Joshua C. Cook's Blog, page 8

Great Video on Story

So the other day I was on twitter, and saw a link to a TED talk from Andrew Stanton (Produced Wall-e, the Toy Story movies, etc.) about creating Story. It’s a fantastic short video only about 20 minutes long.

 

I’ll embed it here at the end of the post, but I’ll also summarize it for those who don’t want to sit through it. (You should though, it’s only 20 minutes long.)

But here are 7 things I took away from this video.

 

1. Make me care – Meaning, you need to have a story that the reader cares about the characters. If they don’t have any sort of connection to them, they aren’t going to care, and they won’t like the story.
2. Give them 2+2, not 4 – Meaning, let the reader put things together, give them crumbs and clues, but don’t hit them over the head with the answer. Make them work for it a bit.
3. Give them a Spine – Not meaning that they are tough, but give them a core. An overarching goal. Something that drives them always. A good example, in the Godfather, Michael Corleone just wants to make his father happy. Even after his father’s death, he runs things in the way he thinks would make his father happy.
4. Drama is anticipation mixed with uncertainty – Meaning you want the reader to be really interested in what comes next, but they aren’t sure what that is. (Remember 2+2 above.) A good example.. the current Game of Thrones TV show. The creators of the show along with George RR Martin have done a fantastic job here. They’ve made the audience care about the characters, they’ve given the watchers the 2+2. So of course you WANT to know what happens next, but you think MAYBE you have an idea, but your not sure.
5. Conditions need to be met – This one at first threw me a bit, but it makes sense. Your protagonist, they can be the most awesome and pure white knight character. BUT only if what they want is met. Take Woody from Toy Story (Andrew Stanton uses this example, it’s a good one.) Woody is a great guy, benevolent, kind, you know, just an all around swell character… until Buzz comes in and displaces him as the favorite toy. Woody then gets petty, jealous and not an all around nice guy. The takeaway is, your good guy doesn’t always have to be a good guy.
6. Each Character, who are you? – A pretty obvious one, but still needs to be said. Characters need to have a reason to exist. If you have characters that the main story wouldn’t miss, why have them? Give them a reason to be there. A purpose in the narrative.
7. Invoke Wonder – It’s a hard one to do, but give the audience something to feel that is bigger, greater than themselves. When they close the book, you want them to think “Whew” you want them to desire to live in that world.

I’ve been doing some rewriting on my current story based on the main themes above, and I think it’s really helped. Some of these aren’t easy to do, but I think overall guidelines like this help me find the core of the story and the characters a lot better.

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First Draft to Final Product

I hate this part.

I sort of hate it really. If you’ve ever written anything like a short story or novella or even an epic, the rush of finishing that first draft is a great one. “Yeah I’m awesome, got my first draft done, whoohoo go me, etc etc.” and of course a small part of you thinks, I’m such an awesome writer, a quick run through to correct some what will be totally minor grammar stuff and I’ll publish this baby out. The public will love it! My name will be on the posts of every Goodreads message board, the #amreading twitter hashtag will blow up with rave reviews!!

Yeah.. hold your horses there buddy.

You (and I mean me as well in that you) have a LONG LONG way to go.

1. You need to have a GROUP of others read it. Meaning, at least 4-5 others. Meaning feedback. Just because you think your ever so clever betrayal in the first 20 pages makes sense, doesn’t mean it will to anyone else. Your the author, you KNOW what motivates your characters already. If you don’t give the readers enough clues, they aren’t going to understand.
2. That feedback you got from those 4-5 people? USE it. Even if it means that something you thought was awesome needs to be cut of changed. If they all notice the same thing, there’s a problem.
3. You need an editor. Yes, really. And yes, it’s not cheap to hire one. And yes, waiting for the draft BACK from editing will suck. Accept it. If your lucky enough to get picked up by a publishing house you won’t need to hire one, otherwise, it’s your money. Or if your REALLY lucky you can work something out with an editor. Trade services or whatnot. But you need one. The fact is that there’s a good chance you will overlook issues. It’s your work, you have seen it 1000 times now. You need a critical eye. Not just a readers eye, but a harsh critical one. You will hate it. Accept it, and move on!
4. Covers. Book Covers. You can go the cheap route, Fiverr is a great choice for that end, but you DO get what you pay for. Finding a cover is also not always cheap sadly. Remember though, the first thing a prospective buyer is going to see is your cover. Good cover art is a must.

 

So after ALL of that, then you can publish.. yay!

But wait, what formats? eBook only? eBook and Paperback? What about audiobooks? Then you have marketing.. book trailers, postcards, bookmarks, etc.

I hate that part. But as others have said, the first draft? That’s the damn easy section. Getting from the first draft to the final product isn’t easy. Do your self a favor though, don’t skimp or cut corners on it. It’s just as important as the first part.

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Bridgefinders First Draft DONE!

I’m very happy to say I’ve finished my first draft of my latest WIP, Bridgefinders. I’m going to take this as a good sign, but I wrote 55,150 words in a little over one month in time, making this the fastest draft I’ve written so far. Making me even more happy was the fact that I didn’t write every day. As I’ve mentioned before I’m a daytime writer. I don’t do night writing well, at least most of the time. I write best in that 9 am to 11 am time frame. I wish I knew why, but that seems to be my sweet spot for output. Bridgefinders was an easy write pretty much from start to finish for me, a refreshing change after the slog my last book became, were writing 300 words was painful.

Even better, my experiment with how I was writing the protagonist and antagonist(s) worked pretty well for me. I really felt like I needed to be in a separate headspace to write some of the antagonist(s) parts. I’d listen to some of Green Day’s American Idiot, or some old school Metallica, a bit to much coffee and then write those parts. And overall I’m really happy with how that turned out.

So what’s next for Bridgefinders?

So glad you asked! (Well you didn’t really, but I’m going to tell you.)

I’ve got 5 Alpha readers who have the draft now, one of these kind souls has already given me feedback. I’m also working with an actual editor this time around who also has the draft. I’m also doing some re-reading of the draft and tweaking things here and there on my own, but no large wholesale revisions yet. I’ve asked all my Alpha readers to please give me feedback in a two week time frame along with a list of things I’d really like to hear from them on. Examples include, what were their least favorite scenes, thoughts on the Protagonist and the Antagonist(s), etc.

With that feedback, and the feedback from the Editor I’ll do a full scale rework. Then I’ll resend to my editor, get a copy edit done, and that will be that. Of course I still need to find a good cover for Bridgefinders both eBook and Print. CreateSpace print.

So things are moving along. I will say I feel better about Bridgefinders than anything else I’ve written. And I’m pretty hard on myself when it comes to things like this.

The only other things on tap are:

1. Trying to work out a Marketing plan for Bridgefinders
2. Debating doing a vlog on Mind Mapping (or ‘Why I don’t do outlines.’)

Not sure on that second item, debating it for now.

 

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I’m not a Young Adult author.

I alluded to this yesterday, now I’ll explain further. I am not a YA author. There, I said it. And I don’t think I ever will be.

Let me break it down a bit more though. I can already hear you  “A good writer should be able to write anything.” or “I bet if you tried…” or even “But YA books sell and make money, you should do that and make bank!” I’ve had some variation of those said to me when I tell people I’m not a YA fiction writer.

YA for those rare who don’t know, is ‘Young Adult’ fiction. Now I’m not really clear on what constitutes a Young Adult really, it has always sounded like a label looking for a reason to me, but I’m increasing both amused and dismayed by the number of labels used on people, ages, etc. (Which is like a whole other topic.)

But to do my traditional number it down style..

1. Maybe a good writer CAN write anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Look at say Stephen King. He writes mostly Horror, with splashes of fantasy and other elements. But he has his genre. Look at Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series, He’s got his niche as well. Authors have area’s and subjects they are drawn to, and are better in.
2. If you only tried… This assumes I haven’t tried. But I have. And it is, well, bad. Worse than bad. And I don’t mean it in a ‘I’m my own worst critic’ way, I mean BAD. There are some actual reasons for this. To start with, I’m really to far removed from the YA experience. Though as I said I’m not quite clear on what YA is, my best guess is late teens, very early twenties. I’m 42. I don’t have a good frame of reference for that age range. Adding on to this is the fact that simply I wasn’t much of a YA when I *was* those age ranges. I was hopelessly weird and introspective, literally would flinch if someone brushed against me, and massively introverted. I wasn’t social, I was a complete moron when it came to women, and was wasting time doing pretty much nothing. I wasn’t even a good student at the time. I don’t have that connection in my mind to that time in my life, it’s all sort of vague and depressing.
3. I hate this one. Yes, YA books CAN be very popular. And of COURSE I’d love to make a living writing, (True fact, people think I make mad money off the books I’ve already done. I made 112$ last year off book sales. yes, 112$.) But writing something I don’t feel, and can’t connect to just to make money, well, I can’t do it. It would suck all the joy and fun out of writing. Period.

 

So what KIND of writer am I? Glad you asked.

 

I have no clue!

See the first few books I’ve done have all had the overall theme that you can’t trust a damn soul, and that pretty much everyone and everything is out to get you. Different stories, but that’s still the overall feeling through the books. This current book throws that dark world view out, and doesn’t even mess with it. Sure, my protagonist has a bit of a habit of not telling other’s 100% of the truth, but it’s not the same thing (It’s not! Don’t look at me that way.) This story is more exciting, more active, and more interesting. So who knows what kind of writer I am. Do I even need to know in truth?

 

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Exercise and Writing

So, about a month or so ago, I decided to weigh myself. This is something I normally don’t do. I’ve never cared much about that number, as long as I felt good, clothes didn’t feel tight, I was fine, right? But I had to admit, that I no longer felt good, and clothes were getting tighter, far tighter than I wanted them to. So not thinking much of it, I decided to weigh myself. And saw to some dread, I was the heaviest I’d ever been in my life. (Yay for being 42!)

This bothered me. Then once I started thinking about it, I sort of realized a few things at once.

I was eating like crap.
I had a very sedentary job, I literally sit for hours a day.
I had no energy to do anything anymore. Play with the kids? Nope. Do things around the house? Nope. And even writing was getting hard, I was running on empty every day, pretty much all day.
I really wasn’t ready to have a heart attack and deal with all that. My blood pressure was also getting higher and higher following my weight gain, and quickly dropping muscle tone.

 

See I live in Florida, and so when it’s warm enough I swim for exercise. But even here, there are months that’s not an option (Yes really, as I write this it’s 38 degree’s outside. You don’t want to go swim laps in a pool in this weather.) I had fallen into the practice of just not exercising during that time. But as I got older, that was causing me more and more issues. By the time summer was over I was finally getting back to where I wanted to be, then I’d loose it all over again and undergo a transformation into something nominally human and more hippo like.

This I decided, wasn’t going to work.

So Winter exercise was in. Even though I have the bone structure of an offensive lineman, I hate lifting weights. Really hate it. So more aerobic exercise is what I was after. Not actual like aerobics, I’m also lacking in any sense of rhythm. So with a bit of fear, I decided on jogging. Now I say fear because I don’t have the best knees. It runs in my family to have bad knee’s (and other joints actually) so I wasn’t feeling overly confident, but I wanted to try. To augment this, I decided for upper body to do a boxing exercise. One, it seemed Manly, and two, seemed like a good way to work out any aggression I may have.

And so it began.. at first, 10 minutes of running, then 10 minutes of boxing. The first week.. sucked. More than once my brain told me to pack it in, sit down, and chill. Get a snack and watch a random episode of ‘Diners, Drive ins and Dives’ and forget this whole thing. But, I stuck with it. The first change I noted was, I had more energy. Noticeably more. In fact I actually ended up cutting my caffeine intake, which I’m sure made my heart a bit happy as well.

By the end of the second week, I bumped things up to 20 minutes of running and 20 minutes of boxing. This was hard, and I’m still at that level. I eventually want to move it to 30/30, but I’m not there yet. But the changes…

I have a heck of a lot more energy.
I FEEL better.
And very surprisingly, my writing has gotten better, a LOT better.

(Note: I do not look anything like the man above.)

Writing for me was and still is a creative outlet. I enjoy it. But, when I was in my hippo/slug phase, I quite simply couldn’t write worth a damn. Even putting 300 words on the page was hard. My brain wasn’t working, I felt tired and overwhelmed. No good, and no fun.

WITH Exercise however, my writing has in fact exploded. Before I started working out, I was working on a YA SciFi novel. And honestly it hadn’t been going well. When I sat down and read over what I had written, it was dreck. Worse than dreck. And on top of it, I knew in my gut I wasn’t a YA writer. (I’ll write a different blog post about that.) So right around the same time I started the new exercise regimen, I started a new project.

And it frigging rocks.

I don’t know how else to say this without adding a bunch of curse words, but my writing output has simply exploded. I went from struggling to write 300-500 words, to blowing through 2500-4000 words at a time. I’m a month into this first draft, and I’m already at 30,000 words, and that’s even with me skipping some days writing. I don’t tend to write much on the weekends, family time tends to take over, which is highly important to me. But being at 30,000 words at this stage is mind blowing to me. And it’s GOOD output. It’s not dreck, it’s actually good writing.

There’s been research that regular physical exercise actually causes the hippocampus part of the brain to grow new cells. This area of the brain is involved in memory, and combining information from short and long term memory. Since I tend to keep almost everything about a story in my brain, outside of a few mind maps and maybe a page or two of notes, memory is something I need!

Final take:

Regular Exercise as helped me be a far better writer. (Also a better father, husband, and overall better human being.)

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David Bowie

David Bowie died last night. If find myself sadder than expected, and I’ll explain why in a minute. But first some background… I have never been one to really be one who follows or becomes a “fan” of a singer or actor. I don’t do obsession well. It was rare I even had a crush in my hormone laden early teenage years on any celebrity, the few exceptions being a young Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth, and of course, Danica McKellar of the Wonder Years. (No it’s not lost on me that David Bowie was also in Labyrinth.)

I grew up in the rural south. Small town central, maybe a population of 1100, just big enough to barely support a Winn Dixie. After 5 pm the town was empty, like “Tumble weed blowing through the street” empty. It was the 80’s and I was still wearing cowboy boots, jeans, leather belt and those fake mother of pearl snap button plaid shirts that my Mom seemed to get from somewhere. My parents weren’t very country at all really, high educated ex-hippies actually, but I think my Mom wanted me to fit in, so I wore what she bought me.

However I also have an older sister, and she was deep into mid 80’s fashion. You couldn’t buy any of it where we lived in town, you had to head into Gainesville, a college town nearby and go to the mecca of teenagedom at that time and place, the Mall. I really could have cared less at that point in my life, but I would spend many a Saturday afternoon being dragged from store to store as my mom attempted to keep up with my sisters fashion needs and wants. (Note: My sister is a great person, but she was just one of those young teen girls to whom what they wore meant a LOT.)

So we were at a Burdines at the Mall in Gainesville (A Large store like a Macy’s that was based in Florida, eventually bought up by Macy’s and had their name changed) I being the bored kid wandered around the racks, rolling my eyes at my Mother’s need to know where I was when I noticed a TV in the Teens  section. A TV that was playing, on a loop, “Blue Jean” by David Bowie.

Now you have to understand, we only got two channels at the time, ABC and PBS. No cable where we lived out in the woods, and since all my friends lived in town, when I was over at a friends house that DID have Cable, if we were watching TV it was cartoons usually. We did eventually get a Satellite Dish one of those huge 80’s things, where you had to scan for channels on random satellites and move the dish around to find anything. But at this moment, what I saw on that screen was to me, the most crazy thing ever.

This man, looked so weird! This stuff, why was he dressed like a Genie? What was with the makeup? Why are all those people in the crowd dressed like that? People don’t dress like that, do they? This was the craziest thing ever. I watched it over 13 times that day. That moment has always stuck with me for simple reasons, It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone be that daring. I had lived a fairly sheltered life so far at that point, so this to me was nutty.

I got older, and have seen more things that are far crazier than David Bowie. Things that I wish I had never seen, and things I wish I could see for the first time over and over again. When I saw the news this morning, my first thought was of that song. See David Bowie was for me the first example of being totally 100% committed to being yourself. He owned it. He owned being THAT character, and ever character he was before and after. He was true to himself, a quality that is sadly rare in the world.

When so many people (myself included) parse themselves, self-edit, and don’t say or act on what they really want to do, the person who embraces himself fully always will be remembered.  He4 was true to himself, and we can only try to strive for the same.

Thank you for that David Bowie.

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An Experiment

So I’ve been working on my new book, Bridgefinders for about two weeks now. It’s going quite well, and I’m happy with the flow and the story so far. But I’ve been mulling over in my head how I’m going to write the antagonist side of things. See in this book the protagonist and the antagonist are almost two sides of the same coin. There are a lot of links between them, though it’s not readily apparent at first. In fact the antagonist who I’ll call “S” for this post, has a VERY different mindset that the protagonist, who I’ll call “C”.  “S”comes from a different place both mentally and physically. And I think I’m going to find my normal method of linear writing hard to do with these two characters. So as an experiment I’m going to do the following:

Totally write the story strictly from the point of view of “C”.  Get that whole story arc done, regardless of length.
Then start a totally new story strictly from the point of view of “S”. Get that whole story arc done, regardless of length.
Merge them.

 

The main reason for this experiment is that I think it’s a disservice to the “S” character who I really like a lot to make them a bit player in the story of “C”. The character deserves more. And as they are very different, I’m not sure I can flip between the two and do it well. I need to inhabit the “S” character’s personality and background more than in a superficial way. The main downside to this is going to be the length of time it takes. It’s not going to be fast, but I think it’s going to be worth it.

I’m also going to go ahead and THIS time pay for an editor. I have someone in mind, and I think it will work out well. I’m debating doing something on 99designs for the cover art, just depends on the $$$.

So I’ll update this blog again with updates on how it’s going. Should be interesting at least!

 

–Josh

 

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First 1500 words of Bridgefinders

So I’ve decided to post the first 1500 words of something I just started working on. Working title of “Bridgefinders” it’s a fantasy novel set in modern times, or as I was educated recently by someone, it’s “Urban Fantasy” which honestly I didn’t know was a thing. But here without further ado, is the first 1500 words of Bridgefinders. Read, think about, and if you like it, let me know!

(Note: This is ROUGH draft quality, so ..well.. you know.)

 

Bridgefinders

 

 

“Look Mark, it’s a system. Just a system, like any other system. I don’t need to know what each part does in detail.” Cendan was getting louder on the phone. “Just LISTEN, do what I say, and we will be done with this call in an hour.” One hour later to the minute, Cendan hung up the phone with a loud sigh. Performance up eleven percent, and one paycheck richer.

Cendan felt a bit burned out though. He found dealing with people hard. They weren’t predictable, and they didn’t always behave in logical and predictable ways. Mechanical systems, electronic systems, those were easy. Looking out the window of his home office, Cendan looked at the lush garden below. Heck even a garden was a system. Plants were the easiest living thing to deal with for him. They didn’t throw him curveballs on wants and needs. As a result, he actually rather liked gardening.

Cendan billed himself as a “System Management and Performance Consultant” a fancy sounding title that made the business types nearly giddy. Truth be told it was a good and fairly lucrative carrier. Companies paid him to make systems, regardless of what it was, run better, faster and more efficient. And he was good at it, very good.

Glancing at his cell phone he noted the time, and the fact that he’d had no phone calls or texts in three days. He used this cell for personal things, not work, and it served as a reminder that he wasn’t getting anywhere with trying to have some sort of social or romantic life. It’s not that he didn’t try, he did, and hard. But there always seemed to be a disconnection between what he thought he should be doing, and what the other person wanted him to be doing.

Cendan shook himself and decided to go for a run. Clear his head, then a nice cold shower to really feel refreshed. A small smile crossed his face at the thought. Some dinner, maybe a movie, then sleep. He felt good about the overall plan for rest of the day. Quickly changing, he left his apartment and locked up, jogging away his troubles.

A small shape appeared on his table, and grew to the size of a small dog before stopping. A gnarled figure, with large eyes with blood red irises and a nose too large for its face. It’s most distinguishing feature being the large collection of rings, and metal trinkets strong around its neck on a nearly black with dirt string.

*sniff, sniff* the figure smelled the air, searching for what it had come to find out. A tongue, grey pink and long appeared to lick the air. It snuffled and grunted as it jumped off the table and onto the floor. “Grellnot find another one. Grellnot find another one!” The figure danced side to side, the necklace jangling back and forth.

A long sniff and a pause the creature tapped his head. “Grellnot find one who doesn’t KNOW. No keepsakes for Grellnot here. SHE will want him gone before he knows.” The figure sat, it seemed sad now, though its heavy breathing and grunting still gave it an air of danger. “Unless SHE doesn’t know. If they find him, and make him KNOW, then Grellnot gets what he wants, and SHE gets what SHE wants.” A grin split its dirty lined face, showing a row of sharp even teeth, even as it’s tongue licked them.

“Yes… If Grellnot strikes now, only SHE gets to be happy. Not Grellnot. So Grellnot will wait, wait till he KNOWS, then Grellnot gets a shiny for his collection.” The creature stroked the necklace, its motley assortment of rings and keys, watches and other even stranger metal objects softly clinking in the dark kitchen. “Grellnot loves his collection. All those FINDERS pretty toys. All those DELICIOUS meals. Grellnot remembers them ALL.”

The creature started suddenly, its ears before flat against its stringy hair sprung erect, quivering. “Grellnot hears a child…” Its face took on a cast of malice. “Grellnot LOVES to scare children, delicious fear.” And with a pop the creature was gone, leaving only the faint feeling that something not right, something outside this world had been there.

Cendan was he felt one of the few people who understood the interconnection of things. As he ran his mind would grab random objects, and place them in the system of the world, and how they connected to other things around him. He had once tried to explain this to someone who didn’t have the same mindset, they had given him a look of utter confusion and found someone else to talk to.

The main issue with the world to Cendan was that the vast majority of people in the world didn’t understand their connections to it, and how one action causes other actions, and down the line. So many people thought of themselves as an island, self-contained and not connected, not beholden to the rest of the planet for any reason. Cendan knew that was egotistic tripe, but it was depressingly common.

A deep sigh and he decided to sort of shutdown his mind, loose himself in the steady rhythm of his steps as he ran. Steady and regular beats, counting out the distance. This claimed him greatly, when the world was so disorganized and regrettably stupid. He had mostly lost himself to it, when turning the corner near his home, he was presented with the sight of several police cars and an ambulance at the house across from his.

As he looked an officer approached him. “Sir? Do you live in the area?” The man’s badge read his name as Harlan.

“Yes, Officer Harlan? I live right there in fact.” Cendan gestured towards his place, slowly running in place as he talked. “What is going on?”

Officer Harlan glanced over at Cendans house. “Your name sir?”

“Cendan Key.” He replied.

“Mr. Key, do have a pet? Any animals?” The Officer seemed irritated with him, and Cendan wondered why. Maybe the running in place? Cendan then thought about the question. Animals? “No Officer. I do not. Why?”

“How long have you been out running Mr. Key? Hour? Thirty minutes?” The officer’s face betrayed his annoyance. Cendan decided to stop moving, and saw an immediate reaction towards a more relaxed persona.

“One hour Officer.” Cendan wanted to ask a follow up, but found himself unsure if this would annoy the officer more. People, so hard to deal with he thought to himself again.

“See any wild animals? Feral dogs or cats?” The Officer paused. “Little girl who lives across the street got bit by something, and something not small.”

Cendan raised an eyebrow at this. He didn’t really know the family across the street. He was on nodding terms, half waves but that was it. He interacted with all his neighbors that way. He knew however they had a little girl, no more than seven or eight. Wild animal attacks here? Unusual.

“No Officer, I didn’t see anything like that.” Cendan paused. “Haven’t seen any wild or feral animals in this neighborhood ever actually.”

At that moment the doors to the house where the girl lived opened as the Paramedics carried the little girl out of the house and into the ambulance. Cendan could see her right arm was bandaged up, but blood was starting to seep through.

“It was a little man! Not an animal! A little scary man!” The girl yelled to her frantic looking mother. Cendan couldn’t hear more as the girl was placed in the ambulance and followed by her parent and the doors closing behind them. Soon the ambulance took off with a wail of a siren fading quickly as it moved out of sight.

“Kids. Going to make it hard to find this animal if we can’t even get a good description of it.” Officer Harlan shook his head. “Look, Mr. Key, if you do see a wild animal, feral animal, just let us know ok? Call us or animal control ok? Don’t try to interact with it or capture it yourself. Don’t need anyone else getting bit.”

Cendan just nodded. Dealing with a wild animal wasn’t anywhere he felt comfortable. But why had that girl been screaming that it was a little man?

“Officer? Where was the girl when she got bit?” Cendan asked curious. “Just so I know where to stay away from.”

The Officer paused a moment. “That is the only weird thing. In her house apparently. We searched it high and low, and can’t find it though. Must have escaped somehow.”

Cendan looked at the house in question. How could that happen? It made the most sense of course, logically. But something bothered him on a deeper level, and he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

Grellnot wiped his face. Tasty screams, tasty blood. Watching from the upper branch of a tree Grellnot smiled. “Stupid men, not looking up. Stupid stupid men thinking Grellnot is an animal. Grellnot is far more than an animal.”

Grellnot tracked the one he found as the man entered his own house. Soon THEY would find him and make him ready. Grellnot would feast then, and SHE would get one step closer to freeing them all.

So there, the first 1500 Words of Bridgefinders! Hope you like it so far….

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Ideas, where do you get them?

Ideas. Those ‘ah-ha’ moments where something in the work your creating sticks out at you in the most obvious way, but until that moment you never realized it. I have recently realized that idea’s about stories or things I need to add/change only seem to occur to me when I’m *not* writing. What I mean by that is pretty simple. When I’m actively writing, I tend to ‘follow the script’ in my head. I tend to know where I want things to go and how to get there. I’m as I’ve heard from other people a ‘pantser’ apparently. I don’t write out long detailed outlines, and I tend to keep the story’s overall plot and timeline just in my head. This honestly is mainly due to me not being terribly organized, and the fact I loose anything I jot down pretty often. I do still use a mind mapper application to help with character development, if only because it helps me lay out each characters wants, needs, desires and fears. In turn I use this to figure out how each character will react/behave to situations.

 

****Side note**** This just occurred to me, but this is part of my old theater training. I had never drawn the parallel before, but this is pretty much the exact same process I used mentally to help flesh out characters I was playing when I was doing theater. Pretty damn cool, never realized that.

However it’s only when I’m not actively writing do I realize there are big questions I’m forgetting. I get these idea’s pretty much doing one of three things.

Swimming – I live in Florida, so the swim season is pretty long. I’m not sure why exactly, but the act of swimming for exercise seems to allow me to mentally think about things differently.
Shaving – Yes really, the act of taking a piece of sharp metal and scraping hair off my face leads me to find new things or ideas to add to whatever story I’m writing (Had this today in fact.)
Cooking – In a former life I came very very close to pursuing cooking as a profession. But I get a lot of ideas this way as well.

 

For me at least, ideas come to me at the oddest times. I sometimes beat myself up a bit for not being able to devote MORE time to writing. But I realize now that the actual act of writing is only part of writing. The mental part, the idea’s and creativity part for me at least means I need to be away from the computer and doing other things. Things that allow me to be more on an ‘autopilot’ and free up whatever the part of me that likes to create stories. So in a way I’m writing a lot more than I think, at least I can tell myself that!

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I’m alive!

So I’ve been a slacker once more. I haven’t really posted on here, and I’ve been non-busy on twitter as well. But I have my reasons..

I started a new day job. – It’s given me more time to write, and it’s far less stressful.
The new book is turning into a monster.. in length. It’s flowing well, I know where and how I’m taking everyone and everything, but it’s a long write.
This time of year with kids going back to school, birthdays, anniversaries, etc, can be a real pain to get some stuff done.

 

But I’ll be the first to say I have slacked when it comes to the social media aspects of being a part time writer. I’m not big on self-promotion, which is something I need to work on. I”ll say this, I’m going to try again to make a blog post at least once a week, and to push myself to finish the book by the end of November. At least the first draft. That gives me all of December to edit, and rewrite, get feedback, etc.

The new book, for those who don’t know, is a YA Sci Fi novel. Looks like it will be clocking in around 50-60K words depending. Writing believable and authentic sci-fi has been a fun and interesting challenge. Oddly enough recent sensational news stories are reflecting a part of my main storyline, which I find vastly amusing. But I’m back, I’m alive, and I haven’t given up on writing.

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