I have some very good reasons for not writing – it was never a case of ‘I don’t wanna.’ I’m taking a new day job and we’re in the process of packing and moving. On top of that, my current job is in education and last week was new student orientation. So my Real Life has been keeping me very busy. So busy that I actually forgot to write one day. Just poof, woke up the next morning and had a “Aw damn” moment.

This is a learning lesson, however, and I’ll take it as such. First, never mind karma, hubris is a bitch. Here I am writing about motivation and writing every day, and then BAM in the writing solar plexus. Life intrudes. I can’t even imagine how people with kids do it. It’s easy to write every day and set yourself goals when you have time to do so. The real trick is carving out time and energy, even when you don’t have time and energy. Note to self: work on that.

Second lesson is from the book of working myself into a corner. I decided to write a story that’s been running through my head for while and when I started it, I realized that my basic premise is a little sketchy and needs some shoring up. Add in a character who I suddenly realized would be absolutely psychotic if I wrote him the way I originally intended. I toned him down a lot, which is what lead to holes in my premise. I can fix it in revision, but once I started writing myself off the diving board, I realized my rule of not working on more than one thing at a time left me no leeway to set something aside and let it percolate in the back of my head when it needs to. I’m thinking hard now about how to work this situation within the rules I set down. How can I write every day on something that needs a break? I’m not exactly sure. If you have thoughts, please let me know.

And the last thing that became apparent is that I need to set aside a consistent time to write. I’m contemplating in the morning, since that seems to be when a lot of ideas come to me anyway.  Or perhaps at lunch. Whatever I decide, I need to stick to it. That should help ride out the Life Happens periods.

So, the attic and the smell of tape and cardboard call me. Let’s see if I can find more forgotten story ideas up there.

(*as to the post title, the callback to the Wide World of Sports stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away.)

One thing I struggle with is keeping a writing schedule. I’m not exactly a schedule kind of person. I tend to be a shotgun writer – I write 3000 or more words a day in a frenetic burst and then I stop. The problem with this is inertia. Inertia is my friend when I get pounding away on the keyboard, but once I stop, it’s really hard to get started again. If I can manage to write even a little each day it adds up to more overall writing that builds up over a period of time.

Okay, so how am I staying motivated?

1. Write every day. I have set a very small goal for myself right now. I write 250 words of prose a day, every day (and this blog doesn’t count). While I was working on big editing projects, I let that count, but that was a short deadline exception. Now, it’s go prose or go home. It doesn’t matter if I don’t feel like it, it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the time, I force myself to sit and write 250 words. When I do this, something wonderful happens: 9 times out of 10, I write a lot more than that. I can bang out 250 words in five minutes, if I’m in the zone. That’s only a page a day. Most days, I write 500 and sometimes 1000 words. I expect that when my day job settles down a bit, I’ll be able to write even more than that. It all adds up. If I do this for a year, then I’ll have at least a little shy of 100,000 words done. That’s not a bad sized novel.

B. Once something is begun, don’t stop till it’s done. This is another problem I have. I tend to write something for a while, and then either stall out and abandon it, or perhaps I’ll get another hot idea and drop what I’m working on in favor of the new project. Of course, that only results in a bunch of half-finished projects. So, I’ve been forcing myself to finish what I start. Sounds simple, but while I’m writing something, I have a voice running in my head telling me that it’s crap, and it isn’t making sense, and it sucks, and so on and so on. Well, I tell myself, it’s crap right now because it’s a first draft. Maybe some people can write perfect prose on first draft, but I sure can’t. I have to keep telling that voice to piss off. The revision and edit process will (hopefully) bring out the good parts and cut out the bad parts. Of course, if I never finish the work in the first place, then it’s going to be the worst kind of crap. Unfinished crap. I might be able to sell crap, but nobody buys unfinished crap.

III. (related to the previous) Sometimes a story needs killin’ but only as a last resort. There was one story I was working on that just would not come together, so I abandoned it. It was necessary in this case; sometimes they don’t work. But I try to understand that if I abandon it then it’s for good. Finito. Done. I don’t assume I will come back to it; the many story fragments in the file drawer laugh at that. That gives me a sense of responsibility to finish what I start. If I know that abandoning it means it’s going to die lonely and unfulfilled, it prods me to at least finish the poor thing. It may not be good, but at least it’s complete and it can languish in the “needs revision” file until I get to it. These stories have one thing going that the fragments do not – I don’t have to try to remember what I was doing with them. A half-finished story is like an old half-eaten slice of cake. I suppose you might go back and finish it a week later, but it’s all dry and crumbly and unappetizing.

Now I want cake. Mmm. Cake.

The hardest part is discipline and willpower. That’s something I can’t convey in words here; and I still struggle with it myself. You just have to decide to do it, and that it’s worth doing. The difference between published writers and talk-a-good-game-writers is that the published writers obviously sat down and wrote. That’s the kind of writer I want to be, so I’m making it happen. One page at a time.

Among the old standbys like Fahrenheit 451 and The Lord of the Rings are other books that either don’t get enough praise in my estimation, or seem to have fallen by the wayside. 

When gravity fails; George Alec Effinger

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger tops the list of pleasant surprises for me. It’s a Cyberpunk book (actually the first of three books, but it stands alone) that’s set in the Middle East rather than your typical West Coast/Japanese pastiche. Effinger’s characters are memorable, the setting is unique and the mystery keeps you enthralled throughout the book. It’s my favorite book in the Cyberpunk genre, topping even the venerable Gibson. A few years before he passed away, I emailed George and told him how much I loved his books – especially a passage in the second one, which has stuck with me to this day. I wish I had kept up the correspondence now, but at least I was able to let him know how much I enjoyed them.

A canticle for Leibowitz; Walter M. Miller

I read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller after hearing Joe Haldeman talk about it at a con last year. I had heard about it before, but hadn’t read it. It’s really a triptych of three stories that interlock. Set in a post-nuclear war America, it follows the progression of humanity in its efforts to survive and rebuild. Cutting commentary this; it stayed with me long after I read it. Not many science-fiction books deal with religion and human nature so effectively.

City of golden shadow; Tad Williams

The Otherland series by Tad Williams is another welcome nomination. I devoured all of the books a few years ago (well, going on ten years, I suppose) and greatly enjoyed them. It’s billed as Cyberpunk, and I suppose it is, but it’s a different kind of Cyberpunk – more akin to fantasy. Most of the books take place within virtual worlds where Williams is free to explore many worlds of his own devising, including some familiar ones like The Wizard of Oz and The Odyssey.

Of course, I talked about the Amber series last time, and I was pleased to see its inclusion in the list of nominations.

Ender's Game; Orson Scott Card

The other thing I find interesting isn’t something that was nominated, but rather something that wasn’t.  A lot of the nominations are for series of books, like The Lord of the Rings and the Amber series, but I noticed that Ender’s Game was the only book nominated. Certainly, it deserves nomination, but I wonder why the rest of the Ender series wasn’t mentioned. Was it because the first book stands largely on its own? or was it because of the direction the other books took? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard ambivalence for the books following Speaker for the Dead, and personally I agree that the series kind of falls down midway through Xenocide. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

It should be interesting to see the results of the voting. I have a feeling that the usual suspects will top the list, and certainly people will argue specific standings forever, but I look forward to seeing how my personal favorites stack up.

I recently recommended Roger Zelazny‘s Amber series to a few people who were looking for new things to read, and in so doing, I got the bug to read it again myself. This will be my 4th time reading it, although the last time was quite a while ago. This is a fairly remarkable thing for me, as I mostly dislike reading most books more than once. The only other books I’ve read multiple times are the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Engines of God, by Jack McDevitt.

I picked up The Great Book of Amber a couple of weeks ago, even though I already own all the books in the series. I figured that I wouldn’t have to dig the books out of the attic it would be nice to have all 10 books in one large volume. In the first two days, I devoured the first book, Nine Princes in Amber, and I fell in love with it all over again. If you haven’t read it (shame on you), the story starts with the main character waking up with amnesia. Yes, not necessarily the most original of beginnings, but Zelazny does such a good job of keeping the mystery alive all throughout the first book, that it doesn’t really matter (and really, this was written in the 70s; it wasn’t so cliché then). When the main character starts getting a taste of the strangeness afoot, I dare you to put the book down.

I don’t want to talk about too much of the plot here, as I think it is best experienced with as little knowledge going into it as possible. I read the first book when I was seventeen in my high school Fantasy and Science Fiction Literature class, and I had little pre-knowledge of the book. By the end of the semester I had read all five books of the first series (the only series at the time). The joy of discovery along the way is another reason why I love the series so much – just when you think you know what’s going on or what will happen, the story takes a hard left turn. It’s quite a ride.

What’s more interesting to me this time through, however, is the writing more than the plot. Yes, the plot is excellent – full of intrigue, politics, and mystery. The prose itself is something rare these days. It’s quick, accessible, and friendly (the first book is a mere 175 pages long). Some of the style comes from the first person point-of-view, true, but Zelazny doesn’t take three pages to describe the armor of everyone in the room like some modern fantasy authors do. (And that’s not a dig on “epic” fantasy, just a statement of fact.) Zelazny writes witty, pithy prose that I really appreciate.

In fact, I appreciate it so much, that I do believe I emulate it. As I read, I saw how much of my own writing style was influenced by the man, and I am once again saddened that I never got to meet him. I wish it had occurred to me to email him, or write him and let him know how much I enjoyed it.

So if you like fantasy or tight prose and deep mysteries, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I envy you who have not yet read the series – you have quite a ride in store.

(I also wanted to use this as an excuse opportunity to try out my nifty little Open Library plugin. If you want to know more, simply click below. Sadly, the Amber series has not yet been published in electronic format, but it’s dirt cheap on Amazon, and well worth the price.)

The great book of Amber: the complete Amber chronicles, 1-10

Roger Zelazny; Avon Books 1999

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

I have an admission to make; I am terrified of revisions. I don’t mean editing (although that can be kind of scary too) no, I mean changing critical elements for fear of breaking the stories beyond recognition. It’s something I’m going to have to come to terms with as a writer if I am going to learn anything, or indeed, write any stories that are worth anything. 

At first, I saw my stories as sacred cows. No, you just don’t understand. That character is going through hell. He’s moody and depressed. That’s why he’s not a very sympathetic character. If I change that it just won’t be the same story anymore.

Bull. And even if it isn’t bull, it’s probably a Good Thing.

There were two pro writers in the ReConStruction workshop – Carl Frederick and Steve Miller. Both of them gave me feedback which was about as close to glowing praise that I, as a starting writer, could have hoped for. Something along the lines of “Wow, we really enjoyed this story. But…”

Ah, “But.” You are my nemesis, “But.” (Hmm. Let’s not continue that. It’s sounding odd.) That “but” meant something along the lines of, “The main character is flat and we didn’t understand the resolution of the story. Fix those, and this is publishable.”

Oh, yes of course. My main character and the whole point of my story needs changing. but otherwise, I’m good.

I despaired.

After a day of mulling over all the feedback (Lou Berger and Heather Urbanski were my fellow neophyte authors and they gave fantastic, brutally honest feedback as well), I had a plan for fixing my story. Wisely, I promptly tucked my notes away and forgot about them.

I’ll talk more about the past year at some point, but suffice it to say there was stuff between now and then, and having fired my new submissions into the ether, I turned my attention once again to this year-old tale. I re-read the feedback and despaired.

It’s amazing, even a year later, my brain can summon incredible amounts of shear stubbornness. I was overprotective of my story all over again. No, I can’t change this! This is still a good story! It made me cry and I know what happens!

But I realized then, and I realize now, that the feedback I got was valuable not because the others didn’t like the story, but because they did. They wanted it to be a better story – to be all it could be.

I’ve learned a lot in the past year, and in re-reading I too see the flaws more clearly. I also see how I’ve progressed as a writer. It is, at its core, still a good story. But this is not a child’s macaroni art to be hung on the refrigerator and admired for how cute it is. This is going to be submitted to a publisher who might want to pay money for it, and that’s why it needs to be as good as it can be. Even, if by some miracle, I did nothing but a polishing edit and it was purchased by a market, there will be readers out there who say “Hmm. you know, that guy was kind of flat. And what was that ending about?” I think that is more of a wake up call for me than the possibility of rejection. I don’t want to be remembered as the guy with the flat characters and crappy endings. I’ve read those stories, and shaken my head. I don’t want people to shake their heads at my stuff.

So the story, which I will discuss further in the near future, is now being marked up like a Beverly Hills rhinoplasty patient. I have my plan for fixing it, and I still think it’s a pretty good plan. Will it go far enough? I guess that remains to be seen. But you don’t make an omelet without hatching chickens … or something … so let the cutting begin!

In the next couple weeks, I will likely be posting stories of the events of the last year, since I decided to start this blog nearly a year ago. A year goes by before this post appears! Good lord. I never used to understand why writers took so long to get anything done but now, I get it. I get it. Anyway, that’s for some other time.

Today I submitted my first novel to a publisher for the first time. It’s thrilling to be able to write those words. Huh. Look at them there. Perhaps I shouldn’t say too much about it, but I will say that the book is a work set in a universe that is an owned property. That is, if this publisher decides they don’t like it, well, I guess I can post it on fan fiction sites or something, but I can’t shop it anywhere else. 

But that’s okay. I wrote a book! That’s something I couldn’t say with any honesty last year. I learned quite a bit from the process, which will likely spawn more blog posts, but for right now, let’s leave it at that.

What I’m dealing with now is some kind of strange postpartum pessimism. I’m thinking about the novel and how I could make it better. How I should probably change it, narrative threads to add, that sort of thing. I’m proud of my work, though – I think it’s pretty good. It’s just that I could make it better.

One of Heinlein’s rules is Thou Shalt Not Revise Except To Editorial Order*. Dear Robert, I wish I had your conviction. I understand what you mean (I think), but I don’t know how you do it, if you ever did, in fact. The story is sitting there in my head scrabbling about trying to get better. How can I deny it?

I do wish I had more time to edit, but said publisher’s submission window is closing fast, and there’s simply no time for major rewrites. I suppose I should have submitted next year, but the guidelines say that they’ll work with you on your story, if they think you have the chops. I do think I have the chops, if you pardon the arrogance, so I hope they at least contact me and give me the chance.

Also, I don’t want to put six more months of work into something if it will never see publication. Perhaps that’s a bad attitude, but the year has gone by and this is only the first blog post, remember? I have more to write!

Anyway, dear time traveller, perhaps you’ll be reading this from the future where the novel is published. If so … can you tell me how it turned out?

*or something like that.