Jonathan Dyer's Blog: The Nick Temple Files, page 5

Analysis in a Work of Nonfiction

An Unexpected and Positive Aspect of Writing Nonfiction

 

Skyline at Mauna Kea

I’ve commented here before on some of the surprises and differences I’ve encountered by moving from years of writing fiction to writing a biography. My latest epiphany has to do with the analytical segments of that biography. Usually, the challenge in putting the biography together has involved taking the hoard of sources and research I’ve assembled and weaving a coherent narrative from all of those materials together...

Writing and the Immediate Benefits of Exercise

Opening the Floodgate on a TreadmillAnaehoomalu Bay, South Kohala, Hawaii

I imagine there is some physiological or psychological explanation for what I have experienced several times now. Or maybe the explanation is a combination of the two. I’m neither a doctor nor a psychologist, so I can’t offer any expert opinion, but as an experienced practitioner I can say the following: physical exertion enhances creative thinking by merging ideas with organization, at least it does in my case.

Some week...

Overcoming Content Issues in a Nonfiction Draft

First Draft of Chapter 3 Despite Technical and Content IssuesWaimea Canyon, Kauai

After a loss of about 7,000 words due to a hard drive crash, and some brutal editing to take out what doesn’t advance the narrative of my bio’s subject, I’ve got a draft of Chapter 3. August turned out to be a challenging month, but I’ve ended up with 28,500+ words and 30% of the bio drafted. Good, steady progress.

In addition to the technical issues I described in my last post, I keep running into research issues...

Hemingway’s Digital Suitcase

Not Enough Backup Means Too Much RewriteKauai’s Wailua Bay at Dawn

I’ve been backing up the biography I’m working on by saving my document as a PDF every time I finish the day writing on MSWord. I had a few problems not being able to open smaller Word files due to unreadable content, so I thought I should start the PDF backup routine. If the Word file of my manuscript were to become unreadable, at least I’d have the PDF from which I could reproduce it. It would be a pain in the ass to retype it...

Passed 25k Words in my Biography WIP

A Good Milestone for my First Work of NonfictionMaui from the Lahaina Roads

I just passed 25,000 words in the biography I’ve been writing. By my reckoning I’m now more than 25% through my first draft. That’s good progress particularly considering that I hadn’t written a word as of May 10th of this year. My trip to Mauna Kea on the Big Island seems to have jarred things loose. Before that trip, it was all research. Now, writing is a much larger percentage of my daily efforts than research, altho...

Chapter 3 of 10 is Taking Shape

Ahead of Schedule in my WIP BiographyContemplating Molokai from DT Fleming on Maui

This morning I completed one section of three in Chapter Three of the biography I’m writing.  The first draft of that section comes in at just under 3,700 words. I’m shooting for 10,000 words in the chapter, so the section is about the right size. Undoubtedly I’ll cut it down as I edit, but for now it’s a good start. Additionally, I’ve scheduled August for drafting the chapter. Being this far along on only the fo...

Biography Progress Report

Moving Forward with a Biography in ProgressWhere the Pacific Ocean meets the Pololu Valley on the Big Island

I started drafting Chapter Three of the biography I’m writing. My modest goal is to average 350 words per day until a draft is done. The chapter, like the other nine in the book, will come in at right around 10,000 words, so it should take about a month to draft. I’ve done enough research to write the bulk of it, but I’ve found that additional points occur to me that will need to be rese...

My First Work of Commercial Nonfiction

My First Work of Commercial NonfictionWriting poolside at a villa in Mauna Kea

For the past several months I’ve been working on my first piece of commercial, as opposed to academic, nonfiction. It’s a biography about a central character in the “based on actual events” streaming series my writing partner and I are developing. The idea is to market them together with the expectation that success of one could lead to success of both. Since the WGA went on strike, the streaming series has been on h...

Two More Free Ebooks for the New Year!

A Collection of Short Stories and the First Nick Temple File

Continuing with the spirit of “Readers over Royalties,” I’ve made the Kindle version of two of my books available for free for the next five days! My recently released collection of short stories, A String of Beads, and the first of six Nick Temple Files, Switchback, can be downloaded for free through the first of the year. So, have at it!

 

 

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A Nick Temple Christmas

Reupping “A Nick Temple Christmas”Original Nick Temple File from Field Station Berlin

The Christmas season is upon us, so it’s time to once again post an original bit of Nick Temple I composed while stationed in Berlin during the early 1980s. I wrote this bit while working in subsystem Echo at the Field Station’s intercept site on Teufelsberg. It’s one of about a dozen similar snippets that constitute the origin of the Nick Temple character.

To the left is a jpeg of A Nick Temple Christmas. I h...