C.K. Combs's Blog, page 5

This Week in Novel Writing

I worked on my novel 5 of 7 days this last week. Time-wise, most of my work was editing of the first draft written in November. In terms of impact, yesterday’s work was the homerun. When I wrote during NaNoWriMo, it was fast and furious and often a decision I’d made days or weeks prior didn’t support what I wanted to do on a given day. I knew when it came time to edit and revision my chapters into Draft 2, I’d have to reconcile those differences. Yesterday, while working on a major reveal in Cha...

Week 8 of Draft 2 Work

I realize it would be good to come up with a real title for my work-in-progress. For now, I’m calling it Life is Like an Amusement Park, though I don’t think that truly fits what’s happening in the story. So The Haunted Amusement Park? The Mystery of the Haunted Amusement Park? Sounds very Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys, doesn’t it? Or maybe something from Scooby Doo… will the culprit turn out to be a white man in a disguise????? “I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for these darned kids!...

Facing Fear

Brené Brown ends her Unlocking Us podcast with a rapid fire set of questions for her guest. One of these is, to paraphrase, ‘When you are full of fear, about doing something, what do you do?‘

Tell me if this situation sounds familiar, at least from pre-COVID times. You’re somewhere in a group. Maybe it’s a social group with friends and acquaintances and people you just met. Maybe it’s a gathering of people you work with. Could be a family group situation. You’re feeling good, maybe you’ve g...

Books of 2020

Last year I read 33 books. This is well shy of my goal of 50, though I am pleased with the quality of what I read. I’ll share my list and some of my impressions. I’d love to hear what your favorite reads of 2020 were.

Sandman Vol. 8, Neil Gaiman, et al.On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean VuongSandman Vol. 9, Neil Gaiman, et al.Aftermath: Empire’s End, Chuck WendigOnce Were Warriors, Alan DuffStorm of Locusts, Rebecca RoanhorseA Common Pornography, Kevin SampsellAgorafabulous, Sara Beninca...

Novel update and more

I am in the midst of the second draft of the novel I created during NaNoWriMo. My goal is a chapter a week. I started during the first week of January and I’m got three chapters into second draft, so it’s going well. It feels like a good pace, a pace I can sustain. The only downside is that I have about 24 chapters and at 4 a month, that’s a 6 month process. Not terrible, though I’d like to move a little faster. We’ll see how it goes.

My definition of ‘second draft’ is a version of the stor...

Life After Plague, Thoughts on The Stand

I’m watching The Stand on CBS. I read the book way back in my early adulthood. I also watched the 1994 TV series. The story made an indelible impression on me. The haunting and revolting image of 99% of the population dead, unattended and rotting. The idea of a world almost empty of people (plus some domesticated animals). The prospect of losing everyone you love and know. The intriguing idea of starting over, being an architect of a new society.

So how would I have done if I’d been a surviv...

Book Recommendation: Cassandra Speaks

I found out about Elizabeth Lesser’s book Cassandra Speaks through Brene’ Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast. The book intrigued me because it promised to speak to the parts of the human story – history – that have been silenced, suppressed or unasked for. The subtitle is ‘When women are the storytellers, the human story changes’. I still remember the shock of realizing the history we were taught in school (and continue to be taught) is not the whole story. I know, seems obvious now, but I did...

NaNoWriMo2020 progress report – Day 17

This is day 17 and the minimum target for today is 28,339 words. My word count today is 35,198. At this rate, I’ll hit 50k on November 24th, 6 days ahead of schedule.

The key this year has been the pre-planning. I’ve always been a pantser for this event and now I can understand why I often floundered in the long middle of the month – I didn’t know where the story was going. This year I know where I’m going AND I’m open to new ideas and twists I discover along the way. Today I wrote a scen...

NaNoWriMo2020 Status Report – Day 8.

Along with thousands of other wrimos, I’ve completed 8 days of novel writing as part of National Novel Writing Month, popularly known as NaNoWriMo. At the close of my writing session today, I was at 15,490 total words; keeping at a pace of 1700+ per day with some 2k days sprinkled in. To reach the goal of 50K words during the month of November, we have to hit a daily average of 1667 words. So far, my lowest total was on election night, which is not surprising. That was a stressful night and...

NaNoWriMo2020 – Choices

NaNoWriMo2020 is now just days away. I started last week with a lot of options for which story take on during my month-long quest for 50K words.

One idea was to expand on the story of Merton, the 4 year old who murdered his nanny to open a portal to another dimension and is actually an alien assassin.

Another possibility was to expand on a story about an old guy who survives the end of civilization as we know it.

Still another is the story of Clive, the trans guy who loses his job and...