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!
About Me
- Mr. G
- Dan Garcia resides in San Antonio, Texas, in a household ruled by a dog and a cat. These benign overlords allow Garcia, his wife, and two daughters to live with them so long as they are served unquestioningly. The dog and cat compel Garcia to write stories of imaginative fiction and fantasy; their rationale being: the potential for supplementary income from the sale of these stories means the possibility of more treats and toys for them. Thus, when not at work at the San Antonio Public Library, Garcia is permitted to craft his tales despite the fact that this activity limits his availability for scratching and petting. Hell-Kind is Garcia’s first novel which he was allowed to type because of his opposable thumbs and agile digits; the dog and cat did all of the actual heavy-lifting for the story, and are not particularly concerned with receiving credit for the book.
Friday, June 29, 2012
We interrupt our regularly scheduled program...
Friday, June 22, 2012
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)
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!
Friday, June 15, 2012
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!
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!
Saturday, June 9, 2012
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!
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!
Friday, June 1, 2012
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...)
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...)
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