ROW80 Update and Why This Book Took So Long

I'm not going to do a daily break-down of what I did on the Round Of Words in 80 Days dare since the last update on Wednesday. I'll just give you the total:

From Wednesday through Saturday: 1163 minutes, or almost 20 hours.

But the book is done. I will be making some character and clue-consistency passes later on, but just now my brain's word muscle is sprained. And even after sleeping much of the day, the words for this post are coming with a lot more difficulty than they ought to.

Goals

As you may see from the sidebar, I exceeded my goals for ROW80. Fear not, I will be continuing the dare until it's over on December 22. Though I'll start that tomorrow, I won't post the new goals until Wednesday.

Why This Book Took So Freaking Long

1.) It took so long because it took so long.

I started the book in 2003, let it stall, and then took it up in earnest two years ago. It looked like a piece of cake then, and it has continued to look like a piece of cake since. But memories and old ideas have a way of changing and running out on you -- so the slower you go, the more problems you have. I will talk about this later in a post of it's own, though, because writing over a long period of time also gives you some advantages.

But mostly, in future, I'm going to use shelf-time for good, not for evil.

2.) Real Life Kerfuffle Caused Me To Take My Eye Off The Ball.

My dad died, and I discovered Indie Publishing. These two things together yanked aobut a year out of the process. There were other issues too, but they were smaller.

In future? "Life Rolls" will get you no matter what. So the lesson here is only be mindful that fate is going to get you sometimes. So even though I might try to avoid Item #1, I may have to deal with it again.

3.) I'm moving to a new level.

I can't say that I learned specific new skills for this book, but I never put them together like this before. You could even say that this is the first time I have trotted out some of the skills I've been acquiring and really put them through their paces.

I was juggling all the usual plot and character stuff with advanced Hitchcock suspense theory, and multi-layered clue/red herring usage and screenplay arc structures, all the while working out the voice and attitude of a series I hope to live with and play in for a long time. (I've done a lot of this with Mick and Casey, but it's much simpler there because I have one narrator with his own voice and style, and he smooths it all out.)

Juggling all this is hard and takes practice and the result is not likely to be the best story in this series. (But that's a good thing, because it would suck if the later books didn't live up to the promise of the first.)

And a lot of that work will not be noticed by the audience.

But it will affect the audience, and that's where a certain pride in your craftsmanship comes in.

4.) The Story Demanded It

The mystery genre has a particular problem that no other genre has: The audience is not just along for the ride. They are actively engaged in reading subtext. And the subtext of the subtext. They're like poker players and they know your "tell." When I was a kid, I could pick murderers off of book jackets. (Charming, likeable character, who couldn't possibly have done it? Yes, that's him officer.)

At the same time, the mainstream audience likes mysteries, even if they are mystified until the end. But they don't like feeling dumb. Levinson and Link (creators of Columbo, and Mannix, and Murder She Wrote) learned this lesson the hard way. When they created the Ellery Queen TV Show, they worked very hard to make it live up to the books in terms of being fair but mystifying puzzles -- and that wonderful series was canceled after one year. So when they created Murder, She Wrote, they intentionally made it easy. And that lasted twelve years.

I was one who was very disappointed at the loss of EQ, and only moderately interested in Murder She Wrote. But I question whether this is an "either or" situation in terms of pleasing the audience. It seems to me that the masters of classic mystery have always laid in multiple layers to please various levels of audience. And every mystery writer has to write a story that is still enjoyable to those who picked the killer off the book jacket. (And also enjoyable to those who didn't see it coming at all.)

And those kinds of choices are a part of this Artisan Writer thing: It's not always that complicated, but you are always crafting a reader experience.

No, maybe the Artisan thing is even more visceral than that. It's that you care about how things work.

I will be talking a lot more about clues and red herrings and writing for different levels of audience soon. But I will not post anything until Wednesday, when I post my next update and ROW80 goals.

Done done done done done.

Okay, I actually got all the way through to THE END this time. The big hold up today was that I realized that the "Detectives sit around and tie up all the loose ends" scene was now so far out of whack with the rest of the book, it was better to just toss it all out, and write it anew.

I'll need to do some character and texture passes, but that can happen with proofing. For now I am done done done.

And since the opera ain't over 'til the Miss Piggy sings ... and here she is!



I'll post my deconstruction of the process that took so long tomorrow morning with the ROW80 dare update post.

See you in the funny papers!

Half-Past Five and Not Done Yet.

Gotta sleep now. Darn it. Not done, although I did some good work. And I am SOOOOO close. Two chapters yet to go over. Yes, they are tricky.

And yikes, I just looked down to see I put in seven and a half hours on this this evening -- on a work day.

That's 447 frickin minutes to put me within only a couple minutes of my final goal.

See you tomorrow.

Nuts! I'm not done.

I have approximately 5 scenes left which require a functioning brain to sort out. Maybe 6, since one of the scenes is more of a sequence.

The worst thing about this kind of writing is that it disrupts sleep: I stay up late until I'm really tired and expect to sleep well, only to find my excited brain is worst than my cat about getting me up early.

So even though I got nearly six hours in today, I was drooling on myself. And that's probably why I didn't get further. And I've got to get up early tomorrow for work. pfftttttp!

So... the completion is postponed until tomorrow night. The blog post with the debriefing about the writing of it gets postponed until late Saturday. Heck, I may just make it the Sunday ROW80 update. We'll see.

See you in the funny papers.

Absolutely Right, Except When Wrong

Dean Wesley Smith has got me thinking again (blast him).

For those of you who are writers and haven't read his blog, I recommend that you read it religiously (and be sure to read all the comments too - lots of great discussion there). Dean's blog is critical, especially if you want to make a living in this business.

Dean is a guy who not only makes a very good living at writing, but has done so in times when supposedly midlist writers like him couldn't make a living at all. His schtick is that the only reason writers can't make a living is because they cling to myths that hold them back.

And though I never advise anyone to follow a guru blindly, if you really wanted to follow someone blindly -- adhering to the advice to the letter -- Dean would be the man to follow.

Because Dean is always absolutely right about everything... except when he's wrong.

(And he'd be the first to tell you that. He'll be in the middle of a rant about how you absolutely must not do something and he'll put in an aside "unless it works for you; don't mess with what works.")

I bring this up because every now and then I'll say something in the comments on his blog which freaks him out. I'm not a great person for staying on message, even when I fully agree with you, and Dean is trying so hard to free writers from silly notions which hamper their ability to succeed.

It sometimes makes me feel like a bad influence when I write about what I'm doing. Like I'm passing out joints to the kids on the schoolyard.

So here's the thing: I'm in a very different place than most writers are. I'm doing things which may seem to be the polar opposite of what he advises (more on that when I get to tomorrow's debriefing on the writing of this book) -- but I'm not doing it because I believe in any of those old myths which he hates so vociferously.

I'm doing it because I've been around a long time, I've learned a whole heck of a lot of different practices and methods... and the only thing that dictates what I do now is the story itself. And that, for me, is a part of what it is to be an artisan writer -- like a carpenter listening to the wood.

But I got to this point, where I can listen to the story and what it wants, by doing what Dean tells you to do. (And okay, if I say one thing and Dean says another and you don't know who to believe, just remember that Dean got rich and successful from his writing, and I haven't. And I probably never will.)

But I also think Dean takes a rather narrow view, and it doesn't hurt you kids (or old folks) to experiment, especially in the area where Dean and I differ the most:

Dean believes that your Internal Editor is the enemy, and should be locked in the closet.

I believe that your Internal Editor is an annoying but incredibly useful control freak who needs to be kept on a leash, but always on call.

You won't get anywhere if your Creative Side isn't in control. But there are places you will never get to if you don't bring the Internal Editor along for the ride. And the book I just wrote is one of them.

And we'll talk a little about that tomorrow. Maybe late tomorrow, because my Internal Editor and I will be finishing up the book, and wrestling him is time-consuming -- and I may not actually sit down to write that post until Friday night.

See you in the funny papers.

ROW80 Update and Change In Posting Plans

First, there's a change in posting plans this week. I've been too busy to prep the point of view post I mentioned. It's really a multi-part post anyway, and I'll do those next week.

Instead I will kick off the discussions about Artisan Writers and craft with a post called "Absolutely Right, Except When Wrong." A lot of what I am going to say in the next month or so will seem in opposition to Heinlein, and to what Dean Wesley Smith will tell you -- and since I believe that the very best advice for writers comes from Heinlein's Rules and DWS's blog, I should address that.

Then on Friday I will write about what made this book take so frickin' long to write, and what worked for it and not. This book is, I think, a great example of where the artisan concept diverges from the Heinlein model. But it's also an example of how writing slow can screw you up.

A Round Of Words In Eighty Days Update

I kinda knew I wasn't going to get done tonight. And Wednesday is the day from hell. So unless we end up having a snow day, I'll be finishing this up on Thursday.

Sunday Day 56 - 272 minutes. On a roll.

Monday Day 57 - 226 minutes. Okay, finished through Chapter 24. Really wanted to get further today, but had some issues. And unfortunately, Chapter 25 is one of those chapters which will have to be retrofitted with new information. At this point, though, I don't have to disguise any information (which was an issue earlier) so it should go faster.

Tuesday Day 58 - 126 minutes. Woke up with the realization that I had one revelation too many in Chapter 24. I wrote that a long time ago, and now that I've set it up, I don't need to hit Karla over the head with a clue-hammer. I need to just move up the Big Reveal at the end of the chapter to the middle, and let Karla's intuition do the rest. That's mostly cutting, so not too hard. (But it will change the rhythm of her explanation scene.)

I'm determined to get this thing done before the end of the day Thursday. (It would so help if we had a snow day on Wednesday, but I fear that is not going to happen.)

See you in the funny papers.



For your browsing convenience, here is a Linky list of the others who updated today:

The Man Who Did Too Much - Random Excerpt 2

A very short excerpt, chosen by the randomizer in my sidebar.

George has had a very very bad day, and it's partly Karla's fault. He shows up at her house, in need of support.

* * * * *

The Man Who Did Too Much
from Chapter 15 - What Do You Do With A Spurned Recovery Agent?

"WOULD YOU LIKE some orange juice?" said Karla.

"If it's got vodka in it. And you can hold the orange juice."

"What about a brownie? It's got so much chocolate, it's practically a controlled substance."

Karla went into the kitchen to get the brownie. Behind her the music changed, mid-song, so George must have changed it. Edith Piaf. Je Ne Regrette Rien. I regret nothing.

Well, that was a good sign.

She cut a brownie and put it on a plate and wondered exactly what she was going to do with him. This was why she didn't like dealing with strangers. You do just one quick little favor, and you end up with a love-sick James Bond in your living room listening to Edith Piaf.


I hope to be done with this sucker on Thursday.

See you in the funny papers.

Weekly Preview and ROW80 Update

I went to see HUGO this afternoon. It was wonderful, and for some of us, it was a stunning box of surprise treats. It's a magical, fanciful tale about an orphan boy who lives in the walls of the Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s. He maintains the clocks and works on a broken robot his father left him.

And the magical mystery he is trying to uncover turns out to be a piece of real history that not many people know. It works great as just a fanciful story, but it's a jewel for those to whom the real story means something -- especially if you didn't see it coming. So I'm not going to say more. Just... go see it.

A Round Of Words in Eighty Days -- 7th week wrap up.

Wednesday Day 52 - 0 minutes.

Thursday Day 53 - 0 minutes.

Friday Day 54 - 61 minutes. I had a really really great half hour session, but when I went back to it, I hit the wall. I couldn't even keep my eyes open. I think I have more resting to do than I thought. I managed to eek out a little more decent work, though.

Saturday Day 55 - 167 minutes. Getting onto a roll again. I've got two whole days I hope to devote to this as yet. We'll see how far I get.

Preview of coming week:

I know I said I'd hoped to get back to more regular posting, but I'm really wrapping up this book, so the blog has to wait.

• Monday - Random Page Excerpt
• Wednesday - ROW80 Update
• Thursday - Intro to the Point of View Series
• Friday - IF I'M DONE, I'll do a post on Friday about what it used to be like to be a beginning writer, and what that might mean to beginners today.
  

See you in the funny papers.

Video For Thanksgiving: Alice's Restaurant Illustrated

I posted a shorter version of Alice's Restaurant in an earlier post about "told" stories.

But since it is a great Thanksgiving story, I thought I'd embed it for all to watch. This is the full version, and it also has funny cartoon illustrations to go along with the words.

(Caution to those of the conservative persuasion -- it's an anti-war, anti-draft song/story from the sixties.)



See you in the funny papers.

Book Sale!

Just to let you know -- my Thanksgiving Sale has begun:

I've put two of my novels on sale for 99 cents at Amazon until December 7. (And for those who use other formats, or just don't like Amazon, here are the coupon codes for 85 percent off at Smashwords.)

Have Gun, Will Play
Amazon
Smashwords: EQ44H (Note: you MUST have the code to get the discount)

The Adventure of Anna The Great
Amazon
Smashwords: XJ33W (Note: you MUST have the code to get the discount)

But wait, there's more!

Waiter, There's a Clue In My Soup! Five Short Mysteries is currently free at all vendors except Amazon. Amazon usually matches a low or free price, but they just haven't gotten around to it yet. You can wait around for it, or you can get it now for free at Smashwords, the B&N Nook Store, and other e-retailers. If you like, you can "report a lower price" on its paget at the Amazon Kindle Store.

* * *

This is a last chance to get a cheap price on the novels for a while. I'm going to run an experiment in charging a price closer to the big publishers for a few months. So sometime after midnight December 7, I will be raising the price on these to $6.99.

This sale is also an experiment: I am promoting it only in a couple of limited ways. This post, and perhaps some other mentions here. A couple of announcements on Twitter. And a few ads on Project Wonderful sites where I have advertised before. I am not making a special banner, nor have I contacted any cheap book sites to get it listed.

I had been hoping to use this as a launch promotion for The Man Who Did Too Much, but the timing just won't come out right. Still, new readers from this sale should trickle over to that book eventually.

See you in the funny papers.

ROW80 Update - Crap Dance

What's a Crap Dance, you ask?

A crap dance is when you first say:

"Oh crap, this boring little bridge scene just got more interesting and I have to tear out all the seams and do it right."

And then you break into a dance because, you know, the boring little bridge scene just got interesting and added to the wonderfulness that is your story.

And on to the ROW80 Midweek Update:

Sunday Day 49 - 90 minutes. Got myself halfway to where the scene needed to be -- so it was just the "oh crap" part.

Monday Day 50 - 91 minutes. Crap Dance Day. Hard on the brain stuff, especially since I had a headache coming on (not sure if it was migraine or simple sinus + eye strain) AND I had to go picket for my job. But I am delighted that this chapter which should have been done in five minutes is blossoming under many hours of work.

Tuesday Day 51 - 0 minutes. I knew today would be a challenge, but I didn't realize how much of a challenge. The graphic design students had projects due, and the printers were revolting. (No seriously, they formed a drum circle, and you could hear little voices inside yelling: "Whose network? OUR network!" ) I was running around all day. And then we did our last round of holiday shopping (because Wednesday is the LONG day). I got home late and zoned out, and it was only few minutes ago that I felt ready to do anything. But when I looked at the clock, I saw it was after midnight. I could do a little work... or I could update this post, do a little reading and go to bed. (Guess which one I'm choosing?)

Tomorrow is my long long day. However, even if the printers are still camping out in the park complaining about capitalism, I think the students are pretty much done and ready to go home and occupy some turkey dinner. I might get a little work done tomorrow, and maybe even on Thursday, but the next target date for real work is Friday.

Given how long this has taken, I think I have to give up on my hopes of publishing this in December. Aiming for New Years Day. And that means the target date for finishing it is now December 1. "Six-Gun Santa" is just going to have to wait until next Christmas.

See you in the funny papers.

ROW80 sunday update

I've got some fun upcoming posts, but I don't have time to polish them up and post them this week. This week is going to be hectic, and I'm far from where I want to be on the book.

But I still might be done by the end of the day on Wednesday. The main thing holding me up are the sections that need replacing. They don't necessarily need to be completely replaced, but they needed massive thinking.

Why?

Because they were utterly static. They didn't drive anywhere. In one case, the premise of the scene was contrived. There wasn't a motive for the character doing it that way. So I hammered it out and hammered it out... and eventually came up with a reason for the scene that threaded perfectly with earlier work and drove the scene to a better conclusion, and set me up for the next segment.

But I'm going to be very busy every day between now, and, oh, next Christmas? Maybe the one after that?

Wednesday Day 45 - 0 minutes. Usual day off.

Thursday Day 46 - 90 minutes. Spent too much time watching Occupy Wall Street on livestreams.

Friday Day 47 - 91 minutes. Spent most of that time pulling out the seams on a boring chapter of investigation. I beat it out again, and now there is some narrative drive, and George has a reason for doing what he does, as opposed to me having the reason.

Saturday Day 48 - 120 minutes. Still had at least an hour's worth of beat work to do, and I lost track of time, so that's approximate.

But it's after 3 am and I've got to get to bed.

See you in the funny papers.

Why Readers May Not Want Self-Published Writers To Get Editors

In all the posts I did this past week about editing and self-publishing, and those I did in the week before, I didn't write about one very very important consideration:

The Reader.

Frankly I thought this issue was obvious and clear, but it seems writers are a little too self-involved to see it.

Too often the advice an unskilled writer gets goes like this:

"Get an editor to fix your mistakes! Oh, and polish up those first chapters in particular, because readers use samples to judge whether to buy a book or not."

Do you see the problem here?

Readers do. You hear it from them all the time.

"But I tried using samples to sort out the bad from the good, and it didn't work. The sample would be really polished and professional, but the book just fell apart in the middle and I couldn't even get to the end."

The more we use editing as a short cut, or as a marketing tool, the less effective it will be. Readers will be forced to find other ways to find good books. The power of the sample will be dead.

Remember folks, beginning writers don't know what it takes to write well.  They need to learn to write first.  They need to learn to do their own editing.  And then, if they choose, they'll know if they need an editor or not.

With Enough Courage, You Don't Need a Reputation

The "Do Indies Need Editors?" post prompted an interesting conversation on Twitter between me and Jason Black (aka p2p_editor), who disagreed with my statement that the consequences of failure for the self-published author are next to nothing.

Black is an editor, but I don't think he was disagreeing on the basis of fear of unemployment -- whether indie authors as a class need editors or not, there's plenty of work for a good editor out there. (As I said, they are to be prized above rubies and chocolate and bacon.)

(Added Note: Didn't realize that this was the Jason Black who runs the Plot To Punctuation blog. A LOT of good material on that blog about craft. Sometimes more into the "editing" thing, but hey, he's an editor.)

What he specifically brought up was a fear that self-publishing has a bad name.

My first reaction to that was... and how is this a problem?

My second reaction though is to ask a question that gets more to the heart of this:

Self-publishing has a bad reputation among whom?

Hate to burst publishing's bubble... but only writers and publishing people care who published a book. Some readers who are publishing groupies will care, depending on what their specific heroes think.

Like it or not, "indie publishing" is not a brand. For that matter, publishing house brands are barely noticed by end readers either. Sure readers have heard of them, you will never hear a reader say "I'm gonna get me one of those books from MacMillan!" Or "I'm never going to read a Simon and Schuster Book again. They suck."

Readers look for genres and authors.

Sure, right now, with all the indie authors running around trying to turn "indie publishing" into a brand, there are a few small groups who think of indie publishing as a genre. But that's just growing pains. The solution to that is to stay away from those people. Try not to promote your books in the same venues, so that your books don't come up with only indies in the "also boughts." Stay away from tagging clubs and don't use promotional short cuts the way they do.

But most of all, quit worrying about your reputation.

Any reputation except the one you earn yourself is overrated. And even that is less important that people think: Somebody is going to sneer at you no matter what you do. It's just not worth the trouble.

And it distracts you from what you really need to do:

Be brave, be fair, do good work.

In the meantime I'd be happy to discuss with anybody the ins and outs and specific ideas and questions in the comments. (Discussing complex things on Twitter is tough.)

See you in the funny papers.

Aggh! This is what I was talking about...partly

You know how I mentioned yesterday that established traditional publishing people seem to be just as locked into a shallow, "editing makes it better" idea of craft as unskilled indies?

I saw a link to a post about "deep point of view." I am extremely interested in point of view issues. It's one of those issues which I have studied since I was in grad school, and still feel there is so much more to learn. (I won't tell you how long it has been since grad school.)

So I clicked eagerly on this link. I didn't expect a dissertation. Even some shallow insight can be useful....

And I found the author actually didn't know what deep point of view was. She thought the difference was editing. Take out the "he thought" or "she felt" phrases in a sentence and voila, it's different!

No no no no no no no NO!

I'm not against taking out "he thought" or "she felt." They're not necessary, and depending on narrative voice and sentence clarity, you probably want to cut most of them out.

But by themselves they don't actually affect the voice or the reading or the immediacy of the sentence. They're like tag lines; mostly invisible to the audience, except they are so frequent they clutter up the story and dilute the voice.

But weeding them out is editing, not voice. It's not a matter of substance, and it will not give you more control over your point of view.

But there's also a Yes yes yes yes YES.

Later in the article, the author actually did get into substantive things. Once you get to the part headed "Inside Out, Outside In" her advice is good. I don't agree with all of it, but she tells you about how to write in the voice of a character, and that is incredibly important to deep points of view.

So here's the link: What is Deep POV?

This inspires me to write more about the theory behind point of view, and how, like tense, a lot of smart people get it wrong. But not now.

See you in the funny papers.