Leaping into the Year

Just noticed that February has almost slipped by and I don’t have a blog post for the month.  So I figured I’d better get something whipped up, and what better day to do it on than that most elusive of rare days, February 29^th. 

So, first, an update, I guess.  Work on my novel “Behavior” started in mid January, and progress was good out of the gate.  I got about 20,000 words of background material, world building and whatnot written, but then I hit a wall, and things have been slow going.  I think there are two reasons for that.  First, I’ve exhausted all the ideas that had been floating around in my head about the futuristic society in which the novel takes place (it is currently set in 2064), and I guess I need time for new ones to fill it.  I’m also used to doing invention work on the fly, as I write the story itself, so I may just have to dig in and start the narrative, so that I can see what corners of my world need to be created and fleshed out, even if I have to revise significantly later. 

The second thing that has slowed me up is I’ve gotten back into filmmaking in a minor way.  I was heavily into this several years ago, but pretty much got out of it to focus on my prose writing.  But I have a friend who I worked on a pilot for two years ago, and he is starting production on more episodes, and asked if I would come back to help with production.  I agreed, as I enjoy filmmaking, (I’m currently working as First Assistant Director on the shoot, as well as doing a bit of writing on the scripts) and figured it would be a nice change of pace.  But like anything, it takes a lot of time, and in the last two weeks I’ve been working on it, I’ve made little progress on my novel, or any other prose writing.  So I’m going to have to see if I can get my head back into the game, and make the novel priority number one, or else bow out of the film project at some point in the future.  We shall see. 

On the publication front, I’ve had a few sales since the beginning of the year, and a couple of stories have come out as well.  Every Day Fiction just bought “Way to Blue,” my story of a winged man who can no longer fly, inspired by the Nick Drake songs “Fly” and the eponymous “Way to Blue.”   Used Gravitons released “Rememories” in January.  This story, about a disfigured man who visits ‘mem joints’ to relive his former life in his head over and over again, got ripped to shreds by a professional author at Odyssey, but I made a few changes (though probably not as many as he suggested) and I’m happy with it.  Sometimes you just have to let a story get out there and see what the world thinks.  Finally “The Ale Wife,” a story about a farcical courtship with unexpected results, will be published by Mirror Dance in March. 

My wife and I watched the Woody Allen film Midnight In Paris last weekend, and we quite enjoyed it.  The fact that it featured some of the “Lost Generation” writers as characters really made me want to reread some of these authors.  Hemingway, Fitzgerald and some of the others were heroes to me during college, when I read pretty much their entire oeuvre.  The film also brought the romance...the ideal...the fanciful dream of the writer’s life back to my mind.  The day to day life of a writer in reality can be pretty banal, though satisfying.  Sometimes one has to let one’s mind wander a bit, and look at things from a distant place, to realize that the romance, the ideal, and the dream are indeed there, just as they were for Ernest, and F. Scott, and Gertrude, and all the rest.  

"Fun Project" finished

Well, I finished my ‘fun project,’ yesterday, which entailed completing the fantasy novel that I started writing when I was nineteen.  The novel finished out at 90,992 words, of which 39,763 are new words added to the twenty-four-year-old manuscript. 

As I mentioned I would do in a previous post, I just blazed through the writing, using the forty-six page outline as it was written, and I didn’t take any time to worry about fixing all the major problems that this piece held.  It was a tedious and even painful thing to do at times, but I feel overall the effort was a great learning experience, and it feels good to be able to say that I’ve created even a crude, quite bad, rough draft of a novel. 

Laundry listing all the problems this novel had, or the things I’ve learned from finishing it, is probably beyond the scope of this blog.  But I’ll highlight a few of them here.  First off, the novel was quite derivative, drawing heavily on Tolkien and his imitators, as well as the game Dungeons and Dragons.  This in itself is not inherently uncharacteristic of the fantasy genre, but I myself find I wish to be more original in my writing, and that alone will probably preclude me from ever revisiting this work as something to revise.  I do like the characters, and a few elements of the plot, so perhaps these will find their way into a future work.  We shall see. 

Another problem that I found with the work was massive amounts of point of view (POV) shifts throughout, all of which were not handled very well by me.  I had three main characters in this novel, and I tended to jump between all three throughout the work.  While the third person omniscient POV is a legitimate form, it requires the most skillful of writers to handle it well (Mario Puzo’s The Godfather comes to mind) and I feel such is beyond me at this point.  It was definitely beyond me then.  This POV, if not handled well, can be very distracting for the reader, and can often thrust them out of the narrative.  It is much safer to stick to third person limited POV in most cases.  George R. R. Martin succeeds with multiple POVs in his Song of Ice and Fire series, but he handles it by breaking the work into chapters with a single viewpoint character for each. 

Another problem I found was the overall lack of danger for the characters throughout most of the novel, and the way that they usually found their way out of danger with too much ease in most cases.  A writer really needs to pile it on to their characters, and make them work hard toward their goals.  Lots of ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ moments are good as well.  The stakes should always be raised again and again and again, higher and higher, until the ultimate crisis moment when it looks like all is lost.  Sadly this work just did not do that in most cases. 

The novel overall seemed to lack what I’ll call depth, for lack of a better word.  Characters, particularly minor ones, were often wooden and two dimensional.  Even the major ones were two dimensional in many ways, not to mention the setting itself.  An author really needs to create a background for their characters and world that not only provides depth and realism, but also motivation for the actions and desires of the characters.  I’m not saying every novel needs the level of background that Tolkien created, but I think there is a happy medium between that and simply writing what only appears on the page.  This can probably be accomplished in many ways.  There are writers who do vast amounts of ‘world building’ before they begin the manuscript proper, and there are those that simply create as they go.  Both are valid, but there is no excuse for not doing it at all.  I think for me, a combination of both may be the way to go.  Since I’ve mostly worked in short stories, I’ve mainly been of the ‘create as you go’ school of thought, but for a novel, particularly a novel as complex as the ones that I want to write, I think I may try a little bit of pre-manuscript world building to get me where I want to be. 

And so, with a little sadness but also excitement I leave this world and these characters behind.  Sad, because I have enjoyed revisiting them again, breathing a little life in them and completing something that I started.  Excitement, because I am now ready (I think) to tackle the SF novel that has been gestating in my brain for several years. 

But, a few short story ideas have presented themselves over the course of the last few weeks, so now the decision is, do I knock those out, or move right into the next novel.  Only time will tell. 

On the reading front, I’ve just started George R. R.  Martin’s Game of Thrones novel, the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire.  I very much enjoyed the HBO series based on this novel last year, and am surprised at myself for never getting around to reading this series.  I’d read a little bit of Martin’s work before, mostly short stories and the novella Sandkings (which I highly recommend), but this is the first of any of his longer fiction that I’ve read.  So far, I must say, I’m enthralled.  Martin is a master storyteller, and he has crafted a certain masterpiece here.  His plot is far-reaching and complicated and the history of his world so complex it almost reaches a Tolkienian level.  His world feels gritty and real, and he doesn’t pull any punches.  I would love to know more about how he built his world.  My only dislike with is prose is his heavy use of adverbs, which I’ve always been taught weaken one’s writing, but such is a minor complaint against what amounts to one of the best books I’ve read in quite a while.  I look forward to the next few volumes with great fervor. 

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to all!

I meant to do a quick post at year’s end, but here I am, two days late.  Ah, well, better late than never. 

THE YEAR IN REVIEW:

Looking back, 2011 was a great year on the writing front for me.  Final totals were 416,976 words written, which comprised 1,367 pages--by far the best I have ever done.  I also met my goal of submitting 100 stories by year’s end, an accomplishment of which I’m quite proud.  Of these 100, thirteen were published, sixty-seven were rejected, and twenty were still out there as of the end of the year.  The new year has so far brought two more rejections, and, huzzah!, another acceptance. 

This acceptance was for my story entitled “The Ale Wife,” to Mirror Dance Magazine.  This is a humorous little tale of false assumptions and misconceptions that I am happy has found a home, and I’m glad to place something at Mirror Dance, which I enjoy reading.  It is edited by the brilliant Megan Arkenberg, who has placed a great deal of finely-crafted stories in many well-respected venues.  When I see her name on a piece, I always know I’ve an intriguing, well-told tale in store for me.   

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m now hard at work finishing an old novel from the 80s as a little inspirational and educational side project to help ramp me up to working on the SF novel that will be my main focus in the first part of 2012.  I was averaging about 3,000 words a day on this before the holidays hit and the house filled up with family, but I’d knocked out about 16,000 words on it before that, and I’m now back at it. 

Here’s to a great 2012!

Chris

Revisiting an Old Manuscript

So I mentioned in my last post that since I reached the milestone of 400,000 words for the year, I planned to spend the balance of December, and possibly a little of the beginning of next year, working on a little ‘fun’ project.  Well, allow me to elaborate. 

First, a little background. 

When I was nineteen years old, during the spring and summer of 1987, I wrote a novel.  More precisely I wrote a complex outline and summary for a novel (46 single-spaced pages) and then wrote almost two hundred pages of the novel itself.  Something then discouraged me, and I put the novel in the proverbial drawer, where is has languished for over twenty-four years. 

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Novels written by teenagers usually aren’t that good.  (and no, no apologies to Christopher Paolini)  This one wasn’t the exception, either.   It was a standard Tolkien Fantasy knockoff with Elves, Dwarves, Dragons and such, set in a standard medieval Europe-like milieu.  Such books were all the rage back in the seventies and eighties, with the likes of Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings and others cranking ‘em out.  I lapped ‘em up like crazy, so it is no surprise that such was the leanings of my first attempt at a novel. 

I came across that manuscript in an old filing cabinet recently, and I actually read it in its entirety--with much delight.  And no, it wasn’t that good, but it was fun to see what my skills were at that point in my life, and also my weaknesses.  I was a little disappointed when I got to the chapter where it abruptly ended.  Yes, in spite of how bad it was, I was enjoying reading it. 

I found a note I’d placed in the same folder where I’d kept the manuscript that outlined my reasons for abandoning it.  I’d been browsing the bookstore that day and I came upon a published fantasy novel that I decided had quite a few similar elements as my little opus, and I think the experience just deflated me.  I wrote a few more pages, but the burning drive to finish the novel just wasn’t there.   I think I’d been so driven because I felt I’d had a very original premise for this novel.   One that hadn’t been done yet in genre fantasy. 

That premise?  My main character was a dwarf who wanted to become a wizard.  And you see, according to the tropes of the day (as started by Tolkien, but reinforced by later, copycat authors, and of course Dungeons and Dragons), dwarves are inherently non-magical.  So I had a character, and a seemingly impossible goal, and I sat down and created a rich but quite derivative world in which to tell this story.  I did a lot of research into Norse myth for this work, and I think that is why there were so many similarities to the published novel I came across (which was, for full disclosure, called “The Plains of the Sea,” by Neil Hancock), right down to several names I’d used.   Old Mr. Hancock had mined the Norse mythos as thoroughly as I had--perhaps even more so. 

So, flash forward twenty-four years.  I’ve reread the manuscript, and while I don’t think I’ve got anything even remotely usable on my hands, I did enjoy it, and I sort of wished I’d finished it way back then.   So now, I’m thinking, just for fun, I may do just that.  It shouldn’t be too hard, as I’ve got the detailed outline and summary that I created, I just have to pick up where I left off and complete the prose.  The only question is, of course, would this be a valuable use of my time? 

Before I answer that, I’ll say that the original writing of this novel WAS a good use of my time.  I taught myself a great deal about writing that summer by simply going through the process.  The technique of writing an outline and summary for the whole thing first was a good and useful method, one which I think I will use on future novel projects that I have planned.  Then going through the day to day writing of the thing, even though I didn’t finish it, still proved to me that I could handle a work of that complexity. 

So, on the one hand, finishing out a novel that I feel has no hope of success would seem on the surface a waste of time.  But, I don’t plan to spend that great of a deal of time on it...maybe six weeks or so, and I think there can be some benefit.  I’d wanted to start on my novel called “Behavior” at the beginning of next year, but I still feel my mind is geared toward the short fiction I’ve been writing, and I need to do something to sort of ‘ramp myself up’ to the task of writing a novel.  So I think the exercise won’t be completely without benefits.  I’ll no doubt learn a few things along the way, so I think it could be time well spent.  Most established authors maintain that a writer has one or more ‘bad novels’ in their system that need to be gotten out before their better work emerges, so perhaps “Shillelagh” (as this novel was titled) could be one of those. 

So, I’ve set a few rules for myself in this endeavor.  The main one is that I’m going to stick to the story as plotted by my nineteen-year-old self, plot holes and all.  Also, no going back and fixing issues in the first two hundred pages that were already written.  (It is full of problems like POV issues, gaps in the causal chain, unresolved character arcs, etc).  As for the rest of the writing, if I can address any of these issues at the sentence level, then that is fine, but no major changes at the chapter level or greater. 

Part of me also wants to try to channel that nineteen-year-old’s voice when I write the rest of it, but that might just be asking a bit too much, and really isn’t necessary, since I’m writing this only for an audience of one...me. 

So, here I go, revisiting some characters and a world that has sat frozen in time for over half my life, waiting for the tale to be told.  I’m almost excited to begin this endeavor, and I think that nineteen year old I once was would be pleased.  Get ready to find your magic, little dwarf!

I’ll keep you posted on this little project as it develops. 

Chris

400,000 Words!

I entered my daily word count in my tracking spreadsheet yesterday and discovered I’d hit 400,000 words for the year.  I’m quite proud of that, I must say.  My daily goal for this year has been a thousand words a day, so with a couple weeks left in the year, I can say that I’ve happily blown past that milestone.  (Hit 365K on November 9^th).    It has truly been a year of living like a full time writer.  Here’s hoping I can keep up this pace, or something close to it, for many years to come. 

As I check my spreadsheet, I see that these totals include 124 complete short stories, ranging in length from a few hundred words to twelve thousand, plus quite a few unfinished pieces.  Some are crap, some are salvageable, perhaps a few are good. 

I’m planning to start on a novel at the beginning of next year, and I think the thousand word-a-day goal will work well for this.  I don’t want to completely stop writing short stories, though, as I’m learning a lot still from that format, and I’m having a little success selling a few.  So perhaps I’ll split up the week, and work perhaps four days a week on a novel, and spend the other three on shorts.  Another way to do it might be to set a goal of a certain number of short stories per month.  This was suggested by Gary Braunbeck, our writer-in-residence this summer at Odyssey.  While he spends most of his time on Novels, he says he tries to write at least one short story a month, so he ends up with twelve a year.  That’s not a bad goal, though I may try for a few more a month, since I’m writing a lot of flash fiction. 

But if I keep up the thousand words a day, that should easily allow me to produce two or so ‘rough draft’ novels next year, and still have quite a bit of words left over for short fiction.  Of course there is also the need to do revision, particularly for novels, so I’ll have to work that in somehow as well.  I really haven’t done a great deal of revision this year, so I need to improve on that. 

For now, though, since I’ve reached this milestone, I’m thinking of taking the rest of the year off from ‘serious writing’ and work on a little fun project for a change of pace (not that ‘serious writing’ isn’t fun as well).   I’ll let you know what that is in the next post.

Chris

The Pearl

One of my favorite writers, Lucius Shepard, is also a Facebook friend.   He was recently in Nantes, France, and posted a little story on Facebook about the singer Patti Smith.  He had seen her in the Seventies, wild and out of control, most likely messed up on drugs.  The next time he saw her was just recently in Nantes, and he described her as a sixtyish lady in a long coat and boots, waiting in a hotel lobby, a smile on her face and bouncing on her toes.  He lamented not catching her recent show, but said it didn’t matter, as ‘the little dance’ she did in the lobby had answered all his questions about her.  “Patti Smith has survived her personal rock and roll and, as do some few survivors, has grown a pearl around the sadness that entails.”

That last line struck me as an incredibly beautiful piece of sentiment, and I couldn’t help but reflect on it throughout the day.  Everyone has some measure of sadness in their lives, and most of us try to move beyond it, or dispel it, or drive it from our lives through whatever means we find at hand--perhaps religion for some, or drink or drugs for others, or sex, or baking or perhaps, for some, through art.  But no matter what we do, that sadness never really leaves us, it just becomes a part of us, like a scar that tells the story of the roads that we have traveled. 

The concept of “growing a pearl around it” is quite a powerful thought, for that’s what we, as writers, are hopefully doing when we take whatever measure of sadness is dealt us and turn it into something beautiful with words.  I’ve had great sadness in my life at times, but I’ve never found a greater opiate than putting pen to page and turning those sour, ascorbic lemons into lemonade, or turning the painful, gritty grain of sand into a pearl, as Lucius so beautifully put it. 

Such thoughts leave me feeling dreamy and poetic as I sit down for my daily writing session.  All is well in the world, but somewhere, through the quantum throes of time, hurt lingers.  And there is always room for another pearl....

Flash Fiction Frenzy

It’s been a week of flash fiction frenzy. Not only have I been writing it like crazy, but I just got word that in addition to the two pieces that sold last week (Annie’s Book and Nikki Comes Home) to Every Day Fiction, I’ve sold a third to Weird Year. It’s a little piece called During The Eclipse that deals with myth, religion and the nature of belief, all in about 650 words.

Yes, that’s why I love flash fiction. You can seemingly pack so much into such a little space, it can really pack a punch. And it is often what you don’t say, but only hint at, that often leaves the most impact.

I think writing flash is a great exercise for a writer; one learns a lot about brevity and being succinct, and using one’s words to their greatest effect. I’m also glad the form has grown as popular as it has, because I enjoy reading it. It is almost the perfect format for the fast-paced, please-me-now world of the internet.