Amid the Ruins of Our Own Making

At left, an image of Whitby Abbey, ruins, as photographed by Juliet220 and hosted on wikicommons. This meets the criteria of a quality image.

I'm writing tonight. I've notes all over my desk that I've amassed solving a plot hole (Add Bob back at the cabin , give him a shotgun, put Lucious in a shipping container and find out what Diazepam tastes like).

The abbey was destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII after his little falling out with the Pope.

Lesson: getting in the way can be a problem. More than that, your characters don't know when they are in the way of trouble.

I've off to write. Darkness won't last all night.

You know what I mean.

Night Writing, Morning Edits

At left, some of my working area.

It's a busy time. I'm walking back through my USCG Navigation Rules,  my Chapman Piloting and Seamanship, and now a replacement copy of Basic Coastal Navigation as my old copy got away from me. My Annapolis Book of Seamanship is downstairs by my bed.

I'm planning on sitting my navigation exam in December and it has been ... er ... several years since I had to pass such a course.

So, a little bit each day.

Which is where we are tonight.

I'm in composing mode. I have several tools to share that help with this task.

Toggl ( here ) is a free time tracking app that is free, has a mobile app component for all you app folks, and is completely free form. You pick the category,  hit start, and time "butt in chair" effort. If you are a words-per-day sort of person this isn't something you need.

After a good decade back in the chair, I find I do better not focusing on the stress-laden w-p-d count. I use a time-on-task count. It worked in school ( you spend three hours a day on statistical thermodynamics and your grades will go up markedly in that arcane subject as well).

While we're on it, let's talk composition and words.

I use Scrivener. ( here ) I love it. It has scene/chapter/project word count totals. It produces a dozen formats. It integrates with Dropbox if you should like (I just do a manual drag to my local Dropbox folder after a writing session and select an option to allow new-to-overwrite-old on copy. Syncing happens quickly and ... cloud backup achieved! Good enough.).

I format my Scrivener output in a custom wash with a couple of post-production Powershell scripts added in and I'm ready for a couple of my favorite LaTeX typesetting production formats. ( LaTeX here ).

I compose into the evening. I try and keep from working too late because, like you, I have a day gig.  That's important.

I edit in the morning with coffee in hand. I read aloud in my library and fix the immediate issues from the prior session. Sometimes I make notes and set the new material aside for an "immediate revision" session in the evening after a little thought.

I stick with this process until I am in a hole from which there is no escape. There aren't many of those anymore because I am willing to cast aside large volumes of ineffectual text if the blind rush of impulse has lead to .... dull.

Time discipline and stability in the mechanics of the writing process serve me well to keep my creative energy "on the page" and not in tampering with what the hell I'm trying to do: write.

I have no idea if this works for other people. I think a lot of you might be like that to: we have some idea of what works for us sometimes but we don't understand why and we don't understand what other writers do.

I did know one fellow who wrote in pencil starting each session with three sharpened #2 wooded beasties. He wrote until the pencils were dull enough that his longhand -- he wrote quite small -- was filled by the large flat loops of his script.

I'm an ink fellow for longhand because ink's contrast shows better in poor light.

As to why this process of mine and these lovely tools will from time to time fail me and I will go weeks without working on a single composition, I don't know. Sometimes I can no longer bear to sit at my desk and face my own writing for one minute more.

I know that over time, I'll come back to it.

I keep very good notes now so I can pick things up quicker the next time around if a spell of "absent heart" strikes me.

Keep the ink flowing. Night when everyone is in bed and morning before they are up makes for some productive volume if one is manic enough to keep the interest in place.

Take It With You

At left, Finnish children on parade. These are probably refugees of a sort from the war. The photo doesn't clarify beyond saying they are Finnish children.

Copyright free image from wikicommons due to age.

I like this photo for the suitcases.

I lived out of a suitcase like this when I was a little older. I had a "two suit-er" and almost everything I owned fit inside it. Almost.

If I knew I'd be dragging bags after me for the next forty years I might have blown my head off right then. As it is, I've got it pretty good - except that I'm still "Packy the mule" when traveling with Frau Bear. Comes with the role.

I take my fiction with me. A lifetime of being "somewhere else" has taught me how to shut out the outside world. I've talked to writers who need the solitude or the inspiration of the lonely beach or the cry of the loon. I've not however talked to many writers with a number of books in print with this disclosure, however.

I attended one of those high schools without walls. Yes, back in the 1970's there was a move to "break down the walls" and create an immersive flexible environment for learning. These are largely noisy unproductive structures - until you learned to deal with the distractions.

Who knew that I'd be so well prepared for cube farms that I'd find door-less offices and open bullpens comforting?

I think it is all bullshit, by the way. The first thing we give you once you make field-grade in the corporate ranks is a nice think oak door with which you can shut out the rest of the world and get down to that independent knowledge-work of which you do so much.

Yes, I see the satire dripping a bit, as well. I didn't shake my brush well enough on that line.

Anyway, I am one of those knowledge workers and I do shut an oak door and work independently. I also sit in a coffee shop and scratch away. Location means little to me. Focus means everything.

With that, I've had great success carrying a small pocket notebook devoted to the current WIP in my trouser pocket. Last year, I bought a little leather cover for these - typically - Moleskin notebooks. It really helps their endurance.

Anyway, I find carrying my fiction around in my head helps me focus on those things that are lost when I'm wallowing through prose. The chance to be a portable writer gives me the opportunity to have things strike me, record them, and move on where in prior years this inspiration and clarity would have been lost.

When you have a volume, a WIP, a short story, you do carry it around with you.

I'd suggest packing a little bag for it next time and carrying that in your pocket, too.

Your story is a refugee until you finish it and grant it an identity. Help its journey with a little luggage.

You might call it the baggage of your writing. Clever turn, that.

Not clever enough for the remark, though.

Back to it. Work to do.

I should write that down.

Ink on Page

A generous copyright-free image of the painting The Manuscript Book by John White Alexander.

It is spring and a time of the thousand distractions. It is also time for me to integrate two plots of the WIP and write the comprehensive draft.

Luckily, I like this part.

So, this week has been consumed with all manner of plausible distractions. They're all plausible.

The trick is keeping them at bay,

Nose, meet grindstone.

You'll understand if tonight's post is short. I've work to do.

So do you. I hope it is going well.

Dead Man's Hand

Wild Bill Hickok had aces and eights in his hand when murdered. Tage Olsin had this fine photo up his sleeve over on wikicommons which he allows us to use for just the price of attribution.

Thanks, Tage.

I've got a story that won't hunt. I wish I had such a great name as "dead man's hand" for such a tale. I cannot get the plot pieces to wind in any way I find interesting enough to flush out.

Off I go - to other projects.

Sad, really. I've got a fine opening scene but from there it just labors, drowns, and eventually washes up a on the sandbank like an overused cliche.
No harm. I didn't love the characters and there you have it. To spend even the couple weeks it takes form me to finish a short, I have to love the characters.

So, off on other murders. These killings, I like. The killers? I love.

They're the sort of folks you know. You might have been at their house for a holiday party.

Don't look in the closet.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It

Even writers do it.

At left, marker for the first successful nuclear explosion by the government of the United Kingdom.

Successful.

We are a self handicapping lot as writers.

It looks good. It feels good. We've plenty of time.

We sabotage.

I'm sabotaging myself writing this entry tonight though I had a pretty good morning session.

New storage materials arrived today because I'd filled some of the snap-together boxes I use to cool down various half-baked works. It's important to ice things. It's important to label the things you have cooling!  Annotations aren't a bad idea, either.

The library received a good sorting and a bunch of pending items were successfully filed.

Now, it is early evening and I have everything I need. I'm going to sit here in this chair with pen in hand for the next hour without a computer or tablet running within reach.

I'll not answer email. I'll not make a sketch. I will hold pen in hand and stare at the outline until I am writing.

There is no other way but letter, word, sentence, paragraph, page, scene, chapter, novel.

What is it of which you are hesitant? Success?

Close the computer. Try a few words now. They might - might - be the right ones.

I'm going to go find out myself.

We'll let each other know in the pages of the NYT Book Review.

Tiki Me, Tiki You

From wikicommons, a graciously shared image of a Tiki: in this case a deified ancestor.

I have a green light on constructing a detached screened porch. Ostensibly, I'd use it to write into the evening on lovely summer nights.

I'd also equip the room with a fold-out bar. A .. ahem ...Tiki Bar.

There was an advertisement some time ago which featured blind pigs: unlicensed bars. I've wanted one since seeing the advertisement.

Most unlicensed bars are in a basement or garage. Mine would be in a screened room with a very few tasteful Tiki accouterments. Oh yes, my associates would indeed flock to the bar.

When the Paris Review comes for the interview, we'll be able to conduct the affair civilly over a couple of Suffering Bastards (my favorite Tiki drink) in the summer house.

I'll also be able to write, smoke a cigar, and not be consumed by all manner of flying bloodsuckers we have in Michigan. I live adjacent to a wetlands - which you know if you've seen the seasonal announcements of "Frog Day" here at Mayhem. It's pretty wet. I have wood ducks breeding in it.

Anyway, there is something to work for now. How can I have the trappings of a well accomplished writer of mayhem and murder without actually killing 'em with the debut novel?

How indeed?

I think I'll save pouring the footings until I have a clean prose draft in hand of all three acts of this work-in-progress. That's a goal. You've read it here. The working title? Despot Island. Fitting, no?

Now, before I get the Tiki Voodoo HoooDoo, I'm off to write.

Remember what happened to Bobby Brady? You should leave the Tiki alone and go write, too.

Grand Day!

At left, the reward for a productive day. The teapot is from Denby and is not mine.

I really like it. No, I'm not getting another unless my squatty breaks.

I'm way to young too start having more than one functional teapot at a time.

I am having a nice cup, though.

It's cold here. Still the throes of winter. It isn't even close to the freezing point. The birds think it is spring, though. We had nice bright sun.

I had a grand productive session with a friend tonight. We write together on Wednesday evenings at the local (and very nice) library in my little town. I put my head down, focused, and solved both voice and tone issues with my latest draft of a story!

 Last night I worked out a nice plot outline with snippets of prose interspersed. Tonight, I revised the protagonist, gave her a much stronger voice, stitched three conflict arcs through the story and wrote two key scenes for inclusion into the longer full draft re-write.

Yes, I earned my tea. I'm quite pleased.

It isn't spring yet; but, it feels like it inside when we make progress. I love that about longer works,too. Solid progress on a chapter or two of a novel just brightens my heart. Sure, they'll probably be quite different in the final version but the progress feels good.

I've a half-dozen short-stories shaped to where it is time to do the last pass draft carefully and slowly after a solid read-through and notes. Scrub a MacGuffin here, tune a conflict there. It's fun work when you think the plot and voice and twist and reveal all are beginning to work for a story.

So, off to read. I'm almost done with the horrendous state of affairs as Fukushima Diichi. Still, fascinating stuff.

I've been writing. Have you?

13th Arrondissement

I have a story set in an old city and for the model, I use Paris. Why not? Public transportation, infrastructure, some very old and some very new.

Now, the 13th happens to be a place of immigrants at the moment. However, any place of immigrants soon evolves to a place with long tails and eventually "the old city." Lovely trend, that.

At left, a little early snow. This was the picture I used when I first started the piece though now in my mind there is much more snow.

There is a little snow here. Yesterday was entirely consumed and so this evening - Sunday - I am wondering where the time went. Time too feels a little like this picture: there is the means to move through it but conditions tend to preclude anything but the walk.

I have a fire in the wood stove, pets surrounding me, banana bread baking in the over, and some cold roast lamb to go and forage upon. I'll finish this entry, make some tea, forage, and settle down with pen to craft some prose around the bones of the story I've outlined.

I hope this evening finds your home quiet and your pen active.

Write something. Then write some notes on something else. It's almost winter.

I Hear You Were Something ...

I heard you were something in your formative years.

-Tori Amos - "Pretty Good Year"



Jack Schaefer wrote Monte Walsh which I read over thirty years ago. I remember there is a scene in the book where an old timer watches Monte have a go at a horse. He tells Monte "I was kinda good too, oncet."  That line stuck with me.

I've been away fighting blogger and a hosting bug. I'm back. I have been writing. I'm through chapter ten on my rough draft on the way to 25 or so (I have POV sections from the co-protagonists to add in their own roughs of the story then incorporate in the real "first draft" of all the parts moving together).

I'm now officially too damn old to have any excuses. I've tried the writing when quite young - 17/18/19/20. That was back when the things I actually knew about life didn't seem to be anything at all. Then I picked it up seriously from 24 through 31, lost a family through a divorce, picked up notebooks off and on for the next decade. I got steady in the mid-40's. I got serious - writer serious again - a year ago.

There was a lot of self doubt that went away when I admitted that I had less on the clock left than I've used up. There are stories I want to tell just because I want to tell them.

I used to ask an uncle why he did something. He'd tell me he decided to do it that way and that was it.

I didn't understand that answer much when I was young. I understand it just fine now.

I hope you're writing. I hope you understand the only thing holding you back is that big ball of "can't" in one pocket and "won't" in the other.

Take off those pants. There's work to do. Get after it. Nobody can do it for you.

Amazing Stuff.

Picture at left courtesy a fellow named McGeddon. Tempting to name such a child Armistice. We'd call him Arm. (I'm here through the weekend folks. Tip your waitress well, please.)

It amazing what a decent night's sleep and a proper pot of tea will do for your outlook and mood.

RANT =>  By "proper," I mean tea brewed in a pot with actual boiling water (not water that has been boiled) where the leaves from this year's harvest have been steeped and not "poured over."  I'm now to the point I will not order tea in North America from anyone who doesn't have an accent from the Isles. Boston Tea Party my ass. <= END RANT

I've two ideas for new stories that I've mulled over all night in slumber. I'm excited for both. I've got new respect for the W.I.P. that I liked quite well before setting it to print. We're on speaking terms this morning. That's an improvement.

I got advice from Celeste to the effect that less stress produces better effort. I'm taking liberties there with her comment but it's how I read it and she's right, of course. No sense stressing about work I've not even done. 

Maybe the first pass at the next draft of something I care about very much solves its structural problem. We won't know until we're at that point. I've got enough in the box here needing attention to feel badly about without looking ahead in angst to something not attempted yet..

I'm in my library with a pot of tea, dog, cat, a good attitude, focus, and even a little dedication. I hope you readers have the same joy this weekend yourselves. There is snow in the air outside my windows. I do love it so.

Now, onto the amazing stuff. The guest post over at Type M for Murder on the right bar is very nice. Fellow is a retired Episcopal Reverend and an active author. I thought the tone of his piece was quite good. Makes me a little sad I don't know the fellow personally. Sounds like the sort of guy who is a good sport when he catches a fish much larger than yours. (It's a trout thing.)

Off to the W.I.P. where my head should be while my eyes are focused and my head is clear.

The Beauty in Ideas

More scraps of paper from a day at left. It was a big day for the scraps.

I've been very occupied with the pressures of the real world. The day job, this cold, a couple opportunities. It's all been a blur.

The ideas come. Uninvited, but they come.

I've been fortunate to know a number of men whose ideas have changed the modern world. Yes, they've all been men. Women frighten me a bit. I try not to get very close to them.

One of the best of these men told me he believed he could solve most problems by applying his mind without interruption to the issue at hand, and in doing so, an insight about something completely different would leap into his conscious mind as if sprung from some pop-up box released by the spinning handle of his first activity. He would joke that if he could only discover how A made him see B in a different light, he'd bottle it and we'd all get drunk on inspiration.

I had that day today. I'm grinding on my day job concerns, focusing on bits and pieces of various cat herding variables and boom: ideas. I see a set of edits. I see a change in the direction of a current WIP. I have an idea about grouping three of my stories thematically. I have the idea for a new story which is fantastic - and by that I mean "waaaaaaay out there" fantastic and not so much the golden glow of wonderfulness fantastic.

I don't know why working on one thing made me so much more away of solutions elsewhere, but it did. I find ideas themselves wonderful. I find their birth simple beautiful. [ On the other hand, I find deadlines the ugly old witch ugly. Camilla ugly. ]

Why this happens I personally do not care. I love it when it does.

I am wondering if being completely wrapped-up in a non-writing activity spurs any of you onward to your writing brilliance?

I'd love to hear stories of how seemingly unrelated actions spur your creativity.

Journals, Old and New

At left, the nearly indestructible Moleskin and the durable yet fleeting iPad also using a Moleskin app.

Like you, I've carried a journal most of my adult life to catch ideas, snippets, flotsam.

However, I'm using a journal this year for for recording the information about the writing I do rather than holding the writing I produce.

I'm recording the meta-data.

I suggest you also consider the advantages of doing so.

Many of us are professionally organized and competent in our day jobs but turn to writing as if we're sophomores in high school once again. We do poorly with issues such as prioritization, time management, and consistency of effort.

The "about writing" journal helps.

I've tracking my

• writing effort by word count,
• progress towards projects (i.e. short story draft finished, first re-write finished, second draft polished),
• time on projects including this blog, 
• my reading list - currently reading and "need to read." 

I'm tracking the effort I spend in design, drafts, edits, and administration.

I hate recording time. However, it's helping.

I've been able to see by a simple application (Eternity on iOS) the percent of effort I am expending on various aspects of this increasingly serious pursuit. Its use is effortless.

I'm able to look in my journal at progress I've made in production of content.

It has been a real help for the ego. It provides a type of grounding that shows a measure of progress that otherwise is completely lacking. "January, I did X and wrote six chapters of Y and edited two short stories and sent two others out and ..."

It looks much more impressive when we're tracking our activities. Those milestones of novels published or stories in an anthology come too rarely to be the reinforcement many of us require. The frustration factor can grow in the middle of winter and a journal about writing helps.

I'd urge you to provide that sense of accomplishment and success in your own efforts by considering recording them in a journal. It makes those "I'm completely shit at this"  moments much more insignificant when they come.

Hart Johnson has something to say today about ego over here. It's well worth looking at to see how she deals with angst. Celeste Holloway has the opposite end going for her right now on her blog here. She's deep in a final edit and getting excited about the end of the process.

Me? The steady progress recorded in the journal will help keep the tiller hand firm as I move ahead.