Leaving a Mark In the Final Days

"Knife of Dreams" by Greg Ruth (gregthings.com)

Spoiler alert! More excuses following.

So life happened...again. Since my previous blog I've been on a week long trip to Universal Florida for my son's birthday, celebrated my 10th anniversary with my wife in the Carribean, been for my birthday to Williamsburg and switched from consulting (for the last 9 years) to a full-time graphic designer position with a startup company in Raleigh. But it's not all good news. My father also passed away at the beginning of September. He was 75 years and passed away in his sleep due to a heart attack.

So where does that leave me with writing? Honestly? In a not so good place. I've been struggling for the last few months with a particular involved piece of rewriting. Whereas I was redrafting before, at most adding, rewriting or omitting small sections of my almost finished novel, I always knew I was going to have to do major work at this part of the process. So far draft 4 of Aelemental was about bringing the book to one cohesive read. Separating action and emotion so it didn't feel like every single chapter was trying to emphasize both, smoothing out Simon's character building, so he wasn't an ADD patient on a sugar rush all the time, but also omitting a slew of secondary characters who quite frankly were slowing down the plot. So where the first three parts of the book involved only minor edits (but still a complete syntax and semantic check), the fourth part was where most of the plot, characters and mythology really didn't gel. That's when I decided to rewrite the whole part.

That took me several months, with many interruptions for work, side projects, household duties and a long (and admittedly fun) summer.

Now comes the final fifth part. I've wrapped up pretty much everything I wanted to say. Foreshadowing and hints of things to come are in place and loose plot threads and character conflicts are all neatly resolved and all I have to do is bring the climatic battle to a satisfying payoff...again.

Still, I have my fears. What if I publish it digitally and I can't find the time to advertise it well? Will I still be able to market it to publishers/agents? I still need to do the illustrations and the front and back cover. And winter is coming, which means more holidays, more time on the road commuting to and back from work and a looming flu season.

My dad wanted to become a writer when he retired. He was a chef all his life and only got so far as to self-publish a dozen cooking books on Vancouver Island, driving from inn to store and stocking new copies wherever he managed to sell a few. He didn't get very far, despite his great drive. So he decided to write fiction and find a publisher for that. He never made it. I don't want to become like that. I don't want to leave a legacy of a great ecological fable unfinished except for an unpublished digital manuscript, four more plotted books and a wall full of notes. I'm already 43 and I was 35 when I came up with the story.

Although I can't give up my day job, and I'm also not willing to give up every spare piece of time to force-write, I will diligently and patiently continue plowing on until I deliver a 95% great young adult novel. Anything more will go unnoticed anyway and result in a greater amount of hours second-guessing myself and not shipping. This story must stand or fall on its own merits and I will let go of it with the confidence that I gave it my best shot.

It's Time. My Time.

Today I've decided something important. I've decided to just write the story I want to tell for the last 6 years.

Yes it has been 6 years ago since the Muses started haunting me and I've come a long way. I have plotted all 5 books in my Ælemental series. I have written the first book, redrafted it and redrafted it again. I have started writing the second book. I have done a lot of research on fairy tales, rain forests, Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs and Incas. I have learned a lot about writing, about rhythm and characters. I have read the most helpful books on writing and telling a good story. I've made drawings. I've invented an alien alphabet. I've kept this blog, started another one and released a tie-in called 'Impulse' on Twitter and Facebook.

But this is not so much about what I've done as what I'm no longer going to do.

I'm not going to:

• 'just' write a story
• write for a specific audience
• try to become the next J.K.Rowling
• write to become a millionaire
• perfect my story until my fingertips bleed
• rush redrafting because people want me to be finished
• include everything I find interesting
• cut out everything except the bare essentials
• have the characters 'come alive' and lead the story
• have the plot hi-jack the characters
• put gimmicks in the book to sell it
• feel bad about blogging, telling people and texting about writing the story

So, Anonymous? Get of my back and crawl back into that miserable little hole you came out of. I am glad for your 'criticism', but grow a pair and take credit for your complaints, cuz anyone can anonymously spout venom without taking the responsibility to use sound arguments.

Writing should be fun. You should not have to deal with pressure of performance. This is not an Olympic event. I'm writing a fictive tale, not a research paper on curing cancer or AIDS. The quality of my writing is not subject to any of the bullet points listed above, because for every rule there are exceptions. Books that break all rules become popular reads all the time. On the other side, I read crappy books all the time as well. I finish them too. I just don't pick up sequels if they're really not worth it. As a reader I can be judgmental. As a writer I cannot. 

I have a story to tell and I need all my concentration to weave that tale well.

So, after money, audience, comparisons with other writers, fame, page counts and attractiveness to publishers have all imploded as motivators due to their lack of substance, I am left with the final (and most subtle until I find the next) hurdle to penning a good yarn: time. I need to write when I can write (Sorry, Mr. King, we're not all as 'dedicated' as you are), at the speed I feel is right and damn those (including myself) who bug me about when they get to hold a copy (Sorry Geoff, Ray, Marcus, Dawn and others, I know you all mean well). This is my brain child and I will deliver her when she's ready, even if it takes me another 6 years.

Ælemental, 12 years in the making. Simon was born back... as was his audience.

And blogging? I'll keep doing that anyway, because it's like therapy to a writer: it clears my head and holds a mirror in front of me, like right now. But that's a story for another time...

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!

Draft, Edit, Print...at What Cost?!?

Another week of Nancy traveling for work. Another chance to spend my evenings writing This Is A Book. And as if it is a universal law, there is good news and there is bad news.

The good news always comes easy. The book is practically finished. I'm wrapping up the short fiction stories I wanted to include (four in total) and the philosophical/autobiographical stuff is as good as done.

The bad news is everything else.

Let's start with the basics: I'm running out of time. It is really hard to write a book within even 4 weeks (let alone my original plan of one week) considering that I'm only writing when Nancy is gone (3 out of the 4 weeks scheduled), Alex is in bed (8pm-midnight) and I'm not doing other stuff (like writing this blog, researching Lulu and Kindle Direct Publishing or... sleeping). I truly admire those writers who set aside full days from sunrise to sunset with only writing on their mind, but I have a life. A life which demands I seek for a job, keep the household running, spend time with my family and a variety of other incidental errands.

This directly leads into the quality of the material and my ambitions about it. The experiment of 'This Is A Book' is simple:

prove that anyone can write a book, publish it and have it join the abundance of other seemingly superfluous titles available at your local bookstore. 

Do it with spontaneity, make it fun and give it away for free. 

This way people can't complain about the quality too much, because it's like a piece of performance art for writers and readers alike (and if they do complain I'll refuse to listen, nah). However I can't have it completely bomb and destroy my fragile newborn reputation as a writer, because I do still need to publish 'Aelemental' along the same channels. Yes, that means I'm converting to self-publishing from seeking out the traditional industry.

So with the time running out and the quality of the material on the line, what do I do next? I still have to design the book and publish it and by what I've seen today, the learning curve is acceptable, but still somewhat daunting. I know my way around InDesign and have checked out Lulu and Kindle, but can I get it all done in time before my time runs out? I might also have to sacrifice more than just my initial promise of getting it done in a week and giving it away for free. If you want to hold an actual copy in your hand, you'll have to shell out approx. $9.50 for a 100 page 'Lulu published' copy. If I waiver my $1.00 royalty I can bring it down to $7.50. An e-book version should be doable for free (Is this true, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), but this means lesser interactivity. In other words, you can't do the activities I included in the book unless you copy them onto actual paper. Still, I can do both: publish an actual book on Lulu and the free e-book on Amazon. Or should I charge at least $1 for the e-book? What do you think?

Choices, choices. I really welcome any thoughts on self-publishing, so if you can help me out, drop me a note, alright? Otherwise I'll just have to invest more time into researching...or just go for it and risk it all....eek!

The Muses Ride Again

We're back! It has been an extensive (and explosive) six weeks since my last blog. With the final hand laid to the first draft of 'Simon & Sally' (working title) my wife Nancy, my son Alex and I packed our bags and headed out for some downtime in the United States of America. While we enjoyed our vacation away from everything and anything, back at home in Bangkok the state of affairs did not cool down - in fact they heated up and reached a boiling point. The result of this was a death toll of 75 people, over 20 buildings set to flames (among which the famous CentralWorld shopping mall) and an unresolved political and social climate that may have been tempered, but by far has not been doused.

And so after three weeks of intended vacation, we got another three weeks of unintentional vacation handed to us. Nancy's new job required visas that were simply not made available until the dust back at home had settled. I could have taken up redrafting the novel at that time, but instead chose to spend quality time with my son, who missed his friends terribly and kept on asking when we would go home again. Well now we are and guess what? He didn't want to go to school this morning. Talking about living in the moment by direction of snap decisions. Which brings me to my own decision I need to make.

My extended absence shaved off a whopping 45 days off the deadline of getting the book accepted by an agent to shop around. In the meantime I still need to:

• redraft the first draft
• get Nancy to edit it down even further
• while she is doing that create the illustrations for each chapter
• plot and possible draft the second book of the series.

Even if I leave out the drafting of book 2, I still need to completely redraft book 1 and possible rewrite a lot after Nancy is finished editing it. Do I start immediately, reading and rewriting or should I first research the various 'How to Write' guidebooks out there so I know what to look for when I redraft? I have four books, one of which is Stephen King's 'On Writing' and one is a very concise 'Elements of Style' my dad gave to me a few years back. I feel like I should read these, however I'm not sure if it will actually help me or bog me down with rules an industry might not even be paying attention to anymore. One of the more memorable examples of this is the rule that one should not use more exclamation marks than one every hundred pages. Reading Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol' the other day I found several on one page and he has no problem selling his series.

There is an added problem to my dilemma and that is that after my last IT-project ended in November 2009 I have not been working, other than flexing these new writing muscles of mine. So I will also have to reserve time to upgrade my computing skills, update my resume and website and start looking for work. Of course, if I actually do find a new gig, when will I find time to write? Hmmm, something to think about. Just not too long, because time is ticking.

Time

Hi there,

It is funny how we go from one chapter in our lives to another. I feel like we live for the moments where the switch from one point in our life takes place to another. For example. Alex is at his Spring break point. In other words his last day of school was Friday and today he's going to Bangkok Dolphins Swimming Camp for a week. So he's switching from one daily routine to another. Nancy is also transitioning from one job to another and I have just finished Book 1 and am now preparing for my vacation(s). There is even a countdown on this blog for when Book 1 goes to a publisher.

Time is an odd thing. I am continuously aware how long we've lived in Bangkok (2yrs), how long ago I started writing the book (5mnths) and how long we've been in the new year already (4mnths). Then I realize I've been writing this blog for 75 posts, have 2 days left before I go to Malaysia, where I'll stay 5 days before I come back, after which it will be 2,5 wks before we go to the US. Aaaargghh. Is really our lives just a summation of time blocks?

The most common expression about time is: 'I have/had no time for/to...', which always struck me as funny. Because don't we all possess the same amount of time? Don't we all have 24 hours a day in which we choose to employ one activity or another. My belief is that we don't not have time to do this or that, but rather we choose not to spend time doing this or that. And it's not even a conscious decision either often. Our society is so polluted with attention grabbing stimuli that we often feel overwhelmed and then browse very discriminatingly in order to keep our heads above water. What does that say about our society? Are we all white rabbits running around with a pocket watch (or cellphone glued to our ear) saying: 'I'm late. No time. No time'?

My point being that time plays such a factor in our lives that simply doing nothing for a moment or slowing down, instantly has a bad association we don't want to be associated with. So we partition our activities into time blocks and we run on automatic from one to another. We stop enjoying every moment in life, we run through life for the sake of... running. Where Book 1 in Simon & Sally is indirectly about matter (space) and the abuse (greed & deforestation) upon it, Book 2 will address the relationship between space and time and the abuse upon that (plunder of resources & hate). Book 3 then will singularly address time and the what happens when we get disconnected from it (pollution & sloth). If you think these are too heavy topics, don't worry: it's heavily marinated with fictitious events, places and characters.

I'm going to spend some time now not thinking about the books.