ROW80 Check In - And Talking To Myself

Here's my Round Of Words in 80 Days Wednesday Check-In:

Sunday Day 14 - 125 minutes. Stayed up much later than I meant to, but I got a lot more done. Too tired to deal with the emotional texture of the sign-off of Chapter 17, though. But it may be less tricky than I thought.

Monday Day 15 - 61 minutes. ...but I enjoyed every minute of what I wrote. Chapter 17 is now whole and satisfying. I was really suffering from sleep deprivation Monday. I got to bed after 3am the night before, and had sinus problems which disrupted my sleep in the morning. I somehow managed to not do any work at all until nearly midnight.

It took a lot longer to get through Chapter 17 than I expected, but I think part of the reason I was struggling before is because I was compressing too far. Taking my time with it, making multiple runs, is working out really well for the tricky emotional texture.

I also found it very helpful to let the characters be wise. It can be fun to let the audience get ahead of the characters -- to let the characters be clueless about themselves. But it's often overdone, sometimes to the point of being automatic. It can get the characters, the audience and the writer in a rut. I find, very often, the solution to being in a rut is to let the characters get you out. Let them be wise and clever and deal with it for themselves. I'm going to talk about this in a lot more detail later.

Tuesday Day 16 - 61 minutes (again). I played around with scenes at random from the end. Knitted together a few things. I realize one other thing that will give me a certain amount of trouble is the last chapter -- "The Detectives sit around and explain it all to each other" scene. I think I've got a good set up so I don't have to explain too much, but maybe it's time to nail that down, so I know what I need to firm up or set up. Christie is a great model for this, and I've read a bunch of Christies lately.

In the meantime....

A conversation between Me, Myself and my Brain for your delight and edification:

Me: I guess I'll just start my routine with a little random proofreading.

Myself (scandalized): No, no, no! You need to get to the scene in Chapter 18. You can't write the follow up scene until you've done that. You need to do that NOW.

Me: Oh, all right. Brain? Can you give me a hand with Chapter 18--

Brain: Eeek! I'm not ready. Avoid! Avoid!

(Brain dives into the closet.)

Me (to Myself): See?

Myself: Brain is just being lazy.

Me: Then you try telling him what to do.

Myself: We're not on speaking terms since the Chapter 14 debacle.

Me: I can lure him out with proof reading.

Myself: But that's such a waste! You're gonna change it so why proof it? How do you even know you're not going to cut that scene?

Me: Oh, Brain? Are we going to cut the scene in Chapter 9?

Brain (sobbing and rocking): ...Not ready, not ready. Nope, not ready, not ready, not ready....

Me: If Brain can't handle that, he's not going to handle anything else. There's no point in writing at all, so we might as well--

Myself: We could do research instead!

Brain (perks up): Research! Did I hear somebody say research!

Me: No, Brain, proofreading!

(Brain comes out of the closet wags tail.)

Me: Good, Brain. Good good, Brain.

Brain: Hey there's a "hte" but it doesn't count because spell check would have got it. Oh, but you left out "can" in that sentence. Score! Oh, look! You wrote "theire" when you meant "they're" -- that's a double score! Typo AND wrong word! (pauses to think) Hey, you think we should cut this scene in Chapter 9? I bet we could make this work without it....

The big issue, though, is that Mr. Brain has been working very hard and is tired and cranky. I often slack off on Wednesday anyway (it's my long day at work), but I think I'm going to schedule it as completely off except for one thing: update the reading copy on the Kindle.

See you in the funny papers.

Daring Novelist's Greatest Hits

On Thursday this blog will be two years old. I thought, by way of celebration, I would review the top posts and maybe post some links.

Blogger's built in stats started nine-months after I started this blog, so the Top All Time Posts (in terms of visits) don't really reflect "all time." So I also went back and looked at Feedburner's stats to see about adding a few earlier posts.

Books Are Not Commodities! They're...Pastrami On Rye!
(a look at why we don't have to worry about the "race to the bottom" on ebook pricing)

How Readers Find Books (These Days)
(part of a multipart series on how Google and algorithms have changed publishing -- and why writers should worry less about marketing and more about writing)

Dialog Tags - "Fear Them Not," Said She.
(a little common sense on the irrational fear of the word "said")

eBook Experiment Update - Better Than A Poke With A Sharp Stick
(a look at my less than stellar success at self-publishing, and where I decided to go from there)

Novella, Novelette, Page-Count and Word-Count
(how to measure the length of an ebook, and also clear defitions of novella and novelette)

On Hatchlings and Neo-Pros -- When Is A Writer "Good Enough"?
(a look at dealing with criticism as a young writer, and how it's often accurate but not helpful, and how you'll find your answers eventually yourself)

Story Notes for "Balancing Act"
(Notes about the writing a frivolous little romantic flash fiction story -- this was the top "click through" on my RSS feed -- I would not have guessed this was a top post, but the clicks don't lie)

Volume vs. Quality - A False Dichotomy
(saying "I prefer quality over quantity" is an excuse, and a poor one - you can' t have one without the other - but we also need to learn to pace ourselves)

My Live Real Choices, Beat-by-Beat, As I Write
(I was surprised this one was popular too: a log of my decision-making process in plotting a couple of scenes. It feels self-involved to me, but it was fun to write, and I may continue the series later on)

Turning Expectation into Anticipation
(a look at suspense theory, and Alfred Hitchcock)

I'll be back on Wednesday with the "A Round of Words In 80 Days Challenge" update.

See you in the funny papers.

Week in Review/Preview - ROW80 Update

This week is my blog-iversary!

It will be two years, as of Thursday, since I started this ongoing novel dare that is my blog.

So in celebration, I am, uh, cutting back on posting. Well, you know I got to get this novel done. So for the next two weeks I'll only post four days a week -- the Sun/Wed ROW80 update posts, and Mondays and Thursdays will be regular thinky-type posts. (And Mondays will not be reserved just for covers because of this.)

• Monday: The Daring Novelist's Greatest Hits -- plus some forgotten favorites too.
• Wednesday: ROW80 check-in (plus musings on the struggles of meeting goals, etc.)
• Thursday: Blogiversary! A look back at the first two years of this blog (this might end up broken up into two -- in which case I'll post one on Friday as well.)

A Round of Words In Eighty Days Update

Wednesday Day 10 - 0 minutes. Wednesdays are my long days and I get home late. And it marked the end of a long week of disrupted schedules, and such. It will always be a low productivity day. The other thing that worked against me is that I've reached the point where I have to stop the read-thru. I try to get to the point where Wednesdays can be proofing or editing days, but I was not at that point alas.

Thursday Day 11 - 107 minutes. Today was a brilliantly spiffy day. I went into my work session with a blank mind. Ready to just jump in and work on whatever presented itself to me. There is a major event at midbook -- and I have all the pieces, but they only fit together... adequately. I had a little filing to do here and there. I'd tried a few major shuffles before, but today I snagged onto the right undercurrent, the "emotional trajectory" as it were, and with a few minor adjustments, I am ready to pound to fit!

Friday Day 12 - 102 minutes. Busy day at work, had to spend a lot of time unwinding. I set a mini-goal of setting myself up for a good day on Saturday -- i.e. getting lots of edits and material in place and creating a new reading draft for the Kindle.

Saturday Day 13 - 123 minutes. Made it! Just barely. I had a full day of errands and shopping, AND I had to stop by to Occupy Lansing for a while. Also make cookies for the permanent occupiers. (To be delivered Sunday, as it was late before I got the first batch done, and I suspect I need more than one batch.)

I'm working on the hardest part of the book really (have been for the whole dare) where the B Story overtakes the A Story. I realize now that part of what I've been doing all this time is using my layering technique. Writing for one element, then writing for another, and then working them together. This is just a really big, complicated version of that.

I would like to do a clip, but there are some twists and turns, and I want to choose carefully for fear of spoilers.

See you in the funny papers.

Only Rule: Pay Attention

An awful lot of writing rules aren't really rules at all.

For instance, very often one of the first "style" rules we learned about writing was to not repeat words. That was the very first writing advice I ever got. My dad was reading over a book report, and he suggested that I not use the word "she" quite so much in a particular paragraph.

It's really the same rule as the one where people go through and try to eliminate the word "said" entirely.

But here's the thing: those ain't rules. They don't automatically improve your writing. As a matter of fact, often the very best writing uses repetitions and rhythm to create additional meaning.

So if they're not rules, what are they? What is just about every "rule" in writing?

They're tools for seeing. For noticing what you're actually doing. They act like a grid, or magnifying glass or ruler. They point things out to you, but they aren't meant to rule what you do. Blindly cutting or changing words is no better than blindly putting them in.

The real rule is Pay Attention.

Be, as Miss Marple is sometimes described, a noticing type of person. Notice what you're doing and be deliberate about your choices.

See you in the funny papers.

A Rambling Post About Nothing

I was supposed to write this post about Coverage and Critique for tonight. Heck, I was supposed to do it last week. I've mostly got it written.

But I'm not posting it, because it's boring me.

It isn't a problem with the subject so much as my mind is wrapped up in the story right now. And the blog is suffering for that.

Which is good because that was a part of the plan.

Don't ask which plan, I don't remember which one and I'm not going to look it up. It was in one of those grandiose posts about where I'm going and what I'm doing with my career. And I remember distinctly (or maybe indistinctly -- I'm a bit fuzz-headed tonight) that I said I was going to neglect everything else until I had more writing done. That I'm supposed to be establishing the foundation of my various series, etc.

I'm sure I said I wasn't going to worry about sales (but they dropped off this week!) or about blog stats (which I've been checking every ten minutes), or whether anybody has retweeted me (but if I wrote a better headline for that I bet I could get a retweet), or anything like that. I wasn't going to do that.

Because I don't need a big blog audience or an engaged Twitter following, or to worry about sales, or much of anything else, until I have more books out there. Because, after all, the best promotion for a book --the only real way to improve any of this -- is another book!

Am I mistaken, or isn't that something I've been saying loudly and for a long time?

Maybe I'm getting deaf in my old age and didn't hear it. I guess I should shout louder when I'm talking to myself....

See you in the funny papers.

ROW80 Update - And Getting Past Discouragement

I'm putting my ROW80 Update at the end of this post, because this is more important:

Getting Past Discouragement

I haven't had the chance to read many of the update posts of the other ROW80 participants, but I try to at least browse a few each time I get the chance. I noticed the word "discouragement" came up in a few places. Not a lot, but just enough that I am reminded of my own first efforts at a dare, and the discouragement that comes on young writers generally.

There are two kinds of discouragement.

One is when people get discouraged about not meeting their goals. You sit down and do the math, and you realize you can't reach your ambitions if you don't write 20,000 words a day, and you managed 16. Everybody suffers that one, and there are a million techniques to get past it, so I don't worry about people so much when I hear it. (Joining a group or a challenge like ROW80 is a help on that, btw. You get to hear how everybody else is struggling, and realize it's normal.)

The discouragement that worries me is the one where the writer say:

"I'm discouraged about my writing."
"I don't know if my writing is any good."
"I don't know if I'm any good."

You've got to fight this kind of thinking. This kind of thinking can become a self-fulfilling prophesy, as doubts cause you to betray your muse and write "safe" and mediocre stuff that others tell you to write.

I have three suggestions for people who feel this way:

Revel in your flaws, because they may be your strengths.

Dean Wesley Smith and Nina Kiriki Hoffman used the motto "Dare to be BAD!" as the rallying cry for getting over this kind of discouragement and taking your writing to another level.

Here's the thing: you may be right, you may be doing something wrong. But if you just hide it, you won't get better. So bring whatever it is that you're doing out into the light and indulge in it. Go after it like it's gold, rather than hiding it away. When you're done, one of two things will have happened:

1.) You will have mastered the skills surrounding that flaw when you're done, so you can eliminate it. OR...

2.) You'll find out that what felt embarrassing and discouraging was really something unique and precious, and close to your heart, and by bringing it out and developing it, you will have something more precious than diamonds and chocolate. More precious than diamonds, chocolate AND bacon.

Remember why you're a writer.

Right now, the desire to write the page in front of you might be driven by a need to please someone, or a need to be published, or some external motivation. But once upon a time, something internal drove you to want to make up stories and write them down, and it had nothing to do with what anybody else thought.

You may have read something or seen something or heard something which sparked a story in you. It created a strong emotion -- a thrill, excitement, perhaps even anger -- and an event happened in your head that you wanted to bring to the world.

That's what you're writing for.

You aren't writing to get an A in your class, or to get good reviews, or to make a lot of money. Those things would be nice, but those are negatives in terms of your writing quality. Every single one of those drive you to play it safe and be mediocre and to do as the sports people say "Play not to lose." Ironically, doing what you're supposed to do gets you B grades, moderately positive reviews and maybe a little income.

That's all mediocrity. It's all middle-of-the-road, a million-people-did-it-before.

Some of you who are discouraged may be thinking "But that's exactly it, I worry that I'm mediocre."

Here's the secret: You can't break out of mediocrity by doing things right. You certainly don't get there by listening to doubts. Doubts lead only to mediocrity. That's what mediocrity IS.

You want to break out of mediocrity? Go after the joy, and be arrogant about it. Don't let any criticism get in the way of enthusiasm -- even the criticism that comes from within.

You don't just have to risk failure, you must revel in failure. You must SEEK failure. Because only through failure do you learn and develop -- and ultimately find something unique and new and worth it.

Failure is not optional.

Recruit Cher as your Muse

And if you find yourself getting discouraged anyway, play this very short video:



You might also check out this post from May, "On Hatchlings and Neo-Pros - When is a Writer 'Good Enough?'"



And now for my update: A Round Of Words In Eighty Days -- Second Week - Check in 1.

Sunday Day 7 - 104 Minutes. I sorta took the day off. Went to lunch and a movie, and then did a bunch of editing. Actually, I started a read-thru. I didn't count reading the first 6 or 7 chapters, because I've edited them pretty extensively. I also didn't do any heavy editing once I hit the more raw chapters, because I'm trying to get a sense of pace. The most important thing is that I enjoyed reading it so far. I'm going to continue the read-thru tomorrow until I get bogged down or finish.

Monday Day 8 - 113 Minutes. A ha. Chapter 16 is where the real rough patch begins. I don't want to look at it until I can dig in up to my elbows, so I'm going to skip ahead in the read through tomorrow, and read what I have that's AFTER the mess. In the meantime, I might have got a little more done, but I found myself watching the livestream of "OccupyAtlanta" where the police were getting ready to clear the park. (But at the last minute, the mayor decided not to do it.)

Tuesday Day 9 - 60 minutes. Well, I knew this was going to be a tough beginning to the week. I've also discovered that I have further to go with some of this than I thought... but that's okay. It's just that there is a lot of twisting and turning that I forgot about.

As for the rest of the week.... Wednesday is my day from hell (always) and I don't know what I'll get done. The big issue will be whether I'm needed for extra testing work at the Day Job on Thursday, if not, I hope to do some catching up then.

See you in the funny papers.

Short Stuff - Damon Runyon

I am very very tired, so instead of an extensive post I'm going to give you an excerpt of a short story I read.

It's a Damon Runyon story, and that means it's out of print and not available for Kindle -- but there are used copies of his books around, and I read it in a paperback called The Best of Damon Runyon.

Runyon was great with the twists and punchlines and ironies in his short fiction -- but he's more famous for the fact that he was, like P. G. Wodehouse, a master of voice. His characters -- all small time hoods and crooks and gamblers along Broadway in New York -- spoke with his distinctive, slightly elaborate yet slang-filled patois.

The story I was reading today was "The Snatching of Bookie Bob," which begins like this:

Now it comes on the spring of 1931, after a long hard winter, and times are very tough indeed, what with the stock market going all to pieces, and banks busting right and left, and the law getting very nasty about this and that, and one thing and another, and many citizens of this town are compelled to do the best they can.

There is very little scratch to be had anywhere and along Broadway many citizens are wearing their last year's clothes and have practically nothing to bet on the races or anything else, and it is a condition that will touch anyone's heart.

So I am not surprised to hear rumors of the snatching of certain parties going on in spots, because while snatching is by no means a high-class business, and is even considered somewhat illegal, it is something to tide over the hard times....

And thus begins the story of the snatching of one Bookie Bob, and how it goes not like Harry the Horse thought it would.

And for those who are impatient (and also want something free...) here is a clip from Guys And Dolls which not only has the style and voice, but also a touch of the Runyon sort of twist:



Guys and Dolls was based on a number of Damon Runyon short stories, and the original play was to be awarded a Pulitzer, but because the writer who did the adaptation was on McCarthy's blacklist, they decided not to award a Pulitzer for drama that year rather than give it to a possible Pinko. (So don't ever let it be said that the Blacklist only affected talentless hacks.)

If you like old movies, you might also check out "Lady For A Day" from 1933 (it was remade in the fifties as "Pocket Full of Miracles" with Bette Davis, too).

See you in the funny papers.

Monday Covers: Light and Dark

This week I was jazzed by two covers. Neither of them were adult mysteries, but if I were to see these covers in the mystery section, I'd pick them up in a second.

The Apothecary is a children's book (middle-readers). It has mystery and magic, and it is historical -- but from the 1950s, rather than the Victoran/Edwardian era the title and art evokes.

The artwork here reminds me, indirectly, of Edward Gorey. I haven't decided how. But it sets a mood: dark and imaginative, but with a certain simplicity. It suits a children's book, and IMHO, it really suits a great old-school cozy mystery. A lot of modern cozies do go for this mood.

I was thinking about why I like this sense of simplicity and I finally put my finger on it. Great cozies and great children's books have two things in common: they have moral clarity, but they have a subtly twisted world view which allows for a lot of complexity inside the broad brush strokes of a slightly cartoony world.

The Sisters Brothers has another simplified and moody cover. I love this because it makes great use of pure design. The shapes are all symbol and/or text. The text itself uses modern typographical design -- stacking the words of the title to make a neat box, and then throwing some grunge "distressing" over the top. The characters are each holding a gun, but that hand/gun shape is almost like a typographical symbol of some sort. Their bodies make a big black "M" shape, which works with the two triangles of the nose in the moon/skull behind the. (As well as giving the moon/skull a more skull shape.)

And of course, the heads are the eyes of that moon/skull, complete with hats for eyelids, and their own eyes act as the pupil of the background figure.

The colors -- red, black and off-white -- I just love what they do with so little. The whole thing screams dark crime comedy, and that appears to be exactly what it is. From the description, it sounds like it's darker than I would really enjoy but this cover certainly gets me to look at the description and maybe a sample.

See you in the funny papers.

Week In Review/Preview - ROW First Week

A Round Of Words In Eighty Days

I knew I had a heavy schedule at day job for this half of the week, so my goal was to not lose too much ground. I wanted to hit the 600 minute mark (my weekly goal) a day early -- on Saturday -- so I could line up my week on the Sunday Update posts. And I made it! I made it early enough that I will probably do some work tonight to get started on next week's 600 minutes.

Wednesday Day 3 - 39 minutes! This was my long day at work, so I slacked off a bit on the Dare Goals. But I had an inspiration there, about a tough scene that was coming up -- how to transition from a major turn, to Karla realizing that her books were floofy. (It's a clue.) It pulls the whole sequence together. So I wrote that.

Thursday Day 4 - Oh, crap. Nothing done. Thinking, maybe. And I was SO excited about working on some scenes. But though today was not such a long day, it was an exhausting one, and I have to get up early in the morning. I ended up revamping that post I did for Friday, about Sustainable Anticipation, because it is relevant to what I'm working with right now in the book.

Friday Day 5 - 96 minutes. Whoo hoo! That leaves me within easy striking distance of hitting 600 minutes by the end of the day Saturday. Which allows me to start the next week on Sunday. Worked on Chapter 17, in which Karla realizes she has a naked man in her house... or else a fully clothed man who is dripping wet.

Saturday Day 6 - Exactly 120 minutes, to make for 601 for the week!

This coming week, it's the early part of the week which will be tricky. So now that I've reached 600 minutes, I'm actually going to start next week's goals tonight after midnight. I hope to have all the pieces in place for the tricky section -- up through the end of Chapter 18 -- by the Wednesday update. The rest, I think, will go a LOT faster. I think I'll have an actual coherent draft, from beginning to end, soon.




Comparative Goal Making

I think I know too many hard-driving pros. I'm always surprised when people say that my goals are ambitious or that I'm setting the bar high. I never think I am. I mean, yes, I do always set the to something I'll have to work on to achieve, but they always seem comparatively low. (Compared to, oh, people like Dean Wesley Smith.)

I noticed that a lot of the other participants in this writing challenge (and others) have lower goals. And exactly the kind of good, steady, low, habit-building goals that you would expect.

But here's the thing: I've been writing for a very long time. I've not only formed habits, but I've tweaked them pretty well. I've learned about myself and what I can and can't do. I am disappointed that I can't just shift into gear and do what DWS does, and that I never will for more than a short period of time.

But I also know that where I am is really quite spiffy. And I have an idea of where I can go, and am likely to go under various circumstances.



Coming this week:

• Monday Covers: Lite Darkness, where I look at two covers (not cozy mysteries) which evoke exactly the sort of "lite" darkness that I want to see in a cozy.
• Tuesday Short Form - I'll review some short stories I've been reading. Not sure which ones yet.
• Wednesday - ROW80 Check In - (CHANGE: Instead of more about my goals, I'm going to talk about Reversing Discouragement -- since so many seem to be discouraged lately.)
  
• Thursday - Coverage Vs. Critique
• Friday - One Rule: Pay Attention -- all the other rules boil down to that one.

Food Of The Week -- Chao Two-flavor Pork

I got two little boneless pork steaks -- too much for one stir-fry dish (or a "chao"), so I decided to make two dishes with contrasting flavors. Yum!

First flavor: Mu Shu Pork

I shredded up a quarter of a small cabbage, and and about a quarter of a large onion radially so I had similar long shreds for that. And, of course, cut the first pork steak into shreds as well (easiest to do if it's slightly frozen, unless you have mad knife skills). I normally would have added mushrooms, but alas, the mushrooms went yucky on me a day sooner than expected. Stir-fried up those with some minced garlic and a lot of hoisin sauce.

Second flavor: Cumin Pork

This isn't technically a Sichuan dish, but I've only had similar flavors in Sichuan restaurants. It originally comes from Muslim Chinese areas, and is a lamb dish. But like other lamb dishes, it's really tasty with pork.

I cut the second chop in cubes, and stuck it in a ziploc bag with some Sichuan red oil, minced garlic, a couple dashes of cumin and oregano, and a dash of soy sauce and dry sherry. I would have added ginger, but I didn't have any. I diced half a large sweet red pepper, and another quarter of a large sweet onion. Then I chao-ed the meat (with maybe one more dash of cumin, and some Sriracha hot sauce) and added the veggies when most of the pink was gone.

I did this all while watching Campion on my computer in the kitchen. (Amazon Prime gives you free access to some nice streaming choices.)

This all made me happy. Perhaps that's why I had great success at writing that day....

See you in the funny papers.

Sustainable Anticipation -- Castle, Costello, Brewsters, and Me.

I watched the season premiere of Castle a couple weeks go, and found myself frustrated at something that TV shows do all the time these days: they build tension on some element (in this case, the romantic tension) until they really need to let it snap... but then, golly, the producers chicken out and decide to keep things exactly the same -- so they don't let it snap at all. They just stall.

And at first that's okay. It builds more tension, but after a while it just gets dull. The problem here is that they're making a promise. I've talked about promises before. You have to pay off on them. If you don't, then you betray your audience, and they stop trusting you to pay off, and that makes the tension go away. Then the whole thing gets dull.

So shows like Castle have a problem. The networks are right that people do tune in because of the romantic tension, but the thing that keeps them tuning in is the promise that the situation will change. So how do you change and stay the same too?

With Castle, unfortunately, they went with making bigger and more serious promises in a cliffhanger ending for last season. Like Bullwinkle "This time for SURE!" ... and then backed off and set things back to how they were. To be honest, it would have been better if they had not ramped up the tension in the cliffhanger at all. Just went with the simmer below the surface.

And yet, an awful lot of great comedies use sustained high tension all the time. What makes some kinds of tension more sustainable than others?

I think the problem here is the source of the tension. So let's take a look at some successful comedy which depends on ever-repeating, ever-increasing tension, and how it works.

For instance, no matter how hard Costello tries to get Abbott to explain who is on first, no matter how creative he gets, he will never get anywhere. (If you've never heard the original of the famous Abbott and Costello "Who's On First" radio routine, please watch the video below.)






The thing that drives the joy here is that we are not looking forward to when Costello finds out that Who is the name of the guy on first. We don't really care whether he finds out. What we're enjoying is seeing just how persistently Abbott can manage to keep him in the dark.

Another example would be Arsenic and Old Lace, a classic film I rewatched the same week as the Castle premiere. This is a film with a situation -- a dangerously, but delightfully, insane family -- which obviously must change. Society cannot countenance things like, you know, murder. And yet, no matter how hard reality tries to make a dent in the insanity, it never quite can. The Brewsters are an immovable object, and reality is simply not a fully irresistible force.

But a part of the tension here is that we like the Brewsters. (Except for Jonathan who is truly evil.) We want to see them persist and thrive and be happy -- to stay just as they are. We just don't want to see any innocent people get hurt.

And all the way through the movie we see, over and over again, innocent people are nearly killed (but then saved) the Brewsters are nearly caught (but not quite) and Jonathan nearly does horrific things (but is thwarted). And that's exactly how we want it.

So the tension ramps up each time over things we don't want to happen, and every time we're rewarded by them not happening. A new threat, a worse threat, will arise, and we don't know how they're going to get out of it this time, but... PHEW! Saved again!

Sustainable tension comes not from teasing us with things we hope for, but from fear of losing something we like.

The problem for a show like Castle is that it's teasing us with a hope for change. We want to see these two people get together. All the force of nature wants them together. The tension is unsustainable because we never get what we want, or what the characters want or what anybody wants. There is pleasure in the teasing promise, but it can't last forever. You have to pay off on it.

Now, Castle doesn't do a terrible job at this - there is progress of a sort, and though the premiere threw the promise of last season under the bus, there was a twist at the end of this episode promising a more interesting direction after all. I'm not dissatisfied, but I am at the end of my patience, and I don't want to see same old, same old, unless they give up altogether on the teasing the audience. (That is, I'm fine with the chemistry as is, so if they were to stop building big tension on it, and just let it be an "almost" relationship at status quo, fine. But that's not how they've built the show.)

Now... to my own issues as a writer.

A good, long-standing mystery series, imho, is one that makes a promise of a great status quo. You may have temporary tensions of all kinds, but what kind of situation can make two promises: that it will always be like this, and that it will also always be interesting?

I think I have found my status quo - and the built in repeatable threat to it - in the WIP. The issue is that George himself is a character desperately in search of a status quo. He needs it. But he's also a catalyst -- a force which prevents things around him from ever completely settling down.

Here's a quote from a scene I just edited:

George: I did not set the cat among the pigeons.
Co-worker: George, you ARE the cat among the pigeons. That's why Eva calls you.

George is an irresistible force, bowling down everything around him and wishing everything wouldn't fall apart on him. He needs that Zen pond of water which cannot be destroyed; water reacts to the forces acting on it, and then slips right back to how it was. And he finds that in Potewa county and in Karla.

So that, I think, is the dynamic -- the rubber band -- in the story. Karla persists, like water. She is the unflappable status quo, and George is the cat among the pigeons.

But I didn't realize that at first, so that element might not be as strong in this book as it could be -- but I don't see that as a flaw. It's there, and there's room to grow with it. Plus there are some fun scenes and details I was going to edit out because they seemed to be there to entertain me, but I realize they are about that dynamic.

And all in all, I am looking forward to this season's Castle. I'll betcha they can pay off on their promises. They're just teasing me with these indications that they won't.

See you in the funny papers.

Steve Jobs: Rest Different

By now I'm sure you've heard that Steve Jobs died today.

Not many people really understood what Steve Jobs did for this world, and how he did it. They think it has to do only with Apple, and Macintosh and iPhone. They think Mac fans overlooked his flaws in adoration of his cool products.

But that ain't it.

You have to look at his flaws to understand how much more he did than foster the invention of the iPhone. It's the stuff he did that people hate which has brought us to where we are. It was in the fact that he not only built his company (and a few others) but that he saw what he wanted for the world, and he had the arrogance to make the world follow.

Somebody else invented WYSIWYG, and computer mice, and telecommunications, and the web and MPEG-4 and MP3 and even the iPod. The raw material, the inventions, all of it were out there. Jobs saw the potential, and it wasn't enough for him to just move his own company forward. He forced the hand of his competitors again and again.

Even those who refuse to ever touch an Apple product have benefited from this. It's why we have Windows and Android and other kinds of mp3 players in the advanced state they are in. Heck, it's why we have Kindle and Nook.

So I'll just end with the quote from Apple's "Think Different" campaign, becuase I think it's really suitable as a eulogy:

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Steve Jobs never doubted he could change the world, and by golly he did.

See you in the funny papers.

ROW80 Update - And My Writing Tools

This is the first update for The Round of Words in 80 Days Challenge (in which we are required to post Wednesdays and Sundays). The story so far:

Sunday, Day 0: Planned to do some organizing of notes and other things to prepare, but ended up just getting some blogging done ahead of time. Had a vision about how cool it would be if I really got off to a really really great start with bazillions of words and minutes on Monday and Tuesday.

Just a note about what I'm doing: Here's my Goals Page. Also, most of this book is done. I have 82000 words, and I don't think it will be more than 90k when it's done. However the middle is a mess. This is a comedy mystery and both of these require extremely tight timing and such. (At least the way I like them.) And I tried a couple different versions (which you can read about here).

So Chapters 12-19 were a major mess. And 12 was the nightmare -- and it's done. Which has cleared the way for the rest. Now, the New Challenge Begins, we shall see how quickly we can actually get this done, hmmm?

Monday Day 1: 158 minutes! Woo hoo! I was hoping for a little better, but that's still over the 90 minutes I have set for an average day. I got momentum up by going back over Chapter 14, then made a run at the multiple versions of Chapter 15 and straightened all that out. I got a little bit of prep work done for Chapter 16 -- but that's going to be harder. It's partly new and partly old. And I have to decide Tuesday, once and for all, whether Rosie takes part in it all. Unless I chicken out and skip to Chapter 17 (which is also a mess, but it's a good mess.)

Tuesday Day 2: 188 minutes! While I was hoping for 200, it's still over double the daily average -- which will be necessary, because Wednesday through Friday are going to be hectic at the day job.

In Today's efforts, I dug deep and did some tough but fruitful work. I didn't get as far as I wanted, but I like what I did. (And Karla took the bit in her teeth and when she was introduced to Zero, she blurted out "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" Which, frankly, has stymied both me and him for an appropriate reaction.)

We'll see how it goes from here. The next update will be on Sunday.

In the meantime, here's a post about the tools I've been using to help me with this dare....


Shovels and Rakes and Implements of Destruction
or, My Writing Tool Chest

We all have our favorite pen, or notepad or even our favorite writing application on computer.

I myself am prone to gadgets. Always have been. I can't afford to buy lots of them, but somehow I manage to acquire them anyway -- some new, some used, some hand-me-down. Gifts.

Over the years I've put together a set of gadgets which seem to suit my writing style, and they have been particularly helpful in my writing dare efforts. Keep in mind that 1) I like to get out of the house for at least one writing session a day, 2) I don't like to take my laptop, and 3) I don't like typing long passages from scraps of paper any more.

So here is my Portable Writing Kit:

Ancient Asus Eeee netbook:

It's little enough to port around in a large purse but has a keyboard big enough for my typing. In a pinch, its wifi will work -- but unless I'm traveling out of town, I don't use it. I use this puppy for one thing only: typing. It has an SD card slot, and so does my home computer! Hallelujah! The return of the floppy disk!

So I write raw material on the Eee, and transfer it easily to the hard drive when I get home.

The one problem with using the Asus is organization: I do not believe in keeping more than one "current" copy of the manuscript - the rest are all backups. I don't like to even OPEN a back up copy, because I'll accidentally start editing on it, and then I end up with multiple versions of the manuscript. What I need is a read-only reference copy for when I'm on the road.

Which brings me to....

Kindle

Every couple of days I create a reference copy of the manuscript and put it in the Kindle. Easy peasy, and I don't have to worry about editing it, because even the annotation feature is such an incredible pain in the tuchis that I hate doing it.

(I am experimenting with using annotations for marking those last few typos, by marking them in Gutenberg books. Typing, as I said, is a pain, so when I find an error, I type one letter, and save that as an annotation. I haven't gone back to make use of those annotations yet, so the usefulness of his is To Be Determined.)

The other thing I do is put my writing "to do list" on the Kindle, so that I have a reference without creating too much more paper litter.

Paper litter is beloved of my middle cat, Maude, but she need not worry, I create plenty of that...

Steno Book

I used to write EVERYTHING in steno books, and I bought them in bulk. I use them for non-linear outlining and note taking and brainstorming. They're also useful for quick notes when I don't have time to pull out the netbook and wait for it to boot up and then wait for the app to boot up. Steno books also never run out of battery power.

But lately I've found a way to edit while I'm away from home -- even with my "the only REAL copy of the manuscript is the one on my harddrive" policy. I do not edit on my netbook. Never nohow noway.

So, instead, I read the current manuscript on my Kindle, and I write notes in my steno book. Those notes might be anything from "hte = the" to a rewritten paragraph, to a reminder to lay a clue in a particular scene, or to double-check the spelling of a name.

Because I'm not actually editing (i.e. making changes in the manuscript) this is a creatively painless process. Really easy to do. I do not have to make decisions, I just have to take detailed notes.

Then later on, I sit at the computer with the notes and type them in -- and that goes quickly and painlessly too, because while I was taking those notes I actually did make all the decisions, even if I didn't have to. I just have to implement them. Plus, in this two pass process, it goes fast -- but it's as good as two full writing passes as I review the notes as I go.

iPod Touch

I use my touch as a PDA more than anything. I call it my "brain," and its main job is calculating how the bill will be split up in restaurants. And like my old PDAs, it was my main ebook reader before a friend bought me a Kindle. And I still use it to read while waiting in line somewhere. But it's not much of a writing tool. The screen is too small.

However, the other thing I use it for is a pocket watch and clock, and that brings us to the new cool use I've found for it....

I'm measuring my Dare progress in minutes, and that makes the Touch my favorite writing tool of all time. It has a stopwatch built into the alarm clock! And when I hit "stop" and turn it off, it holds the time for as long as I want. So I can just accumulate minutes all day long -- measured to the microsecond.

The only problem (and this is a problem with a time-based dare no matter how you measure it) is that I sometimes forget to turn it on when I start. But because it's a spiffy gadget, I forget it less than I used to forget to look at the clock.

Other stuff:

I have used 3x5 cards and postit notes for outlining. I don't use them most of the time -- they're too much trouble -- but now and then when I have a knotty problem, I like to work with them as physical objects.

A set of Happy Meal Toys (the Disney ones in particular) for staging complicated scenes. Again, not something I do all the time, but knotty problems with too many characters finds these a wonderful tool.

Job Jar: this I've never used for writing, but it really appeals to me. I'd like to use it as a randomization tool of some sort. Instead of filling it with tasks, I'd fill it with brainstorming questions -- even generic things like "Why?" Or with adjectives or other loaded words. Then, whenever you get stuck, or if you want to start a brain storming session, you reach in and grab one or two cards, and let it inspire.

Pens and Pencils: I never use good pens any more because you can never get proper refills for them. (I don't like fountain pens -- but if I did, those would be easier, of course.) Instead I use mechanical pencils. I collect them, I love them.

Some people like simplicity, but I find that the right tool doing the right job is a joy.

See you in the funny papers.

Finding New Short Fiction -- Author Blogs

Last week I recommended some specific authors and stories and collections. They were almost all classics, and nearly all to be found in traditional permanent book form.

This week I wanted to give you an overview of places to find new fiction, but the subject is really too broad, and I'm trying to get a book done, so I'm just going to tell you about one small corner. Well, not such a small corner, really. It's actually huge and difuse.

Author blogs.

There are a lot of magazines on the web -- both formal print magazines and small webzines -- but one of the more interesting places to find short fiction is on author websites.

What I like about blogs is that they're like magazines or newspapers. I read them for the regular non-fiction content, and when a story pops up -- especially if it's a flash fiction -- I just naturally read it without even thinking about it. With longer stories, I usually want to set aside time to read it properly, and that time never does come. Of course, sometimes you get lured into reading a longer story without even thinking about it....

This is all just beginning, and I have barely started finding these sites myself, so I'm not going to try to give yo a "best of" -- I'm just going to tell you a few sites I've found. (And I'll continue to do so every Tuesday.)

Dean Wesley Smith

I've mentioned elsewhere that Dean Wesley Smith is in the middle of a short story writing challenge, and he's publishing stories on his website as he finishes them. Each story expires when the next one is put up, however, so you have to read regularly to catch them all. The stories are off-the-cuff and sometimes quite odd-ball. (For a while he was holding back stories which were suited for commercial publication, but he's behind on the challenge, so some of those are also creeping onto the roster.)

Kris Rusch

Kris (who happens to be married to Dean) is an award winning author/editor who also writes like a fiend, and she puts up a story on most Mondays on her blog Kris Writes, and also does a book excerpt once a month.

Morgen Bailey

Morgen Bailey's author site has started doing "Flash Fiction Fridays." These are not her own stories, but those of people who submit.

Karen Wojcik Berner

Karen's Bibliophilic Blather page also does flash fiction on Fridays, also stories submitted by other authors. She usually has a theme, but has some open periods too.

And there are so many others, and many who will start in the future. Keep your eye on your favorite author's blogs.

Tomorrow I report the progress on my Round of Words in 80 Days effort.

See you in the funny papers.

Monday Covers: Evocative Images and Little Text

For these "Monday Cover" posts, I sometimes just browse through the Shelf Awareness newsletter for the more attractive or interesting cover in the bunch. This time, while I saw a couple of good nonfiction covers, I almost despaired of finding anything interesting in the fiction area....

Until I got down to the paid "advertioral" section. There at the very bottom, was this evocative cover for When The Dust Finally Settles.

The first thing that strikes me is the fact that it's both dark, and vibrant. The colors are all secondary colors, all blended, but still highly saturated: green, red-violet, yellow-orange. That alone evokes a muted intensity, something under the surface. The buildings and details up at the top are crowded, and yet lonely in the fact that there is a field between us and those buildings. It's lush with green, but feels barren in the stark, unidentifiable rows. (It could be rows of moss for all we can tell.)

Little (or No) Text

Here is something for the e-publishers to think about: We all talk about how we have to have a legible cover in thumbnail; use big fonts so you can see the title and author.

And yet, note also that the title here is small.

But Seth Godin has pointed out that with an ebook it doesn't really matter. It's not an actual physical cover -- it's a "product image" which goes next to the title on the page. He's leaving text off his ebook covers altogether now, and just going with an image.

I'm not sure I agree with him. The problem with leaving all text off the cover is that it confuses the issue. It's supposed to be a picture of the product. If the product is a book, well, a book has text on the cover. (This is why ebook-only publishers sometimes put little blurbs in tiny illegible text on ebooks covers -- to make them look like paperbacks) . A picture without text confuses the reader as to what they're getting. Is it a print or painting? Or are they getting the item depicted? If you write a book about a clown, the customer can't tell at a glance whether they are getting a clown costume, or a DVD of a clown's performance, or what.

That's why proportions are important as well. Last week, when I went looking for links for those short story recommendations, I kept coming across video and audio adaptations and spin-offs. In some cases it was hard to find the original book. The only thing that helped was that the CDs and DVDs and such were all different dimensions.

Right now, it's great to use the freedom we have to deviate from the norm... but we're still trying to communicate here. What will a "book" look like when there are no more physical books? I have a feeling we'll still be using some of these unnecessary elements as a cultural signal.

Evoking Other Books, Evoking A Genre.

The other thing I wanted to talk about with this cover is what it evokes intellectually.

The book is described thusly: "Narrated in part by a ghost, When the Dust Finally Settles is a novel focused on land, loyalty, and Southern racial politics in 1968."

I'm not a big fan of the Southern Gothic, but I am fond of its cousin, a genre you could call "Northern Noir." Things like the movie Fargo, and also like Archer Mayor's police procedural novels about a team of detectives in Vermont.

And that cover above immediately reminded me of a set of the older covers from the Mayor series:


I always really really loved these covers. I wanted to collect the whole set of Mayor's books with them. But alas they changed the style, and the later books never saw a cover like these.

The cover of When The Dust Finally Settles evokes the same feeling via the saturated colors and the countryside subject matter. The use of pattern within rows. The colors here are brighter and closer to primary colors, but there's a lot more black to mute them.

The other element that draws these covers together is the primitive style. The Mayor books are woodcuts, the one up top has the odd off-set proportions of a an American primitive painter. They both evoke the folk art of a deep-rooted culture.

Will I buy that book up top? Probably not. Like I said, it doesn't sound like it's quite my cuppa. Nothing against it, though, and that cover DID put it on my radar in a positive way. I'll grab a sample, and even if I never get around to reading that, the author and book will be in my mind when I hear about them another time.

See you in the funny papers.

Week In Review/Preview - Drinking Koolaid, Kindle Fire and Funny Floppies

Just 24 Hours before I start the next dare!

The Round Of Words In 80 Days Challenge begins Monday. Am I ready? As ready as I will ever be. I am glad I took the last week and a half off. I am back to battling the cold, and the cluster-(bleep) at the day job involving the new computer order has continued to get bleepier as drop-dead dates zoom past, and we have less and less time to resolve unresolvable problems. (Just a usual fall semester....)

I am, however, very much looking forward to the new dare. The Goals are posted Here. The rules demand an update on Sundays and Wednesdays, so those days will be devoted to that here on this blog, although I will often include a related post about productivity or something, especially on Wednesdays. (Since weekends are the "review/preview.") For instance, this Wednesday I will be talking about how I use my excess of writing gadgets and tools in the maintenance of this dare.



Drinking the Koolaid?

I love Janet Reid, a funny and generous agent who maintains a couple of great blogs (including The Query Shark). Recently, though, she pissed off a bunch of writers by making a comment about how writers shouldn't "drink the Koolaid" of self-publishing.

I actually sympathize with her feeling that indie publishing is kinda like a cult. Sure people get excited and make mistakes, and maybe follow advice a little too slavishly. But I agree with those who think she got the wrong end of the stick on this "drinking the Koolaid" metaphor.

Here's the thing: drinking the Koolaid isn't about getting excited and making mistakes. Excitement and mistakes are GOOD and NECESSARY things. Drinking the Koolaid doesn't happen at the start of something new, it happens at the end -- when the system is teetering and there is no reason to continue to support it, but you do something self-destructive out of loyalty.

Right now, self-publishing isn't going to do anybody any harm at all. Zero harm. It may not do you good -- other than be a learning experience -- but it won't do harm. Signing a publishing contract right now, on the other hand, could do you a lot of harm. Signing a contract is a commitment. And right now, the contracts are crazy, and really force a huge commitment on the writer. Same with agency contracts.

Look, the industry is changing. Everybody is flying blind. You don't want to make commitments right now. You don't want to lock up your rights. THAT is a lot closer to drinking the Trademarked Sweetened Beverage.


Kindle Fire Released!

This week, Amazon released their iPad killer -- the color touch-screen Kindle Fire. Honestly... I think it's more of a Nook killer. It will push Apple on a couple of elements (namely size and price) but it doesn't appear to be a full-featured tablet computer.

But you never know, it might grow into one. (Just remember that the iPad evolved from the iPod, which wasn't originally a multitasking device.)

What excites me is that they are now offering sub-$100 Kindles, and better yet, a SMALLER Kindle! Yes yes yes! It's close to the dimensions of a mass-market paperback. If Apple were to come out with an iPad that size, I'd buy it in a second. That extra inch or so of screen space is exactly what I need to make my iPod Touch more useful.

Unfortunately, the tiny Kindle is not the one with the fancy color touch screen.

Now, I don't own an iPad yet because, cool as it is, it fits my lifestyle exactly wrong. It doesn't fit in my purse to carry around like my Touch, and adding a keyboard would make it bigger and clunkier than my netbook. And because it doesn't play Flash, my video viewing choices online are limited. (For instance, Hulu wants you to pay for a subscription before you can watch their media.)

The new color Kindle does not beat the iPad on any of those. It might be smaller, but not small enough to make a difference. Typing isn't any better. As for the video functionality? It sounds like the content choices may be worse. I haven't seen any definitive answer, but it sounds like it's really geared toward Amazon content, and limited online sources.


Upcoming Posts

• Monday Covers: Evocative Images With Little or No Text
• Tuesday Short Stuff: The New World of Short Fiction -- finding current stuff. (The web is crawling with short fiction... it's coming out of the woodwork!)
• Wednesday Update: Update on ROW80 -- an a look at my implements of destruction, er, I mean my writing tools and gadgets.
• Thursday: Coverage vs Critique (or Reader vs. Writer -- or is it about you or me?)
• Friday: Delayed Gratification, and What Holds a Story/Series together. (With a look at the TV Show Castle, and the movie Arsenic and Old Lace.)
  

Video Of The Week: Dramatic Floppy Drives

Okay, maybe it's not as dramatic as the Singing Tesla Coils playing the same tune at a deafening volume, but it's still pretty cool....



See you in the funny papers (if the floppy drives don't take over the world....)