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Oh, That First Draft Magic! (pt 1)

“You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.”

Anywhere.

That’s where your text can go in its early phases.

You haven’t published it yet. You haven’t submitted an idea to anyone or anything official. Your work, at this one shining moment in its history, is completely un-obligated, beholden to no one but yourself. You’ve told a couple of close friends and family members about your overall story idea and a few of your characters, but even to these rare few people, the how’s and why’s and wherefore’s of your future masterpiece are totally unknown. The surprise twists, obscure references, and homage character names are yours for the making, or not. You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.

Have you put yourself on a timeline yet? Don’t. I urge you not to rush it. Not yet, anyway. If you have never published anything before, and you are plotting out your outline or pounding away on your very first first draft, you might be eager to reach that magical day when you hit the submit button on Amazon or your chosen platform. Seeing that future thumbnail of your cover and that product link on the world wide web with your name next to it might be the ultimate vision in your mind as you lay down to sleep each night. . . but hold off on saddling yourself with a “release date” in the early going. Allow yourself the time to get into a rhythm. Find out, as the days go by and turn into weeks, how much free time you are finding to write, and how much time you are actually allowing yourself to write. Once you ease into an inevitable flow and strike that work/family/friends/writing balance, you will begin to see more clearly how many words you are comfortably capable of producing per session, and how many sessions per week you can sanely manage.

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What you see in the picture here is a collection of gadgets known as the AlphaSmart Neo, which I will be dedicating an entire post to pretty soon, because it deserves it. I mention it because it allowed me to drag a reliable method of writing with me everywhere I went while I was working on the first draft of the first issue of Blue Daunia. I didn’t always want to take my MacBook to work, or carry it to a coffeehouse or café if I had other errands to run before or afterwards (it gets hella-hot in the summer in Montgomery, AL, and leaving a MacBook in the car while you’re grocery shopping reserves you a special place in hell).

With the AlphaSmart with me on the go, and my computer always at the ready while at home, what I discovered was that I could easily find the time to churn out about 1500 to 2000 words per day, roughly five days a week. This level of output, I found, would allow me ample time for my day-job as well as spending time with friends and family. However, I only found this out after feeling out my schedule and seeing what worked for me. It will be different for you. It will be different for each and every person who sits down to tackle a writing project.

For some, it will be a matter of quality versus quantity, whereby they find that they can do 3000 words in a day but that their quality begins to suffer after roughly 1800. . . and that’s completely fine! There is an old adage that, during the first draft, you should just write and write and write, disregarding quality for the sake of just getting the project written (the idea being that you can always edit and polish later). This is true, to an extent, but it is my personal belief that, after a certain point in one’s attention span has been reached (or a certain level of mental fatigue), you shouldn’t keep blazing through your outline points if you honestly stopped “feelin’ it” half an hour ago. There is a distinct difference between “editable quality” and “I’m basically just adding adjectives and adverbs to my outline at this point.”

So, find your rhythm. . . find your pace and your comfort level, and then, although some may tell you otherwise (writing advice is, after all, a matter of opinion), by all means, set yourself a first-draft completion date! The purpose here is two-fold. First, after you’ve determined how much you are comfortably capable of, a concrete date staring back at you on your computer wallpaper or fridge door will keep you motivated to maintain that pace. It instills discipline. Once you’ve found out what you can do, sure, you could shirk it one day for a few extra hours of Netflix or a roiling comments debate on Facebook, but couldn’t you be doing that on your own time? Is it really helping you achieve a lifelong dream right now? Secondly, it gives you enough of a sense of purpose to let others know that you are “on the clock.” Once your friends and family know what you are up to, and you’ve worked out your schedule enough to let them know that there will still be time for them, they will understand that your writing time is just that, your writing time. Treat it like a job at this point, but without the stress of a jerk boss or overly-gossipy co-workers. Treat it like the best job in the world (because it is!), but a job nonetheless, and one which has to be undertaken just like any other job out there. Would your day-job boss allow you to watch Netflix or browse Facebook on the clock? Believe me, once you’ve met your quota for the day, you’re going to feel proud about it and enthusiastic for your next session. Drop the ball one day (which I have been guilty of, a couple of times) and you’ll be surprised just how bummed you can feel about it, the dread of having to play catch-up, and how pessimistic about the whole project you can become (the only cure being the next successful session).

To Be Continued. . . .

Germination of the Seeds of Thought

“Rule of thumb: never intentionally stifle your own imagination while it is attempting to soar.”

It could start with something as simple as a name. For me, back around 2006 or 2007, it was the word “Azaria,” and the dreamlike vision of ships, tall sales flapping crisply in the breeze, sailing beneath a fiery sunset of oranges and purples, upon a sea reflecting that sunset with tinges of gold and flashes of silver. But who did these ships belong to? What were they doing? “Aarrrrr,” I thought… but it was a doubt-ridden exclamation because Johnny Depp and his pirates were far too mainstream already, so it was more of an “Aarrrrr?” with a dog-like tilt of the head. But beyond all that, what was I going to do with these ships, no matter who they belonged to?

Ironically, or perhaps not, I wasn’t dreaming of ships because I wanted to create some grand form of literary entertainment. At that time I was actually trying to dream up my very own roleplaying game, along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons, with my own setting and my own set of rules… or, ya know, Savage Worlds rules. I just wanted a fun, rip-roaring adventure game I could play with my wife and son on weekends and after school.

But, as previously stated, pirates were too “all the rage” at the moment, and so I sought to avoid that. So what about Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds? What about just trying to make a living with your ship from job to job, but on my beloved ocean rather than out in deep space? And what if I could take that premise and keep it confined primarily to the coastlines and oceans, never venturing too far away from the sea, and combine it all with various levels of technology and throw in some Greek mythology and D&D-style monsters every now and then and….? Whoa, boy! Slow down! Or better yet, don’t! Rule of thumb: never intentionally stifle your own imagination while it is attempting to soar.

At this point, ideas were beginning to develop and churn. It was a frantic hodgepodge of thoughts, nearly assaulting me, popping into my mind all at one time. In no particular order, it went something like this (and please, try to picture this as a circular jumble with no beginning or end): “Male heroes are overly abundant… how about a girl… with blue hair! Daunia, for no discernible reason… note to self: Google Daunia to see if it’s taken. Maybe she has a pet miniature dragon that stays perched on her shoulder like a pirate’s parrot. That would be cool. Wait, is that cool or lame? Azaria. That’s the name of the world, and if it’s not the whole world then at least it’s a big, big ocean bordered by plenty of coastal regions. She can’t handle a ship all by herself… she needs a crew. How about that guy Hamish from Braveheart? Yeah, that red-headed guy. But I can’t call him that. What about Red–… Redman… Redwake… Redwood! And some other people… I can come up with them later. So they sail around the sea and take on jobs, like Malcolm Reynolds. Man, this could be a whole series! Of roleplaying adventures though? No… well, yes but no… man, I miss comic books. But I can’t draw. So I’ll just write it. Because I can do that. But I still want it to be episodic, like a comic book. Not even a series of novels… actual issues like a comic book!”

And so the seeds of the Blue Daunia series were planted. Rough ideas can later be sketched out in a notebook or computer text file. I actually had a thin three-ring binder which I took to work and kept in my office while there (I was a grocery store manager at the time), and every time a name or an idea would come to me, I would jot it down and make a few notes beside it. This was back before the time when you couldn’t sneeze without hitting a smartphone, and nowadays I recommend some sort of notepad app so that your notebook is always in your pocket. Anyway… you will notice, if you haven’t already done so, that a name that pops into your head is usually accompanied by some sort of face or occupation or role within the story (or concept of a story). Jot it all down, as much as you can! And thus I began to chart out gods and goddesses, priests and priestesses, small villages and sprawling cities, ships, captains, allies, villains… and all of this without so much as a hint of a firm plot in place. Oftentimes, a plot can stem from nothing more than a handful of characters and their motivations, coupled with some cool locations for them to do their things in. Give that some thought, and possibly even a try.

But whatever you do, don’t shut it all down! It might sound, from time to time, stupid to you. You might wonder what the hell you were thinking. Someone else you’ve ran it by might tell you it’s really not that good. Don’t listen! (Not yet, anyway… I’ll talk more about beta readers later). First of all, they may be wrong. It might be excellent and you’re just talking to the wrong person. Secondly, even if it is a load of hogwash, it’s a start! It’s highly malleable. It can be pounded out and polished (that miniature parrot-dragon eventually became a crossbow with blade-edged dragon wings, for example, because Game of Thrones became a thing and I didn’t want Daunia to come across as just another heroine with a dragon). The bottom line is this: these are your seeds. Nurture them. Work on them. Expound upon them. You never know when they might sprout up and merge into something truly phenomenal.

Journey Into the Unknown

“To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair. Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right!”

On August 8th, 2017, just three days ago as of this writing, I uploaded the first issue of my new ongoing monthly oceanic adventure serial, Blue Daunia, to the Amazon Kindle store. Here’s the scary part though: it’s my first-ever anything in terms of published work. To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair. Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right! This website, brand-new as of today August 11th 2017, will serve two purposes. First, it will chronicle my trials and tribulations as a brand-new indie author embarking upon a potentially life-changing journey. Secondly, it will, in the future, serve as my website as an established author (this requiring optimism, forward thinking, hard work, luck and hope).

Oh, and, by the way. . . here’s the link to my Amazon Author’s Page, which at this time is just a bit sparse in terms of shoppable content, but bear with me, and check back here frequently, as I seek to change that and keep you posted about the journey I’m on to get that goal accomplished.

So, if you’re an aspiring indie author and you’re wondering what it’s like to go through this process, or if you’re well underway and just want to read some posts to see if your mind-set matches that of someone who has already been through it, then hop aboard. I’ll be talking about everything from the steps I took to how I felt during them, to things like dialogue, action scenes, compelling characterization, self-doubt, discipline, and so very much more. Oh, there will be personal ramblings as well. . . observations about movies and sandwiches and paperclips and whatnot, and as I get those typed up, I’ll stick everything under the tab “That BLOG Thing” and you can find a list of categories over to the right of any given post within it.