Category: Rants & Observations
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Finished through Lesson 20 on the new Secret Writing Class today
Lesson AND worksheet — took a couple of days on this one, but this was one of those strange sideways-thinking lessons that lets you get at parts of your story that are going to be unexpected and exciting for readers, and that will give you fresh perspectives soon your characters and world. Like what I…
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The Money-Grubbing Asshat from Berkeley
I do email first thing, and then last thing. And this morning, my first goddamn email was a notice from the Berkeley Humane Society telling me that August is National Make-A-Will Month, and offering me their Personal Estate Planning Kit so I could leave them all my money when I die. Shitbags. This is pure…
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‘Twas a fine day in writing land… with vengeance…
You know how you have heroes who you watch take a beating from the world, and get trampled by minions who’ve taken over something they’ve created? And you watch the over-throwing bastards who trample them ruin all the good stuff they made, and make a complete mess of this wonderful thing they put into the…
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Heading in — teeth bared, knives out… because the BIG bad is coming
Rolled out of bed early — couldn’t sleep. Got the shower, drank the coffee, and cleared all the office shit first, because today I’m heading in to the BIG MIDDLE SCENE, where everything changes. I’m taking a deep breath. I have the Rock Gods going, because this section of the book needs my full focus…
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Why I’ve been AWOL from blogging (AKA the dangers of stand-sliding on the playground)
In my first run through my five-novel Ohio series, I carefully plotted the first book, wrote it, love it… And carefully plotted the next four books. Followed by ignoring my outlines and pantsing the novels. Why? Because it was fun, it was exciting, it was like being a kindergarten kid again, standing on the top…
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Civilization Versus The Full-Body For-Keepsies Panty Raid… and The Survival Value of ADD
When I was a kid and my family lived on the western tundra of Alaska, my dad took me hunting and fishing with him. We were bringing in food for the table in a place where agriculture was impossible. I loved tagging along and helping out. I was nine, so for hunting I was just…
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Replotting Ohio 2… The Experiment that Went BOOM!
Book 2 has a lot of salvageable material. A lot of awesome world stuff, some wonderfully funny scenes, some pretty scary scenes. It was fun for me to read, and I made myself laugh a bunch of times, got a little teary-eyed, did a light revision and passed it off to my Editor. Matt, however,…
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And more of the same… OHIO 2 (NO… THREE) Revision
I’m going through all five novels. At the moment, I’m tearing apart Book One, which I got right, to find out where I need to take Book Two THREE in the revision. It’s a complicated process, and I’m managing to give myself regular headaches going through it. And all of this is my own damn…
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Still replotting, still restructuring on Ohio 3
There’s damn little I’m going to be able to save. Ohio 3 is lost in the weeds. So at this point, I’m barely even looking for things to save. I’m just looking for the story I wanted to tell but didn’t, and if I can use any of what I already wrote, great. If not……
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Here’s that Wrong Left Turn In Albuquerque… and it’s as bad as I dreaded.
The first sixty pages of Ohio 3 held up fine. Starting on manuscript page 61, I went in exactly the wrong direction, dropped the really good local character I had in place for one who broke my otherwise tight worldbuilding through two novels and the start of this one all to shit, threw in a…