Perseverance

Writing by Bocca (DeviantArt)

All words have been said. Writing is not magical anymore. If it ever was. And maybe I'm just in that phase where the work just needs to be done. I can blog about it until the number of words here exceed that of the book. I can talk about it with friends until they can recite my intentions by heart, but no longer have faith in it. I can replot, redraft and reedit until my fingers bleed and my eyes dry up. But in the end, it's just time and work.

Shipping it. 

It's the most important factor in any endeavor and writing a young adult novel is not exempt. How many would-be writers lay beside the road as reminders of too much good intention and not enough follow-through? How many more shine from the shelves of Barnes & Noble as examples of the possible, but also slowly filling up the white space of our consciousness so that no one can claim to be the next J.K.Rowling anymore? I just need to ship it and that means crunching the hours and doing the work.

I have a son. I am married. I have a job. I enjoy my hobbies. But all of these are also chipping away at what few reserves I have left in time and energy. Eight years ago I plotted this book (and four more). Eight long years that have taken me through five countries, endless projects and many more hours of beach, books and movies. I've painted my series in the meantime. I've seen snippets of my ideas echoed back at me from writers who got their ass in gear, while I was redrafting and remodeling, or simply NOT WRITING. My kid is eight years and he's seen me angry, laconic, passionate, bemused and depressed about this book. This one book, which is the beginning of everything.

No one has covered my topic yet.

It is still a virgin exploration of values both real in the world and fantastic. It ties so many things we find endearing and exciting in storytelling together. And, of course  it's not the Great American Novel, it's not even the best thing since sliced toast. But in my opinion it IS on par with Tolkien and Rowling. If only readers don't have to wait the same length in years between those two for me to get this novel published. And then there's still the other four books in the series. I am confident however that it will not take me eight years to write the next one. After all, if anything, I'm much better and confident now in writing than ever before. I'm bolder and I know what I want. And what I want is to share this with the world.

This dragon is getting slayed.

Off the Rail

Day 5 of the Writing Marathon
I'm tired. My eyeballs are bleeding, my beard is strangling me and my ass feels like ground beef. This writing stuff is hard. For those, who just tuned in: I'm in draft 4 of Aelemental Book 1: The Tree of Life, a young adult novel about finding oneself in this modern world of environmental, political and social upheaval. Oh, and it combines all fantasy subgenres and connects them in a logical and very original way.

But like I said... I'm tired. No, make that exhausted and I still have a ways to go.
My day so far:

• 6:00 Woke up to the chimes of my iPhone. Can anyone hate chimes more than I do now?
• 7:00 Kid is off to school. I crawl back in bed.
• 10:30 After a breakfast of champions (toast with PBJ/Nutella and some Chai tea with soymilk and honey) I groan. My old nemesis: the computer. I switch the beast on and position my protesting posterior onto the creaky seat. Was that seat always red or is it slowly draining my life fluids?
• 3:00 Man alive! Did I just work for 4 and a half hours straight? No wonder my knuckles feel like old wooden logs grinding the splinters off of each other. Breakfast of champions indeed! Time for lunch.
• 3:09 One super mango/banana smoothie with cinnamon later and I'm back in the seat.
• 3:35 Kid comes home. Needs some wrestling. We wrestle. He wins from his old man. Sweet, I've had my exercise for the day. If only I could put in some meditation time, but I'm not mindful enough to remember. I know there's a joke in there somewhere.
• 4:00 Finished Chapter 8: Simon and the Grim Council. Kind of proud of this particular chapter and not just because Nancy wrote the most number of 'Nice!'-s in the margins of the whole of draft 3 either. Thins just gel in this chapter. Simon is arrested and brought before the fairy tale council. Lots of drama and melodrama (which I excel at according to my wife) and some cool epic displays of over the top fantasy dialogue, decor and characters. Let's just say: this is not the Snow White you grew up with.
• 6:00 So tired. Writing this blog now, cuz I'm not sure I'll be back until tomorrow morning. Then again, I'll be shopping for Captain Underpants with Alex tomorrow (as promised), so maybe I should make the most of what time I have left tonight. We'll see. First dinner...

Here's some inspirational art I used from diTerlizzi to give me some ideas for the Council of Aelders, who pass sentence on poor Simon:

Planescape, art by Tony diTerlizzi -
I wanted a police force made up of red caped females.
Can you guess what fairy tale  character may be part of them?

Planescape, art by Tony diTerlizzi
The Council aides ended up being decisively non-human and
more in tune with which Aelder they served.

Planescape, art by Tony diTerlizzi
The Council of Aelders consist of the 5 most famous fairy tale characters,
the only snag? You have never before seen them like this.

Planescape, art by Tony diTerlizzi
The Verdant Sentinels are the woodsmen of the sotry: they patrol the forest perimeters
 and make sure humans don't discover the secret Domain.

• 11:00 Okay, so I'm back and did an extra few pages. Now time for bed.

About Suffering Artists, Story Balance and Flow
It's probably good that I'm tired - suffering artist burning the midnight oil and all that (okay it's only 11pm, but hey! I'm a parent for heaven's sake, I'm supposed to be in bed by 10!)  The tiredness allows me inside the skin of Simon. I'm actually writing a new chapter, that collects bits and pieces of when Simon has meltdowns. Like I said at one point (or maybe not, I can't remember) draft 4 is about making the story flow and keep it balanced. The emotions, action and information in draft 3 was too haphazard and it seemed random and not natural at all. Besides, Simon was angry all the time in the first 10 chapters and it's hard to sympathize with the lead character when he's barking at everybody all the time. So, I decided to tone it down, make him more sympathetic (aka bland) at the beginning, shell-shocked as his life is turned upside down (aka victim) and now tired, frustrated and angry as there are too many questions unanswered and he feels locked down by Fate (aka 3D). Which is really what he is being under house arrest in the fairy tale city. And what I am. Am I? No wait, that's the melodrama playing up again...

Au revoir.

Bullet Exits Brain Leaving Big Hole.

Wednesday 9th November
Okay, so maybe I overdid it. My tools have maxed out on the amount of creativity I tried to channel through them. Check this wonky schedule out:

• 6:00 Got up and prepped Alex for 1st school day in almost 3 weeks.
• 6:45 Start up desktop...
• 6:46 Try again
• 6:47 :(
• 6:55 Okay, the computer is really dead. The lights are on, but no one is home. Ships.
• 7:00 Start diagnosing my computer myself - I am an IT guy first after all and an artist second, or so my diploma says. At this point of time, I won't argue with a piece of treeware, lest that also leaves me hanging.
• 7:30 I give up. It's definitely a hardware problem as I've run diagnostics and massaged every card, chip and cord in the casing. Time to bring it to the computer repair shop. But because that won't open until 10:30 I fetch water instead - our bottles are empty and our water company has stopped delivering 2 weeks ago due to the flooding.
• 8:10 I decide to get groceries as well. Hop on bike and go to expat supermarket, cuz quite frankly the local markets and smaller supermarkets have not been stocking up lately and at least this way I can get some decent yogurt, bread and canned goods.
• 9:15 Return sweaty. Decide to meditate and do some yoga. Meditate was crap (couldn't concentrate), Yoga was rushed. What the heck am I rushing for? Oh right, I really really want to get to writing, but I have to wait for the repair shop to open.
• 10:30 Ships. Ships. Ships. I totally forgot my coffee visit with my friend JD. This is what you get when you meditate like an ADHD patient on caffeine.
• 10:45 Coffee visit with JD. We share miseries and cures. Always good talks with JD.
• 12:00 Cycle to Fortune City, the local IT mall where I have my desktop checked. It's the graphics card that burnt out as well as the memory that was hickupping. That's what you get when you're such a visually oriented artist like myself. ^_^ Anyway, 30 min. of repairs later and 200 Baht poorer I cycle back home.
• 1:00 Eat lunch (egg/ham/tomato sandwich & green tea/lemonade), shower (aaaah) and hook up my ole computer.
• 2:00 Write 1/2 half of this blog.
• 2:20 GET TO WORK ALREADY!!!
• 6:00 Need to stop. Still in infernal chapter 6. I realize it's because this is also the chapter I left off polishing the text during draft 2 in order to dramatically start cutting in draft 3. I made that bold decision, because I was fed up tinkering details, while so much of the book needed to be axed. Now I'm paying the price.
• 7:45 I'm back.
• 9:15 Ended Chapter 6: The Yellow Dirt Road to the bombastic final two tracks of X-Men First Class. Man, those tunes kick some seriously dramatic @$$!

Good. So this wraps up the first part of Simon's journey in Book 1. He has followed the trail of his kidnapped sister and is about to enter the mythological city of FabelInsel. I'm glad I was able to compress and shorten this trek, if only because it serves no other purpose than to introduce the reader - through Simon's eyes - to the fantastical world of Aelemental. The real meat of the story begins now...


Aaaaand more art:

More Stan Sakai turned Aelemental.

CU latah, alligatah.

Speeding Up

TING! Day 2 of the Great Redrafting Marathon. Things are going great. It was a slow start yesterday, but things are picking up today. Tomorrow promises to be even better. Why? Well, first of all I'm getting the hang of writing again. Just like riding a bike. Also, I get to leave all my research, notes and other helpful things around my work space instead of tidying them up, because I have to focus on other tasks. So that makes diving into it easier in the morning. And then finally: today is Alex's last day at home, before school reopens. So no more homework, chores or other distractions. Sorry kiddo, but Papa needs to write the next Great Novel.

This is what I did today:

• 6:45 Woke up earlier than yesterday. Woohoo. Bonus! Felt so jazzed, I even allowed myself to tweet about it.
• 7:50 Ready to get crackin'. Sat behind my computer.
• 9:00 Time I really started working. Damn you Internet and damn that browbassing.
• 11:00 Hit the gym, ran for 45 minutes. Then lunch with Alex - miso soup and Vegemite on bread for me, PBJ sammie for him. I know what you're thinking.
• 12:25 Homework time with my son. Took a little longer this time, but oh well - it's the last time.
• 1:30 Shower. (Crap, I realize writing this I forgot to meditate - and now you know why I have to meditate, sheesh!)
• 1:45 Back to writing. 
• 2:30 Quick run to the kitchen to get a big glass of green tea & lemonade (what am I doing to my intestines?)
• 6:00 Finished Chapter 5: The Candy Crumb Trail: but is it really the 'old' chapters 5, 6 and 7 which I combined into 1 longer one? Or does it still only count as one, because they were so small? I dunno, but I gotta quit to cook dinner. More rice, this time with paprika and zuchini. Probably the most normal thing I eat today, what is up with that?
• 7:00 Kid goes to bed after watching Spongebob and Fairly Odd Parents.
• 7:30 Post the kids homework online and back to work. Tough chapters ahead with lots of cut and pasting. Watched a little Daily Show and then at 8:00 to work.
• 10:30 Time to quit. I tired. I cuddle my pillow in absence of Nancy.

I'll leave you with more Aelemental art:

After Usagi Yoyimbo artist Stan Skai. Still looking for the right style to do the chapter illustrations.

Bonsoir!

Bullet To The Brain

Time to get straight to the point. After spending too much time looking for IT work, playing host to visitors, swimming in the Maldives (what now?) and being a nurse to my sick wife I now dedicate this week to some serious marathon writing. 7 days of non-stop revision. The fourth and final draft of Aelemental - Book 1: The Tree of Life.

This is what I did today:

• 8:15 Woke up. Crap. Already slept too long.
• 9:00 After oatmeal, groceries at empty supermarket (due to Bangkok floods) I ignore the sweat and get cracking.
• 11:15 Finished Chapter 3: The Boy and the Monkey. I exercise (weights) for 20 minutes.
• 11:45 Lunch with my 6yr old Alex - smoothie for me, PBJ sammie for him. It's tradition.
• 12:15 Alex is still having 'Snow Days' (the warmer watery variety) so we do his homework toegther.
• 1:00 Shower (it was due) and meditation (good for focus and concentration).
• 1:30 Back to writing. 
• 2:30 Coffee break: hazulnut latte and banana cake from corner shop Bicarro Coffee (good for everything)
• 5:45 Still in Chapter 4, but need to cook dinner (Nancy left yesterday for week long USA work trip). Rice with Edamame and Red Snapper. Kid loves it for some obscure reason. Might have to investigate.
• 7:00 Put kid to bed after reading some Captain Underpants (...it's the circle of nerd....)
• 7:30 Quick blog updates (this - duh and Snaxtons <- shameless plug)
• 9:30 Time I plan on stopping writing, watch some Conan/Daily Show and hit the sack. I'll tell you if I succeed in that tomorrow.

I'll leave you with some Aelemental art.

Experimenting with chapter illustrations.

Ciao!