one more draft…

after i spent the end of tuesday evening with both arms covered in ice packs watching an episode of As Time Goes By*, and then the morning with alternating ice pack and heating pad on my stiff neck, my wife convinced me that perhaps i needed to take a break.

for which i owe her an(other) enormous debt of gratitude. not only are my forearms not burning anymore, but i discovered the answer to my problems with the current section of the story, which i don’t think would have happened otherwise; not until a much later revision, at the very least.

see, i got caught up trying to finish the typing in record time. i have about 45 handwritten pages left and i was hoping to have it all completed and ready to print out by today, as we have some family coming tonight. i was on target, too. i’ve been able to manage 20 pages in the mornings before work and then usually some more in the evenings. so i would’ve finished this morning, at the latest.

but i wouldn’t have been done. i don’t mean the fact i still have revisions and beta reader comments to go, but that this revision would not have been done. i was so caught up in just trying to type that i was ignoring (or trying) some rather glaring alarms going off around me. i’ve mentioned the environment issue and my waffling there, but when i look ahead to the expected word count total, it appears the current book will be about 25,000 words short of the last one.

now, in itself, this isn’t terrible, but it made me recognize an issue i’ve been ignoring, regarding a subplot. a couple minor ones already exist, but they have been extremely peripheral so far. one must remain so, but the other deserves an upgrade.  the real discovery, though, was an unexpected line of resonance (and future conflict) that’s been running through both books, in fact, which i’ve not consciously picked up on, to my discredit. of course, kelly’s going to be none too happy, but this one will ultimately bear some wondrous fruit, which i believe she will thank me for.

this didn’t come to me in full, though, until writing in my journal last night about not typing, and then referencing the idea i had a few days ago that helped me answer the environment question** . in a rush, i realized what i’ve been missing, and it all made perfect sense and i started scribbling out the ramifications and developments as they came to me.

the point being***, though i know this and teach this over and over in my writing courses, it’s incredibly important to walk away, at least for a day****. usually, i recommend this between drafts, but it is equally important when logjams occur at other points, and i had forgotten this part. i’ve been so hell-bent on finishing and getting something to readers before the start of the school year that i’ve let the story suffer as a result.

never a good idea.

if i finish before school starts, great. if i don’t, that’s okay, too. deadlines are important, and i still think i can do it, but i don’t ever want to put something out in the world that i know i short-changed.*****

now, i probably won’t be able to take care of any of this until the weekend, though it’s impossible to describe that as unfortunate when we get to play host to some of Mary’s family whom only rarely get to see. maybe i’ll grab an hour here and there.

* truly, the cure for whatever ails me

** though, yes, i’ve triple-guessed it since, but i’m confident now

*** yes, i eventually get there.

**** though that’s asking a lot of the average first-year college student. i know; i was one, too.

***** obviously, nothing i write is perfect, and there’s always something else to try, some other way to write something, some phrasing that might be better suited, but that’s par for the course.

only 11 pages so far today. there are more words on each of these pages, because my handwriting gets steadily more cramped as i go. had some errands to take care of, and now logging in to work.

i’m also having quadruple thoughts about not changing the environment, as i mentioned yesterday, though there was a single compelling and entirely unexpected discovery that may solidify it.

now i need to refreeze the icepacks.

so i’m coming into that large section of the story upon which i have been expecting to implement a fairly major overhaul.* however, as i think i referred to recently, i’ve had second thoughts about my second thoughts, i’ve even dragged my wife through all the ins and outs of my convoluted thinking on this, bless her patient heart.

interestingly, it all boils down to an environmental (or UI!) change. the events, order, progress, character development, all of these things would remain the same, regardless, but the environment(s) they would occur in would be different.

why? well, because i wasn’t always checking my notes as i wrote.

when i’m writing, i tend to have additional thoughts about previous or future scenes and instead of stopping my current flow, i scribble them down on a piece of paper to the side. as you can imagine, this has resulted in not only a lot of scrap pieces of paper hanging around, but a lot of scrap pieces of paper disappearing. with HHNF, i started that normal hap-hazard way, but quickly forced myself to stick to devoted sheets of paper with the relevant issues. as a result, i have managed to keep all my ideas (the good ones and the bad ones) to hand, ready for revisions or as yet unwritten scenes.

unfortunately, despite having them all handy, i didn’t always refer to them. so, in this particular case, i had planned the scene in question with a particular environment in mind. it wasn’t as detailed as it should’ve been, though, so when i had another, apparently more engaging and fleshed out idea, i scribbled it down on said sheet and felt very excited about getting to it.

when i finished writing that scene**, however, i was not feeling terribly enthusiastic about how it was turning out. i liked a lot of it, but there was something that felt awkward, a bit unwieldy, somehow off. this continued to nag at me until i looked at my notes and discovered that i had written the scene with the original vision, utterly forgetting the newer idea. given the amount i had written, though, and that the scene was done, i opted against revamping at the time, in order to reach the end and see the bigger picture.

in all my typing up, though, i’ve been trying to prepare for that scene’s work. i’ve tried to envision how the events would shift (not change) within this new environment. the principals would remain, because i really liked the story itself, but i knew i wanted this new environment because it was going to work much better.

or would it?

now that i have reached this scene, i find that i have had more trouble envisioning how to make the newer idea work better than the one i’ve written. having wrung through several of the writing obstacles in the original vision, i can’t see how painting on a new environment would change anything, which leads me to question the rationale behind wanting to change it.

yes, it could be my laziness, certainly. the overhaul would be considerable and i’m an inherently lazy writer. once i’ve started down a path, i try to stick to it. this certainly gets me in trouble when i force my characters, so the same certainly would apply here, but i think i’m being objective and honest about this appraisal and the decision i’ve finally made to stick with the original, at least for now.

this other environment has plenty of its own style and aura, and i have certainly filed it for future use, so it won’t be lost, but the original vision is going to stay, and i feel pretty good about this. not 100% confident, given all the back and forth i’ve had over this for several weeks, but i believe this is right.

we shall see. now i’m late for work.

(and it was 20 more pages, today, crossing well past the 50K marker)

* yes, i’ve spent more than a few years in IT.

** which turned out to be considerably longer than i originally envisioned, but that’s okay because this was a case where my original vision was a little less than detailed

i’ve been trying to pay closer attention to the publishing industry, lately, for obvious reasons. i get some newsletters and follow a few agents who blog, and the news is largely depressing, like the economic news nearly everywhere else. everything from publishers shrinking staff and cancelling book contracts at the last minute to independent bookstores closing left and right to chain stores like Borders in deep financial distress. obviously, all this impacts the likelihood of publishing houses to buy more titles, which impacts my ability to find an agent who thinks he or she can sell my book in this tightening market.

none of this is really news, though – tough times are everywhere – but i had somehow insulated myself from the direct personal reality of it. well, last friday evening, my wife and i were out grocery shopping and decided to stop by a local independent bookstore. my wife was looking for the first Charlaine Harris ‘Dead’ book and i was just looking for something light.

when we walked in, though, the shelves were so bare in this once-booming store that my wife asked if they were moving. of course, the answer was no, and that times were so lean that they hadn’t been able to make their regular new orders and were working largely on existing stock and any used books people brought in for resale.

we walked out with three books, but i was genuinely caught off guard by the whole experience, and despaired for the world. i was, however, reminded of Andrew Zack’s post in line with this. while the post is obviously overtly intended for writers, it was also, for me, another piece of evidence about the cheaper=better mentality that seems to have pervaded our society.

without going into a long diatribe about that whole topic, though (too late?), it all comes down to much the same basic point as Michael Burstein made at the end of the first half of the Future of Speculative Fiction Magazines panel at Readercon: if you want it, you have to pay for it.

and nothing to complain about (almost 50,000 words, now), and the light typing meant more time spent with some visiting family, some of whom we haven’t seen since we got married.* of course, it rained buckets here and there throughout the day, but the weather mostly held off for the afternoon, which was nice, though it picked up again just in time for dinner with my parents.**

i was considering some more writing this evening, but I opted for a bit of downtime*** with my wife, watching our much-beloved and much-lamented Firefly on DVD. i think my arms were glad for the break, too.

*way too long

** which we were late for, and we were hosting. very embarrassing. sorry folks.

*** such downtime has been too rare as i plow on with the book to finish before school starts.

22 pages today, which is awesome, but nearly made us miss the beginning to a nephew’s baseball game. this is the downside to being so heavily focused on the book: a significant reduction in family/social activity. balance is hard.

on the other hand, the school year starts in 4 weeks, and i’m pretty certain that i need to have HHNF out to readers before that, or it will just drag on, as i won’t have the mental capacity for it.

the story is also still cruising along. i’m feeling very good about the quality, still, and have even begun to second-guess my second-guessing about the overhaul i’ve been anticipating near the end. i’m still not entirely certain this isn’t my laziness talking, but the more i think about it, and the more i type up sections that i thought would need more revision but actually don’t, the less i think i might need to perform reconstructive surgery on that later section. we shall see.

finally, the reason we were almost late to the baseball game is i was completely sucked into the story i was typing up, so much so, that i was actually teary-eyed at a particularly emotional scene, and couldn’t bear to leave off at that point, despite our impending lateness and the slow burn starting in my forearms. i had to see it through. honestly. and that’s pretty darn cool.

while i was able to type up another 11 pages this morning, putting me past the 1/3rd marker for word count, i was hoping to get more. i even went so far as to type at the breakfast table while my wife made scones (most delicious!) before she headed off to work*, in hopes of actually getting 20 pages before lunch.

however, i had a couple errands to take care of this morning that i had forgotten about and which took an hour out of my time (losing at least three, if not up to 5 pages of typing). there was also a moderate amount of revision in today’s work, though.

the last couple days i’ve been noticing that i’ve actually done a bit of culling as i went. it’s perhaps not surprising that i write more than i need to, and often repeat myself, so much of my revision process includes chopping stuff out. This is usually because the content is unnecessarily wordy**, but recently it’s been primarily because i was repeating myself.

now, as i mentioned yesterday, i am trying to keep Kelly’s word as grounded in reality as possible, and sometimes in life we say or do things repeatedly which, if written down and read exactly as they happened, would seem ridiculous.*** so, i’m working to walk the line between reality and readability.

when i started writing, the idea that i wouldn’t write things just as they happened in life was anathema to me. i felt like i would be the one to show just how the real word is. it took me far longer than i’d like to admit to realize that everybody seems to feel this way in the beginning (what is it about slice-of-life stories that is so attractive in high school and college?), and that, almost without exception, writing a full length work adhering to all the mundanity of existence, is painful and simply uninteresting.

so, there are adjustments to make. it’s a give and take process, and i’m learning, i hope, how to be realistic without being deadly dull.

now i might have another scone…

* i know i should’ve helped, but am i the luckiest guy, or what?

** GASP! NO! me, wordy?

*** then again, maybe i’m the only one whose life feels like this sometimes…

another 12 pages so far this morning, and hopefully a few more after i post this.

i typed up the pages with the the main catalyst of the book in yesterday’s work, and today Kelly is struggling with figuring out who and what to believe. i’m having some uncertainty again about how much to tell, how much to show, and how much to leave out. there are maybe a couple things that i think need to be told in this section, but i try to focus on the showing wherever possible. however, i am struggling with how much i can expect a reader to pick up on, take on faith, or simply refuse to accept. for me, i love stories (books/movies/etc.) that frustrate me at the beginning, because a character does/says something out of character or seemingly impossible or ridiculous, only to reveal at a later point a very valid and believable rationale for that character’s actions/speech.*

therefore, i like to do the same. not all motives are spelled out in bold letters, not all characters act the way they might be expected to, not all events make complete sense when first experienced, but for each of these seeming ‘mistakes’ i have an intention, a purpose, and a rationale. an exaggerated, and morbid, comparison may be a village of people bombed in the first wave of an attack. these people may have no idea what’s going on before they die. they don’t get to know the answer, but there is one, albeit a terrible one. only the survivors get to get answers, though even then the answers are rarely complete.

whoa, okay, that got a lot further afield than i expected it to, but i guess that’s part of my point (and my problem). i work very hard to make sure that kelly lives in a world that works the same way mine does*** and doing so means sometimes things don’t make sense as they happen. my conundrum, then, is avoiding an expository ‘tell’ or even a ‘show’ to explain why, in the moment, reserving the explanation for a more realistic later time. the question is, though, will readers buy it? will they agree? or am i the only one who likes being seemingly led astray for a while?

hm. guess i won’t be getting anymore pages typed up this morning…

* actually, we just watched Push the other night and there was an excellent example of this in there. while i enjoyed the atmosphere, and Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans really seemed to have fun together (even when not having fun), and the premise of the film’s world was quite cool, that world unfortunately was the downfall of the film, falling prey, in my opinion, to a lack of thorough consideration of the impacts of a word scattered liberally with people with powers, even as the film starts by saying that they’re all hunted. anyway, the scene referred to (oh so long ago) was the one that dealt with the black-haired girl (whose name i forget). i won’t say more in case any haven’t seen it, but i really liked the idea of it. unfortunately, though, this too falls through on a further consideration, but the intent was there!

** while such a lack of purpose may well be an author’s intended purpose, i’m not sure i could find any satisfaction (enjoyment certainly isn’t a word to be used in this context, but there are countless extremely popular books about the ruin of people’s lives, so enjoyment isn’t always the intention) in such a story. if the story were a tale of the casualties of war, the loss of innocence, the abandon of governments, then those themes would have to be built in, explained in some way, so the explosion of the bomb is seen in that larger context, even if not by the characters themselves.

*** well, except for that minor detail about the demons, obviously.

last night i was able to get another 10 pages types up, and i’ve just now finished another 18 pages, bringing the total word count to 24K, and the handwritten page count to 60 out of 204. either way, i’m around a quarter of the way done.

as i’ve been hoping, there has been much less revision, lately. not trying to jinx myself, but i would like to believe that it’s overall in better condition to begin with. i’ve just finished the major plot element, which i hope will be an extremely emotional and shocking surprise for the readers, and which has put me in some concern that i might be pushing things a little too far too soon, but i can’t see another way of doing this with any ‘honesty’ or truth to the story and characters. i suppose i’ll eventually have to apologize for everything i put Kelly through.

now, though, i must wrap my forearms in ice.

so, yesterday i had a contractor in to look over some house work we want done (apparently such a big job that he didn’t even want to give me an estimate) and then i ran across an author i’d never heard of who has published (and is still writing) a series of books almost identical to my NGD and HHNF books.

just as i was getting in to a good wallow, though, i learned that some of my friends had just received what is probably the worst possible news in their situation, news i can’t imagine receiving, much less dealing with; yet, they’re doing it.

and i was complaining about money? or writing fiction that somebody else got to before me? please.