Why, Hello There!

Damn, it's been quite some time since I've posted. As promised, I'm bad with keeping a regular schedule, especially when there's not much new going on with my writing. I'm still writing every day, usually in the morning before I go to work. I'm still working on the same novel I've been writing for quite some time.

Unfortunately, I had a little setback with the WIP, a story that I'm calling "Walk a Web of Spiders". I was hoping to have the third draft done by now. If you've been playing along, you'll say, "Hey...weren't you working on something called 'Air'?" Yeah well...I was...I am. The set back was that I got about halfway through with the third draft of my WIP, and realized that I wasn't happy with the direction it was going. The first half was fine, but the main plot really started kicking in during the second half, and that (I think) had the potential to sink the whole damn thing. Therefore, I pretty much scrapped the main plot and started rewriting the second part from scratch. Luckily, it didn't impact the first part much at all. So all of you beta readers who read the first part of "Air", you'll be happy (I hope) to hear that what you read won't change (except for the feedback I'll incorporate). So currently, I'm about 3/4 of the way done with the story's 2nd half, which... if my math is right, is ... ah nevermind.

One thing I've been having a lot of fun with is Google Plus's #SaturdayScenes, a community started by +John Ward where writers can share their work with fellow writers and get very useful feedback. This feedback has been so helpful with my writing. Case in point, I've been sharing the aforementioned WIP scene by scene over the past few months, and the community members really seemed to respond well to one of the subplots... So well, in fact, that it made me rethink (and eventually rewrite) the rest of the story.

As I said, the first half of the story won't change too much, except for the normal progression through the revision process. That part of the story I'm comfortable calling the '3rd draft'. I'm going to periodically post scenes to Wattpad. Feedback is always welcomed and appreciated!

That's about it. I'll try to keep up with the blog more, but again... no promises.

Thanks for reading!

-- Tim.

Revision Process and Other Things

As always, the two weeks I promised in the previous post has turned into a few months. I'd apologize but I know for a fact that I haven't learned my lesson. I'll prove that five months from now when I post again.

In all seriousness, there hasn't been much going on until now. So I haven't had much reason to post. My nose has been to the grindstone, if you will, and that's good. Right?

First, the novel. 'Air'. The first draft has been completed! I did as I said: I buttoned up characters, timelines, plots, etc. The plan worked out really well for me. In the end, a few scenes had to be added, others cut. Now it flows, at least as much as first drafts are supposed to. There's one thing I decided not to do.

After printing out the entire thing, a phone-book-sized work of 630 pages, I decided to simply put it on a shelf and not show anyone. No one. Not even myself. There's a lot of good advice out there on the 'Googles' about editing. One such article is from Wendy Mass's blog post. I plan to lean on it quite a bit when the time is right. But the time isn't right. I'm going to wait. I figure, how can I edit something from an outsider's perspective when I lived it for three months straight. The last part of the each sentence would pop in my head before my eyes got there. So I put the first draft aside. It'll sit on my bookshelf, tucked in among works by Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Peter Abrahams and others until July 1st. With luck, maybe some form of osmosis will happen, but even if it doesn't, I'll crack it open at the beginning of July, red pen at the ready. So what to do until then? That leads me to my next bit of news.

I've been writing a short story for the past few weeks, and as of last Saturday, it's been in the hands of my beta readers. They've been amazingly helpful. While I definitely need to fine tune the thing, the good news is that the story isn't too far off key. My goal is to coral all the feedback, make necessary changes and start submitting the story by July 1st. This story, by the way, is called 'For Davey'. I added a synopsis to the Stories and Novels page.

That's it! I promise to post status updates about both the novel revision progress as well as the short story submission status. But notice that I'm not promising as to when.

Thanks for reading!

-- Tim

First Draft Completed, Now What?

Good evening all!

I'm back from a long, long, long hiatus from the blog, but it was for the best of reasons. I spent every day since early December working on a new project, the first draft of a story that I'm calling 'Air'. I set a weekly word goal of 7,777 words  (don't ask me why...seemed like a good a number as any), and each week I made sure that I hit or surpassed my goal.

I'm here to tell you that I've done it! I now stand at the far end of that tunnel, the four-month-long tunnel in which we spoke in front of at the time of my last post, when I said that I was going to be starting a new project soon. Do you see me leaning in from behind its stony lip? Can you make out that thing I'm waving in my hand while I grin a victorious grin? Well, I'll tell you. It's a completely-finished first draft! And it's so much more. It's 129,000 words worth of clay. There's some semblance of what it can become. I can see it even now, though to most it is still lost in the pudgy, shapeless folds that looks more like mechanically separated chicken than anything else. That's okay. I am armed with my scalpel... ready to carve something beautiful that everyone (hopefully) can enjoy. And yes...it's a bit daunting.

You see, I've written a few short stories before, two of which have gotten published in magazines. I've written the first draft of a 100k novel but it was full of dead ends and obstacles that were too mountainous for my level of experience. I (temporarily) put it aside. Some day, I'll go back to it, I swear. For now, my experience with actual editing stops with the completion of those aforementioned short stories. 5K words compared to what I'm looking at with 'Air'...big difference... a helluva big difference.

I've been doing a lot of research on different methods of editing. A lot of what I'm planning is being pulled directly from Chuck Wendig's playbook. You can find it here. It's a great and very helpful post, one every hopeful writer should read.

One of Chuck's first suggestions is to get feedback from beta readers. OK, great. But there's a problem already. I've shown up to the marathon, just shy of the gunshot that will start me barreling towards the finish line, only to realize that I left my damn running shoes at home. My story is chock full of unfinished scenes, plot holes and dialogue so far out there that a conversation between two crack whores would seem more intellectual. Some characters have mullets and drug problems in scene 10, but then are corporate CEOs with sexy last names by scene 20. I won't even go into all the time paradoxes and location inconsistencies.

So what am I to do? I can't send this slosh of horse manure to beta readers. It'll make their head explode, and that won't help me. I think I have a plan figured out. Before I'm ready for beta readers, I will take care of the following:

• Characters: For each of the major and minor characters, create a character-detail page. This page will have descriptive information, personality information, history, notes, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Create a keyword out of the character's full name and link it to this detail page. (I use Scrivener, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Click here for an idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to keywords. Then search all scenes for that character. If the character has a relevant presence in a scene, attach the character's keyword to the scene. After visiting all of those scenes, you'll not only have a comprehensive list of all scenes in which this character participates, you'll also have the description page instantly available to make sure all the character info jives across all the scenes. I'll then do this for all the characters...well...all the characters that deserve it.
• Timeline: Create a timeline on a separate page that has all the major and the more important minor events that take place in the story. Also include the ages of the participating characters when these events occurred. Shuffle the scenes around to the proper order based off the timeline (Again...Scrivener to the rescue. One of the beauties of Scrivener is the ability to easily move scenes around).
• Marking Plots/Subplots: This goes hand in hand with the timeline bullet. Just as I created keywords for the characters, create keywords for the plots/subplots and attach them to the scenes as well. The beauty here is that if I want to navigate a particular plot from beginning to end to see how it flows, I can do a search for that plot's keyword and be shown only the scenes that have that keyword attached. Awesomeness to the nth degree!
• Places: Create a keyword for all the relevant places that pop up more than once in the story and attach it to the scenes where the location is mentioned. Also create a location-description page if necessary and attach the keyword there as well. Just like for the characters, what we have is an easy way to find all the relevant scenes and make sure the descriptions all jive. 

I think that after I complete these things, the draft will be ready to see the light of day... at least to a select few beta readers. At that point, I'd love to share how the process worked (or not). Give me a two weeks or so...I'll be back

Thanks for reading!

--Tim

'A Taste' and Other Happenings

It's been quite a time since I've updated my blog, but that's okay. I've been busy with the good stuff... writing.

First and foremost, I am excited to say that my short story, A Taste, has been published in the December issue of an awesome magazine called Under the Bed magazine. You can download it to your Kindle, Nook or directly from the magazine's website. No matter what your source, please be kind and leave a review!

In my drunken state of euphoria, I'm giving away The Death Bump, another short story of mine. You can download it here. If you like what you read, I definitely encourage you to buy the December issue of Under the Bed magazine.

In other news... NaNoWriMo went very well. I managed to get over 60k worth of words done in The Sorcerer's Paragon: Book 2. My goal was to write 2k words a day, and I made sure that I stuck to it. I think outlining the entire book beforehand helped a great deal. I used the snowflake method, a method that I described in an earlier post.

As I mentioned in that post, I followed the snowflake method to the letter. While it had its positives, I have to admit that in the long run (in my case anyway), the negatives piled up higher. I got the point where I was so concerned with hitting each part of the outline that my character's own voice got a bit muted in the process. I ignored his input. I didn't let him lead the dance, which was stupid on my part because it is, after all, his dance. The poor guy is little more than a marionette on a string, a cardboard cutout going through the motions instead of being a living, breathing entity. The whole damn thing discouraged me enough to put the WIP aside for the time being.

But that's okay. It's only temporary. I'll fix it sooner than later. And besides, it gave me incentive to begin something that has been thickening in my mind for quite some time, something that I'm really excited about. I began drafting another story that I'm calling Air for the time being. Eventually, I'll go back to Book 2 and complete the first draft, but I feel like I need to get some of Air on virtual paper. This one will be done in the pantser mentality. I have an idea of where I want it to go and a very rough idea of how the characters might get there. I have some of their back story figured out, but I'm looking forward to being surprised by them.

Ok. Back to NaNoWriMo and lessons learned. I learned the importance of sticking to a schedule. Even when my muse decided to leave me by the wayside, even when I was feeling as creative as a freakin' rock, I forced myself to sit at my desk and simply put one word after another until I reached my daily goal. Sometimes the tap refused to loosen, and I struggled for each and every drop. Other times the words poured out like a flood onto the paper. No matter what, I didn't call it a day until I got my 2k words down.

I think I can sum up the importance of keeping to a writing schedule by leaving you with two very good quotes from two very good authors.

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

- Stephen King


“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”

― W. Somerset Maugham


Good stuff, right? That's all for now!


Thanks for reading!

-- Tim