STARTING TOMORROW!
For all of July, all three books in the Bridgetown Trilogy will be on sale!
Book 1, A Division of Souls is, as always, FREE to download!
Books 2 and 3, The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light, will be 50% off! This means that you can get ALL THREE BOOKS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE.
It’s MADNESS, I tell you!
So starting tomorrow, head on over to this here page at Smashwords, scroll down to the bottom, and have at it!
It wasn’t as if I’d had an energy-draining day at the Day Job on Friday. In fact, it was smooth sailing for most of the afternoon. I kept myself busy by catching up on personal emails and listening to some new release tunage. After work we went for a walk to the Legion of Honor Museum up on the hill (it’s just a little over a mile from our house by foot, uphill 98% of the way) for a sneak preview of their Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millenery Trade exhibit. A bit tired from the walk but otherwise just fine.
Did I get any writing work done, though? Not a word.
Nor did I get any work done Saturday, when we went to see a movie at the Opera Plaza (the documentary Letters from Baghdad) and afterwards stopped by Green Apple to buy a few books I’d been looking for. I did turn on the PC to update a few drivers and software, but spent the rest of the day catching up on webcomics that I’d been backed up on. [I’m a big fan of webcomics for multiple reasons and will most likely have a future post on them at some point!]
Sunday was shopping day, so hopefully some time tonight I’ll be able to squeeze in some Lidwells work. If I’m not distracted by other things! Heh.
It’s not all that often that I’ll take a day or two off without feeling some sort of guilt. I’m at that point in my writing career where I’m once again comfortable with my processes, that I don’t feel the need to rush to get things done. [I’ll still kick myself for procrastinating, but that’s more about getting my daily processes started in the first place.] I can afford a few days off where I’m living a normal life, watching TV and going out into the world and whatnot.
It’s a struggle of many writers, considering many of them are like me, juggling their writing career with their Day Job. You can’t really decide ‘I’m gonna play hooky from my Day Job, I deserve to do it now and again’, at least not without consequences and/or lost pay. On the same token, you don’t want to do that with your writing either, because a) that’s admitting your writing is less important (which you do NOT want to admit), and b) that’s one less day you’re moving forward, one more day your story is just sitting there, doing nothing. It’s also why, when writers do take a day off from writing AND their Day Job, it’s usually for vacation purposes and purposely doing nothing, and STILL feel guilty about it.
Still, it’s a struggle I’ve gotten under control. I’ve been hitting over 2000 words daily, between blog posts, personal journalling and occasional poetry writing, the 750 practice words on Secret Next Project, and Lidwells. My deadline stress is light. My near-future plans are clear. The docket is a hell of a lot clearer than it was just a few years earlier. I can afford to take a writing day off…especially if that day is spent reading and watching other people’s creations with an eye on what their own processes were! [See what I mean about Writer Brain never being completely turned off?]
I can afford to be lazy every now and again, and not feel the least bit guilty. I just need to remember to enjoy it!
Somehow I found myself listening to 1984 the last few days. It may have been sparked by hearing my favorite song by The Fixx, “Deeper and Deeper” (the end credits song to the movie Streets of Fire from that year) on an 80s Sirius XM channel. This in turn influenced yesterday’s Walk in Silence, with the various songs that I was listening to at the time. And as is my wont, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and am listening to various songs and albums from oh so long ago.
I was thirteen at the time, seeing the back end of junior high and entering high school as a freshman, hoping that life would be a bit more exciting and less drama-filled. [Seriously, what is it about middle school and everything in life sucking?] I’d just started focusing seriously on writing, to the point where I probably spent more time on the Infamous War Novel project than I did on my homework. It just seemed a hell of a lot more exciting to me.
Thinking about it now, I’m fascinated by the parallels between then and now. A resurgence of ultra-conservatism, American exceptionalism, international terrorism, sexism, ism ism ism. I’m even a bit weirded out that we could fit Russia into this equation again.
With the current administration doing whatever it thinks it’s doing, I’ve been sort of preparing myself mentally to get through it. I could easily fall down the other rabbit hole — the one where I fall prey to the doom and gloom and feel like shit until it’s over and done with — or I can learn from the past and know that there will indeed be a light at the end of this tunnel soon enough. [Granted, this tunnel is a detour that we really truly did NOT need to take and it’s a big pain in the ass for all involved.]
Personal point being — to get through the troubles and frustrations of today, I’m thankful to have a decent memory of the past. It helps me to stay one step ahead of the beast.
In the context of writing: this is part of why world-building is so important to me, and it’s also why I’ve been working on future projects with the 750 over the last few years. When I was first starting out way back in the 80s, figuring out how it all works, I just sort of made up the scenes as I went along, with a somewhat vague overall plot line being nudged ever so slowly forward. The end result was patchy and inconsistent at best. Writing these practice words for a project I haven’t even started yet gives me just enough of a world and a plot to base it all in. It helps me to stay one step ahead of that beast.
It’s tricky, and you really need to know yourself and your own thought processes, but it’s worth it in the end. It’ll keep you sane, that’s for sure.
I’ve said it before: I really don’t want to wax politic here, I really don’t. This blog is about writing. It’s about my love of writing, the things I’ve learned that I want to pass on. It’s a part of my lifelong career. I don’t want to wax politic because a) that’s not what this blog is about, b) I don’t want to bore you/chase you away, and c) I try to avoid said waxing as much as possible these days for health reasons.
So I’m just going to say this about Shakespeare in the Park’s recent interpretation of Julius Caesar: to be honest, when Shakespeare is reworked and set in a more current context, quite often it’s bloody fantastic. We saw a recent version of Hamlet that took place during an extremely paranoid Cold War that worked perfectly. West Side Story (aka Romeo and Juliet, of course) is one of the best musicals ever made. The Globe Theatre’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in present time that we saw last year was absolutely hilarious. So a version of Julius Caesar in which JC is a very clear interpretation of Donald Trump? Totally makes sense to me. [And yes, it is true that the same troupe did a version some time ago using Obama, to little or no controversy.]
The issue here is not using a sitting President (a term I presently use with a bitter taste in my mouth, natch) in a play in which a major plot point is that he snuffs it. I mean, come on — remember Primary Colors (the book and the movie), which was supposed to make Bill Clinton look like a moron? LOLs for days from the right wing, as I recall. I saw the movie myself — it was pretty bad quality, but its ham-fisted attempts at cleverness didn’t give me the vapors.
The issue here, at least for me, is the willingness to be so incurious, so impassive, so willing to blindly idolize a person to the point that logic flies out the window. Or as Darrin Bell’s comic strip Candorville put it so wonderfully yesterday, “I’m starting to think you’ll say anything just to win an argument.” The vocal backlash was boggling. Blessedly short, but boggling.
On the plus side, it’s ridiculous situations like this that empower me even more to keep on writing. I don’t need to fight against pointless agruments like this. These voices may be loud and have a network megaphone, but they’re also a shrinking base. The longer this play goes on, the less comedic it becomes. There’s the unfortunate byproduct of all this, in which certain people will find this claptrap as God’s Truth and hurt someone, and I do sometimes fear that will escalate if this keeps up.
BUT — I refuse to lay down my quill because of it. More to the point, I want to pick it up more often. To keep sanity alive and kicking.
With my Sort of Secret Next Project taking up my daily practice words, I’ve been tearing down some of the boundaries I’ve had set up for ages. I suppose you could say it’s part of the ‘own it’ mantra I’ve been using lately…instead of trying to find reasons not to write a certain scene for whatever reason, I’m forging ahead and writing it anyway.
These are passages that work within the context of Secret Next Project, of course. It’s not so much about pantsing the writing as I’m letting myself come up with things that I would normally not write. Here’s the thing: when I’m writing a character, I have to have at least some connection with them, whether mentally or emotionally. I get inside their head and see how they tick. This is all well and good, but there is the tendency to write samey characters, or worse, write Jonc Personality #483.
I tried (and I think mostly succeeded) writing this way for the trilogy, especially when I had to get inside the head of characters like Denni and Amna, who were major players with a hell of a lot of stressful issues going on. I think this is also partly why I trunked some of my earlier novels, because I’d failed.
The Secret Next Project involves quite the menagerie of characters, so I definitely need to stretch my boundaries there. In writing my daily practice words, I’ve been doing my best to set as few boundaries as possible. In the process, over the last couple of days I found myself writing some passages that surprised even me! And I like that feeling. It means I’m doing something right.
…That said, it also means I still need to focus mostly on Meet the Lidwells. Which means the Secret Next Project is currently also the I’d Rather Be Working On This Fun New Project Instead Project.
As is typical of any writer, of course.
Well, that’s a good question.
It’s a question that came to me the other day when I received an email response to an agent submission that I’d completely forgotten about. I’d forgotten about it because I’d sent it out early in March of 2015, over two years previous, for A Division of Souls. One of the last times I’d submitted a manuscript before deciding to self-publish the trilogy. The response was a rejection, but a nice one…they explained why they felt they couldn’t connect with my book.
I’m totally fine with that. In fact, I’m totally fine that it was rejected, and that it took two years for them to respond. I’m actually kind of touched that they not only took the time to finally respond, but they read my submission and gave a reason why they didn’t accept it. That doesn’t always happen.
I thought about it some over the weekend, and realized that if I had heard back from the few agents I’d submitted to then, and if, in a stroke of luck, my manuscript had been accepted, then I’d have most likely gone a different route in my writing career altogether.
Instead, I’d given them all three months to respond — a generous amount of time to be honest — and after a no-response from a fly-by follow up, that’s when I chose to self-publish the books. A Division of Souls would be self-released that September, and I’ve stayed on that course ever since.
Over the course of the last two years, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s multiple reasons why I self-publish.
Self-publishing is a hard (and sometimes expensive) road, but it’s the road I’m best suited for. It excites me on almost every level, from the writing to the editing to the cover art, and even to the release. My only constraints are of my own making. I may not be pulling in the dough, but I’m putting my work out into the world, and I love getting responses about it. Plus I’m paying it forward by telling you about the process here at my blog, and now at a growing number of conventions.
It’s a hard road, but it’s the one I chose, and I’m glad I chose it.
Another thing about perseverance, especially when you want to be a writer, is knowing full well that you’re going to face-plant into that next tree, but you go ahead anyway, scream “Yoiks, and away!” and make the jump.
It took me a long time to figure that out. I’d say most of my 90s output was really just about fostering the writing habit, getting used to it, getting better at it, little by little. Sure, I had delusions of grandeur that I’d be able to sell what I was writing, but there was always a small part of me that knew those delusions were exactly that. My attempts at submission then were during a time when I had no idea if I was any good. If they’d get accepted, then I’d figure I was on the right path and doing something right. If they didn’t, well…at least I knew that I still had some ways to go.
I still metaphorically face-plant into trees on a regular basis, of course. This time it’s less about quality or submission success, and more about dedication and time management. On Wednesday I wasted too much time doing other things that I didn’t give myself enough time for my daily practice words. I only got a few hundred down before I had to log off of that and get some Lidwells work done. I made up for it Thursday by avoiding Twitter* and making a point to get the practice words (and a few other creative things) out of the way early.
(* – Well, given that it was filled with comments, hot takes and livetweeting of the James Comey hearing, I had good reason.)
That’s the thing, really…despite the face-plants, I still have to shake it off and jump again at the next opportunity. Maybe one of these days I’ll clear all those obstacles.
If I’ve learned anything over the last week, it’s that the downside to coming up with a secondary project to play around with while working on Meet the Lidwells is the temptation to fall prey to the “ooh shiny!” of the newer project, leaving the original one undone. I love the apartment complex idea at the moment, and I’m quite sure it’s because I’m still in the world-building phase of that one. Two daily-words entries and I’ve already come up with some neat ideas that I’d like to play with.
BUT! I really need to focus on my other story! The one that’s been on my mind over the last few years. The one I can FINALLY devote my time to. The last thing I need right now is another distraction!
So how to handle this sort of thing? All writers fall prey to it sooner or later…the rogue new idea that tempts you and won’t leave you alone, and you know damn well that if you don’t write it down RIGHT NOW it’ll be lost forever. Often to the detriment of any other deadlines you might be working on at that moment.
Well…I’ve learned that there’s got to be a bit of balance. From past experience, the worst thing I can do with a completely new idea is to try to create an entire novel out of it. I definitely don’t have the whole story and its universe in my head at that point. The end result will be a lot of making stuff up as I go along, thus needing a hell of a lot of revision on the back end. It’s one of the reasons the trilogy project took so damn long.
I wrote outtakes of Meet the Lidwells via my daily practice words, and I knew that wasn’t going to be the final version. And I wrote it while I was rewriting and revising the trilogy, so I put just enough into it to keep it alive until it came time for it to be my main project.
I’m doing the same with this new story idea. Right now I’m looking at it from a workshop level, throwing stuff at it to see what works. Coming up with characters, names, settings, and other background details that I can reference a little later. And I’m sure sometime within the next few months I might even draw a layout of the main setting, maybe even some of the characters. Bits will change along the way. It’s all up in the air right now, malleable.
And that’s just for fun, at the moment.
The heavy work is on Lidwells, and that’s where it’ll remain until it’s done. That’s my evening writing work, the stuff I’ll treat more seriously. Attending to details, focusing on the feel of the story in my head, contemplating what needs work and what needs excision. And besides…this one has a deadline that I don’t want to break. If I have to put New Shiny Idea aside to devote more time to Lidwells to get it done on time, so be it.
Finding that balance is a bit of crazy work, but I believe I can get it done.
For your enjoyment…something I wrote Thursday afternoon for my daily 750 Words. It’s a rough draft of an idea I’ve had for the past month or so. The setting is an apartment complex in a suburb of a sprawling mega-city, where its tenants are of all kinds: humans, aliens, monsters, mythical beasts. It’s a Studio Ghibli-inspired story about a young kid living at this complex (whose family owns and runs it) and his adventures meeting all kinds of beings, getting to know their lives, eccentricities, and maybe even starting a few friendships in the process.
This is most likely going to be my next project after Meet the Lidwells, and I’m looking forward to writing and self-pubbing it.
I’ve put the passage under this here cut. Hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to Bridgetown 