R.K. MacPherson's Blog, page 12
February 11, 2012
The Best Laid Plans
I'm celebrating the end of this week. It didn't thrill me on personal nor professional levels. I went through three computers (!!!) and took a major hit to my productivity. The current computer is working, but isn't up to my usual standards. It either adds or ignores spaces and it's starting to piss me off. I miss my Mac.
However, I returned to my current work in progress after ignoring it since December. Got 8,000 words written this week, including the much-dreaded sex scene. The current...
January 23, 2012
To Kill or Not to Kill…
Whether tis nobler to put up with the slings and arrows of long-term fictional relationships or take up arms against them and kill them off in dramatic, inventive ways…yeah, that's the question. For me, at least. Shakespeare didn't have that problem. He killed everybody. Hamlet reads like Reservoir Dogs with more wit and Romeo and Juliet would get a hard R-rating if they filmed it as it was written.
I'm not Shakespeare, thankfully. For one thing, he's dead and I still have a lot of exploring l...
December 24, 2011
Geld, Money, Moolah….
However you call it, I got my first royalties this morning.
It's absurd just how awesome this feels. The first step in a long plan comes together and I can see the actual results. I don't think I'd have been any less happy if it'd been a single dollar–it's the beginning.
I'm grateful to everyone who purchased Antigone's Fall (And would like to point out that Kindle delivers on Christmas Day, so if you're looking for an inexpensive last-minute gift…). I've gotten great feedback from it and...
December 19, 2011
Enriched and Refined
My mother assumes that I spend most of my day, sitting upright in my chair, fingers poised over the home row, eyelids fluttering as I line up the perfect words for a killer sentence. It's her view of what writers do and I largely blame the clip at the end of many Stephen J. Cannell shows where he's intently typing and rips the final page out with a flourish. The reality is much different. For one thing, I slouch like a planking squid…
For another, no writer can wait for the perfect words, or r...
December 13, 2011
A Wordy Shell Game
Since I've transitioned from "aspiring writer" to "working writer," I've noticed that I no longer take YEARS to write things. I can't. For one thing, my boss likes to think of himself as a nice guy–until the deadline goes whizzing by, at which point he transmogrifies into a balrog who took a level in badass. So, I rarely have months or weeks to ruminate on a story or assignment. He loves Mamet and is particularly fond of Alec Baldwin's cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross. "ABC!" He'll shout...
December 5, 2011
The Theory of Relativity
My stepfather finished Antigone's Fall this weekend. He gave it five stars, but didn't like the ending. Apparently realism and consequences don't make good fiction for this man, but I'm still delighted he read it in the first place (And I encourage everyone else to do the same! #ShamelessSelfPromotion). He is, however, sold on the idea of e-readers. He bought the cheapie Kindle and likes it, so but he can't use computers so he asked for my help in getting another book.
"Why are they all so...
December 1, 2011
Numquam cerrises!
December is here, which means NaNoWriMo ended yesterday. Thousands of people reached the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. That's a remarkable feat but it's intended to help establish regular, daily writing patterns in one's life. Fifty thousand words is a good start to a novel–but it's only a start.
"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit." -Richard Bach
Whether this is your first novel or not, whether you hit the NaNoWriMo deadline or not, I'd encourage everyone to keep going...
November 28, 2011
Stars, Reviews, and Words
More and more, online shopping reminds me of bee decision-making processes. Bees doing things collectively. When a certain threshold is reached, the whole colony moves in a new direction. As someone learning and plying the digital marketplace, I see a lot of parallels. It's not enough to judge a book by its cover, or even its sample download–people want to know that other readers didn't think something was an utter waste of time and kilobytes.
November 24, 2011
VT Day
In the US, today is Thanksgiving. Anthropologists (or possibly xenoarchaeologists who visit our planet) in the future will look upon this day as a celebration of our victory against the evil turkeys of the world. What else could it be? A coordinated strike against our most hated enemies. We have hydrogen bombs, sonic and laser weaponry, huge tanks–and none of that dissuaded the evil turkeys from going forth to spread terror and feathers. They had to be stopped!
He'll cut a bitch.
Turkeys are...
November 21, 2011
Gauging and Disengaging
Work on my NaNoWriMo novel is going well. Just over 61,000 words thus far and I can't help shake the fact that I know it needs bolstering. It needs atmosphere and details, but this is the first draft. As my friend Dave is fond of saying, "ABC: Always be typing—we don't have time to get things right!" And that's true. I'm trying to get this book finished (initial draft) before the end of the month. Will it happen? I'm not sure. Will it happen before the end of the year? Probably.
As I look...
