Boy, Interrupted

I set ambitious writing goals for this year.

Goal 1: Finish the first draft of BENEATH A SUNDERED SKY (150,000 words)

Goal 2: Finish the first draft of WHAT'S BEHIND THE CROOKED DOOR? (15,000 words)

Goal 3: Finish the third (first final) draft of PRINCE OF CATS (50,000 words)

Goal 4: Rewrite BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE (150,000 words)

All in all, I set goals to deal with the largest word count I've ever attempted in a single year. (Granted, some of it had been touched before so maybe that should have a .75 modifier to the word count in terms of difficulty. I can't say for sure.) I didn't set these goals with a "let's see how much of this I can do" mindset. I set goals I expect to achieve. Thus I expected to achieve all four goals.

So why am I obviously leading up to the fact that I'm not going to achieve all four goals? Because it's March and I'm already sick FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS YEAR! I'm not one of those people that get sick every decade. I have a crappy immune system. January and I are not friends. I get sick in January almost every year. Then again at the end of autumn or around there when the weather is turning and my allergies are kicking my ass and everyone has forgotten how to cover their mouths for some reason.

The fact that I've already been sick three times this year is not a good sign. It certainly hasn't made writing easier. It took a bit to get back up to speed after the first time I got sick. Then, after the second time I got sick, I realized everything I had written between those illnesses was absolute shit and needed to be deleted. I not only wasted a month of writing time, I wasted the paltry 20,000 words I wrote in that month (which is half of what I usually write in a month, in case you're wondering).

Beginning the year with SUNDERED SKY and seeing how easily the setting fell onto the page, I didn't think it unrealistic at all to finish it in three months. Add a couple weeks to switch gears and finish CROOKED DOOR and I had thought to have points one and two scratched off by April. I thought maybe to add goals 1.1 and 2.1, revising a second draft over the summer for each of those stories.

It's March 8th and I'm at 50,000 words of goal one. At this pace, I'll finish the book by September! Horror! What a wasted year that would be. I don't expect that to be the issue, obviously. Once I'm well, the word count pace will increase, but damn it's hard to feel that way when I'm on illness number three and I can only manage enough mental capacity to realize I'm sucking it hard this year.

How's your progress coming? Hopefully better than mine.

That question is for everyone, but especially Nate. Everyone stare at Nate and remind him he should not be reading this journal entry. He should be writing his novel. Now. Go. Shoo. Be creative.

More Music!

For my old job I used to travel to Europe. Sitting in a bar in Amsterdam, I often heard a style of electronica that really spoke to me. It was a popular house music there that everyone seemed to know, but no one would explain to a silly American. It was unlike anything I heard back in the states. Well, years later with the rise to popularity of such performers as Skrillex, I finally know A) what it's called; and B) how to find it.

So what I was hearing way back when was Dubstep. Now that it's popular, people love to make fun of it because that's what people on the internet do. Let this be a lesson for when you put anything you create out there. Some jackass will make fun of you because that's what jackasses do. Regardless, now that I've found the name of the genre, YouTube has granted me plenty of opportunities to listen.

I bring this up because I don't listen to music while I write. BUT some music gets me so pumped up that I want to write. Such a song is Nefarioiusa by Skream. Check it out:



I've listened to that one three times in a row now. Work? Who wants to work. That can wait until tomorrow. Now it is time I create!!!

Real-Life Hobbit

When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. "Attention K-Mart shoppers" was a frequent phrase uttered over the PA system, to give you a frame of reference. (Younger readers, K-Mart is like Wal-Mart before Wal-Mart was Wal-Mart.) Unfortunately, the quality of goods to be obtained there was not always the best. Do you know what foot stones are? Where some really shitty shoes sometime (like the kind you'd buy at K-Mart) and the sharp pains you feel beneath the soles of your feet are foot stones. That's what I got from a $10 pair of shoes from K-Mart.

My mother's response when I told her I couldn't walk any more and needed new shoes? Let's go back to K-Mart and get a new pair. Yeah, no. Let's go get some real shoes. Unfortunately real shoes back then cost pretty similar to what real shoes cost now. A pair of shoes for a ten year old would cost you $40 on the affordable side. And of course, this is the age of Air Jordans where everyone else was wearing $120 shoes. But we were poor and $40 usually got me yelled at plenty, thanks.

One year the search for shoes proved so difficult that I almost could not find any that we could afford. This meant that I spent a good portion of my time barefoot. That tradition continues today. The first thing I do when I get home is take off my shoes and socks. I don't like wearing them. They smother my feet and trap me in and really, what do I need shoes for? I'm not walking over hot coals or jagged rocks.

My wife likes to call me her hobbit, and there may be some truth to that. At work, me being in my own cube with high walls, if I'm really focused on an important project and I don't want any distractions, I'll take off my shoes. I leave my socks on because I'm at work and all, but if I could...oh, I would.

And in case you're curious, I'm at work on my lunch hour right now and I am not wearing my shoes. Wheeeeeeeeee!

Shaking It Up

So my wife and I used the last of our groupons for the year. We're fortunate that she acquired so many earlier this year because with our current financial hardships, none of this would have been possible.

A year ago for my birthday, I drove up to the North Country. I had the day off and I wanted to go up to the mountains so that's what I did. I stopped at Canterbury, New Hampshire. There's a shaker village there. Don't know what the shakers are? They're like quakers but awesomer.

I didn't know they were awesomer at the time, but as our groupon (actually I think it was NH Daily Deals), we got a reduced admission and got to take the tour (which normally costs $17 per person). So that's what we did over the weekend. We headed up to Canterbury and took the guided tour, which is one of the better guided tours I've ever been on. And it was there that we learned about the shakers.

Dude! Dood! I've never experienced Christians like these. Truly, I was moved, and I'm not even Christian! Civil equality, feminism, hard work, scientific advancement, all in the 18th century! Don't think about all that being part of a religious sect back then, do you? They invented the clothes pin, the washing machine, the circular saw, the dorothy cloak, the rotating oven, and the flat broom. And most of those were invented by women! They boiled the sheets of the sick every day, changed clothes every day, and considered all labor equal and important in the eyes of god. So while they fell into typical gender roles in terms of work, that was more a matter of upper body strength and there was no difference between working in the laundry and plowing the fields. They were all fine work to be cherished.

The method invented for drying clothes in the winter was AWESOME! And really, the method for tracking everything in a proto-socialist society (you only owned your toothbrush and your comb) was super awesome. Everything (from a spoon to your short) had a demarcation. Each building had a letter and each room/drawer/cupboard had a number. So if someone found your missing shirt under a bench, you would return to your room and find your shirt laundered and pressed and in your shirt drawer because it had D.14.7 embroidered in it which means that shirt is stored in the 7th drawer of the 14th room in the Dwelling house.

DOOD!

It's actually pretty sad that there are only three shakers left in America (in Maine). The New Hampshire village has been turned into a museum, and I'm glad it was. I would have hated to miss out on learning about these people. I will absolutely use some of this stuff somewhere in a story.

(Also, Ken Burns did a documentary on them, if you want to learn more and can't make it out to one of the villages-turned-museum.)

It's the little details

I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: To help your reader believe the fantastic, make sure they recognize the mundane. It's an easy (lazy) hand-wave to excuse inconsistencies in fantasy by saying "this isn't the real world" when so much of the book mirrors the real world. Rarely do we create something newly whole. More often, we take what's familiar and twist and turn it until the picture looks different.

Why? Because if everything was new, the plot would get stuck in the mud of explanation. And in the end, you would resort to comparisons to the things we recognize and the reader simply associates the new thing as the old thing and all your creative effort is a waste. Don't reinvent the wheel. It's round and it works. Reinvent the people and their history and their religions and their culture.

For this reason, I love going to historical events/museums and the like, so I can pick up on the minor details I had assumed were X but proved to be Y¹. That is why I would go to a place like Old Sturbridge Village twice in ten days². For that same reason, while trying to find things Good Ken might find interesting on his vacation, I recommended the mansions in Newport, RI.

The mansions are were the captains of industry gathered near the end of the 19th century for "summer homes" so they could exult in no taxes and exploitative employment practices. (That's not always true, but when you see where the Vanderbilt's "cottage" the Breakers, you'll want to beat them with sticks.³) Having already listened to the main audio tours, I dove into the "aside" tour items, little things they include as extras in various rooms. How did the servants live. What were the obligations of the family's children to society, etc etc. And I took notes. So many notes! So many ideas that I want to incorporate. The way the houses were built, where the placed what rooms and the importance of those rooms and their placement. What servants wore. What the art was painted on⁴, and so on. They even had mini-bath tubs designed for masturbatory purposes. Ingenious!

Perhaps the thing I like most about including these little details is when someone responds, "That's awesome. Wouldn't it have been cool if we had had those in real life?" And then I can say, "We did!"


¹ The basic lesson I've learned is that people weren't stupid. They were quite innovative. They were simply innovative with the tools and technology available to them at the time. Eliminate stainless steel, electricity, and microprocessors and a lot of our ingenuity would start to look much the same.

² For free! Old Sturbridge Village gives you free entrance back to the site within ten days and any new guests get a 25% discount. That's hot!

³ All these places have a lot of gold leaf. There is one room that Vanderbilts...built that the preservation society thought was silver leaf. But that didn't explain why the silver wasn't tarnishing. So they brought in a portable x-ray machine and discovered the patterns were actually platinum leaf. Do you know how expensive platinum was in 1897?!?! And they used it to decocrate their walls!!!!

⁴ We all hear about oil on canvas. So a tour guide was stuttering while pointing out a painting. "Oil on...oil...oil..." and I'm thinking, Canvas, woman! Say canvas! This painting was particularly interesting because it looked like the artist had painted the entire canvas black before starting. While that is a practice, in this case it didn't seem to serve the subject matter. The black was showing through and inhibiting the portrait of the family member. "Oil on ebony." WHAT WHAT? On ebony? HOW AWESOME!!!!

Good Ken is Good

My friend Good Ken¹ Braun is in town. We are leaving for Canada today for he has never been out of the United States and I will pop his international cherry. We go to Montreal for a couple days and then Quebec City. This is the first vacation I've had in years. While money is still tight, it'll be nice to get away. ...or would be if I hadn't gotten sick. Stupid germs.

Now, you may ask, why do I care that Good Ken has come to visit, Joe? I don't know this guy. I don't even know if he's good². You care, gentle reader, because when Good Ken comes to town, our conversations inevitably lead me to new novel ideas. It was a conversation with him that prompted the original idea for WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING (that has since become WITH A CROOKED CROWN following agent feedback).

And he has not disappointed! I took him to Old Sturbridge Village and we looked about the cemetery because old cemeteries are awesome. He says what a growing number of people think, cemeteries offer peace for families, a glimpse to the past, but are otherwise a colossal waste of space. He'd rather be cremated³. Then take his ashes and turn them into a synthetic diamond.

If my brain had sound effects, it would be the dive alert horn from a submarine. AWOOGAH! AWOOGAH! Story idea! Story idea! AWOOGAH!

So here's the situation. It's the future and wealthy people are turned into diamonds when they die. Their names are laser-etched into the gem. The family weaves those gems into a necklace. The most prestigious families have massive necklaces that show they are the best of the aristocracy.

And one of them is stolen! Duh duh DUHHHHHHH!


¹ When we first met, there was another person who I was friends with also named Ken. Things were not well between us. To keep others straight about whom I was referring, I named them Good Ken and Bad Ken.

² He's so good. O.O

³ I can't find a burial ritual I approve of. You're not allowed to be buried in wooden coffins any more so how are the worms and the beetles supposed to eat me? And cremation is nice but all that fire energy is wasted. Hook up the crematorium to the grid and generate some power with my passing. One last good act for mankind!

A New Adventure!

Groupon Queen discovered that we lived near the nation's third largest living history museum, Old Sturbridge Village. This is a village as you would have found it in 1835 New England, and many of the buildings are actually from that period transplanted from one of the various states. Actors/educators are in period dress and conduct themselves in particular professions, so there's a printer, a tinsmith, a potter, etc. This was REALLY cool and I learned a ton! (My understanding of how a grist mill works was informed by Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and 19th-century mills did not use a rotating millstone of that fashion, if that fashion ever existed. Also, I learned how a sawmill works and a schoolhouse and...and...who the hell can fit 12 people in a house that small?!)

There was also Fife and Drum corps there today playing a variety of music. And some of the early 18th-century muskets are as tall as I am. How the hell could anyone aim with something that large? You'd need a stand to rest the barrel on! (They also had a seven-barrel musket that you might recognize if you've watched the Richard Sharpe miniseries. I don't know if it appears in the novels.)

Inevitably in these places, I end up taking pictures of the placards instead of the actual structures because I want to be able to go back and reference their information later. (I did this for a map at a Greek Fest for the Middle East c. 2nd millenium BC and it was pretty awesome.)

The one I was most enthused about today was the information on the mill. Aside from showing the proper way to turn the millstone (they laid on top of one another like two donuts whereas I had thought one vertical rolling around the other), they also explained how millers kept their business. People brought their grains that needed milling and would pay the "Miller's Toll," 1/16th of the milled grain that the miller could then sell to those people who did not raise their own crops.

I love the phrase "Miller's Toll" and am devoting considerable effort to finding a story that will fit with it. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.

Things I Like Other than Writing

I finished my rewrite, began PRINCE OF CATS (which is going awesomely--beyond awesomely really, I'm flying), and the summer crush is over. Obviously you can tell that because I'm blogging, thus my hours are not filled with making content to educate the next generation of politicians who will hopefully ben an improvement over our current crop.

ANYWAY

As this is the end of he busy season for a few months, I have time to not only write, but to do other fun things as well. I can take days off and stuff. I'm told the funs happen on days off.

So what do we do? Well, New Hampshire keeps a lot of its funs outside, so I'll go there to find them. My buddy Britt taught me how to play disc golf and I've been practicing. I could do more of that. Especially since the local putting green was rebuilt after a really bad storm tore up the baskets.

I could...go sailing! My wife spoiled our anniversary surprise and mentioned we're going sailing. I learned how to sail through Naval ROTC my freshman year in college and absolutely loved it. It was my favorite thing about the entire experience. She's the queen of the groupon and got a good deal that we can go sailing down on the Charles River (I believe that's where it is).

Another groupon she got me for Christmas is horseback riding. I learned to ride when I was four. My family used insurance money from my father's death to go to dude ranch and mourn/cope/stop trying to kill each other. I have loved riding ever since. I do it every year and if I had enough money, I would love to have a horse of my own. Well, she got me a groupon for a two-hour trail ride and I'll be cashing in that puppy this week. I'm so excited! Woooooo!

But there is more! I need to shed about 20 pounds, but Alpine Adventures, the zip lining place up in Lincoln, NH, has a new course. What's zip lining, you ask? Watch this video of my wife zip lining from a couple years ago. She got me a gift certificate a couple Christmases back and I need to use that puppy. Once I'm less fat.

Kimball Farm in Westford, MA

We have a tradition here in the Selby household. My wife's birthday is a month and a half before mine and our anniversary is in between. We make a birthaversary event out of it. For each of our birthdays, we choose a place we want to eat and an adventure we want to go on. This year, Jen wanted to go to an awesome Greek restaurant named Amphora in Derry, NH. For her adventure, she wanted to go to Kimball Farm in Westford, MA. She's wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride for awhile, but they're incredibly expensive out here (maybe everywhere). Kimball turns out to have an "aeroballoon" ride. It's a big helium balloon tied to a passenger ring that holds twelve people. They raise it on a winch and you fly 300 feet in the air.

They also have two mini-golf courses (that were a lot of fun), batting cages, an arcade, animals, and bumper boats. You get the right idea when you hear bumper boats, bumper cars but on water. But it is SO much more fun! Take an outboard motor, put it in the center of an intertube, drop a seat over it, and go to town!



I could do this for hours! If you're ever in the area, you should definitely give it a try. It was an awesome adventure.

A Triumphant Return

So here I am. :) The busy season has passed. At least until it arrives again (which for me will be January). This year (in my new department) hasn't been even half as bad as the two previous where I was expected to work 14-hour days with weekends and basically go balls to the wall until the summer was gone. I love New Hampshire weather because it has four seasons, but I was skipping one of them and that wasn't as much fun.

I have continued to write, another thing that was difficult in the summer. I have been rewriting Wanted: Chosen One which is now titled With a Crooked Crown. Let me tell you how much work that has been. I thought it would be an up-front slog while I bent the first half of the book like a contortionist and then just some mopping up to clean up the dust. Not so! Change the main character to a person that was a secondary character and that takes a lot of work. More over, change one of the negative characters to someone less negative and you start to realize he had to get his bitch on in every chapter he was in. Every time I say I'm almost done, I have to stop and rewrite entire chapters.

This weekend I did some prep work on my next book. I don't always do character designs and such before I start writing. Often I don't know the characters to be involved and those I think will be of use end up never fitting into the evolution of the story. But I have a very clear picture of this story. Very clear. I already have names for ten characters and that never happens! So that's kind of thrilling and kind of frustrating at the same time because I can't work on it until I finish my rewrite. So close! So far away! (I spent the morning rewriting a chapter and have spent my lunch hour rewriting the rewrite to change the POV to a different character. :)

And I will leave you with this. My wife just read A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, as we are both fans of the series (books--we haven't seen the HBO show yet). By the end of A FEAST FOR CROWS I had picked up on Martin's chapter template: introduce characters, eat/describe what they're wearing, have something important happen. So I would read the first page to see who was around and then the last two pages of a chapter to see what happens. I'd skip all the description because after four books, I got it.

Well, according to the missus, he's actually increased his description of food, which may be difficult to comprehend. Her question was obvious? Why?! To date, I had just assumed it was his style, but then I wondered, is he doing this on purpose?

The answer slapped me like a person that's been sitting next to you on the couch for the entire movie and you didn't even know they were there. Yes he's doing it on purpose. In the very first book Ned Stark says people aren't saving enough for winter. Summer had gone on too long and people forgot how much food they needed to save for winter. So here is all this opulence, all these people feasting and gorging and being all disgusting. Why? Because the next book is named THE WINDS OF WINTER and you want to guess how hungry they're going to be then? It's a 50-calibre metaphor shot through five books so the sixth one can properly juxtapose their situation.

It's the opposite of the soft touch. It's the jackhammer. Or it's just his style. We'll see.

My Nemesis, Progress!

A bit of a note, I am still swamped at work though that should be clearing up at the beginning of August or thereabouts. Lots of nonsense going on right now, but I am well versed in Alice's time in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass so nonsense is right up my alley. (Do not judge that I live up an alley. We all fall on hard times sometime in our lives.)

Because I've been so busy, I've been writing down post titles of stuff I want to post but will have to get to later. You can imagine that this is as successful as writing down a book title and remembering the idea later. To that end, my post on adverbs last week had one major omission, the original point of the post! "Just the Adverbs" was a specific title I chose because the word just can be used as an adjective or as an adverb. And when used as an adverb, it really weakens your sentence. That is one of those adverbs where King and I agree. I almost always take it out when I see it. Unfortunately, I see it a lot in my own writing. In first draft, it seems to connote a triviality or an understanding of totality that in second draft review appears more as broken rhythm and indecisive imagery. If you're not using just as an adjective, chop it out. Your sentence will read much stronger for it.

Speaking of weaker, that brings us today's topic. It may be my folksy Midwestern upbringing or it may be some subconscious attempt to be less direct (something I'm told I need to be). For whatever reason, I tend to use progressive verbs WAY more often than is necessary.

I hope you can help me with this = I am hoping you can help me with this.

All. The. Time. If I were Superman, progressive verbs would be my green kryptonite (I was going to make a red kryptonite joke here, but reading through the Wikipedia entry for kryptonite just reminds me how much I dislike Superman and his entire canon).

A rhythm that I use to the point that one of my beta readers pointed it out to me is an independent clause comma progressive verb. He typed on the keyboard, thinking of all the times he wrote similar sentences.

Oh me and the ING are good friends. Too good, maybe. Me and ING need some space apart. Set it free and if it comes back, and all that. Maybe? Yes? No? I love you, ING! Don't go!

And with that, I go back to work. See you guys soon. For real this time. ;)

(How's your summer going? Did you hear that Nate Wilson had a son? They let him reproduce. The wonders of modern science. Wish him and the Professor well.)

August Wilson

If your education was anything like mine, the only plays you were exposed to in high school were the Shakespeare you read in English class (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, maybe King Leer or Macbeth) and whatever your school performed for the yearly musical (Guys and Dolls again?). Maybe around senior year you got yourself a Death of a Salesman and/or Glass Menagerie. Once you got to college you picked those two up, some more Shakespeare, maybe Our Town or Die Fledermaus.

You know what, they're all good plays and there is a reason they are timeless (well, aside from that last which is technically an opera). But I will admit that I went through all of high school and all of college (earning a theatre degree!) and I never read a play written by a black playwright.

A couple years ago I saw Fences by August Wilson and was blown away. I mean, blown. away. I went from the Huntington all the way to North Station without speaking (and really, me anywhere not speaking is a bit of a big deal) because I was still reeling from the play's impact.

It is one of ten plays Wilson wrote, each representing a different decade in the 20th century and he African experience of that decade. Fences is set in the fifties after Jackie Robinson and World War II where America is beginning to integrate but hasn't yet reached the civil rights movement.

I wish I had read/scene this play in college. Hell, I wish I had scene/read it in high school. It was the single most powerful bit of theatre I have ever been exposed to and I think I would have approached my college experience entirely different if I had scene it first.

If you are in the New York area or will be traveling there, there is a play written by a black playwright while she was in residence at the Huntington. It's called Stickfly and I saw it when it ran in Boston. It's about black families on Nantucket island. It has some hard hitting dialogue and doesn't just sing a "I'm so persecuted" song. It challenges all its characters and is finely done. Give it a try if you have the opportunity.

Anti-Social Socializing

I am not anti-social. In fact, I love being the center of attention. I have wanted to be the storyteller since I was five, lying about the size of the frog I caught¹. The trick is, there are a lot of social situations where I cannot be the center of attention, and in those cases I find I would much rather be writing.

Most often, this is a barbershop party. My wife is in a competitive a capela barbershop chorus and quartet and those folks love to party. When they party, they sing. I can't sing². So I hang out while they sing. They're good people and we converse at times, but really, it's a party where everyone else is singing. I would rather write, but I feel that's rude. I don't want to sit in the corner on my computer. So...I sit in the corner with my liquor. It's marginally more social.

Any more, it seems I measure all social engagements against writing time. Knowing that I've already had two hours to write that day, would the time spent socializing be more fun than more writing. If yes, then yay! If no, then...can I bring my computer just in case?



¹ It was THIS big!

² I'm told I could sing very well with proper training, but I consider that training writing time and would not sacrifice the one for the other.