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Time and Tide and Ten and November ApproachingPosted by dhoffman on August 27th, 2009

Not a great night for writing, not even a great week for writing.  But I did write.  Well, tonight and Sunday night, at least.

So, that’s something.

Writing Chapter Ten, as I’ve been this past week or so, has been interesting.  It’s a pivotal section, and very much Show-Don’t-Tell, and while I might imagine this to be easier than  a chapter full of explication, it’s proving slow going.

Well, how many different ways have I started this chapter out?  At least a dozen, I’d wager.

The current way feels like its working.  It’s funny, actually (funny interesting, not funny ha-ha) as the more I write, the more I see places I’m things I’m going to have to go back and fix.  The temptation to quit and start working on the second draft is nearly overwhelming.

It would be easier, too.  I’d wager a ton of what I’m writing now will end up on the cutting room floor (so to speak) when I go through the second draft.  It’s a lot of placeholder stuff, is what I’m saying — my plans for the second draft and beyond are so different from what I’m already working on, what I’ve already typed, that it could almost be a different book.

Still, I’m finishing the first draft.  The manuscript is 200 pages, about 83,000 words.  I’ve got maybe two chapters to go, perhaps a wee little epilogue, and I’m done.  Hell or high water, at least I’ll have a first draft with the words THE END positioned happily at the end.

And then I get to go back and do it over again.

Or, shelve it for a while (which I really, really don’t want to do) and get cracking on Painted Ocean (which I really, really do want to do, curiously).

So it goes.  It’s almost September.  If nothing else, this has been incredibly educational.

Something else on my mind is National Novel Writing Month.  November is much closer than seems either reasonable or possible.  I can’t help but wonder if I might use NaNoWriMo to kick start myself with one project or another, or if I’ll listen to my common sense and sit it out this year (a pity, really, as I do always enjoy that desperate creative energy, especially the last day or so when I realize I’m 10,000 words in the hole).

Alrighty.  Time and tide and all that.

Chapter One Returns!Posted by dhoffman on August 21st, 2009

Well, in an interesting turn of events and after many nights of trying to figure out a way to make the fact that the sky is clear, but the air feels “laden with moisture” somehow interesting and relevant, it seems Chapter Ten is going to bear a remarkable similarity to Chapter One from my very first draft version of the book.

It’s an odd feeling, certainly.  Said original chapter — which I’ve got frittered away somewhere but I don’t think I could bear to actually read it — was a load of fun to write, and should be a wide-load of fun to write again.  The tone feels good and I’m hoping I can get a load of “what the hell was that” in there without having to resort to silly tricks.

And there you go.  The weekends have typically been lousy for writing but I figure if this really is the right way to do things, I might be eeking onto Chapter Eleven by this time next week, if not sooner.

Pretty cool.

Chapters Nine and Ten and a Decade of StoriesPosted by dhoffman on August 9th, 2009

Huh.

Well, I’ve no real idea how many words I went through, how many I’ve written and deleted and written and cut/pasted over to a backup file, but tonight I’ve finally pushed through Chapter Nine.

The ending is a wee bit freaky and scary and if I had to say something that, separate from myself, would be nice about it, I’d say it’s, “I got done in two and a half paragraphs what I was afraid I was going to have to take several pages to write”.

I mean, I think it’s good, overall, but that’s subjective.  Objectively, I’m always pleased when I feel like I’ve gotten where I need to go in fewer — in this case, put “much” in front of “fewer” — words.

On to Chapter Ten.  Know what I need to say.  No goddamn idea at all how to say it.  More’s the pity.  Our story is a hair under 80,000 words long right now and the temptation to just write, “and then this all happened and then this and then THE END” is rather strong.

But.  But Chapter Nine went some cool and interesting places I’d not foreseen.  More importantly, it was yet another great exercise in me realizing, “holy crap, five-thousand words in and I need to go back from scratch”.  Yeah, that’s always a good thing (well, it is, but it hurts when you do it).  Every time I learn that lesson, I hope and pray it’s the last time.

Chapter Ten.  Possibly some tonight.  Probably more for tomorrow night.

Also, more great ideas on Painted Ocean.  Very excited and when I say this could be a Book Series, I mean just that.  I could spend the next ten or fifteen years telling this story and that’s either deeply terrifying or wonderfully exciting or — more likely — a heaping plate of both.

Where Are My Videos?Posted by dhoffman on August 5th, 2009

Seems to be something wrong with embedding videos.  No time to fuss over it now, but I’ll get it sorted out in a day or two.

Amateur Balloon PornPosted by dhoffman on August 4th, 2009

I suppose it’s technically Not Safe For Work, but it’s really just balloons, so maybe it just depends on where you work.

Sexually explicit, an f-bomb or two and you’ll just watch and be amazed (this was an entry for The Stranger’s “Hump 5” amateur porn competition last year, I believe:

In Which The Author has, Once Again, Discarded Whole Piles of WordsPosted by dhoffman on August 3rd, 2009

This was an interesting weekend from a writing standpoint.  I had most of Saturday to myself and all I managed to accomplish was deleting four or five thousand words of text — the entirety of what was written for Chapter Nine.

This was not an easy decision.  In some ways, I really liked where the chapter was going.  But, the sad fact was, what I had wasn’t getting it done.  It was too much tell and not nearly enough show.  Oh, it was better than my first couple go’s at the thing, but it was still sloppy as hell.

So, now it’s gone.

Saturday was a work day, even if I didn’t have to leave the house to be on the job.  I spent a good amount of time sitting in my desk chair, reclined as far back as I could go, eyes closed, thinking things over.

What am I doing that’s wrong?  That was one thought.

What can I do to make it right?  Another common thread.

What wound up happening, when all is said and done, is I came up with a simpler, more elegant way of doing things.  More to the point, it should read better, and feel better as one is reading it.  The chapter (which is about 2,500 words heavy as of this writing) flows MUCH better and feels MUCH MUCH MUCH better.  It’s got an organic, natural feel which I’m hoping I can continue through to its conclusion.

It all makes sense, if you can dig that.  Like, the previous attempts relied too heavily on you, the reader, buying into the conclusions of this character or that character.  Joe says XXX so you must believe XXX is true.  The problem with that is that Joe’s explanation for XXX felt overdone.  Joe was trying to hard, or I was, by way of Mr. Prose.

That’s an example, of course.  Not a bad one, but I don’t want anyone to worry that Joe has become the Explication King, or anything.

Now, what’s happening is conclusions are being drawn, driven by action and recollection.  Characters are examining things that have happened and ar happening and, within the context of these actions, we and they are learning some neat things.

So, it works better.  It’s show and not tell.  You could do it (with some minor changes, and good acting) in a movie.  And it wouldn’t be twenty minutes of heavy-handed dialog and one character trying to convince another character that magic, for lack of a better word, really does exist.

Which is nice.  It’s a quarter to four in the morning right now and I’d keep going, push this thing to its conclusion, but the yawns have begun overtaking the not-yawns.  I have to get up in about three hours and I figure that’s as sure a sign as any that it’s time for me to hit the hay.

Plus, the pets seem ticked that we’re in the wrong room.  So it goes.