Big Ed's Place

So I had one of those disheartening moments that sometimes hits writers. I had to rip up a story and throw it away. It was California Dreaming, which I’d started and finished last week. Unfortunately, it pushed Summer Camp canon beyond what Nick Scipio could accept. That’s fine. It’s his universe and I’m a guest. We did find a way to convey the heart of the story in something that would fit, but I’m basically starting from scratch. I must admit the fire to work on was tamped a bit.

That said, this is really one of the cases where getting back on the horse matters far more than the damage done. I haven’t gone into a funk or slowed down on my writing. Instead, I just switched to another work in progress and pushed on. And, as I said, there’s still the core of a story there. Later, I came back and started working on expanding that core in an acceptable way, this time under the working title Florida Daze.

But getting it ripped up made me think about writing and critique groups.

Now I happen to believe there’s a very good place for a writing community. This can be hard lonely work and it’s wonderful to talk to people who ‘get it.’ In my experience, there’s lots of emotional support and encouragement. I wouldn’t have been writing if it hadn’t been for such a community formed by Girl Friday.

There’s also a place for a critique group. I know what I intended to write. It’s harder to evaluate whether I accomplished what I intended. I know that’s true for many other writers. So, if we can, we get either a group or a small coterie of trusted beta readers.

The thing is, I’ve also seen critique groups that do the ‘rip up.’ Heck, I’ve done it before I knew better. The thought of the ripper is that they’re helping make things better. But are they? I’m not sure they really are.

For one, it hurts. Even done with kindness. Sometimes pain’s necessary, but I think it takes a particular mastery of the subject material plus compassion to tear something apart without inflicting unnecessary pain.

For another, I’ve come to believe that all too often, the critiquer doesn’t know anything either. The critique is “this is how I would do it” not “this is what’s wrong with it.” Sometimes there’s a better idea in there, but should the writer really listen? There’s a risk of drowning out the writer’s voice if they make every change suggested.

In this case, Nick’s critique was dead on in some spots and off in others, in my opinion. That’s why the story core might be salvageable. It’s less of an edit than a rewrite in a new direction that will hopefully work.

So Florida Daze is up to 2240 words, with about 462 of them salvaged from California Dreaming. That means I ripped up and threw away over 3/4 of the original story. It also means I managed a little less than 1800 new words this past week.

Meanwhile, I worked on Giving Thanks in and around Florida Daze and added another 581 words to it, bringing it to 987. That gives me about 2300 words for the week, which is a good week.

Furthermore, by getting back on the horse, the pain went away fairly quickly. That’s always good and one of the reasons why getting stuck on a ripped up piece is self-defeating.

This past week, another author started a story in the Compassionate Courtesan Universe. My ‘job’ in reviewing it is to check for consistency with canon. It’s been an experience that’s more surprising than I expected.

For one, I have to be vigilant about what’s ‘not canon’ and what’s ‘not the way I’d do it.’ Fortunately, the other author is experienced enough that I don’t have to worry that he’ll write a lousy story. It’s a lot harder to separate out style critique from ‘that’s crap’ critique than to just restrict my comments to ‘that’s not consistent with canon.’

Of course, part of the fun and surprise is when he invents new canon. I get much the same pleasure from Tzratzk’s art. “This isn’t exactly what I envisioned, but it’s not wrong, so why not go with it?” I’m definitely looking forward to the story.

So what does this have to do with my writing status?

Well, this week was largely editing. I worked on Unmasked and will post it within the week, hopefully. I also edited a short science fiction story I got back from the universe’s owner. I’d written it as fan fiction and then emailed it to the universe author, saying I don’t know what to do with this. His response was, “good story, but it’s not really in my universe. Get it out there.” So I’ve been tweaking it in order to make it stand alone independent of his universe.

Even my new writing has been canon related. I had a queue jumper this past week–a story that insisted on getting out of my head onto paper (strange analogy since it’s really onto the hard drive). It’s a Summer Camp story (working title “California Dreaming”) and I knocked out 1900 words in a few hours. The problem is–it doesn’t really fit Summer Camp canon. So I’m staring at it going, “now what?” I’ll probably set it aside for a while and work on other stories until I can either figure it out, talk it through with Nick Scipio, or decide to abandon it.

It’s a challenge. But all these canon issues have been fun. Hopefully reading the results will be too.

Some time in the next couple of days, I’ll post TMI, the third story I’ll have written in Nick Scipio’s Summer Camp Universe (the stories page is here). I also have two more in my writing queue. It seems a bit strange to realize that I may soon have written a comparable number stories in someone else’s universe to any one of my own.

Now admittedly, the word count strongly favors both the Holiday Series universe and the Compassionate Courtesan universe. It’s not fair to say there are as many Summer Camp stories as there are Compassionate Courtesan stories because, while true, there are 8 to 10 times more words in the Compassionate Courtesan stories. Nick’s universe is mostly fluff and fun for me–not the serious exploration of characters and situations that I do elsewhere. Two of the three of them are about as close to stroke stories as I get. That’s not to say they’re devoid of characterization or explorations. Just that they’re not as serious.

That said… it’s a bit strange to actually write in someone else’s universe. Surprisingly, issues about plot and story consistency are pretty easy for me. What’s hard is getting the characters to sound like Nick writes them. I don’t have the ear for dialogue that he does and since the characters didn’t originate in my head to begin with, it’s tricky. It also doesn’t help that I’m much more visual than auditory. I see scenes in my head, which is why I decided to try a graphic novel with Deep Dish.

So I pretty much have to send Summer Camp stories to Nick for editing. That’s a delay and a round of serious redlines that have to be addressed. I have to separate out stylistic differences from character differences–it’s my story, after all, even if it’s his universe. In the end, well, you get to see the results of the end. I think the stories are pretty good.

In the end, even though I do the writing, it’s still a collaboration. As such, it’s only as good as the people who are collaborating and their relationship. There are times I want to slap Nick upside the head, but am smart enough to realize doing so would be counterproductive. So far, he seems to have the same restraint. Furthermore, even if my story is ‘stand alone’, I have to rely on Nick not doing something crazy in his own stories, since I don’t control the universe. If he were to decide to suddenly have his characters swerve into gay masochistic sex–well, it’s his universe and his choice. But my stories would lose a lot of their fit if not their appeal.

In the end, I’m definitely enjoying it, but I certainly feel the need to not make it my primary playground. It’s fun, but sometimes I have to pick up the pen and get onto the adventures of people that live solely in my own head.

So I started the week thinking I’d continue to slowly increase my writing pace. I finished page 32 of the Deep Dish script and also knocked out page 33. Not a bad start, I thought.

Then in the middle of the week, I was exchanging emails with Nick Scipio and an amusing idea for a short story in his universe came to mind. Now normally, that would be the end of it. I have a lot of ideas after all. I’ve probably got a dozen for Nick’s universe alone. But given how little time I get to write, and how thick my queue is, I generally let those ideas slither on out of my brain and hope they’ll find other fertile pastures.

But this one grabbed me. And grabbed me hard. Like “big dog yanking little kid down the sidwalk” hard. Like “angler hooks shark instead of guppy” hard.

The title is “TMI” and it’s set between the Coulters’ and Hughes’ return from Utah and Paul’s week of insanity and is told from Chris’s POV. I figure it’ll be around 3kwords when I’m done, which is a nice little snippet. It’s more of one long scene than a tightly plotted drama, but I’m enjoying it.

And I’ve written 2,471 words. That’s over 10 times my normal weekly rate! I honestly can’t remember writing this fast in the post-baby era, and maybe not even in the post-wife-moves-in era. I slowed down only when I broke a glass bowl and sliced three fingers, which seriously hindered my typing. It’s not serious, so I hope to be back to full speed soon (typing this takes more time due to the bandages).

So where does my queue stand these days?  Well, here it is.

Publication Queue
Irie No Kaubutsu–expected to be published in the Tentacle Dreams collection by Republica Press this month.
Waiting for Rodin–to be published in Pill Hill Press anthology in November or December
Fantasy story under other pen name–to be published in spring.

Active Works in Progress
TIM–2471 words done on crappy first draft of approximately 3kwords.
Deep Dish–33 pages of 64 scripted, rest through detailed outline, 3 pages completed w/ full art.
Unmasked–3,466 words done on crappy first draft. Expected length ~10kwords.

Works I’m committed to
Giving Thanks–the 9th Holiday Series story. It’ll be short.
The Devil in the Details–a Summer Camp Universe story. Probably novella length, but maybe not.
The Boys of Summer–third Compassionate Courtesan Universe novel
Historical Fiction novel under other pen name

Highly desired additions
Honeymoon–If I decide to release The Holiday Series as an ebook, I’ll add a 10th story as the ‘bonus’ for folks who’ve read the entire thing here.
One-Eyed Dick and the Valley of the Sun–I’d really like to do a follow up story with Dick, and I’ve got just the nasty pun to end the story with.
A science fiction short under my other pen name. I like the premise, but not what I’ve written so far. I think a complete rewrite might be in order.
Some more short fiction I can submit to anthologies. Naked Twister and Caught Online are my current best ideas, but I’m sure I’ll have others.

and of course, there’s the Summer Camp Universe stories
The Size of Their Toys (Erin’s 16th Bday)
Mayflower (how Sherri and Susan met)
The Devil’s Due (if a trilogy seems apt after I write The Devil in the Details)
Kara’s bachelorette party (only after Nick gets far enough in the main story)

Whew! That doesn’t even include a lot of passing fancies or other whims and ideas. That’s several years of writing at my current pace. Unless, of course, the queue jumper pace becomes the norm. We’ll cross our fingers.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m on Nick Scipio’s reality team. What that means is that I see and comment on his drafts before they are released.

When Nick sent me the draft for Chapter 11 of Book 4, I argued that it didn’t make sense for Paul and Leah to be excluded from swinging with their parents completely—that there would be times when Sean wasn’t around. Nick disagreed, but we continued to discuss the idea. In particular, I felt that the adults wouldn’t cut Leah and Paul off unless something had happened. I suggested a ‘something’ to Nick and he told me to go write the story. It became Bent.

This one was a challenge because, while the plot was minimal and it was reasonably short, I was playing with many more of Nick’s characters than I did in Dealing with the Devil and I had to make them seem like the same people. Fortunately, Nick helped out and I’m reasonably satisfied with the result.

I also wanted to tackle the incest taboo in a slightly more realistic manner than most of the stories on the internet. Nick’s universe is one of the few on storiesonline where characters engaged in incestual encounters actually have second thoughts about them. I believe the struggle between the lure of the taboo and the recognition that it’s fraught will peril is important to capture. While I didn’t spend a long time with those internal struggles (Chris isn’t David, after all), I hope I did realistically show how the slippery slope of allowing rules to be bent can lead to them being bent more than ultimately desired.

Okay, A Mall Tale has echoes of A Good Christmas. Sometimes the theme is just irresistable. At least this one is for me.

Nick Scipio forwarded me a Call for Submissions for an anthology on exhibitionism. This story popped into my mind and I loved the fact that the narrator was not your typical “young stud.” When I finished it, I realized it wasn’t suitable for the original Call, and so submitted it to Ruthie’s Club, where it was published in March 2009. With Ruthie’s closing, I thought I should republish it here.

I like the surprise in this story, and the audacity of the unnamed female lead. It also contributes to my hope that some day, if I’m really lucky, I too can see unexpected things at the mall…

Wow. Having the Grand Opening certainly helped free up my muse, or my time, or both. I knocked out 694 words on Love’s Labor Found, bringing it to 3687 words. Now that’s still not a lot, but it’s certainly better than I’ve been managing in a week for a while.

In many ways, it’s because I’m not editing. I’ve spent most of the last few months furiously stealing every second to edit my older stories so I could have the Grand Opening. It actually felt strange to sit down for lunch recently and not have two chapters I needed to go through. So two of those lunch hours, I actually wrote. The evenings will probably not be great reading time for a while–I need to catch up on household chores as well. But if I can still bang out a few hundred words a week or more, I ought to be in good shape for having a new story ready to post not long after the current “Grand Opening” run.

I also had a queue jumper this week. I managed to beat it back into the regular line after it gave me a decent first paragraph, and I think it’ll be happy to remain there for a while. It’s working title is “Deep Dish” and it takes place in Nick Scipio’s Summer Camp Universe. I don’t think I can finish it until Nick releases a few more chapters of Summer Camp, which is probably what will keep it docile in the pen for a while.

Up front, I must state that my work is entwined with Nick. He hosts this site on his server. He lets me play in his Universe, writing Summer Camp stories. I return the favor by serving on his reality team and reviewing his rough drafts before he releases them. Does that bias this review? Probably, but I’ll let you the reader judge how much.

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Well, not much original writing this week.  Love’s Labor Found remains stuck at 1640 words.  I didn’t have a lot of free time at all, and what I did have I spent on editing One-Eyed Dick.  After three passes, I sent it to my reading team.  I’m getting the feedback now, and have already folded in edits based on those comments.

I think the story’s substantially improved with the edits and with some of the suggestions.  There’s only one meaningful plotline change, and in the grand scheme it’s pretty minor (my wife talked me into letting a character live).  The most challenging edits were for vernacular voice.  One reader pointed out inconsistencies and so I basically did a ‘search’ word by word, so that every time I used “thinkin’” instead of “thinking” i was using it the same way.

Even then, I catch problems.  I spotted a stupid typo that slipped through all the edits and it’s like ‘why is this here?’  I am looking at adding a proofreader to my team and following Nick Scipio’s overall strategy and we’ll see if that helps.  For those not familiar, Nick finished a draft, sends it to an alpha reader, revises it, sends it to a reality checking team, revises it, sends it to an editor, revises it, and sends it to proofreaders.  Now I’m confident that scope is bigger than I personally need, but I think it’s still good to have several sets of eyes on a work before it goes out the door.

And ‘going out the door’ may be difficult for this one.  I’d like to submit it for pay somewhere before posting it here.  A few dollars to offset costs of this site would be nice, and most places only insist on exclusive rights for a handful of months.  Which means y’all will see it, the only question is when.  However, being humor and being longer than most (it’s still ~7400 words, even after edits and cuts), there aren’t a lot of good markets.  I’ll rant about this on Wednesday, but if I don’t come up with something within a couple of weeks, I may just release it here near/after all the backlog stories are up.  We’ll see.

It’s amusing to me to look at my weekly totals and see how low they are. There are of course the usual reasons or excuses and causes. But today I got to thinking–what’s slow? What’s fast?

Back when I wrote The Ugly One and Two Minute Penalties, I could basically produce 5-6kwords in 3-4 weeks. That’s about 1500-2000 words in a week. I considered the pace at the time to be extraordinarily slow. I’d see Nick Scipio or Frank Downey pounding out long stories at extraordinarily faster rates. Of course the irony of the fact that I’m now writing more than both of them combined is not lost on me.

These days, of course, my writing is slower. Except that I’m also doing a lot of webpage work, and does that count? Additionally, this post and the Wednesday Musings post are easily several hundred words. If I throw those into the writing count, am I writing slower or faster than I used to? And what other standards are there?

For this week, I feel like I made reasonable progress on One-Eyed Dick. I’m up to 4221 words, which means 1105 in the last week. No progress on Love’s Labor Found (still at 1640), but it still feels good.

And maybe that’s what matters? Not the speed but the sensation of having progressed?

Anyway, that’s the status this Sunday.