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.

It's good to have goals

My goal, during this week of vacation, was to get to the end of Part One of this first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter.




It took a little longer than I anticipated, but I made it, just a few minutes ago. And I'm exhausted.


The best part of setting and achieving a goal, though? The opportunity to reward oneself when one hits it.




Now I'm going to celebrate by giving myself a couple of days off from it. I'm going to work on painting and drawing, and catching up on my reading.


Right now I'm reading Berserker's Star, by Fred Saberhagen. If you're not familiar with the Berserker series, I suggest you check it out. The initial idea behind the stories--doomsday machines built by a long extinct civilization, haunting the Galaxy, wiping out life when they find it--is quite interesting to me.


I went out this morning and took some photos of some beautiful lilies that are blooming on the property around here, with an eye towards painting and/or drawing them. That'll be enough to keep me busy for a long while, I think.


I also did a fairly decent colored pencil drawing of a rose, based on a picture a friend sent me. Roses are really hard--there are a ton of subtle details you have to get just right or it won't look like a rose. This one does, sort of. I tried to post a picture of it here but for some reason Google won't let me. Dammit. Well, you're not missing anything, actually, but I was proud of it.


What's my next goal? I want to be finished with Part Two by the end of next month. There will be five parts, altogether, but I've found taking it one piece at a time is the best way to handle this sort of thing. All the while keeping the ending in mind, of course.


But first I'm going to let it rest for two or three days. We all could use the break, I think.

Rereading favorites

I have a question for those of you who consider yourselves avid readers.


Do you go back and reread a favorite book?


I ask this because I've been derided in the past by people--some of whom claim they are avid readers, themselves--because I'll go back and reread a book I particularly enjoyed. Their response is, "Why? What do you think you'll get out of it that you didn't the first time?"


I usually respond, "Do you only listen to a song you like only once?" The usual reply is, "No, but that's different." I'm not sure how it's different, and no-one has been able to explain it to me so far. I've taken a lot of crap from people because of this--for some reason people seem to think it's a character defect or something.


To me, rereading a treasured book, like The Lord of the Rings, is like dropping in on old friends that one hasn't seen in a long while. Sure, I know what's coming, and there won't be any surprises, but somehow that makes it more pleasurable for me, not less. I don't necessarily read it for the plot, but for the characters I love.


So, to restate the question--do you reread books? Why or why not?