The Finish Line… Sort Of, & Other Random Thoughts

The end is nigh!

No, this isn’t a declaration of some impending apocalypse; the end, in this instance, refers to the end of the first draft of my first novel length work.  There was a time there when I felt I’d never reach the goal, where the number 105,000 looked too huge… too overwhelming. I finished my writing session last night with a little over 101,000 words on the manuscript total… 4000 more words to go, but then the real work begins.

I’m planning on celebrating the completion of the draft, but this milestone is merely the first leg of the journey — there’s still plenty of road ahead.  The real work comes after the first draft is done, because no piece of writing (unless you happen to be perfect in your execution… and I, most certainly, am not) is ready for the world in the first iteration.  I have a lot of revision and editing to do… this being the first novel I’ve ever written, I’d be a fool to convince myself that it’s not rife with problems the require careful untangling… honestly, some of it is outright shit that needs to be cleaned up, or discarded and rewritten.  I’ve earmarked a few chapters that are going to require some serious surgery because they’re clunky, or they lack the narrative punch that makes the difference between an okay piece of writing and a good piece of writing… and I’m not prepared to settle for okay… I know potential readers won’t be either.

This is my freshman attempt at writing a full length novel… I may have mentioned that already… and as such, some of this manuscript was written with boundless joy, some with bottomless deperation, some with manic obsession, and some with caustic exhaustion.  I’ve learned a lot over the ten months it has taken me to draft this book, and I have much more to learn still… volumes of knowledge and experience to rack up before I comfortably take the title of novelist… I’ll accept storyteller for now because, at least to me (and this is meant as no disrespect to storytellers out there) this is where the kernal originates.  It’s not enough to merely tell a story, the trick is in making it compelling and entertaining and I think I’ve accomplished at least that thus far.

Just because you can build something doesn’t make you a master craftsman, though, and that’s where the learning must go on because to continue to challenge yourself and strive for excellence should be on the list of goals for any artist… settling for anything less puts you in the realm of, “why do it at all?”  Creating is a struggle enough as it is, but doing it with a degree of verve takes a lot of hard work, and it’s an extreme act of ego to believe that you’re automatically at the top of your game just because you happened to have written a novel.  The first novel proves a lot; principally it proves that you have the discipline and the drive to complete the task, that you can, by an act of will (or stubbornness), write a really long piece of prose… and that, by no means, entitles you to anything.

Cross a desert, it’s you against the desert; cross the ocean, it’s you against the ocean; write a novel, it’s you against yourself — no shit, you learn a bit about what you’re made of.  It’s not physically demanding (a little, if you happen to suffer from a repetitive motion injury), but it most certainly is intellectually and emotionally demanding.  I’m beat… but I’m excited to do it all over again.  I guess we can consider this an extreme brain sport; the rush comes, not from jumping off the cliff or taking on the rapids, but from taking an abstract idea, turning it into a concept, and making it grow into a story — this imaginary Genesis, which people have likened to playing God, is where it’s at… the addictive part akin to the adrenaline rush of more physical endeavors.

I’m on the verge of finishing this thing, it’s taken me ten months, it’s been a mental and emotional roller coaster… when I knock out the last period on the draft, and turn out the lights on this leg of the project, I’m going to get really drunk and sleep for two days…

This past week, Harry Harrison, Science Fiction author/satirist, died at the age of 87.  Even if you were not a fan (and I really wasn’t, I’ve always been a more avid reader of Fantasy) it’s important to note that the man’s work will endure long after his death.  In these instances I feel it’s important to give your condolences regardless of whether or not you were a fan of the man’s stories or of the genre as a whole because the simple fact is that this man (and the genre in which he worked) contributed, via his imagination, to our cultural consciousness.  If you don’t know who Harrison is go look him up, it’s certainly worth your while.  Like I said, I wasn’t a big fan but I sure as hell knew who the man was.

We’re losing a very important generation in Genre, the generation that established the arena and the rules, who broke said rules, who pioneered speculative fiction with imaginations so powerful their visions resonate to this day and will most likely continue to resonate for a long time.  It is that status to which we aspire, and it’s important the we acknowledge it and that we give due respect to those that have gone before.

Rest in peace, Harry Harrison, and thank you for your imaginative stories… Say “hi,” to Ray Bradbury and Anne McCaffrey  for me…

Cheers!

Moving... Moved.

I wanted to post just a quick note to let everyone know (all two of you... Hi Leigh... and anyone else who reads but does not follow) that The Write Experience is moving... well, rather that it's moved. This is not a spot decision; I've been eyeing a Wordpress hosted blog for some time now and most likely will upgrade this to a hosted website, powered by Wordpress, sometime in the near future -- my brother is web designer (how lucky can a guy get?) and I'll most likely draft him into helping make that website/blog look real purty...

I like Blogger, and the decision to leave it behind was not an easy one... it's very convenient to have a blog attached to my Google account, and I'm giving up Google+ integration to relocate to Wordpress; however, this here was instrumental in my decision to change blog hosts:

Invasive ads on the Dashboard fail to amuse me...

The ad above actually occludes part of the Dashboard in Blogger... and that turned out to be a bit disappointing... once I had a flying watermelon moving back and forth across the screen while I wrote, and another time I had an animated, flabby belly that would shrink and grow and shrink and grow repeatedly on the screen.  Did I complain to Blogger?  Nah, what for?  They ought to know better than to permit ads like that to ruin their interface.  Granted the new Dashboard is fresh out of beta, but since I was already contemplating the move... well, they just helped me make my decision.

This blog will eventually move again, but that will be to its own site with its own domain which I will have control over, and then I won't have to worry about annoying ass ads unless I get hacked.  I'll most likely cross-post between the two blogs at least one or two more times.  Nothing about the format will change; I'll continue to document my progress on this novel and anything else I write afterward, including my progress and participation in NaNoWriMo and any other silly shit that comes up along the way.

If you read my blog, thanks -- I hope you continue with me; if you don't read my blog, shame on you -- in the near future there will be a news story about a guy who went berserk and then spontaneously combusted, and if you don't start reading my blog now you won't be able to tell people later that you used to read that nut-job's rants before he got fail-famous.  C'mon, be a pal.

Cheers!

By the way, the new blog URL is: www.thewriteexperience.wordpress.com  Bookmarks are encouraged...

The Storyboard with Pat Rothfuss... Oh Yeah, and Some Other Stuff...

I just got done watching The Storyboard, Patrick Rothfuss's new show on Geek & Sundry-- if you are at all interested in writing fiction, specifically genre fiction, I highly recommend this show.  I don't get to travel much, and I most certainly don't get to got to many conventions (I haven't been to one in a while, and there are other reasons for that... but I won't get into those in this post) which means I get to miss all of the really awesome author panels that take place at said gatherings.  Thanks to the interwebs, I can often find the panels on YouTube but the quality of the recording is typically dodgy (usually the footage is documented with a cellphone) and there's usually a lot of background noise -- so the essence of the experience is there, if you don't mind someone jawing on about some shit while the authors are responding to the questions that are posed to them.  The Storyboard takes the idea of the author panel and it shines the spotlight on the authors, not on the guy off-camera who's opening a box of Goobers and complaining about the prices.

The Storyboard aired on Tuesday night (8:00 p.m. Pacific, I think) as a Google+ Hangout, so it was live which again is in keeping with the panel style set up of the program.  In the house, talking about Urban Fantasy (a subject in which I'm particularly interested) along with Pat Rothfuss: Jim Butcher (who perhaps knows a thing or two about Urban Fantasy), Emma Bull (the godmother of Urban Fantasy), and Diana Rowland (prolific Urban Fantasy author with a lot of interesting things to say about this sub-genre).  Setting aside all of the rough edges one would expect to find in a first webisode, The Storyboard (for me, at least) was pure magic.  I, unfortunately, did not get to watch the program live on Tuesday night (I had company over, and didn't want to be a rude nerd, "My program's on!  Everybody go home!"), so I watched it on Geek & Sundry's YouTube channel.

As a hobby author creating his work in relative solitude who, having had the experience of a writing group and all the drama that entails, generally shuns other writers (not out of any kind of conceit on my part, let me assure you; but because often these associations become less about writing and more about everyone's personal stuff... not that I'm opposed to socializing, but there's bars for that), The Storyboard is a great way to get a peek of the inside of a published author's head without a scalpel and the possibility of prison time.  Rothfuss and his panel discuss the sub-genre and their respective approaches to it, as well as the appeal and greater purpose of Urban Fantasy stories; and it's great (again, for me) to have Pat Rothfuss at the helm of this particular discussion because he's an Epic Fantasy author, but an author none the less... which means he knows what questions to ask in order to eke out the essence of his panel's knowledge while still remaining an outsider to the Urban Fantasy style itself. It's plenty good if you just happen to be a fan of Rothfuss, Butcher, Bull, and (or) Rowland because there's a substantial element of these esteemed authors talking about their stories and characters, but Rothfuss really steers the conversation toward meatier matters and these matters are brilliant brain food for the aspiring and hobby writers out there (even if you're not interested in writing genre fiction).

Because writers are foremost readers, one of the best bits of the show comes in the form of the congregated talent discussing the books they feel don't get enough attention in their contribution to the Urban Fantasy oeuvre.  Named here are authors I like a lot: Kevin Hearne (Iron Druid series), Harry J. Connally (unfortunately now defunct, Twenty Palaces series), the works of Neil Gaiman, classic works by Ray Bradbury and other authors not traditionally thought of as Urban Fantasy, and works by up-and-coming authors like Benedict Jacka (Alex Verus series).  I'm always down for new reads, and Rothfuss and Co. don't disappoint in this respect either with recommendations that include some of the authors I mentioned above as well as stuff by Thorne Smith, Nicole Peeler, and M.L.N. Hanover.

I really appreciate Patrick Rothfuss and the gang at Geek & Sundry (I'm looking at you, Ms. Day; you're the queen!) for putting this out; although I'm sure the intent was not to offer a free writers' workshop. obviously that's not the purpose of the show, but I guess is depends on the individual viewer... for me (like I mentioned above): brain food (and nothing to do with Ms. Rowland's morgue job... watch the show, you'll see what I mean)... I'll be watching every episode of this for as long as they continue.

On a far more local note: take a look at that handy word count widget thing I've got on the blog... over there in the right hand corner... notice anything?  This past week I broke the 90,000 word count mark on my first draft manuscript of the novel I've been working on for what seems like forever.  90,000 words was the original target for the manuscript, but I knew at the 70,000 word mark that I was going to need more room to tell the story, so I arbitrarily up-ed that goal to 105,000 words.  Well, I'm almost done: I have two and a half chapters left to go and I may well knock that out this coming week; the feeling is a mixture of relief held in reserve and terror... like I'm almost as afraid to finish as I am happy to almost be done... these kinds of conflicting emotions have plagued me over the course of writing the manuscript, and someone who has written a novel before assures me it means I'm doing at least something right...

So the plan goes like this:

• Finish the manuscript;
• Do a complete re-read of the manuscript;
• Begin edits;
• Send raw manuscript and survey to beta readers (by the way, if you're interested in being a beta reader send me an e-mail at dan.garciasatx@gmail.com - the pay sucks, but you get to read something for free and give your opinions which I promise not to ignore);
• Review feedback from beta readers;
• Begin revisions;
• Outline next novel;
• Complete revisions and test read;
• Do it all over again during NaNoWriMo in November.

Glutton for punishment?  You bet'cha.

Cheers!

It's August...

Crazy how the time flies; before long it will be time for the kids to start school, and then the hectic part of the year begins. We get spoiled by the lazy summer, and the heat of this particular time of year (here in San Antonio) really makes you want to avoid the outdoors... it's the time of year when you step out your front door and feel like you've stepped in to a broiler. This can be a good thing, especially if you happen to have a hobby like, oh I don't know: writing. When you find yourself wanting to stay indoors, your excuses for not writing diminish... and when you are near the end of your first draft manuscript, you might often find yourself hunting for reasons to do the other stuff you have to do that's not writing.

I'm pretty damn close to breaking the 90,000 word count mark; in fact, I may end up doing that tonight. That was my manuscript goal when I first began writing this novel, and now it looks like I'm going to blast past that in order to tell this first story. A while back I pushed the word count goal up to 105,000 words, and then immediately regretted it because that seemed to me at the time to be an overwhelming amount of words... now it looks like it will be right on target. I may not hit 105,000 words exactly with the first draft, but I most certainly will by the time I'm done with revisions.

The big upside here is that I'm ahead of schedule... I wanted to be done with the draft by the end of September, and now it looks like I will be done by mid-August. This is exciting for me because it means I will get to spend more time editing and revising the draft, and that I'll have ample time to outline the next novel ahead of NaNoWriMo in November. And that right there is another reason to be excited: NaNoWriMo is only three months away, and I had so much fun last year (even though I broke out in the shingles) I can't wait to do it again this year... hopefully sans shingles.

The foregoing strategy will be to knock out a 50,000 word draft during NaNoWriMo in November that will serve as the basis for the first draft of the second novel in this series. This will hopefully put me well ahead of the game when it comes to writing the third novel... and that brings me to the big debate which is currently raging in my head: publication.

To publish or not to publish, that is the question... One thing I do know for certain: I will not be self-publishing. I have an extraordinary amount of respect for people that self-publish, but that ain't me, brother. I, along with a buddy, self-published a comic book for a few years and if there's one thing I took away from that experience it's this: that kind of DIY I am most certainly not interested in. I'm not a business man, and I already know I suck at representing myself... from a business standpoint anyway. I'm not a marketer, I know nothing about agenting, and despite the fact that I use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter -- I don't have the time or will to devote to using that avenue to push my writing. There are experts out there for all of these things, the publishers have them, and that's the route I'd want to take if I decide that publication is what I want to do.

Can I get published? Sure, why not? I submit the average big box bookstore shelves as evidence, and direct your attention to the abysmal garbage you are likely to find there. My abysmal garbage could be there too... but I reserve my decision to publish until I have the first three books written... so I guess that resolves the debate. Really, the challenge will be getting an agent who will be willing to represent my work since most publishers will not accept unsolicited manuscript submissions from authors without an agent. My plan would be to come to the table with three books already written... I just need to make them the best that I can manage... or not.

Being a hobby writer is nice, primarily because there's no pressure except for what you put upon yourself. Before I went on vacation I was entertaining the idea of taking on some freelance writing if I could find a few venues that wouldn't mind paying a little cash money for a bit of writing work, and I'm still interested in doing it but not with as much gusto as before. It comes back to that pressure thing: freelance writing means deadlines, and time away from writing my novels. I have a full time job which eats up a lot of my time, but it also pays for the house and the bills and the groceries and all the rest of that necessity stuff. There's no way I can give up time from that, so the sacrifice would have to come from my writing time and that's bullshit because I have very little time to spare as it is.

If I was going to make a living as a writer I should have done it a long time ago... and I wanted to back then, but life gets in the way. Regrets? None; it is what it is. I write because I enjoy writing, because I enjoy telling stories, because I like creating characters and building worlds; I write because I can. I've always written, all my life (except for the portion when I still hadn't learned how); I was blessed with the ability to express myself through writing, and for that I am grateful to everyone who had a hand in making it so. I plan to keep doing it too, regardless of whether or not I try to get published and regardless of the fact that I'll most likely have my manuscript rejected... I can always write another story. That's the big advantage of creative expression: there's always more to come.

Cheers!

BTW: I wrote this posting on my Google Nexus 7 tablet; I got a defective tablet in my first order, and the replacement arrived this past Tuesday. Now I don't want to turn this blog into a tech review thing... I'd like to keep it focused on my writing experiences (be they good or bad); however, I told an old buddy that I would give my impressions of the tablet once I've had a good opportunity to put it through a few flaming hoops. I'll be writing that up in the near future, and posting it here since I don't currently publish anywhere else. Consider yourself warned... heh!

Post Vacation Grind

It's not easy to get back in gear after a decent vacation; the family and I had a pleasant six days to get nice and spoiled by not doing much of anything.  I casually did just a bit of outlining for the next novel, and started a story string which I will probably use for a stand-alone Urban Fantasy novel sometime in the future (I took my tablet along with me so no one would suspect that I was up to anything), but mostly what I did was relax and drink an awful lot of beer with my father-in-law.  It was nice to set the novel aside, set Scrivener aside, set work, and all the other day-to-day stresses aside and just focus on existing -- I went after the Zen of the vacation, and did pretty decent in my efforts... it's the most, honest-to-God, down-time I've had in a really long time.

But all good things must come to an end, as the old adage goes; the return to work was bumpy and the week (although it was a short week since I went back on a Tuesday) seemed to drag on... I was back performing my job duties, but my brain was still very much on the beach of South Padre Island.  The Monday of our return, I purposefully didn't jump back in to writing because I wanted to get everything completely unpacked and put away... plus I knew I'd just end up sitting and staring at the screen because of the aforementioned brain problem... which is what ended up happening to me on Tuesday night.  It's one of the dangers of putting something like a novel aside for a little while, I guess.   No regrets though: even if it felt like I was shitting lava rocks, I still managed to get my target word count out on Tuesday and again last night.  I didn't write Wednesday night because my new toy was delivered.

I got a Google Nexus 7 tablet.  Why?  Because, that's why.  Actually I got it because the price is very nice (199 bones for the 8 gig), it has a quad-core processor, the seven inch screen form factor makes it very easy to take along with me anywhere I go (I've composed some of the chapters for my novel on my Android phone which, as you might imagine, isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to do on a four and a quarter inch screen... a seven inch screen is better), and the reviews I read (for example, this one and this one) were largely positive.  I have an Asus Transformer TF101 which I like a lot and which I took on vacation with me, but it's not exactly the lightest thing in the world.  With the keyboard dock attached it weighs almost as much as some laptops, and it's a 10.1 inch screen with a big chunk of Corning Gorilla Glass on it.  The TF101 is great, but I don't see myself tapping away on it on the bus or at a restaurant... and, honestly, the keyboard on the dock isn't great.  Mobile authorship, that's what I'm after, and the Nexus 7 is just too good a deal to pass up.

I was looking at a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 seven inch model, but they're pricey and I was already impressed by a tablet made by Asus... which the Nexus 7 tablet is, under the direct auspices of Google.  Needless to say, I got a bit excited about it... and when it arrived... I received one with a defective screen...  The upside of the story is that Google customer service was actually very nice and I have a replacement tablet on the way; the down side, of course, is that I got a taste of the device and then had to send it back...  I was so impressed by Android 4.1 (Jellybean) that I'm considering laying down the $350 for an unlocked Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, since it will receive the update to Jellybean long before any other phones do... hell, mine hasn't even been upgraded to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)... I'm still on Gingerbread...

Wow, sorry... this posting went tangential and wound up being about tech rather than writing... but in a round-about sort of way, it's about writing since that's exactly what I intend to use my technology for.  See, this is what I'm talking about: I went on vacation figuring I'd come back focused and ready to tackle the rest of the novel with gusto... it just didn't turn out that way... but it will.  Eventually (hopefully, sooner as opposed to later) my brain will kick back into gear and I'll hit it with abandon... I'm almost finished.

Cheers!

Quick Post

Hey everyone out there in internet land, I just wanted to put up a quick post primarily as an apology but also to make a quick update.  I didn't post last Friday because our house was being used as a bed & breakfast by out of town guests.  It was a good time, and I was too busy playing host to do anything like post a blog or work on the novel, so I just let it go... and I really should have posted an away message or something because I've committed to posting every Friday and I like to meet my commitments.  I had a fine time with my guests, so I really don't feel too bad about not posting... but I feel just bad enough to make the apology, so there it is.

My house guests included my long time pal, and all around good egg, Andy Perez and his lovely family.  Andy is a artist of some note, an independent comic book publisher, and one of my closest friends in the entire world (you can check out some of Andy's work here). Andy and his peeps were with us for a few days, and on the day they left my brother, Mikey, and his lovely girlfriend arrived for a stop over at Chez Flores y Garcia on their way back to El Paso.  Any visit from my brother is a cause for celebration, and we did it San Antonio style with an outing to the First Friday celebration in the historic King William district and several pitchers of mighty fine beer at Beethoveen's Maennerchor und Hallen.  Coincidentally, Mikey and Andy are collaborators on two independent comic books: Lonely In Black and The Afterlife Chronicles of a Zombie.  Neither of these visits were about talking shop, they were about having a good time, and that's exactly what we did.

On Saturday afternoon, when all the guests has departed and the house was quiet, I got back to work on the novel and had an excellent bit of output... I guess it was all kind of pent up in there.  Sunday and Monday were low output days (this is normal for Monday nights), and Tuesday I hit the wall...  For some bizarre and unknown reason, I had a big bout of self-doubt on Tuesday... it was just awful.  I reread some to the work I'd produced the preceding days and just felt like it was all crap... this led to me feeling like the whole novel was crap, and I was at a point where I might have scrapped it all and said, "fuck it."  I can't explain what brought on this feeling, it just happened.  I woke up Tuesday morning feeling blue and it just got progressively worse from there.  By the time I made it home from work, I was in no mood to write... so I decided to distract myself.

Something good came out of that black Tuesday: I accidentally stumbled upon the news that Scrivener was now available for Windows... well actually, that it's been available for Windows since late last year.  Never being one to enjoy using buggy, first generation technology/apps, I was a glad as I could be that day to discover that there was a much more stable version available for purchase.  Scrivener is what I wanted to use during NaNoWriMo last year, but it was only available for Mac then and I wasn't about to run out and buy a Macbook just so I could use the program.  It brightened my day at least a little to know that the program I wanted to use was now available to me.  I've been using WriteWay Pro which is a good product (I know I've mentioned it in previous posts), but Scrivener's feature set is considerably more robust, and it's what I would've been using all along had it been available to me before I invested in WriteWay Pro (still, it was money well spent, and I'm happy to support and promote that product).

So, rather than stew in my own feelings of authorial inadequacy, I spent the evening learning to use Scrivener; yesterday, I set up the novel in Scrivener's manuscript template, and I was back to writing.  Now the software didn't cure my self doubt, I did that on my own (well, with a little help from my friends); all it took was a bit of grounding and a change of perspective... stepping away from the novel for a night helped too.  Writing is a hobby for me right now, but it's a hobby I apparently take very seriously and like any creative endeavor there are emotional components you never realize are there until you confront them.  Is my writing good enough?  It's not, and never will be, to me... that just comes with the territory.  I feel like every once in a great while I write something particularly clever or insightful, but for the most part my writing needs work and it always will.  Besides: "good enough" for what?  Publication?  Perhaps... perhaps not; I'll never know until I try, and I have no intention of trying any time soon, so I need not waste energy worrying about that now.

My goal is to get as good as I possibly can at what I love to do without causing myself an aneurysm... but writing a novel is a challenge, an intellectual challenge that no one is really ever prepared for until they undertake it.  At 77,534 words, this novel is the single longest thing I've ever written in my entire life and I still have five chapters to go...  My desire is to have a 105,000 word final manuscript by the time I'm done with edits, revisions, and rewrites.  Why do it in the first place?  Because I'm bat-shit crazy, that's why.  Writing a novel is the intellectual equivalent of climbing a mountain: you do it because it's there and you have the balls to try.

Huge, huge, huge news, (IMHO): one of my favorite authors (if not my absolute favorite), Neil Gaiman, has just signed a five book deal with HarperCollins; but wait, there's more... get a load of this:

A Sandman prequel... my geek heart is going to explode with excitement... but I have to wait until 2013...  Oh what a glorious thing to look forward to.

No new post next Friday; I will be away for a nice little family vacation, and I anticipate not having internet access during that time.

Cheers!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program...

Today is Marisol's birthday and so I'm going to be unavailable for a regular Friday posting. The five years mark is a big and important one for a child, so today I'm 100% dad... "writer me" goes on the shelf for the weekend. See you next Friday. Cheers!

Writer's Sag

"But in a larger sense every novel is a first novel, presenting no end of unique problems, carrying enormous risks, and offering immense excitement and other rewards."

-- Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print (1979)

I got a pretty bad case of "writer's sag" this week...  "What's 'writer's sag?'" you ask.  Well, it's not in the official lexicon of aspiring or established writers... at least I don't think it is, but let me start by telling you what it's not: "writer's sag" (as I define it) is not as malicious as "writer's block," which is as horrible a thing as can happen to any writer.  "Writer's sag" is to a cold, as "writer's block" is to the flu (and I'm definitely underestimating "writer's block"... because it can be devastating).  "Writer's sag" is a bumpy road, whereas "writer's block" is a road closed or a bridge out... I think you get the picture, no?  It's a loss of momentum; there, that's probably where I should have started.

It's partly my fault (bullshit, it's all my fault) because I saw that I was running out of space with my original 80.000 word draft goal... it was just becoming increasingly apparent that 80,000 words was not going to be able to contain the story... so I upped that to 105,000 words.  From my reading around the various submission guidelines that publishers post on their websites (Note: not all of them do, some won't even give you guidelines... instead telling you they don't want your manuscript unless you have an agent) I learned that the average manuscript runs between 80,000 to 120,000 words... with fantasy manuscripts tending towards the higher end of that range.  One quick look around my bookshelves indeed confirms that fantasy novels have a tendency to be a bit fatter than sci-fi novels, so okay: that already confirmed that I was shooting too low... or was I?  The part I think I got screwed up in my head is that the 80,000 to 120,000 words  is for a final draft manuscript... not a first or working draft; however, I remedied that initial misinterpretation by adjusting my target word count to 105,000, thus allowing myself a comfortable 15,000 word buffer for my revision/rewriting.

How exactly does this contribute to the aforementioned "writer's sag?"  Well, take a look at the Word-O-Meter to the right (over there, you see it...).  When the target goal was 80,000 the percent complete was 75-76%; now with the goal set to 105,000 the percent complete drops to 62-63% complete... and somehow, my fragile, neophyte writer's ego found that dispiriting... and that right there is exactly what "writer's sag" is all about.  The thing is: you develop (or should develop) a particularly complex and intimate affinity for your story -- it's a part of you, the offspring of your imagination; something that, even though you may only ever show it to your family and friends, contains a part of you regardless about how dispassionate you try to make yourself to the whole process.  Creative work is work... hard work, in spite of what some may think and say.

So check this out: I write primarily for leisure (and I've been told I must be mad to do so); I entertain absolutely no illusions about ever getting rich doing this... I have no professional stake in my writing (if that comes later, that's cool... but telling the stories is the goal), and my family's livelihood is not attached to my ability to complete the novel I'm writing -- I'm not beholden to any contractual obligations... and even then, my emotional and spiritual well-being is at least a little tied up in what is essentially my hobby.  Isn't that odd? Couldn't some psychologist write a really nifty thesis about the egos of creative people?  I have zero real world investment in my writing, and yet I'm still subject to despair when my momentum lags.  How bizarre is that?  I mean I know: if I didn't care, I wouldn't write...  There's an axiom like that somewhere; I think it was in Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing...

In reality, for me anyway, it's more than just a desire to tell a story (although that certainly is the overarching objective); it's a personal challenge, like a marathon runner... it's a test of endurance and discipline (one which I'm apparently better at rising up to, unlike my smoking cessation...)... a test of my will, and, yes, a test of my ego.  It must be, or all you are doing is giving a report: "boy finds magic sword, boy takes magic sword and confronts evil duke, boy slays evil duke and henchmen, boy becomes king, the end."  There's a story in there... not much of one, but it does give a sequence of events that for some people constitutes a story.  The challenge then for the writer of imaginative fiction is to give this sequence of events some emotive and intellectual power; to flesh it out by infusing a logical and mostly believable (it's a fantasy story, so you get some leeway) mix of story elements which then amplifies this sequence of events, and which will in turn make readers want to participate in the co-construction of the fictional reality... the fiction dream... that readers might willingly suspend their disbelief for a little while and believe in your world of magic and wonder.  It's a tall order, and, even if your audience is just your best friend, or your cousin, or your grandma, it's terrifying.

The writer's ego... well, my writer's ego... seems to be beset on all sides and at all times by thoughts of failure and fears of not measuring up to the challenge I've undertaken... this even though I receive some pretty good feedback from my beta readers.  I told you back at the very beginning of this blog (not this post, the blog) that I'd be sharing the ups and downs of this process... and this is definitely a "down."  Thus, I've presented a problem for which I have no solution other than to keep on writing... which is exactly what I intend to do.  It's perfectly natural and okay to have a fear of failure; it's even kind of healthy.  What's not healthy is allowing any kind of fear to prevent you from doing the things you love to do -- I love to write and tell stories so even though my momentum sags and my writer's ego takes a hit, in the choice between continuing to write or giving up, I think I'll just continue writing.

So as it doesn't all read like bad news, something really cool happened last weekend: I got my desk.  No more folding TV tray for me, no more sitting on the edge of the futon and having my limbs fall asleep... I got a desk, I got a chair, I got a place to work:

So this is where the magic happens now: inside my den at my chase desk.  The rest of the den still looks more like a storage closet than on office, but the junk in here is mine so that's on me.

Here's a slightly different view; you can see my HP laptop in this picture, and that's the machine where the story engineering is really taking place.  Yes, that is my black, Epiphone SG off to the right; please feel free to envy...

One last shot to give you a better idea of what the rest of the room looks like... what you don't see in this, or the other photos, is the futon and the bookshelves which are all against the right wall looking into the room from where I took the picture from the doorway.

It is important to have a space in which to ply your craft, regardless of what that craft might be, so that (at least) all of your crap will be out of everyone else's way.  For the longest time, I wrote at the dining table and that meant that my materials (both technological and paper) were all over one quarter of the table surface at all times (and subject to spills and other catastrophes).  When we moved out of the apartment I was relegated to a TV tray on which to place my laptop until such time as a desk could be purchased, and a spot made available for it.  I was so happy, no: ecstatic, about it when it finally happened... and then, prrt! "writer's sag."  So it goes, I suppose... I'll shoot for a much lighter topic next time.

Cheers!

The Three Quarter Mark, New Template, and a Few Thoughts Inspiration...

When I hit Save last night, after falling asleep in front of my laptop in the den and waking reluctantly at 2:00 a.m., my progress meter indicated that I was very, very near the 75% complete mark.  This woke me up fully in an instant; I mean the cobwebs of sleep just flew off my eyes and I sat gaping at the screen.  Not that long ago it felt as if I was spinning my wheels around thirty (or so) percent done going nowhere fast, and the little pie graph displayed on the Dashboard of WriteWay Pro was showing far more red than green.  Now that little pie graph is much more green than red, and the official mark is 74.6%.  I attribute this steady progress to the writing schedule I mentioned in a previous post, and to my (sometimes forced) ability to maintain that schedule.  I set my target complete date for September 30, 2012, but at this rate I'll be done with the rough draft a lot sooner which means I'll be able to start revising, rewriting, and editing a lot early than I anticipated... possibly, I might have a pretty polished draft done before NaNoWriMo in November.  I have the first half of the novel out to some dear friends who are serving as test readers for me, and I provided them with a vehicle by which they could give me some feedback that I'll use during my revision process; they're not doing copy edits for me or anything like that, they're just reading the content and reacting to the story.  Hence, if they come back to me and say, "I like it, but..." it's the "but" I'm after for revision.  I'm not sure if this is the way you do it; I seem to have not received my Official Novelist Handbook from the union, so I'm pretty much inventing this as I go along (Aside: there is, in fact, no such thing as an Official Novelist Handbook, and I don't belong to any unions... I made that shit up... it's what I do).

So to recap: what's worked for me here is setting a schedule and sticking to it... imagine that.  For the next novel I'm even going to go the extra step of creating a formal outline and trying to get myself a bit more organized at the gate before I start running the marathon.  My plan is to then write the bare bones story during NaNoWriMo and then flesh it out to meet my word count goal.  I'm not a big fan of reducing my creative act to something as quotidian as a word count, but it's the only useful measure of progress I've got at my disposal and I'm certainly open suggestions.  There is a page count option in WriteWay Pro, but that's equally absurd in my eyes; it's the reducibility (not a real word kids, but the kind of word created by efficiency experts and quality management consultants) of a creative act that I find absurd, by the way, and I could probably wax philosophical about this topic for hours... but I won't... not this time anyway -- we'll put that in the back pocket for another time.  Anyway...

I decided to change the template of the blog in favor of one I felt made the site easier on the eyes.  I like the previous template okay, but honestly I selected it because it was black and at the time I felt it gave the site a feel of mild bad-assery... it's all a part of the nerd psychology: you try and find a way to make yourself appear as bad-ass as possible even though in the end you know full well that there's no hope... no hope at all -- you're still at home writing your blog, and the beautiful, popular people are out copulating in night club parking lots.  So then all that's left is for one to embrace their nerd-istic tendencies and make the blog easier to read... yet another tendency of the nerd psychology: I have shitty eyes, and most likely anyone who would be interested in reading the blog probably does too, so you do the considerate thing...  The "black, beat poet uniform" is back hanging in the closet, and now you get the more casual and (hopefully) eye-pleasing minimalist design.

The fact that I'm writing a novel came up in conversation a few days ago.  Yes, I was totally bragging and making statements of unabashed puffery about how arduous the whole experience was, yet also how fun.  The person with whom I was conversing asked me where I got my inspiration for the novel and I froze like a chicken who accidentally waltzed into a Chik-Fil-A.  I know there's authors out there who relish this question, and then there's authors who dread this question... I belong to the latter group.  The little voice inside my head said, "Well, dumb-ass, here's your chance to practice for the day some fool actually decides you're worth interviewing," but I just couldn't seem to think of a good way to answer the question.  Saying, "I totally made the whole shit up," just doesn't sound as dramatic and romantic as many people (I think) believe writing a novel is.  I've got no streets of Paris, or alleyways of London; no great, expansive roads of southwest America, or exotic Caribbean beaches with which to season my creative process.  I sit in my den (which looks a lot like a storage closet) with my laptop on a TV tray, and I unravel my story from my imagination and the things that interest me: a whole bunch of fantasy bullshit.  Panicked, I decided that the best way to answer the question, and still save face, was to make the answer as cryptic as possible.  My answer: "I dreamed the story and started typing when I woke up... I haven't been able to stop typing since, because the story has possessed me."  Start snickering now...  Hey man: I'm a Fantasy writer, what the fuck do you expect?  Best of all, it worked... my answer got me an "Oooo," and what more can you ask for?

In a lot of ways, "What's your inspiration?" is an invasive question, and often the answer is very personal.  In hindsight, I probably could have been a lot more honest and said that mostly it was the stuff I read and watched that inspired me to craft my tale, and probably that would have been a perfectly acceptable answer.  I'll chalk this episode up to proto-authorly anxiety and just move on with life... better luck next time.

Anyhow, off for burgers and ice cream.  Cheers!

Elegy

Ray Bradbury died on June 6, 2012, and I have to admit that I found the news to be quite distressing.  My wife and I went to a place called, Tycoon Flats and I had a few drinks in honor of Mr. Bradbury.  Ray Bradbury is a great inspiration to my imagination and creativity, and though I only knew him through his work I feel like I lost one of my own kin -- my spiritual godfather.  Maurice Sendak died last month and that was a major bummer; but Bradbury... well, his work changed my life... and reading Fahrenheit 451 in high school is what made me want to become a writer and a librarian.  I used a page in my novel notebook the day he died to express some intimate thoughts about the passing of this titan among authors... I don't want to wax too poetic about feeling sorrow for a man I did not know personally, but his stories influenced me on various levels and through various mediums -- I recall watching Ray Bradbury Theater as a kid back in the 80s; reading The Martian Chronicles, and coming to realize the man's influence on damn near everything else I watched and read... on damn near everything I though was cool then... and now.

Ray Bradbury was 91 when he died, so he lived a full life and then some.  I'm tempted to take a break from the novel and write a short story in his honor (his short stories are among the very best I've ever read), but I think I'll honor him by finishing my novel.  Like I said: Bradbury became a spiritual godfather to my creativity, and I have often (way too often) neglected my side of that holistic relationship.  I've wound up dabbling in a variety of creative outlets, rather than commit to one -- mostly out of fear, mostly out of denial and unrealistic expectations I heaped on myself... largely out of fear that I could never match up to what I secretly desired.  Had I devoted myself to writing then, I'm pretty sure I'd be published by now... but I chickened out.  Bradbury was never a coward: he pushed the limits, he forged Fantasy into something marvelous (yes, I said "Fantasy"; he wasn't overly fond of the Science Fiction tag most commonly attached to his work).  I'm writing now because I dismissed (finally) those fears and expectations and just embraced writing because it's fun, because it's something that gives me joy.  Could I have done that without drawing inspiration from Ray Bradbury?  Possibly, but not likely...

So what does any of this have to do with the price of tea in China?  Hell-Kind will be dedicated to Ray Bradbury.  Thanks Ray.

BTW: I know it's not Friday; I'm a day late, but I had a previous engagement last night and had to work on what is my regularly scheduled day off.  We'll get back on schedule next Friday, and keep it that way unless something unforeseen comes up.

Cheers!

Happy Friday!

I just stopped by to update my progress on the novel, and I thought that perhaps this would be a good time for a post.  In fact, I'm going to try and make this my Friday habit: Friday will be blog day.  I would really like to be more prolific with the blog, however, no one reads it... and I have a very narrow time where I get to write -- very narrow.  I work full-time, I'm married, and I have two small kids (8 and soon to be 5), and what ever time is left over after work, husband-hood, and fatherhood is where I get to work on my book.  I often have to snatch time out of thin air, so composing on my smart phone on the bus going to or coming from work is no uncommon thing for me.

My wife just instituted a nightly walk; we go to the nearby park and make three laps around the walking trail which sums up to a little over one mile's worth of walking.  I like this really because I get to spend time with the family, we get some exercise (I'm rather thick in the middle... a hazard of a primarily sedentary lifestyle), and I get a good chunk of relatively quiet time to contemplate the novel.  I've had to make some room in my writing schedule for the nightly walk (it's only two days old at this point), and I got to thinking that writing schedules might make a good topic for a blog post... and I'm here now, so what the hell... away we go.

I've never been a very organized writer, and that speaks volumes to my level of success (which, by the way, is none at all... but then I haven't ever made a true effort either, so that speaks the other volumes in the set), in fact over the time I've been writing I've mostly ever written for my own amusement, and still do.  I fancied myself a "seat of the pants" type writer; in fact, back when I wrote poetry (knock it off, we all did at sometime or another, and dollars to doughnuts, I bet it was because of girl), I went from composing structured and metered poems like sonnets, to free verse scrawled in a composition book.  Why?  Because I fancied myself a "seat of the pants-er."  Joke's on me: I'm not.

Since this is starting to take on the tone of a confession, I should also mention that I made a number of previous attempts to write novels and they all failed; let me find a soapbox, so I can testify.  This was my novel writing approach: I wrote a first sentence, read it back to myself, and then started writing thinking in my supreme foolishness that I would be able to keep it going for 300 or so pages.  Hahahahahahahahaha!!!  What a dumb-ass!  Believe it or not, the furthest I ever got was six chapters... six measly chapters, if we're being completely honest (and I am, you'll just have to take my word for it), of about six or seven pages each.  Laughable! but I seriously thought, "dude, I'm the next Raymond Chandler."  And therein is another thing...

I love genre fiction.  I have a degree in English Literature, and I was miserable the whole time I was in school because they had me reading all this literary fiction bullshit while filling my head with garbage about the literary canon and literary criticism theory: I wanted to fucking blow chunks all over the place. (An aside: Whoa, don't get all panties-twisted now; there's a lot of literature I love and respect, but I just don't see the value of studying literature like it's meant to be kept on some marble pedestal.  I value my education, but the guidance counselor was right: I should have studied Chemistry. End aside...)  I read for entertainment, and because I want to close the book at the end and say, "Wow, that was absurdly fucking cool!"  Only a very scant few literary fiction books have made me do that, but the majority of genre fiction books I've read illicit a response at least approaching this.  Back on topic: even in the genre fiction court I had to learn that, though I love Mysteries, I can't write them; though I love Science Fiction, I can't write it... thus the next big step was figuring out what I could write.

So to recap the post so far: we've learned that my lack of organization and my incorrect perception of myself as a writer were preventing me from making any progress.  This has likely happened to you, or is happening to you now; so this isn't all about me -- I'm just an anecdotal element in this post because I don't mind making a fool of myself in public.

So what the hell does any of this have to do with writing schedules?

I'm glad you asked, I was just getting to that... When I started writing my novel last September/October (I honestly can't remember when I started.  I have notes dated in September, but I can't recall if I started writing then or in October...), I decided that, unlike previous attempts at long fiction, this time I was going to do some planning and that I might even do (eek!) an outline.  Holy shit, yeah; now we're getting fancy...  Now, I didn't know thing one about creating an outline for a novel (and to be perfectly honest, I never made outlines for my papers in school... I wrote the paper, and then bullshitted an outline afterwards...) but I work in a library, so getting material with which I could inform myself was pretty easy.  Oh yeah, and then there's that whole inter-web thing... that wilderness of information and pornography.  Suffice it to say, I figured it out... but the outline thing... well... I just didn't take a shine to it, so instead I just created a broad plot, and broke the plot down into acts, like in a play.  I also read a bunch of books on magic, because I was writing a fantasy novel (Urban Fantasy, to be exact) so I wanted to have a good idea of what people have written about magic (I can't say anything more without giving stuff away, and I'm not giving anything away -- I hate spoilers, and I'm very superstitious about talking too much about what I'm working on).  I did my homework and then I felt ready to write.

I wrote five chapters and the vehicle broke down; I was starting to meander again... and when I meander, I lose interest; but, dammit, this time I was going to fix this before this story that I invested a good amount of time preparing to write went into the heap of unfinished stuff I have collected over the years.  What was the fix?  A writing schedule.  Believe me, it's not rocket science... you just have to be prepared to be completely honest with yourself.  Writing is as much discipline as it is creativity because you can have the best ideas in the world, but if you don't have the discipline and the will to do something with them they are completely fucking worthless.  I took a look at my day and I broke it down, factoring out times when I obviously would not be able to write.  Then I took a look at what was left over, and I felt like crying... because a good portion of the time left over was time for things like sleeping, eating, and going potty...  Who needs sleep, right?  I could take my laptop with me into the bathroom, but do I really want to?  There's no damn way I'm giving up food.  I reshuffled the deck and looked at the hand again, then decided I could squeeze out and hour or two everyday if I'd quit being a weenie about it.

The fact is: human beings are creatures of habit; I'm a creature of habit, as much as I like to think of myself as a free-spirit... as much as I like to think of myself as a "seat of the pants-er"... I'm not... and you might not be either.  There is a certain part of me that enjoys creating with abandon, but there's another part of me that needs to stay within the lines... and right, that's not very romantic... that's not very Hemingway*... that's not very Hunter S. Thompson or gonzo... that's reality.  So I made a schedule, and committed to a target word count, and told myself, "self, we're going to stick to this schedule and this goal and we are going to stick it out and see this thing through; are you with me?!"  I immediately blew the schedule...  No shit... I was off the schedule the very first week I instituted it.

It took me a while, and I remembered to make the schedule flexible enough for me to write a little more when the opportunity presented itself, or a little less when it did not.  I've now been on my schedule for a little over a month and I'm now more than 50% done with the draft of my novel. (Another aside: there was an intersession where I was not able to write... extenuating circumstances...  I covered this in a recent post.  End aside...)  Better still, I'm cranking along at a pace that will virtually guarantee that I finish when I've projected.  It's the habit thing: my writing schedule became a part of my habit, but in order for it to get there I had to disrupt another habit (namely, sitting on my ass and doing nothing...), and that's okay because this relatively new habit is producing results.

If you're stuck on your project and you can't seem to get un-stuck, or if you start but can never seem to finish anything I say swallow your pride and try a writing schedule... it most certainly cannot hurt.  That's why I post these things up for all *zero* of you, so that you'll avoid the pitfalls I've fallen into over the years... find your own damn pitfalls, man... stay off of my cloud.

Cheers!

(* Contrary to popular belief, Hemingway was actually a very deliberate writer.  His word choice, his pacing, in fact everything about his writing was carefully selected, and he was an avid reviser.  So there...)

Another Tool of the Trade...

I'm still reeling a bit from hitting the halfway mark, and I'm supposed to be taking a couple of days off for making progress (and because it's a holiday weekend); however, I scored a little something that I"m actually a bit excited about: a Logitech K400 wireless touch keyboard.  If you compose on a laptop you know why I bought a keyboard.  My HP laptop has a nice keyboard, but typing on a laptop keyboard for an extended amount of time can get really painful after a while... especially if, like me, you have some kind of repetitive motion injury.

Now this is a small keyboard that I can put on my lap, or on a board, or on a cushion (like right now) -- I can sit back, I can stretch out, I can move around and still type away... I can belly down on the floor with it; I can take it to he kitchen table while I eat (I'm 100% sure my wife would not appreciate that)... you get the point, and that is: anything to make writing more comfortable.

It's important, I can't stress it enough: if you are going to write on a computer (even if, like me, you are doing it mostly for fun) you should do what you can to make it as comfortable and enjoyable an experience as possible.  Suffer for your art intellectually, not physically... once you jack up your hands, they don't come back... and surgery is expensive, so that means it's best avoided.  Little tools like this are an investment in your ability to keep creating, and they're not particularly expensive... I paid around $40 for this little thing, and I'm already seeing a return on my investment.

Okay, so I'm officially off for the next two days (I have to work tomorrow... the real job, but that doesn't count... the break is from writing), and tomorrow my wife and I are headed to Austin to see Sparta in concert.  Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, and don't forget to take a moment to honor those who died protecting our freedom; raise a glass and toast.  Cheers!

The Half Way Mark

I'm half way done with the draft of my first novel.  Hooray!  I'm feeling under the weather, and I'm up way past my bed time, but I can't abide sitting around and not doing anything... so, in an effort to keep myself from going crazy, I used my down time to write.  50% down, 50% left to go... I'm feeling it. :)

Ha-ha, Jinx

So after posting on Saturday that nothing catastrophic had happened to me while composing bits of my novel on my smartphone, guess what happened? This morning I was working on a bit for an upcoming chapter, an action sequence actually, and my phone elected to freeze up on me just as I was about to hit the period and finish the scene. This caused the Diaro app to restart and it dumped my work into oblivion... Needless to say, I was not happy. This has happened to me before, although not while I was writing something for the novel. The problem was caused either by the Go Keyboard app or the live wallpaper, so I switched to SwiftKey X keyboard and turned off the live wallpaper... hopefully this won't happen again. See why I'm superstitious?

Two postings in one day...

It's like a two for one sale!

So I read this article recently, this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/in-e-reader-age-of-writers-cramp-a-book-a-year-is-slacking.html?_r=1, and it really made me question whether I really wanted to pursue being a published author. The Reader's Digest version of the article is this: publisher and readers are putting more pressure on authors to put out material in a more rapid fashion. According to the article, the popularity of ebooks and reading devices has created a higher demand on authors... not necessarily an altogether bad thing; however, the article goes on to say that readers want more access to the author via social media and that they want a sense of ownership over the author's work -- the readers want to feel like they have some kind of say, that they can influence the outcome of the author's efforts.

Whoa there Bucky, now hold on just one God damned minute. I would love to build a base of readers who enjoy my stories, but I'm making one simple and plain declarative right now: I'm the boss around these here parts... keep that firmly in mind please. I'll write the stories and you, potential reader, will read the stories... it's a time-honored arrangement that has been working for a very long time. Two books a year is not that bad of a deal, and I think I can keep up that end of the bargain, but your contribution to this will be to use your imagination to participate in the fiction dream -- you need not expend any more effort than that. Deal? Shake on it? Groovy.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

Really, in this day and age, absence makes people forget all about you.  As I have no followers, this all becomes largely an exercise for my own amusement...

I took a pretty extended hiatus due to a number of real life things that come up: moving, settling in, yard work, and other sundry tasks that make a man set aside his story.  Well, I put the story aside but I didn't put the pen and notebook away.  While I was making my contributions to our living arrangements and paying my sweat equity, I kept on plugging away at the story in the most low tech manner you can imagine: in a paper journal.  Ostensibly, I was doing what needed doing around the house, but whenever an opportunity presented itself I kept working on the story: an hour waiting for a ride in a coffee shop or during lunch in the employee lounge at work, while waiting for the bus, or any other time I could squeeze in a few lines; or at least ponder the possibilities of the plot.

Then I figured out that I could do the same in a way that wouldn't require me to come back and transcribe my work into the computer: I started composing on my Android smart phone and tablet.  With a little app called Diaro and a Dropbox account, I make a rough draft of my chapter on my phone and then upload the text file to my Dropbox cloud storage.  Then it's a simple matter of opening the text file at home on my PC, copying the contents, and adding it to my novel file in WriteWay Pro -- bickety-bam, there's progress.

"Isn't typing on the phone's keyboard a pain in the ass?"

Hell yeah, it is!  It took me a while to get used to it, and the stock Android keyboard was most definitely not to my liking, so I tried a few third party keyboards until I settled on GO Keyboard, and then I just had to keep at it until I got used to interface and got better at typing on a four and a quarter inch screen.  My tablet is a better interface, much bigger screen, and it has a keyboard dock which is really nice -- attaching the tablet to the keyboard dock makes it into a netbook-sized portable that's nice to use in tight spaces.  On the tablet, I prefer to use Google Docs (now Google Drive) because the word processor is robust enough for draft work.

"How stable and secure is this method?"

*Shrugs*  I have no idea... I haven't had anything catastrophic happen yet, and hopefully I never will.  (I'm knocking on wood, as I type... I'm THAT superstitious)  I really want to get the draft of this novel done by September, so that I can work on the next one during NaNoWriMo in November (only six months away).  In order to keep up my pace I'm going to continue to use my phone and tablet to advance my work on the story.  It's possible that I could lose my phone or my tablet or both (I'd lose my head if it wasn't securely attached to the rest of me); just as it's possible that all of my electronic devices could crap out on me.  Redundancy?  P'shaw!  I back up my work on a portable hard drive, and I guess I could upload a copy to cloud storage... but in this hypothetical, I'd be f*ck out of luck if my electronics all decided to die on me at once.  Let's keep our fingers crossed that none of that shit happens.

I'm no bestselling author... hell, I'm not even a published author... so the idea of a high end data vault is beyond even a momentary consideration. There is a moral to this story, kiddies, and it's this: hit save often and make copies of your files.  Pretty easy, right?

BTW: you may have noticed the snazzy word counter I added to the site; no, I'm no programming genius... believe me -- I can't code myself out of a paper bag.  Fortunately for me there's folks out there who not only make neat-o gadgets like this, but they share them.  Want one for your site? or just want to give the makers of this counter some love and support?  Go here: http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters  Thank you, Writertopia!!!

The Write tools; or the seemingly Never-ending hiatus

I got a new computer!  Acquired last week, actually; and it's been quite the process relocating from my old Dell laptop to my new HP laptop.  I haven't had a new computer in about five years, so it was definitely time to upgrade - tools are very important in any vocation, and though my Dell was still cranking along rather well - it had developed some annoying quirks (nothing surprising with a computer of five years old... I mean, it was obsolete the moment I opened the box back when I first got it).  I didn't think it would crash on me immediately or anything like that; however, I wanted to get into something new before that ever became an issue... something faster, with a bit more processing power and a lot more storage capacity.

I have to hand it to Dell for putting out one hell of a computer: that little silver and white marvel held up well over the time I owned it (coincidentally, it has a good, new home - I bequeathed it to my wife after cleaning it up for her... boy, did that take some time), and I do miss the little guy.  Over the course of my ownership, I maxed out the RAM on the Dell (4 GB), almost overloaded the 40 GB hard drive with my music collection (I recall vividly how the Dell was performing like it was constipated), traveled it across Texas and to various locales around town, wrote my first novel on it, and generally lived in it's virtual space.  I beat the hell out of that Dell, and it never gave up on me.  He goes now to a better owner who will treat him with a lot more kindness than I ever did.

The new HP is working well so far; my favorite feature (hands down) is the enormous keyboard with its fat, Chiclet-style keys and full number pad.  It's Windows 7 which I'm not very familiar with... all of the computers I use and have used thus far (except for my father-in-law's computer) are still on XP, and that's the OS with which I'm most familiar.  I didn't expect that Win 7 would be all that complicated, and it's not... but it takes some getting used to.  I also got myself a 1 TB Seagate GoFlex portable hard drive, so I can back everything up... it doesn't have a redundancy guarantee, but it will work for now.

The immediate question must be: why does a writer need a new computer; isn't a pen and paper all that's really required to write?  My answer: "Need" is a tricky term; no, as a fledgling writer I didn't "need" a new computer... but like I said at the beginning of this entry: "tools are important in any vocation..."  A computer is NOT necessary to write; used to be I produced all of my writing long hand, and then I had to set about the tedious task of typing or word processing all of the work.  For me, creating my stories on a computer is a relatively new phenomenon... and I don't exclusively create on the computer: I have stacks of notebooks and journals and pens... I'm a stationary aficionado, and I rarely pass up an opportunity to acquire a new journal/notebook and pen.  I even have a plethora of note taking/text editing applications on my Android phone... it's kooky.  Writing is decidedly low tech by nature, I mean it seems almost deceptively simple: pen, paper, idea - done.  Well, it's not quite that simple, especially not when you consider the innovations that had to be made in order for writing to even exist: language, a system of written language, tools with which to write, and material to write upon... and honestly, it's much more complicated than that if you consider the philosophical and psychological implications of writing.

Yeah, most of that is jest... sorry, my tangent... My point is this: the correct tools for you as a writer are whatever you are most comfortable and familiar with; and for me that's a good laptop computer and my hand-written notebooks - I'm not about to prescribe to anyone what tools they should use, or recommend one over the other: it doesn't matter what you write on, just that you write.  I switched over to composing on the computer (it was a big switch for me) because I'm fundamentally lazy, and I wanted to save myself some steps; hence, I still make notes on paper, but I compose on the computer.

By the way, I'm now working in a creative writing management software title called, WriteWay.  I'm still pretty new to it, but it's proven to be pretty good so far.  I'm still learning the ins and outs, but it gives you some really nice tools to manage your creative writing projects - plot notes, outlining, character cards, research folders, and  more.  If you're interested it can be found here: http://www.writewaypro.com/.  You can download a free 30 day trial, and test drive it for yourself; the full pro version only costs $49, which is a fraction of what Scrivener (which is for Mac only, anyway) and Dramatica Pro cost.  If you are interested in a creative writing project management software title, you can see a nice side-by-side comparison here: http://creative-writing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/... it's where I found WriteWay.  There is also an open source option available for free (although I would recommend making a donation to this fellow if you use his software), yWriter5 which can be found here: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html.  I don't endorse any of these software titles, not even WriteWay (which I'm still learning to use); but I like sharing information so if one of these works out for you - great!

For the low-tech bunch, Markings by C. F. Gibson is putting out Moleskine-like notebooks for a fraction of the cost of the Moleskine brand.  The Markings notebooks are pretty much an exact copy of the Moleskine's Volant and Cahier notebooks (slick, plastic or cardboard cover with a pocket over a "composition book-style" stitched notebook).  These are actually available at Wal-Mart.  I like Markings journals (they're a pretty nice Moleskine knock-off) and I'm pretty sure their notebooks are decently made as well.

Alright; enough jibber-jabber, get to writing...

Oh yeah, the hiatus thing... We're buying a house, and that took up the majority of our free time and thought for about a month and a half.  More on that news as things develop. :)

Okay... it's been a while...

What is it they say about the best of intentions?

I've been meaning to post to the blog for a while; I mean, I knew I was going to have a little bit of down time but this has gotten to be a bit ridiculous.  I got sidetracked... heavily sidetracked, and I'm still sidetracked except that I felt I really needed to put something up here to explain myself.

My wife and I have been house hunting, and it's taken over every waking hour of our lives; first in the searching, then in the viewing, then in the searching again, then in the viewing again, then in the disappointing and shifty maneuvers of the realty industry, then in the searching, then in the frustration, then in the viewing, then in the finding, then in the offering, the inspecting, and the waiting... God, the endless waiting.  I've been unable to concentrate on anything else... I can't seem to make my mind focus on anything else... I've got nerves rattling around in my stomach, and an inability to sleep in any great degree of comfort... and writing... well... not much of that either I'm afraid... and it's not like I don't have a lot to do.

This house hunting thing has been like a great cosmic monkey wrench in the machine works of my own little universe - talk about a distraction.  It shouldn't be any great secret to anyone that writing is a creative act that requires a fair amount of concentration.  Now if you can drop into a Zen-like state of empty mind where all you are doing it writing and thinking of nothing else but writing, my hat is most definitely off to you... you're a literary Bodhisattva.  The rest of us mere mortals need to be able to give at least a fraction of our concentration to the task at hand, and that often means that all manner of other odd shit is going to come flying by like a mental montage of current stress points and worries.

I'd like to focus on the writing I'm currently crafting, and the revision of the writing I recently completed... but nothing doing, at least not right now.  It's all out the window - all subject to defenestration by the need to acquire a permanent abode for the family.  Oh, the misery of growing up and having to be an adult... what a load of shit.  Hahahahahaha!!!  Funny, how the things you need to do are always impinging upon the things you want to do: such is life; it is what it is, and all that garbage.  I recently read somewhere (and for the life of me, I cannot remember where otherwise I'd link to it) that process of writing is more about the time you spend not writing than about the time you do spend writing.  If you're not writing (and I mean actively writing with pen in hand or fingers on keyboard) then, in my mind, you damn well better be percolating something in your head because you sure as hell can't call yourself a writer if you don't write.

I've been scribbling in my old-fashioned, analog, paper notebook every chance I get; which most often is in the morning before I go to work (work, another one of those needs impinging on desires...).  I'm still writing... I'm just not writing what I want to be writing; and the more astute of you might point out that I could be working on my project right now rather than wasting time with this blog that no one reads any how (and you'd be absolutely right, so fuck you... hahaha).

The moral of the story is that life is always ready to place pitfalls in your path, so fuck it.  Do what you want when you want, while you can... just be ready for the bumps in the road because they are coming - just around the bend most likely, and they may suck like a thick, curly hair in a hamburger but they're unavoidable... so suck it up.

Cheers!