Chris Delyani's Blog, page 7

Life and Death in Public Places

This next-to-last blog post on the tour talks about how the final scene of "The Sopranos" inspired a similar important scene in You Are Here. Unlike "The Sopranos," my own scene has a definite ending.

https://therevolvingbookshelf.com/201...

A Writer in Acting Class

The best creative writing class I ever took was a beginner's acting class at Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, Calif. Click the link below to read about my adventures as a thespian.

http://theliterarynook.blogspot.com/2...

I've also given two different interviews as part of my blog tour. Click the links below to read about my favorite authors, living and dead, and also how I react to criticism.

https://niume.com/pages/post/?postID=... (requires a login)

http://thewriterslife.blogspot.com/20...

Thanks!

Chris

Gay Marriage and Global Warming

For today's blog I reflect on two issues that were very much on my mind when I wrote You Are Here, gay marriage and global warming. It looks like both are here to stay.

http://www.imshelfish.com/2016/08/gay...

Mansfield Park

Howdy all,

A couple of new posts from my blog tour. Click below to read an interview in which I talk about my writing process:

http://indiebooksontour.com/book/you-...

And here is a short essay in which I write about my favorite Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park, and how it inspired me to become a novelist:

https://thedarkphantom.wordpress.com/...

I would love to hear what you think!

Chris

Can You Write a Novel in 90 Days? You Can Bet on It

Click the link to read about how I wrote the first draft of my third novel, "Best Man," in 90 days. To keep myself on track I made a public bet on the StickK.com website that I would finish the draft or donate $100 to an anti-gay marriage charity. I won the bet.

Right now I'm working on a new project. This time I made a bet I could write a draft before Sept. 15 or donate $100 to the National Rifle Association. Right now, I'm on track to finish the draft by Sunday -- a whole month early.

http://readbetweentheink.blogspot.com...

Enjoy!

Chris

Loving The Dove

Hi all,

Due to a mixup in blog posts last week, the dinosaur blog is on a new website. The Book Refuge website is now running my blog on Larry McMurtry's epic novel Lonesome Dove, one of my favorite books of all time and how it influenced my own writing. You can read about it here:

http://thebookrefuge.blogspot.com/201...

Meanwhile, the dinosaur story has moved to a new website here:

https://thehypeandthehoopla.joomla.co...

I hope you enjoy them both.

Chris

What a Dinosaur Taught Me

I'm hosting a blog tour for most of the month of August. Click the link below to read my latest post, "What a Dinosaur Taught Me."

http://thebookrefuge.blogspot.com/201...

First Drafts and Food Porn #amwriting #MondayBlogs

Wearing my heart on my spoon for Thanksgiving.

I volunteered to serve Thanksgiving this year. It’s long been my favorite holiday—a simple day to relax and eat and feel thankful for whatever you want to be thankful for. The only stress of the day boils down to a simple but fun question. What to cook?

Luckily for me, the not-to-be-outdone staff at the New York Times launched an addictive new cooking app, just in time for the holidays. The app holds thousands of recipes covering what feels like every cuisine on earth, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, you name it. Thanksgiving is covered on the app as exhaustingly, maybe even as numbingly, as next year’s presidential election.

And no Internet recipe would be complete without a vividly glammed-up photo of the finished dish. Hunks of pancetta glistening among roasted Brussels sprouts. Ruby-red cranberry sauce dripping off the wooden spoon. A golden turkey resting on the cutting board, ready to submit to the knife. Forget about trolling the Calvin Klein underwear catalog. I’ve spent the past three weeks wallowing in the delectable muck of food porn.

Rummaging through the cooking app led me to thinking about where I am with my writing. With my latest manuscript more or less finished, I’m now in the process of letting go of characters I’d grown to know and love over the past three-plus years. A new story will have to fill the vacuum. But who will make up this new cast of characters? What form should this new novel take?

It soon struck me that the answer is as thrilling—and as terrifying—as trying to figure out what to put on the table at Thanksgiving. I may not know what I’m serving, but I have a general idea of the contours that meal will take. Same with any novel, which has to have characters—some nice, some not so nice—following a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The trouble is I could scroll through novel ideas forever. People, images, scenes, stories—all of these are roiling around my head, clamoring in my ear to be chosen. Some are as a fleeting as a chance face I’d see on the train. And since I know I can write anything at this point, I might end up writing nothing. This must be what all writers go through when they are between projects.

For the Thanksgiving project, at least, I knew I couldn’t page through recipes forever. As any good writer knows, nothing cures writer’s block better than an unforgiving deadline. The holiday loomed over me. The turkey was a given. Gravy too. And after sifting through the myriad recipes for stuffing, sweet potatoes, vegetables, pie—editing the menu, as it were—I eventually locked in my choices.

No such deadline looms over me for this fourth book. No guests knocking at the door at an appointed time. I can only go on faith that the noises in my head will quiet down long enough for me to catch the thread of a new story. And make the choice to follow that thread.

In the meantime I’ll bide my time, pare my nails, watch the Golden State Warriors on TV, and maybe even take a few moments to realize how lucky I am to have my health and my family and a roof over my head, and how lucky I am to share food this year with family and friends. And if there’s time left, I’ll catch a few minutes of food porn.

 

First Drafts and Food Porn #amwriting #MondayBlogs

Wearing my heart on my spoon for Thanksgiving.

I volunteered to serve Thanksgiving this year. It’s long been my favorite holiday—a simple day to relax and eat and feel thankful for whatever you want to be thankful for. The only stress of the day boils down to a simple but fun question. What to cook?

Luckily for me, the not-to-be-outdone staff at the New York Times launched an addictive new cooking app, just in time for the holidays. The app holds thousands of recipes covering what feels like every cuisine on earth, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, you name it. Thanksgiving is covered on the app as exhaustingly, maybe even as numbingly, as next year’s presidential election.

And no Internet recipe would be complete without a vividly glammed-up photo of the finished dish. Hunks of pancetta glistening among roasted Brussels sprouts. Ruby-red cranberry sauce dripping off the wooden spoon. A golden turkey resting on the cutting board, ready to submit to the knife. Forget about trolling the Calvin Klein underwear catalog. I’ve spent the past three weeks wallowing in the delectable muck of food porn.

Rummaging through the cooking app led me to thinking about where I am with my writing. With my latest manuscript more or less finished, I’m now in the process of letting go of characters I’d grown to know and love over the past three-plus years. A new story will have to fill the vacuum. But who will make up this new cast of characters? What form should this new novel take?

It soon struck me that the answer is as thrilling—and as terrifying—as trying to figure out what to put on the table at Thanksgiving. I may not know what I’m serving, but I have a general idea of the contours that meal will take. Same with any novel, which has to have characters—some nice, some not so nice—following a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The trouble is I could scroll through novel ideas forever. People, images, scenes, stories—all of these are roiling around my head, clamoring in my ear to be chosen. Some are as a fleeting as a chance face I’d see on the train. And since I know I can write anything at this point, I might end up writing nothing. This must be what all writers go through when they are between projects.

For the Thanksgiving project, at least, I knew I couldn’t page through recipes forever. As any good writer knows, nothing cures writer’s block better than an unforgiving deadline. The holiday loomed over me. The turkey was a given. Gravy too. And after sifting through the myriad recipes for stuffing, sweet potatoes, vegetables, pie—editing the menu, as it were—I eventually locked in my choices.

No such deadline looms over me for this fourth book. No guests knocking at the door at an appointed time. I can only go on faith that the noises in my head will quiet down long enough for me to catch the thread of a new story. And make the choice to follow that thread.

In the meantime I’ll bide my time, pare my nails, watch the Golden State Warriors on TV, and maybe even take a few moments to realize how lucky I am to have my health and my family and a roof over my head, and how lucky I am to share food this year with family and friends. And if there’s time left, I’ll catch a few minutes of food porn.

 

The post First Drafts and Food Porn #amwriting #MondayBlogs first appeared on Chris Delyani.

Out of the Shadows #amwriting #MondayBlogs

One of my notebooks for the new novel.

I’d previously posted that I intended to publish my third book by 2015. Well, here it is, November 2015, and no book is in sight. I regret to report that I won’t be publishing this year. But I promise, the new work is on the way.

A lot of this tardiness has to do with the story editor I’d hired to review my manuscript—or should I say, the editor who was gracious enough to take me on as her client. I had handed her what I’d thought was a decent manuscript in September 2014 after two and a half years of almost daily writing. I’d expected her comments on the characters, the plot, and the pacing would probably lead to three, maybe four months of revisions.That had been my experience with “You Are Here.”

Instead she had me pulling out and rewriting nearly everything I’d written, leaving little more than the characters and a bare-bones structure, and start from the ground up again. I’d learned that much of the inner life of my characters existed in my head, not on the page. Her comments had me working mornings, nights, and weekends, and even then it took me a whole year. Okay, so maybe my working relationship with the editor was considerably more cordial than the one from Billy Elliott, but still, the experience was much tougher than I’d bargained for.

 

The extra year was worth it. I’m much happier with the new version than the one I’d finished last year. I’ve skimmed through the manuscript I’d given the editor last September and am horrified that I’d ever thought it was near publication. My readers would likely have been horrified too.

But even now, I still can’t make any promises about when the new book will be out. For one thing, the manuscript still isn’t finished. It’s still being vetted for story and characters, and then it’ll go to a copy editor for grammar and fact-checking. That will take the project to the end of December. In January I’m going to take a stab at landing an agent and maybe having the manuscript published by an actual publisher. If that happens, I might not have a book out in 2016 as well. But sooner or later, one way or another, that book is going to see the light of day.

In the meantime I’m filling my hours writing blog posts—namely this one, and maybe a few more blog posts over the next few months. Then I need to catch up on my reading (right now it’s Nelson Algren’s “The Man With the Golden Arm” and William Godwin’s “Caleb Williams”), a daily diary, maybe a writing exercise or two. With my mind now (mostly free) of the characters I’ve been working on for the past four years, I’m now looking for a new hero, the man or woman I’ll fall in love with enough to inspire my fourth book. I know he—or she—is out there.