Ground Game

It has been a while, folks. I've been deliberately avoiding updating this blog, because I didn't want to bore you all with logistics and because I wanted to concentrate on working instead of talking about my work. Hopefully some day I'll get super media savvy and start an effective blogging routine, but for now let's worry about getting published.

You'll all be happy to know that Poof is outlined. That sucker is blocked out. It took me all of February, March and April to do it. The scene-by-scene (the document I'll be working from as I draft the novel) is 30,000 words by itself, and there is at least that many pages in the other design documents. Let me give a shout out to the Snowflake Method. Granted, I butchered it, but it gave me a much-needed guide and helped me to slow down and trust the process in a way I never had. I'd say my invention game (the making up of junk) is better than ever, while my performance game (the actual writing) is steadily improving with experience. (I've been watching a lot of MMA in the last 6 months, and it's been really fun to watch how guys specialize in one aspect of their game or hone in on a weakness to improve on it. It has really colored the way I look at my writing.)

Big thanks to my old roleplaying/story buddy, Rusty Raymo, for the long talks and for tons of help flushing out some really vicious story blockages. (Ew?) You're one hell of a rubber wall, my friend. Thanks for putting up with my whiny mid-session freak-outs. "Is this boring?" "No, Steve. Shut up. Work." "Oh. Okay." Could I have done this without you? I wish I could say yes (because I'm a glory-grubbing, stubborn narcissist), but who knows? I certainly never got this far before you came along and carried some of the mental burden. So cheers. :)

In other news, I just finished a story for an anthology and I'm very happy with it. It's the first time I can remember going from zero to finished story where the story turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted. It's like hitting a bulls eye. Feels good! And the feedback I'm getting is overwhelmingly positive. I've even had some people cry. You have no idea how good that feels (unless you do).

On Sunday, I'll be making my first big push writing Poof. It's incredibly exciting and stressful time for me, but I'm eating it up. My new little girl Juliet got here a week ago tonight, and tomorrow she's leaving me for a few weeks to go up to tour the in-laws world in Wyoming. I'll be alone in the house for 2-3 weeks. I will miss my girls, probably some nights so badly that I can't sleep, but this is such amazing timing. What a way to start a book!

I had a lot of other cool stuff to talk about on here, but I can't remember it all. A blog post can only get so long before people start to feel like they're looking up the slope of a mountain. But it's been a wild few months. I got to see Greg Laswell in concert. That rocked. Go see him, he's still on tour.

Peace!

Shh!

Don't tell anyone. If I say this too loud it might go away. But I'm focusing. I'm shutting out the noise and I'm outlining Poof. Our little secret, okay?

Wazzup? This.

Okay, so I'm afraid to write Poof. But I will. After all this:

I just updated my webcomic for the first time in three months, and I'll be doing bi-weekly updates from here on out, until the baby or the novel, whichever comes first. GEEZ, I hope it's the novel.

I'm also working on a script for a comic book issue, drawn by my brother Tim (who is crazy good). The comic is called Brothers Benedict, and I'm very excited about it. When it gets done, I'm hoping to pitch it to a comic book publisher. Fingers crossed.

After that script is complete, I'll be finishing up my little novella, Halloween Knight, which started as a Codex Halloween Contest entry and just ended up being too long.

Then I am going to hammer out a little story that my wife came up with. This one should be almost instantly salable, unless I farg it up.

Then POOF! Poof.

So that's what I'm up to. Gotta run. Peace. :)

Pluggin'

Well, it's been a while. Lots of things have happened since I last updated. I got all my hours cut at work (SUCKY) and my wife is pregnant (AWESOME, but scary). I've been hard at trying to work. You can quote me on that. Make t-shirts.

The plan is still Poof by May (not April...pushed it back a month). Lately, though, I've been working on a short story that I'm looking forward to showing to some of you. It's superbly weird, but not a bad little story. And by "little" I of course mean that the finished story will a nice, unsalable 15,000 words. Go figure. It's been nice, though, to reconnect with the truth about writing. Yeah, 1,000 words a day gives you a young adult novel in two months (if you don't take weekends), but you still have to WRITE every one of those 1,000 words. And that can be hard. "What do you mean I have to make stuff up and it has to not suck?!"

The one thing I'm learning is that you just have to do it. You just do. And you shouldn't think so much that it kills your productivity. I believe "She Who Lies in Secret" is my best story, and that's just silly, because I wrote that story SO FAST compared to the others. The lesson there? Just write. Go on instinct. Do what you do. When the learning is done, trust that it stuck and just tear out and take names. Don't think yourself into a coma. So that's my big epiphany in the month and a half or so since Boot Camp.

Another thing I learned is that the people who succeed are the people who are too busy writing to spend a bunch of time reading message boards and doing critiques. Some is good. Some is necessary, but I'm determined to keep the main thing, the main thing. See you soon.

Peace.

Life As(s) Usual

Just a quick note to let you all in on what's been going on the past few days and weeks since I returned from Boot Camp.

Already, it is easy to get the feeling that Boot Camp never happened. "What do you MEAN I met Orson Scott Card? What do you mean I did that camp thing I wanted to do and it's over now?" But the knowledge is still here. Parts of it have really stuck. My attitude on writing is different. My attitude on STORY is different. And I don't think that's going to revert just because I'm home and comfortable.

Well, almost comfortable.

It seems due to budget cuts and logistical junk that my hours at work have been vaporized. And I loved my job. Getting paid to walk around in the dark and think and listen to audio books? I even had time to write between patrols. Best job ever in some ways. But alas, all good things must come to an end. So here I beez. Looks like I can add job hunting to my To-Do List.

I've sketched out a schedule for Poof, my YA novel that's in the works. The schedule basically has me writing the novel in three months. Yikes. But that's 1000 words a day with weekends off. Should be easy breezy if I do my work in the outlining stage. I've slotted two months for that. And a month or two for downtime and test readings and final edits and pre-querying and such, once the novel itself is finished. It's a fairly loose schedule, one that I know I am capable of. But it also ends up with me and a completed book by April.

I've learned a lot since my last "novel attempt." One of the things I've learned is, writing a book is something that can be done quickly. I wrote a 12,000 word story is just a few hours at work over the course of about 2 weeks. That's over a sixth of this novel's length. DOABLE. If I bust me arse and focus. Also, I know now that a novel is not a once-in-a-lifetime achievement into which you have to squeeze every last observation you have ever had about the human experience. Tried to do that with Silas Crane. "Sweet! That's going in my book!" is a phrase that can quickly over-burden and kill your story. Trust me.

Beyond the novel stuff, I've got a story to write for a Codex halloween contest. And I need to shoot some stories out into the world for publication. I've only got one or two out there right now. For shame.

Anyway, I'll keep checking in as things develop.

Working Out the Kinks

I just read through my previous posts. Wow. Was I really that big an arrogant prick only a few days ago? I guess I was. Apologies to anyone who has had to swallow my crap about being "as good" (whatever that means) as the other writers. So much talk about people wanting to prove themselves, and I was the chiefest of sinners all along. Oh, well. At least I've realized how silly some of my perceptions were at the time. The GOOD part about those posts is that they preserve the enthusiasm I felt that week. I'm glad to be able to revisit that when I'm feeling burnt out and uncreative.

I've been having a lot of negative feelings about writing since I got back. I wish I could be the kind of person who just lets the past be and moves forward, but unfortunately, I always have to rehash old events to discover what meaning they might have in the present. Once each event is named, I can shelve it and move forward. But not before. So here we go:

Before boot camp, my writing schedule was very loose. I wrote stories as they came to me. I had the vague hope of publication in some hypothetical magazine somewhere, sometime, and a distant idea that "one day" I would attempt an impossible, distant, unattainable Novel. I didn't write for a particular audience, and I usually didn't have the story hammered out in advance.

In short, boot camp SQUASHED my old way of doing things. There is no place for the kind of aimless wandering I was doing in the life of a writer who hopes to make writing their career. (It's late, am I making sense?) And now, I have seen my own mistakes picked apart. I've seen other people's mistakes picked apart. Over and over, the problem was not language. It wasn't nifty ideas. It was STORY INVENTION. I never realized how unwilling I was to spend the time to thoroughly hash out a story and it's implications. Orson Scott Card said something in passing that I really latched onto. He referred to writing as "creating an intellectual property."

WOAH. I had NEVER thought of it that way. I had always had this vague idea that you just wrote, and if you were lucky, you sold the words you wrote. The idea that in writing you are building something almost tangible in its detail hadn't crossed my mind. Sure, I paid lip-service to the idea that writing was a "craft" just like carpentry or masonry, but I didn't have a clear idea of what that actually meant. The sad truth is, if I had put the time and practical, accessible story detail into my stories that I put into my stupid Dnd campaigns, I would have been published already. WHAT. A. WASTE.

So if I sound like a whiny, little brat who can't make up his mind about how to view this whole writing business, just chock it up to growing pains. Once I've written some stuff and had the chance to try my hand applying all this new knowledge and perspective, I'll mellow out. For now, I'm trying my hand at invention. I'm putting forth an honest effort to "craft" a story that I won't have to use the language equivalent of the "blur tool" on just to make it look good. I'm trying to be the biggest, most cynical bastard you can imagine, while still enjoying the "making stuff up" part like I did when I was a kid.

Oh, and I made a new rule for myself. "No more books on writing until I've finished a novel-length work." This is a big step. It's easy to be afraid that you don't know enough, and start reading "writin' books" as a procrastination aid. You get a lot of good advice and precisely ZERO writing done. If I want instruction, I'll read good fiction for pleasure. You learn more instinctively from a good book than you do from a half-dozen writing books. So enough. Here's another good one: "Stop nit-picking the language. Period." Also good advice. Just write, neither needlessly verbose nor needlessly sparce. Just write. If you have a good story, it will turn out alright.

Holy crap, I think that's actually true. Back to work, then.

Back Home Again

Now that I'm home it's harder to make myself do things again. It's like this place is made of molasses, and I have to really work hard and chug against the stickiness of being comfortable. The last few days have been relaxing, though, and I feel ready to tackle the challenges of my YA novel.

Looking back on boot camp, these are the things that have stuck with me:

Sadly, I have a deep sense of regret at having not performed as well as I know I can. The story I turned in was not very good. It had potential, yes, and it was memorable, but otherwise it was kind of a pile. When Mr. Card told us to write fast and not to dwell too much on quality, I took that as license to relax and just let it flow. You should never just "let it flow." You end up with a poorly thought-out story. But, it's true, I did learn a lot more from my bad story than I would have from a good one. BUT, future boot campers take note: YOU WILL be judged by the quality of the story you turn in, whether it is a fair indicator of your writing prowess or not. Everyone will categorize you by what they see in your work. So work hard, and when you're out of steam, keep working hard. I wish I would have.

That small disappointment aside, I learned SO much about what makes a story great. I thought I had a decent grasp on storytelling and writing, and vaguely thought that anything I could improve on was just detail and would come with experience. I was WRONG. I learned things (about POV, invention, and exposition--specifically how much information to tell) that I might never have learned otherwise. Boot camp has jumped my understanding forward by years. Now, it is just a matter of applying what I learned. That will take practice, but practice will be more productive now that I have a clear goal in mind.

And then there's the people. I liked every last one of the boot campers, and enjoyed their eccentricities and perspectives. I look forward to seeing what they do with what they learned. Except Jessica, who is a huge cheater--how dare she know what she's doing. ;)

I'll be checking in later this week to update ya'll on the progress of inventing and outlining the book. Peace.