David R. Michael's Blog, page 28

A Sigils Progress Report

 
As of today, I'm 14000 words into my current writing project, Sigils. Usually, by this time in a project I can make a reasonable guess as to the final length. I'm not so sure this time.
 
Am I 20% of the way done? More? Less? I have no idea.
 
If every "day" [2-part chapter] in the outline ends up around 8K-10K (like the first day), then I'm about 16% done [because there are 9 days in the outline].
 
I'm thinking day #2 will end up closer to 10K-12K words. I'm already at 5500 words in this day and I haven't even gotten to the second part of the day yet. Will they all be that long? The 3rd day could be a lot longer. The 4th could be much shorter. In fact, there's no reason to assume that there will even be a useful "average word count" per chapter.
 
So … no … I have no idea how long this book will be.
 
I have 8 full weeks before Junebug's due date, plus I'll do about 4K more words this week. Which comes to about 72K words before Junebug. Or about 86K words total by then.
 
Will I be done by then? I have no idea. All I can guess is I will be either done or close to the end by then.
 
Which is a pretty vague guess, if you ask me.
 
My longest completed novel (which was also my first completed novel; which is unlikely to ever see the light of day) hit 145K words in its first draft (I cut it down to 125K in editing). I really don't expect Sigils to get that long. At least, I hope it doesn't.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
A MilestoneNaNoWriMo 2007 Post MortemMy Nano History To Date

My Flash Fiction "Time: A Love Story" on Book Brouhaha

She opened the door wearing only a coy look and a towel, her hair still dripping wet.


He smiled and pulled her close to kiss her. She returned the kiss and put her arms around his neck, then squealed and pulled away from him as her towel started to fall off…
 
Click here to read the whole story…
 
My thanks to Alain Gomez of Book Brouhaha for hosting the story.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Opining About Short StoriesA Story in "Zombiepalooza""Until Death Do Us Part" on Zombiepalooza

Story Storming; or How I Wrote My Latest Short Story

 
Here are the notes I wrote to myself before I started writing "Secondhand Coffin" back in February. Obviously, there are a lot of spoilers in the notes, as I lay out the entire story (eventually), at least in rough outline. So if you haven't read the story yet, feel free to do that now. I'll wait.
 
Click here to read "Secondhand Coffin".
 
"Secondhand Coffin" was my entry in the NY Midnight Movie Madness Short Story Challange 2011. Which you know already, because you read the story. Right?
 
Without further delay, here are my (unedited) story storming notes for "Secondhand Coffin":
 
SSC2011 Story Storming
 
I drew "Ghost Story" and "Claustrophobia".
 
My immediate idea was a secondhand coffin. Which might actually be a cool title, now I write it out. Buy a coffin, discover you're not the first to use it. But how is that fun? What if it's a for a beloved spouse, and you just fixed him up with a date for eternity? How does a coffin get reused? Is someone digging them and reselling them? "This would never happen if you used cremation." What if the claustrophobia is in the crematorium? The furnace? It's getting crowded in there, all those stuck souls.
 
Why did the soul stick with the coffin instead of its body? Or isn't that always the question? Body's over there, souls floating about whilly nilly, hither and yon.
 
The coffin isn't *really* secondhand. Someone was killed and hidden in the coffin while it was at the funeral home. Their body was then taken out and dumped somewhere more discreet. And hidden.
 
What is the ghost waiting for? She died before she could be a mother…so she's waiting for a child to care for. She wants revenge and is waiting for the man who killed her.
 
So…she's a she? This ghost? Why was she killed?
 
Does she possess the body of whoever is placed there and go on a killing spree? A sort of revenge story with a ghost possessing the body of a man prepared for burial.
 
I like the idea. How do I keep it short? 2500 words isn't a lot of words.
 
And none of that has anything to do with claustrophobia.
 
I could do a somewhat circular story. Start with the coffin on display for sale, lid propped open. End with it back on sale, lid propped open. She can't take it when they close the lid at night. SHe especially can't take it when they place a body in the coffin and close the lid.
 
Maybe a fragmented story with multiple viewpoints. The guy who works at the funeral home who let a body be stored there over night in one of the coffins. The guy who killed the girl and hid her body and then disposed of it. The ghost of the girl.
 
Maybe she was wrapped in plastic and buried under concrete. That would be claustrophobia inducing, I'm sure.
She moves back and forth from her body to the coffin.
 
She woke up just as she was being concreted. She wasn't awake for her last breath. But she was awake when she died of suffocation, unable to move or scream or do anything. The next time she woke up it was when the lid of a coffin was raised.
 
Or maybe the first time she woke up, she was in the coffin, her hands bound. The guy at the funeral home raised the lid, saw her, then called the guy. She can hear muffled conversation. Then the guy who hit her comes back and hits her again or somehow renders her unconscious. "Really dead this time." THen she wakes up unable to breath and being buried by cold, lumpy concrete. THen she wakes up again in the coffin…accept this time she has no body, and no one hears her screams. Her consciousness moves back and forth between the coffin and her concrete grave.
 
Could go Twilight Zone…she possesses the body to drag her boyfriend back to the coffin with her. Accept she manages to also pull him into the concrete with her…or she swaps places with him, leaving him alive in her little nook under the concrete. Her body being found in the coffin with the body she possessed.
 
Can I fit that in 2500 words?
 
Why did the guy kill her? Was he really her boyfriend? Why did the funeral home guy go along with it? Was this something mob related?
 
Or maybe go occult. She was sacrificed to grant them access to power of some sort.
 
She has to know the man who killed her, I think. She needs a connection to him. A personal connection. She needs to know why he killed her.
 
Maybe they're killing someone else. That's how she gets access to both men. Neither of whom she knows. Nor does she know the body that was hidden in the same coffin she was hidden in.
 
She was attacked and , but she wasn't dead. They wrapped her in her own expensive carpet, then stuffed her, carpet and all, into the coffin. "She won't stain anything." "But she'll still stink." "Ever heard of Febreze, you dipshit?"
 
It's almost worse when they open the lid everyday, letting in the golden glow of the special lights of the display room. Almost. Because nothing could be worse than the cold plastic and concrete pushing against her skin. But almost. Because every night, they dusted the coffin and closed it again, locking her away from the light again in her grave of manmade stone…
 
So…open with the opening of the lid. A bit of reflection. Customers who look into the coffin and shake their heads. The funeral salesman who looks familiar and never touches the coffin. Then closing for the day. Then…opening at night and there *he* is, the man who killed her. Or tried to. Twice. And failed both times. And there's the funeral salesman. He's helping the man who killed her put a carpet-wrapped body into the coffin. "What? Do you buy these things wholesale?" They close the lid and now she's alone in the coffin with the dead body. She finds that she can move into the dead body. But with the carpet wrapping her it's almost as bad as her concrete grave. When the men come for the body, she causes it to thrash about and the men drop the body.
 
Now it gets macabre.
 
The man who killed her shoots the body, but this doesn't seem to kill it. There's some beating that happens too. When the carpet is loosened, she manages to lurch the body out and attacks the man who killed her. The funeral home salesman cowers in the corner. She kills him too, but more quickly. She puts both bodies into the still-open coffin. Then she climbs in with them. As she leaves the body, she closes the lid on them.
 
That's 3 parts, really:

Beginning – Return
Middle – Repeat
End – Revenge

 
I don't explain why she was so damn hard to kill.
 
I don't explain why her spirit remained.
 
I don't explain why her spirit could move between the coffin and the concrete.
 
I don't explain why she can possess and animate a corpse.
 
I don't explain where she's headed after the end of the story.
 
I'll need to have a name for her. She doesn't know the name of the two men. Maybe. Maybe she doesn't need to know what she was killed. She can guess, maybe. Or maybe she just wonders what she must have seen or who she must have spoken to at the wrong place and time.
 
~ ~ ~
 
That's all exactly as I typed it into The Journal in my "Short Story" category on 6 February. (This commercial brought to you by The Journal: Write, Organize, Remember, Find. )
 
It was sometime last year (2010) I first used the phrase "story storming". I use it to mean I'm sitting at my desk, typing ideas about/for a story into my journal. Usually *before* I start writing the story, sometimes in the middle to figure out what I screwed up and how I can get past it.
 
My story storming sometimes gets a bit longwinded. As you might have noticed. How longwinded depends on how long it takes me to wander verbally into a story idea that catches my attention. The above was over 1100 words–and that was for a 2500-word story. Compare that to my story storming for a recent novel project: 19,000 words of notes and outline for a 65,000-word first draft.
 
Anyway, I hope that was at least interesting.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
My Short Story Challenge 2011 Judges FeedbackMy Short Story Challenge 2011 Story: "Secondhand Coffin"Lookitthat – More Words Than I Needed

I Always Wanted to be Elvis Costello

 
Not the man. But what he represents. To me, anyway.
 
Here's a singer/songwriter that never became hugely popular. I'm sure he's done OK for himself, but outside of certain circles, that is, flowing along with the mainstream, not a lot of people have heard of him. Or, if they have heard of him, and even remember he had a popular song, they won't remember what that song was. Even if you play it for them.
 

 
But if you watch "Behind the Music" or read interviews with musicians, when those musicians list their influences, many, many of them mention Elvis Costello.
 
He was never popular with the mainstream. But he was influential.
 
And that's what I've always wanted to be.
 
Rich, too, of course. And famous would be cool. But, really, influential.
 
Preferably within my lifetime.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
"Indie" is not a BrandBecoming InsaneBook Trailer – THE DOOR TO THE SKY

A Lighter Tone

 
So far, just shy of 10K words into Sigils, I've found I'm using a lighter tone than I expected. The blood is still there, the bodies of sacrificial victims are stacking up, and the manifestations of pissed-off, angry demon-things have penciled in their appointments with power-hungry, delusional, megalomaniacs. But I've had some fun hitting lighter notes in the middle of the gore.
 
Didn't see that coming.
 
I don't think I've written anything uproariously funny. I don't think I'm going all Buffy with the dialogue. This is still going to be a dark book. I'm writing more or less straight.
 
I think I'm taking a tone similar to what I used in Demon Candy. Which makes sense, I guess. But I didn't expect to do that when I started writing. The two main characters didn't start off all grim and gritty. They started out like, well, themselves. Almost normal people. And they're not–or weren't–grim and gritty. They aren't dark characters at the beginning. But they're getting there.
 
Maybe it will seem even darker with the little patches of lighter color for contrast. Not sure.
 
So far it feels right to be approaching the book this way. So maybe it's a good idea.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
It's Not Writing per se…Demon Candy – Now Available!Win a FREE Signed Copy of Demon Candy!

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, April 18, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Sigils


1513




Tuesday


Sigils
Started editing "Roxy Overload".


1511




Wednesday


Sigils
Finished editing "Roxy Overload".
Line edited "Enamored".
Line edited "Until Death Do Us Part".
Line edited "Roxy Overload".


535




Thursday


Sigils
Created base ebook doc for TWWT.
Create TWWT ebook doc for KDP, PubIt, & Smashwords.


843




Friday


Sigils


1534




Saturday


Sigils


1098




Sunday


Sigils


527














Total



7561




YTD Total: 117073
 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Announced "Sweet Tooth" to G&M, 4CL, FB.
Announced "Sweet Tooth", "Evanescent", "The Perfect Hiding Place" to KB, NB & MR.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday


Uploaded TWWT to KDP, PubIt, Smashwords.




Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield.
The Forts of Colonial North America: British, Dutch & Swedish by Rene Chartrand.

 
Related Posts:
Now Available – "Sweet Tooth"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"Now Available – "Evanescent"

Now Available – "Sweet Tooth"

 
"Sweet Tooth" – A new horror short story by David Michael!
 
Ted Millet, divorced and broke and tired of getting up at 2 am, shows up for work anyway at the Jenny-Buns Donut Shop. If he doesn't make the donuts, no one else will. This morning, though, he has a new customer waiting for him that makes his ex-wife seem almost human. (3100-word short story)
 
"Sweet Tooth" is also available in the collection, Demon Candy.
 




"Sweet Tooth" Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$.99




 
Related Posts:
Demon Candy – Now Available!Now Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"

My Other Fidget

 
Yup. Freecell. On XP, because my laptop is old.
 
As someone who lost 2 weeks the last time he installed Civilization III, Freecell is the only video game I let myself play. But that's beside the point.
 
Freecell games go fast enough that they are a momentary, mental distraction. Almost relaxing. Tarot-like sometimes, because I'll start a game right after a decision to see if I'm thinking clearly–and to see if the decision still seems like a good one when I'm finished with the game a few minutes later.
 
The trick is to not let the mental fidget become all I do when I'm supposed to be writing.
 
My win ratio on Freecell, BTW, is 80%. It would be higher if the XP version of the game had a real "Undo" feature, but that's just me grumbling…
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
This Is My Main FidgetIn Other News…Why I Choose to be an Indie Author

A Milestone

 
With today's 1500 words in the can my total word count for 2011 (111K) has passed my total word count for 2010 (110K). And there's still a lot of 2011 left. I'm pleased.
 
I don't know where I'll be at the end of 2011, but I'm hoping I'll set a new, personal one-year word production record.
 
Today is also the 28th day of my current streak of writing every day. I'm happy my streak survived the completion of one novel (GoSH1) and the start of another (Sigils). Now to see if I can keep the streak going to the end of Sigils.
 
Onward! (Or, perhaps, on-word!)
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Do I Count Every Word? You Bet Your Sweet BippyStill Writing, but No More NanoNano – Thoughts

This Is My Main Fidget

 
This is a 65mm d20 (20-sided die). Green. Just a bit smaller than a baseball but a perfect fit for my hand.
 
This die has never been rolled in anger, or in a game (I have an ivory version which I use for gaming). It's sole purpose is for me to pick it up while thinking (usually when writing or programming) and, well, fondle it. Sometimes I toss it back and forth, from one hand to the other. Sometimes I fumble and it goes flying to bounce off the wall or a file cabinet. So far I've managed to do no serious damage to myself or my belongings. Believe me, this thing could do damage.
 

 
I love this thing.
 
I first learned these monstrosities existed when a friend of mine bought one for herself several years ago. Over the next few months, I bought five, one in each color available. My son has the red one. My wife claimed the black one. I use the ivory one for gaming. The blue one sits on a shelf in my office looking all glossy and cool.
 
The green one, my fidget, one no longer looks glossy, and the numbers have been worn off from lots and lots of fidgeting.
 
I used to twirl ink pens. Or roll my wedding ring around my fingertips in a way that seemed to fascinate people I used to work with. That is, when they weren't being scandalized that I was using my wedding ring as a fidget.
 
These days, for the past three years I guess, it's been this ridiculously huge green d20.
 

 
Best. Fidget. Ever.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Nano – Consolidation and a Bit of RevisionNano – Dots Dots DotsDarker Than Thou