Plugging along

I just finished chapters 5 and 12 of the book I'm working on and sent them off to the editor for feedback. Both of them were pretty difficult, with lots of research (which I shouldn't have had to do in the first place) involved. No rest for the weary, though. I'm jumping right into chapter 6 this week and hope to get it finished over the next few days. I'll admit some base motivation for getting it done quickly: I want to be done with this project before I'm 60, and I want to get paid.

Okay, I do like what I'm writing and I believe in this project. I'm creating a book that will benefit expatriates in Jordan for years to come, hopefully. But it has been a bit of a pain at times, as my part of the project has morphed into something with a bit of a larger scope than I originally intended. But isn't that the way it always is? If it isn't, please don't tell me.

Anyway, as far as the rest of life goes, I've got to get dressed, grab something to eat, and head out to the car registration office to get a replacement for my car registration license card that went missing a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, it fell out of my wallet and one of my kids absconded with it. Who knows where it is now--we searched the whole house to no avail.

So last week, I endured the bureaucracy for two hours over at the car registration office to get a little slip of paper that said "come back in 3 or 4 days." Today, I'm going back, hopefully to success.

A shout out for Review Fuse

I've been a member of a few writers' groups in my time, and the results have generally been somewhat disappointing. Most of the time, the whole thing turned into a big social club (which is great and has a place, certainly) or having my work reviewed or reviewing the work of others was an exercise in frustration because the site tools were clunky or nonexistent.

Not so with Review Fuse, a new site I stumbled across recently while searching for online writers' groups. They're still in beta, but already they're looking really good. The site itself is well-designed, aesthetically and practically speaking. The graphic design is simple, but pleasing to the eye, but it's the functional design that really stands out. They make it easy to review others' work, with an inline comment system that lets you click on a paragraph and add comments to a text box which automatically appears below. Highlighted text in a paragraph results in quoted text in your inline comments, allowing a reviewer to easily pinpoint problems in text. Reviewers can give a piece up to 10 stars in specific categories such as character development, plot, and dialog, allowing writers who are strong or weak in certain areas to recognize where they need to improve and to receive encouragement for what they're doing well.

Of course, your own work can get reviewed as well. You can upload your own work from your computer desktop from a Word doc or .rtf (Rich Text) file into their interface--it even keeps all of your formatting intact when you do it this way. Once you've done that, then your piece is available for review by other site users. The site automatically keeps your work private from outside viewers, helping preserve your first time publication status if you want to submit your piece for publication elsewhere. When you submit a piece for review, you are automatically assigned to review three other pieces of writing before other site users will be able to see your work, assuring that the reviewing keeps flowing and everyone's work gets read. Its a well-thought through system, and kudos to the site designers for coming up with it.

Even though Review Fuse is still in beta, it is solid and the site designers are responsive and friendly to any potential problems. Overall, I highly recommend this site for anyone who writes (especially those who write a lot) and wants to get quality, constructive feedback on their work.

Making progress...

Just a quick update (it's my birthday today, so I've got a lot going on)

I've finished most of 4 sections of the book I'm working on, and started on the 5th. That means I'm about a third of the way through. Yay!

Of the two stories I sent out earlier, one's been rejected, and the other I haven't heard about yet. I like the story that got rejected, so I'm going to give it another look, check under the hood and trim it down, then send it right back out somewhere else. I'm sure there's a home for it out there somewhere.

That's all for today, folks. Stay tuned...same bat time, same bat channel.

Full Plate

Looks like things are ramping up a bit for me these days. 

• I've got a short story to finish for this lit mag I'm writing for right now (and as a followup to my last post, I rewrote the words that I lost and then kept going, so things are going alright there, aside from lost time). 

• I've got research data (mostly anecdotal stuff) to analyze, collate and edit for this book I'm ghost co-writing. 

• I've got other stories coming up that I'll be editing, a couple of my own and a bunch of others' that I promised a friend I'd help edit. 

• I'm also writing some devos as a freelance assignment as well as giving feedback on ones written by other authors. 

So I'm busy. But it's a good kind of busy. 

Aaagh!

I diverged from my usual practice of writing my fiction in longhand and then transferring it to the computer, and now I'm regretting that decision. 
My computer hiccupped (something to do with battery problems) and caused me to lose over 1,500 words from the story I'm working on right now. That means the work of an entire writing session (one I was very pleased with, by the way) lost. 
I'm pretty upset, to say the least, and a bit depressed by it all, but I'm trying to make the best of it. 
I'm recreating what I can remember from my notes and hopefully the scene I rewrite from memory will be even better than the one I originally wrote. 
I've learned my lesson, anyway. Backup any digital work. 

Mini writing marathon

I sat down Sunday night and banged out over 1,500 words for my latest story and am pleased with the results. Not only am I pleased with the word count itself, but also I'm happy with the way the story's going. I just need a couple more sessions like that and this story'll be finished. 
For those who are full time writers, I guess 1,500 words doesn't sound like a lot, but at least for the season I'm in, it's significant. I've learned from Mur Lafferty over at I Should Be Writing that she's recently downgraded her expected wordcount to 250 words per day, which was inspired in turn by the example of Cory Doctorow, who does this and still manages to produce published work regularly. 
So it looks like for me at this point I'll be aiming for around 250 words daily interspersed with occasional longer marathons. 

Sense of Direction

After a couple of false starts, I'm fairly certain I've got a good handle on how I want this new story I'm working on to go. I've got my main characters, and I know their issues, particularly my protagonist. I don't know all of the plot details, and from experience, I probably need to at least know where they want to get to before I get much further. Still, I think I've got a good solid start on this story, for which I'm grateful.

A small rant...and a resolve

I realized once more last night why I am called to write.
My wife and I watched "God is in the Details," an episode of the otherwise enjoyable Sci-Fi channel series "Eureka." This particular episode was a travesty, however, depicting people of faith as ignorant medieval-minded bumpkins, ready to declare any unexplainable phenomenon as a miracle of God or something. (for more on how badly this episode was written, you can read my review of it here). Anyway, my comment to Cara as the episode ended and we were discussing it was: "This makes me want to sit down at my desk and write."
There is such a gap--especially in America, but elsewhere, too--between people of faith, particularly Christianity--and those who don't ascribe to a faith. Both sides often hold extremely ignorant views of the other, and the writing they do about each other reflects this. One of my aims in writing is to publish works written within my worldview into a publishing arena which is traditionally hostile to that worldview. There are many Christian writers who publish works that are read for the most part only by Christians, and that is wonderful. That is their calling. My calling and desire is to write things that will be read by those who do not claim Christianity, or perhaps any faith at all.
My aim is not to proselytize. As Samuel Goldwyn famously said: "If you have a message to send, use Western Union." My goal to is to simply write in an excellent way and let whatever is inside me come out through my writing and illuminate the world around me.

Buckling down

I did it. Made myself sit down last night and wrote 1,700 words into my new story in my Moleskine notebook.
It's amazing how good it always feels when I finally get to the writing process. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.photo.gif

Recording story bits

When I'm developing a story, I've found it helpful to record "conversations" between characters. For some sections of the story, I can imagine interactions between different characters, sometimes quite vividly. I then act out their dialog, and if it's convenient, record it using my phone or another device. Sometimes, I'll write it down, but I've found that this tends to slow down the easy flow of the "conversation" my characters are having.

A little weird, I know, but it works for me and helps me to get to know them better. I may not actually end up using the conversation in the final narrative, but it definitely helps with story development.

The ol' Inbox is filling up

I've now got two stories about ready to send out for publication. Both of them still need some editing, though one is in a stronger place than the other, I think. Both have been read and commented on my one or more of my main readers, so I need to find the time to sit down with them and do the final edit on both to get them ready. Plus, I need to find the right place to publish them. I'll write more on that particular process--finding the right market--in another post. 

Jumping in

I'm pretty much done with my research at this point. It's all gathered together inside Scrivener. So now I've got to start writing. Actually, I already have--done about 500 words or so, but I don't know if I'll keep them. I'm trying to understand my main characters, and part of that involves writing scenes with them that probably won't end up in the final narrative. That's okay, though, because I want them to ring true. I've mainly got to find time now just to sit myself down in the chair (or somewhere else) and write. And that's the really hard part. 

Brainstorming

I'm just at the beginning stages of this new story I'm working on. Unlike previous stories, which just kind of struck like lightning, I'm having to work at the inspiration part. This is sort of like my experience with the police procedural I just wrote, in that it was a request, not an idea that struck out of the blue. I'm using FreeMind, a free mind-mapping program, to help me with the brainstorming part. I'll just keep working through ideas and hopefully I'll spiral closer and closer until I get to the one that really works. At this point, it's kind of a hit-and-miss process. With my detective story, I actually wrote almost all of a complete story before I trashed it and started over with what I feel is a much better version. So it's messy, but hopefully, there'll be some good results.

Busy week

Two things I've assigned myself to get to this week:

• Final rewrites/revisions on "Sinking NeoVenice" and then submission for publication somewhere

• A new short story for the literary magazine startup I mentioned in an earlier post. 

Anybody's welcome to ask me about them--I'd love the accountability!

Of course, the big caveat to all this is that I need to stay focused and balance these projects with my other life callings and responsibilities and "to-do's." I could use prayer for that, as it's something that I find particularly challenging. 

Finished the Detective Story

I finally finished the detective story, so it's now at first draft stage. It's been retitled "In Plain Sight," and I have to say, I like it a lot. It definitely could use some tweaking in some areas, but I've got a solid first draft, at least. I'm sending it around to a few first readers to get some feedback. 

A couple of new projects on the docket

I can't give too many details at this point, but it looks like I'm going to be getting involved soon in a couple of larger projects in addition to my continued fiction writing.

One of the projects is writing for and contributing in other ways to a startup literary magazine. There are lots of details to be worked out on this one, of course, such as where it'll be published, how contributors will be solicited, etc. While I'm not the idea man behind it, I certainly like the concept, and am more than willing to be on board with it. I'll be working on a short story to contribute to the mag (which looks like it'll be issued quarterly, with each issue clustered around a particular theme) once I get my detective story done. The first ish will be out in December or January.

Also, I'm going to one of two editors (so far) working on ghostwriting/editing a book over the next year. The book, a non-fiction piece, which will end up being about 50,000-75,000 words long, will be an non-fiction historical account, told via linked biographical sketches. If that all sounds vague, it needs to be at this point. I may elaborate more on it in the future, if appropriate.

In any case, I've got my work cut out for me, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Burning the 2:00 am oil

Since my wife was staying up to work on a project, I decided to stay up, too. I parked myself on the futon, trusty Moleskine in hand, and wrote another scene for my detective story (yet to be titled). I'm still encouraged at how fast this thing is going and how easy it is to write. It's nearly like the characters are writing the narrative for me. As I said in a previous post, I think once I find the "voice" for a story, then it's generally not too difficult to always know where things are headed and how to write them. 

Every Spare Moment

I'm learning to discipline myself to write whenever I have a few minutes of time. I carry my little Moleskine notebook with me, usually in my back pocket, and when I have a few minutes to spare (like when I'm waiting in line at the bank or proctoring a test) out it comes. I generally try to jot down a few lines for whatever short story I'm working on at the time. The most difficult thing for me when I do this is getting my head back into the story, but I think it's getting easier with practice.  

Square One on the Detective Story

Okay, sports fans. It looks like once again, I'm scrapping most of the work I've done so far on the story I was tentatively entitling "Firewater." It was nearly done this time, too, but somehow, it still wasn't right. So after a few days of working through it, I decided to wipe the slate clean and start from the beginning. First, I did some research on the genre by dowloading actual detective stories from the 1920s and 30s and reading through them to get a feel for typical stories in the genre. Though this seems obvious, I hadn't actually done it up till that point. Then once I read a few, I started afresh. I was amazed how quickly I was able to get the voice of my character. I've found that with my best stories, once I have the "voice" of my character or characters, the story practically writes itself, as I always have a really good idea what they're going to do or say. I have a general idea of where the story is heading, but I let my characters take me there.

Anyway, I'm encouraged. The new story's clipping along nicely and it feels like a much better story, too.

Back in the Saddle

I have been on a kind of hiatus, due to trying to recover from jet lag and an extremely frenetic time in the States. Now that I'm starting to feel like a human being again, I'm getting back to work. My favorite editor (my wife) got "Sinking NeoVenice" back to me with her edits and suggestions. Fortunately, she liked it. I have yet to hear opinions from others in my circle of first readers, so I'll ask them for feedback and then wrap up my final edits on that story soon. I also worked quite a bit on editing my other story "Firewater" the other night and then sat and wrote towards the ending. I've been kind of stuck on how to proceed with the ending, but I think after a couple of false starts, I've finally got a direction to head towards. Once it's done, then it'll be off to my friend Jim for feedback and we can start working it up into a screenplay. 

Anyway, the rusty gears are grinding but the writing machine is starting up again.