Fourth of July randomocity

I apologize in advance for any excessive surliness. It's been one of those weeks.


I guess it would be appropriate for me to write about my thoughts as to the state of our democracy---that it appears to be dying on the vine, that every day it seems the voices of greed, hatred, ignorance, and religious lunacy seem to be getting louder and the voices of tolerance, fairness, and reason seem to be growing quieter. I could go on and on about how the wealthy now own this country and have mastered the art of getting the ignorant to do their dirty work for them. I could say that behind almost all of the problems in this country lies one single cause--greed. I could go on and on and on about how I just don't see our society surviving much longer without something dramatic and traumatic happening to force things to change.


I could do say all that, but I won't. Instead, I'll just say, have a happy Fourth, everyone, regardless of your ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion (or lack thereof), citizenship status, or economic station. We need you. We need everyone. We just need to realize that. Our country is not just white picket fences, two kids and a dog in a yard, a white house with a Chevy in the driveway. Our country is also Chinatown. It's Little Italy. It's the ghetto. It's all those places where people may not speak English, and where most people don't have white skin. Those people aren't African American or Asian American or Italian American or Hispanic American or whatever American. They're just American.


Anyways, I won't say any of that. That's what would be expected of me. I try not to be predictable.


So, my own plans are to write as much as I can. I'm inching closer and closer to the end of the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. I may actually be done with it by the end of next week.


The weather here is supposed to be beautiful, which is fortunate, since the driver's side window of my truck is stuck half-way down. I'll be calling someone to have it fixed tomorrow--since it's not expected to be raining anytime soon, it can wait one day. But I'll at least be out walking around in the mild, sunny day. I may take some pictures of some lovely little flowers I saw on the property, to use as inspiration for a painting or something.


That's what's on my mind today. What's on yours?

I can see the ending . . .

15,000 more words to go before I reach my minimum word count for The Sorcerer's Daughter.


For a first draft a word count doesn't mean all that much, I know. But it gives me a good idea how long the finished draft will be--it'll probably be a tad shorter than the first draft. And no, I'm not shooting for 75,000 words, per se, it's just that is the minimum length before a lot of publishers will consider it a novel.


I should get there with no trouble. I'm getting near the end but I'm not that near. Still got lots of plot left to write about.


And I'm coming up on the really juicy stuff, too. What I'm going to start on next is what has kept me plugging away on this thing for months now. The really good stuff.


I mean, it's all good stuff, but this is the payoff. This is why I started writing this thing in the first place.


So, why I'm I sitting here, writing this, instead of writing the thing?


I don't know. I think I'm just kind of catching my breath. What I'm about to do involves a lot of action, a lot of running around, that sort of thing, and it actually wears me out, writing about that stuff, almost as much as if I were doing it. Weird, huh?


Part of it, though, is fear.


Fear of what, though? I guess, fear that I won't be strong enough as a writer to do justice to the story and these characters. Sounds kind of pretentious, doesn't it?


But I believe I'm telling a powerful story that people will get into, I have a central character that people will relate to, and, if I pull this off, the part I'm about to start on will probably be considered the best part, by the millions and millions of people who will be reading it once it gets published.


Kind of intimidating. What to do?


Easy, actually. I'm just reminding myself that the only person I really need to please, at the end of the day, is me. As long as I like it, anybody else liking it will be gravy.


Okay. Let's dive back in.

On seeing that light at the end, getting closer . . .

I'm about three-quarters of the way through the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter now.


This happened quick, too! It seems like yesterday I was not even a third of the way, and, right after I hit the halfway point, suddenly I start feeling that ever-decreasing word count.


I still need to resolve a major event that's happening with the part I'm working on now, then, after cooling things down for a little bit, ramping up the final, cataclysmic finale. And, I need to do that with around 25,000 words.


That sounds like a lot of words, doesn't it? But trust me, it ain't.


I don't really have a hard-and-fast final word count to shoot for, but I'd love for it to come in at 75,000. Though, it just might get up around 100,000 before I'm done.


In fact, the higher word count may be better. I hate it when the writing in a novel gets choppy and out of rhythm because the author had more story than the word count would allow.


Anyways, I'm rocking right along on this thing. When I finally hit that last page I'll take a week off before starting on the rewrite. My goal is to have this thing ready to ship out to publishers by the end of the year. Maybe even sooner.


So, wouldn't you know it, but a pretty damned good idea hit me last night, for another novel. In addition to the TV show thing that just will not quite go away.


On top of that, I'm trying to find a short story I read years ago, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction., because I'd love to try to adapt it to a script for a short film. It was a beautiful story, one I found deeply moving, but I can't remember the title or the author. I've searched my back issues and can't find it, searched the archives at the magazine's website, and didn't see it there, either. I also emailed the magazine and haven't heard anything--doubtless they think I'm some random nutcase.


Who knows, maybe I am. I may find this story again, finally, and discover that it really isn't as good as I remember.


Not matter what, now, though, The Sorcerer's Daughter takes priority now. TV shows and other novel, short film, and movie ideas, will all have to take a back seat until I'm done with it.


The ending is still a long way off, but I can see it now. It's coming up, a lot faster than I realized.

Sory I haven't been around much lately . . .

I haven't exactly been inundated by concerned emails from the folks who read this, demanding to know why I haven't been around much lately.


Which is no surprise, actually, and any outrage you may be picking up on is feigned on my part. This blog is mostly just me talking to myself anyway--if you dig it, great! If not, then you won't be reading this anyway, so, again, I'm talking to myself . . .


Anyways, I haven't been around much because I've been devoting all of my writing time to The Sorcerer's Daughter. It's sort of interesting to me--I'm now at the point I'd reached during my previous attempts and instead of just completely losing interest in it like I did before, I'm obsessing over it and spending as much time as I possibly can working on it.


Which is a good thing. It means this time I'll finish writing the bloody thing.


I'm still thinking over this idea for a TV show, too, and actually sketching a few ideas for different things that'll be prominent in it, but I've finally reached the point where that thing is content to be on the back burner for now. It's still in my head, still making noise, but it's being a lot more polite about sharing think-time with the novel.


And, so far, I'm liking what's showing up on the page. Yes, it'll need a serious rewrite, but this is a first draft. Nobody is going to see it but me, so it can be embarrassingly bad in places. I'll fix all that with the rewrite.


That was the secret, really, realizing that the first draft is not the final draft. I'm not going back and rereading and rewriting stuff this time--I'm just letting it sit there, not worrying about it, content to let it wait until I come back to it during the rewrite.


You'd think I'd know that by now, considering how much of my life I've spent writing. For some reason, though, it's a difficult concept for me to grasp, and it's really gotten in the way in the past. Hopefully this will be a breakthrough for me, and I'll be finishing more stuff now.


Anyways, that's my weekend--writing, making as much progress on this as I can on this novel, meditating on the TV show thing, watching some TV, too . . . maybe making some more art, if I get inspired. Who knows?


In any case, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's getting closer and closer . . .

Disgusted with my own species and randomocity

I'm finding it more and more difficult to tolerate many of my fellow homo sapiens.


Mostly because of all the dripping, vile hatred I'm seeing towards people who have a different skin color, sexual orientation, religious belief, or whatever.


I'm not talking about random people who show up in my newsfeed on Facebook. I'm talking about people who, in many cases, I've known all my life.


Apparently, if you lose your job and have to go on unemployment and get government assistance to feed your family, or if you're a victim of a vicious, violent crime, or if you've become addicted to drugs, you have forfeited your humanity and don't deserve sympathy, empathy, or any assistance whatsoever.


Christians, each and every one. One or two of them are even pastors.


I wouldn't be a Christian in any case, even if so many of them weren't spewers of the most sickening hateful vitriol imaginable. But I'd be a lot more patient with them if they weren't the source of so many terrible things going on in the world today.


Sorry. I'm just terribly disappointed in someone who is actually a pastor at a church and an old friend who has pretty much revealed himself to be one of those people, too. Though he's not quite as loud about it as many others. I also haven't confronted him about it--there would be no point.


I'm going to spend this weekend working on the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. Now that I've worked my way around this little roadblock I'm making pretty good progress.


I'm about half-way to my minimum word-count of 75,000 words. Of course, since it's a first draft, that may not count for much, but it's a pretty ballpark idea as to how long this thing's going to be. I'm thinking right now it'll wind up around 100,000 words, altogether. Maybe too long for a YA, actually, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. I may wind up splitting it up into two books before I'm done, but, again, I'll worry about that when I finish the first draft.


I'll be working on another painting, too. For the sake of my sanity.

This week in randomocity

H. R. Giger died this week.


In case you didn't know (and I can't believe you'd be reading this if you didn't) he was the artist who inspired the creature and several of the sets for my favorite all-time movie, Alien. That was my first exposure to his work, and I became curious to see more.


What I've found over the years has almost always blown my mind. Disturbing but beautiful work, haunting and powerful. It's the sort of stuff that bypasses your conscious mind, and takes root directly into the subconscious. I've used his work to inspire the tone for a lot of my writing--look for my novella, "Warden," which I published here a while back.


He was a genius, a towering talent, and he will be deeply missed.


I'm taking a couple of days off from work to try to make some more headway on the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. It's slow going. I'm still in love with the story, and the characters, but for some reason it's really difficult to get the words on the page.


Therefore, for writing inspiration, I turned to Ramsey Campbell, specifically his novel, Creatures of the Pool. Campbell is a great example of how you freakin' write a novel. He sets the scene and advances the plot better than damned near anyone else. Sometimes he's a little bit too economical and I have to put the book aside just because what I had just read was so dense with detail, subtext, and plot advancement. I urge you to check him out, if you haven't already. Any of his work, not just this particular book. This is how it's done. There are tons of writers--many of them bestselling authors--who would benefit a great deal from reading Campbell's stuff.


It does my heart good, that there are still a few writers out there who actually write novels instead of outlines and first drafts that somehow get published and purchased by people who don't seem to know better.


So, that's my next few days. Writing, maybe doing a little painting or sketching or something, and laundry.


As good as it gets!

Skeleton writing

I came across this in a novel I'm reading:


He looked up and saw a group of people dragging a machine.


And my teeth started grinding. Why? Because that was all the author gave to describe the scene.


Part of the job of the writer is to decide how far to go in descriptions. The less the writer describes, the more work the reader's imagination has to do to fill in the details. Some writers go way too far, describing every detail, whether it's relevant or not. Too many, though, do what the author above does, and don't describe anything at all.


And it really bugs me, because the details the author left out are important and leave the reader kind of struggling a few paragraphs later. For one thing, this 'machine' this group of people are dragging--machine is an ambiguous term. There are all kinds of machines. We can assume it's a fairly large machine, since it has to be dragged, but the mental image I arrived at conflicted pretty dramatically with what the machine later turned out to be.


This was jarring and completely took me out of the story. This is a Bad Thing. This is not something an author will want to happen.


It's made worse because the viewpoint character knew what the machine was when he saw it, as becomes apparent a few paragraphs later. That sort of pisses me off, too--it's a fake way to build suspense, and it actually would not have made any difference if the reader discovered what the machine is when it's first introduced. So, I'm also feeling a bit manipulated, too.


Now, how about this--I'm just making this one up:


John met the private investigator in the PI's office. The PI was a tall man, a bit younger than John thought he'd be. There were piles of papers on his desk, along with overflowing ash trays. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and spilled Scotch.


Maybe the details you subconsciously glean from the above paragraph will mean something later, maybe not. And you'll notice other than the PI being described as tall and young, I didn't go any further in describing him. So, I'm meeting you halfway--you know he's tall and young,  and you can plug in his eye and hair color--even his race--and everything else. I also implied he's a slob, a smoker, and maybe an alcoholic, and that may or may not be relevant to anything. Now, isn't that better than:


John met the private investigator in his office.


It's a major gripe of mine because I'm seeing this in a lot of novels these days--many of these read like first drafts, not like a finished manuscript. It's becoming more and more acceptable. Drives me nuts. It's lazy writing. It's the author not doing his or her job. More importantly, it's an editor not doing his or her job, catching this, and making the author fix it. If I were an editor I'd be pissed if I ran across this.


Unfortunately, I seem to be the exception. Dammit.