the brunt of the load in Nov., which is going to sabotage his attempts again at nano.

Speaking of my cousin, he found a local supply of shrimp chips! I first had these when my aunt brought them back from Japan when I was in kindergarten. I last had them 15 or 20 years ago when I lived in California. I missed them and I still love to watch them puff up as they cook just as much as I did when I was a kid.

Preparing for the 10th Anniversary of NaNoWriMo

2008-09-28T14:32:00.004-05:00

So many things to blog about...and so little time to do so. I finally finished the latest version of my author's site http://ja.partridge.com. I've got the CMS set up for a site where I plan to post all my setting information, but that won't go live until after NaNoWriMo

Speaking of nanowrimo, I'm very excited about participating this year. (I'm already starting to annoy my wife talking about it.) I'm also a little more worried this year. I'm planning on doing part 2 of the story I began last year, but I'm firmly stuck in the muddy middle of the story and I'm not sure which route I want to take to get me from the beginning to the ending. It's an ambitious story so pacing is already going to be an issue. Based on my work last year, I'm going to need somewhere between 50 to 75 scenes. So far I've got about 20 planned, then the rest just kind of fades into a blur. But, then, that's what's nanowrimo is about, isn't it? Just forcing you to gut out the word count and discover all kinds of things inside of you that you didn't know was there. That and just getting writers off their lazy butts.

Several weeks back I printed out all of my completed short stories (and the 1 novella) and ran them through a final (re)edit to get them ready to send out for their final rounds of submissions. I'm planning on running them through all the few remaining professional markets for short fiction, then I'll probably do something with them online. I like to do my final edits in hard copy (because I think I catch more stuff that way), so though I've finished nearly all of them, I still have to type in the changes.

Other than work, kids and the general distractions of life, I've done a little reading. One was a best-selling fantasy author who shall go nameless. I got about 5 or 6 chapters into it before realizing I had read it once before nearly 10 years ago. Even considering that it was a freshman work, the writing was appalling. The whole thing was all passive verbs, tons of over-writing and general cruft, not just one but two cliche openings because the first couldn't possibly motivate such a lame character.... It thoroughly depressed me, because if this guy could not only get published but go on to have a best-selling career, then something other than writing is the key factor in this business.

Speaking of reading old works, I borrowed a copy of Watchmen from a friend. Seeing the trailer for the movie, made me want to go back and re-read it. It was just as good as I remembered from all those years ago. I hope they can get the legal issues worked out, because I really want to see it, though it will be curious to see how they are able to adapt such a deep character-rich story for the big screen. All that being said, these photos of "Rorschach" picketing Fox studios for holding the movie up made me laugh.

I finally got around to reading The Road. I should say at the outset, that I'm a guy who likes post-apocalyptic stories. That is probably the only reason I finished this relentlessly oppressive book. I'm not saying it's bad. It's actually quite captivating despite some real flaws. The premise is completely unconvincing. (This from a guy who will happily suspend disbelief for any Romero-style zombie movie.) Plot-wise, I think it would have made an awesome short story. As a novel, it was a little thin. The characters are thin as well (both literally and literarily :) but their relationship and the father's obsessive will to survive do keep you engaged in the story. I almost didn't get into it because of an inexplicable lack of quotation marks and other punctuation and at least a few times where the author blatantly shifted from third to first person POV, but it is still a very worthwhile read. It is not divided up into chapters, but many of the scenes are short so I found myself gobbling one after the other like popcorn. I would highly recommend it to anyone and encourage those who fear they can't handle the bleak and unrelenting oppression by saying the book has a surprising and strangely optimistic conclusion that is really quite touching.

What I did on my Summer Vacation--Part 2

2008-07-09T20:22:00.004-05:00

Of course I've done other things besides reading. Besides all the holidays and family events and the sudden need to change web hosts and losing a two (or was that three) week's battle trying to set up a multi-site installation of Drupal for my new author's site (and a couple other sites--hence the multi-site thing. I'm may just stick with flat html.) I have been working on some stories.

A group of us have been meeting once a month to critique stories. I brought the first 10 pages or so of my zombie novella and, even after hearing someone else read it, decided I actually still like it. Even though there seems to be little chance of finding a magazine to publish a science fiction story about zombies in space, I think I'll go ahead and submit it anyway, just to waste postage.

November is getting closer and closer. I was hoping to have the rest of my novel mapped out before then, but I haven't made much progress there. I did, however finish the map I mentioned in an earlier post and it has helped me straighten out a lot of things involving time and distance in the story. Here's the thumbnail version.

Speaking of zombies, I had made a good start on a zombie RPG. It was intended as something of an experiment to see if I can incorporate all the design choices that I would normally reject and to see if I can make them work. Part of the reason for this is because the issue of zombie infection which would make a character from a traditional RPG too brittle to play for long, so I thought a more indie-narrativist approach would work better. I even toyed with using a d6 die pool, as in Ron Edward's Sorcerer RPG (I don't normally care for die pools, but...) I wanted to keep the mechanics fairly minimalistic. I pretty much completed the character description system, but got hung up on the economy of "hope". I hope to get back to it eventually, but I have a secondary web-design contract job to occupy what little "spare" time I have for now.

What I did on my Summer Vacation--Part 1

2008-07-03T19:39:00.002-05:00

Ok, I don't actually have the time or money to take a vacation--I haven't in a very long time--but with the price of gas these days I suppose that doesn't come as much of a surprise.

I did finish some of my reading though. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell turned out to be a wonderful book, though some major plot points were left unresolved. I hope that means we'll be seeing a sequel. I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for it.

I also finished both A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords and am about halfway through A Feast for Crows. I've enjoyed them, but I have to confess that I haven't bothered to buy any of them and am only working through the library's copies. The first two books (Thrones and Kings) had a nice tragic Fall of Rome type quality to it, but the third book reminded me of a certain John Gardener quote:

“Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.”

It's not that there wasn't suspense, but by about the third or fourth time that Arya escaped, got captured and escaped again, well it became somewhat tedious. And when two key characters from her family get killed...well, the whole story is a slow blood-letting so you kind of stop caring who lives and who dies after a while. Other characters disappeared and seemed forgotten for 100,000 words at a time. One rather sympathetic character just got killed--but it happened off-screen which left me filling a little cheated. It might have been better to devote some novels to specific individual characters rather than trying to weave all these plot strands together just a few at a time.

I've heard terrible stories from fans of Robert Jordan's work. I never made it past the first book myself, but I've heard that even his fans felt that he sold out or lost control of the series at some point. I hope GRRM doesn't do a Jordan. He's got a massive story going on. I hope he can keep track of all the story threads, devote the time to each that they deserve, and still keep the story focused on the parts that move the overall plot forward and that he doesn't just follow characters wandering around the landscape for no reason.

Reading, Writing and...Submissions?

2008-04-30T20:56:00.003-05:00

Spent most of the month catching up on reading. After hearing the name George R. R. Martin mentioned a lot (and seeing him in a photo standing next one of my favorite authors Fred Saberhagen and a bunch of other SF&F giants) I thought it past time I checked out his series, A Song of Ice and Fire. So I logged onto my local library and reserved A Game of Thrones, read it and am now halfway through A Clash of Kings. I'm enjoying it a lot though I'm having to resist the occasional urge to make editorial comments. Not that the writing is bad, but I've been doing so much editing of late that it's hard to turn the editor off.

I'm also halfway through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a jewel of a book with sly sense of humor and a wonderful Victorian style. My cousin had loaned it to me, but on the way home from a trip I stopped by an outlet mall at a 75% off store I know of and picked up their only copy, a hardback, for $5. Quite a find!

I'm afraid I haven't done much writing at all this month. I'm still banging my head over where I want to go with my nanowrimo project from Nov. (among other projects.) I came to a major turning point just before I hit the 50k mark and now that I've so thoroughly blown up the main character's world, I'm not quite sure where I'm going to go next. I'm afraid I've frustrated him so much that he doesn't have any real options left. I'm going to have to introduce some, probably by introducing a whole bunch of new characters.

The only progress on anything I can report is that my friend Bruno (one of my editorial subjects) pushed me to submit something, so I sent out little piece of flash fiction. I'm not holding my breath. I don't see much point in submitting short fiction anyway. It's not worth the time and expense of submission, but it was pretty much ready to go, so away it went. We'll see what happens.

Maps, Outlines and Writing

2008-03-25T20:22:00.006-05:00

Another month is nearly gone and though I don't have much to show for it, I can at least say I've been writing. I finished editing a novella for an anthology project that won't quite die. I ended up doing the final edit by hand on print out--it just seems to be easier to catch the little stuff that way than doing it on screen. Of course, now that means I have to retype the final version. If I get off my lazy butt, I may send it and a piece of flash fiction I've got waiting off to some venue or other. I'm not real optimistic about the state of publishing right now, though, so I'm not in a hurry.

Speaking of the anthology, I've--sort of--formed a monthly writing group with two of the anthology's potential authors and my wife. Ironically, the only thing I've presented at the meeting so far is an introductory essay for the anthology. Guess that means I have to get that novella typed up again.

When I realized I wasn't going to make the local con, all the game writing got put on hold which should have given me more time for the book, but that hasn't happened. Speaking of the book, I had also hoped to be halfway through the remainder of my nanowrimo project by now, but at this point I'm thinking I'll just try and get a functioning outline for the rest of it and finish the book next nanowrimo.

I have been working on maps lately. It may sound strange, but ever since I realized that the distance one of my characters traveled between two points (and thus the time required) was greater than I had anticipated, I've been working on mapping the setting for my nanowrimo project. I'm afraid it kind of messed up a bit of the story so its going to take some work to straighten out. Fortunately, I've got an old copy of Photoshop and a method that seems to be working for me. Geography might seem like the sort of thing that a writer just makes up, but after reading Guns, Germs and Steel, I don't take geography very lightly. I may post a thumbnail of some of it when I'm done if I'm feeling like it.

Yet Another Internet Meme

2008-02-01T16:00:00.000-06:00

I stumbled across yet another amusing internet meme on a Jeff Rient's blog (which I also just discovered at the same time) which involve randomly generating a band name, title and cover art for an old-fashioned concept album. For instructions on how it's done, check out Jeff's site. Here is my results.

Yeah, I know it's pretty saccharine, but the funny thing is that the Larry Sweeney article was about a pro wrestler.

January--where did you go?

2008-01-29T20:01:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I didn't get anything done on my nanowrimo project. I was scrambling to try and get my RPG ready for Chimaeracon, but judging by how much my co-designer and I have done, I don't think we're going this year. I have plugged some important holes, but I'm something of a perfectionist and an intuitive thinker, so I have to get each component "right" before I'm satisfied, but making the leap to the correct design has been difficult. I've considered setting up a game design blog and even a podcast (yeah, like the world needs another one of those) because I thought it would help me to focus my thoughts. Some of the best design work I've accomplished--particularly in the area of clarifying my design goals--has been in some form of conversation with others. Even if the person I'm conversing with doesn't offer anything in the way of insight, just composing my thoughts helps a lot.

The other thing that has been occupying my time is an anthology that I've been trying to get together. Just when I'm about to give up because most of my writers have flaked out on me, someone else comes along to give me just that sliver of hope to cause me to drop everything and start work on it again. I did just have another short story submitted, so I've been spending quite a bit of time working on it. The down side of working with brand new writers is that they require a lot of guidance and hand holding, so that has absorbed a lot of my sparse writing time.

I have been thinking about plots a lot again, mostly since I'm working on the second half of my nano project in the back of my head. I've been looking a lot at things like Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations (which is horribly disorganized and missing large gaps in plot possibilities) and 20 Master Plots which is better, but still not as systematic as I would like. I'm taking a more, I don't know, linguistic approach I guess. I've got something like 13 key verbs which I think sums up the action in all plots. My goal is to create a system that encompasses both plot and premise and which can account for all plots. Ambitious, I know. and it will only be possibly in a broad categorical sense. Still, I think it would be cool. I'll post more when my thoughts have a chance to gel.

A few thoughts on Nano 2007

2007-12-07T18:51:00.000-06:00

It was an incredible blast getting back to real writing again. I may continue to do some short fiction, but there's not enough markets yet to justify spending a lot of time doing it. Not that it's any easier to get a novel published, but a dozen short stories has a dozen times the submission wait times as a novel for roughly the same amount of words. That (and the fact that I just seem to prefer taking my time telling the story and enjoy having lots of room to tell it) makes me think novels are a more worthwhile direction for me now. Of course after saying that, I've got a little piece of flash fiction I'm probably going to start shopping around.

It did feel good just cutting loose with an act of creativity. Making sure to hit that 1667 words a day was quite the grind but it felt good shoving everything else aside and just writing.

Now I have to finish it.

My outline just barely covered the 50k words of the contest. Unfortunately it's only half the book I'd intended and while I have a general idea of the rest of the story, there are a lot of details regarding how I get from point A to point B to point C... that still need to be worked out. I'm determined, however to have it finished and the outline for the next book ready by next November.

It's Over!

2007-12-04T21:49:00.000-06:00

It's done! 51,172 words and I totally slacked off the last 3 days. I would have done more, but I caught up to my outline and I was suffering from some serious sleep deprivation. I rewarded myself for reaching 50k with a long nap.

The funny thing is that I set up the blog to document my experience as a first time wrimo-er, but I ended up not making a single post. What little non-novel writing I did during November was in the nano forums and even there I didn't put in much of an appearance.

I'm already planning on doing this next year and I already know what story I want to write. I'm just hoping I'll be a little bit better prepared so that it won't be quite the ordeal this time was and maybe I can get more involved in some of the social aspects of wrimo-ing. We'll see. I'll post more on this later.

And they're off!

2007-11-01T09:51:00.000-05:00

NaNoWriMo has officially begun! For us it included a countdown at Dragon's Lair Comics Games etc. of which yours truly was a few milliseconds late booting his laptop because he was yakking. I discovered two things last night:

1) After ten years of focusing on tightening up my writing (and spending a lot of time editing other people's stuff) it felt very good to force the internal editor off and just write. Several times I saw a phrase that could have been cut down or even replaced with a single word and I made myself leave it.

I keep reminding myself this isn't about creating a finished product, heck I may not use any of any particular scene I am writing at the moment, it's just about brainstorming and getting it all out and hopefully, during the mad dash to the deadline, discovering something new and cool lurking in the story that I might not have been able to discover with a slower and more deliberate process.

2) I also discovered that wrimos are cool people and really fun to hang out with. I regret that I probably won't be able to make many other write-ins as they're all on the opposite side of town from me and all seem to be on Sunday morning. Still, I was glad I made this one and look forward to at least seeing the others online.

Below are a few snaps of the event. Unfortunately some shot didn't come out that well, but hey, it was pretty crazy.

(click each to enlarge)

Our fearless leader

Mike thinking what the heck have I got myself into?

Knuckles aka Todd

Yours truly

Ok, I've wasted enough time on this post. Now I've got to get back to writing!

5 Days to Go !!!

2007-10-27T16:04:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm holding my breath and preparing to plunge in. I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be, but I have been working on my Snowflake. I wish I had had a chance to post more often. I was kind of hoping to use this blog to organize my thoughts as I prepared for November, but I guess I'll just have to be more spontaneous. Well, this is my first nanowrimo after all, I expect I'll be better prepared next year. The one good thing is that I've managed to collect a ton of writing music to keep me motivated for the next 30 days.

(EDIT--I've completed the first two steps of the snowflake process. I had previously jumped to the outline stage, so I'm actually a bit farther along, but I ran into problems because I hadn't done stage 3. If I can get that done and a good list of scenes, I think I'll be alright when November 1st starts...maybe.)

Let the Contest Begin—Sort Of

2007-10-04T20:42:00.000-05:00

Well I'm signed up and beating my brains out trying to come up with a more detailed outline. In fact I spent all last weekend reviewing notes I'd accumulated for years from other writers, trying to figure out what it actually takes to make a story. Why do some stories work and other not work? What elements have to be present to qualify as a story? You know--the big questions. I did mention I've been working on my plot with mixed success, right?

So what does it all boil down to?

Stories are about characters and/or their goals being transformed through conflict.

Usually this takes the form of a outer conflict producing an inner change. I say this because the character is usually spurred into action as a result of some outer force--some sort of change in their circumstances upsetting the status quo.

The basic structure goes something like this:
An inciting incident produces a need (your thematic subject) that motivates the protagonist to pursue a goal, but an obstacle (the antagonist) prevents this, causing conflict. The character struggles with a series of successes and failures until resolution (change occurs).

Either:

The protagonist is transformed--because the type of person they were could not accomplish their goal and they must be changed into the type of person who could accomplish that goal.

The protagonist’s motivation/goal is replaced with a more desirable motivation/goal.

The protagonist is destroyed (unable to pursue any goal).

I should probably mention that protagonists often have more than one goal. Frequently they are torn between two desires, the one they think they want and the one they really want, but don't know until a conflict forces them to choose—clarifying their real desires in the process. This sort of inner conflict is particularly rewarding because the suffering is ultimately self-inflicted and active characters making choices is always better than passive characters that are simply being acted upon. So even if you have a transformational plot where the goal doesn't change but the character does, he needs to struggle with the cost of that change, producing that same inner struggle.

NaNoWriMo signups are almost here!

2007-09-29T18:20:00.000-05:00

Wow! September is almost over and I haven't blogged anything! I had started to blog something about a post I ran across on Exploded Fiction which caught my eye, but I got distracted and didn't finish.

I hope that's not a bad omen. I have to admit I'm feeling a little nervous about NaNoWriMo starting up soon. While I can't wait to sign up, I remember how difficult it was to write a novel at my own pace and I know doing 50k in 1 month, what with holidays and family and regular life on top of everything isn't going to be easy. If I were back in school and didn't have a wife and kids, things might be different.

It doesn't help that I tend to edit as I go. It's hard for me to just spew words down on page--especially since I've been writing this epic story in my head for years now. (I fully expect the final product to be at least 100k.) I need to make some serious progress on it, but I've also totally failed to finish my outline. I have a beginning that may or may not be the right beginning and I have an ending. I've got a number of scenes that I want to stick in, but I'm not sure exactly where. My problem, in large part, (besides second guessing myself) is that I don't have the protagonist's story arc fully figured out, which leads me to question whether or not I should change the focus to another character.

I guess I'll just have to step back and look at this as a massive brainstorming session. Write everyone's story and then go back and cut and prune. I'm sure once I start things will go better. It's just the waiting that's driving me crazy.

Man's First Science

2007-08-20T12:20:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I'd blab, er, blog about an idea that has been floating around in my head for some time now about the nature of writing itself. I've long wondered at the power of stories to define how we see the world and the impact they have in shaping even whole societies and I've come to the conclusion, as strange as it may seem, that stories--telling narratives--is Man's first science.

Consider this, we currently use powerful computers to create sophisticated models of environmental factors which can, with a fair degree of accuracy, project the weather in a given area up to five days in advance. (Let's not talk about global warming right now.) These computer models can be used to test theories of how the weather works, how drugs work and other complicated systems.

However, we each carry around with us a computer far more sophisticated than the most advanced super computer, one specifically designed to model not just the physical world but also human social interaction. Of course I'm talking about the brain.

What got me thinking about this was (re)reading "The Art Of Creative Writing" by Lajos Egri and "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" (I & II) by James N. Frey. They give excellent advice on how to powerfully focus your story by determining its premise. In doing so, they express the premise in something like a scientific formula (i.e. "jealousy leads to the destruction of the beloved").

The story itself tests this theory. If the story works, if it "rings true", then you can say the model has accurately projected one outcome for a given set of inputs. If the writer cheats or the story fails to convince, the writer knows he needs to either change the outcome (abandon/replace the premise) or change the character and his starting conditions. Either way, the model has produced a result that give us insight into how people work and interact with each other and their environment.

We use stories to experiment on people, societies, even the laws of physics (or at least our ability to understand and use them) in ways we could not (or would be unethical to do) in real life. We learn a lot from stories and use them to teach our children.

They may seem like mere entertainment, but its also serious research...or at least it should be.

Flash Fiction

2007-07-19T07:45:00.000-05:00

I remember, decades ago now, my brother writing these short little one-scene short short short stories. The word Flash Fiction hadn't even been invented yet. I don't know that I'd ever tried writing one as my interests were always more towards epic SF&F, but I've been reconsidering it of late and have, in fact, written 2 and 1/2 stories with another one in the back of my mind.

It's hard to call them proper stories as <500 words is barely enough room to establish a character, their situation, the conflict and some sort of resolution. Most just summarize the first two, only "showing" the conflict, while "telling" the rest. The resolution is often only hinted at.

The good ones read like poetry. I think the limited word count restricts the scope of the story to something like that of a poem's and that may be the reason that, unlike most stories, many of these are written in first person present tense. In fact one could argue that Flash Fiction rest firmly in the intersection of poetry and prose.

I've been meaning to post about 365 tomorrows for some time now. I stumbled across them a few weeks back, but with a bunch of home projects (like pulling everything out of my house to replace the carpet), work, advanced java classes, and activities for/with the kids, I haven't had a chance to write about it. 365 Tomorrows is the reason why I've had an interest in trying my hand at flash fiction--as much as an exercise as anything else.

Many of the stories there are quite interesting. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be edited and a number have simple typos that, after all the editing I've been doing on other people's works, have me reaching for my editor's pen. Part of me thinks I should try looking for paying markets first, but the current market for SF is so abysmal, I doubt the pay for one of these (If one could even find a paying market) would be worth the effort or expense of mailing the manuscripts in. Still, I think I'll submit a few to this site just to see what the response is.

Now if only someone would set up a 365yesterdays for fantasy stories...

And I thought I was an INTJ

2007-06-25T21:53:00.000-05:00

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

2007-06-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to get excited about NaNoWriMo, but I'm also a little anxious. I know it's several months away, but I want this to be a real attempt at a first draft and not merely a writing exercise. I've more or less completed (and either discarded or simply shelved) 2 novels (one of 60k words and one of 80k) so I have some idea of what's in store.

I've mostly done short stories of late which has been both more satisfying and more frustrating. Satisfying, because there's an easily attainable goal. Frustrating, because the market for short stories, particularly heroic fantasy short stores, is nearly nil. That, and most of the stories I want to write just require more space.

In both cases, the novels failed to achieve their goals because I didn't have a clear outline. The first, especially, was a muddled mess and I decided after that, that I would have some sort of outline before I tried again.

So I've been working on an outline. It just makes sense that I'll be more productive if I don't have to stop and think what the next scene will be. Unfortunately that is easier said than done. I have a general idea of where I want the plot to go and several key scenes to include, but stitching it all together and working out the details--a lot of that only comes together in the process of writing.

Still, if I can just come up with a list of name for all the characters, that alone will save me tons of time. For some reason having to come up with a character name on the spot just stops me cold as I sit and debate what it should be.

dreaming with my eyes open

2007-06-17T18:53:00.000-05:00

John Gardner, in his book The Art of Fiction, speaks of the “fictional dream” which is the experience readers enjoy when they are engrossed in a good story. Writers, before they can write such a story must, obviously, first dream it up. But they must do more than that.

It's not enough to just focus on interesting people doing interesting things in interesting places. A writer must also pay attention to voice, theme, tone, pacing and a host of more technical concerns—all while engaged in recording this fictional dream. In other words, a writer must dream with his eyes open.

This site then is a small space carved out to serve as my own literary playground as I record my adventures in this waking dreamland... .