Month: March 2015

Achievement Unlocked: First Edit Complete!

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There’s a great moment in Hook, that early 90’s Peter Pan reboot, where Tinkerbell suddenly grows to human size and her house explodes around her as she embraces her true feelings for Peter Pan, confessing her undying and eternal pixie love for him.

Actually, that moment was a little bit weird. Creepy, even, somehow. But that’s off the topic. She unleashes a blast of magic she didn’t know she had, and with a demure little gasp of surprise, she yelps, “I did it!” Just as much in shock as Peter.

Well, that’s me right now.

Because I did it.

I bound up the sprained ankle I mentioned in my last post — you know, the one where I stepped in a literary pothole — and heaved myself bodily across the finish line. And that’s it. It’s over.

Well, not over over. But the first edit is over. Like really, legitimately, no-more-bullsharknado over. The only thing left now is one final pass for formatting, and then I can put the last nail in the coffin and decide who I’m going to burden with the first reading of this coalesced glob of proto-babble I’m tentatively calling a book. And for that step, I’m allowing myself no more than a week. One week — seven days — and then it’s time to figure out who I trust enough to tear my crazily crafted tapestry to shreds.

But here’s a dirty secret. I didn’t want to be finished. No, that’s not right. I was dying to be finished. No…

Truth be told, I was 50-50 split on whether I wanted to be finished with the whole thing or whether I was going to undertake another massive rewrite. It would have been easy to take the rewrite and stretch the process out for another month or more. So easy. I could still do it, in fact.

The fact is, I just slapped a band-aid on the problem of the disappearing character. She had disappeared without a trace, and I just wrote a magical exit from the narrative for her. (There’s magic in my story; I can totally do that.) Solving the problem she presented for me consisted of writing a single paragraph and changing a few sentences in the chapter at hand. That’s all.

But while I was writing the easy fix, a bigger fix crept into my head. A divergent fork in the road. The road overgrown with weeds and bramble and teeming with dark critters and glowing eyes floating in the mist. And this time… this time… I decided to let the harder road be.

You can bet dollars to doughnuts, though, that I wrote down the idea for the rewrite in case I need it later.

So, that’s that. The first edit is concluded. Or so nearly concluded as makes no difference. Concluded in every practical sense. Pat it on the head, send it on its way.

So what does that mean? It means it’s time to stop thinking of this novel as a pet project and get serious about the business of turning it into an actual book that you, reading this, can actually hold in your actual hands. Or, you know, into a collection of ones and zeroes that your handheld computer can belch up at you without the need for all that clumsy processed tree getting in the way. Either way.

And then…

And then, I guess, it’ll be time to don the greasy garb of the pit fighter to begin once again the dirty work of drafting something new. Because momentum matters, and just because the first edit is done is no reason to consider the work finished.

I was reading some notes by Stephen King about how he prepares to work on a story, and he wrote rather anti-eloquently that he gets the idea in mind and then just goes about his life until the muse — and I’m paraphrasing here, but the operative words are definitely his — shits on his head. Maybe I should start carrying a roll of toilet paper around in my man-satchel.

You know, just in case.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.

Broken Ankle at the Finish

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I know, okay? I get it.

It’s become too much of a motif around here, this procrastination, this failure to complete, this inability to batten the last hatches. If writing my novel has been a marathon, I’ve snapped an ankle in the last mile. Or maybe sprained it. Or maybe I just tripped and fell and I’m only really really tired, and every scratch feels like a gash, and every shallow breath is a gasp. But that’s no excuse for not slogging myself across the line.

There isn’t much left to do. There really isn’t. I can only belabor the point so much. I can only pretend for so long that I’m stuck on an issue — this character isn’t working out so well, or that plot turn doesn’t feel quite right — before the truth bubbles to the surface like an eyeball in your soup: that I’m not stuck on an issue within the novel, I’m stuck on finishing the novel.

Because that’s all there is. This first edit has drawn on like an endless summer, and I’m bogged down just a mile from the finish line. The car’s blown a tire and there’s no phone service, and even stepping foot out into the sun has me sweat-soaked and exhausted. The prospect of knuckling up and walking it out to the finish has me dreaming of shade trees and ice-cold lemonade.

The last issue is this one character. I don’t know what to do with her, and I could conceivably go back and write her into a few more scenes or write her out of the novel completely… it honestly makes no difference to me at this point. I’m almost ready to hand the manuscript off to some beta readers (a term that never made sense to me… I mean, I guess I’d be the alpha reader, but does that really make sense? Anyway…) and just let them tell me what to do with her, but then I know it’s probably not a professional move to hand off a work with glaring, unresolved issues and expect other people to fix them for me.

But even more than I’m frustrated at my block about finishing this thing, I’m even more frustrated at the prospect of not finishing it. I didn’t come this far; I didn’t write 90,000 words and then re-write about a third of them; to give up now. I can smell the blistered pork of the hot dogs, taste the swirled sticky sugar of the cotton candy. (What? It’s totally gonna be a carnival when I finish.)  No, I’m going to finish this damn novel if I have to crawl across the line dragging two dead, broken legs behind me.

And sooner rather than later. Because I’m a little bit burned on it.

Not that that’s not glaringly obvious or anything.

*Removes cobweb from eyebrow*

WordSpawn

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It’s a little-known perk of writing that writers get to do something truly remarkable. I’m not talking about the godlike power to create empires of the mind, to breathe life into characters and to spawn images in the minds of our readers. Nor am I talking about the Herculean ability to overcome the blank, intimidating expanse of the blank page. I’m talking about a quieter power, but a greater one.

Writers get to invent words.

This is a subtle power, one that can’t and shouldn’t be waggled around like a magic wand in a seven-book epic about teenage wizards (if ever there were a metaphor). It’s a power that should be practiced with care, delicacy, and great reservation. It’s the power to change the way people think and communicate, if you use it right.

Imagine where we’d be without words like “schadenfreude?” (The Germans are really good at this.) “Kerfuffle?” “Google?” Seriously, imagine your life without Google and try to tell me that the power to create words isn’t incredible and earth-shattering.

Sure, English is chock-full of words already. Good ones, too. Great ones, even. Still, there are those times when you’re casting about for just the right word, one that perfectly encapsulates the thing you’re talking about, one that leaves no room for confusion, one that immediately creates meaning in the mind of your reader, even if they’ve never heard that word before. And the problem is, as broad and expansive as the language is, we just don’t have words for every situation. ‘Twere impossible to have a word for every situation locked and loaded in our memory at any time. Sometimes you just have to make one up.

I do this all the time, and most of the words suck. They’re good for one use only, and once used, they disappear down the gullet of memory and are never seen again. Once in a while, though, you hit on a winner: a word that’s useful, memorable, and catchy enough to merit use by others. Because communication is a two-way street… it’s no good making up an entire lexicon of new words here in my lair if nobody else sees fit to use the words, too.

But today, a breakthrough. A word that might — might — catch on.

I didn’t even make it on purpose. I was just trying to alliterate, and I accidentally created a word that’s already resonated with two readers here in my sphere. Maybe it’s resonating with you, too, and you don’t even know it.

A thing I do a lot here at the blarg is ramble. I have a way of overstating and overthinking things, and I end up going on at length… possibly longer than is necessary. I own that. It’s a fault, but it’s fun for me, and this is my sandbox. I also love to complain, again, probably more than is necessary or healthy. And what do you get when you combine the two? A rant? Sometimes, but not always. I don’t usually rise to the level of anger characterized by a rant. A gripe? Well, a gripe is quick and small-scale. No, when I complain at length it’s like those rumbles in your stomach leading up to a really unpleasant excursion in the restroom. They go on forever and leave you feeling cranky as your innards get all twisted up in knots. The only remedy is getting it out of your system. A grumbling ramble. A “gramble.”

I recognize that this word sort of describes the thing that maybe your grandfather might do about the state of his retirement checks, or that your cranky English teacher might do about the work ethic of his young, irreverent students. As such, it’s not a particularly glamorous addition to a lexicon. But it’s a good one nonetheless, because sometimes you just need to bitch and moan about this one thing specifically, perhaps well beyond the point where the average listener feels sympathetic to you. You need to gramble.

So it’s time to start a movement. You read a blog entry from some guy going on and on about how long he had to wait in line for his driver’s license? Call him out for his gramble. You need to spout off about your boss’s idiotic cornflower blue tie and how ridiculous it makes him look? Fire up the gramble. Kids kept you awake all night and it’s all you can think about or talk about at work the next day? Ask your co-workers to pardon your gramble.

You know this is a word you need in your life. You know you’re dying to use it. Do it. Embrace the dark side, and embrace the raw creative power of language. It’s time to make this a thing. Go get your gramble on.

#gramble

Some Stories You Should Read, 2nd Ed.

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Over the past month, I’ve been taking part in a round-robin writing challenge over at TerribleMinds. Week 1, we all started open-ended stories, and every week thereafter, each participant was tasked with continuing a different story.

I’m happy to say that most of the stories I had my hands on managed to complete an entire story arc, and saw finished versions. It’s a funny thing… as the weeks went on, there were fewer and fewer participants, and a lot of the stories just kind of trailed off into the void.

I’ve done my best to track down all of them, and when possible, to provide links to the websites of the other authors whose hands touched these stories. It’s been an enlightening experience.

1: Cold Blood. Contributing authors: Catastrophe Jones, Helen Espinosa, Lauren Greene.

2: Bart Luther, Freelance Exorcist. Contributing authors: Josh Loomis, Paul Willett, Henry White.

3: Wasteland. (Unfinished as of now, sadly. My chapter was the last.) Contributing authors: WildBilbo, Angela Cavanaugh.

4: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. Contributing authors: Peter MacDonald, J M Beal, Liz Askew.

In short, if you’re on this site reading my fiction, you owe it to yourself to check out some of the links posted above. There’s something of a common thread binding all of us together, and this writing exercise has made those threads a little more visible.

Thanks to everybody who picked up pieces that I worked on, and for laying the groundwork for the stories I continued. This was a lot of fun!

Get Up and Go (A Gramble About Gumption)

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By the way, “Gramble” is just a word I made up. I wanted to keep alliterating with “G”s so I stuck one on the front of “ramble”. Don’t be afraid of my Frankenstein’s monster of a word. Its literary thirst for blood can only be satiated with ink.

Anyway. Gumption. Where does it go?

Some days the gumption is there; it burns away in your belly, it secretes its smoky certainty through your pores and fills you to the tippy top with vigor and optimism. Other days, the fire goes out, and all that’s left is the ashy residue of a bonfire, some empty beer bottles, and a few condom wrappers from where all the cool couples disappeared into the woods.

“Gumption” itself is one of those outdated words that you don’t hear much anymore, but there’s no word quite like it. We’ve got the newfangled Play-Doh lump of a word, “sticktoitiveness”, which is not so much a word as a philosophy. There’s “tenacity”, which has something to do with gumption, but isn’t the same thing. Then you can go and get all negatively-connotated and toss out “stubborn”, which, again, rubs up against gumption but doesn’t take the prize turkey home.

“Gumption” is homey and colloquial and down-to-earth. It’s a don’t-give-up mentality that somehow runs the gamut between boundless optimism and pigheaded refusal to back down. It’s a quiet, determined certainty that with hard work, anything can be achieved.

Maybe it’s one of those things that’s impossible to define, but you know it when you see it.

Gumption is a concept that has resonated with me since I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I first read it in my senior year of high school, then again in my sophomore year at college, then again in my fourth year of college, then again shortly after graduating college, then again after I graduated college again, and it’s recently been in my brain that maybe I ought to read it again. It’s a fascinating little book that’s not actually very much about Zen or motorcycle maintenance, but rather about the world at large and how you choose to view it. If you’re philosophically inclined at all, you’ll probably get some mileage out of it. One of its defining moments for me is a scene wherein the protagonist fixes his buddy’s misfiring motorcycle with an old beer can. The protagonist is pleased with his ingenuity; the buddy is flustered and ultimately unable to live with the notion that a piece of trash could fix everything that’s wrong with his bike. He’s too caught up in the idea of what the bike should look like and what fixing it should entail to realize that the chemically-treated, rust-proof surface on the inside of the can provides all the fixing his bike could ever want at a fraction of the cost and time needed for a “proper” fix.

Anyway, I love the idea of gumption — that inevitable, inescapable quality within the self that just knows how to buckle down and get sharknado done — but I’m faced with a terrible truth lately. Mine is gone.

Like, a few months ago, I had it. I knew right where it was. In the left lobe of my brain, next to the wrenches and the repository of dangling participles. But now it’s gone. Misplaced? Stolen? Dried up?

I’m reminded of an Aerosmith lyric: “My get-up-and-go must have got up and went.”

Seriously. I’m behind on the novel. I wanted to finish the first edit by the end of January, and now it’s trailing off into March and I’m always “just a few weeks away.” I’m behind on grading papers at work and have been since… well… January. Even my posts on the blarg have been fewer and farther between since… ahem… January.

What happened in January?

I have no idea, but whatever it was ran my gumption right out of town. But, see, that doesn’t make sense. Because gumption is a part of who you are. Right? It can no more leave you than your wits, or your good looks, or… maybe these are bad examples.

The point is, my gumption is missing lately. If you’ve seen it, please tell it I would very much appreciate it if it would return home. I have a lot of work to get done. And a lot of get-ups that need to get going.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.