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The trip to Europe was beyond cool. I’d tell you all about it, but there’s far, far too much to tell, and I’d probably run out of lines available on my site, or trip some sort of “Maximum lines exceeded” error in the browser code, so I’ll just summarize the entire experience as being “Awesome”.

Got a good chunk of writing done, especially on the plane. Word of advice, though – if you have really long legs, the aisle seat may look like an okay spot to be, but check the leg room under the seat in front of you. If there’s a big metal frame jutting out from the seat, it really doesn’t gain you all that much.

Also, if you’re on a 9 hour flight and are trying to write to pass the time, the presence of 3 loud babies will cause your writing to become much, much angrier.

In other news, Beast is alive! Zomg, I got the replacement keyboard today, slid all the connectors in, booted it up . . . and presto, I once more have mini-laptop word processor goodness. Tested out all the keys a few times, and while the spacebar needs a little bit of working in, I’m confident that Beast will be back to 100% in short order, or, at the very least, 99.95%. That, or some weird repeating decimal.

Update: Ten Arrows – Chapter 1 completed, Chapter 2 15% done.

Yup, finished the prologue and the first chapter, and got a decent start on Chapter 2. Now, what I’m going to have to sort out is this – do I continue using the ipad/wireless to write, or do I port all the text over to Beast now that he’s up and running once more. I mean, I really should use Beast because it’s Open Office, and you can’t beat actual word processing. It’s just that now I’m kind of used to having a 10 hour battery life for my word processor.

Geeze, it’s always something with me, isn’t it?

Okay, it’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks, and I’m afraid it’s going to be cutting in to my posting regularity. See, going overseas come Thursday, and internet connectivity will be one of those things that isn’t a for sure thing. Plus, I’m going to be in a completely different time zone. And, if that weren’t enough . . . well, I’ll be on vacation. I mean, it’s a vacation . . . you’re not supposed to do the stuff that you’ve been doing week after week. It’s not allowed!

Plus, I’m going to be writing during a good portion of it, so just back off. No calling me a slacker or nothin’, got it?

So yeah, that’s the big news . . . mostly preparing for travel and making all the necessary arrangements and whatnot. Bought me a whole bunch of Euros, pretty cheap too. There’s something about going to your local exchange and buying a big bunch of foreign currency while you’re still in your home country. It makes you want to run into shops, browse through the most expensive items you can find, and then ask the girl behind the counter, “Do you take Euros? No? Damn!” and then flee the store.

But enough about last weekend . . .

Update: Ten Arrows – Sweet merciful crap!

I seriously forgot about the kind of things that would just sort of naturally happen as a result of writing. See, if you haven’t done this sort of thing before, you might be of the impression that a writer knows exactly what sort of stuff happens in every scene of every chapter, word for word, all lined up and ready to be spilled out onto the page. In reality, you’re sitting there going, “Okay . . . he’s here, and he needs to get there. What’s the best way of getting to ‘there’ without being too boring? Uh . . . I’ll have him walk down the street and, I dunno, bump into a friend. They’ll chat, and he’ll be reminded of something else he needs to do, and then he’ll keep going, and he’ll be ‘there’. Okay, great. Now he’s there, and I need him to walk into the store. How am I gonna do that? Hmmm.”

It’s annoying, but that’s how it happens. You gotta narrate your way through getting from point a to point b, even though all you really want to do is magically transport your character to point b and say, “Haha! Done!” even though it would make no sense to read whatsoever.

Well, the magical part of that is when you’re trying to figure out how to fill all the space between points a and b, and you come up with a bit of filler dialogue or a combination of actions that just becomes so clever and outrageous that you suddenly can’t imagine the story without it. I mean, it’s like a key scene suddenly, and it started out as you just randomly punching keys, wishing your main character would just hurry up and invent time travel or something, so you wouldn’t have to waste all this time describing him walking from one room to the next.

It happened today. I’ve told Huushi all about what happened in Chapter 1 (cuz I’m not spoiling anything . . . but I can’t wait for people to read chapters 19-22) and the reaction was about as OMFGAwesome as I thought it would be. It happened on a whim, almost by accident, and yet I suddenly can’t imagine this story not having that scene . . . it defines the main character’s attitude so well. Subtlety, wit, dangerousness . . . it has it all.

That being said, Chapter 1 is almost done, currently at 4800 words. Needs some tooling, and I’m still going to be tacking on another 1000 words or so before starting Chapter 2, but hey . . . that’s how Vince writes. I can’t help it if he writes like that, can I?

Maybe it’s the upcoming trip. Maybe it’s the fact that two of my most important electronic devices are down for the count, or are contemplating the idea. Maybe I’ve just been too involved in writing lately.

Yeah, it’s the last one. Honest.

Still, I forgot all about Friday’s update, and that makes me all sad. I mean, forgetting something like that . . . who knows what sort of other important stuff I’ve forgotten in the past few d-

. . . oh dear god. NOT THE CAKE!

(Quickly runs into kitchen with a fire extinguisher)

Seriously though, I should be back on Monday, and maybe even Wednesday. After that, who knows . . . much will depend on the availability of WiFi out in Europe. We shall see . . .

Okay, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that 3rd Person storytelling is inherently unnatural for me, which is disappointing, and will definitely require some work/practice. After all, my proficiency in 1st person writing may simply stem from the fact that I used to do a lot of it, mostly because it’s hard to tell people about your day in third person, and even harder to have a normal conversation in it. For example:

“Hey, Aaron! How are things going?”
“‘Oh, pretty good,’ he replied, putting on his best fake smile.”
“Tha- . . . uh, what? What are you doing?”
“He looked at her quizzically. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.”
“That’s really weird. I’m going to go sit over here.”
“‘Okay, take care!’ he said, privately relieved that he no longer had to pretend to care.”
” . . . !?”

Yup, you give away way too much information about how you’re feeling when you narrate your own conversations like that. True, it’s a great way to keep people from talking to you, but sometimes that’s not what you’re after.

Update: Ten Arrows – Prologue still coming along great

Yup, as mentioned, I’m feeling pretty good about it, even on the 2nd and 3rd reads. I’ll be expanding on it later tonight, and who knows . . . I may even get finished it and start Chapter 1. Maybe I’ll reward myself if that happens. Not too much pressure though. Don’t wanna push things just yet . . . getting comfortable is all.

Update: New Project – Revenant

I know, I know. Don’t even say it. However, it’s interesting to point out that this project is also a first-person sort of deal. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really like Vincent, and while he does misbehave and such from time to time, he’s very aristocratic about it. That, and there’s lots of things it seems he just wouldn’t do, because he’s not the type. Originally I thought he would be, but now that I’ve met him and had a chance to let him speak, I find that he’s not. Weird, huh?

So this is a modern first-person fictional ‘supernatural-lite’ sort of storyline I thought of, one that sort of takes the ‘yang’ of what I thought Vincent would be and channels it somewhere else. This guy’s a morally flexible hitman, and the first story sees him forced out of his comfortable ‘play by numbers’ sort of life and into a world he barely believes in. This guy does it all . . . swearing, excessive violence, you name it. It’s the ‘surly private investigator’ vibe, plus a touch of sociopath, plus borderline genius IQ, multiplied by 5 and fed a strong drink.

I just figure it’s good to have another first-person series to fall back on, for when I’m practicing third-person.

Update: Oh Crap

Well, just got home . . . through a rain storm, and hail, and generally being soaked. It’s not too bad. I mean, I’m not made of salt or anything.

Of course, my knapsack isn’t exactly waterproof . . . something I was not aware of.

And now Beast is dead, won’t even boot up. The iPad is going schitzoid on me, and I’m afraid to even check some of my other things. At the very least, I’ll probably need a new battery for Beast. At the worst . . . I have some unfortunate emergency shopping to do.

In a word – Sonofa!

I’m going to back off of the whole ‘weekly goal’ thing for the moment. At least for a little while, anyway.

The reason? Well, I push myself pretty hard at times, and that’s not simply testimony to my upper-body strength. I set aggressive goals, and I make them. I’ve found that this is more or less how things get done with me. Set a goal, meet that goal . . . think of another goal to set for myself. Rinse, repeat.

Missing goals is disappointing, but it’s not the end of the world. However, when you’re setting goals for yourself you need to bear in mind the fact that the goal should be attainable. Sure it’s fun to push yourself, but setting yourself up for failure isn’t exactly a good thing if you want to maintain a positive mindset. And wouldn’t you know it, my mindset’s taking a bit of a pummeling lately.

Shifting gears and switching to a different project only really gets done when you find yourself running on passion ‘fumes’, where the activity more closely resembles ‘chore’ than it does ‘bliss’. Leaving a project like that bums me out, because it has structure, it has plot, and simply needs to be written . . . no guesswork, no mess, just voila, done. I just sort of assumed that I’d be able to apply fun, engaging, interesting writing over-top of that story. I made it part of my plan, in fact. Look here: Step 1, outline book. Step 2, write book in a way that is fun and engaging. Step 3, type ‘The End’. See?

So when dropping one project and picking up another, you need to try to ensure that the same sort of ‘running out of gas’ thing doesn’t happen to your new project, at least not right away. Thus, I set a goal for myself for *this* week, after missing the goal for last week. Turns out that was a bit of a mistake.

My inner writer needs to be handled with kid gloves at the moment, mostly because he’s still upset and brooding over the fact that he’s burned out on 3rd person writing recently. He’s the temperamental one, the artist who sits on the sofa with his eyes tightly shut, waiting for the rest of the room to just shut up so he can think, waiting for inspiration to hit him. He can’t be rushed. (Well, he *can* be, but bad things happen . . . like he gets burned out on 3rd person writing and needs a break from it)

So what I’m going to do is wait until he’s more comfortable. No goals for a while . . . the super-secret goal of which is to get my inner writer into a better head-space. Prologue has two pages almost completely finished, (1000+ words, so I guess technically it’s four pages, though it’s only 2 on my word processor) and the familiar voice of Vincent has returned with very little effort. Now is not the time to rush things, Bubba. Now’s the time to sit quietly and wait for the words to appear.

And what of Hamlet? Uh, well . . . shhhh! I’m waiting for words to appear! Keep quiet, or you’ll scare them off!

Update: Ten Arrows – Solid start

As imaginary people go, I really like Vincent. Having a main character you like is important, I think. If you get into disagreements with your main character, they can lead to fights, which leads to guys in white coats coming and telling you they’re going to take you for ice cream . . . but they LIE! There is no ice cream! I even tried licking the white, padded walls, and you know what they tasted like? Crazy-person spittle!  Ewwww!

Update: Hamlet – The real update

Okay, it’s not often that I give myself excuses for missing stuff, especially fun stuff, but it seems that I had a bunch of open windows on Beast, all of which involved the current scene of Hamlet. I was picking away at it, slowly, over a few days. Then, on Thursday, I open up Beast and I see: “Windows has restarted your computer. Wasn’t that helpful of us?”

So yah, work and research lost. I refuse to be bummed out tho. As I said, I’m just gonna sit back and let stuff happen for a bit. See? Look, I’m doing it right now.

I know change is inevitable, and I try to roll with it as best I can. Still, going from an all-out sprint on one project to a sudden slamming on the brakes, and then trying to keep some of that momentum that you had by channeling it in a completely different direction, well, it’s about as successful as it sounds.

It’s like moving. You had everything where you needed it, and now you gotta put the whole thing into boxes and trundle off somewhere completely new and different. Oh sure, you’ve still got all your stuff, and the new place may be way better than your old one, but nothing really feels the same, you know? And I’ve found that when something feels different, it gnaws at the back of your head constantly, like some sort of shadow you can only see out of the corner of your eye. Impossible to become too creative when dealing with something like that.

So it’s been tough these past few days – tougher than the previous couple of weeks in fact. When I’ve been working on the outline or framing how the initial chapter is going to work, it’s been all “Something doesn’t feel the same, am I doing this right?” and “Wait, why am I writing these notes down in this book instead of this one?!”

Still, I’ll get over it. I got no choice . . . the voices in my head demand nothing less.

Update: Ten Arrows – Prologue outline done

Sketched out, more or less . . . know how it’s going to start, and what the overall ‘theme’ of the prologue is going to be. The first book, it was about setting up character history from the perspective of the narrator. Second, it was about the narrator wondering how he was going to put character history and a brief summary of the first novel into his prologue. Now, the theme is more or less going to be ‘Aren’t prologues weird? Why do I feel the need to do them?’ which will spin into its own unique unfurling of character history and story setup.

And then, in the first chapter, Vince causes someone’s pants to light on fire. Bliss!

Update: Shakespeare for Slackers – Hamlet

Still no substantive work on this, but I might just devote a few hours to it tonight sometime. Moving forward is hard work – moving forward and being funny is much easier for me to do.

So, I pondered a great deal. As per the previous post, Black Glass was getting a little rougher around the edges than I’d like, and I was getting concerned. The cure? Move back to what I’m good at for a little while.

See, it seems that whenever I’m knee-deep in 3rd person writing, I get to a point where I’m just so mired in the muck and bogged down that I can’t seem to take any forward steps at all. I needed a break from that, something familiar. And when it comes to writing, we all know what POV I have the most experience in . . .

(Hint – this blog is written in it!)

Yup, it’s time to get back into a little first-person action, ala Harael. Book #3 – Ten Arrows. It’s been mulled over long enough to get a complete outline, save for some minor details. Annoying ones, really.

See, the thing is that Vincent is clever, and thus whatever Vincent does, well, it’s bound to be clever. Most of it is spontaneous wit, flip remarks, and other stuff like that – that’s easy. But the *big* clever thing? You know, the plan that is so secret that even he barely knows anything about it? Surely you remember . . . the plan that outsmarted everyone in the whole city, that plan? I mean, he’s clever, therefore it would have to be clever, right?

Which means I have to be clever as well. Le sigh.

Sometimes while trying to come up with a plan – his plan – I find myself feeling a little resentful over the fact that he’s not the one coming up with it! He just sits back in his keep, doing Lordly things, while I’m working my butt off to-  . . .

(ahem) Anyway . . . let’s just say it isn’t easy to come up with clever “Aha! It was in plain sight all along!” kind of stuff and leave it at that.

So, I spent days trying to figure out the mechanics behind a little something that Vincent (clever fellow that he is) had put together, one of the dozens of little tricks that he’s become known for that will play a big role in the story. It’s a hard thing to do, creating a situation where several small and seemingly insignificant things are visible to readers from the very start, and yet keep them from understanding the importance of them. It’s the sort of thing that can even get me stuck from time to time.

And then, poof! Walking down the street, listening to Infected Mushroom, it came to me. Everything fit together, one shining instant. It made me smile – hell, it made me pat my own back, which is an odd thing to see someone do as they’re walking down the street. Good thing we got all these mosquitoes hanging around, so I’ve got something to blame these awkward self-congratulatory moments on.

And now, with 99.9% of the outline completely done, the only thing I’m waiting for is the “Okay, it’s time to start Book #3″ admission from myself. You know, that loud, fanfare-laden statement that rings out in the evening sky like the world’s largest collection of . . . things that ring out. That one simple statement is the only thing holding me back.

And thus . . . (straightens posture)

(clears throat)

Hey y’all! It’s time to start book #3! Hyuk!

. . .

Wow, that didn’t sound at all like I hoped it would. No cannon discharge, no fireworks in the background. Hmmm. Maybe my expectations were too high.

Update: Goal for this week – Prologue for Ten Arrows, 5 hours spent on Hamlet

Yeah, didn’t do much the whole long weekend, except go down to the heart specialist and run on a treadmill while half-naked. It’s not the sort of thing that allows you to write at the same time. So, I’ve got some lost time to make up for. Let’s get at ‘er! We’ll see how I’m doing by Wednesday.

Bit of a downer this week.

Oh sure, there’s all kinds of stuff that was going on, things I needed to kick-start here and there, and that’s to be expected. It happens most every day, and it’s why I get paid for being in an office for 40 hours a week. I accept that. In fact, I get some of my best work done during the in-between hour when I’m at work . . . swivel my chair away from my office computer and towards Beast, typing away merrily until 1:00 at which point I swivel back and return to work.

That’s not really the problem. I’m bummed out that I didn’t make one of my weekly goals. Worse, I had many opportunities, but chose instead to think long and hard about a problem.

Writing is hard work, but it shouldn’t be a struggle. Right now, with Black Glass, I’m struggling. I got to a part where there should be some stunning, shocking revelation, and it’s not really doing anything. I’ve gone ‘Ta-da!’ and there are crickets chirping. On top of that, I go back to the last few chapters and go over what I’ve put together, and I’m missing description, motivation, emotion, entire reasons for doing things. Characters are doing what they’re doing because that’s what they need to do in the story, not because they’ve come to a logical conclusion, or respond emotionally, or anything like that. It’s been an uphill struggle ever since I rewrote and broke out of Chapter 23 or so . . . meaning that the last six and a half chapters have been like trying to pull teeth.

75% of the way through, and I think it’s gotta stay there for a little while. If I keep going the way I am, I know I’ll end up hating it. I think it’s a good concept, and a good story, and I don’t want to kill it by forcing my way though too much of it during a bad patch, one where I’m writing what should be an explosive, tearful moment as a ho-hum collection of facts and wooden dialogue. It may not be as bad as all that . . . it may be a case of me overreacting, but when I’m like this I really need to just leave it for a bit and see.

So, Black Glass officially parked for the moment, 75% done. about the 65000 word mark. Maybe the target for this story needs to be 120,000 instead of 90,000 . . . who knows. I’ll figure it out later, once I’ve had a chance to let go a bit. Maybe I’m missing something really obvious, and I’m too close to see it.

I just hate not finishing something. Even when it’s only temporary.

In the meantime, I’ve got the Shakespeare stuff which is comparatively no-brainer work. It’ll fill in the gaps in the meantime, so at least I’m working on something. Once I’ve had the weekend (long weekend, woohoo!) to think about stuff, I might even have an additional something to work on as well. Something a little more first-person-ish.

Update: Black Glass – back-burner’d!

’nuff said.

Update: Hamlet

A little progress, but not much. Feel free to mock away.

Update: Ten Arrows

No, I’m not intentionally shelving Black Glass so I can start this one . . . I’d fully intended to finish BG before doing anything Tucat-like. However, I’m also coming to the conclusion that 3rd person storytelling is a lot more difficult for me than 1st person. Might just need to put that to the test with a trial chapter or two, now that the outline is more or less completely done.

I don’t know about you, but I can always tell.

When you’re having trouble with something, it usually shows. We’ve all gone over to a friend’s house and saw the dessert cake they’d attempted to put icing on, something that looks more like a trifle, and even (more often than not) ends up becoming one. Same with drawing, public speaking, just about everything you can think of. I’ve seen attempts at Photoshop that could (and have) inspired gut-laughs on a scale previously unimaginable, and not on purpose. So too, you can just sort of tell when a writer is having a hard time of things.

Was listening to an interview posted by a friend of mine, and the conversation was steered towards writing about what you’re passionate about. The writer mentioned that the difference could be felt, not only when he was writing it, but when it was read afterward. He maintained that you could always tell when someone was passionate about what they wrote, because it almost always sounded stunted and awkward when they weren’t.

Following Black Glass to completion will be a learning experience – of this I have no doubt. I’ll finish it, because it needs to be finished, and because you need to nudge yourself out of your comfort zone from time to time. You can’t learn much by doing the thing you’re good at over and over, after all. What if you were better at something else? How would you know?

So, I’ll finish the novel, and I’ll pat myself on the back, and then I’ll stuff it somewhere and not look at it, not think about it, not do anything at all. Maybe I’m too close to it right now. Maybe the struggle to slog through it comes through in the pages I’ve put together, maybe it’s all fine and I’m just oversensitive to the whole struggle. This has become less about telling a story and more about reaching a goal, and maybe that’s what bugs me. I was passionate about the story when I started it – I’m not sure if I still am.

And thus, I’ll finish writing, put it away, and then work on something else for a while. Whatever I do end up working on, I’m going to make sure that it’s something I’m passionate about. I have a pretty good idea of what it’ll be, too.

And no, the fact that I appear to be good at it doesn’t factor into the equation at all. It’s all about the passion, baby. Trust me.

Update: Black Glass – Well, duh.

If you need an update on how Black Glass is going, you obviously haven’t read the above paragraphs. I mean, you probably didn’t even skim them! Tsk tsk!

That being said, I finished Chapter 29 last week and have moved on to Chapter 30, meaning that I’ve reached the 75% mark or so. There’s still a lot of time to put in, but I gotta step it up and get it done. It won’t be ‘Yay, it’s done! I’m so proud!’ at the end of it, as I’ve said, but it’ll still be something. I’ve already learned a great deal.

Part of the goal I set for myself when I started the novel Black Glass was to move things along as quickly as possible. Fast-paced action is where it’s at, and slow-moving stories are an indulgence reserved for established authors, ones who do not have as much of a pressing need to sell themselves. This isn’t to say that a story shouldn’t meander and move slowly, just that the market isn’t designed to accept that sort of thing from untested writers who don’t have a built-in audience.

So, I moved fast, and I discovered that there was quite a bit of detail that became unnecessary as a result. Good lesson to learn, really.

Except now I suspect that lesson was the first of several. The next one is this – there’s a difference between sacrificing the amount of detail, and sacrificing the level of detail. I thought they were connected to one another at first, but am starting to realize that the difference is merely one of quantity vs quality.

My growing dissatisfaction with how the story has been progressing is rooted in the fact that the details I have been providing thus far haven’t been particularly rich, or helped develop the characters as much as I wish. Right now, as it stands, the main character’s ‘crisis of faith’ moment could easily be overlooked. The internal conflicts seem wooden and dead. What should be roiling, berserk rage comes across as ‘Anger lite’.

Or maybe I’m just too sensitive to it right now.

There’s an author, Neil Gaiman, who I would consider to be a master when it comes to writing rich, compressed quality detail. In one book, Neverwhere, I was quite literally sitting there with my jaw hanging open by page 4, because I’d been subjected to small-ish, innocent-looking paragraphs about the main character that packed such a concentrated whollop when it came to detail that I felt like I knew him for years.

Perhaps this isn’t the right time to be looking at something like that . . . maybe it’s an editing thing. Maybe I go back, look at these sentences that I’ve recently written and find a way to make them better. Maybe I look at them and realize they weren’t half as bad as I thought they were. Still, I think this weekend I’m going to take some time to sort through how Neil does it . . . pin down what he does that works so well, and try to understand why. Maybe understanding what someone like him is able to do will help me, maybe it’ll cause me to look at the stuff I’ve written so far with chagrin and mild embarrassment. Doesn’t matter.

After all, the whole point of this is to get better at it. How could you possibly get better at something you profess to love doing if you ignore those things that make you uncomfortable, and only focus on the parts you’re good at?

Update: Black Glass – Chapter 29 100% done

I’m writing this in the morning, and right now I’ve only got about 1000 words done on the chapter, but I’m going to say that the goal was met. I have an hour over lunch, and will stay up until the wee hours of the morning tonight if need be, but it’ll be done before I go to sleep.

Despite mini rants about flat, emotionless writing, I’m still rather excited about the progress – the entire story is about to reach the 75% done mark. Of course, when it’s 100% done, the editing will probably take a year, and it won’t end up in print form until all three books in the trilogy have been written, edited, and completely finished. That’s going to be difficult, and require some skill at gratification delaying.

Update: Ten Arrows – Outline further refined

I came up with a new character, one that will appear throughout the story, and won’t have any real relevance outside of it. It’ll be wacky, fun, and hopefully make milk shoot out of the nose of dozens of people. Even the ones who don’t drink milk.

This story is becoming increasingly vocal in its demands to be written. Right now I’m closer to viewing Black Glass as an obstacle I need to hurdle over to get to this story. I picture myself, slowly scratching out the last few words of the story, wearily acknowledging that it’s done, crossing the proverbial finish line. Then, I imagine myself perking up, despite the fact that it’s 3:00 in the morning, filled with brand new energy as I start writing the prologue for Ten Arrows.

I’m a strange, strange man.

Update: New goal – Black Glass Chapter 30 100% done – More Hamlet

It appears to be working for me, Bubba. Do some painful, hurried writing, and then do some Hamlet to cool off and relax. Maybe even remember what it’s like to be funny. Shouldn’t be hard to pull off again this week. In fact, I may do Chapter 30 over the weekend, just so I’ve got a week or so to take a breather.