Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, percolation, problem solving on 14 Mar 2019| Leave a Comment »
On occasion, I ask my brain to go through its memory banks and search for something I know I know, but which I cannot at the moment remember. This search method is a technique honed by decades of living in a pre-Internet world, before Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, and all the rest.
What is her phone number? Didn’t I read a book about this subject? Who wrote that song? Where have I seen that actor before?
I got so good at this that I could do it in my sleep. Literally.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, crisis of confidence., novel writing on 24 May 2018| 4 Comments »
It happened.
To be honest, I expected it earlier.
Usually, The Crash first hits me at around 10,000 words. This time, it waited until I was at 25,000 words. Foolishly, I thought I’d avoided it.
But I hadn’t.
Sneaky old bastard waited in the dark corners, hiding in amongst the musty, cobwebbed bric-a-brac, watching me wander hallways I’ve not walk down for years, letting me chuckle with pleasure at my own confidence. It let me think that this time, things were different, and they really did feel different.
But they weren’t.
It was all the same, just delayed.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, setting goals, writing life on 10 May 2018| 1 Comment »
I breached the 20k-word mark on the current WIP, and everything was going fine, just fine, until things began to . . . happen.
No, it wasn’t the few days of fine weather that demanded a drive (or two) in Pepper, nor was it the completely frenetic week I had at work, where no sooner had I gotten a handle on Task 1 than management pulled me off and told me to work on Task 2 (I’m currently on Task 4, which is not only a black box I have to crack open and suss out, but it’s also on fire and has a digital readout that keeps counting down toward zero).
Nope. None of that was the problem. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, setting goals, writing life on 02 May 2018| 2 Comments »
Work on the new novel is moving along pretty well, now, and I’ve achieved what (for me) is a rather brisk pace. I’m not threatening to break my personal best, set back when I was under contract to deliver the Fallen Cloud Saga, and I’m nowhere near the blistering pace consistently set by some writers I know (cough cough Barb Hendee cough), but I’m not complaining. I’m about halfway through Chapter Three (regular readers may note that I’m now posting progress in chapter increments, not in scenes) and settling into a new groove.
Experience, however, has taught me that “settling into a new groove” is, by itself, insufficient for success. New behavior can easily be scuttled when faced with distractions or downturns, especially in early days, when anything shiny is a temptation to wander.
To keep things moving, I need something more. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, pike place market, real settings in fiction, Seattle on 18 Apr 2018| Leave a Comment »
This week’s progress was slowed by a few issues.
First, Season 4 of Bosch dropped, and that simply had to be dealt with.
Second, I had some serious pain due to a nerve regrowing in my big toe (long story) and that made it impossible to concentrate on anything for about thirty-six hours.
Third, I was still on-call, and the weekend was punctuated with several job failures, including two early morning alerts that came to me in error. (Thanks, guys. Who wants to sleep in on the weekend anyway, amirite?)
With this as preamble, it wasn’t surprising that, once I finally got underway with chapter two scene one, my lack of concentration let me slip my lead and run down some research rabbit holes. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged building believable characters, creative writing, flashbacks, novel writing, scene breaks, Writing on 12 Apr 2018| Leave a Comment »
This is what momentum looks like.
Despite work deadlines, two days down with a stomach bug, a major financial planning session, and getting a windshield replaced, I still managed to get another scene completed and entered. This was Scene 3 (begun last week), which ends Chapter/Day One, and it was the first time for a couple of things.
Posted in Writing, tagged building believable characters, creative writing, novel writing, Writing on 05 Apr 2018| 3 Comments »
Writing on the novel continues, albeit slowly. In the middle of Scene 3, now.
In talking to my wife about my struggle, I mentioned that it felt like I’ve broken through a barrier, and that both my interest and enthusiasm had increased, to which she responded with a question: why is that?
I honestly hadn’t thought about why—I was just glad it was—but it engendered an interesting discussion.
Last week, I posted about how in this character-driven novel, I must engage in a lot more forethought. As I explained, writing about how a character reacts to action is a lot easier than writing about their motivation before that action is undertaken. That reality hasn’t changed, certainly not in the last week or so.
What has changed, though, is that I’m finally getting a handle on who my characters are.
This is a critical point, for me.
I’ve built and rebuilt my characters’ backstories close to a dozen times. I’ve changed family structure, occupations, names (lots and lots of names), affiliations, history, and well, damned near everything except their gender. I’ve also worked and reworked my outline, refining it, bringing in subplots, dropping subplots, chucking extraneous secondary characters, tightening it all up.
So, when I started writing, I had a pretty good handle on where my main characters had been and where they were headed.
All set, right?
Wrong.
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir