Where the fallen land

Rhythm

2012-02-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

I belong to a writer's group that has been in existence, in one for or another for more than seventy years. It's true. It started, as a group of women, meeting in living rooms. They read and critiqued, all aloud.

In the eighties, when I joined, meetings were being held in a church. They were still reading to each other. I thought all the stories were amazing, and I couldn't understand how they all found things to critique. Everything each member read sounded so perfect. Except when it came to reading my work. As a teenager everything I wrote was, well.. Teen aged. I loved every word of my Warriors meets Diamond Dogs meets Time Square influenced short stories. Stories that no grown up should have to suffer through.

They did, though. Suffered through all of the awkward adolence-ness of my beginning writing, and made them into lessons for me. They taught me how to set a scene up, taught me how to describe things. (you can't have him open a refrigerator before you tell me it's there). They showed me the importance of verb choice. And, most importantly, they let me develop a critical ear.

It took time, but eventually, I began to hear what they heard. All those little burrs, and big ones, in the rough drafts we dealt with. I could pick them out of my work, as well as other's. Because the truth is, there's a rhythm to fiction, a rhythm that you can't see with the eye.

The ladies that welcomed me into the group are gone now. The group itself was in danger of completely dissolving. It was hard for me, because I've been spoiled. It doesn't do me any good to read to an empty room. No, now, after twenty-odd years, I need to hear my words up against an audience. I need to feel the moment I lose them before I can fix it.

Then one day, another member of the group called me. She and I are the last of the old breed, really, the only ones that remember the "originals", or at least the ladies that were there when I started. She said she was writing, and that she wanted to get together again. I was eager to agree. I didn't know how much I missed it until she said, "I miss hearing the stories."

Me too. Now we meet at Baker College. We are small, but steady. We are a handful of diehards, and some new members. I'm excited at the prospect of new stories, and new rhythms.

Look outside

2012-01-02T16:48:00.000-08:00

It's finally really truly winter. I had very little hope for snow on New Years day--it was forty three degrees and rainy. In Michigan, that's wrong. I'm not really a fan of the cold, but I do love snow. There's a fierceness to the sunlight in January and February that you just don't find in warm places. When there's snow on the ground it's not even dark at night.

Last year the snow was heavy and plentiful. There was so much snow that my back yard was nearly filled up to the top step of the porch. Last year was the first year since I moved out of my parent's house that my Mother didn't call me to tell me to "Look outside." I used to look forward that little tradition, even though the older you get, I'd discovered, the less you really like snow.

The morning after that first snow, I waited, but she didn't call. I watched the flakes cover my neighborhood all morning from my kitchen, but she didn't call. Finally, I called her, and said, "Look outside."

"Oh," she said. "It's snowing. Now everything will be harder."
I
In hindsight, I probably should have known what she meant by that. When I think of the last few months of my Mom's life, there are a million things that I probably should have known. She passed on her love of winter to me, and of snow, but she'd forgotten it this last year. She only thought about how much harder it would be to get around in the snow, and the cold. I tried to talk her out of it, because I didn't want to think things would change. "You love winter. Just look at the snow. It's beautiful this morning."

So I took this picture, and some others for her, so she didn't have to go outside to see it.

I miss my Mom, which I know is to be expected. I suspect she was ready to go when she did, but that didn't mean I was. It didn't mean that this morning when woke up I didn't wait for her to call me.

Nanowrimo, re-written

2011-11-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

It's November 2, and we all know what that means. I'm already behind. Every year, I come up with a strategy to make it through Nanowrimo. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. Okay, that doesn't sound so bad. Does it?

It took me a while to warm up to the idea. The way it's supposed to work, is you sit down on November first and start writing. You don't stop to read, you don't stop to re-write, you just move forward. That, I've found doesn't work for me. The thought of ending up with fifty thousand words at the end was great. But the thought of 50 thousand words of crap... Well, that terrified me.

It's taken me a couple of years to realize what I need from Nanowrimo. It's not really the word count, but the reason to push forward, and to push forward in directions I would not have normally. So, falling behind in the word count doesn't bother me, I know it's inevitable, I mean, seriously, I have to cook two full Thanksgivings and work Black Friday in three weeks. But still, I'm grateful for the time I get to spend with the story. I have time to begin to like what I'm writing, spend time with the characters again. That makes the 4AM writing time worth it.

Ashes

2011-08-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

All summer one thing has been waking me up in the middle of the night: what am I going to put my Mother's ashes in for the memorial? When I picked them up from the funeral home, she'd been dead about four days, I think. I thought I should feel some connection to them. I've read stories about people who have used the ashes of a loved one in tattoo ink, or even, in one instance, of a husband sprinkling a bit on his morning cereal. And everyone has stories of someone they know spreading ashes. I don't know what I expected. What I got was a discreet tote bag and a perfectly serviceable box. The funeral home lady made me open it and look inside-as though I could tell her, yes, I can see that it really is my Mother. So I thanked her and carried them out to the car. I rode around for a couple of hours, trying to figure out what to do next. I'd been to the attorney, I'd made all the calls I could think of.

But now I had my Mom in a box, in a tote bag, and all I could think of was, I'll be able to sleep again. And that I couldn't remember a single hymn that she'd told me she'd wanted sung at her funeral. Not one.

That was the end of April, and that thought hasn't gone away. I couldn't bring myself to buy one of the urns on display at the funeral home. They all looked so impersonal. Just like the ashes. So I put it off. I looked around online, sort of. Nothing seemed right.

The memorial is next week, and I can't imagine how displeased her friends would be with the box. Or nothing. Though, that's what I would prefer.

All summer I've been avoiding the art shop in the Farmer's Market. Mom loved to shop there. She bought prints that artists had made of down town Flint, and she bought lots of the pottery they sell there. I was there with my Dad and nephew two days ago, and the bowls on display made me miss her. Out of habit I began to price them for Christmas, birthday, anniversary, but stopped myself before I said anything out loud. Then I happened to look down on the floor, in the corner, and saw it. This potter that my Mother loved had made me an urn for her. It was perfect, a deep iridescent blue.

I'd like to think it's a little bit of an apology for not remembering the hymns, and for many other things too numerous to talk about. I'd like to think that it's a sign, that things will start to come back, that I can stop sleepwalking. It's not that I want to forget my Mom, it's the opposite. I want to remember something other than ashes.

And we lived the lie like the hope it was

2011-07-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

With all this re-writing, re-living my youth, I've been thinking a lot about David Bowie. Those who know me won't find this surprising, or even interesting. That's okay, they put up with enough.

I've been listening to David Bowie in my writing life for thirty years. I'm listening to him right now, in fact, truth be told. He is, in many ways, my most lasting relationship.

Maybe that's overstating just a bit. Then again, if we're telling the truth....

Let me explain. David Bowie came to me one late night as I lay on the floor in my parent's living room. I couldn't sleep, so I wasn't just alone, I was achingly alone. Insomnia does that to you in the deep night. It cuts you off, makes you long for human contact. Makes you forget that you've ever had any.

For company I had the television. I was thirteen. It was the summer of Star Wars, my first religious experience, the thing that made me pick up a notebook and a pen. It was also the summer of my first experience with sex--not so religious. And it was the summer I found a name to put how I felt--that I wasn't alone completely in the brand of different that I was.

You'd think the sex would have tipped me off about being gay, but it didn't happen like that. I wasn't sure what had happened, and I wasn't sure I wanted it to happen again. I was a very sheltered thirteen year old, I think, or maybe we were all...slower back then.

But I remember very clearly that the secret that love came in different combinations was just that to me. A secret. I knew how sex was supposed to go from the junior high class, and I couldn't imagine that as something I ever wanted to do. I had decided that I would always be alone.

And then came the second religious experience of my life. The kiss. It was the music that made me look up at the screen, of course, jangly and shrill, and somehow compelling. I looked up from my notebook in front of me, and saw it. The few seconds of video made everything seem to fall into place in my life.

David Bowie, paper thin, and frail, walks unprotected down a nighttime city street. His face is a narrow smudge in the dark, his eyes on something ahead that we can't see. There is a group of people around him, but he's clearly alone, none the less.

Suddenly a man, a stranger, races up, throws his arms around Bowie and kisses him. Bowie half turns, as though to keep the stranger in reach, but the man runs away again and is lost in the night. At least that's how it happens in my memory.

Watching it now, on the tiny, and oddly unaffecting YouTube screen, it seems so mild, not at all earth-shattering. Although when MTV started, they clipped those frames away, so it must have been shocking at some point.

And to me--the last survivor of the insomniac wars that night, it was huge. The biggest thing in my life. It put my fumbling first time with a girl into perspective. Gave it possibility. Gave it a name.

I can't explain how it happened, why it struck me so. It's only my explanation of how David Bowie came to me. Why do I still carry him with me? I don't know. I do know that he's buried so deep to see with the naked eye in every sentence I write. I tried to resist, but that's a waste of time. It works and this is how it works. Star Wars gave me the desire to tell stories. David Bowie gave me the context for what I needed to say.

Modern Love

2011-06-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a lot of old videos lately, as a result of trying to re-write my novel about a rock band in the 80's. I miss that time. It seemed that life was less lethal, but then I think that's how everybody views their childhood.

But the videos. I learned everything from MTV back then. I learned how to dress, how to act, how to talk. It was a window onto a world that I wanted to be out in. Instead I was stuck in the basement of a friend, just watching. No MTV at home, so I was rarely there. I've always thought that movies taught me how to write. Star Wars, in particular, and true, I did go straight from that theater to buy a notebook for myself. The first I'd ever bought. But MTV taught me something else. I think in some ways watching the world in two and a half minutes clips made me an observer. It made me an expert at spinning people and places and actions out into whole lives, make them go in the direction I wanted them to go. And I could do it all while lying on the clammy floor in front of the TV. Those videos, "Love is a Battlefield," Let's Dance," "Melt With You," taught me how to spin a story. Make fiction out of just a flash of something.

It was so limited. Now you can watch TV on your TV, your phone and laptop all at the same time. We can control what we see to the second. Now there is no VIDEO. There's no sharpeness to the images. No specialness. People look.... Ordainary now. Effects can be added, but they're effects. We all know those dudes in 300 didn't really look like that. And sticking Brad Pit's face on a baby was just.... It was not really magic. It was a mistake. In the end what we see on screen now is pretty much how the world looks.

In the novel, the main character sees himself on his TV at home, and thinks, "Who is that? Is that really me?" Onscreen he is pristine and sharpe and beautiful. Lying across his bed, watching himself, he is worn and used. He knows that he never looked like that.

No, the world never looked like that. But it does now, in my memory.

Dust, another story

2011-02-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

Check out this link to "Dust and other stories" available on BN.com for nook. If you're interested, and don't own a nook, it's possible to download the ereader software for free to a pc, mac, iphone, ipad, blackberry... You get the idea.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/e/2940012634139/?itm=1&USRI=dust+and+other+stories

This nookbook contains three of my short stories, one of which was nominated for a British Science Fiction Award! I'm very pleased with how it came out. The Barnes and Noble publishing platform is called Pubit!, and was very easy to use. It was about as difficult as making an etsy listing. You have control over everything, even the price. I priced "Dust" at $1.99, because it seemed fair within the market, and it's actually selling fairly well. Neat, huh?

Getting Fixed

2010-10-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

As you can see, Fem-Fangs, the anthology that took my vampire story, "Getting Fixed" is out now, and that was really fast! Just in time for Halloween. It's been a strange half a year or so for me, publication-wise. I'm to the point now where I get more acceptances than rejections. That should make me happy, right? That's what you want in life, right?

Truthfully, though, it doesn't feel any different. I always assumed it would, you know? I always thought it would be great, just knowing that somebody else was going to read your writing, could be reading your writing, but I feel a little disconnected from it. It's like throwing notebooks off a cliff and not even watching them go. Is it because I see so little of it on paper anymore? I don't know. This story, Getting Fixed, is ten years old. That's a long time to be living in my head. The one that wound up in Cinema Spec, "End of an Era" was literally the first story I ever finished. Its lifetime nearly spans the length of my relationship with my best friend. It's older than most of my friends' kids.

So turning loose of them wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I'm happy that somebody wanted them, but I'm always a little scared to turn loose of them. I guess I'm just surprised to feel this way.

I know what you're thinking, but I'm not crazy. They're stories, not my children--those are my cats. But still. When I never sold anything, there was a protection there that I didn't recognize. Now, in spite of how happy I am to see stuff of mine in print, I miss that protection.

Will I stop submitting stuff? Hell, no. It might be scary to stick these covers up on the blog, and post them on facebook (I amaze myself whenever I remember how to do both those things), but I'll adjust, trust me.

A little news, and other things

2010-08-16T04:30:00.000-07:00

So, the most interesting news is that Rock and Roll Over is available for pre-order on Barnes and Noble.com, and on Amazon. My story, Always Crashing In the Same Car is included in it. That story is also the first chapter of that novel, so I have sort of mixed feelings about it. But this is the first thing that I have been in that I've actually been able to order for the store, so while the cover is a little, um, well.. you'll see, I still feel sort of like a real writer.
I also just sold a story to an anthology called "Fem-fangs." Yep, it's about girl vampires. It's a story that I wrote way back at Clarion, called "Getting Fixed" and I'm happy to see it out. I remember I wrote it as an example of the reverse hero's journey, and it got fairly well bashed because vampires are so over done. It was at that moment that I realized that originality was not really high on my list of things to aspire to. Have a good story, make the characters real, and I don't care what kind of tropes you use to tell it. There are, of course, really good examples of that philosophy gone horribly wrong--Twilight comes to my mind, and probably to everybody's mind for that matter. She got the concept of using a tried and true cliche to tell her story, but she forgot to make the characters real, or even a bit likable. I wonder if she even likes the characters.
In a short story it's harder to give characters lives. you don't have the time. The thing to do is give the impression of movement. The character is going somewhere as the story starts, will be going somewhere after it ends. Charles DeLint does this by telling serial short stories. Read even one in the Newford series and you get a sense of the place and the people.
Anyway, I don't mean to knock Twilight. I'm guessing that there's other reasons why those books have become popular. I'm just glad that, in my case, somebody got the joke, and that story was finally taken.

Speak My Name... Just a taste.

2010-08-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

The night started out quiet at Darks. I held up my side of the bar, between filling drink orders, and Ithuriel held up his on his stool. To the Mortals present, we looked just like they did. I, lean, light haired, grey eyed, dressed in an ancient Adam Ant tour tee shirt. Ithuriel, my opposite, with long dark hair braided prudishly down his back, dressed in jeans and a button down shirt.

Two guys chatting the evening away. Not what we were at all. Not ever.

There you go. That's the first two paragraphs of the book. I think, at the end of it, the title is going to be Speak My Name.

Pride

2010-06-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've been turning this over in my brain for a while, so I'm not sure how coherent it will sound outside the skull. But here it is.

Last week one of my younger co-workers posted that as he was leaving the bookstore, he saw two boys--even younger than he--holding hands, happy to be together, you know, just like teenagers in love. He also noticed the people around them frowning, and generally looking uncomfortable with them. He said that he gave them a big smile because he was so proud of them for being braver than he was when he was their age. I thought, as I read his story, "That's just how I felt when I met him. Proud that he was so much braver than I was when I was young."

I was never brave when I was his age. I never said it out loud. Not to anyone. Not in my life, anyway.

The first place I learned to be honest was on the page, and then it took a long time. I was in my early twenties I started writing a book about a rock band. Back then, the main character, Asia couldn't admit, even to himself how much he loved the lead singer in the band. I couldn't admit it either. Not even to myself.

For me and Asia it was twenty-seven years before we were that easy with ourselves. That's longer than any of the boys in this story have been alive. I suppose that's progress.Things have changed, and my young co-worker has shown me that. He is exactly what he is with every single person he comes in contact with every day. And it makes me so proud of him, everyday, and envious of his courage.

Demons and Angels

2010-06-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

I've been wandering again. There's something about being so close to the end, and yet not so close to the end that makes my focus falter. If it ever was that great to begin with. I've been scraping along in my not-writing life, just barely paying the bills--or not paying them, trying to deal with family, trying to make people buy my sewing... It's endless distractions. And I've heard three different people in the last week say that it's easy to avoid writing, because there are so many other things they'd rather be doing. Three. There's something fairytale-ish about that, isn't there? Like a warning. Like all I'd have to do to finish the book is bake three loaves a bread (one with a stone, one with seven kernels of corn, one with mouse fur, but that's another story). Or maybe I should go away for the weekend to a cottage on chicken legs, or....

It's so easy not to write. Because, as Natalie Goldberg says in The Thunder and the Lightning, writing is hard. Sewing is easy, it's finishable. Dishes are easy, they're finishable. Writing is... It's never ending. One story bleeds over into another, and they're all connected in the brain, right? In my brain, Ziggy lives in the same world as Mica and Frank, and the same world where my werewolf pack runs the North End of Flint.

Writing is hard. There's other stuff to do. Each time I hear that, I think, "That's not me." I would rather write than anything else. Anything else. So, why not this? Why write about writing the end, instead of actually doing it? I don't know. I'm stuck at the gates of Heaven. Not metaphorically, either. I'm right there. I didn't expect to be there, and I don't know what's going to happen if we go in....

If we do, will I be done? There's only one way to find out, I suppose.

Re writing

2010-05-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

I know what they say. You should never rewrite anything until you're done with it. I know they have a point. I just wish I knew who they were... But anyway.

I think it's absolutly true that you should not rewrite until you're at the end of the novel. Sure, it makes sense. Except... except that I am rewriting now. Not after I'm done, but right now. I'm changing the story. Yes, I am.

I know. I'm not supposed to do that. But here's my thing: How do I go on and finish until I know were to go? I mean, I'm changing things now, so I really do have to wait to go on until I see how it comes out, right? It's not the speediest way to write, I know, but right now, 40ish pages from the end, one of the characters is trying to show me something. I have to listen, right?

Of course I do. That's why I get on this bus to begin with. I want to listen to what the characters have to say. Isn't that the point? I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what I read for too. Character. I'm not so invested in the plot, or the setting of a thing. It's the people that live there.

So, in Fall, one of the characters has just walked up to tell me that Lucifer has split personality issues. I have to listen to that, right? It's really what I live for in writing. I want to get to the end, sure, but I really really want to let the characters get to the end.....

Yay!

2010-03-11T19:41:00.000-08:00

Luckily, the waiting is over. The first chapter of Ziggy is sold as a short story. I made the changes I offered, and that was it. More details when I get them....

good news and bad news

2010-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been pretty okay for the week. It's Tuesday and I sold chapter one of Ziggy to an anthology. True, it's only for 25 bucks and a free book. But that's okay. I assume somebody will read it.

Now the bad. The editor emailed me within about a half hour of my accepting and asked me if this was about the "real" Ziggy Stardust. If so, they can't print it because they would be sued. I'm not sure that's true, but I didn't argue. I simply explained, that, no, it's not about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars from the album. Here are the differences. You know, my Ziggy's from 83, not 73, he's from Ann Arbor, not London.... He's not spreading the false message of peace from space aliens and the audience doesn't kill him. And certainly not all in the first chapter of the book. Then I changed the name of the band from "The Spiders" to Black Light. Lame, I know. Sorry. Then I took out Ziggy's last name, and changed Gillli's to Ronnie. Yep. Blick. But I'm desperate not to be unpublished. What should I do about the book? Is this the way it's going to go now? I'm really happy that somebody wanted the story. In less than 24 hours, no less. Very nice. But now I don't want it to fall apart because of missconceptions..... The truth is I wrote the book because I missed the '80's. Still do. I wrote the book because I spent so much time lying on my bed staring at the liner notes on albums sleeves, memorizing, and letting the lyrics make up stories in my head. I wrote the book because of Asia, and because I know there are other people out there like him, and I want them to read it. It's the kind of book I really wanted when I was a kid. That's all.

Short Story Tally

2010-02-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

Over the last few years I've managed to sell most of the short stories I've finished. There weren't many to begin with, but I like to figure out on paper what I've sold, what I have left, and what needs to be finished every so often, so here it goes.

Sold:
Dust
Requited
Scales
Phase
This Dark is Mine
After
First Moon
Ithuriel's Kiss
End of An Era
To Rest

See? That's not many. And that would be between the years of 2002 and now. Actually To Rest hasn't seen print yet. It's in that "Forthcoming" limbo. It's funny that "First Moon," is the only one of them that sold the first time I sent it out, and it's erotica. I realized only later that maybe I should have changed my name. Oops. Figures.
Now, here's what I have left that's finished and not published yet:

The Life of Memory
Red Red Scream
Getting Fixed
Wings of Brothers

Not bad really, I guess. Red Red and Getting Fixed are both vampire stories about the same characters. They will someday live in the book I write about them. If I get to that point. The Life of Memory is sort of a Sleeping Beauty story, and so a hard sell, besides the ending is a little wonky still.
The last catagory is of course short stories I haven't finished yet. It's not as long as it used to be:

Atonment
The Never

And that's it, for short fiction. I know that at my age, or almost my age, James Patrick Kelly had over 50 short stories published, and the Charles DeLint had over 50 books published. I suppose that's why they don't have day jobs, right? But I don't write quickly. I'm faster than I used to be, but still. I'm much better with technology than I used to be too. I never thought I'd actually write stuff on the computer. Twenty years ago I wrote in a spiral bound notebook, and then re-typed stuff on eraseable typing paper with an electric typewriter. Then I'd revise and type again. I don't suppose much has really changed except for the erasable typing paper (which, twenty years later feels like parchment and smells a little like cat pee). The computer makes it faster. Now I find myself writing trasitions, connecting scenes on the keyboard because I want to get through them quickly. That still feels like cheating. This still feels like cheating.
But I'll do it. I'll cheat as much as I can to get the story down.

Where am I?

2010-02-07T21:00:00.001-08:00

One of the things they don't tell you about writing a book is how easy it is to become lost in it. At about, oh maybe 150 pages, it starts to happen to me. I begin to forget where I left that character, where that bit of diologue is. I start to wish that I was the kind of writer that made outlines, timelines, something. I begin to think maybe I need a spread sheet.
It's scary to look at the page and wonder who wrote that and how it go there.
That is where I'm starting to be in Fall now. I just found a whole notebook of stuff that I'd forgotten belonged in the story. I should be a little freaked out, because it does seem like losing control. But I'm not. This happened with the last book, and now I can recognize it as the process I have to go through. I can't control the story I'm telling--that notebook full of scenes is proof of that. I don't know where I'm going, or where I'll end up, but that's okay. For me, it's the only way to write. Now that I've lived with the characters a while, I know them. Now I just have to figure out where to go with them.
Until then, I'm lost, but I have to remember that it's a good thing.

mart

e books

2010-02-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

I work at a big box bookstore, which has just put its own e-reader on the market, and I have a book that's looking for a home. It's boring, I think to explain how much I love books personally. How much I love the smell, the feel of paper. That's all been said before, and yet, ereaders are huge business.
Clearly the industry is changing. It has been changing for 15 years, but I think that change is speeding up. I think that instead of saying, one day everyone will carry 300 books around in their purse it's going to be in 6 months.
So where does that leave my book--I won't even address where that leaves my job. It leaves the book in my hard drive. I've collected a healthy stack of rejections that say "this is great, we really enjoyed it. Best of luck elsewhere." The first few of those are nice, but after a while, you know how it is. But I do not want to give it to an e publisher. I mean, it's clearly the logical thing to do, but I don't know if I can. Reality is that print publishers, for the most part don't have the money for new writers, and I know that. Maybe it's vanity. I want the thing to be solid, I want people to hold it in their hands. I'm not sure I can reconcile myself to submitting it to something so insubstanial. I say that, but I know that in reality I will end up doing just that.
Someone pointed out to me that now is the time to do it. Before it becomes as common as itunes. But I'm still on the fence. Really, I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't know if I'm ready for this new century.

Fickle

2010-01-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I've just spent most of this afternoon writing. And on something that is entirely not my novel.
It's not that the novel is finished, or all the trouble spots are fixed, or I'm even through with the rough draft, or I know how it will come out. No. None of that. It's that my brain is rebelling, and won't give me anything for Frank and Mica to do.
No, now I have about twenty pages of a steam punk thing that's been in the back of my head for a while. Twenty pages, and it's not a novel. I say that, but I can see where it's already too long to be a short story. Fantastic.
Truthfully, I've enjoyed ever minute of it so far. I love tinkering with new things, and by definition, a novel at two hundred plus pages isn't new. So, what am I? Twelve or something?
No, it's just that I know that good ideas are limited, and I'm afraid if I don't write down what I'm thinking about right now that I'll forget and lose it compleatly. Sound nuts? I'm not denying that, although, in my defense, I am old.
So tomorrow, I promise, more demony stuff. More words. More pages.... Tomorrow.

Writing a novel

2010-01-29T21:56:00.001-08:00

So, this isn't the first time I've been here. Well, not here, exactly, but here, at this space in a novel. I'm about two hundred and twenty pages into the the thing, and I'm beginning to get scared. Will anybody want to read the thing? How long will it just lurk on my hard drive before I fool somebody into buying it?

Does it suck?

I think I'm probably not alone in wondering all these things. Novel writing is scary. I love to work on short stories. I love the limits they give. I love the feeling of being able to control all the sentences, sort of watch all the corners of the room at once, you know? Novels are nothing like that. they're like losing control of the horses and riding straight for the cliff. I swore I'd never do it again after the first one.

But my mind was still set on wide story when I started this one. Too much story for twenty pages. The characters seem to have too much life for that.

I thought I had some idea of how to do it, having made every mistake imaginable on the first one. But this is different. Maybe they're all different. I don't know. So maybe this blog is a way to keep me focused. What did I work on today? How many words, how many chapters. There's a lot of math in novels, I've discovered. I've tried this blog thing before. We'll see how far I get this time..

mart