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A Long, Rambling Post (part of a series…)Posted by dhoffman on June 3rd, 2009

Today was a long day.  Not a long, hard day, just one of those days that seems to stretch forever before you, offering up no hint that you might, eventually, hit the horizon.

I spent almost the entire day in the car.

I left the house at seven in the morning, drove down to the office, drove out to New Jersey, drove back to the office, and drove home.

I was home about 2:30pm.  I had an hour long meeting somewhere in the middle there.

So, over the course of about six and a half hour in the car, I managed to drive . . . about 140 miles.

I used to commute from the South Shore of Long Island 55 miles to North Jersey.  55 miles each way, or 110 miles a day.  The ride, with traffic, could take upwards of four hours, if you hit it wrong.  On a bad day (or night) I’d drive myself crazy thinking of how slowly I was going.  How I was averaging something stupid like twelve miles per hour.

If we pretend I was in the car for seven hours today, that would mean my average speed was twenty miles per hour.  The really painful thing is, I don’t think I had that much traffic.  Maybe I’m blocking it out . . .

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I’ve got a blank Word document open on my desktop here.  I think I’m about to write the end of Chapter Seven.  I can’t explain why — which is to say, not that I don’t want to explain, but I, internally, myself, do not know why I feel this way — but I think this is the *right* way to write the close of this chapter.  There’s a good deal of stuff to “fix” from what already exists as text and I don’t want to spend time mucking with that.

Also, I’ve got a notion of what’s to come next in my head.  I want to preserve that — even if it’s wrong — and see what comes out.  It’s a simple scene, really.  I spent some time thinking about it in the car today (snicker).  So I’m going to play with that and see what happens.

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I’ve been thinking of the next four to five chapters, as well as how I want to start out Painted Ocean (and revisit Lions Together).  I had a good run at the gym today, typically a good time for creative free-association.

I’ve been writing Animals, in one form or another, for so damned long, and I wrote the first draft of Lions Together so quickly (NaNoWriMo and all) that I think I’d forgotten what it felt like to be genuinely excited about the prospect of a “new” story.  Now, that’s an unfair statement, as the current state of Animals resembles my initial idea in almost no way whatsoever (I think even the characters had different names).

Ocean is a huge, monstrous story.  It incorporates themes and ideas I’ve had bouncing around inside my head for, literally, decades.  A story I would daydream about called, “Traveler” (which probably would have been dull as hell) contributed its two cool ideas and really makes things cool.

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Today is June 4th.  I started this draft of Animals on January 5th, 2009, a pinch under five months ago.  Doing the math, I’d say there’s almost no way I could get through these last chapters in the next month.  If I had to bet, I’d say early August would probably be a safer bet (though, you never really know with this stuff).

Seven months to knock out a first draft is nothing to sneeze at.  I’m confident I can turn around and start in on revisions for the second draft as soon as I finish the first (there’s a temptation to do that now, but I really want to have a beginning, a middle and an end down on paper before I start doing that).  No idea how long the second draft will take but once that’s done — and I’ve got a pretty comprehensive list, already, of the things I feel need addressing — well, it might be time to start showing this to some folks, collecting some opinions.

And, of course, starting in on the next thing.

At any rate, I’m going to see what’s up with Galen and Kara.  I think they have things to tell me.

From Beyond the GravePosted by dhoffman on March 10th, 2009

Both figuratively and literally.

Something dumb like six or seven years ago, I had a fun idea for a little horror romp called, say it with me, “From Beyond the Grave”.  I can barely remember what the story was about, beyond the core concept, but I know I spent a while working on it before deciding I was going in the wrong direction, I suck, I need to work on something else.

I’ve been thinking about it a bit, lately.  Stewing up ideas for making it work, turning it around, etc., etc.  Trouble was, I couldn’t remember the damned name of the thing.

I knew the spirit of the name, though, which makes it doubly-annoying.  The idea — and God, I can’t believe I’m about to share this — was for this story to be one in a series of three or four books.  Maybe loosely interrelated, maybe not (depending on how things turned out).  Each one had a hokey sort of horror name (the second was, I think, “Bump In the Night” or something along those lines) and a similar aesthetic.

Well, I was motivated to go digging tonight and after a little work (I really need to reorganize my files), I turned it up.  I skimmed for a bit, feeling the usual stuff you feel going over something you decided was crap (it’s not as bad as I thought, what I was thinking, holy crap, was I serious?) but the core idea is still solid.

So, I typed up some notes in a fresh document, gave the book its own folder and moved it into the queue.  I know I’m working on Animals now and I’m pretty sure the next one is going to be Painted Ocean (though that, as with all things, is subject to change).  I wish I were working on Lions Together are Called a Pride — but I’m not.  Here is where I see that doing this stuff full-time would be beneficial.  Stealing two to three hours a night, if I’m lucky, just isn’t keeping me ahead of myself.

But, so it goes.  And, if the worst thing that happens is my writing never catches up with my ideas, I guess that’d be just fine.

Flee The Coming Snowpocalypse!Posted by dhoffman on March 2nd, 2009

I find it interesting that the more I’m looking forward to writing it, the more it seems to fight me to keep from being written.

This happened in Lions Together are Called a Pride.  There was a scene I had in my head the entire time I was writing the book.  When I finally got there (it’s about 4/5 of the way through the book) I found . . . well, not much.

Oh, the idea was solid — still is — but the words were on strike.

That’s been happening with this chapter, as well.  The ideas are solid, but I keep getting away from myself.  I’m whipping off on tangents and I need to give myself a smack upside my head to get back on track.

Gradually, slowly, I’m pulling it off.  I’ve got about five pages of rock-solid stuff (and another thirty or so pages of discarded stuff) and every day when I stop, I can’t help but feel that tomorrow it’s going to all fall into place.

And it does!  Just not the way I hope it will.

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We’ve got a pair of Winter storms hitting us tonight.  Turning on the news, one might get the impression that snow is (a) poisonous or, (b) able to melt human flesh, with the way newscasters are losing their minds over the incoming, “Snowpocalypse”.

Folks, it’s snow.

Get over it.

It’s barely even sticking, thus far.

Now, I like the snow.  I miss the kind of snow I saw during my four years at college in Wisconsin.  Further, one of my best friends just moved back to Wisconsin with his fiance last week.  I’m jealous of him and the magnificent Winters I know he’ll be enjoying up there (“enjoying” in that sentence means, “suffering through and praying for death, but in a homey sort of way”).

The Weather Channel called these storms the “Northeastern Mega Storm”.

Slow news day, folks?

Whenever I feel badly that the words are coming slowly, I just have to turn on the television and see the terrible, terrible stuff coming out of people’s mouths and then I feel a little better about my own words.

I Have No Title and I Must ScreamPosted by dhoffman on January 27th, 2009

Well, first off, obviously, this was not a great weekend for writing.

It was, however, a great weekend for other stuff.

And, I just got a new chapter — the wrong chapter, but I don’t think we should hold that against me — off to a fantastic start.

From the top, then:

I have ideas for two cool “short” projects I want to work on. I need someone more . . . artistically inclined than yours truly to make them happen. I’m talking to a couple folks, may talk to a couple more. At least one of these, I hope, will wind up on Infinitecanvas.net (one of the illustrators I talked to today was suitably wowed by the possibilities the site offers up. This should be fun).

So, that’s nice.

Additionally, I had an idea for a book I’ve been tossing around sometime. It’s sort of a “concept” book, and I have absolutely no desire to even touch it until I’ve got Animals and Lions Together in the can (or, whatever it is writers are supposed to have things in).

It’s an interesting idea and, like many interesting ideas, other interesting ideas are necessary to make it work (wow, some sentence).

And, just now, tonight, I got started on Chapter Three. Yes, I only just finished Chapter One, and yes, I desperately need to revisit said chapter . . . but I needed to write and I had a cool idea for Three.

It worked, I think. We’ll see if it continues to work under closer inspection.

I need to go over Chapter One with a fine-toothed comb. This is not something I would do normally, especially in a First Draft. I’m trying to be more meticulous, more serious (tonight’s writing to the contrary). and part of that is keeping my eye on the ball.

Chapter One, towards the end, got away from me. No fancy way to put it: it got away from me. Not in a big way, I think, but in a way that requires correcting before I can work seriously on Chapter Two.

Hopefully I’ll get to spend some time with One tomorrow. If not, I’ll continue in on Three, which is shaping up to be a pretty fun chapter.

Five Versions . . .Posted by dhoffman on January 8th, 2009

Sigh.

About a month ago my father asked me to help him get some data off an SD card he was using with his digital camera.  The details are silly, but basically he had another device he needed to get the pictures onto.  Said device had its own 8GB hard drive, but it could only read a 512MG SD card.

The SD card he had was 2GB.

So, long story short, I had to shuttled the data about 200MB at a time from his card to my PC to the smaller card to his device.

There’s a point coming, I swear.

About two weeks ago, I decided to upgrade the External HD I use to transport files between work and home (and to bring with me when I travel).  I’d been using an 8GB thumbdrive.  It was working fine, but I was starting to become concerned it might give up the ghost one day (I’d been using it for some period of time).

So, I picked up a nice 320GB Seagate Freeagent Go drive, along with a cradle for home and office, and migrated my data over.

With me so far?  Seems like a decent plan, no?

So, here’s what happened: on my work PC, the 8GB drive has been the K: drive and the Go drive became the F: drive.  The desktop shortcut, though, would misbehave from time to time and turn into an H:.

Somehow, in the process of migrating my data over, I created an identical file structure on the 256MG SD card.

And I’ve been saving things to it for the past two weeks.

But only . . . sometimes.

So, now I have the 8BG thumbdrive, the 320GB Go drive, my local files, local files from the work PC and the files from the 256MG SD card . . . and I don’t know which versions of which files are the right ones.

Sigh.

So, now I have five copies of Animals and five copies of Lions Together open on my desktop.  Luckily, as posted earlier today, neither file is very long . . . but what a pain in the ass.

A Short Stack of Paper (and its two friends)Posted by dhoffman on January 8th, 2009

I chose sleep over not-sleep last night, but I still got a good deal done before heading in.

It’s funny: a week ago I was working on a 60,000 word manuscript, hammering out the final details, feeling pretty good at how close the finish line was getting.

Today I’m about ten pages into one MS and two pages into the other.  Intellecually I know what what I have is (a) the start of a new, good story, and (b) the Second Draft of a less new, good story.  What it feels like, though, is a very small stack of paper (and two additional sheets just sort of hanging out to see what’s going on).

I’m reading Stephen King’s Duma Key.  I’m enjoying it so far.  I keep imagining what it would be like writing for a character with only one arm.  I’d be terribly self-conscious about it and probably have him picking things up with the wrong hand a cool dozen times, if not more.

Also, and I’m not far along enough to confirm or deny, so I’m not sweating spoilers, I have to wonder if Edgar Freemantle has ever heard of Issac Mendez.  I’m interested to get further into the story and see if things are as similar as they seem thus far.

A Door, A Window, A WhateverPosted by dhoffman on January 6th, 2009

An interesting and what feels like productive evening.  I said I’m not going into word counts or what’s what, and I won’t, but I will say that I’m feeling pretty good about things.

I had a mostly-agonizing day as my head is clearly interested in picking something to write, but was unwilling to show me the door to that something.  Does that make sense?  Whenever I’m starting something — whether it’s a new book, a new chapter, or just a moment in a book, I’m looking for the door, the window, some opening that lets me into the scene.

Here: you can write a main character crossing the street, getting on the subway and going downtown, and you don’t have to make it particularly interesting to convey that information.  Like, “Galen crossed the street, got on the subway and went downtown.”  Wow, awesome.

Sometimes you can get away with stuff like that.  Sometimes, though, that momeent you’re describing requires more art than that.  Maybe it’s an important decision, crossing the street and getting on that subway.  Maybe Galen doesn’t like riding the subway, or he feels silly going downtown when he thinks he should be going home.

At those times, there’s an opening you have to find that’s just the exact, right, perfect, appropriate way to describe the scene.  Sometimes it comes easy.  Other times . . . not so much.

Starting out Lions Together was like that.  I knew I needed Gabe and Nikki on a plane together.  But how to get them there?  Are they driving to the airport?  Checking luggage?  Are they the kind of people who’e check luggage for a weekend trip (no, they’re not)?  Or maybe just start them out as they’re getting into their seats, stowing their carry-ons.

Those little decisions an author makes a million times in the course of a story are what makes the story interesting to read.  For the most part, they’re unquantifiable to boot.  There’s no “right” way to describe someone walking across the street, getting on the subway and going downtown.  It has to fit the particular circumstance and that circumstance’s greater context.

So a slide-rule isn’t going to help much.

At any rate, I might have found one such door tonight.  I’ll check it out tomorrow and see if I still feel that way, but right now I’m feeling alright, yes I am.

The “Between” Chapter Lives!Posted by dhoffman on January 3rd, 2009

So, I wrote a bit more and got that feeling like I was typing the same word over and over again (to no effect), so I scrapped all that and set to work on that “between” chapter I’d been thinking about.

Turns out that was a really good idea.  Course, it creates a new problem, but I’ll deal with that in due course of time.

About a thousand words for that, plus about another three-hundred I’ll likely keep elsewhere (some for the end of Chapter Fifteen, some that’ll come into play in whatever the “next” chapter becomes).

Of course, now I have things that don’t-so-much match, but I can get along with that.

Two Books In My Head is One Too ManyPosted by dhoffman on January 3rd, 2009

I’ve been working on Lions Together for the past few days, trying to push things through these last few chapters and bring the story to its conclusion.

There have been . . . problems.

Not with the writing, no.  I sit down and the words come and that’s very nice.

The problem — aside from my throbbing desire to be writing Beautiful Handcrafted Animals — is that I just spent about a month thinking about Lions Together and there are massive and sprawling things I need to redo in the Second Draft.  That I can envision these things as clearly as I can is making writing the end of the First Draft WITHOUT factoring those things in . . . interesting, to say the least.

For example: towards the middle of the book, Nikki finds herself sort of shanghaied.  Maybe not the absolute techincal term, but go with me here.  The problem I’m having is she leaps from that situation right to another situation where she’s held against her will.  This feeds into the resolution of the story, so it’s a good thing, but leaping from one sitation to the other feels sort of . . . bland.

Like, she moves from one cell to another (figuratively) and there needs to be something more in the middle there.  So I have a way to do that, but we’re talking two or three chapters in my past now.  I don’t NEED to write it now — I have it in notes — but if I know I’m going to write it, it feels like it’s already part of the story (if that makes sense).

And, we’re talking about another chapter or two of story popping in there.  It’ll be interesting and let me do some fun stuff with Nikki, but it’ll also bridge these two circumstances in a more reasonable way.

I was tempted to write it this way back the end of November, but it felt sort of clunky at the time.  Rough.  There was a lot to work out and NaNoWriMo was looming overhead.

But that’s where I find myself now.  I have 3-4 chapters to write, figure about 40-50 pages, or something along the lines of another 15,000 to 20,000 words, but there’s a part of me that wants to go back and start fixing all the broken stuff.

If I didn’t have a full-time job, a wife, and other things dragging on my time, I could pound this all out in about week.

There’s also this temptation: summarize what you want to do, maybe write a section or two and then shelf the thing.  Start in on Animals and do what you want with that and come back to fix this (i.e. rewrite it from Page 1, but slowly and with more care than November tends to allow) once the First Draft of Animals (or, the Tenth Draft, I suppose) is finished.

It’s a rough crossroads.  Made worse in that I’m not sure if my obstinance to finish Lions Together isn’t counter-productive.

I’m forging ahead.  I still think of how I let Animals slide after last year’s NaNoWriMo and I don’t want to have that happen again.  I’m keeping notes on what I want to fix when I go back to Lions Together and hopefully this will all be for the best.

Still an Idiot, But At Least I Have a WordcountPosted by dhoffman on December 30th, 2008

So, I deleted about 100 words from the start of Chapter Fifteen and then wrote 1,245 words.  I sort of petered out in the middle of a sentence about security cameras (don’t ask), but I think I found my way back in.

There are two dangers, I find, with National Novel Writing Month (for me, at least).  The first is that the breakneck pace of pounding out 50,000+ words in a single, crowded, 30-day period tends to leave one feeling drained at the end of that month.  It happened to me last year and I never really got my act together until the following November.

The second danger is that I’m focusing so hard on writing that I’m not focusing on WHAT I’m writing.  Which is not to say that the core of what’s down is bad, it’s just that when I actually set down to get back into it, if I’m being more thoughtful and considerate of where I’m going . . . it’s tough to get back in.

More than a year later, I’ve just now figured out how to get back into Animals.  My thoughts on that are so all-encompassing it’s actually a little torturous going back to Lions.  Well, it was.  Then I was walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, contemplating bagging it for the evening and playing some World of Warcraft when I came up with a great way to skip what I wasn’t enjoying, what felt like more of the same (as in, “more of what the last five chapters were filled with”) and get into some cool, new, interesting stuff.

Turns out it worked, and while I do wish I was on Animals, I also enjoyed immensely, being back with Nikki.

I should be parked in front of the computer again tomorrow.  I don’t know if I expect to get thousands and thousands of words, but I’ll be happy just moving the story forward again.  I’m about 1/3 through the chapter with a pretty clear line of what’s coming next.

Oh, and for whatever it’s worth, this month of introspection on Lions Together and Animals has given me a pretty clear idea of where I go on both stories.  Lions Together needs — NEEDS — massive rewrites, but I think I know where that needs to happen.  For example, a lot of Chapter Two has to go.  It’s clunky and it has characters I don’t think we’re ever going to see again.

Regardless, I’m going again.  Maybe not full steam ahead but really, full steam ahead is kind of rough trade, when you get right down to it.  I don’t have a deadline, artificial or not, and I’m just enjoying the ride.