progress

Writing and productivity

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Holy crap, you guys. Yesterday I wrote over 3500 words yesterday. I am never that productive. Never.

Long time readers know I’ve been working on my productivity for years. I used to write two pages a day and crap out. I thought I could never do more.

Well, blah blah blah, I’ve been trying to do better, and it’s working out. I’m not writing faster because I’m writing sloppier; it’s because I’m changing the way I work so I can focus more.

You know what else helped? This:

Guest Post: How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day.

I’m not doing exactly what this author is doing: I don’t write out the upcoming plot points on a legal pad, I type them into the end the actual file and delete them as I go through. I also don’t have a spreadsheet, mainly because: spreadsheet. However, I am finding that, the more quickly I work, the happier I am with the sentences I put down. There are fewer word echoes, at least.

Anyway, I’m off to do today’s pages and if history is any judge, today is going to be incredibly difficult.

Ten Days

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I’ve just put Lord of Reavers up for sale on B&N and Amazon. It’ll be a while before it’s cleared for sale there, but in the meantime you can still buy it directly from me.

Also, my wife and son are out of town for ten days to visit her family. I’m at home, and I’ve borrowed a number of DVDs from the library; they aren’t great movies, but they’re for grownups, and if you have an account on LiveJournal (they’re free), you can vote for which ones I’ll watch.

In the meantime, here’s my plan for the next week and a half:

1- To bed every night before midnight. Before 11 would be better but lets be realistic.

2- Vegetables every day.

3- Get back on the Livestrong calorie counting, which I set aside during the holiday.

4- A helluva lot of walking

5- Personal hygiene, apartment hygiene.

6- Set Freedom for six hours every night before bed.

7- 2500 words a day at least.

It will take focus, but this is going to be a productive holiday season.

A Special Project

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Today is my son’s tenth birthday. He assures me that this means he’s no longer a child even though he’s still a kid. I’m not entirely convinced by his argument, but what the hell.

Anyway, he and I have been working on a special project for weeks. Actually, lets make that months. See, many of you reading this will have heard that we’re homeschooling my son, but you might not have heard that he hates to write.

Yeah, the writer’s son won’t put a paragraph on a page without an hour of griping and squalling. He won’t let his artist mom teach him to draw, either. Learning science, division, or world history from us? No problem. But when we try to teach him about the things we know best? Hell no. That’s practically an affront to his dignity.

Then I bought Adventures in Fantasy by John Gust:

Although I actually bought it from Barnes & Noble–the one in the University Village that’s going out of business. (Although maybe you’d rather see a link to Indiebound.) It’s a lesson plan designed to guide a young person through the process of writing a novel.

So far we’ve had lessons on punctuation, showing vs. telling, alliteration, POV, the hero’s journey, metaphor, simile, and a dozen other subjects, all handled in the fun prep work for a fantasy novel. He did written projects, did an oral presentation, (re-)learned vanishing point as he drew an early scene from the book (a drawing he’s very proud of, btw)–all in all, it sounds like a soft assignment, but he’s been doing a lot of work on this project.

And my son, being who he is, wouldn’t have done all those work sheets [1] without having me right beside him doing them at the same time. So yeah, A Blessing of Monsters has been planned in part through these grade school exercises. No, I will not post the drawings I had to do of all the characters. Hell, I don’t even like to talk about plots ahead of time.

Plus, I had to kick over the book’s recommended plot structure before I wrote it. For elementary school kids, the hero/sidekick/mentor format works just fine[2]–it’s excellent, actually–but for me I needed to really change things up.

But finally, after weeks and weeks, we got through all the exercises. Before he sat down to write the first page, we spent a few days watching the LOTR movies, then it was a go.

He’s a funny kid, and he loves funny books. I knew he would be working on a comedy, but I think he’s really nailing it (for his age group, of course). I’m also a little surprised by how rough some of his punctuation can be. He reads all the time, but apparently that doesn’t give him a model to follow.

His goal is a 100 words a day, and I expect him to do a few thousand words before he reaches the end of this novel. The biggest goad to get him to produce is to know that I’m going to do more words that day; he’s actually a bit of a tyrant. “Dad! Less Twitter, more writing.”

After he reaches the end, we’ll do an edit and–surprise surprise–I intend to offer him a penny a word for it and publish it here on my website.

It’s been fun and I think he’s learning a lot. Best investment I made last year.

[1] If you’re thinking of picking up the book, keep in mind that it’s full of worksheets that need to be copied/printed/filled out, and might not be appropriate for your Kindle.

[2] And would probably sell a million copies if I wrote it myself, but I’m not that commercially-minded.

New story, email issues, party party partay!

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My email is being cruel cruel to me, so don’t be surprised if it takes me a while to respond.

Also, I’m going to have a S&S story online very soon, hopefully today.

But first I have to go home and attend my son’s birthday party. It’s not his birthday, but it is his party. The little guy has everything planned out.

Also, I met my small goal today, even though it’s a big goal day. It’s weird; I used to thrive in a sleep-deprived trance. I’d come at my writing in a weird exhausted state when everything felt heavy, and that would help me silence my internal editor.

But over the last year I’ve been trying to get enough sleep as part of my plan to live past 50, so today, one of the first trance-days in months, I feel utterly useless. It’s weird.

Empathy, Stock Art, Eye glasses, Homeschool and Booze

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Let’s start with Empathy. Everyone has been having a laugh at the Forbes writer who put together the “If I was a small black child” column. It was dumb, thoughtless, and actively harmful. Obvs.

But you can rely on Ta Nehisi Coates to talk about this stuff in the best possible way. One, Two. That second link contains links to a pair of Megan McArdle articles that are also invaluable. Excellent reading.

As for me, I was a total goof off in school–smart but continually bored and prone to do stupid stuff to impress my friends (like any teenage boy). There were whole years that went by when pretty much every day I did something that could have gotten me jail time.

And no, I didn’t want to work hard. I wanted to play rpgs, get high, smash stuff, throw a carpet over barbed wire so we could swim at the pool after it closed, etc, etc.

So it’s easy to say: “If I were a…” and then imagine the path you would take to success. It’s much harder to look back at your own self and realize what a lazy screw up you were, and admit that a more difficult environment would have defeated me.

Next is stock art, which is what I need right now. I have a sword and sorcery novelette almost completely ready to publish. All I need at this point is a decent(ish) stock image for the cover. Hard part? Finding something I think is decent.

Anyway, I plan to release this particular story only through my website. Why?

Let’s move on to “Eye glasses.” My son needs them. Not just one pair, either. He needs a reading pair and a non-reading pair. Add to that the sad fact that my landlord mailed me a little something–no, it wasn’t a Christmas card. It was a notice of rent increase.

Yay! Rent increase notice right before the holiday (but not so soon before that we could budget it into our spending.

It’s not a big increase and our rent is already very reasonable. It’s just hard timing and I hope enough people will want to buy this short story that we can cushion this blow. More about the story later.

Next: you know how public school teachers will sometimes show movies in class? Guess what! His homeschool family has found an excuse for the extended editions of LOTR! Starting tonight. More on that later, too.

Finally, booze. I just bought the smallest non-airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniels I could get. Why? Well, I don’t drink like I used to (what with the kid-having and the belly-reducing and all) but I do love egg nog. LURRRVE egg nog. And it just doesn’t seem right without a little bourbon.

Plus, I couldn’t resist that cheap German spiced wine. I actually bought two bottles of it. You know the one I mean? You warm it on the stove and drink it until you’re loopy? I don’t care if it’s crap. I love it. And did I mention I only bought two bottles? That’s some self-control right there. (Tangentially related, the store only had two bottles left).

And that’s all for today. I was supposed to write 2500 words on A Blessing of Monsters today, but after all those revisions I only managed 1500. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow.

New site bookstore, and other things

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1. The plugin I was using to sell Twenty Palaces directly from my website wasn’t working correctly, so I’ve switched to something else. This new thing is quite complicated, almost like getting an iPhone just so you can tell the time, but I hope soon to have more fiction to sell from my site, so here it is.

The only problem is that I can’t make the PayPal Sandbox work so I can’t test drive the whole thing first. It’s annoying, but if someone wants to buy Twenty Palaces through the site, would you let me know how it goes? I assume I’ll hear from people who have problems, but… you know. It’d be nice to be sure all this works. (Added later: It doesn’t.)

2. [Deleted]

3. I have the first eight(ish) chapters of A Blessing of Monsters ready to send to my agent. My wife is reading them first to catch anything deeply stupid (not that… ahem… there’s anything… oh hell). She’s not what you’d call a fan of epic fantasy, but she’s giving it a go anyway.

4. And having the new book is helping me deal with self-publishing Twenty Palaces. I can’t say I’m pleased to be releasing it this way. Yeah, I’m glad readers who love the series get this story, too, but it also makes me mourn a bit more.

Which is why it’s good to have something fun and cool to work on.

5. If I can get decent cover art together, I’m going to add short fiction to my online bookstore. Assuming the bookstore is any good.

6. And yes, I’m up late. My son is having a bit of trouble getting to sleep.

Twenty Palaces update

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Sales through the website have continued, and I’m grateful to everyone who has bought a copy from me. At this point, as soon as I see the payment notification from PayPal, I’m emailing the file to the reader. I’m sorry that there’s that delay, but I will do my best to get it to you as soon as possible.

 

Also, by this point, everyone who has purchased a copy of the book should have received one. If not, please let me know. I’ll do my best to fix it quickly.

One more thing: if you bought and read Twenty Palaces, would you consider reviewing it, please? I would appreciate the help.

Today I have to get the hell out of the house and work on A Blessing of Monsters. What with the plugin/direct sales ordeal and the holiday, I haven’t worked on it since Tuesday. That’s bad. So I’m going to run some errands, have more pie for breakfast, and sneak out to the Starbucks and the library so I can make a few words. Wish me luck.

Just passed the 20K mark on A Blessing of Monsters

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Remember when I said this epic fantasy was definitely going to be complete in one book?

Er…

I’m going to have to slow forward progress on it while I revise the opening chapters and work up a pitch for my agent. Hopefully she’ll be happy with it and this new book by “George R.R. Martini” will be available sometime in 2013. God, I hope so.

Meanwhile, I have to go back and add more setting. I also need to change one of the viewpoint characters, who is not the sneaky trickster I wanted her to be.

Also, let me ask a question: Why is NaNoWriMo in November? Is it because the “No” in “Novel” matches the “No” in “November”? Because it’s hugely inconvenient, especially for folks in my country. Thanksgiving falls right into the end of the month, which is a time-consuming, exhausting, complicated holiday, and it also marks the start of the Christmas season.

Why doesn’t it run in January instead? Most of the big holidays are done and people are all jazzed about new beginnings and resolutions. Besides, the solstice will have passed and we’d be enjoying longer and longer days.

Anyway, for those who are taking part, remember, there is no rule but this one: “Be interesting.”

OMG, I suddenly understand Wolverine’s hair

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And The Beast’s hair, too. Here’s a picture of Hank McCoy, aka, The Beast:

BEAST

Those are trunks, not underwear. You know, like wrestlers wear.

Here’s a picture of Hugh Jackman done up as Logan/Wolverine:

Wolverine hair!

(I gotta get me one of those man-watches.)

Both of those guys have pointed hair on the sides of their heads, and as I’m developing a sort of “ape/monster” for the book I’m writing, I suddenly had to ask myself something unexpected: what sort of ears do these creatures have?

If they’re more primate-like, they’ll have round ears on the sides of their heads. If they stand up from the top of their heads, they’ll be more like a bear’s or a wolf’s. More human/less human.

And maybe this makes me an idiot for not realizing this before, but Wolverine’s and Beast’s hair are designed to let them have human ears while suggesting a non-human head shape.

Anyway, it’s something to think about (when I ought to be writing).

Why does realism matter?

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Something annoying: The author of this io9 article about a panel discussion on fantasy highlights a Lev Grossman quote, then goes nowhere with it. Here’s the quote:

“Why does realism matter?”

Simple, isn’t it? and nice.

But it’s true. Why is realistic fiction useful? If I want to understand the horrors of war, the pain of divorce, the disappointment of seeing a business fail, I don’t need to read fiction. There’s non-fiction on that very subject. I could read the real thing not a fake version made up by someone.

So forget about justifying the utility of fantasy. How do people justify the utility of realism?

Let me answer my own question: Because it’s beautiful. Because it’s powerful and affecting and we love it.

And that’s no different from fantasy. We’re comparing best to best, right? We’re not comparing the best examples of one genre to the worst of the other, right?

The best fantasy is powerful, affecting, and beautiful. (Maybe that should be “and/or” because sometimes the powerful and affecting parts are not at all beautiful.) It’s not all that different from other kinds of fiction. Sure, it contains elements that the author made up, but all authors make things up. Novelists aren’t trying to write non-fiction, and I don’t see any reason to force fantasy to justify it’s utility in ways that other genres don’t have to.

“Why does realism matter?” Because we long for it, the same way we do for fantasy.

In unrelated news, I broke the 9K mark on my epic fantasy, and the world is still collapsing around my main characters. In fact, there’s more collapsing to go. Fun! But I’ve already started worrying about how long the book is going to go (which is dumb but I’m a worrier).