The Endless Expanse of Editing

I'm still on Step One of the editing process, the assembly of the scenes. The Roster, if you will. Who is here and who isn't.

I haven't made a lot of progress lately, what with the holidays coming up and all that. It's a lame excuse, I know. But hopefully come January, my days off will actually be off and I'll be able to work more on it.

I'm about halfway through my Word document, which means I'm more than halfway through my story, because there was a lot of extraneous stuff at the end for the sake of words that I no longer need to worry about. Basically, it just continued the story of the main character, and what he does later, which was mostly retell the whole novel to other people. You know, for words. So I'm not even going to look at that right now.

So It Begins

I have begun the lengthy editing process. I'm starting by going through the first draft of Cold Blooded, and just making a list of all the scenes. Some, I think, are actually more than one scene, but since I wrote it without chapter breaks and just a "* * *" most of the times the setting changed or time skipped forward, it's hard to tell what is supposed to be a scene. So at any rate, I'm making a list of the events, as they happen.

Once I'm done with that, I'll start picking at which scenes are actually important and which ones don't move the plot forward. Any information in the cut scenes that is still needed will be recycled into new, better scenes. I've already started a second document of all the chunks of backstory, so that I can have them as a handy reference guide for when I want to sprinkle that information back in. Right now it’s just in a couple of big blocks, and that's no good. My research tells me that you’re not supposed to do that.

Endings and Beginnings

I'm back! NaNoWriMo is over, and I'm here with my report.

I did not make it to 50,000 words. I made it to just over 35,000. That is not to say that I came away with nothing. Even if I never turn this draft into a proper book, that doesn't mean it was wasted.

I have learned a valuable lesson about myself. Even if I can't describe a setting, or a character, or world build worth shit, my god, can I kill people. It's like time slows down and I can detail every moment of their demise. There's a procedural cop show, I've forgotten which one, CSI or Bones or something, where it does this interior simulation of arteries getting severed and whatnot? It's like that.

So I killed Steve fifteen times, and rendered each one in beautiful detail, but at no point mentioned what he looked like. That's how I roll.

Hiatus 2018

I'll be going on hiatus for the remainder of November. I'm just busy trying to finish my novel in between working.

I'll be back in December with a post-NaNo report.

Putting Things in Boxes

This probably has very  little to do with my NaNo novel, which I have, by the way, finally given a name. Its still-entirely-changeable-but-at-least-looking-like-a-title title is Graver Mistakes, which is from the Coheed and Cambria song "Neverender." I don't know if it makes sense for this story, but we're going with it.

The other day, I was stalling and putting off novelling, and started a list of stories I've written (or at least first drafted), and their respective genres. I'm trying to find my niche, I guess. I want to see if there's something I tend to gravitate towards.

Right now, there are twenty-one stories on the list.

Death and Romance

Yes, I skipped last week. I'm sorry. I had a lot going on. It was all Halloween/beginning of NaNo/having to work on my day off, and I realized sometime on Sunday that I never wrote my post. But that's fine. I didn't have much to talk about then anyway.

So now I'm a few thousand words in, and this story is taking turns I never expected. My initial thought was that Steve was just some hapless oaf who got killed repeatedly in gruesome ways. But now all of a sudden he's a mentally ill grave robber with possible aspirations of being a superhero and I don't know what's happening anymore. Oh, and there's a love interest?

What started as some easy, jokey series of unfortunate events has turned into something else entirely.

Mystical Murder Weapons

Here is my problem when it comes to prep work and anything involving research. I go to look up one thing, and two hours later I'm reading about martyrdom and the Fisher King. That's one of many reasons why it takes me so long to write my blog posts.

I was trying to research the Spear of Longinus (aka the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Lance). I was trying to figure out what happened to Steve to cause him all the trouble he's about to experience. I'm inclined to think that whatever kills him first has something to do with it.

Night of the Living Steve

Oh, Steve. Poor, poor Steve.

I'm going to murder him. Repeatedly.

The question is, of course, why? I can write his unfortunate demise in fifty different ways, but I need some kind of narrative framework to hold it all together. How has Steve found himself in this situation? Why is this happening to him? How is he going to get out?

Previously, I've said, on at least two occasions, that he's been cursed by an angry god. But unless I do some work and really flesh that out into something, it just ends up being "just because." As in, these things are happening to him because it's convenient for the purposes of story writing. It's not a good reason. And a good reason for him getting into this pickle is going to be instrumental in getting him out. I mean, how do you appease an angry god?

Squiggly Lines

Here's what I've been up to lately. I built a fire of creativity, and I stuck every iron I had into it. I have this new story I'm planning for November, and I have at least three old stories I'd like to revise. I have all this stuff, and I'm not really doing anything with anything on a daily basis.

I need to pick one project and go with it. My next NaNo novel is the obvious choice. Everything else can wait until December. Cold Blooded (the vampire one) will probably be the first revision project, because it has the most usable material to work with. After that is done (yes, done, not just half-done and abandoned), then The Long Road (the road trip one) and Cape Nowhere (the Victorian X-Files one) can get their chance.

But in order to make any of these stories really work, I'll need to do some planning.

Mostly Dead

It always happens that I'll be in the midst of one project, and already I'm thinking about the next. At the moment, I'm supposed to be plotting my upcoming NaNo novel, I haven't even started it, and instead I'm thinking about revision.

It's been brought to my attention that my 2016 vampire NaNo novel, Cold Blooded, is not half bad. It's readable, even. So it might be prudent for me to try to revise that one, as opposed to The Long Road, which still needs most of a plot.

Now, I haven't reread Cold Blooded in a while. I'm not sure if I've read it since I finished the first draft. But I remember it being a lot of fun to write. I did a lot of research on vampires in various works of fiction, picking out the attributes that I wanted to use.

Reading is Fundamental

I haven’t done a ton of writing lately. I've actually been doing some reading.

Most recently, in that's it's ongoing, I've read Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. I started it last night, and I'm almost done with it. It. Is. Fantastic. Narratively, it's fascinating. It has a habit of telling you about things before they come up in the story, but it doesn't make it any less exciting when it does come up. Like, something will be mentioned, and it piques your interest, and you want to know what on earth that's about. Then it gets to that point, and it's still all, "Oh shit! That happened!" I'm explaining this terribly. But it’s fucking great. And it includes all these elements of modern culture, like the internet and social media, that makes it all seem kind of… possible.

Seriously, if you are a fan of… books that are good, read it.

The other thing I read recently was not a book. Not a real one. Not a complete one. I had opened it up when I was looking for excerpts for my last post. It's Cape Nowhere, my 2012 NaNo novel.

Finding a Voice

Sorry there was no post last week. I had a lot going on.

---

Narrative voice. That's why we're here today.

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but A) I'm too lazy to verify that, and B) it's an ongoing problem, so it bears repeating.

What I mean is the voice that the narrated bits (not the dialogue bits) are in. If you're writing in first person, then that's one of your characters. Otherwise, it's just this nebulous narrator figure. But just because they don’t have a body or a face doesn't mean that they don't have a personality and a voice.

My problem lies in the fact that my narrative voice tends to have no personality. It's just this flat, clinical description. And when it's not, then it's… wrong. Like a lack of cold professionalism is childish.

The Horror!

Unrelated to absolutely everything I've been up to lately, horror is hard to write.

I mean, I guess The Long Road has horror-ish elements (like whatever the fuck the sheriff of Maranatha is), but I wouldn't call it horror.

Horror movies are easy. Shitty horror movies, anyway. You throw in a creepy soundtrack, some jump scares, and you're done. Startling, at any rate, is easy on film.

You can't startle with a book. Words don't jump out at people. With a book, you've gotta be all atmospheric and build tension. With words! It's hard.

What About Everything?

I've started rewriting The Long Road again. I haven't got very far, but it feels… good, just to be working on it again. I figured out how and where to start it, that introduces the characters without being all info-dumpy.

That being said, I'm thinking a lot about backstory.

Obviously, these characters have history, both of their own and with each other. I've been doing a lot of research into how to incorporate that into the story. And let me tell you, the internet is god damn useless. "Work backstory into the narrative in bits and pieces." No shit. You don't want to stop the action to explain how your characters know each other, or how they got where they are now. Some sites recommended the use of a prologue. As far as I know, prologues should really only be used when there's some crucial worldbuilding that needs to be done up front. Usually that's a sci-fi/fantasy thing, where the reader needs to know something about the world in order to not be completely lost. This is not that kind of story.

Making Promises

I haven't been working on anything lately. I have all these things I want to do, all these grand plans… all these murders to commit. Fictionally, speaking, of course. Of course…

That's the downside of all this. It makes me sound like a psycho something.

Anyway, I have the ideas. I just don't have the motivation. I could barely get the motivation to write this post.

The question, then, is what do I do about it.

Much like inspiration, you can't just wait around for motivation. You just have to do it. You have to make it a habit, a routine, and just sit down and do it, even when you don't want to.

As you can see, I haven't mastered that yet.

The Triumphant Return of Steve

This post is unique. It may not look it, but it's very different from anything I've ever done. It was written entirely on a smartphone. That's right, I've finally joined everyone else in the future.

You know, Fifty Shades of Grey was written on a BlackBerry, I've heard. And look how that turned out.

I certainly type a lot slower using this tiny keyboard, so I'm not going to be using this all the time, but it's a little something different and... what's the adjective form of novelty? Oh. It's "novel." I'm an idiot.

Well, speaking of novels, I guess, I might as well tell you all my upcoming plans.

Where to Start

I'm back on The Long Road. Maybe I never really got off of it. Maybe I'll always be here. Maybe no one ever gets out.

But that's not why we're here. We're not aiming to get off the road, we're trying to get on it.

I've began this story twice. And both times, it began just before our heroes set out on their trip. And both times, I've had to slog through some boring shit to get them on the road and started on their adventure. I get caught in a dialogue trap, where everyone just talks and nothing happens. It's like… conversation quicksand.

It's one thing to have dialog that enhances what's going on, and propels the plot forward. But this… it's not that. Much as I like Tony's coffee story, it's not really contributing to the story as a whole.

So I've come to the conclusion that the story needs to start later.

Well-Contained Plots

Bottles. Great for cramming messages into. Also great for stories you want to keep contained.

That's right, we're talking about bottle episodes, or bottle movies. Or bottle stories in general. Terrarium fiction, I once said. You take all your plot, characters, and conflict, and you stick them in a confined space and sit back to see what happens.

Bottle stories are not necessarily bound to the bottle. There is nothing keeping the action there. It just happens to all take place there. Personally, I think it's more interesting if the bottle's been corked.

The Flashiest Fiction

I've started writing flash fiction. Or microfiction, you might hear it called. Very, very short stories. The first one I've written was 112 words.

Incidentally, I've finally started using the Instagram account I've had for months. I've never been one for posting selfies, and I don't have anything interesting to take pictures of. So I've decided to write very short stories, put them in a square with a nice background, and post them to Instagram.

Just like books are divided into length based categories (novellas, novels, epics), so too is flash fiction. The term "flash fiction" itself is used for stories 1,000 words long. "Sudden fiction" is 750 words, "microfiction" is 100, and a "minisaga" is 50. A lot of them show up in literary contests where the goal is to have exactly that number of words.

I'm not so particular, so I'm using "flash fiction" in the general sense. I'm not so much constraining myself by word count, but by overall size.

Foreshadowing Firearms

This post might have been written on time, but I went to a concert on Wednesday. Bad Wolves, Breaking Benjamin, and Five Finger Death Punch (click links for musics). Totally worth it to get tickets down on the floor, by the way.

But anyway, we're here to talk about writing. 

You may have heard of Chekhov's Gun. It's a… I don't know, a rule, that says, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

Basically, if you bother mentioning a thing, it should be important at some point.

Monsters and Mayhem

I have a lot of things in my head.

I've had a few random ideas for my current story, involving time travel, human sacrifice, the usual. I also have this gnawing in my brain, in my very soul, to finish The Long Road.

I don't know why that story is so important. I mean, every year, I sit down to write a NaNo novel, and I say, "This will be the one." The Great American Novel. The story that's going to change the world, even if it's just my little corner of it. It's the story that will make sense and I'll be able to show it to everyone without cringing. Every year, I say that.

And every year, I write a pile of complete nonsense, with a few good gems sprinkled throughout, the needles in my haystack.

A Story About Something

Writing Desks and Ravens: Freedom Edition.

And what's more free than freewriting?

I've started writing for Camp NaNo. I still have pretty much no idea what it's about. Some kind of Lovecraftian horror, I guess, judging from what I have.

Basically, I started with a single scene that popped into my head. This one tiny moment. Just… this:

Blood seeped through his fingers as he lay in the grass. In the dim light, the indistinct form of the creature edged closer. He was done for. There was no escaping now.

The thing was only six feet from him. It could have turned and finished him off. But it didn’t. It kept moving, right on past him. He wasn’t a threat anymore. He was already dead.

Nothing in Particular

I just watched the 2012 movie Upside Down, and it made me think of one of my stories from a few years ago, The Shattered World, in that it involves worlds that are strangely connected and dubious science. Definitely what I would call fantasy and not science fiction. Maybe I should revive that story and give it another chance. Maybe for Camo NaNo in July. Or maybe I’ll do something new. I don't know.

What would you like to see, all five of my readers? What kind of challenge would you like to see me tackle? I have a few things up in the air at the moment, in various states of completion, but I'm not above shelving them and starting something new.

I would have written this post hours ago, but I got distracted reading a story that proved to be much longer than expected. I literally spent hours on it, even as it got later and later, because I really wanted to know how it all turned out. It was a very dark and bleak story, but my god, was it good.

I want to write something like that.

Alice in Uni-Land

This post is up very late. Let me make it up to you. Here's a story I wrote last year for a prompt I got off of r/writingprompts: "Alice and wonderland but from the perspective of a university student doped up on caffeine and a massive lack of sleep."

A little something to entertain you with.

Alice stared down at her biology textbook as the clock ticked its way past 2am. The evolution of lagomorphs blurred into a puddle of text and diagrams. It grew bigger and muddier as her head dropped ever closer to the page.

She jerked awake and reached for her notebook. But it wasn’t there. Her dorm room had vanished as well. She now found herself in a forest, and she wasn’t alone.

Into the Void

All right, where are we at?

I'm alternating randomly between coming up with new ideas for the next draft of The Long Road and writing pithy nonsense for my romantic comedy. And amidst all that, I'm wondering what I should do for Camp NaNo in July.

So I have a lot going on. I'm multitasking, by which I mean I'm doing several things at once, but none of them particularly well. I need some kind of structure, some kind of schedule. But that's just not working for me right now. Right now I'm just writing when I want to, and not writing when I don't want to. Not efficient, but better for stress levels.

Me being me, instead of focusing on all the things I'm already working on, I'm going to talk about what I might want to do for Camp NaNo.

Paper Towns

I was thinking, in the shower, about paper towns. Really, I just said, out loud, "What if they were paper towns?"

By "they" I, of course, mean the weird locations in The Long Road. Obviously. I think a lot about stories even when I'm not actively working on them. I'll randomly come up with new ideas for stories I wrote five or ten years ago. This is by no means a stretch.

But anyway. If you're not aware, paper towns are towns that exist only on paper. They're fake.

Forking Roads

This post is being written late, because I got super distracted yesterday. By a book. Not one I was writing. One that I was reading.

I've been big on road trips lately. The Long Road was a road trip. My little rom-com involves an albeit short trip where two people get to know each other. And I just read (in seven hours) John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, which kicks off its main story with, that's right, a road trip.

I think this is a sign that I need to get back to at least one of my stories.

Just Write

Well, I dropped down to one post per week, and there was no rioting in the streets. I'm not sure anyone even noticed. And that’s fine. I know my content's been a little underwhelming as of late. I'm going to blame it on work. Basically, my schedule got all switched around, and I've been given new responsibilities. It just exhausts me. So I'm sorry my writing regimen has sucked lately.

I think I need to think more about seriously publishing. It's the goal, after all. Now, the rom-com I'm writing right now will never be seen by human eyes, so obviously I'm going to have to do some new writing.

But what? The age old question. What do I write?

They Raise Their Towers to the Clouds

This week I'm coming to you live from the deep dark woods. Where yes, there is internet. It's the 21st century, guys.

I had an idea about a story, where there was a model, and an overdose, and a guy who was trying to unravel… something? It seemed like a really good idea, but when I thought about it later, I couldn’t remember why exactly. I had the basic idea, but I'd lost the spark.

This is why you write things down, kids.

Playing Games

I haven't written more of my rom-com, and that's okay. Everything I've been working on lately has been full of deadlines. First it was NaNo in November, then it was that serial story I had to add to every week, then it was Camp NaNo in April, where I felt guilty every minute I wasn't trying to revise. I put all this pressure on myself, then I start to hate the project I'm working on because I have to work on it.

I know, I know, if you want to be a "real" writer, you have to treat it like a job and write all the time, on a schedule. But see, I have a job. Writing is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be my escape. Yeah, sure, I want to get something published one day, but not at the cost of despising the finished story for all it put me through.

That said, I have had several thoughts about this rom-com, and the sorts of things I'd like to see happen.

Going Home

I woke up with a thought in my head about an industrial revolution. I have no idea what that pertains to, but I have a feeling it was a holdover from a thought from yesterday. This is why you write things down, folks.

In other, more writing related news, I'm… writing a romantic comedy. It goes against everything I stand for, but there it is. I wrote six pages of it the other day, just trying to get the setup out of the way. See, there's a particular situation the characters have to be in, where most of the action happens, and I needed to get them there. So the beginning is a little awkward and kind of "why would you make that foolish decision" but I can fix it later.

I know I said a few weeks ago that if I wrote this rom-com, I wasn't going to blog about it. But now I am, because frankly, I don't have anything else to talk about. I don't want to talk too much about the overall plot, because I'm afraid it's going to sound stupid, and then I won't want to write it anymore. Which would suck, because it's shaping up to be a fun little story.

Utter Nonsense

What if each thing you ate had to have at least one ingredient in common with the thing you ate before it?

What does that have to do with anything? Not a damn thing. These are just the sorts of things I think at 1 or 2 in the morning.

I was going to write this post Friday night so that it would be up on Saturday, but by the time I got home, with a terrible headache, that just wasn't going to happen. So here we are. I'm doing my best. Or, well, probably not my best, but safe to say, not my worst.

Mostly, I'm getting distracted by the internet lately. It happens.

No Turning Back

So I didn't write a post on Saturday. You might have noticed. I only noticed at 12:30am on Monday.

Now, normally, I'd write a post, backdate it, and pretend it was there the whole time. But not today. Today I thought I'd just move on and start writing Wednesday's post.

And here we are.

I intended to spend 30 hours revising my story in April. I did not. I thought it would be easy. It was not. Sure, that's just one hour a day, but I'm lazy and not particularly motivated. I want the book to be done, and be good, but it's so god damn hard getting there. Since, you know, I'm lacking 60% of my plot. And everything I do write is crap.

On the bright side, at the very, very end of Camp NaNo, I may have finally figured out the most important, most burning question in my revision notes: Where the fuck are they going?

I realized, it's not the final destination that matters. I mean, yes, they should have a plan, maybe they're going to… St. Louis or something. But that's not what's so important. That's not why they keep going.

Getting Distracted

I'm trying to focus on the project at hand, but I keep getting distracted by an idea for a romantic comedy, of all things. It's invading my brain. It's from a picture I saw on Facebook of a Tumblr post that was a picture of a craigslist ad. So it's come a long way to reach me in the first place.

But I'm not going to write it.

Not now anyway. I have a revision I'm supposed to be working on.

And I'm kind of torn on the whole thing. I think it could be a fun story. But there's a big part of my brain that is wired to reject things like that.

Wasting My Time

I thought I'd get a whole bunch done over the weekend, but, well, things happened, and really all I did was make a fancy little timeline for The Long Road. Which might seem like progress, but really, it's just the very beginning, the bit I already knew. And it's not really a traditional timeline of events, not like a plot arc or anything. It's more a depiction of literally which timeline the characters are in at any given moment.

Here, look.

Something to Believe In

I have found religion.

Okay, well, not me, but my character. Andrea. I had all these little bits and pieces about her, and they suddenly all made sense when I gave her a Christian upbringing. Like, there was something in her backstory that, well, technically didn't happen, but it almost did, and she'd just as soon forget about the whole thing. I was never quite sure why. Whether it happened or didn't, it wasn't wrong. Unless you've got some traditional values. Also, this kind of explains why she is one of six children. Not to say that Christians have the monopoly on large families, it just seems like it's more common.

This is a new thing for me. I've been writing NaNo novels since 2010, and a good handful of short stories before and after that. And I don't think I've ever had a main character (or a character who was in more than a scene or two) who was religious. It's going to be an interesting thing to write. I'll try not to offend anybody, but I make no promises.

This revelation has made me realize that my three characters fall on a spectrum of Purity vs. Corruption.

Music for the Road

I've been thinking of all kind of interesting ways to divide a story. Chapters, sure, but that's so… ordinary. One thing I wanted to do with The Long Road is to group the chapters into sections named after road feature. Like "dead end" or "hairpin turn." I don't know if that's going to work, but it's a thought.

Another thought I had was to break up it up by the song that's playing at that moment of their road trip. But that would make for very short sections and is probably not a very good idea.

I have been thinking about road trip music, though. Each of the characters is going to have their own musical taste, just like real people. And sure, there's bound to be some overlap, with some bands or genres that everyone likes. But then maybe one person really likes Nine Inch Nails and no one else really gets what the big deal is. So then you have fighting over control of the radio.

Re-Beginning

I realized that in my last post, I said that the word counter filtered out words like "it" even though "it" appears in the last line of my abstract "poem." The site claimed that, not me. So someone is confused. (Hint: it's me.)

But moving on.

I've started rewriting the beginning of The Long Road as part of my revision process. I still don't know what cargo area of an SUV is called, and am still calling it steerage. This will continue, more than likely. Anyway, there was a whole thing about Tony being late and getting coffee that I've kept and altered, because it shows that he's kind of a dick and only out for himself. I think I could come up with myriad ways why people wouldn't like him, and why his family abandoned him (I'm kidding, they left because they’re also selfish assholes). The challenge is going to be convincingly showing why anyone would want to be friends with him. What are his redeeming qualities? What makes him likeable? Why the hell does he speak Russian?

All good questions. Some may one day have answers.

Talk About Looking Back

I decided to see what the most used word was in each story I wrote, for shits and giggles. I ran The Long Road through Word Counter and got a piece of abstract poetry.

Jesse, Tony

Andrea said back

Look, just go

Ask around down

I know, get road town

Don't turn door

Fuck time!

What did sheriff one-something

Over hand think happen?

It didn't

It goes on like that. Pure nonsense.

Beginnings Are Hard

Revisions are going slowly. The problem lies in the fact that I don't know even the basicest of information about anything. Like the fact that basicest is not a word. Most basic.

I don't know where they’re going or why. I don't know where they're coming from. I've changed my word goal to an hour goal so all of this pondering and planning can at least count for something. I need to get my shit together, seriously.

I told my washing machine that they were doomed from the start, but I can no longer remember why.

I Keep Falling Out of Time

As I said last time, I'm going to talk some more about time travel. Because I love it. What does this have to do with upcoming Camp NaNo? Probably nothing. And that's okay.

Here's my experience with time travel. I've written two time travel stories. I think. I can only thing of two. I have Unknown Soldier (first written as a short story in 2008, then as a screenplay in 2011), and A Matter of Time (my first NaNo from 2010).

Unknown Soldier was pretty straightforward. It was a loop. Essentially, our protagonist heard a story about a mysterious guy who did a heroic thing. This inspires him to try to be heroic. He volunteers for an experimental program to test, you guessed it, a time machine.

So Close, So Far, I'm Lost in Time

Time travel.

It's one of my favorite subjects. It opens up all kinds of possibilities for stories that cross multiple time periods. It can be done really well, or really not.

There are options when it comes to time travel. You have two main types:

• Loops
• Branches

Loops are different from time loops, in which a period of time keeps repeating. Rather, I mean the kind of thing where someone went back in time and did a thing, but that doesn't change the future, because they always went back to do that thing. Like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The bit with the patronus at the lake or whatever.

Branches are when they go back and change something, and they divert events onto a different path, resulting in a future different from the one they left. Like Back to the Future. School dances and sports almanacking lead to changes in the timeline.

Oh, the Places You'll Go

This was one of those days where I wrote a good chunk of a post, before deciding it was no good and starting over. I also had to make time for Lego Jurassic Park and at least two naps, and well, here we are.

I have a week left before Camp NaNo begins. Which means I need to get my ass in gear, regarding an outline. Now, I've determined that the first chapter or so should establish these characters on their road trip. They'll make stops, fight over snacks and music, and just… do things young 20-somethings do.

A Proliferation of Portals

I've been watching 11.22.63, and spoiler alert for the first half hour, there's a portal. Not anywhere that would make any sense, it just is. And I'm only a few episodes in, but it’s not explained how it got there. In true Stephen King fashion, I suppose. Sometimes, weird things just are. I mean, in From a Buick 8, there's a portal to a hell dimension or whatever inside a car (I think, it's been a while since I read it). He can get away with it. But can I?

To be honest, The Long Road is really shaping up to be some kind of homage to Stephen King. The weird town with the sheriff is very Desperation, whether I meant it to be that way or not.

And that's where we run into trouble. There's a fine line between "inspired by" and "a rip-off of." You don't want to be on the wrong side. Especially if you hope to eventually publish something, which I do.

So on the one hand, I might be able to get away with giving no reason for the portals and reality jumping. On the other though, I kind of want to have one. It's seems kind of cheap to just say, "It's happening, just because."

What do you think? Would you want a reason to eventually be revealed, or can you accept a mystery with no answer?

Today's post is a little short, because I don't have much time. I'll see you Saturday.

The In-Between

I love liminal spaces. You probably know that by now. Those places between other places. The thresholds. The doorways. Places neither here nor there. That moment between today and tomorrow.

Somehow or another I found myself reading about hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, that is, the transitional periods of falling asleep and waking up, respectively.  Essentially, your brain doesn't always go smoothly from one to the other. It gets a little murky and mixed up, and gives you this liminal state between the two. And then I read about false awakening, where you think you've woken up, but you're still dreaming. The whole dream within a dream thing.

Me being me, I take some run of the mill mental phenomenon, and ask myself what kind of adventures could this lead to. I mean, a doorway's a doorway. Not just a link between asleep and awake, but maybe also a link to somewhere else. I've mentioned hypnic jerks before, that twitch when you're on the verge of sleep, like you've nearly fallen and caught yourself. But where were you falling to?

Long Lost Stories

I once wrote a story, or part of a story, about a kid who gets transported to some medieval land and has to find his way home.

Side note, I like just starting my posts all abruptly. I imagine it's like I just strolled into your living room and started telling you a story you weren't anticipating and didn't ask for.

Anyway, something reminded me of that story. I knew how it began, and kind of how it ended, but I never got around to figure out the middle. I haven't even seen this story in years. I wonder…

A Change of Plans

All right, guys, I'm calling it. I'm discontinuing "Just One Yesterday" for the time being. I wanted to give it a better ending, but… It was getting stuck in a rut of nothing really happening, or just the same things happening. There was all kind of other information that needed to make it in there, but for whatever reason, it never did. I think it's the nature of making it up as I go. I don't have a set plan of where to fit things in, so they don't fit in at all, and the story just wanders off the rails.

I know there were some unanswered questions, the largest of which was probably, how did Patrick end up dead and condemned to hell in the first place. That was actually the initial idea I had for the story, but when I actually started writing, I skipped to the aftermath.

I'd like to return to it someday, and I probably will eventually. But right now, I'm bored of having to write it, which is likely reflected in the quality, and everyone's getting bored of having to read it. So we're moving on, for the good of humanity.

Random Scribblings

I had a great idea about something the other day. But I didn’t write it down, so now I have no idea what it was. Let that be a lesson to you. Inspiration is a fickle bitch. The best and probably only piece of advice I can give about writing is to always have something to make notes on, whether that's a little notebook, a voice recorder, or a smartphone app. When you get an idea, you write it down. That idea's not going to stick around, and it's not going to come back when it's more convenient for you.

During Camp NaNo some years ago, I was about to go to bed when I thought of something that would solve the current issue with my story. I didn't have anything to write it on, so I willed myself to remember until morning. Well, I can tell you with some certainty that it was a word with about seven letters, and it had a "g" in it. That information did not solve the problem in my story.

Sometimes, I'll have random ideas about revision for NaNo projects I worked on years ago. And you better bet I write those down, because one day, I may actually sit down and fix those stories. If I wait long enough, I might solve all the plot holes with random thoughts.

Bailing Out

And… it's late. Again. I even had this one outlined in advance, I just didn't write it. I'll be honest with you, I'm kind of getting bored with it. I feel like it's not going how I want it to, and I can't pull it back and divert it. So, I think this is a sign that I should wrap it up. There will probably only be a few more installments, and then we'll move on to something new. I just need to get to a good stopping point, that's not like a bullshit cliffhanger.

So… Part Six:

"I thought of angels choking on their halos…"

The room spun. The ceiling warped like a heat mirage. The light fixture threatened to blink out of existence.

Patrick tried to raise his injured arm. It didn’t cooperate. He picked it up with the other hand and brought it up where he could see it. Besides the crusty bite marks, he could swear he saw something moving under the skin, crawling through his veins.

The front door opened. Patrick dropped his arm, wincing when it landed on the couch. Someone walked through the haze of the room. He expected Bryony, and thought it was her until he saw its face.

Everything's Connected

I had an interesting story idea yesterday, and with a lack of anything else to talk about today, I thought I'd tell you about it.

Imagine this: a short story collection with, I don't know, ten or so stories. All are set in a shared universe, each is from the point of view of a different character. There is some underlying current of a connecting thread, and the whole mystery or secret truth or whatever is only clear after reading all the stories.

The Spread of Darkness

I don't know why I can't write this on time. I'm terrible. I'm sorry.

Here's Part 5 of "Just One Yesterday."

Patrick could try to get his job back, and work for a soulless hell-monster. He could try not to stare at those abysmal eye sockets. But Frank would know. Somehow, they always knew that he could see them.

He wanted to be a badass and do a tactical roll out the door to escape from danger. That wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he awkward shuffled out the door, still crouching and hoping the booth shielded him from the view of the kitchen. He didn’t look back.

He crossed the street and kept on walking. He wasn’t going to deal with this right now. His arm hurt where that thing had bit him, like little pinpoints of fire. The job search would have to wait. For now, he was going home.

Back on the Road

In the midst of working on other projects, I'm always thinking about The Long Road, my NaNo novel from last year, and how I'm going to fix it. If you're just joining us, it was essentially about three friends who go on a road trip, and slip from reality into pockets of weirdness. It didn't work out, as a NaNo novel, coming in at only 25,000 words, but it had so much potential.

The main thing I've been thinking about lately is that it needs more lead-up, more time to establish characters. Which means a minimum of two chapters before anything weird even happens. We need to learn who these people are before we throw them in the grinder.

For instance, Tony has to wander off. That's a given. It's a thing he does, that kicks off a major plot point. But he also needs to do it sooner. I need to show that this is a character trait of his, so that when he does it at the worst possible time, you're not wondering why.

Taking a Step Back

So I've written a bit of a twist in the last installment of this story, and I'm not totally sure where to go from there. Hence the lateness of the post. Also I went to go see Black Panther (super good, go see it), and then took at least two naps. Saturdays are my napping day.

I am calling the story "Just One Yesterday" for the time being, so now all the pieces are tagged with that. And I guess it's going on hiatus for the moment, since I'm not sure what happens next and I don't want to screw it up. It'll be back next week. Maybe even on time. But probably not.

What am I going to talk about today, then? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Apropos of Nothing

Titles are important. That's the first thing anyone sees of your book or short story. It has to be catchy, and good, and it has to mean something.

Well, that's the goal, anyway. I have a history of working titles that don't necessarily mean anything. They sound cool, and somehow reference something in the story or in its creation, but don't necessarily make sense for the finished project.

What do I mean? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's some examples:

• Locking Up the Sun: This was a superhero story about a guy who could teleport. The title vaguely made sense because the main character was sent to rescue a superhero named Supernova. But really, it was just named after this song.
• Secrets and Thieves: A post-apocalyptic adventure with a wide variety of strange characters. And while yes, there are secrets, and at least one thief, I don't know that they were central enough to get a spot in the title. It's a line from this song, which has nothing to do with anything. It's just a good line.

Filling in Blanks

All right, here's Part Four. Three hours of sleep followed by at least three naps and I finally got it done. A lot of dialogue today. Hopefully moving us into the next part.

“Really?” the girl asked. “Because I just saw you fight an old Asian man, murder him, and then he disintegrated. So please, let’s hear your perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Okay, maybe not perfectly reasonable.”

She took her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call the cops.”

“Are you?” he asked, sounding bolder than he felt. “You gonna tell them I vaporized a guy?”

Thoughts So Far

So we're on, what, part three of that serial story (which may be called "Second Chances," I haven't really decided)? What do you think so far? I kind of know what's coming up next, but I have yet to work out a long term plan. So I don't really know how long it's going to be or where it will end up.

I'm hopefully going to a thing this weekend about outlining, so maybe I'll learn a thing or two. Maybe I'll come back as an outlining machine! Probably not that.

So anyway, I've been trying to build this world and these characters without all the baggage of a full length novel. We just don't have time for that here. It's a fine line between no extra info, and not enough info. I'm not sure what side of that line I'm on right now. I'm hoping the answered questions in there right now will be answered by the end.

I'm going to cut this one short because I have to go to work and I don't want to put this off another day. I'd like to post on time every now and again.

Getting the Hang of This

If you've been keeping score at home, you may know that we’ve just passed the two year mark. My first post was February 2nd, 2016. I kind of forgot it was the anniversary, so I didn't plan anything special. I hope the next part of the serial story will be enough.

And yes, it's up late. I had to do adult things like buy a new microwave, and then less adult things like watch Star Trek. I'm trying to get back on schedule, I'm just really bad at it.

So here's Part Three:

The dusty remains of the thing settled on the kitchen floor. Patrick looked at his arm. Irregular teeth marks had been cut into either side. He wrapped it in a dish towel and peered out the kitchen window. There were probably more of those things out there. And he was probably supposed to fight them.

That bus station guy had been really vague on the details.

There was another knock on the door. Great, what now?

Who Am I?

I'm trying to get the story posts back to the weekend, so we're going to talk about some other shit today. Namely, names.

Specifically, my name.

I've mentioned at some point in the past (I don't remember when, I have over 200 posts, man) that I had this whole debate about pseudonyms and whether or not I wanted to use one. I was going to. That's why the blog is under Mad Cooper. That's what I was going to publish as, when I got around to publishing. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't like the idea. It would be a pain in the ass, more than likely, and I'd have to set up some kind of "doing business as" thing if I wanted to get paid. And I realized that people would potentially address me as "Mrs. Cooper," and I definitely didn't want that. There's a reason that's not my last name. It doesn't suit me.

Where Am I Going?

I moved the blog post to Saturday so that I could spend all day working on it.  So as you might guess from this very late post, I have spent all day doing… not that. I've been "thinking" about it, I tell myself. I do an awful lot of thinking.

Lately I've been thinking about this story I'm working on. Namely, what should happen next. I haven't written it yet because I don't know. I don't know if it's going in a good direction, as is.

As I'm sure I mentioned before, one advantage to publishing episodically is that you can get feedback along the way, right away. You can see if a character or a storyline is doing well, and that gives you some indication of where you might want to take the story.

Forces of Darkness

Boom, Part Two. One I name the damn thing, I'll tag them all with it for easier future finding. Also, we're going to Wednesdays and Saturdays, for the time being.

Patrick awoke on the ground in a pool of blood. Here was his body, right where he’d left it. He sat up. Someone screamed.

The express bus back to Earth. Good for extending your miserable life, and startling passersby who had just seen you die.

He held up a placating hand to the woman in question. “Sorry, sorry. Everything’s fine here.” He stood up and brushed himself off. It didn’t help. He was still covered in blood, people were starting to stare, and distant sirens were growing closer.

This would be a good time for him to be anywhere else, so he did the natural thing, following a near-death experience, and went home to take a shower. He earned a few stares along the way, which was to be expected. What was not to be expected was the face at the corner of 3rd and Main.

Unexpected Delays

I have found that by the time I get home around midnight, take a shower, and have some dinner, I don't have a lot of energy left for writing. So it's still taking me some time to get these posts and stories written. Hence all the lateness.

When I initially started this thing, I was in school, and had Fridays off, so I could take all day Friday to write the second post of the week, if I wanted to. Now I work Monday through Friday, so I have to get both posts done in the middle of the night. Due to this, I'm considering shifting my posting schedule, and going to Wednesday and Saturday. What do you think of that?

One Piece at a Time

I've been thinking about serials. Not killers, not at the moment, anyway. I'm talking about old school serial novels published in magazines or newspapers. If you were anyone in the Victorian era, you published your book in serial form first, and then in a single volume. Everyone did it. Arthur Conan Doyle. Alexandre Dumas. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Now, obviously, this has something to do with only offering Part One of my story last week (it still doesn't have a name). I have realized that I can release this thing, and future… things, piece by piece.

This brings up a new can of worms regarding formatting. Or structure, I guess. Each piece needs to have its own story arc. Like a TV episode. There's an big arc for the whole season, but there's also an arc for each episode. I am intrigued by this.

Heaven Nor Hell

I did indeed set out to write you a short story based on the vague idea I had the other day. But the more I thought about, the more I realized I was not going to be able to write the whole story in the amount of time I had.

So here's Part One.

Patrick’s arrival at the Pearly Gates was not as advertised. For starters, there were no gates to be found. Rather, he appeared to be at an abandoned bus station in rural Montana in the middle of the night.

Had he stepped off a bus to get here? He couldn’t remember. For a moment, he couldn’t remember anything. He looked around, up and down the empty road. No, that was right. It came back to him in flashes. An uneventful life and an abrupt end. Somehow that had landed him here.

Wherever here was.

A Project, At Last

I have no ideas. Zero. This isn't even writer's block. This is just writer's meh.

I want to work on something. Anything. I've been going through all these writing prompts and nothing has ignited that spark. I'm trying to make a fire with wet paper over here. Any little inkling of an idea I get quickly drives itself into the ground in a spectacular show of boringness. They never even have a chance. As I try to develop them, the creative part of my brain just fucks off, leaving the part of my brain that ruins things.

I had this whole plan at work today. I was going to come home, pick a prompt from my giant list, and talk a bit about its possibilities. What I could do with it. What sort of characters might be called for. And then I'd write an actual short story for Friday. Then I got home, looked at the prompts, and thbpbp! Nothing good.

Searching For Inspiration

I'm still not back to posting on time. Yet. I'm considering changing the format a bit. A comment on one of my recent posts mentioned formerly having a blog with one editorial piece and one short story per week. And I'm starting to think I should try something similar. I could talk about something on Tuesdays, and try to implement that something on Fridays.

At least until some NaNo project or another starts up. Then it'll all go to hell, as usual.

I haven't written anything new since the end of November. That's over a month. What have I been doing with my life? Making excuses, mostly. And coming up with random ideas I don't know what to do with. Like, "A handful of people are trapped by a snowstorm. One of them has a secret."

Something About Nothing

You know, when I was in college, my issue with doing research papers was not the research. It was the paper. I love research. Learning new things and just absorbing information. Having to turn around and vomit the relevant data onto paper with some sense of coherency was less fun.

Similarly, I have a tendency to go onto Netflix and add a whole bunch of interesting-looking things to my list, and watch none of them. I do the same with writing prompts. I save them, lists and lists of them, but don't ever use them.

I like collecting things. Not so much doing something with those things.