Novel #2 is complete

 2020 was a different kind of year. My goal is to write every day, with weekends off unless I find myself with free time. But in the middle of the year, as the pandemic was spreading more rapidly than our understanding of it, I just stopped writing for three months. And I didn't expect to ever get back to it. 

Every time I've taken more than two days off from writing, over the past decade-plus, there's always been this gnawing in my core urging me to get back to writing, making me irritable and quick tempered. There was none of that. I was happy to be able to just read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and not think about when to carve out time for writing. 

BUT, I had a novel waiting for one final pass. And my friend, Matt, had taken the time to read it and give me some notes on it. I couldn't leave it to just lay fallow on my hard drive, and I couldn't let Matt down. So, eventually, I got back to it. And now, 93,000 words, and a few years and five drafts later, I have a final draft of my second novel. Now, I need to distill those 93,000 words down to 200 and begin querying agents. (the first novel went nowhere, as far as querying, though I did have one agent ask for a full manuscript, which led me to believe I was on the right track)

So, it's time to get that summary done and begin throwing this story out into the world. Because I already know what is next in the queue, and I would like to have that completed by the end of 2021. 

I'm writing a New Story

Day #10 of the return to the writing habit, and a byproduct of getting back to work and writing all those blogposts is that the fiction side of my brain has turned back on. During the three-plus months of my writing drought, this was the most frustrating and unfamiliar aspect. Typically, when I've gone through a spell of no writing, my mind was still working on story ideas. But nothing like that occurred. Now that I'm making the time to write again, though, it seems The Muse TM has returned. Which isn't that surprising. I already wrote about that, here. 

So, to offer something other than self-congratulations, here's the opening sentence for the new story (I hope it does the job I stated it should in this recent piece):

Andre Johnson was seven years old when he stepped into another world.   

Thanks for indulging me. I mean, it is my blog, so I suppose I'm entitled. 

__wink_emoji__ 

-chris

ON WRITING: The Habit's the Thing

Day 3 of working to get back into the habit of writing. Here we go:

I've written about this before, but you can't allow yourself, if you want to write, to fall into the trap of waiting for the muse. That's a mug's game, a romantic notion that sounds lofty and artistic but will only hamper you, if you truly want to be a writer. [And note, being a writer is many things, but at its core, as Harlan Ellison stated and I will paraphrase: if you write, then you're a writer, full stop. Other good advice, from Neil Gaiman:  finish what you begin.]

But it's an easy trap to fall into. I did, when I first had the idea of writing. Of course, I have a tendency to romanticize things, which is probably why my reading and entertainment choices have leaned toward fantasy and the fantastical -- Star Wars being the prime example of this, with comic books a close second. So, when I first considered writing as something I could do, I though it was necessary to just wait for the ideas to come, to allow the muse to fill me up with creativity and direct me on the proper path. I had this one story idea that I believe was a good one. I would work on that, whenever I felt like it, with days and weeks and months passing in between writing spurts, those gaps expanding once I got into the revising phase. And here, as well, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought you needed to revise the fuck [sorry, Mom] out of a story before submitting it. I was into my 13th or 14th revision, at which point I am certain I was just changing words back to ones I'd had in previous drafts, when I finally stopped, put it aside, and tried to figure out what I was doing, and, more importantly, what I was doing wrong. 

Writing is work. Harlan Ellison, my favorite author, famously would write stories in bookstore windows, from ideas offered by friends or attendees, without any foreknowledge of the subject. He wanted to prove that writing was just like plumbing or teaching or any other job. You worked at it, you became better, it was something you were able to do with some facility, But, like any job, you had to work at it, otherwise, what was the point? 

If you want to be a writer, you need to write. That's advice #1 from any author. You have to write. Every day. It's not easy, because there are plenty of distractions calling out for our attention. You have to sit down, in the chair, spark up the computer, and begin smacking those keys. You have to do it regularly, every single day (though I like to take weekends off to be with my family), and, most importantly, you need to have a goal in mind toward which you're working. This goal will keep you honest, and it will allow you to forge ahead and finish those stories you start. Your goal can be a timed one, or a quantity one, whatever works for you -- write for an hour, write until you've gotten 500 words down, write until you have a full scene completed. Anything that gives you something to shoot for and keeps you moving forward. Consider:  if you write 1,000 words a day, after three months you will have written 90,000 words, roughly, which equates to a standard sized novel. Of course, there would still be revising to finish, but once you have a rough draft to work from, the writing is a bit easier. 

The most important thing about making your writing a habit -- and this is probably obvious, but bear with me -- is to make it a regular thing, within your personal schedule. Set a time, the same time, every day, for when you're going to write. Set up a writing space, dedicated to just that, and it can be at the dining room table, in a home office, on your porch, wherever, but utilize the same space very day. Your mind, and your body, will come to recognize this as the writing space, and when you sit down to the keyboard you will know, subconsciously, that it is your writing time. Patterns can be important, especially when beginning a habit. Choose some music, something that will relax you and focus you, that won't be distracting. I prefer to use soundtracks or classical music or jazz, something without lyrics. Currently I'm listening to the John Wick soundtracks. The music energizes me, and it drowns out distractions (I used to do this in high school, when I did my homework); it keeps me focused on the task at hand and allows me to work toward my goal, which has changed over time. Used to be I would try to write for 2 hours a day, then I worked to a 1000 words a day goal, now I've taken on something Joe Hill does, which is to work on a single scene and finish that scene, during my writing time. It's not always doable, but it does give me something to aspire to. 

In the end, the only person who can make you write is you, and whatever means you utilize to get to that place, I applaud you. Just remember, you need to write on a daily (regular) basis, and you need to finish what you begin. Other than that, everything else is fair game. 

-chris

Succeeding (or Failing) in public

So, this is the week where I am working to get back into the habit of writing. And my plan is to do it in public (at least, as public as this blog may be . . . not overly public, though technically it's totally public, but one must take into account one). 

It's not enough just to spit out something onto a screen, as it were, though that's apparently where I'm heading with this. I had a few ideas of what I could do:  write about something I'd recently read or maybe craft a scene or a setting just as an exercise; of course, I could be doing THE WORK -- revising one of my stories, or going through that novel manuscript on a final pass, or working on the synopsis I need for that (87,000 summed up in less than 200, please). Any of these would be good. 

But I also considered writing extemporaneously . . . like I'm doing right (write?) now. Annnnnnnnnd, I'm not feeling it (most especially because it just feels like an exercise in futility with nothing to gain, either for you the reader [singular for multiple reasons, hahaha!] or for me.  So, a scene or a setting. Let's see if I can do that. 

Cue music: 

And, let's begin.

Antoine opened his eyes. Darkness. 

He could feel a chill on the back of his neck, a soft breeze licking the skin just below his hairline, coming from . . . somewhere. Sitting in a wooden chair, his arms were pulled back; he tried to move his hands, found they were bound. Rope or wire or plastic cut into his wrists, he couldn't help but let out a tiny scream. Eyes pinched closed with the pain, Antoine took a breath, tried to fill his lungs with air, but found it impossible. 

On his left, a sound, something moving. He turned, looked. 

The darkness looked back. 

"Who's there?" Antoine's voice cracked, was weak. Questions tumbled through his mind, refused to congeal into anything coherent. He opened his mouth again:  "What do you want?" 

Nothing. 

Antoine sucked at the air again, tried to regain some control of the situation. His breaths were quick, shallow, unfulfilled. He could feel himself panicking, worked to push that thought down, continued to grasp for oxygen and finally managed to calm down his lungs. He took three long, slow breaths, then opened his eyes wide. 

A slight glimmer on his right. An outline -- tall, square, a window(?), maybe. 

A thicker shadow to his left. Heavy. Solid. A piece of furniture -- a bookcase or a dresser. 

The chair he was in. Wood, with delicately carved decorations on its back (he could feel the empty spaces scattered across his shoulder blades, down the rest of his back; he could almost picture a similar chair from his childhood, in his grandmother's apartment). The legs were narrow, the seat solid. Antoine felt like he should be able to break it if he could get the right leverage to lift it from the floor and topple it over. Of course, this thought led to the discovery that his legs were bound as well, at the ankles and the knees. 

FUCK!

"What are doing?" 

A soft laugh, so low Antoine thought it might be his imagination. 

The female voice following it told him it was genuine. "Isn't it obvious?" the voice said. "We want to kill you. But first, we want to play." 

So, roughly 350 words. Not bad for a first draft. At least, I hope it's not too bad. I only had an image, of someone locked in a room, when I started. I didn't know it was pitch black until I began writing. In my mind, I wanted to write something that might elicit the anxiety one would experience if in this situation. I don't know that I succeeded in that regard. I would need to know what I'm doing in order to achieve that with a quick first draft. I'm not even sure if could achieve it on a third pass. But I feel like I may have crafted something that is, at the very least, interesting. And, given the opportunity to revise it and flesh out a larger narrative around it, I believe I could come up with something worthwhile. Maybe I'll try that someday. But, for now, I got a chance to flex the "fictive" muscles for the first time in a long time. 

I'll be back tomorrow with something else. Not sure what it'll be, but hopefully it will be engaging. 

-chris