David R. Michael's Blog, page 26

Intimidating Myself

 
Back in January, I cranked out 30,000 words in 2 weeks–10 days, actually, since I didn't write on the weekends.
 
Which sounds great, but–
 
How did I do that? How do I do it again (for longer this time)?
 
Does it even make sense to intimidate yourself?
 
These are the Deep Questions I ponder as I look forward into June…
 
-David
 
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Not Exactly How I Planned It…My 2010 Writing GoalsSigils Update and Existential Artist Personality Bullsh*t

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, May 23, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


HoE2 plotting. Finished draft outline.







Tuesday


HoE2


2065




Wednesday








Thursday


HoE2


555




Friday








Saturday








Sunday


















Total



2620




YTD Total: 137058 (12942 words behind)
 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday


Created catalog pages on 4CL for BF&OS, NBSS, DC, and TWWT.




Tuesday





Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2011

 
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Well, Fine…

 
…I was going to be all "indie" today. That is, do what I want to do. Take the day, more or less, "off".
 
But it's Memorial Day weekend. There's nothing "indie" about being lazy on Memorial Day weekend.
 
Damn it! I was going to take the day off–the whole weekend off–*ANYWAY*. Really. I was. Because I'm *INDIE*. Not because someone was paying me to stay home from work.
 
You know what? Screw it. I'm going to WORK on Monday. While the universe of non-indies goes to the mall or grills burgers in their backyard. You watch me. See if I don't.
 
I'm an indie, damn it.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
-David
 
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And We're Off!

 
HoE2 is underway with a first day of just over 2000 words.
 
After only 97 new words last week–and 27000 words put on the shelf–I have some catching up to do.
 
If I can get HoE2 at least mostly done before Junebug arrives, I'll consider it a Good Thing.
 
-David
 
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Scenic Plotting

 
I'm still working on the outline for my next project. I'm almost done. I might even finish it today.
 
The project name is HoE2. You can say it as an acronym ("Aych-Oh-Eee-Too"), or pronounce it one of a couple different ways ("Hoe-Two", or "Hoes"). Your choice. The 2 is kind of a giveaway about it being a sequel or a companion novel or something like that. The HoE is also a kind of obvious acronym, I think. But then, I've read everything I've written… I will neither confirm nor deny anything. But, yeah, you're guess is probably right.
 
I took a somewhat more scenic (and organic) approach to building the story for HoE2. I started with the setting and the main character, both of which I was quite familiar with, then built the story from there. In the process I remembered a couple of action movies that I enjoyed and decided to borrow at least a few of their tropes. That got me to the point of a high-level story. 14-15 sentences that described the major movements of the story. From that list, I started creating a list of scenes. I'm letting the scenes morph the initial structure, so where I've ended up is not where I started.
Every pass through the story I get a bit closer to the end, and I see new details that I need to fill in. I'm hoping the next pass will get me to the end of the outline. Of course, the *real* "final pass" will be the actual writing. And, yes, the story will change in that pass too. I'm looking forward to that. It's kinda fun to compare where I thought I was going with where I ended up.
 
In some ways, my process with this outline feels very different from plotting other stories (like how I plotted GoSH1 or, especially, The Summoning Fire). But it's probably just another evolutionary step. A further mingling of both top-down and bottom-up approaches.
 
One part of this process that I've been focusing on is making my scenes/chapters have cliffhanger endings. Not always full-on cliffhangers, but a point of suspense. A hook to pull you into the next chapter. My first deliberate attempts at this are in GoSH1, mostly in the second half of the book. For HoE2 I decided to try for it with every chapter, beginning to end.
 
I'm curious how it will turn out.
 
Back to the story!
 
-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, May 16, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Sigils
Edited Gunwitch chapter 8, 9, 10.


97




Tuesday


GoSH2 brainstorming.
HoE2 brainstorming.
Edited Gunwitch chapter 11, 12.







Wednesday


Threads Reboot brainstorming.
Created NBSS 1.1 base ebook doc.
Created NBSS 1.1 ebook doc for KDP, PubIt, & Smashwords.
Edited Gunwitch chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 (edit complete).







Thursday


HoE2 brainstorming.
F25C1 brainstorming.







Friday


HoE2 plotting.







Saturday


HoE2 plotting.







Sunday


HoE2 plotting.

















Total



97




 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday


Announced BF&OS on blog, FB, 4CL.
Added "Effie Two-Five" and "Secondhand Coffin" to short story promo thread on KB, NB, and MR.




Tuesday





Wednesday


Uploaded NBSS 1.1 to KDP, PubIt, Smashwords.
Updated NBSS promo thread on KB, MR, & NB.
Sent Gunwitch to first readers.




Thursday





Friday


Updated Door Sky promo thread on KB, MR, & NB.
Created NBSS promo thread on B&R.




Saturday





Sunday


Signed up for Twitter: @GunsAndMagic




 
Reading List

The (Mis)behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward by Benoit B. Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson.

 
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Free Fiction – "Deadline's Curve"

Here's a free flash fiction story for your Sunday. A few notes about the story follow it.
 
Deadline's Curve
by David Michael
 
Author winced as he heard the first squeal of the tires around the twist in the story line, then the clank! … clank! … clank! of the plot.
 
The motor of the story had purred along for over 40,000 words. A few times the engine light had come on, as if the story tension had become lower than expected, but it had always gone off again a few seconds later. Overall, a smooth ride.
 
Until that one plot point, until the twist that propelled the story towards its climax.
 
After that point, the clanking got louder and louder. The engine light reversed itself, sometimes flickering off, but remaining steadily lit most of the time. Tension skyrocketed and plummeted from one page to the next. The engine temperature gauge climbed higher, creeping closer to the dangerous red line. The story sometimes smoothed out as it ran on to the end, but never for very long. And even in the smoother parts, the noise of the story cogs and rotors rubbing against each other was distracting. Annoying even.
 
Author sighed and put the manuscript down. Were there any more mechanics in town he could take the story to for a critique–and get it back before the publisher's deadline?
 
His friends, shade-tree critiquers all, though one or two with some real skill, had poured over the manuscript at his request. Those sessions had netted him some suggestions for tightening here, lubricating there, adjusting this, moving that from one place to another. Some of those suggestions had even been good ones, extending the "purrs along" distance from 30,000 words to 40,000.
 
But always that one plot point, always the horrible clanking.
 
The story had to turn there, or it could never reach the ending. But as soon as the turn was made, the clanking started up. The story kept gamely cruising forward, but the manuscript felt like it was pulling itself apart.
 
The deadline Author faced kept coming at him, full speed, threatening to pull him apart.
 
A so-called professional had kept the manuscript for a week. Running the story through his computer, going through it word by word, calling with updates as he did so. In the end, though, the professional had returned the manuscript to Author, saying only, "I took this thing apart and put it back together. I think you'll like the results."
 
But the clanking had still been there, right at the halfway point of the story.
 
"I don't hear it," the professional said when Author took the story back in. "Sounds fine to me."
 
The next professional had pronounced the story DOA. There was nothing he could do short of a total rewrite and rebuild. Which he was willing to do for a fee–a much bigger fee. If Author really loved his story, this professional said, then Author should let him proceed. Author demurred.
 
One more time through, Author decided. He picked up the manuscript again.
 
He liked reading the beginning of the story. The story started with a satisfying roar, hit its stride, pulled into the stretch and seemed good to go for thousands of words yet, maybe even past 100,000 words. The characters, the setting, everything in time and in touch, well lubed and fitted, where they should be.
 
He stopped reading before he reached the crucial turn, before the squeal and the clanking could kill his buzz. He sat there and relished the feeling for a while, that wonderful feeling of having written something he knew was good. Finally, though, he could not put it off any longer.
 
He started reading. He risked a small smile, one last bit of reveling in the wonderful purring of the story. Then he stepped on the gas and headed for the curve.
 
Maybe this time he would see a way to take the turn that wouldn't be so damaging. But even if he didn't, he would have to send the manuscript in.
 
Copyright © 2006 by David Michael.
 
Story Notes: I wrote this story during A Short Story a Day. I had forgotten all about "Deadline's Curve" until I was poking around in my September 2006 archives, looking for notes about The Door to the Sky. I remembered Camille's recent post, "Alphabet Soup – A Fable for Writers", and thought I would share my own little writer-writing fable-type creation. I hope you enjoyed it.


PS If you enjoyed "Deadline's Curve", you might also like "When Writers Attack".
 
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How Blue Got Her Name (in THE DOOR TO THE SKY)

 
Blue, in the novel The Door to the Sky, is a woman with goddess-like power over the air and sky. That her name is "Blue" seems almost obvious. What else would her name be?
 
Funny story…
 
I plotted The Door to the Sky in September 2006 after plotting The Summoning Fire (though before *writing* The Summoning Fire; I was saving TSF for NaNoWriMo that year). And, as I had done when I plotted The Summoning Fire a few weeks before, I started with a structure.
 
Here is that structure:
 

 
The simple description of the structure is: "Three converging storylines".
 
Just like with The Summoning Fire's spiral, each line is a primary character viewpoint, with a few, related secondary viewpoints.
 
Can you guess which storyline is Blue's?
 
As I wrote notes about the "Blue character" and how her story arc would go, I fell in love with the name. I resisted at first, then embraced the name. Once I had done that, the name showed me all sorts of ideas that I had not considered before. I can't imagine the character with any other name now.
 
"Red" and "Green", on the other hand, never clicked with me as names. So those became "The Traveler" and "The Tyrant/Savir Agrata", respectively. After all, the sturcture was just an outlining tool. Not a naming tool.
 
Except for Blue.
 
-David
 
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Gunwitch Editing Complete

 
I'm excited.
 
I'll be creating a Word doc for the full manuscript, and a couple ebook formats tomorrow or the next day. Then I'll send the book to first readers.
 
I read and edited 9 chapters of the book tonight. I didn't expect to do that. Means I'll be watching Top Chef Masters with the wife tomorrow night.
 
But, as I said, I'm excited. To be done editing. To be sending it out (soon).
 
Onward!
 
-David
 
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Free Ebook – Nasty, Brutish & Short Short – FREE on Smashwords

 
For a limited time, my collection of horror flash fiction and short short stories, Nasty, Brutish & Short Short is FREE on Smashwords!
 
The Call of the Hunter Moon – Violence is easy. You just let go. Your hands become claws for ripping. Your teeth bare, you snap, you grab, you tear. You smell the fear, savor the screams, taste the blood…
 
Tucker – When I arrived, the boy stood there surveying the chaos he had wrought, gloating over it all–except for her. He wouldn't look at her. She knelt by the body she had once inhabited, her physical face now unrecognizable in the gore…
 
Crowfeeder – At our arrival, the closest of the black carrion birds startled. A ripple like a wave in a black ocean flowed across the field as the birds flapped into the air, reconsidered once they saw how few we were, and settled back to continue gorging…
 
And 10 more!
 
Click here to grab your copy of NASTY, BRUTISH & SHORT SHORT from Smashwords!
 
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