Big Ed's Place

Monday of this week, I was chatting (tweeting actually) with a couple of other authors about some story ideas and one of them said he had a great one “If I can ever get it down.” Man, do most writers know that one. Ideas are easy. Working them into a viable story is fun. Finding the time to ‘get it down’ on paper–that’s the challenge all too often.

Amusingly, I was blessed this past weekend with having some time. It was an unintentional Father’s Day gift. Saturday morning I had a great idea for a science fiction story. Saturday afternoon, my wife and my son both went down for naps. Fortuitously, I had no pressing chores and so I could fire up the laptop and write. Sunday afternoon the pattern repeated. Between the two, the story was done. I decided to get gutsy and even submitted it to a magazine Sunday night. I love online submissions.

It worked because the creative juices were flowing just when I coincidentally had time to write. A few more chores, or a planned activity or two, and it wouldn’t have happened. The creative juices would have had to wait and hopefully not dissipate until I had the time. If they had, I’m sure the resulting story would have lacked the flair of the original inspiration. I might have had a different story off the same idea when the juices did return and it may have been as good, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the same.

But I think having “if I can ever get it down” is a good thing. When I first started writing, I had time. The words were slow, though, and I constantly second-guessed myself. I was slow because of issues with the creative flow and not with my schedule.

Those days are gone. Which feels like a good thing. I’m certainly more productive.

And one of the wonderful things about talking with other writers is that this seems to be a common evolution. Time becomes the problem and appears to remain the problem even for the full time pros. So I’m happy to be at this stage.

And now it’s time to get the next one down.

Sometimes I’ll be plugging away on a story and hit a point where I’m forced to stop. I get a sinking feeling in my gut and I realize the story just isn’t working. It’s usually a difficult, wrenching moment. I have to take a break from that story and remind myself that it’s okay if they don’t work from time to time.

When this happens, I’ve got a couple of choices. I can power through, set the story aside, or rework it. Powering through relies on me trusting that it’s “good enough” and that at least some readers will still like it. It’s usually a hard slog in that case, but I have done it (and no, I won’t say which stories fit that category).

Usually I set it aside. Giving my brain backburner time to figure it out helps. Sometimes I’ve even sent it out for critique, though in all cases where I wasn’t sure, all the critique did was confirm it wasn’t working.

Many of those set-aside stories end up in my ‘abandoned’ folder. Time passes, I look at them from time to time, and nothing breaks free. Eventually I just clear them out of my work in progress folder.

But sometimes, either as the story sits there or as I plug forward anyway, I see what’s not working. It’s usually an “a ha” moment in the shower, which can be a real pain since my laptop is not waterproof.

But this is my Sunday post–what does this have to do with my writing status?

Well, this past week, I had the “a ha” about what I’d called Oral Histories. As a result, this week’s writing was ripping it apart and rebuilding the story. I didn’t do much else, in part because I was still hung over from rolling Take it to the Bank out the door in under a week, and in part due to the usual real life demands on my time.

Oral Histories had been my crack at a Summer Camp story set right after Chapter 18 in the main story. I wanted to write about Chris’s reaction to Elizabeth breaking the rules and had this idea that he’d talk to Beth about it. I managed 2200 words before I was forced to say, “this isn’t working.” I hated the title. I hated the planned ending. It seemed to ramble way too much. At least two of the conversational sequences felt forced.

The “a ha” was that I had the wrong title. It is now Broken. The title change forced clarification into the rest of the text. I figured out a good ending fairly quickly and bounced the rewrite plans by Nick (always important when writing in his universe). Then I spent my time shredding and rebuilding the text.

I’m back up to 1695 words. They’re flowing much better this time, and I’m confident I’ll get through it in time, though I may return to my other queued stories first. If I do, it’ll be that I have the confidence that now it works.

Have I mentioned how much I love and hate the giddy end rush in writing a story? I’m getting close on both my science fiction story and Unmasked. This past week, I wrote 1799 words to Science Fiction story, bringing it to 6,056. I also managed 197 words on Unmasked, bringing it to 4,954. That’s a little less than 2000 words, which is a decent week.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. I’m close enough to the end of both stories that I can taste it. I can see the final scenes and am starting to have some of the words ring through my skull. I actually have the closing paragraph in my Science Fiction story written. I want to write more now and, of course, life prevents me from doing so. I’m actually doing this status update on Thursday, before a family weekend away (and away from the internet too) and will soon have to turn to packing and prepping and loading the car and all those other preparations.

So until I have a moment, I have to savor that delicious frustration of being close, but not quite there.

TMI came to me just after Nick released Chapter 18 of Summer Camp. The phone sex scene within that chapter triggered some ‘what if’ thoughts that quickly took bloom into the story herein. I realized that, between Bent and the Chapter 18 Coulter hot tub scene, that there was more to tell from Chris’s point of view (and may be additional stories in the future). I’d also been toying the idea of writing a strap-on scene for some time, as I almost included it in Bent, but decided it went a little too far for the characters at the time. Erin wouldn’t introduce one, but Regan already had one…

After that, it was mostly a matter of getting Nick’s blessing for some of the other ‘nuggets’ dropped in this quick story. As a result, they’re canon and should add to the overall main storyline.

Regardless, it was fun to write.

I’m close, so close, to having the script for Deep Dish complete. I finished six more pages this past week, which means I only have four more plus the final pass to do. I’ve hopped around some–I’ve got pages 1-54, 57-58, and 60-63 done. I’m probably done in a week. Then it’s time to finish the cover letter and start shopping it to publishers.

I find the last mile in any writing project to be a heady, challenging time. I’m of course referring to long projects, as short ones are over before the Mile 22 exhaustion can be felt. Once the end is in sight, there’s this strong delirious desire to dash for the finish line, quality be damned, and I have to fight it. At the same time, I have to avoid the fear that ‘it’s not good enough’ because that leads to endless iteration and editing. If I really am worried about it being good enough, my first readers can tell me that.

I also have to remind myself to actually finish. Part of my brain is already racing ahead to the next project with shivers of anticipation. This past week, I actually wrote 858 words on a political thriller. I have no idea what I’ll do with it–if I’ll continue it or let it sit in the inactive drawer. It was just there when I was pissed off and wishing a certain politician was dead (and in my story–he is!).

And of course the other problem is that the writing starts wanting to crowd out other things in life with more immediate deadlines. I suspect many of us have had the phenomenon of reading a novel and being so close to the end that we stay up much later at night than we should. Or hanging out to the last minute of a captivating TV show even though we really should have left for an engagement ten minutes ago. That’s what happens when I’m in the final stretch of writing a story.

In this case, there are some major major work deadlines in a week as well. It’s going to be an interesting fight for that last mile.

So I tried my new approach this past week and took my laptop to use during my lunch writing periods. It went well, but I discovered a catch. One actually has to have a free lunch period. I had two working lunches and a third was cut so short it wasn’t even worth getting the laptop out of its case.

I managed a little bit of progress on Deep Dish. I scripted two more pages and did the detailed outline for two more, so I now have 1-19 and 23-24 scripted and 20-22 and 25-39 through the detailed outlining. It’s not much, but in two lunch periods, it was about all I could do. It was certainly a bit better than doing it longhand, though.

And unfortunately that catch of “available time” popped up in other places. What little evening time I had was spent on the ebook project (watch this space–ebook of The Ugly One coming sometime in the next couple of months) and working with Tzratzk on the art. I now have pages 1-3 from him, fully illustrated, and they look good. That’s the minimum for looking for publishers, so as soon as I get enough detailed outlining done to confirm my page length, I can start shopping it around.

Which brings that ‘catch’ back into play. I’ve got 25 more pages to do detailed outlining on. At 2 a week, that’s a couple of months, which is really much longer than I’d like. That also assumes the current pace.

Which is probably a bad assumption because work’s going to heat up again in September, and we’re going to start a major home renovation project (it’s needed and it’s time). So it looks like it’s going to be a constant battle for free time to work on my writing projects.

The solution is, of course, obvious. I just need to win the lottery. Of course, that would mean buying a ticket, which I haven’t done. I guess there’s always a catch.

I made very little progress this past week on Unmasked. I managed a whopping 86 words, bringing me to 2,853. The fundamental problem is that I just don’t have the time and energy to write simultaneously. Mostly that’s been an energy problem, as work is particularly draining these days. I often write during lunch, and my few non-working lunch hours have been devoted to staring at the wall waiting for brain cells to start firing again, or reading the newspaper. Which is much the same thing, actually.

Ironically, I did manage to find time to read and critique rough drafts for three other authors. It doesn’t take as much energy as writing does for me, and that led to an interesting observation with the third author.

Plotting is easy for me. I can pretty easily figure out how to put scenes together and what nuances need to be in them. I’m quite good at spotting issues in others’ plots. For example, for one of the stories (a fantasy story) I read this week, I realized that there was a minor inconsistency in how the magic worked. It was subtle–more of a “well, if X works, why didn’t they just do Y?” But it leapt out to my eyes without much work.

Aside–one of the things that drives me crazy about many books and films is exactly that. The plot requires the characters not do something simple. A standard example is the comedy plot where characters go to great lengths to do something (usually involving deception) because they’re afraid of hurting another character’s feelings. You mean lying and deceiving them will hurt less? C’mon. But the plot falls apart if they’re honest up front. Often such plots require their characters to be idiots or the plot twists are clearly contrived in a way that violates my willing suspension of disbelief.

So I was talking with the third author and we quickly pounded through some issues and scenes and straightened out his story flow. When we finished, he said he was all ready to write now, and it’d go smoothly and fast.

I laughed.

Because these weekly status reports show that’s just not true for me. The plotting is easy, but the wordsmithing is hard. I know exactly what the scene is supposed to accomplish. I can see it in my mind. And I’m struggling to find the sentence to start the whole damn thing off.

I don’t know how many other authors fall into this mold. Writing is hard. Coming up with the story… easy as pie. Alas, both are required to produce anything good.

In my last post, I mentioned I was using an arc outline for Deep Dish. I thought I might explain this little trick.

Now, I should be upfront and say I’m all over the map on outlining. For most stories, I have a very very top-level outline in my head before I begin the story. I will often jot it down, but not always. And I do mean top-level. For example, the outline for Fireworks was:

1. Pre-weekend discussions
2. Flashing games first day
3. Guys’ show. Possibility of touching raised.
4. More exhibitionism games.
5. Girls’ show. Cross-couple touching that Will can’t handle.
6. Dave helps Will get over it.
7. End at lakeside having public sex while fireworks go off overhead.

That turned into 30,000 words without much more outlining.

Now sometimes I don’t outline at all. Those stories can be frustrating and slow to write, because I’m feeling my way forward. It’s write a paragraph, wait. Write a paragraph, wait. Maybe the characters tell me what’s happening next, and maybe I wait a while. Love’s Labor Found evolved that way. I had the opening scene clearly in mind, but the rest had to evolve as I wrote.

But sometimes that’s just not enough, particularly if the story has multiple intersecting subplots. I’ve found then that it helps to do a simple bulleted outline of each subplot or story arc, and then see how they interleave.

For example, here’s part of an arc from Deep Dish:

Sal Takes over the Club (arc 1)

• (Backstory) Harry has been running the club since the burlesque days, seeing it as a ‘theatre’.  Because he’s a favored friend of The Chairman of the Board (modeled on Tony Accardo), he’s had a lot of freedom to do what he wants
• (Backstory) Mob has Big Boss (modeled on Joey Aiuppa) who runs things; Chairman of Board is advisory.  Point is, Big Boss has power to overrule COB.
• (Backstory) Sal is an aggressive mobster working his way up in The Outfit.  He’s at a Crew Capo (Underboss) level.  He know Mob finances are being squeezed due to social changes and is trying to regain profitability.
• Arc begins as Sal leans on Harry to increase the club’s profits
  • Harry responds by raising the cover fee, backroom fee, stage fee (arc 2 crossover)
  • Some of the girls respond by offering “extras”
• Sal leans on Harry to hire one of his guys as the bartender
  • The bartender is a bookie; sports betting primarily
• Sal leans on Harry to increase profits again, suggests touring headliners
  • Harry agrees, brings in a porn star.  She fucks a guy in the audience.  Sal loves it.  Wants more.  Suggests that maybe they do something like those Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco and make blue movies.

The outline goes on, of course, but I wanted to call attention to the arc crossover comment.  Another Arc in Deep Dish is:

Brandy and Delilah flee town (arc 2)

• Brandy and Delilah start discussing getting out of dancing
  • Complain about raised fees (arc 1 crossover)
  • Brandy reveals she’d love to teach little kids
  • Delilah talks of going to college
• Delilah explains to Brandy and Malcolm the practicalities of leaving
  • They need money
  • They don’t want to be followed

Again, this arc outline continues, but I’ve now tagged the other arc crossover point where the two arcs intersect.  The raised fees in arc one trigger action in arc two.  This doesn’t look like much from this example, admittedly, but there are four arcs in Deep Dish (so far).  By looking at them individually and then identifying the crossover points, it’s easier to keep the writing tight.

Now I don’t know of any other authors who use this trick.  Maybe some do, maybe it’s just not a good tool for many.  But I thought y’all might find it interesting nonetheless.

One of the things that makes writing satisfying to me is that it’s fundamentally a solo enterprise. Yes, I have a team, and sometimes I need to coordinate with another author if I’m playing in his (or her) universe, but those are pretty minor interactions. The bulk of the enterprise is me by myself.

I like this because it means my schedule is my own. I don’t get hung up waiting for someone, like I do in so many of the other projects in my personal and professional life. Nor do I have to jerk my schedule around to accommodate the whims of others.

This last week was a good example of getting jerked around. I had a business trip that consumed three full days of my life. The meeting itself was only one afternoon and the following morning, but the unavailability of convenient flights forced the two extra days into the trip. It became very clear that my presence, though requested, wasn’t really needed. So I spent a lot of time not getting stuff done. I tried to work remotely with my corporate team, but found myself waiting far too much for inputs. The result was completely frustrating.

I did manage to get some writing done, though not as much as I wanted. I find it difficult to write erotica on airplanes because I’m invariably jammed into a middle seat, making it impossible for my seatmates to avoid seeing what’s on my screen. I’m not embarrassed by what I’m writing–my seatmates will certainly not see me again–but I also don’t believe that it’s fair to force my seatmates into reading something they may not like. I’d certainly be uncomfortable if the guy in the aisle seat started reading a Penthouse, not giving a damn about who would be unavoidably looking over his shoulder.

So I wrote 766 words on Unmasked. That’s respectable, though I wish I’d been able to manage more. Surprisingly, it flowed well once I started. Hopefully I’ll get some uninterrupted time soon to keep that flow going.

I also worked on my arc outlines for Deep Dish–got two of the four in great shape. It’s a bit frustrating, though. Despite me having clear visions in my head, I still haven’t solved the financing issue. Since I can’t do the art myself, it’s an issue. The down sides of it not being a solo enterprise…

Last week, I ended up not writing anything that I really expected to. I revised and released “In the Style of Rodin.” After poking around the markets, I decided to just release it here. I did try an experiment–I only announced it on twitter instead of also in the various yahoo story groups, figuring it was just flash and so of less interest to the story groups. It gave me some statistics of my readers.

I also ended up getting side-tracked into writing a very long post as a follow up to my Rape vs. Ravishment post. As of this moment, that post is nearly 4000 words long, which is stunning. I need to make a few more edit passes before it’s ready to release, so I’ll just put it into the standard Wednesday slot.

Part of what’s stunning to me about it, is that I managed to find the time and passion to write 4000 words on a post, when I’ve struggled to find the time and passion to write that much on my fiction. Why did my productivity suddenly jump? Yes, some of it was having more available time (a business trip gave me ‘hotel’ time to write), but I’ve had that time in the past. I can’t say it was because I was more organized or had a better idea where I was going. While it is true that I get more words written when I’m not figuring out the scene as I go, I had similar problems with the blog post. By the time it’s released, I will basically have rewritten it twice because I was stumbling pretty badly on my first draft.

Instead, what makes sense to me is the difference in passion. I was pissed when I first read the paper that my upcoming blog post critiques. I found the writing, the analysis, and conclusions sloppy and I didn’t like being told that I was wrong based on such sloppiness. Now, as I wrote and rewrote, I realized that much of the ‘sloppiness’ was really sloppiness in my reading, and not in their writing. I also made an effort to calm down because a response to an academic paper needs to be level-headed. Hot-heads don’t win logical arguments. So at some point, when the anger and irritation wore off, I still maintained a fair amount of passion to ‘get my arguments right.’

So the passion shoved me through. It was a short burst, and I’m not sure I could have sustained it for much longer. Besides I now have to address the chores etc. that got pushed to the side and I’ve even more tired than I was before. I’ve got the backlash when the adrenaline wears off at work.

But it did get me wondering–what could I be passionate about in my fiction? What in my queue would inspire me to knock out 4000 words in a few days, because by gawd I need to knock it out or I’m going to go crazy?

I’m finding I don’t have much passion for the top story in my queue–Caught Online. The reason I put it up top is that I thought it might fit with a call for submissions. The problem is, it really doesn’t. The call for submissions wants stories that celebrate female sexuality, even if from a male POV. Well… yeah, I could bend it, but it’s a stretch. The premise is a guy realizes that he’s seen a picture of one of his coworkers on a swinger’s site. So the central conflict should be what he does with that knowledge. I think the story would be stronger if I stick with that as the focus and not bend it for a submissions call.

So next will probably be Unmasked. I’m not finding a lot of passion for it at the moment, but I know that’s because it’s going to be heavy at the beginning. The Holiday Series was light and fun when I started, but when I decided to include some real character development, I had no choice but to introduce some drama. Unmasked will wrap most of it up, but I’m not finding the energy to dive into it.

That said, I have had flashes where I really wanted to work on Deep Dish. Seeing as how I still have some issues resolved on publishing a graphic novel, I’m not sure how much I’ll do. Probably enough to keep the juices flowing at least.

In the meantime, I’ll continue letting thoughts about ‘what would I be passionate about’ simmer on the back burner.