Jared Millet's Blog, page 11

Apparently, Writing is like Dieting

As in, once you fall off the wagon, it's hard as hell to climb back on.
It's been a long dry spell since the end of NanoWrimo, broken only by a one-night flurry of writing that produced the first draft of "Fire," the story I'm going to read at the next Hoover Library Flash Fiction Night.
Excuse #1: My day job has become a joyless, draining, soul-sucking slog.So What #1: Tolkien worked on his Book of Lost Tales in the Allied trenches while fighting in WWI. Man up, Jared!
Excuse #2: Sitting on my writing to-do list are the N∞th rewrites of "The Orbit of Mercury" and The Blood Prayer, both of which make my eyes bleed when I look at them.So What #2: Get a wet wipe. The Work Must Be Done!
So here's the plan: I think I need to work on something new, so something new it is. I've been holding on to the characters from my aborted 2009 Nano in case a story came along that I could throw them into. Well, one has. I'm not sure where it's going, and I'm not sure how it's going to end. I've never done seat-of-the-pants writing before, but this time I'm just going to wing this bastard and see how it comes out.
The ingredients: Space travel documentarians. An impending supernova. An order of monks who won't evacuate. A liquid life form. Stalagmites of "glass coral." Rivers that run upstream. Shooting the rapids uphill by means of magnetic induction. 1,000 words per day. Death before dishonor.
Here we go.

No time to blog, Dr. Jones

I meant to stop by earlier for the post-Nano wrap up, but life has been a tornado for the last couple of weeks. The universe kept getting in the way of my writing this month, but by the Power of Grayskull and sheer bloody-mindedness, I was able to hammer through to the end. For the last week or more, I was clocking a good 2,200 - 2,500 words per day, and I still barely made the finish for a final tally of 50,211 individual words of prose.
So am I done? Not on the life of your mother.
I haven't had a chance to work on it at all for the last few days - that adventure resumes tomorrow. When it does, however, I'm still looking down the barrel of at least 80K to go before the first draft of this puppy is put to bed. Then, off to write some other things and back later next year for Draft 2.
The big question to ponder here is: does Nano still work for me? I'd have to say yes. I've done more actual writing this last month in in the rest of the preceding year combined, despite my delusional New Year resolution of "one story per month." That delusion might return next year; we'll have to see. Up on deck after the current novel is done: go back and finish "The Century War," keep my other unsold stories in circulation, do draft #9 of The Blood Prayer, and get that puppy out to market. Speaking of markets...

2010 Local Author Expo
Yesterday I attended my first ever Author Event! The Local Author Expo is an event put on by the Friends of the Birmingham Public Library to give all of our self-published and indie-press writers a place to get their books out in front of the public, at least for the day. The fact that it was the same day as the SEC Championship didn't deter anyone; this was our biggest year yet, despite the fact that we had to cut the program down from two days to only one. And, most importantly of all, I actually sold books! A big thanks to everyone who attended, especially those who shopped at my booth.

And we're off!

National Novel Writing Month begins in less than two hours for those of us on Central Daylight Time. I'm telling you now, because there won't be much time for blogging in the next thirty days, at least until I'm comfortably ahead on my word count. I've added a nifty Word Count Widget to my blog so that if I fail to maintain my daily word count goal, my shame will be broadcast across the intertubes... and no one will notice.

I've been Snowflaking as usual, and this year I've got further in the process than ever before. Good thing, too, because this book is going to be one complicated bugger and I need to stay as organized as possible. Right now I've got full character summaries for six principal characters, a five-page detailed synopsis of the plot, and a chapter-by-chapter breakdown that tells me what to write every day.

My outline has an even 50 chapters, which has to be a good sign. If you guess 2000 words per chapter, then I've got about a 100K book here, or about twice what's required for a Nano win. I imagine I'll actually get done around New Year's.

So wish me luck. If you want to pray for me, I'd suggest you pray to Crom, but he doesn't listen.

A week to go...

until National Novel Writing Month. This will be Year Four for me, and the third in which I head back to the world of Majadan. You can find me here on the NaNoWriMo site masquerading as a 16th Century Danish astronomer. The working title of this year's book is The Wolves of Majadan, but I suspect that should I ever market it to a publisher, I'll probably call it The Ghost Cauldron.

Meanwhile, "The Century War" is stuck like a duck. (No celebratory pizza for me, dammit.) I did quite a bit more work on it since my last post, but the whole thing has stalled out. It's not writer's block - I know where I mean for the story to go, but I don't feel that what I've written so far can support my ending. I've been reading Writing Fiction for Dummies by the great Randy Ingermanson, and it's really helping me analyze exactly why my story is flawed. I know you're supposed to do a first draft, then rewrite, but I think I've got to rework everything that's come so far before I can push through to the end, and with November and the final assault on the Ghost Lords looming on the horizon, I just haven't got the time.

I'll come back after burning Majadan to the ground and finish the "War." I still have confidence in the underlying story; I just need to approach it better. Besides, I'll need something to do in the break between drafts 1 and 2 of Wolves.

Now: back to outlining my novel and plotting the murder of one of my characters.

Deadline: Did I make it?

Nope. Not even close.

To be fair, my current story is turning out to be over twice as long as any of my previous shorts. If it were only as long as "Dead Man's Hand" or "Rougarou" I would have been done for days. (Current word count: 8,263) Since this critter is turning out to be a novella, I'm still not there yet.

So will I renege on my deal with myself? Nope. I knew this was a longer piece going into it, and if I had been working at the pace that I manage during NanoWrimo, I would have been done with it anyway.

(Of course, the argument could be made that writing a novel is like driving on the interstate, and writing a short story is like driving through an urban area on surface streets.)

So: here's the deal. I told myself I would give up soft drinks for a week. This, I will do. However, I want to be able to finish this story and it might be a little difficult to write through a caffeine withdrawal headache, I will allow myself one (1) Diet Coke (which I hate) a day, but I must write at least 1000 words on any day that I do so.

Here we go.

Self-Imposed Deadline

Stalled out on The Blood Prayer for the moment, and it's been too long since I created something new. Therefore, since I apparently can't work without a deadline, I'm going to dive into the oil rig story that's been bubbling in my subconscious since early March. It's called The Century War, and I've got a preliminary scene list worked out and some leftover bits from my first (aborted) stab at it from before the summer.

Randy Ingermanson suggests that when setting measurable mileposts for y...

Dragon*Con Wrap Up

Well, it's been a week and at last I can move again without a caffeine I.V. Time for some pics!





Thursday, about 9:00 p.m. This is the badge pickup line that greeted me once I got into the Sheraton after waiting for three hours outside.





Allan Gilbreath, me, and Kimberly Richardson, editor of Dreams of Steam , Saturday afternoon at the Kerlak Publishing booth in the Exhibitor's Hall.





My sensei Ann Crispin and I, Sunday night, at the Pacific Rim Bistro on Peachtree Center Ave.





I spent the rest of t...

Dragon*Con: Post Two

Okay, where was I?

Saturday A.C. Crispin's Master Class for Novelists! Met with all the students to go over issues we had in common: pacing, foreshadowing vs. predictability, the importance of query letters. Will meet one-on-one later for a personal novel critique.

Stood in line next to an Ozzy Osbourne lookalike for the DragonCon After Dark costume contest - a lot of waiting for too short a show. Saw Stan Lee walking by. Stayed up for a midnight screening of Zombieland , possibly the cutest...

Dragon*Con: Post One

Thursday A.C. Crispin's Basic Writing Workshop, bright and early. Lots of good information, starting from the basics (just like it says on the tin). Characterization. Plot. Show-don't-tell. Story Logic. Setting and description. Point of view. Lots of handouts, lots to share with my writers group in Hoover. Bunch of websites to check out, such as the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), Caveat Scriptor, and (of course) Absolute Write. Looking forward to tomorrow. Strangely compelled to ...

Tick-tock, tick-tock

A week from today, I'll be at Dragon*Con for the first time in three years, and my head's about to explode from the waiting. I'll be attending A.C. Crispin's writing workshop, which looks like it's going to be a blast. In the interim, I really ought to be working on the rewrite of The Blood Prayer.

Problem is, I can't stand to look at the thing. Therefore, I'm blogging instead.

I know, I know. I'll get back to it tonight, I swear. I really, really want it to be over and done with, so I can...