Tag: author

“Don’t get it right, get it written!”

“it is the most inspirational video on the topic I have seen, and I have seen hundreds….”

My mind is numb.  I don’t want to write tonight.  I have an I.V. drip of coffee going just to keep myself awake.  I am tired.  I haven’t touched my 2000 word goal for the day on the Blue Daunia series, and I am actually just a bit loathe to do so.  Not because I don’t love the characters and their quirks and dialects, and not because I am in any way bored with the plot (in fact nothing could be further from the truth).  It’s just a simple matter of the fact that it is now 9pm (in my part of the world) and I have just worked a 10.5 hour day at my “day job.”

I feel drained.  I even had a hell of a time coming up with a topic for this very blog post (but then I figured I’d just write about that and the reasons behind it).

But I will write.  I will strive to hit my word goal for the series.  One thing compels me forward.  One thing wills me on.  And I wish I could say it was some grand notion of the nobility of the sense of duty, or some ultra-powerful work ethic instilled deep within me.  But it’s none of these things.  It’s far more simpler than that.  In fact, it’s something you can gift yourself with as well!  (Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell ya anything… except my book, but the gift I’m discussing in this particular post is absolutely free!).

Simply put, it is this video:  Don’t Get it Right, Get it Written, from a YouTube channel called Film Courage.  It is aimed primarily at screenplay writers, but the knowledge, wisdom and abounding inspiration applies easily to the narrative prose form, or any writing, for that matter!  If you’re a writer, the first minute and six seconds alone should be enough to kick you into gear, but if that doesn’t get you going, the next two hours and eighteen minutes will pound your brain into submission.

The premise, distilled down to its essence, is a mesmerizing embellishment of the “butt in the chair” principle of writing, as in sit your butt in the chair and get at it!  To that effect, it is also the most inspirational video on the topic I have seen, and I have seen hundreds.  My overall mission for the blog, although I sometimes wander astray, is to help writers along their journeys toward indie publishing, and in that regard I’m here to tell ya, this video is something you absolutely need to watch if you have any struggles whatsoever with self-discipline toward the notion of just getting it done.

The video tackles other topics as well, such as fear of rejection, self-doubt, self-loathing and self-confidence, and the majestic accomplishment of completing a first draft.

Yet the core of the message rings true throughout:  Damn the excuses, damn the doubt, treat this as a job (the best job in the world) and “clock in!”

The channel itself has a plethora of other videos on the topic, which, again, is geared toward screenwriters, but I have yet to hear a single word during any of the interviews that couldn’t apply to any form of writing.  The channel’s other topics, for example, include character, dialogue, story, villains, and emotional impact.  If you are a writer of any sort, I cannot recommend this channel enough.

And if you’re having trouble just plopping yourself down in front of your keyboard or notebook and going at it, this video will take you to that coveted place you mentally need to be.

Playing with Mental Toys: Introduction from Blue Daunia Issue #1

The following is from the Introduction of  Blue Daunia  Issue #1:  Dark Tides of Illunstrahd.  To me, it illustrates the usefulness of flights of childhood fancy as they relate to the ongoing process of the creation of narrative fiction.

By the middle of childhood, somewhere amid the 1980s, I had amassed a sizeable collection of action figures from various movies, cartoons, comics and other genres.  A vast majority are probably still buried somewhere deep within the confines of my old bedroom and its small closet in my childhood home, and without knowing the exact number of the toys, I would comfortably put the estimate at somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 80 pieces, possibly more.  The sizes of the figures among the various intellectual properties were largely incompatible: some were just over three inches tall, while others neared the realm of my sister’s Barbies, and they ran the gamut of all sizes in-between.  Some of them only had articulation at the shoulders and hips, while others could be made to assume all manner of action poses for kung-fu goodness.

I had my fair share of neighborhood friends, and a great many hours were spent outdoors, playing the usual range of action-heavy games of make-believe and sports alike.  Metabolisms and imaginations soared sky-high in those days, and yet I was perfectly content at home as well, left to my own whims and flights of fancy at times… and that’s where the action figures got their time in the spotlight of my youth.

I mentioned the varying sizes and intellectual properties of my collection, but I’ll have you know that this never once posed a problem for me, because hardly ever did I see fit to use the figures as part of their intended worlds and stories.  On the contrary, I invented my own worlds and stories, my own universe, in which these beings existed and in which they came to life with all the strengths and flaws and quirks and mannerisms I could bestow upon them.  Sure, Luke and Han were occasionally allowed to be Luke and Han, if that was my momentary whim, but the vast majority of my time spent playing with the figures was spent creating new personas and new worlds.

It’s not that I didn’t love the hell out of the movies and shows and books these figures hailed from.  It’s just that I took these forms of storytelling to heart as lessons just as much as entertainment, if not more so.  Each new struggle on the screen was a lesson in intrigue through character limitations, each unfolding conflict in a comic book was a lesson in dramatic pacing and plot development and revelation, and every episode and issue, whether self-contained or to-be-continued, was a lesson in how to use the episodic structure to enhance continuity, canon, and bit-by-bit worldbuilding.  I took the figures and truly made them my own universe (or two or three), size and shape be damned.  Long story short:  I didn’t just play with action figures, I created with action figures.

And here, decades later, although the figures themselves are long buried and forgotten, I’m still doing it.  That’s what the following pages are.  That’s what they’re all about.  The story you are about to read, and its (hopefully numerous) continuations, are nothing more than a grown man “playing with action figures” in a certain manner of speaking.  I am a writer today not only because of the countless movies, books, television shows and comics I have consumed, but because the resulting toy lines, for all their cash-grabbing reasons for existing, allowed me to consume these properties in the most creative and enjoyable way possible.

My only hope is that you enjoy the result as much as I enjoyed the creation, because I genuinely and thoroughly loved the process… and because it really was just a form of playtime.

First Draft, First Chapter of Untitled Work

Thomas Sowell sat at his desk in the room of his apartment which he called his office, trying to get his word-count achieved for the day.  He called it the “office” because he had to call it that.  If he did not, he would never take it seriously enough to get any work done, and as a self-publishing author, this would prove fatal.  In times past he had called it his “library,” his “playroom,” and “the alcove,” each bearing a different meaning upon his soul at different times of his life.

The room oversat the staircase of the second-story apartment, and was positioned as the front-most area of the dwelling, with a towering, five-foot-wide window overlooking the outside world.  His desk faced the west wall of the room, the balcony above the staircase to his right, and the giant window at his left.

On a hot, breezy mid-afternoon in August, he had the window open so that he could listen to the birds of late summer.  This, he thought, would serve as a form of white noise to help him tackle a few chapters of the science fiction adventure he was attempting… something about a girl on a boat.  Just over an hour into the attempt, however, he allowed his mind to open up to distractions, and, when the TV on his desk was off, his wandering focus usually turned toward the window.

The outside view was nothing spectacular.  The apartment was along the backside of the back-most building of the complex, and the window overlooked, in order: the sidewalk, a grassy knoll, a black chain-link fence, more knoll, a ten-foot drop-off, and the parking lot of the back-most buildings of a completely different apartment complex.  On this particular afternoon, it was something in that neighboring complex which caught his straying attention.

A white mini-van pulled up to one of the apartments, and a girl or woman too far away to be of discernible age hopped out of the driver’s side.  Dressed in pink Capri pants and a sleeveless blue denim shirt, her long blonde hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail.  Based on what he could tell of her general shape and demeanor of motion, she could not have been more than forty nor younger than twenty.

Thomas watched as she opened the rear hatch of the mini-van and pulled out a blue plastic crate of various books and movies from among a few other crates.  With a certain touch of grace which he found himself admiring, she walked around the vehicle and up the three short steps to an apartment door.  He watched to see if she would knock or if she would struggle with the crate to produce keys from her pocket.  She produced keys.  She fumbled with the lock and handle, pushed the door open with her foot, and disappeared behind the self-closing door which did so with a dull thud he could hear even across the distance.

He swiveled his office chair back around to face his computer, and thought a bit about how to get the girl on the boat to escape the clutches of an impending peril facing her crew.  He had just rested his fingertips on their familiar positions along the keyboard when he heard the dull thud again.  The sudden turning of his head toward the window stung his neck a bit.

The girl or woman was back outside, this time with a tiny black and white dog which hopped around not unlike a rabbit.  Whether a chihuahua or a Boston, he could not tell, but he admired the way in which it never seemed to hop very far from her for something without a leash.  It bounded freely, but close to its human, who sat herself down on the front stoop and began thumbing around on her smartphone.  Thomas watched to see if she would call someone, a significant other perhaps, or if she would just keep thumbing as though merely navigating a social app.  She kept thumbing.  The dog-rabbit cocked a leg and relieved itself on a nearby shrub.

He thought about turning once again to his writing, but decided to watch her stand back up and retrieve another plastic crate from her trunk… this one filled with shoes and a couple of hats.  She gave a curt whistle to the doggit, who followed her to and through the self-closing door.  Another dull thud.  If she comes back out, he thought, I’m taking action.  He paused for a moment to wonder what he had even meant by “action.”

He turned to take a shot at a paragraph or two, thought about the leftover Chinese food in the fridge, and resigned himself to make the short trek to the kitchen for at least a can of soda and to start a pot of coffee.  Mid-trek he paused to look at his own tiny dog, asleep on the sofa… a beige chihuahua named Tom Petty, simply because that was the name he had wanted to give her at the time he picked her up as a small pup from the breeder.  Regardless of whether he had picked out a male or a female that day, its name was going to be Tom Petty.

The fridge was disappointingly bare by the time he got to it, which he took harder than normal not only because he lived alone (with Tom Petty and an orange cat), but because he had had the money and opportunity to grocery shop yesterday but had decided to pick up an extra shift at the deli instead.  At least the Chinese food was there for him if he wanted it, which at the time he decided he did not.  For now, a fresh pot of Chock Full O’ Nuts, and a zero soda while it brewed, would suffice.

He made his way back toward the office, putting a hand on Tom Petty along the way to make sure she was still breathing.  Whether she was five or six years of age he could not remember.  He had acquired her with a bit of the severance money he received when he was let go by the bankrupted grocery chain, and could not now remember if it had been five or six years past.  He knew it wasn’t quite time to say goodbye to her, but he also didn’t like to think about the hands of time moving ever forward against her.  For now, she was still breathing.  Lazy as hell, he thought, but still breathing.

Sitting the soda on his desk, he checked the window, running his fingers along the hard, hot mesh of the screen.  No sign of the girl.  Mini-van still there.  The boat, imbedded in the text of the computer screen, still in peril.  He sat.  He typed.  He stopped.  The birds had ceased chirping, just as they had done every day at 3:27 for the past five days, and he had no idea why.  He committed the cardinal writing sin of firing up the browser, but only for the purpose of putting on some Dylan for background music to replace the birds.  If there was anything that could see a girl on a ship safely out of peril, it was Dylan.

Dull thud.  He turned.  She was there, opening the rear hatch again.  Another crate, this time hot pink.  He rose, pulled up the mesh screen, and leaned out beyond the edge.

“Hey!” he yelled.  She looked up.  “Hey!  Need any help?”

She looked left and right. And finally back toward him.  “No, I got it, thanks!” she yelled back.  She started back toward the apartment, leaving the hatch open.  He could see that there were only three more crates remaining, but God knows what all else potentially crammed into the back rows of the van.

“I really don’t mind!” he yelled out.  A couple of dogs began to bark in the distance.

She paused, turned toward him, and put a hand above her brow to block the sunlight.  “I don’t know you!”

“I know!” he yelled.

“We can all hear you!” someone else bellowed.

He scrambled to get his slip-resistant deli shoes on.  They were a bit on the ugly side for social endeavors, but they were slip-ons and made for good get-out-fast shoes.  Tom Petty looked up and tilted her head sideways as Thomas dashed down the stairway and out through the front door.  He scaled the fence, scraping his arm on one of the loose links at the top, and tumbled down onto the grassy knoll.  Surveying the drop-off into the adjoining parking lot, he discerned that it was more seven feet than ten, and hopped down, landing harder than he anticipated and crumpling to the asphalt.  He grabbed his ankle and writhed.

“Oh my God,” he heard the girl say after a gasp.  Seconds later, she was upon him.  “Are you okay?”  She sat the hot pink crate down beside him.

He grimaced and looked up, squinting partly from the pain and partly from the sunlight searing into his brain.  “I’m Thomas,” he grunted.  “Thomas Sowell.  No relation to the economist.  My friends call me Tom.”

“An economist?”

“Yes,” he said, rising to his feet and hopping lightly on one foot.  “But no relation.”

He could see plainly now that she was probably in her late twenties, and a bit more attractive than he initially realized.  She probably had someone.  All the bit more attractive ones usually did.

“I’m Claudia,” she said, looking quizzically upon his hopping.

“Just Claudia?”

“Well, I don’t know who all else I would be.”

“No, I meant your last name.”

“I know what you meant.  I just don’t know who you are.”

“Thomas So–”

“Thomas Sowell, yes… I know.  No relation to an economist.”

“Right.  I was just wondering if you needed any help… with the crates, I mean.”

She glanced over her shoulder back toward the mini-van.  “Look, I don’t mean to come across as rude, but I don’t know you.”

“You’re not a racist, are you?”

She tilted her head, not unlike Tom Petty had done moments ago.  “Uhm… you’re white too.”

“Oh I know,” he said.  “I just don’t marry racists.”

She laughed softly.  “Look, it was nice meeting you.  I guess we’re going to be neighbors.”  She looked up at the concrete wall topped by the grassy knoll, and the fence just beyond it.  “Well, relatively speaking.  But I think I can manage.  The crates, I mean.  I just wanted to make sure you were okay.  You landed kinda hard.”

“I’ll be okay,” he said, extending his hand.  She shook it.

“Anyway, I better get back to it.  I’m expecting the moving company any minute.”  She turned and headed back toward her apartment.

“You didn’t say ‘no’,” he called out to her back.

“Excuse me?”  She paused and turned to look at him again.

“To the marriage proposal.  You didn’t say ‘no’.”

“Right,” she said.  “I’ll get back to you on that.  Have a nice rest of the day.”  She turned and continued her short trek.

“Okay.”  He put a hand up.  She didn’t see it.

He tested the ankle with just a touch of weight.  The pain shot up into his brain, and he suddenly realized that, other than the wall he couldn’t scale and the fence he could no longer climb, he had no idea where the proper entrance to this complex might be, or how far away it was.  The pain subsided for a brief moment by the excitement of her turning back toward him yet again.

“You know,” she said, “you didn’t propose to me.”

“I didn’t?”

“No, you didn’t.  You just said you wouldn’t marry a racist.”

“Damn.  I thought I had nailed that on originality alone.”

“It was original,” she said.

“I’ll get back to you on that.”  He tried to put weight on the tender ankle and scrunched his face up from the shot of agonizing pain.  Not wanting to fall again in front of her, he knelt quickly on his good knee and propped himself on both hands.

“Oh, shit,” she said.  “You’re really hurt, aren’t you?”

He looked up into her eyes.  “I never fake a botched proposal.”  He held her gaze and could almost see her thoughts churning behind the hazel-green eyes.

“Is there someone I can call for you?”

“Good idea.”  He reached into his pocket, putting more weight upon his propping hand.  “I left my phone upstairs.”  He rolled over to a sitting position.

“I could call an ambulance.”

“Don’t bother.  I’ll manage.  You’ve got your work to do.”

“You can’t even walk,” she said.  “Let me at least call an Uber or a taxi or something.”

“My wallet is up there, too.  I don’t want you to have to pay for anything.”

“Oh, I didn’t intend to.”

They sat and stood in silence in the bright sun of the afternoon, neither knowing what more to say.  Every few seconds, he glanced up into her eyes.  Again he could tell that she was deep in thought.  Finally, she broke the silence.

“Come on, I’ll help you to my van.  If I drive you around to your apartment, will you promise me you’ll find a way to the E.R.?”

“I suppose that would be the wise thing to do.  Do you always ask for promises from strangers?”  He rubbed his swelling ankle as gently as he could.  “Or invite them into your van?”

She extended an arm out to him.  “Well, I guess for a moment you can be Thomas Sowell, not the economist, instead of a stranger.”

He grunted as she pulled him up and awkwardly allowed him to lean himself upon her, putting one of his arms around her shoulders.  “And you’re Claudia… just Claudia.”  They hobbled off together toward the van.  “You know, I feel this is the closest we’ve been in quite a while.”

“Who are you?”  She opened the passenger door for him and helped him into the small dog bed on the seat.  “Oh, you’re on the–… nevermind.  I don’t wanna ask you to move again.”

The van smelled like a mix of lilac and lavender.  That girl-car smell, he thought.  He reached a hand to press the eject button on the CD player.  “What are we listening to today?”  He took the CD as it emerged.

“Hey!  Cut it out!”  She popped his arm and made him wince from the sting of it.  “Oh my God, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean for that to be that hard.”

“Boys II Men?  Seriously?”

“What’s wrong with Boys II Men?”  She grabbed the CD from him and put it into its case from the center console, her face turning a shade of red.

“Nothing, I guess.  I just had you pegged for Taylor… for some reason.”

“James or Swift?”  She cranked the van and looked behind her as she backed out.

“Both,” he said.  “Either.”

“Yes to one, no to the other.”  She shifted into first gear and slowly started through the complex.

“Ah,” he said.  “But yes to which?  No to which?”

“You figure it out.”  She shook her hands with the palms still resting on the steering wheel.

“That could take some time.”

They navigated the apartment complex with no music, and in relative silence.  He tried in the meantime to decipher whether it was good or bad that she had had no response to his last comment.

“So where are you moving from?” he asked as they turned onto the public roadway.

“Michigan,” she said.  In one block, they were at the entrance of his complex.

“Michigan?  What brings you all the way to Alabama?”

“Do you have the gate key-card?”

“Sorry, no.”

She let out something between a growl and a sigh, and he tensed at her legitimate impatience.

“Relax,” he said.  The keypad code is 4381-asterix.”

“It’s not you,” she said as she punched in the numbers.  “It’s just been a long day.”  The gate swung slowly open and they rolled through and into the maze of buildings.

“And I’ve added to it,” he said.

“Where are we going?  Tell me the turns.”

“Right, at this next turn.”

“No, you haven’t added to it.  If anything you’ve been a distraction from it.”  She took the turn.  “Totally bizarre, but a distraction.”

“The next two rights and then a left.  That bad a day?  It must be, if all this doesn’t cut it as a low point.”

“Well, Thomas Sowell, it’s not every day a non-economist falls from the sky and breaks his ankle right there in front of you,” she said, following his directions.

“It’s not broken.  That’s–… I think it’s probably not broken.  There’s a good chance.”

“Nah, if it was broken, you’d know.  Believe me, you’d know.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Oh yes.  Yes indeed.”

“This one,” he said.  “Pull up right here.”

They parked, and she came around to help him out.  He counted himself lucky to again be leaning upon her, his arm draped over her shoulders.  They made their way around the back side of the building to his front door, and he leaned on it and stared at her for a few long seconds.

“Well, this is me,” he said.  “And that’s you.”  He pointed beyond the fence and the drop-off, toward her apartment door.

“Small world,” she said.  “So, you’re good now?”

“Yeah, I’m good.  Listen, I really appreciate it.  Taking the time and all.”  A moving truck pulled up in front of her apartment.

“Least I could do, Thomas Sowell.”  She turned to wave at the truck.  “Hey!  Up here!”

“Did we come to the wrong place?” one of the two men emerging from the truck yelled out.

“No!  I’ll be over in just a minute!”  She turned back to Thomas.  “Let me know how everything turns out, will you… with the ankle.”

“Oh, you bet.  Hey, you never did tell me what brought you all the way from Michigan, Just Claudia.”

“Weston,” she said.  “Claudia Weston.  And that could take some time.”  She smiled faintly and waved as she began to walk off.  He waved back and stood there, leaning on the door, watching her as she walked around the corner.

A handful of seconds turned into a handful of minutes as he watched the white mini-van pull back up in front of its new apartment.  He remained propped long enough to watch her interact with the men from the moving company, and eventually disappear through the door, the dog-like thing bouncing at her feet as she entered.

He smiled to himself, despite the pain in his ankle.  He turned slowly on his good leg and pushed down on the latch of the door, realizing that he had it set to auto-lock upon closing, and that the keys were on his desk.

“Well, fuck.”

Excuses, Excuses (pt 1)

“You don’t have to verbally paint the picture of a perfect summer day, or embellish every detail of a small New York apartment. . . just tell us a good story.”

“But what if this isn’t any good?”

Re-read it.  How does it sound, in your mind?  Does it make you cringe?  It happens more often than you might think.  But here’s the thing:  That’s fine!  Believe it or not, if we don’t acknowledge our mistakes (such as our cringe-worthy writing), we can never hope to improve.  And if we give up entirely, there won’t be anything to improve upon.  But ask yourself this:  “Who am I writing this for?”  If your answer fits squarely along the lines of “a potential future audience, hopefully of millions,” then guess what. . . they haven’t read it yet!  And they’re not going to, until you publish it.  So if you just hammered out a chapter, chances are not all of it will make you cringe when you re-read it.  Some of it, you might actually be quite proud of.  And for those passages that do make you cringe, you can re-write them!  That’s what the editing/revising phase is for.  As you tackle a session, trying to reach a word-count goal or a time goal, give yourself permission to write badly.  It is far better to do so, and edit later, than to just give up on a project and not write at all.  In two months or in five years, what will you be more proud of:  having plowed through it and created something you can shape and edit, or having thrown in the towel?  Make your future self proud and cringe for a moment.

“Writing is for talented people who were born with a gift or know how to market themselves.”

Wrong.  Just wrong!  Writing is for expressing your ideas and your stories through the medium of the written word, and nothing more.  Yes, there are critics and teachers and standards that make it seem like there is some sort of mold that cannot be broken. . . a path or a set of ideals that we are made to believe (by mainstream trends and industry measurements) we must follow.  Break it.  Go beyond it.  I’m not speaking of the rules of grammar necessarily, but even if I was, take a look at a book called Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston.  Here we have a bestselling author who, in this book and others, shatters all notions of quotation marks and the traditional system of writing dialogue.  But it’s actually a quite compelling read, and at no point do you question who said what, or when.  And as for talent or gifted, believe it or not, simplicity is sometimes the absolute best route to take in writing fiction (and certainly non-fiction).  Yes, flowery prose may have ruled the roost back during the Romantic era, but then along came writers such as the immortal Ernest Hemingway, whose prose has often been described as terse and lean.  You don’t have to verbally paint the picture of a perfect summer day, or embellish every detail of a small New York apartment. . . just tell us a good story.  As for marketing, I see it this way:  If you are truly passionate about what you’re doing (i.e. writing your story), then you are going to focus initially and primarily on finishing your product.  And if you believe in your finished product, and your passion for getting your work out there is still as strong as your passion for writing, you are going to feel compelled enough to do the research, pouring through website after video after article about the how’s and why’s and do’s and don’t’s of marketing.  The hours will fly by as you do so, and you will be driven to learn.  Yes, it takes work, and yes, you’re going to find it daunting, but you’ll get through it.  If you’re truly passionate about writing, you will make the efforts, and you will push.  Sometimes there are just no ways around hard work and dedication, and I’m sorry, but the same is true for writing.

“I don’t know what to write about.”

Let’s go back to Hemingway for just a moment.  He was once quoted as saying, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.  Write the truest sentence that you know.”  If you’re worried about wrapping your mind around the philosophical ramifications of what is truth and what is not, or how “truth” relates to its distant cousin “fact,” then just ignore that one word for a moment.  Come up with a sentence.  Give it a shot.  Jack Bowman knelt down to pick up the baseball that had just dented the door of his car.  There’s one.  Here’s another:  “Why would you even say something like that?” asked Amy.  Let’s try one more:  I was only twenty-four when I died.  Okay okay, just one more:  The whispery voices seemed to be coming from the back of the walk-in closet.  There.  That’s it.  That’s all it takes.  Distill Hemingway’s advice down to a mere “Write one sentence,” and just take it from there!  It really can be that easy.  Do the whole “journey of a lifetime begins with a single step” thing.  Follow up your sentence with another (do try to make it related to the first one, though).  Then do another.  And another. . . and a few more.  Heck, you can even take one of the sentences I just wrote. . . I promise I won’t sue you!  And let’s say you stretch your opening sentence into a paragraph or two.  Where do you take it from there?  You have three options at this point.  You can throw the whole page in the garbage and never think or speak of it again.  You can sit and do some more exploratory writing, just winging it as you go until you get stumped. . . and when you get stumped, you can transition from this option into option 3:  You can take the time to write out a rough outline of where the story is heading, with characters and events and as much or as little detail as you want or need (option 3 is a technique used by writers who call themselves “plotters”).  Once you have outlined a chapter or three, or a short story, then you can go back and fill in the details via the process of “writing.”  Whatever you do though, and however you choose to do it, I only ask one thing of you:  please have fun.  This should be fun.  If you’re not entertaining at least yourself, you probably won’t be eventually entertaining anyone else, either.

From a Porch, With Earphones. . . .

“I saw a meme today, on some social site or another, which basically said ‘turn off the news and love your neighbor.’   It sounded like excellent advice.  I now have a black eye and a few restraining orders pending against me.”

“Mona Lisa must’ve had the highway blues. . . you can tell by the way she smiles.”

God almighty, that Bob Dylan.  I think about the level, about the plane of existence, he must occupy, differing at different times, and I sometimes shed a tear over it.  There are some things that just. . . some music that. . . I can’t. . . I simply digress.  It’s like liquid Kerouac, distilled through filters of Eliot and Pound above a blue-flame of Faulkner, with guitar.  That’s what I say.  But the man himself would say simply Guthrie, only in a past life and not this one.  Never this one, because for talent like Dylan, this one hasn’t even been solidified yet.  We’ll know more about 2017 Bob Dylan in 2021, after time to digest it and spit out some sort of media-conforming descriptors.  Rest assured, those descriptors will be trendy at the time.

Anyway, good evening out there in Blog-and-BlogReader-Land.  I hope all fares well with each and every one of  you.  As for me, yesterday was a bust, which put immense pressure on today.  But it’s all gonna be okay now, because I surpassed the 2600 and hit 3148.  I won’t spend too much time patting myself on the back, though.  Is it really an achievement when you had it coming?

Instead, I’ll spend my time (and by time I simply mean my post) whining, because everyone loves to hear some whining.  It must be true, or half the news wouldn’t exist and if that happened, that other half of the news would seem so stale and utterly factual.  I saw a meme today, on some social site or another, which basically said “turn off the news and love your neighbor.”   It sounded like excellent advice.  I now have a black eye and a few restraining orders pending against me.

I kid, of course.

So, what is it I’m whining about?

Basically just that I have committed myself, for now, to this series. . . this oceanic adventure thing.  And I want to also explore other things, other avenues.  I want to “stream out” as I call it, like Faulkner, like Eliot.  Like the words of Bob Dylan.  Oh hellz naw I’m not claiming I have even 0.5% of their talent.

I’m just saying I have that desire. . . that almost trendy-hipster desire, to sit outside at some downtown café in the near-future Autumn and just write about whatever the hell.  There’s a crisp-ness to it.  A literal coolness, palpable to the skin first and the spirit inevitably.  Autumn.  The best.  A cigarette.  A friend or two perhaps.  An afternoon of un-obligated freedom that rolls over into evening like a slow train from the Smokeys.  That Nashville meets New Orleans vibe.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing. . . what I’ve gotten myself into.  I enjoy the oceanic adventure genre.  It has a uniqueness to it, and I do love my characters.  When I first conceived of the series, I saw it as virtually limitless in terms of the directions it could go and the plot-lines that were possible.  I still think that’s true.  There’s a certain beauty to that, all its own.  But sometimes, just sometimes. . . it can be like pancakes.  I want that first bite excitement back.

I’ll get it.  I know this.  The series is still a blast. . .  to imagine, to work on.  First-World problems, man.  It’s time to veg out with some 3DS.  It would seem that the fate of all of Valentia is in my hands.

(Me): How’s it Going?; (Also Me): I Could Kick My Own Butt

“My friends are very dear to me (as is my family).  I wouldn’t trade time with them for anything in the world.  And yet, yes, I could kick my own butt for not putting in my thousand words for the day.”

A thousand words a day!  For any writer deep in the trenches, this probably sounds like nothing.  Hell, to me it sounds like nothing!  So why was it such a hard number to hit today?

My plan for the Blue Daunia series goes thusly:  Publish an issue on the 15th of each month.  From the 16th to the following 15th, write a thousand words a day, for twenty days.  For the next ten or so days, re-read, revise and edit like nobody’s business.  Voila, 20,000+ word novella disguised as an issue!  Put it on the Amazon Kindle Store for a couple of bucks.  Done and done.

And now, just for the fun of it, here’s a cat telling a joke to a paper towel dispenser. . .

20161015_182730 (1)

Anyway. . . .  As I’ve said, a thousand words a day is nothing, really.  Until things like going to the bank, going grocery shopping with the family and then going to hang out with friends in the evening until, oh, 10pm, when ya gotta get up and be at your day job at 7am the next morning.

My friends are very dear to me (as is my family).  I wouldn’t trade time with them for anything in the world.  And yet, yes, I could kick my own butt for not putting in my thousand words for the day.  What does this mean?  It means I’ll be playing catch-up tomorrow afternoon and evening.  Yessir, 2000 words tomorrow, after a 9 hour day-job shift.

Normally, I would cringe at the prospect of this. . . the very thoughts of it.  But I’m a writer.  I got this.  (Bad grammar aside, I got this).

So, what makes me so confident?  An outline.  I have one.  A solid, concrete plan of characters, locations and events, in a precise sequence.  And even though that precise sequence always manages to un-sequence itself, the plan is securely in place.  I know exactly what I’ll be tackling next.  All I have to do is write my style (ever-evolving) and bring my craft-hammer down upon the subject matter.

I used to be a pantser.  Did you know that?  Of course you didn’t.  The overwhelming majority of you barely know me yet.  Writers know what I mean though.  A pantser is someone who can just sit down and write, letting the story and their characters take them to wherever fate will allow.  This usually results in a masterpiece which feels quite free-spirited and free-flowing.  I envy pantsers.  I envy my old self.

And yet, I don’t.  Not really.  It’s hard sometimes to envy a style that, for many, can more easily result in the dreaded writer’s block.  I am now what is known as a plotter.  Writers immediately know this as someone who outlines and plans, to varying degrees, what will be happening in the story, and roughly when in the story things will happen.

Lately, and especially with an adventure series, I find it far easier to dedicate an afternoon to brainstorming an idea for the next issue and then doing a few pages of an outline. . . a sort of bone structure on which to hang the prose.  Once the outline is out of the way, writer’s block has one hell of a time clutching you in its evil grasp.  Just try not knowing what to write next when it’s right there in the outline!  It’s almost absurd.

So, does this mean that the pantser method no longer has a place in my arsenal?  No, I don’t think that’s true.  See, pantsing. . . What?  Where did the term come from?  That’s a good question. . . I’m glad you asked.  Pantsing refers to writing by the seat of your pants.  Simple enough, eh?  Anyway, pantsing will always have its place as a great way to brainstorm new story ideas.  Maybe it doesn’t work so well in the context of an established series, but I could see it working as a way to get a new story arc started within the series.

Let’s say I’ve outlined a plot of a story arc that ends up taking up three issues (comic book style).  I haven’t outlined the next story yet, so I sit down and just start typing.  Maybe it’s a conversation between Daunia and her shipmates.  Maybe it’s someone else, far away from the ship, hatching an evil plot which the crew might find themselves all caught up in later.

Pantsing reigns supreme in such instances, and I would be foolish to stifle my imagination and step away from the fun just because I hadn’t previously outlined this particular bit.  When I’ve taken it as far as I can go, and then sit there wondering what to write next, only then would I allow myself to revert back to the plotter I have recently become.

Either way, a thousand words a day really is nothing.  It’s funny to think back on. . . when I first texted my father the link to my first issue, it took him by surprise, because he hadn’t known about it.  It also started a texting conversation, in which I explained to him my plan to write a roughly 72-page issue per month.  He responded by saying something like, “Are you sure you can manage that every month?  That’s nearly two and a half pages per day!”  First, he was going by pages and not by words, and secondly, I hadn’t told him the part about how I was planning on only dedicating 20 days to the actual writing, not 30.  But I did text back “Two and a half pages takes about half an hour,” and he responded, “That’s some fast writing!”

Fellow writers. . . can you imagine a world in which 2.5 pages is difficult to come by in a 24-hour period?  It’s almost unfathomable.  I have to admit, I had a good laugh over it.  At that particular time, on that particular day, I had a good laugh over it.  Not today, though.  Today I could kick my own butt. . . because 2.5 pages would have been a great deal better than nothing!

Rookie Fears: Little Computer Details (pt 2)

“. . . from the research I was doing, it takes a modicum of technical knowledge- the tiniest bit of coding savvy- which, as a writer in the 21st century, I felt almost required to have, and which, as a writer overall who just wants to pound out stories and not worry about computer details, I don’t really possess in the least. . .”

A couple of nights ago, I hammered out the first part of this post, about my worries and doubts concerning the details of just how to get a book onto the Amazon Kindle Store.  As I allowed Mr. Cubbon to illustrate in his video, my fears turned out to be completely unfounded. . . almost comically so.

But, as I was writing the first draft of Blue Daunia Issue #1 back in early June, other fears as a first-time indie author began to creep in to take the place of those that had been placated.  And, as it turns out, there was a collective name for those fears:  “ebook formatting.”

Yes, I had done a modicum of research in the past, and what I knew off-hand from those past browsings amounted to this:  Uploading a Word document to Kindle is possible (and possibly tricky); Amazon uses the “mobi” format, preferably with a hyperlinked table of contents; PDFs are doable but extremely tricky when it comes to Amazon auto-converting to its native mobi; and then there’s epub, which is the easiest format for Amazon to auto-convert.

But, when the time came, how would I get my final draft into one of the better two formats: mobi and epub (I just didn’t want to take chances with the possible conversion errors of Word or PDF)?  And, almost more importantly (to perfectionist me anyway), how would I go about hyperlinking my table of contents, so that, when I finally see my book-baby on the kindle screen, I could tap on a chapter name and be instantly transported to that chapter?

Other authors dabbling in the ebook format had hyperlinked their TOCs… heck, almost all of them!  The small handful of books I had seen on my kindle which weren’t hyperlinked, looked extremely cheap in other ways as well, from typos to poor cover designs to outright public domain rehashes done with very little care.  In other words, early on in my readership of ebooks, I almost instantly began to equate non-hyperlinked TOCs with lousy, time-wasting quality.  Therefore, if my then-“future” self were ever to write and publish an ebook, it had to have a hyperlinked TOC. . . it just had to.  I considered it an absolute necessity!

Ah, hyperlinked Tables of Contents and ebook formatting. . . from the research I was doing, it takes a modicum of technical knowledge- the tiniest bit of coding savvy- which, as a writer in the 21st century, I felt almost required to have, and which, as a writer overall who just wants to pound out stories and not worry about computer details, I don’t really possess in the least.  I had seen programs and apps which would take flat text and convert it to mobi or epub, but the details I craved, like hyperlinking, still required other measures.  But I have a limited attention span when it comes to such things. . . more like an impatience. . . so what was I to do?  I considered it a hurdle I would have to cross.  Where to turn?  Was there to be no “magic bullet”?

Enter the Scrivener program, from Literature and Latte.  I found out about it during that worried fit of research, and I’m here to tell you, it was like a godsend.  One of the best parts was, for a good bit of time, it is actually free!  Here’s the blurb from their own website:

“The trial runs for 30 days of actual use: if you use it every day it lasts 30 days; if you use it only two days a week, it lasts fifteen weeks. Before the trial expires, you can export all of your work or buy a licence to continue using Scrivener.”

And here’s another cool thing about it: although there is a rough tonnage of things you can learn about the features of the program, there isn’t really all that much you really need to know in order to churn out a mobi or epub ebook, complete with my coveted hyperlinked TOC!

When you first open the program, and select the “Fiction” category followed by the “Novel” template, there will be a tab in the upper lefthand corner titled “Novel Format.”  Take the ten or so minutes to read and digest that, and you have basically everything you need (except for text and talent) to get yourself well underway.

At $45 US to own outright, it’s not the world’s cheapest bit of software, nor is it the world’s most expensive.  But, for what it does for you as a hopeful indie author and publisher. . . for all that it can do, this program is to ebook formatting what Mr. Cubbon’s video is to Kindle uploading.  It makes things just that drop-dead simple, and the results are spot-on.  There are things I am still learning (it’s nearly as limitless as the game of chess), but all you need to get yourself up and running are right there on that one screenful of primary instruction.

With the guidance of video content such as Rob Cubbon, and the ease, convenience and near-perfection of tools such as Scrivener, there is, in my inexperience and my humbled opinion, no better era in which to enter into the world of self-published ebooks.

More Scrivener goodness to follow. . . .

 

Rookie Fears: Little Computer Details (pt 1)

“I’m afraid something vital to the process is going to be too complicated for me, and that one over-my-head step will derail the entire dream.”

I didn’t know what I was doing.  As of this post, I still don’t fully know.  As I said in my first post, as well as my home screen, I am admittedly new at this (hence the purpose of the site).  But I’m here to share with you the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of everything I’ve encountered on the short distance up the path I’ve already traveled. . . so here’s a little tale of fear and revelation.

I knew the story I was trying to tell.  And I may not be a Nobel Prize winner for literary fiction, but I’m arrogant enough to think that my writing isn’t all that bad, so it wasn’t the technique I was concerned about.  I was also fully aware that thousands of indie authors post their works on the Amazon Kindle Store each and every month, so it wasn’t a matter of an impossible task that had me worried, either.

To be honest, what scared me the most was the technology of it all.  You see, I’m not very gifted when it comes to things like computer code, HTML, formatting and the like.  It’s all like a foreign language to me.  And then there’s my laziness when it comes to having to learn something new, which is itself a form of fear:  I’m afraid something vital to the process is going to be too complicated for me, and that one over-my-head step will derail the entire dream.  So what would I do in that near future when I finally got ready to approach the front gates of the Big A?  How on earth does one traverse those gates?

If you’re a first-time ebook author, still in the early phases of the writing, and the preceding paragraph sounds all too familiar to you, then I want you to relax.  Take a deep breath.  If it was nearly as hard as I built it up in my mind to be, then I wouldn’t be hard at work on Blue Daunia Issue #2.  Heck, if you really want to get down to it, if this stuff was actually technically difficult, I certainly wouldn’t be maintaining a blog site all by myself!  Nope, breathe easy. . . the writing discipline and the marketing and the patience really are the hardest parts, and you are more than capable of tackling those (I believe in you. . . but more on these points in future posts).

So, what, then?  How is it done?  Assuming a writer masters his or her self-discipline and gets an ebook written and assembled, then how on earth does it become part of the Amazon Kindle Store?  Well, before I was even at that point, when I was just starting out on my first draft, these questions were plaguing my mind fairly heavily.  As I said earlier, if any one aspect of the process could creep up to cripple me, then a lifelong dream could very well be rendered pointless.  So, I did what I always do when I’m in doubt about something:  I turned to YouTube.  I sifted through a few dozen tons of videos, so that you don’t have to.  Okay, the second part of that sentence wasn’t really true at the time, but it might as well be for the purposes of this blog.

If you want to know the very best of the best of the YouTube videos on the subject. . . the clear-cut #1 that will guide you step-by-step and walk you by hand through the process, then here it is:  Rob Cubbon’s “How To Self Publish a Kindle E-book on Amazon’s KDP Select — Join the Self-Publishing Revolution.”  Nothing else I have seen before or since is as clear and concise.  Nothing else really even comes close.  I could go into detail, recounting step by step exactly what Mr. Cubbon has already displayed, but what would be the point?  If you want to know how to storm the gates of The Kindle Store, then that’s it. . . that’s click-by-click how it’s done, and although he may never see this, I’d just like to tell Mr. Cubbon “Thank you!”  So, yes. . . watch that video, and then, when you’re ready, click here.

“But wait,” you might be saying.  “That’s pretty cool that I can upload a file to Kindle far easier than I ever dreamed, but how do I get my work into a form that Amazon will play nice with?”

I’m glad you asked, because that gives me the perfect thing to talk about in Part 2 of this post.

Blue Daunia Issue #1

“Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys”

Blue Daunia
Issue #1: Dark Tides of Illunstrahd

Screen Shot 2017-08-16 at 9.57.07 PM

A new ongoing monthly series begins!

Azaria
An exotic world not unlike our own, but entirely beholden to the mythology, legends, and pantheon forged by the almighty sea. With a myriad of cultures that run the gamut from backwater to highly advanced, Azaria is a world whose sole provider of technology is as secretive as it is powerful, at times competing with the oceanic pantheon itself for ideological supremacy. But there is something else beneath the shimmering surface, deep within the Hadopelagic Zone… waters so deep that all cultures unite in referring to them as “the Blue Hell”… something darkly intangible and unspoken. Could there be a third force, ancient beyond all recorded knowledge, vying for supremacy?

Daunia Bluehaven
On her ongoing quest to investigate the disappearance of the brother she barely knew, her adventures aboard her father’s final ship design would lead her crew all across the coastlands of the world of Azaria.

Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys. The swashbuckling monthly serial begins here. Join Daunia and her crew as they traverse a world of towering cliffs and arctic tundras, dense tropical forests, sweeping mountainscapes, cavernous subterranean depths, marble palaces, gothic spires, dusty libraries and raucous drunken inns. In the life of a freelancer, you never know where your next job might take you, or what odds you might face to get it done.

In this inaugural issue, embark with Daunia and her crew of “freelancers” as they travel to put a recently-acquired treasure into the hands of a prospective buyer, and to spend some much-deserved time in the company of old friends. The crew soon learns, however, that the sleepy port town of Illunstrahd might hold darker intentions lurking beneath its surface, and a long-forgotten secret which could threaten the fate of all of Azaria.

Oh, That First Draft Magic! (pt 2): Don’t Fear Your Audience

“If your aim is for a handful of people you grew up with to pass around a PDF. . . if that’s your target audience. . . then, by all means, concern yourself with how they might react.”

So, you’ve developed your rhythm and habits, and you’ve finally fallen into a comfortable schedule.  You’re even partway through the pounding out of your first draft.  But then you come to it.  It’s time for a sex scene, perhaps a twisted act of violence, or some recreational drug use without consequences, maybe a tricky rape scene or the implying thereof.  But as you “clock in” and begin the session, suddenly you realize:  “wait… my mom might read this” or “this actually happened to a friend who was horribly embarrassed by it” or “what will my sister think of this?” or even “my pastor might get ahold of this.”

soapymouthralph

Here’s the thing:  who are you writing this for?  Do you wish for your project to stay within a small, tight-knit group of people immediately around you, or do you want to put this out there for the masses?  If your aim is for a handful of people you grew up with to pass around a PDF. . . if that’s your target audience. . . then, by all means, concern yourself with how they might react.  If, on the other hand, you have bigger fish to fry, then I’m sorry, but your mother, sister, friend and pastor will just have to blush.  But please keep one thing in mind, if this is proving to be a hangup to you or if it seems to be hindering your pen in any way:  Your sister has seen Game of Thrones.  Your pastor was a RoboCop fan in his younger days.  Your friend has probably downloaded 4 to 7% of the porn he or she has searched for.  The modern world is not exactly a shelter of morality, and neither should your writing have to be.

And it doesn’t have to be a matter of drugs, sex, rape, etc.  Your hangup could be something as simple as language.  Should your characters cuss?  Well, it’s completely up to you to decide, but I urge you to take a listen to the world all around you before you make that decision.  If your characters find themselves in an environment conducive to a few choice four-letter words (a bar, a raging party, the dockyards, a drug bust), then something might seem a bit off if you attempt to scale things back for the sake of sparing your Aunt Edna’s ears.  The rest of your audience might notice that something is amiss too, as though your characters were written in a vacuum or a convent.  And, again, I would be remiss not to say that your Aunt Edna probably wasn’t always the saint you thought she was.

An important thing to remember is that your characters are not you, and your family and friends would be silly to think of them as being so.  Yes, they were born of your imagination, and yes, their words and deeds are controlled entirely by your dictation, but only to such an extent as they are avatars, symbols, representative of the demographics of an imagined society which also shapes their demeanor just as much as your own grasp does.  If you put them into a world of complete fantasy, then yes, you can mandate that said world tends toward a certain mode of behavior, as squeaky-clean as you want.  But if your characters’ surroundings are based on reality, then any effort to write contrary to that reality will come across as artificial, and can be a jarring experience to your readers, even pulling them out of the flow of the text at times.

This having been said, it should also be a matter of your target audience (your real target audience, not your neighborhood church cookout).  Are you writing a work of “young adult” fiction?  If so, maybe you do want to keep things closer to PG-13, but never lose sight of the environment your characters inhabit.  I’m not saying you should set out to get yourself banned from every school library from here to Hoboken, but, on the other hand, you don’t want to ignore the world the modern “tween” is emerging into, either.

My point is simply this:  while you are writing, put your immediate circle of social influence out of your mind. . . completely.  Write the prose you want to write, or better yet, the prose you would want to read!  This is your story, your baby.  Especially if it’s your first attempt at published writing:  do what you want to do.  I leave you, for now, with a couple of quotes from the legendary Bob Dylan.

“Everything passes, everything changes… just do what you think you should do.”

“. . . It is not he or she or it that you belong to.”

And one more quote. . . this one from Laura Dern as Diane in the current season of Twin Peaks:  “Fuck you, Gordon.”

And remember to go check out Issue #1 of the monthly oceanic adventure serial, Blue Daunia, if you haven’t already done so.  It’s only 99 cents, for Pete’s sake!