I've finally made it to the other side of my writer's block. I'm back to working on the novel, hitting my word count every day.

Thank goodness.

It wasn't any one thing that got me through it, either.

i started reading again, sprinting through two novels that'd been sitting on the To Be Read pile for a good while. They were both excellent, they were both slightly outside my normal genre, and they were both kindling to re-light the writing fire inside me.

I leaned into my schedule disruption, which meant calling a halt to my exercise routine for a week. I know, you're not supposed to do that; it's the exact opposite of the advice most folks give about writer's block ("take a walk", "clear your head", etc). But it helped me to relax, to feel like I had all the time in the world to write, which made it that much easier to find my flow.

And I read a few chapters in the new Pocket Workshop book by the Clarion West Writer's Workshop. Specifically, Eileen Gunn's chapter on writer's block calmed me down significantly. It reminded me that blockages happen, and pushed me to interrogate it, rather than ignore it.

By forcing me to really look at why I was blocked, to listen to what the block was trying to tell me, I found my way forward. I realized that the novel section I was working on wasn't working, really, and that's why I was blocked on it. It was too passive, for one. Where the previous flashback section was very much driven entirely by the narrator's actions, the current section was one where a lot just happened to her. Or where she stumbled across things, and reacted to them. It wasn't compelling, and my subconscious knew it, but my conscious mind wanted to carry on like nothing was wrong.

So my subconscious went on strike. Writer's block.

I spent a few days brainstorming ways to change the section, to make it driven by the narrator. And suddenly my writing brain kicked back into gear, generating conversations and visualizing scenes again. Not all of them lined up, but that's ok, that's part of the process.

In the end, I decided to trash the 5,000 words I'd written for the current section of the book. Goodbye, gone.

And started over.

But now, this time, the words are coming much more easily. I can sit down in the morning and get my word count in, without worrying about being blocked, or not knowing where I'm going. The narrator -- the protagonist of this section -- is back firmly in control of things, and that's how it should be.

Instead of somehow wandering from Central Asia to Europe, she's fleeing there, from the consequences of her own actions. Instead of stumbling on a town with a dragon problem, she's seeking it out, because it's the only way she can keep a powerful curse at bay.

She still faces constraints, of course. But the way she overcomes her challenges within those constraints is her choice, no one else's. And that...that makes it a lot easier to write down her story.

What about you? Have you had a period of serious writer's block, that you then worked through? How did you overcome it?

Zero words written on the novel this week.

The little parts I was writing last week, based on the outlining I did, ran out of steam. Turns out a single day of outlining isn't enough for a section that's probably going to end up being 30,000 words!

So this week I hit pause on drafting. Instead, I've spent each day's writing time on outlining and research, trying to build a path forward.

Eh, that's not quite right, either...More like, I started out the week with an idea of the beats this part needs to hit. Character X needs to meet Character Y in Town Z. There's a Guild-sponsored dragon hunt, which both compete in. Something something something, they become friends.

Which is not a lot to go on! So this week I've been drilling into the "why" and "how" of things: Why is Character Y in Town Z? Why does anyone in the Town care about dragons? Why this Guild in particular? How does Character X find out about the competition? How do they meet Character Y?

That, in turn, has pushed me to do some more research into the history of the region, looking for answers about government structure, merchant shipping, relations between nobles and peasants, etc etc etc.

And it's working! I stumbled upon an historic event that fits exactly with my generational timeline, and explains why Character Y is in town (and why they might join in a dragon hunt). It's settled a lot of other questions I've had about the book -- like when precisely in history everything is taking place -- and even adds extra depth and drama to some later events.

So, am I ready to get back to drafting? Not yet. I've only got the first third or so of this section outlined so far. I need to work through the hunt itself, and its consequences, before I'll feel comfortable putting fingers to keys again.

Hopefully that'll be sometime next week. Wish me luck!

Did I say I'd spend time outlining last weekend? How naive I was! No, last weekend was all house chores, with a single break -- a fantastic break -- to celebrate a friend's new job.

So I did the outlining on Monday, and wrote Tuesday, and Wednesday was...a lost day...and went back to writing yesterday. And now it's Friday, and I've only hit half my word count for the week. I've got some catching up to do.

And editing -- that second flash piece I wrote last month needs another draft -- and story submitting. It's a lot to juggle!

But I've got today off, thank goodness, so there's a good chance I'll get some of it done before the weekend. And who knows? I might sneak some work in on Saturday or Sunday as well.

Meanwhile, the approach of fall has me feeling the need to be in a class again, leveling up my craft. I recently discovered Cat Rambo's Academy for Wayward Writers, and its set of self-paced classes looks like just the ticket. I think I'll start with the one on editing (since knowing when to stop editing is something I struggle with) and go from there.

Steady progress on the novel this week, even though the plot of this section is getting away from me.

I had an outline for this part, I swear. But that outline’s nearly a year old now. The characters have shifted, both in my head and on the page.

As a result, they’re doing and saying things that are blowing holes in my outline large enough for the Ever Given to sail through. A single representative of a merchant guild has become an entire squabbling panel. An orderly interview morphed into an impromptu witch trial. Three characters that were supposed to be at cross-purposes are now joining up to hunt dragons on the sea (!).

I’ve managed to wing it, so far this week. But I’d like to have some time this weekend to rework my outline, and plot out the new sequence of events, given how much has changed.

I could keep winging it, I suppose. But experience has taught me that without an outline, or some kind of guide, this first draft will end up being even rougher than normal. And it's already going to be intimidating enough to revise a novel this long. I don't want to be creating more work for myself down the line.

So: an outline there will be, if not this weekend, then first thing next week. After all, you don't want to go sailing in search of Baltic dragons without a map!

Novel broke through 60,000 words this week!

I'm back to working on it every day, so far. Picked up my brush, so to speak, and went back to filling in different pieces of the section I'm on. I'm still jumping around a lot, as different things occur to me (and as mental blocks come up for any one piece), but that's just how this book is going, I suppose.

I am starting to get tugs to go work on other stories, though. Had solutions to two big problems with my first novel just drop into my head the other day, which made me want to pick that back up and edit it. Also there's a short story I've been noodling on for several months, that I figured out how to tell just last week.

But I'm trying to hold to the novel for now, at least till this section of it is done. I know if I pull away for too long -- longer than two weeks, say -- the chances are I won't come back and finish.

Which doesn't sound like me, but...it's just so dang big, this book, both in scope and in final word count, that I'm still intimidated by it. Some days I wonder if it's worth it to finish, if I have it in me to pull something like this off. Not to mention concerns with getting all these different cultures and time periods right, in terms of representation. I'm far outside my comfort zone, here, and it's hard not to look back at the cozy interiors of a smaller story and wonder if I should just go back inside.

But not yet. I want -- I need -- to get this draft done first. I think taking breaks, to work on shorter stuff, is good, and I'll keep doing it. Work that into my mental schedule, so to speak, so that I let myself work on something else after each big chunk of the book is done.

But I'm going to finish, even if it takes me another year to do it. After all, I've got no deadlines, no publisher waiting on this. When am I ever going to get the chance to do something this risky again?

Wife and I are doing a bit of stay-cation now that she's back from Arkansas, and thank goodness. It's a chance for us to re-connect, but also relax after having to each carry a (separate) household on our own.

And it's also a chance for me to spend a little more time writing than usual 😀

As a result, I've drafted a new short story, gotten mid-way through a first draft of a second, and still written over 600 words on the novel. Both the stories are very short; one's 800 words -- so would qualify as flash in most markets -- and the other's currently at 1,300 words, so will likely finish around 3k. They're both a little darker than usual (maybe too dark), so I'm not certain they'd be sellable, but they've been fun to write, so 🤷‍♂️

They've also been a nice break from the novel, which has let my brain go from "I have no idea how to write this section" to "Ok, here's the map, I'll make up the rest." I've taken the outline I wrote up last week and started filling it out, using the "dabs of paint" method that has become my go-to for this book.

I've always heard from other authors that you have to learn to write each book anew, and in this case it's true; my only way forward has been to completely change my technique, from one where I write the whole thing through front-to-back, to one where I write little pieces as they come to me, and then slowly fill in all the gaps till everything meets up and the section is done. I end up doing more editing of the draft early on, in order to make everything line up, but doing it this way frees me from worrying too much about getting everything "right" in this first draft (which would be impossible).

What about you? Do you find yourself radically altering your writing process for each book? Or is it more of a slow refinement over time?

I've not written a single word for the novel, this week.

It's been a mad scramble to get everything lined up at work before I go on vacation for the next two weeks. Plus my wife's coming home after a month away tomorrow, so I've been getting the house back into presentable shape 😅

So this week has been a bad one for words on the page. I haven't been entirely idle on the writing front, though. Two of the four short stories I wanted to edit are done, and I've sent them both out to different markets (one got rejected 48 hours later, so I need to send that one back out, but still). I've also stolen some time to plot out the current flashback sequence in the novel, discovering some things along the way about the main character and her experiences.

And I've been putting together my short book reviews post for last month. Slowly. But steadily.

I'm hoping to catch up on my actual word count today, as the first day of my PTO. If I can get my chores done first, of course 😬

One short story down, three to go.

I managed to get the final edits done last weekend for one of the four short stories I'm working on. Submitted it to a market, too, who promptly rejected it three days later 😅

So I need to send it on to the next market. And use this weekend to edit the next short story, so I can start sending it out, too.

My goal is to get at least one done every weekend, so by the end of August I’ll have all four circulating to different markets.

Meanwhile, I’ve been pushing the novel forward. Wrapped up the bridging chapter I’ve been working on these past few weeks, and finally started on the second of the three big flashbacks.

The sequence of events for this flashback's still a little vague in my head. May take some time this weekend to outline it out, try to make it all clearer. Always a bit easier to get through each day’s writing when I know where I’m going!

Novel's hit 57,665 words!

I've finally had a week where I've hit my word goal every day (so far). I've had to trick myself into doing it -- thinking "just write 50 words, and if that's it, that's fine" to start -- but it's worked.

I'm wrapping up the "bridging" chapter I've been working on, one that advances the main plot while setting up the second of three flashbacks. This chapter started out as just a scattering of dialog, much of it out of order (as it turned out). Over the past few weeks I've been layering in blocking, then descriptions, then thoughts, as well as stitching the different pieces together (via more dialog, blocking, etc). I confess I wasn't sure until yesterday that I could actually get the beginning and the middle conversations to link up, but somehow it's all come together.

At least, in a first draft sense. This whole thing might have to be trashed and re-done for the second draft, who knows? But I can't get to that second draft without finishing the first one.

It's good that I've been hitting my word count for the novel already this week, because I need to spend the weekend working on my short stories. I did a count recently and discovered I have four that are just one more draft away from being ready to submit to magazines. Considering I currently I have nothing on submission, it's time to polish those stories up and start sending them out. Maybe rename one or two (like everything else, my first passes at titles are...terrible). And there's that previous novel sitting in the corner, waiting for its third draft.

Too much to do. But thank goodness I don't have any hard deadlines. I'll get to the stories, and the third novel draft, and finish this current book. All in good time (but seriously I need to wrap these up so I can get to some of the new ideas I've been having...)

I'm back to something of a normal writing schedule, finally. I'm not always getting my writing done in the morning, like I'd prefer. Often having to squeeze it in over my lunch break, or between getting off work and cooking dinner. But I am getting it done, thank goodness.

Weekends are still my best option, though. Having a long block of unbroken time lets me tackle things that require more focus, like editing a short story (which I got done this weekend, and started sending out to beta readers). If only weekends were longer, eh?

The best thing that's started happening recently, though, is that I'm getting ideas again.

Before the pandemic, I'd stumble across an idea for a story (short or novel) multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. i'd capture it in whatever notes software I was using at the time (I've been through several, don't judge me). Starting a new project was a matter of rifling through those ideas to find the one that resonated with me the most, while telling myself I'd get to the others "someday."

That all dried up in 2020. It's like that part of my brain went to sleep, waiting for a time when I wasn't worried about surviving the week.

It makes sense that it would, but I missed it. Even though I thought I knew why it was gone, I wondered if it would ever come back. If I would ever be an idea-generator again.

But thankfully, it has! Over the last week or so, I've been coming up with story ideas -- most of them novels -- every other day. Bits of dialog come to me, or a scenario that I'd thought about before suddenly clicks with something I read, and the seed of a story is made.

Some of them are about novels I've already written. I may have mentioned the four novels I have in draft form (3 first, 1 second), a, um, embarrassing habit of mine that I intend to correct soon. I'd thought that all but the last would end up trunk novels, but lately I've been getting ideas on how to tighten up the others, things to trim and change to make them better. And you know what? I might just pull them out of the trunk after all.

I mean, in the end it's my body of work, and I can do with it what I please, right? Maybe they won't sell, even if I edit them all, but editing them will be good practice. Especially if I do it deliberately, getting better each time. So eventually I will draft and edit a novel that'll sell.

...you know, if I can just find the time for all of that 😅

Anyway, I'm happy to be generating ideas again, even if they sometimes distract me from the novel I'm currently drafting. Welcome back, formerly missing part of my brain!

This week has been a bad one for writing.

It started out well enough, mind you. Got a blog post written and some plotting done on Monday, and actual words down on Tuesday.

But the rest of the week has been a wash. Wednesday was a blur, between work, getting the dogs to the boarding people, and prepping the house for having the power shut off on Thursday. Yesterday I got up early, packed, drove out to the hotel I was going to work from, and rushed right back home as soon as the power was off.

And no, spending all day working in a hotel where no one else was masking was not conducive to being creative 😬

So here I am, end of the week arriving and only 271 words written. I've got a lot of catch-up to do this weekend.

Wish me luck.

Novel’s crossed 54,000 words!

I’m back to writing it in a scatter-shot way. Skipping up and down a chapter, scribbling down dialog or blocking or scene descriptions as they come to me.

The current chapter's proving particularly difficult to write in anything like a linear fashion. There's just so much for me to cover, to bridge the time between one lengthy flashback and the next. I've got to deepen the two main character's relationship, continue to express one character's coming to terms with their recent debilitating injuries, and set things up for the next bridge after the second flashback.

It's a lot, and as a result, the draft of this chapter is a jumbled mess. I've got dialog for one line of conversation scattered across three different scenes, and none of it ties together. Yet.

I keep telling myself the first draft is supposed to be messy, but this is just...the most confused thing I've ever written, so far. How am I going to pull together a coherent chapter from this?

Speaking of coherence, I'm also trying to edit the short story I drafted last month. And at some point I do need to start in on a third draft of the novel I was working on most of last year. I've not yet gotten a novel through enough drafts to be ready to send it out to agents, and it's high time I finally did.

But time...time is the problem. If I'm working on the new novel, I'm not editing the short story. If I'm editing the short story, I'm not editing the novel. And if I'm editing the previous novel, I'm not making progress on the current one.

How can I square this circle? How can I find the time to not just work on, but finish, all these projects?

Screw it, I'm putting more magic in my fantasy novel.

Up to this point I've been careful to keep it magic-lite. I wanted to make things as close to historical as possible. Did -- and continue to do -- my research, mixed in my own experiences with the locations involved, and restrained myself to just the one change (dragons!) and nothing else.

But now, 50,000 words in, that's boring me. So I'm letting it go.

Mind you, I’m not going all-out. I’m not suddenly dropping in some fireball-throwing wizards or wisecracking elves (though fireball-throwing, wisecracking elves does sound like my cup of tea 🤔)

I’m taking the fantastical elements of the book, and strengthening them. Taking what had been a vague psychic connection, and making it both stronger and more specific. Like turning up a dial in the sound mix.

That’ll give it a more prominent role in the story, and provide another tool I can use to complicate things for my characters. rubs hands together It’s going to be fun.

What about you? Have you ever gone into a story with a set of self-imposed constraints, only to shatter them later?

I finished the eternal section!

Finally laid down all the connective text it needed. Final word count: 34,089 words, for just that one part of the book (!).

It's a huge milestone. Means not only that I can move on to the next part of the book, a shorter interlude before the next large chunk, but I'm about 1/3 of the way through the book as a whole: 49,594 words. I said this was going to be a door-stopper, right?

I feel like I need to take a moment and look back at where I started. Not to brag, but just to survey the view from this part of the summit, so to speak. Because otherwise the moment's going to be lost, mixed in with all the others spent putting one word in front of the others, trudging up the slope.

When I started out on this book, last November, I had a plan in a very loose sense of the word. I knew the beats I wanted to hit, and the general shape of the story, but that was it. I didn't really know who these characters were, or what could motivate them through these events. I also didn't know if I could even write this kind of historical novel, where I leap from the shores of the Baltic Sea to the Central Asian steppe and back again.

But I have. I can. It might be junk, but the first draft of the steppe sequence is done. I conjured up a whole family from scratch! I worked out how to track a dragon across the plains. And discovered how a pre-teen could summon her inner strength to strike back at that dragon for her father's death.

That's not nothing! Again, it's just the first draft, and I can already see that it'll need a lot of edits. But after months of grinding away at it, wondering if I'd ever see real progress, wondering if I should just stop and spend my time doing something else, I can take heart in knowing that this piece, at least, is done. And if I can finish one section, I can finish the others. One word at a time.

So take heart, if you've been feeling like me! Like the work is never-ending. Afraid that none of it will be worthwhile.

Because eventually you'll summit that mountain. And you'll look back at where you started, and wonder how the hell you've come so far.

So I didn't quit. Not this week, at least :)

Only 686 words written so far, though, so I'll need to play catch-up today and tomorrow, once again. I seem to end up skipping my writing for the day at least once a week, so a Friday writing marathon might end up being a regular habit. Which is fine with me, actually...wrapping up my writing in a final burst feels like a good way to roll into the weekend.

And I've finally got enough distance from the horror story I drafted -- about two weeks -- that I can go back and start revising it now. Which'll be a nice break from the novel (again), because ye gods I'm tired of the section I've been working on. Writing in skip-around mode works for getting me past blockages, but makes sewing up all those missing parts kind of a drag. And it makes that connecting process a skip-around of its own, but an involuntary one, so just as I get in the flow for one area, I hit the words I've already written, and need to skip ahead to the next missing piece.

It's tedious, and tedium makes it hard to push myself to get the writing done. Because it needs to be done, those missing pieces need to be filled in, lest I end up with something of a half-told story.

But it's not very fun. The fun parts I've already written! That was the good thing about skipping around. Now I'm in the bad part, which is...well, something I've got to grit my teeth and get through.

On the other side of the tunnel of tedium is the next chapter though, where I've got to write about bodily trauma and some inner psychological horror as changes take hold in the point-of-view character. That'll be fun...so long as I can convince myself I know what I'm doing when writing about this kind of physical trauma 😬 I might want to set aside a day or two for some research...

I finished the rough draft of the short story!

It topped out at 5,157 words, which is a little longer than I'd like. Most of the markets I want to try to sell into have a cap of around 5k. But I should be able to trim it down enough during editing that it'll squeeze under the limit.

So I'm setting that aside for a couple of weeks, to get some distance on the story before I try to revise it. I'm picking the novel back up, meanwhile, trying to finish the same interminable section i was working on when I pivoted to the short story.

I say interminable because it seems I keep finding gaps in the story that I have to fill in now. I'll be scrolling along, watching a continuous flow of words, when there's a break in the narrative. And I have to stop, scroll back up, get back into the "mood" of the particular scene, and then spin a bridge across to the next one.

It's a little tedious, but only in the sense that I can't believe I left so many holes in the story. I'm filling them just fine, the words are flowing, thank goodness. But I'm already judging past me: Why didn't you just keep writing the story? Did you really need to skip over writing these three paragraphs that I just put down?

The answer, of course, is that yes, I did need to skip them. At the time, I needed to leap over them in order to discover my destination. But that still means poor present-day me has to trundle along behind, paving over the potholes in the semi-paved story road.

What about you? Ever make a judgement call during drafting that you later regret, either in the same draft or later?

Novel's at 44,600 words! I'm still wrapping up the section I've been working on for weeks now, filling in the gaps in the narrative I left behind when I jumped around to write the bigger moments in it.

Wife and I brainstormed different reward methods over the weekend, and she liked the idea of a vacation savings account. So that's what I've done: Setup a new, separate account, where I'll deposit a little bit of money each week, but only if I hit my word count goal. Then -- as the pandemic lifts -- we'll use that money for travel.

I've also shifted my morning routine a little to give myself more time to write (an hour instead of just thirty minutes). I don't necessarily spend all that time writing, but having that time lets me relax and get into that state of flow that both helps me get the words down and takes me out of my languishing head for a while.

So far, it's working; I missed my daily writing on Wednesday because of some food poisoning, but I was able to make it up on Thursday by using more of my hour than normal. Combined with the mini-sprint I ended up doing on Tuesday, I've already hit my writing goal for the week! Looking forward to making that first deposit on Saturday morning :)

Speaking of the weekend, I'm hoping to get back to the short story draft. I'd like to finish it, even; it's close to being done, if I can just nail down the visuals for the last bit. Ok, I say done, but...it'd be just the first draft. Still, gotta have the first draft before I can edit it into the second.

How about you? Made any recent changes to your writing habits, good or bad? Hit a milestone you're proud of?

I got my second shot!

Wasn't quite as easy as getting my first. Yesterday was the first day of general vaccine eligibility in California, so even though I got there around 30 minutes early, I spent most of that time waiting in a socially-distanced line. But the folks there were all still friendly and efficient, and I made it through and out without incident.

I could feel a difference in this shot; felt like more material getting pushed into my shoulder. And about ten minutes after I started feeling light-headed. Had to put my head between my knees and breathe till it passed.

It did pass, though, and I went back to work that day. My left arm (where I got the shot) was -- and continues to be -- basically useless, too sore to raise up higher than mid-line. Other than that, I had the same wave of fatigue hit me as last time, shortly after I wrapped up work yesterday. Which is why I missed my daily word count for the first time in two months 😬

I might be able to make it up today; we'll see. I feel mostly fine, though I've got some of the symptoms of my asthma being triggered: stuffy nose, lungs can't quite get a full deep breath (it doesn't hurt exactly, but it definitely feels like something I shouldn't do too often). I don't think I have a fever, which is good.

Will probably still spend most of the day in bed, just in case. Better to take it easy, I think. That doesn't stop my from having my laptop in bed with me, though (as you can see). Hopefully I can get some writing done in-between doses of tea and naps.

I hope that wherever you are, the vaccine rollout continues, and if you haven't yet been able to get it, that you soon will be. We need to kick this virus, so we can spend more of our time and energy building a better world than the one we lost in the pandemic.

Writing this past week has been...well, difficult is too small a word for it. When my motivation for even getting out of bed has been snuffed out, it's impossible to convince myself that the words I'm setting down are worth anything.

And yet they must be written. Because who knows how long this funk will last, and in the meantime the novel needs to be completed. Need to get this draft done, this junk draft, so that I'll have something to edit later. Not that I'm looking forward to later, exactly, but I know it's coming.

Thank goodness I stopped being an inspiration writer -- that is, someone who writes only when inspired to -- a good while ago. Because at the moment, inspiration isn't just hard to summon for me, it's completely gone. I'm writing like someone re-learning how to walk: laying down one word at a time, till a sentence is formed, and then moving on to the next. Word by word, line by line. Till my daily word count is reached, and I close the laptop.

I'm not blocked. I'm not afraid of the scene I'm working on. I'm just depressed.

I'm trying different things to lighten my mood, of course. I started walking in the mornings again, and I can now vouch for the runner's high as a way to trick my body's chemistry into lifting the sadness for a bit. It's doesn't last, but for a little while I feel...not normal, but I stop feeling like crying all the time.

Crying is a constant danger at the moment. Anytime I'm left with my thoughts for too long, I start to tear up. Which makes writing dangerous, in a way; I've got to think to put these words together, but every time I start to imagine the scene before me, my thoughts will veer into taking an inventory of all the reasons I'm worthless and unneeded, and I break down again. I know it's my brain inventing reasons for my sadness, but still. It's surprisingly good at it!

And trying to do the opposite -- take inventory of all the things I have to be happy about -- doesn't help, either, because it just gives me a list of reasons I'm an ungrateful wretch for daring to be sad.

There's no winning here. There's just endurance, and a hope that it will pass. I've had dark moods before -- never this bad, but still -- and they've all come and gone like clouds in a thunderstorm. This one will, too, given time. I hope.

Novel's at 38,160 words. The snippets I'm working on are starting to spill over into the next chapter; I'm already scoping out the reactions of the characters to the events of the section I'm working on.

Meanwhile, this section is winding down. And I'm getting the feeling that much of it -- most of it, even -- might be cut in the next draft. I mean, do I really need to describe how a character makes their camp dinner in such detail? And yet, if I don't do it, I won't know that they keep flour in this jar over there, and that they constantly gather firewood as they travel, so they have a stock of it ready to go when needed. Details like that would be completely lost, if I didn't make a hash out of describing every little action right now. So I keep doing it, knowing that what I'm writing now will likely be cut, but that doesn't mean it won't be used.

I'm also...well, I'm debating whether to let one of my characters give A Speech at the end of this chapter. They have the words for it -- I've already written the points they want to hammer home -- they have the audience, they have the space and the time. But does the book have the tone for it?

I usually shy away from having characters make big speeches, or monologues. Blame part of it on a Gen-X thing: I treat displays of sincere emotion with suspicion. Blame another part on my preacher of a father, whose pompous, hypocritical sermons turned me off to religion altogether.

So I'm always pushing my characters to speak more naturally, to take any Great Wisdom they want to lay down and either show it through their actions or weave it into their dialog some other way.

But this time...this time I might let them just say what they want to say. Certainly the situation calls for it: a young girl is about to be pushed into an apprenticeship that will change her life, take her away from the family and the place she's always known and send her criss-crossing the world with her mentor. And all because of a decision she made to pursue vengeance for her father's death, that led to a near-deadly encounter with a dragon, and now this. Such sweeping changes, they call for a little more weight to the dialog, yes?

Oof, I'm uncertain. I'll write the speech, I think, and see how it plays. I can always change it later, right?

Ye gods, the Daylight Savings Time switch walloped me this week. It's like I was finally adapting to 2021 -- working on the novel, editing short stories, plotting out a new story -- and then DST yanks an hour out from under me, robbing me of just enough energy that I've been struggling just to hit my daily word count.

I've basically been slow-motion jet-lagged all week. I really wish we would stop doing this to ourselves.

The good news is that (thanks to beta readers) I now have not one, but two stories under submission. Just waiting for their little pink slips of rejection to come back 😅

I kid, but really, it feels good to have them out there. Statistically, they will get rejected from each magazine I send them to, which is how I steel myself for it. But I like these stories. I believe in these stories. There's a market for them, somewhere, and the only way I can find it is by sending them out.

Meanwhile, the novel's climbed to 36,789 words. I'm starting to connect up the snippets of dialog I've written for the ending scenes of this section, which means I'm having to actually worry about things like "How would they have treated this wound in this time period?" and "How badly injured is the protagonist, anyway?"

I am definitely getting some of these details wrong. I do not know enough about wounds, or medical care on the Central Asian steppe in the 18th century, or early modern firearms, or...really, so much. But I know enough to write something down, something I can come back and fix later, so that's what I'm doing.

It helps for me to think of this not as the first draft, but as the trash draft. The draft I know I'm going to mess up on, and revise extensively later. No one's going to see this draft but me. I'm going to finish it, and then do the research needed to get each section right. Hell, some of these scenes I'm flubbing might not even be needed, and so they'll get cut. Which would make taking the time to get them exactly right now a waste.

So it's onward! Screwing up as I go, laying down the raw material I'll shape into something better via editing.

I don't think I'm good at coming up with story titles. Mine tend to end up either very much on the nose -- my first published story, "Wishr," is named for the company at which it takes place -- or become horrible puns, like "There Will Be Bugs" (I know).

So in trying to come up with a new title for the story I've been editing, I wanted to branch out from my usual process. Started brainstorming, just listing out things as they came into my head.

At first, most of them were more of the same (I really am fond of puns). But then I thought back to short stories I've read and liked recently, and their titles, and realized: The ones I liked the best (titles, not stories) were ones that fit the story, but where I didn't understand how they fit until after I finished reading the piece.

So I shifted my brainstorm, away from trying to convince a reader to read the story (by telling them what's inside it) and towards giving readers a new insight into the story after it's been read. And voilà! I found my new title.

I've got some beta reader feedback to process (on the story as a whole) this weekend, and then the story will be ready for submission, shiny title and all.

Meanwhile, I keep moving ahead with the novel, which is sitting at 35,380 words. I'm past the big climactic scene, and into the aftermath, where the consequences of the protagonist's actions come due, and her life changes forever.

This part introduces a new character who becomes a major part of the protag's life. So after filling in the rest of the climactic scene, I'm back to sketching what comes next, setting down fragments of conversation and description as they come to me.

I'm trying to consciously develop a different voice for this character, a distinct way of looking at the world, so it's obvious she comes from a different part of it than the protagonist. Which means I'm focusing on dialog first, nailing down the back-and-forth between her and the protag before handling any action.

I'm also getting close to the end of this section of the book. 21,000 words and counting to cover just a few days in the protagonist's life. Important days, to be sure: You only get one first encounter with a dragon! Even once I read the end of this section, though, I've still got some gaps left in the earlier parts of it that I'll need to close, stitching everything together.

And once that's done? On to the next big section, which will leap years ahead in time, and thousands of miles across the Earth's surface. Let's hope I don't get lost along the way!

Novel's still chugging along, currently at 33,884 words. I've pushed through the first big scene, and am well into the second.

There's...well, there's individual pieces of the sequence that are still missing, some connective tissue that I have yet to write. The technique I've been using, of skipping around to write those scenes (or sometimes fragments of scenes) that I feel like adding, has a that cost. Eventually I have to go back and write in everything I skipped.

But for now, it's all big scene all the time, and no connective tissue...yet.

However, the big news this week is that I've finally cracked open a story I've been working on for nearly four years now. That one started out as just a character and a situation, a piece of backstory for the novel I wanted to write. But it never worked quite as well as I wanted it to, so I've kept tinkering with it (and submitting it while tinkering with it, which is a habit I need to break).

Tim Waggoner, during his 15-minute (!) workshop back in January, pointed me to the central problem that was holding up everything else: the motivation for my main character wasn't strong enough. So on weekends I've been brainstorming different ways to go, different versions of the character that would have a stronger push for their actions.

I finally hit on one this weekend that I liked, and in the process of editing the story to match, everything fell into place. I ended up cutting away about half of the story's word-count, focusing in on just three scenes. But in those scenes I not only lay out the main character's motivation, I fill in the secondary characters, giving them more life and depth. And I shifted the ending, so it's now both more complete (in the sense that the current narrative arc ends) and more open-ended (in that the world's evolution past the story is implied).

I'm going to do one more editing pass this weekend, to clean up language and make sure it all fits together properly. I'd like to have it ready to submit in time for Nightmare Magazine re-opening to submissions later this month.

I need a new title, though; the old one doesn't fit anymore. Anyone have any tips or tricks for choosing a title you can share in the comments?

Novel's up to 32,300 words!

It's been easier to write this week. My wife's recovered from her vaccine ordeal, and is well on her way to hitting her two-week full-strength-protection mark. Neither of us have picked up anything in the meantime, so -- touches wood -- we should be ok to ride out the rest of the pandemic.

I also got back in the habit of writing in the mornings, which seems to help. Something about trying to switch gears one more time, at the end of the day, makes it that much harder to focus on the story. Harder to think about where it's going, and what I want to describe along the way.

Finally, I think it helps that I'm facing down the two scenes in this sequence that scare me the most to write. They're both action scenes, which I consider a weakness of mine. And they're both emotionally fraught for the main character. In one of them, she winds up losing an animal companion she's had since she was a little girl. In the second, she's seeking -- but not necessarily finding -- vengeance for her father's death.

These are big, tentpole scenes. I need them to move quickly, to feel realistic, and also to hit readers right in the feels. Which means on top of my normal first-draft anxiety, I'm worried about building up to scenes that fall completely flat. Or scenes that are laughably implausible. Or scenes that make it all seem too easy on the protagonist.

Even success, in a sense, is rough. Writing scenes like these -- where the emotional stakes are high for the characters, and it can end in a broken heart -- are hard on me, too. Because I live through everything they experience; I have to, in order to put it down on the page. So I feel the knot in my chest when their father dies. My own tears well up when they have to put down one of their closest friends.

So I've been putting them off. Writing around the scenes, so to speak. And there's been plenty of other things to cover! But now I've got to write them, so I can move ahead with the story.

And somehow, once I'm in the scene, writing it, it becomes easier. Easier to picture what's happening, and easier to describe it. Easier to say what the impact of it all is. So I end up writing more, and more quickly, than before.

It's almost like my fear of the thing is worse than the thing itself?

Of course, this is still just the first draft. It might feel easier to write it once I'm in it, but it could still all be terrible writing. I won't know till it's done.

How about you? Are there particular types of scenes that you put off writing, for whatever reason? How do you overcome your hesitation?

Writing each day's words this week has been like extracting teeth using a slippy pair of old tweezers.

I had a...let's say rough...ending to last week. Several things came together at once to make work stressful, which bled into the early part of this week.

Also my wife got her second vaccine shot, which on the one hand is awesome, but on the other required her to suffer through being harassed by a cop and yelled at (in close proximity) by the staff working there. And a few hours after she got the shot, she came down with alternating chills and sweats, shaking uncontrollably. She didn't leave the bedroom for three days.

The icing on the stress cake was some maintenance that we needed done on the house, that could only be done by people entering the house. Which meant shutting off the heat, opening all the windows, and locking myself in my office while they were here.

My body, being slightly over four decades old now, doesn't react well to such compounding stresses. And it's gotten creative, so the manifestation of the stress differs every time, by type of stress and how much I'm going through.

Big speech coming up? Probably going to break out in fever blisters.

Mother-in-law had a pulmonary embolism requiring you to give up all your pets, sell your car and your house, and move back to Arkansas to take care of her? Prepare for root canal failure.

This time, I started clenching my jaw so tight that I woke myself up with muscle cramps. Felt like someone was reaching from my neck through my jaw to tug at a tooth. I got maybe four hours of sleep over two days.

So...yeah, focusing on the novel's been difficult.

It's during times like these that I'm glad I set my writing goal so low. 250 words is something I can hit in about 20 minutes, on a good day. So on days that are not good, I try to give myself an hour to hit it, dropping other housework to carve out the time. And it's working, so far.

All the same, I hope next week is more relaxing.

This book may end up being much longer than I thought.

It's currently at 29,122 words, which is almost half of the 70K or so I thought it would end up being. The trouble is, I'm not even close to being halfway done.

The section I'm working on now, just by itself, is 16,000 words long. And it's not near done, either. I'm maybe....halfway? through the story I want to tell in this part of the book. And this section is only meant to be about one-fourth of the whole, so that would put the final word count at around 120,000 words (!)

That would make it a third longer than the longest thing I've ever written in my life.

I swear, I'm not eating up word count spinning needless metaphors or having characters do a lot of navel-gazing. It just turns out that yes, when writing a novel that moves from the lakes and forests of northern Sweden to the neverending sky of the Central Asian steppe, there's a lot of, um, ground to cover. Who knew? (Narrator: He did. Or should have).

Granted, a lot of what I'm writing now might be cut out. Some of it is no doubt redundant, or can be compacted so that the events of a few pages get covered in a few paragraphs. But even lopping off 20,000 words of filler would make this a 100K book.

100K is about 400 pages, which...well, that's a commitment, isn't it? For reader and writer alike.

So much for being done with the first draft before April. This might end up taking me the rest of the year.

Maybe it's time to look at bumping my daily word count? Trying to squeeze in a second writing session in each day? Or I could start writing on the weekends again. Just two extra days of my regular word count would be an extra 500 words a week.

Or perhaps it's best to be patient. Work on this draft during the week, like I have been, and use the weekend to edit other stories (and that previous novel, which needs a tune-up before going out).

What about you? What do you do, when a story you're working on starts to look like it'll be much longer than you anticipated?

'Tis the season of the writer's conference.

Had the Apex Magazine 15-minute workshop on Monday, which may have permanently changed the way I approach my writing. I'm on the alert now for some of my bad writing habits, and am currently going through two different stories to eliminate them.

Today, I'm attending Clarion West's workshop on How to Write Science Fiction in a Post-Colonial World, part of their series of single-day online workshops. Similar to the Apex one, I'm not sure what to expect. I hope it'll help me with the novel I'm writing right now (and future works), where one of my main characters is from the steppes of Central Asia. I don't want to appropriate anyone's culture, but I do want to showcase the diversity of the world, particularly in the time period I'm setting this story (the 18th century), which American writers tend to whitewash.

And I'm considering signing up for the Southern California Writers Conference, which is in two weeks (and also online). It was the first writers conference I attended, back when we could safely congregate inside. I got a lot out of it: I wrote two stories, got tips on plot structure, and met some great people. And now one of my fellow Writers Coffeehouse alumni (Dennis K Crosby) is one of the special guest speakers! I could use that kind of shot in the arm again (vaccine connotation very much intended).

Not that I'm currently having trouble producing, thank goodness. Novel's at 26,099 words. I've patched up the seams in the scenes I've written so far, and moved on to the "meat" of the chapter: the POV character's close encounter with a dragon.

I'm still writing it in bits and pieces, moving up and down the page as ideas come to me and I figure things out. It keeps me from getting hung up on any one part of the book, or worry too much about how I'm going to get from Point A to Point B. I can always make something up :)

And after the Apex workshop, and re-examining some of my past short stories, I'm starting to think about the connective tissue between scenes differently. As in, maybe I don't need it, after all.

That's not quite right. I think I, the writer, need it. I need to have written it, in order to fully understand my story. But I don't necessarily need to show that to the reader.

Same thing with exposition. I need to know everything about my world. I need to know what the sunlight looks like in springtime. I need to know how the birds sound in the morning. I need to know which cars are driving by at the end of the day (if this world has cars). So these are all things I need to set down, to fix in my mind by fixing them in text. But I don't need to relay those details to the reader, unless something stands out to the POV character, and affects their decisions.

It's advice I've heard before, but not really felt in my bones until now. I'd always assumed my readers were lost unless I held their hand, and relied on my brevity to make the explanations palatable.

I think now I can trust the reader more. I still plan to write all the exposition, so I have it straight in my own head. But when editing I'm going to start taking it all out, and only putting things back in if a beta reader complains of being lost. Otherwise, I'm going to lean on actions and dialog to convey everything.

What about you? Is there a piece of classic writing advice that took you a while to fully understand?

It feels good to have a competent President again. A President with some dignity, who doesn't spend his time tweeting out misinformation. Whose Press Secretary thanked reporters after her first press briefing, who doesn't see journalists as the enemy. A President who made news this week because of the raft of actions he took to kick off a national response to the coronavirus pandemic, not the lies he told.

The day after the inauguration, I sat down to write after a long day at work, and when I looked up I'd written twice my daily word count, smooth as butter.

I could get used to this. I want to get used to this. Not in the sense of taking it for granted, but in the sense of it happening, over and over and over again.

There's much to be done, politically. Too many Americans are locked up in prisons. Too many Americans fear the loss of their job so much they're willing to endure urinating into bottles and absurdly low wages, while their bosses complain about not knowing how to spend all the money they're making.

But it'll be easier, collectively, to tackle such things, if we don't all have to worry about the President, too, coming after us. If we have the headspace to write, and call, and paint, and march, and sing, and petition, without wondering, every day, which shoe the executive is going to drop on us that day. What painstaking progress the administration rolled back with callous ease this morning.

It'll be good to feel like we have an ally in the White House. Not perfect, by any means. But not actively trying to set us back.

Novel's at 24,580 words. More by the end of the day, since I haven't yet done my daily words. Back to the rhythm of 2,000 words per week.

I'm at the point where I'm stitching together the pieces I've written for the current sequence, before pressing on. I'm having to shift some paragraphs around, moving them either earlier in the chapter or later, so I can keep them without interrupting the flow of things.

I can already see parts I'm going to have to revise. Conversations that don't go anywhere (currently), descriptions of daily life that will need to be rewritten according to the research I'm doing.

I'm...uncertain, whether to fix those, or just press on. The advice I've gotten from the Writer's Coffeehouse says to move on, to just make a note of it, so it'll be easy to come back to, but to keep forward momentum going. Finish the draft, then go back and patch things up.

And it's good advice! Only...if I already know how things need to change, shouldn't I change them? Or worse, if I know things need to change, but I'm not sure exactly how, isn't it better to find out the more stable form for them now, so I can keep writing the book with that in mind?

I suppose the advice is meant to keep me from getting bogged down in revisions, instead of finishing out the draft. And I definitely do not want to do that. And it'll probably be easier to make the changes I need once the book's done, and I can see the whole story, rather than now, when I'm still mapping it out.

So I suppose I will press on. Still going to make notes about revisions to the scenes, though, so I don't forget them when it's time to edit.

But to have something to edit, I've got to finish this draft.
Onward!

What a week, eh?

Trump's been impeached for a second time (finally). The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol are being rounded up (thank goodness). And tech platforms are waking up to their complicity in the planning of the attack, and as a result, dropping right wing extremists so fast it reveals how much they were dragging their feet about it before.

Not that my family back home believes any of that, of course. I mean that quite literally: they don't think Trump has been impeached, they think "antifa" (insert eyeroll here) caused the riot, they think the First Amendment requires their favorite BBS to let them post anything they want.

It's...amazing, to me, to see the people that wrap themselves in the flag and "Blue Lives Matter" defend folks that invaded the Capitol with the intent of halting a Constitutional process (and perhaps grabbing a hostage or two) and beat the cops that tried to stop them.

What happened to the party of law and order? The party of civics, of wear-your-tie-to-school and don't-you-know-how-the-government-works, hippie? Was it always a smokescreen?

So...yeah, I've been a little distracted. Writing-wise.

But I'm still hitting my 250-words-a-day target! Not always when I'm supposed to (in the morning), and not always in a single session (10 minutes at lunch, 20 minutes after work, 15 minutes before bed...), but I am getting them done, every day.

Not much more than the minimum, I'm afraid. Which is why the novel's only at 22,894 words. But it's progress, all the same.

Taking weekends off is still helping. Relives the pressure for a bit. Lets me do some of the research I need to do to properly write the section I'm on, which can soak up a lot of time (can you believe it's hard to find an English-language book on 17th-century Central Asian history and culture?). Also gives me a chance to reflect on where things stand so far, and where I'd like to novel to go next.

What about you? How is your writing going, two weeks into the new year?

Oof, 2021 started out well, didn't it?

I mean even with the spike in Covid-19 patients, and the continued lies spread by the President and his allies about the election, I had a feeling on New Year's Day that we'd escaped the awfulness of 2020. That we'd turned a corner, the case numbers would be coming down soon, President Biden would be in office in just a few weeks, and we could start the work of rebuilding everything the Republican Party has destroyed over the last four years.

Even the Georgia elections (!) gave me hope. My fellow citizens in GA turned out in such numbers that they put the two Dems over the top, putting an end to the use of the Senate as just a roadblock to legislation. Exciting times!

And then came the coup.

I know, I know. Attempted coup. Or riot. Maybe insurrection, if you're a journalist and you're feeling spicy.

And suddenly all of the mental habits I'd tried to shed from 2020 were back. Reflexively checking the news every five minutes. Doomscrolling on Twitter. Cognitive dissonance from looking out my window, seeing a bright January day in SoCal, and then hearing reports of shots fired in the Capitol building.

Texting friends living in DC, to see if they're okay during the madness.

I called my brand-new freshman-clean House Rep yesterday, not just to urge her to impeach Trump, but also to check in and see if they were safe.

What a country.

Difficult to think in such times. Difficult to write.

But so far, I've managed to do it. Each day, closed out Twitter, stared at the screen, reading over the previous days' work until I sink back into the story.

And it is sinking. It is an escape, for me. A needed one, in this case.

So I've pushed the novel up to 21,348 words. I'm almost done with the scenes I've been working on, patch-work-style. I move up and down the page, writing sections as they come to me, completely out of order. I leave visual gaps in-between them, extra newlines, to show that these are fragments. Then go back in and fill the gaps later, stitching together all the pieces until they read like a continuous whole.

It's not how I've written other novels. Not even how I usually write stories, either. But it's the only thing that's working for me, right now. So I'm using it.

Hope wherever you are, that you're safe, that you can still put yourself in the headspace to write, even if it's just a few words.

Hang in there.

We made it to a new year!

In the past, I've taken that for granted. One year rolled into the next, I got older, and the world kept turning.

Not this year. This year, reaching January feels like an escape, like ducking under a closing door just before it seals itself shut.

So a sincere Happy New Year to us all!

Novel's at 19,864 words. I'm still butt in chair every morning, forcing myself to stay there until I hit my word count goal. Some mornings it's easier, some it's harder, but...I'm always making progress.

I'm actually starting to run out of runway on the research I've already done about the setting. Which means I'm having to make more things up out of thin air, and thus getting more things wrong. I've already had to revise a few scenes based on new reading I've done. That'll happen more and more, I expect, until I can catch up.

I know that ultimately, I'll need to do some heavy editing of this draft, once it's complete. Not just to fix some inconsistencies, but also to ensure the things that are consistent are historically accurate. Or at least, as accurate as a non-specialist like me can get them in a fictional tale.

But since I know I'll need to do it, it doesn't scare me to get things wrong now. What's important now, I think, is to get the emotional beats of the story right. If I can nail down the characters, and how they react to the things that happen to them, I can fix the details later. Even if those details mean I need changes to the events of the plot, that's fine. So long as the emotional arc of things is right.

That's my theory, at least.

I want to thank those of those you who've been reading me regularly through this hell year. You give me hope that someday, these novels I grind away at will see the light of publication.

And for my fellow writers, I offer a hope and a blessing: May your writing be a joy and comfort to you. May your inner editor take a vacation when you're drafting. And may all your tales be true.

Onward to 2021!

Happy Holidays!

I'm finally back in my office. All the house work we've had done for the last three months -- while we lived, worked, ate, and slept sealed-off in the guest room -- is over. Taking down the barrier between the guest room and the rest of the house was like opening a huge present; we were grinning like kids the whole time.

And the work all looks fantastic, and a little unreal. Like we've stumbled into someone else's house. But no, it's ours! And we can once again use it all.

So I'm back to watching the sun come up over the mountains just east of the city, hammering out words before the work of the day begins.

Speaking of which, the novel's up to 18,000 words. So I'm putting out about 2,000 words a week, which is not bad, but does mean this draft won't be done until looks away, does mental math sometime in June (?!).

Which is...fine, I suppose. That's still a novel draft in less than a year. But if I only work on one project at a time, that means it'll be six months before I get back to editing my last novel. I've gotten some excellent feedback from my beta readers, and I'd like to incorporate it all before sending it out to agents.

Maybe I can keep working on the new draft during the week, and edit the other novel on the weekends? That's technically not taking the weekend off, but it is taking a break from the current draft. And editing's the kind of work that's hard for me to track, in the sense of how many words I've covered. These editing passes I'll need to jump around in the narrative, adding a bit of dialog here, changing a description there. It's not linear work.

What about you? Do you work only one project at a time, even if that delays things? Or do you find a way to juggle multiple pieces at once?

Anyway, as we wind down 2020, I hope you and yours are coming through the pandemic safe. I hope the vaccine gets rolled out to where-ever you are soon, and that enough folks get it for the danger to pass.

Good riddance to 2020. I'll see you all in 2021!

Novel's at around 16,400 words. I haven't done today's writing session, though, so I should finish out the week closer to 17K.

The deal is working, so far. Holding myself hostage, unable to go for my morning job or take a shower or have breakfast or anything until my writing's done for the day, has been rather effective.

And I'm looking forward to the weekend again, when I can daydream and doodle and research and not have to worry about hitting a word count. That recharge time is proving important, for my mental health and for my writing.

Funny, I think I started this year by throwing away word count goals and the idea of penalizing myself for not meeting them. Here I am at the end of the year, once again setting daily word count goals and forcing myself to meet them. It seems not only do different techniques work for different people, different things can work for the same person at different times.

What about you? What previous writing habit have you brought back this year, if any? Or maybe there's an old trick you've dropped?

Novel crossed 15,000 words today!

My pace has slowed since NaNoWriMo, but I'm still managing about 2,000 words a week, which is pretty good for me. Puts me on track to finish this draft sometime early next year.

I've changed up my writing routine a bit, both to give myself more time to write, and to have a chance to recharge.

So I've made a deal with myself: I have to write in the morning, first thing, as soon as I get up. No news, no twitter, no email. Just writing, until the day's words (at least 250) are done. I can take however long I want to set those 250 words down, but I can't do anything else until I do.

Most days, I end up going beyond those 250. Once the pump is primed, the words keep flowing.

In exchange for this early-morning discipline, I only have to write on week days. Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday are days off, now, just like they would be (I hope) if I were a full-time writer. If I did write full-time, I'd still need vacations. Still need days off. But I'd have no one to tell me when to take them, and I'd probably feel guilty if I did.

So I've made this deal. Treat writing like job, get it done first thing in the morning, and in return, I can take the weekends off.

Sunday was the first day I've deliberately taken off (from writing) in...months. I still did some research for the current book, digging up images and articles on Swedish manors built or renovated in the 18th century. I sketched some notes for future scenes. But I didn't write anything, didn't have to produce any words.

It was...incredibly relaxing. It was glorious.

And I came into Monday's writing session recharged. Ready and eager to go.

This is the first full week I've been working under this self-made bargain. I'm looking forward to the weekend, having met my word count goal every day this week, first thing upon waking.

What about you? Do you ever take days off from writing? Do you feel guilty when you do, and if so, how do you handle it?

So I didn't win NaNoWriMo this year. It wasn't even close.

But I'm not quitting on the novel. I've come too far not to see it through.

And NaNoWriMo has got me flexing my writing muscles again. After today's writing session, I'll have churned out almost 2,000 words in a single week. That's not novel in a month pace, sure, but it's a novel-in-a-few-months-pace, which is better than I've been able to achieve since the pandemic began.

Even so, I still feel pressed for writing time. I want to brainstorm for a bit, every day, before working on a scene. Or after finishing a scene, reflect on what might be missing from it, what I'll need to add the next day. And that's hard to do, when I've only got thirty minutes or so free to spend on the novel.

It's good that I've got some vacation coming up at the end of the month, then. That'll certainly give me more time in which to work.

But I want -- I need -- to carve out more time during a regular work day. Which might mean dropping some of my other hobbies (I've been brushing up my French, and learning Swedish) in order to make that time. Or maybe I'll get up even earlier, so I can make that time at the start of the day.

Not sure what's best. Gotta figure something out, though.

What about you? What do you do, when you feel like you're not getting enough writing time?

Slow but steady.

I'm at a little more than 7,000 words on the new novel so far this month. Behind where I need to be to finish NaNoWriMo, but further than I was a few weeks ago. That's got to count for something, right?

Writing during the week has been difficult. Work has been...stressful, and I've needed to come in early and stay late, just to keep up. That's obviously cut into my writing time, but it's also drained my batteries before I even have a chance to sit down at the keyboard for the day's words.

As a result, while on the weekend I built up to around a thousand words a day, during the week I've fallen back to a few hundred. Sometimes. If I'm lucky.

There's light at the end of this tunnel, though. I've got a week of vacation coming up. A full week, when I can write at least half the day, before house and family obligations pull me away.

It might not be enough time, even then, for me to catch up to where I need to be to reach 50K by November 30th.

But I'm going to try for it, nevertheless.

Hope your own writing is going well, and if you're trying NaNoWriMo, that you're slaying each day's word count, day by day.

Onward!

I thought writing during a pandemic was hard.

Turns out, writing during a tight election where one of the candidates has spent the last several months shouting "Fraud!" at the top of his lungs whenever someone mentions mail-in voting (while casting his own votes via mail) is even harder.

So I did start working on a new novel this week, for NaNoWriMo. And I have worked on it each day.

But I've made very little progress. Only 1,424 words to date.

I'm trying not to stress about it. I have enough to worry about already, from work happening on the house to day-job deadlines looming next week to the pandemic getting worse in my city to trying to help my wife convince her mother that no, in fact, Biden will not come personally to her house to confiscate the guns she doesn't have and disband the police department.

It's a lot.

But I want to tell this story. I've been thinking over these characters for a few months now, and I want to see where they go. I want to show you their world.

I just have to build it first.

What about you? If you're doing NaNoWriMo, how is it going?

Intro

I met Tone Milazzo through the San Diego Writers Coffeehouse group hosted by Jonathan Maberry. I've known him for a couple of years now, and I still don't know how he has time for all of his projects.

When not running the podcast for a local publisher or play-testing his own Fate Core modules, Tone's preparing for grad school, scripting comics, and writing novels.

His first book, Picking Up the Ghost, came out in 2011 from Chizine. A follow-up, The Faith Machine, will be out in May, from Running Wild Press.

Tone took some time out of his incredibly busy schedule to talk with me about his process, writing diverse characters, and how "Done is Beautiful."

Writing Process

To start, can you talk a bit about your writing process? When you're designing a novel or a short story, are you a pantser? Are you a plotter?

Definitely a plotter. And the outline for Picking up the Ghost, was something like 12 pages long, which I thought was a full outline. But I definitely, as I got to the middle, I needed to stop and do some more outlining. The story was coming to an end too soon.

When I outlined my second novel, The Faith Machine, it was 77 pages long. That's a page per scene. Now that's an outline.

77 pages, wow! What do you actually have in your outline?

It's a bullet point list: plot points, foreshadowing, and payoffs. Sometimes there's dialogue snippets in there, if something occurs to me at the time. It's mostly about where the characters are coming in, what changes, and where the characters are coming out at the end of the scene. Kind of like a method or function in computer programming.

Kurt Vonnegut said every scene should either move the plot forward or move the character forward. So it'll be either one of those two.

Ideally it's nice if you can do both in the scene, without jamming too much in there.

When I first started writing, I would put way too much stuff into a scene. Now I'm trying to keep it to one or two changes or insights per scene.

Other things in the outline...Sometimes it's pop-cultural references, like I've put something in the scene that's supposed to evoke something from another book, classic literature or something like that. In Picking up the Ghost there was a lot of occult symbolism. A lot of tarot card stuff. There are some scenes that are supposed to evoke the Major Arcana.

Do you ever get feedback on the outline?

It's mostly for me.

Though if there's an idea that I'm not sure will work, I'll try to compartmentalize that idea and pitch it to people. Ask them: "Do you think this thing is going to be okay?"

That's about it. I don't want anyone to look at my outline or my first draft. It's too messy.

Nobody?

Yeah, it's terrible. Especially the first draft for sure. The first draft of Picking up the Ghost, there was a sentence in there, "He stuck a stick in the spot. The stick was stuck."

Oh God.

Yeah. I think I wrote the first half and got distracted and then wrote the second half, forgetting that I wrote the first half.

When outlining, is there any particular technique you use for building your plots?

So Picking up the Ghost was definitely me trying to invert as much of the hero's journey as possible.

The typical interpretation of the hero's journey in fantasy is an orphan with a destiny, who finds a magic sword, and has a magical mentor. It's basically King Arthur, right? People are cop-opting King Arthur.

So I decided to take that list and make it a manifesto for the book. Instead of an orphan, the protagonist is dealing with family issues. Instead of being some sort of knight, he's a shaman. And he has mentors, but they're not trustworthy mentors.

I also wanted to make it American instead of European. So that's where his ethnicity comes in. Being biracial: African-American and white.

The African-American culture, my attitude is, that's the most American culture. Even like what most books think of as American, which would be like a rural white culture, that's traceable in a straight line right back to Europe.

Whereas African-Americans had their culture stripped from them by the slave trade. They had to rebuild themselves from the ground up on this soil.

The Faith Machine isn't YA. How did you build that one?

So for the second book, I wanted it to be Hollywood friendly. I looked at something called the Save the Cat outline for screenwriting. It's a 15-point plot, and that's the spine of that story.

It's the first time I used that, and I discovered that it's probably a little short to fill an entire novel. A movie is about a novella in length. Fortunately, because I had an ensemble cast, I had a bunch of b-plots that I could use to fill out the page count.

With all this time spent on the outline, what's your editing process like?

Go over it again and again until my eyes bleed, and it's never enough.

For The Faith Machine, because the outline has such a deep understanding of what the story is supposed to be, I didn't have to do quite the extensive rewriting that I used to, like I did on the Picking up the Ghost.

When I wrote out the first draft of a scene, it was a scene I'd been thinking about for over a year, so I knew how it is going to play out.

And even when it got to editorial, I had two editors, one that I paid for and then one from the publisher. And the one that I paid for, it was mostly grammar and little details.

The one from the publisher, he lived on the East coast, and he had some thoughts about the opening scene. On The Faith Machine there's two characters who are in charge of the team traveling around the East coast, activating all the agents in person. But the order that they activated in was not a good commute. So stuff moved around just because I didn't realize that this place and that are more than a day's drive away. Minor stuff like that.

Picking Up the Ghost

In the acknowledgements of Picking Up the Ghost, you mentioned that it was a five year process to get the book together. Can you talk a bit about that?

I think for that one I found a publisher fairly quickly. I think the process of finding a publisher was under a year. Which was stellar compared to The Faith Machine.

The biggest chunk of time came when I had the book finished, and I workshopped it with three of my friends. None of them liked the second half of the book. So I had to rewrite the entire second half.

I had taken Cinque (the main character - ed.) into what I call the Halfway World. So it still looked like St. Jude (Cinque's home town - ed.), but there was nobody else there with him.

And what I'd done was, I didn't realize that they liked the supporting cast so much, and I took all them away.

How long did that take you to rewrite?

That was about probably about another year.

A lot of revising by myself. Some moments where I just wasn't writing for a few months at a time. Distractions, like World of Warcraft.

Most people's first book usually takes a few years though, from what I hear. Even Jonathan Maberry says he took three years to write his first book.

Working on the same book for five years, how do you keep yourself going?

It's the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy.

How's that?

The sunk cost fallacy is the attitude of, we've put this much time and effort and money into a project, so we have to see it through. That's a fallacy, because maybe this isn't worth finishing and to throw more money and time and effort into that pit is not worthwhile.

Whereas in a novel, if you've written 70,000 words, then you only need 20,000 to finish. If you don't finish it, then you literally have wasted all that time.

And I think that's where the sunk cost fallacy is not a fallacy. Because books take so long to write. And nobody's going to read a book that's 95% done.

An artist I knew said something they taught in art school is: Done is beautiful.

I take that as a mantra. Think about all your favorite pieces of art, what do they have in common?

They're all finished.

Exactly.

Why set Picking Up the Ghost in a town along the Mississippi?

So, I knew I wanted the protagonist to be African-American. And then I picked a location. I wanted it to be a living ghost town.

It was going to be Detroit. We all hear these stories about urban decay in Detroit, right? Which would have been a good choice, except a friend of mine turned me on to East St. Louis.

He showed me a book about East St. Louis's history. And it's like the Detroit situation, but far, far worse. It was literally a company town and the local government was in service of either the metallurgy companies or the mining companies, I forget which.

And then when the industry was done with it, it abandoned the place. Everybody who had money left. And there were people left who didn't have money, didn't have the resources to leave.

Consequently, it was the descendants of the African-American workers who had come to work the low-end jobs in the factories and production that are still there.

So did you actually go to East St. Louis? What sort of research did you do?

When I was in the Marine Corps I got to meet people from that part of the country, so I got some perspective there. I also found a great urban decay exploration website where the guy spent a lot of time in East St Louis.

The main place where all the magic happens, the meat packing plant, it's based on an Armour Meatpacking Plant on a hill outside of East St Louis. And it's still there. You can see pictures of it. So I was able to lift all that.

I read a few books about the education system in Middle America, its decline, and stuff like that. They had a lot of stuff about that city.

And that's also part of the reason I fictionalized it. I called it St. Jude instead of East St. Louis. That gave me a little bit of freedom to make up stuff. Whereas if I use a city from the real world, I'll never stop doing research on that city.

Why St Jude?

St. Jude is the Patriot Saint of lost causes. Good name for a dying town.

Did you have any concerns, as a person who presents as white, writing not just a protagonist who's African-American, but a novel where most of your characters are African or African-American?

When I started writing it, it was before this sort of increased awareness of appropriation. So I wasn't aware it was even a thing. I knew who Vanilla Ice was, but I didn't connect that to writing fiction.

And as I said before, I wanted to write an American story, and I think of African-Americans as having the most American culture. Then there's the fact that the town St Jude is based on (East St. Louis - ed) is something like 98% African-American. To put white people in that book would just be weird.

When I write about any kind of marginalized group, I'm not making a statement, other than I'm presenting people with these traits in roles that they've normally not had.

For example, in both books (Picking Up the Ghost and The Faith Machine), all my protagonists have mental disorders.

Cinque is schizophrenic, and then all the characters in The Faith Machine, except for Park, have mental disorders too.

So I'm not making a statement about mental disorder at all. I am taking this trait, which is normally relegated to villains or antiheroes or supporting characters, and assigning them to the protagonists. That's it.

So you, along with a lot of authors, recently went through getting the rights to your book back from ChiZine. Are you going to put Picking Up the Ghost yourself, or focus on The Faith Machine for now?

The eBook is up. I've already written a short story that bridges the two novels. I'm going to put that at the end of an ebook edition of Picking up the Ghost, and sell it for a buck.

And then if somebody gets to the end and they like it, there's a link to where they can buy The Faith Machine.

It's going to be a loss-leader. I figure that's the best use I have for it right now.

Did you get anything back from ChiZine, like the final manuscript or --?

No, they hold onto the formatting and stuff like that. And they also hold onto the cover. So I've had to make my own cover.

And I have to get my own ISBN number if I want to return to print, even print-on-demand.

When do you think you'll have that ready?

The Faith Machine comes out in May, so hopefully before that. A friend of mine volunteered to do the cover for it, so whenever he finishes.

For now, you can find Picking Up the Ghost on Kindle

Fantastically well-done. Weaves together magic, fairies, Great War trauma, romance, sisterly rivalry, and the treatment of special-needs children into one cracking good story.

So very happy to discover there are sequels.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Dribble out your backstory. At the start, offer just enough to explain the choices that brought the character to that point. Introduce the rest later, as needed for the story.
• You can get away with a romance between two characters that have little in common if you make their raw attraction clear and compelling.
• Sometimes the greatest climaxes (or turns in the story) happen when the protagonist realizes something about themselves that they didn't know before.

It’s got an elderly kick-ass demon-assassin, zombies that can think, and a death goddess working at a small press. For that, I can forgive the continuity errors and the occasional odd plot point.

Three things I learned about writing:

• Watch out for the vague "some": "something made her", "something told her", "some sort of sense"...it gets overused too easily.
• Where you start your story affects how sympathetic your protagonist seems. Start it when they're under stress, and readers automatically feel for them. Start it with them relaxed but complaining about how rough they've got it, and readers might not be as charmed.
• Vivid, brief descriptions and snappy dialog can pull a reader through the roughest parts of your story.

“Gothic” in the overwrought, melodramatic sense.

There’s some fantastic ideas in here, but it was tough one for me to finish.

Three things I learned about writing:

• People falling love notice everything about their beloved. If writing from the POV of a character falling in love, their thoughts will dwell on even insignificant details about their beloved.
• Constant repetition of unexplained magical elements makes them annoying and boring. Conserve the magic, to make it interesting.
• Use a deep dive into a character's thoughts during conversation sparingly. Dialog should speed the story along, interrupting the flow with paragraphs of thought undercuts momentum and frustrates readers.

Managed to whittle the list of editing passes from twelve to twenty and now back to thirteen.

Which means I didn’t finish them by the end of March, like I wanted.

I did finish the biggest of the changes, though: giving each chapter to either the male or the female protagonist, swapping evenly between the two, and filling out her narrative arc so that her storyline has equal weight.

The changes I have left are much smaller: revising character appearances, adding touches to scene descriptions, and making sure everything is consistent.

Still, I’m setting weekly goals, aiming for three editing passes done each week. At that rate, I’ll be finished with the edits in early May :/

Much later than I’d like, but I tell myself that’s better than not doing them, or worse yet, continuing to tweak and edit for a year or more.

My original plan for editing the first novel turned out to be…rather naive.

I thought it would be enough to fix the female protagonist’s plotline, then make a few description tweaks, and be done.

Instead, I’m looking at making a dozen or more editing passes over the novel, each one picking out a thing to fix and make consistent through the book.

I’ve had to change character appearances, character names, city names, backstory, world history…nearly every element needs to be tweaked one way or another to line up better with what I think the novel should be.

So I’m keeping a running list of things to fix as I go, jotting them down as I find them. That way I can focus on just one editing task at a time, getting one thing right all the way through the book before going back to the beginning and starting on the next fix.

My goal was to have these edits done by the end of the month (for a total of three months of editing), so I could spend the next three months editing my second novel. But we’re a third of the way through March, and, well…my list keeps growing.

Still, I’ll push on. I’m finding I still like this novel, still like the characters. I want to do them justice, give them the best book I can. So I’ll keep working through the list, till the list is done.

Novel’s complete at 50,122 words!

At least, I think it’s complete. Last time I thought it was done, there turned out to be another 45,000 words of story to tell in there.

The cut-off point this time felt more natural, but could seem just as arbitrary to a reader.

Only way to find out for sure is to hand it off to those brave friends willing to read and offer feedback on something so rough and ragged (bless you all).

Till then, it’s back to editing my other projects. I’ve had some ideas for how to trim my first novel into a better shape. cracks knuckles

Hope you have a Happy New Year! May your words sparkle, your stories captivate, and your edits be painless :)

Novel’s at 39,412 words.

Decided to brainstorm my way out of being lost. I took the climax I’m working toward, and mapped out short, medium, and long ways to get there.

They all had scenes in common, but only the long path gave me the chance to wrap up all of the plotlines I’ve got going.

So I’m taking the long path.

It’s still likely to end up a short novel. I’m definitely in the final third of the book, so I know I need to pile on the pressure to build things toward my climax.

With luck (and a lot of work), I’ll be finished somewhere around the first of the year.

Then I can turn back to editing my second novel, and maybe doing another pass on my first novel, and another edit on this short story I wrote in September…

sighs Maybe best to ignore that for now. One story at a time.

Novel’s at 33,986 words.

I’m at a point where I’m not sure how much story is left to tell.

I could be two-thirds of the way through, and so on my way to the end. If so, I should be quickening the pace in each scene, pushing the narrative forward faster and faster to reach the climax.

Or I could just be halfway through. In which case, I should be steadily building toward the next major turning point in the story, pacing things so that the reader’s not exhausted by the end of the book.

I feel like this is something I should know.

I’ve got the rest of the book outlined (even if it’s in my head). I know the scene for the story’s climax. I know the characters that are there, and what happens afterward. But damned if I don’t know how they got there, or how much time there is between the scene I’m currently writing and the last one.

It mystifies me that the only way to find out is for me to write it. As if I weren’t writing a story, but reporting on events. And until those events happen, I’ve got nothing to report.

NaNoWriMo’s over. Final word count: 30,836.

So, I didn’t make it to 50,000 this year. But I don’t want to dwell on that.

Here’s what I did do:

• I started a new novel, which is still not easy for me.
• I proved I could still write 4,000 words in a single day, like I did last Saturday.
• I learned that starting with a short story set in the world does help when it comes time to write the novel. I've written more each day, and more easily, for this novel than the previous one.

More modest than NaNoWriMo, true, but I think it’ll keep me focused, keep me pushing forward on the book. I’d like to have this first draft done in three months instead of twelve, so I can spend more time revising it.

Wish me luck.

Novel’s at 19,170 words.

Limped along with 500 words a day through the week, then managed to crank out 2,000 words yesterday. Hoping to do the same today, and tomorrow, and Sunday.

I need to be writing about 5,000 words a day, to make the NaNoWriMo deadline. That’s…probably not going to happen.

I have to try, though. Even if I don’t get to 50,000 words this month, I’m still going to finish the novel. So every word still counts.

Novel’s at 12,104 words.

I’m seriously behind. About 18,000 words behind, to be more specific.

Trying to tell myself that every word written is a victory, and it’s enough to just have the novel started. That works. Sometimes.

And sometimes I just want to take the day off work, so I can write.

Because I’m also looking at the short story I’m supposed to revise, the previous novel I should be editing, and the one before that that I should be sending round to more agents.

I put all that on hold so I “focus” on NaNoWriMo. But if I’m already slipping behind on this month’s writing, maybe I shouldn’t have?

How far behind am I going to get on those projects, while I struggle through this one?

Went back to finish the short story, as prep for converting it into a novel for NaNoWriMo…and found I couldn’t finish it, because there was too much more to tell.

Which is a relief, actually, because it means I don’t have to throw the short story away and start over, or worry about having enough depth in the setting and the characters for a novel. The short story is the intro to the novel, the opening scene(s), setting the stage for everything that follows.

This has never happened to me before. But then, it’s only my third novel, so what do I know?

Now I’m working up the outline of the book, discovering plots and subplots I didn’t know were waiting inside the short story.

It’s a process that’s both fun and terrifying, like doing improv sketches in front of a video camera instead of an audience: you have to hope the jokes land, because you won’t know until long after you’re done performing.

I really want to do NaNoWriMo again this year. Last time, it helped me finally dig in and start a novel, pushing me to get 50,000 words in before the end of November, and then finish it over the following months.

That same novel is now edited and ready for querying. I’ve spent this week drafting a query letter, one I’ll be editing this next week before starting to send out.

At the same time, I need to prep for NaNoWriMo, so I’ve also begun writing a new short story. It’s from an idea that’s been kicking around in my head for a few years. I think there may be a novel’s worth of story in there, but I don’t want to dive in to one without some prep work.

So I’m writing a short story set in that world first, to see if it has legs. It’s something I did (without knowing it) for my first novel, and skipped – because I didn’t know it was something you could deliberately do – for the second.

Since I found the first novel much easier to write, and I’ve heard other writers mention using the short story as a way to explore a novel idea, I’m going to try it out.

If it works, I’ll have something solid to work with as I build my outline for NaNoWriMo. If it doesn’t, then at least I’ve only invested a week or two (instead of months).

Opened the novel this week to continue my edits. Flipped open my notes, looked for the next thing that needed to be fixed.

There wasn’t one.

Which means: the edits are done, hooray!

But also means: it’s time to query agents. And suddenly I have the urge to hold onto the manuscript just a bit longer, to do just one more editing pass, before letting anyone in the publishing world see it.

That won’t do. So I’ve been researching agents open to submissions in my genre, compiling a list of five to start with. I’ll find more once I’ve heard back from these five.

I’m already steeling myself for the rejections, but there’s really no choice here: it’s either face rejection, or never have a chance of it getting picked up by a publishing house.

Trimmed another 3,000 words off the draft this week.

Only three chapters left to truncate. Then I can start in on the growing list of problems I’m seeing as I go: personality quirks that got dropped from later chapters, items whose properties changed without reason, place names that got swapped.

At this point, I’m starting to look forward to doing the final copyediting run-through, because it’ll mean all these other issues have been dealt with.

Till then, I’ll keep cutting.

Labor Day weekend was awesome. I spent most of each day editing: reading through the novel and hacking away at anything that didn’t need to be there. I’ve trimmed a few thousand words off the draft already, and it feels great.

Except that every time I read it, I find more things wrong.

On my way to cut down a stray paragraph, I noticed one of the characters' dialog sounded like a really bad imitation of an accent. Had to stop and fix that.

Trimming a different chapter, another character had somehow developed a verbal tick, repeating the same phrase with every sentence, like some sort of crazed parrot. I had to stop and fix that, too.

Each round of edits is revealing more edits that are needed. I’ve had to stop changing things as I notice them, because it ends up derailing the edits I originally went in to make. Instead I’m jotting each one down in a notebook, so I can go back through later and fix them.

What I thought would be a series of nice, orderly editing rounds has become a game of whack-a-mole, where three more problems rear up with every one I knock down. At this rate, my internal deadline (Oct 1) for finishing the edits won’t be a deadline so much as the day I put down the mallet in defeat.

Until then, I’ll keep hammering away.

With the first draft of the children’s book done, I can at last turn to editing my first novel, the one I started as part of NaNoWriMo 2014.

The problem, of course, is that I have no idea how to edit a novel.

A short story, sure. A blog post, definitely. Those are small things, though, easy to hold in my head and thus easy to find contradictions in, easy to re-read and catch typos, easy to control.

I read in The Kick-Ass Writer that you shouldn’t go into editing without a plan, and that you should make several passes: a pass for grammar, a pass for plot, a pass for descriptions.

So I made one plan, and threw it away, because it was too detailed and intimidating.

I made a second plan, and then threw it away, because it was too vague.

I made a third plan, and then decided I needed to stop being afraid of diving in and fixing things. So I re-read all the alpha-reader feedback I had, picked the most glaring flaw they all mentioned, and decided to start there.

Granted, it’s two-thirds of the way through the book. But it’s something that worried me when I wrote it, and if they also had issues with it, it’s something I should take care of.

Once that’s fixed, I’ll move onto the next biggest issue, and then the next, and the next. Along the way, I’ll tweak wording here and there, fix typos, etc, so that hopefully I’ll have caught them all before I do my “official” re-read for those kinds of mistakes.