I just finished my fourth draft of Sharp Things. How is it looking?

It is not where I want it yet. All of the pieces are there, but I’m not quite happy with the tone and voice and the thread tying it all together. So I will go through it a fifth time and try to fix that. I am presently flipping between Sharp Things and another project.

I am far past the point of having anything profound to say about the process at this point. One just keeps grinding. I think I am done with this lengthy thread, though. Time to start fresh posts. The tale of drafting Sharp Things has beeen told. I hope you got something useful out of it.

Excelsior!

5-15-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about five months now.

Current word count 64500/65000.

I finished the third draft this morning. The book is about 85 percent done. If I had to use a metaphor, I’d say, I have a shoe. Now I just need to lace that shoe up, pull the laces tight and tie them off.

I still hope to finish the book before the end of the year. At this point, I can set the book off to the side and let it marinate a bit, then come back with fresh eyes. I’m ready to get away from it for awhile. I’ve probably been working on it for about two hours a day for the third draft. Now I’m going to work on another project for about a month. Then I’ll come back to Jacob Cable and do a fourth draft. The plot is now there, but some refinement is needed. Plus, I need to add a couple of chapters. It’s getting there. Now each subsequent draft will take less time, as well. If I spent an hour on each page during the third draft. I can now spend maybe 10 minutes on most of them.

At the end of the day, there is a certain level of, let’s call it, tone, that I need to reach with my writing. I’m not sure how to articulate it, but it is maybe like music. I like music, espeically guitar music. In fact, I’d like to play guitar, but I am not that musical, and I don’t have time for two artistic pursuits. Nevertheless, stories are my music. They need to have a certain pitch to them before they ring true to me. That final tuning is what I have left.

So it is onto another project for approximately 30 days. Then back to Jacob Cable. By the way, I believe the title of this one is going to be Sharp Things.

4-26-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about…I’m not sure how long now? Since January?

Current word count: 63500/65000

I’m still grinding away on the third draft. I am about halfway through it. It’s going okay. I’m getting to the point where the story is breaking for me. By ‘breaking’ I mean the story is starting to make sense. The characters are making more sense. I can see what needs to be done in each chapter to make it fit with the whole. Once I get this third draft done, the book will be about 85 percent finished.

It is also the silly season for me, so I don’t have as much time to write anymore. If I get through two pages a day, that is pretty good. I always want to go faster, but that’s as fast as I can go. All my brainpower is currently spoken for every day. If I keep it up for another month, the third draft should be about done.

Onward and upward!

4-5-21

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about fourteen weeks now.

Current word count: 61500/65000

I’m still working on the third draft. I will cease these entries until I finish the third draft. It is time to narrow my focus and get the job done, especially since April will be a busy month for me besides. In the meantime, here is how the first chapter of Jacob Cable #4 looks to this point…

CHAPTER
Yeah, keep looking at me, loser. Who are you to tell me squat? Jacob Cable, private detective? That’s a laugh. I know what you are. You’re a pit — stinking, vile, hollow. A nation of despair. Import: booze. Export: rage. And you think you know what’s best for me? Keep your worthless mouth shut, maggot…

Newspapers blew down the empty night street like strange tumbleweeds. No cars or people moved. It was either too late or too early, but then everything is one or the other. Ugly buildings sprouted from the concrete like oversized gravestones. They looked ready for the wrecking ball. Their windows were dark, which meant the rooms were deserted or occupied by people who wished they had the means to desert them.

I confronted my reflection in the laundromat window once more. I’d been talking to my reflection more than usual recently, trying to pinpoint the exact moment where life turned in my hand like a razor. Probably in the war, probably in France — this part of town reminded me of Des Oiseaux’s blasted landscape. I wished it had been. That meant I traveled back in time, and maybe I could find my past self to warn him.

But it wasn’t the past. It was 1950. It wasn’t France. It was Los Angeles. Five miserable years since I came back from the war, and I still hadn’t managed to crawl out of the hole I found myself in after the charge on the eighty-eight in Des Oiseaux.

Overhead, a faint scattering of stars tried to poke through the moonlit smog and failed. The universe may be infinite, but everyone is stuck in their own little pit. Sure, for some it might be a two-story colonial tastefully decorated with Chippendale furniture, lit with scented candles and brightened with flowers, but what difference does that make?

Still, any fool can be uncomfortable, and any fool can be alone.

Adria was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. And why did I want to see her again anyway? Had I forgotten what she did to me? Of course not. I thought about it always. It was burned into my soul like an acid scar, just like the war and every other bad thing, and thinking about them was akin to wallowing in filth like a manure-caked hog.

My scarred right hand had been buried in the pocket of my trench coat, but now it was out, and my jackknife gleamed sharply in the streetlight. If I sawed the blade against my skull, would it sound the same as a bayonet? More importantly, if I slashed the blade across my wrists, could I drain out all of the misery?

Do it, my reflection — ever the helpful one — prodded. It grinned at me, like it was friendly, but it was the grin of the Grim Reaper.

“I hate you,” I said.

How had things gotten to the point where self-loathing was the greatest luxury I could afford? The question was as cutting as the knife in my hand. I trembled on the verge of doing something rash, but, as always, the implacable will of the mechanism stopped me.

“Time is not a flat circle because you don’t go through life standing. Time is a flat spin because you go through life falling.”

The image of a crashing airplane came to mind. It trailed smoke as it descended in an out-of-control death spiral. The earth waited hungrily, ready to absorb it. The plane’s insignia was a whiskey bottle filled with blood, gripped by a four-fingered hand, and the name written on the plane’s nose was Jacob Cable: Private Detective.

A man came around the corner then. His shadowy form shambled toward me. Maybe he was an angel who came to stay my self-destruction, or maybe he was a devil who came to hasten it. It was hard to make out halo or horns in the gloom of flickering lights.

I turned away from my reflection with flaming embarrassment. The conversations people have with themselves when broken and alone should not be witnessed or heard. They are more revealing than dissection and cause more social disgust than leprosy. If you don’t believe me, go into a crowded place and talk to yourself. The looks people give you are terrifying. They would kill you if they could, the way animals destroy deformed offspring.

I pulled my hat low and stuffed the knife into the pocket of my trench coat as the man approached. Rules of etiquette demanded some sort of greeting since we were the only ones on the street. I didn’t care to bother, though. He might take it as an invitation to stop and chat, and I had no interest in banal conversation about the weather or maybe the Dodgers. I was far beyond gleaning pleasure from such things, but a good chance existed he was, too.

What kind of people walk the streets at three in the morning? The kind that want to be alone or the kind that want to die. But I suppose there was a third choice. Maybe he was a bum. The area was lousy with them. Then I’d have to put up with the usual begging and propositions that rode stinking breath out of mouths ringed with more gaps than teeth.

How about a dollar, mister?

I haven’t eaten in a week, mister. I can earn it if I have to…

Please, mister, a man has needs.

I didn’t need the grief. I had enough of my own. Etiquette could take a long walk off a short pier.

I wasn’t going to say boo to him.

The man drew nearer. His stride was unusual. No lively clip-clop of heels. It was a step-slid, step-slid, like he was limping. He closed to within speaking distance. I kept my eyes on the ground and projected an aura of anti-socialness.

The man ignored my cold shoulder and headed straight for me.

“Help me,” he gasped.

I caught the guy as he pitched forward. Short stubble covered his cheeks. Scruffy hair poked up from his scalp. He was young, early twenties. He had a moist humid feel, like he was soaked with sweat. A dark viscous fluid streaked his forehead. Even in the grimy streetlight I had no problem identifying the substance: blood. I lowered the man to the ground. He grunted and wheezed, and I grimaced at his soiled-diaper feel.

“Help me.” The man put a shaking wet hand on the back of my neck and pulled me close, like he wanted to kiss. His eyes gleamed with feverish intensity. “I don’t want to die.”

The man coughed, and a mist of blood sprayed. Gaping wounds poked through rips in his clothes as his chest heaved. They looked like grinning mouths in his flesh. One of his ears was missing. A hunk of meat was also ripped out of the hollow between his neck and shoulder. The coughing fit rattled to a gasping conclusion. The man pulled me closer. His pain-wracked eyes gazed deep into mine. His breath smelled of offal.

“You’ll help me, right?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll help me, and you’ll get them for what they’re doing?”

“Sure.”

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

A ghastly smile creased the man’s face. He found my four-fingered left hand and squeezed it like he was trying to hold on to something, anything. Then his eyes glazed over, and he went limp, a final gurgle bubbling out of the back of his throat.

Comprehending the man’s savaged state dazed me. Gore streaked my trench coat. I shrugged it off with distaste and wiped my gore-smeared hands on it.

The guy is shredded. What happened to him?

The man’s dead face answered no questions. Blood oozed from his wounds in sluggish drops since a heartbeat no longer propelled them. I spread my trench coat over him. Red soaked through the material and bloomed into flower-shaped stains.

I noticed his trail then. Droplets of blood dotted the path he had traveled.

I caught my reflection in the window as the man’s dying words echoed through my head.

You’ll help me, and you’ll get them for what they’re doing? Promise?

My reflection overrode the dead man’s questions with one of its own.

Where are you going? I’m not done with you! Don’t you dare walk away from me!

I followed the man’s blood because blood follows me.

3-29-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about thirteen weeks now.

Current word count: 61500/65000

Jacob Cable got put on the backburner this week. I ended up polishing up a short story for submission and writing a movie review. It was good to get a break from the book. I had reached the point where the law of diminishing returns was setting in. The words simply stopped making sense. We’ll see how the next week goes.

I also got a rejection on another short story this morning. What do I think about that?

I approach it from the perspective of, whatever they wanted, the story did not give them. Otherwise, they didn’t give me any feedback on why the story was rejected. In my opinion, the story did story things. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. It had a character who went through an arc. It had a mystery revealed throughout the course of the story. It had regular action. It had readable prose. But it didn’t make the cut.

Can’t win them all. At the end of the day, I still have a finished story that I can try submitting somewhere else. Maybe it will work for a different editor. I’ve had that happen with numerous short stories.

On the flip side, I also have some short stories that readers seem to like (and they aren’t making it up to be nice) that have gotten rejected ten times. I like them myself, but, for whatever reason, they never click with editors. It’s a mystery.

Art really is subjective at the end of the day. I’m sure everyone has read short stories in an anthology or other venue and wondered why they made the cut.

For now, I will keep piling up words. I’d like to get a third draft of the Jacob Cable book done. Then I can take a real break, let the book marinate a bit and come back to finish it for good at a later date.

Third drafts and beyond are actually my favorite parts of writing. Then the book is starting to come together and it is a matter of adding salt rather than peeling potatoes.

I read an interview from one of the members of the band Faith No More on creating one of their signature songs: Epic. The guy said he continually listened to the basic track over and over and over again. When one listens to the same thing over and over again, one starts to hear stuff that is not there but should be there.

For example, the guy just heard the piano at the end, even though it didn’t exist in the sounds he was listening to repeatedly. So it is with writing — one goes through the same words over and over and over again, and eventually it becomes apparent what words need to be added.

2-22-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about twelve weeks now…

Current word count: 61500/65000

I finished the second draft. Under different circumstances, I would take a break and let the book marinate a bit before coming back to it with fresh eyes. In this case, I am going to turn right around, go back to the beginning and start the third draft. I’m doing that because the bulk of my problems are still plot related. In that case, it’s best to keep going while everything is still fresh in my mind. Plus, now is the time to do it before spring and summer get into full swing and things become busier.

There’s really nothing profound to say about getting to this point or about this week’s work. Now that I see the shape of the whole story, I know what needs to be done chapter to chapter. I know who each character is and their motivation. It should be easier to do set-ups and pay-offs. By the end of the third draft, I should have a book that is around, let’s say, eighty-five percent done. Then it’s just a matter of adding nuance.

I’m writing this post on Saturday morning. I just got through the last chapter of the second draft. I will take the rest of the day off from writing, plus Sunday. That will give my eyes a chance to rest, as well. Then I will be back at it Monday. I will set a 30-day time frame for the third draft, but I hope it rolls a little faster than that. Time will tell.

Reading-wise, I started a book about the Black Sheep Squadron, a group of World War II airmen who worked in the orient. It’s interesting reading their real-life stories, and it gives a person a lot of fodder for story-writing. One of my favorite anecdotes so far is how no one could catch a P-40 in a dive. Then the Germans came out with the 109E. A P-40 pilot decided he had enough of a dogfight and dove to escape and fight another day. Low and behold, he looks beside him, and there is the 109E slowly passing him in the dive. The 109E pilot rolled back his canopy, flashed the V-for-victory sign at the P-40 pilot as he pulled ahead and flew away.

I don’t know why, but I find stuff like that fascinating.

Until next time…

2-15-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about eleven weeks now…

Current word count: 61500/65000

It’s still a bit slow-going. Still got eye troubles. Vision is getting better, though. I simply need to do a better job of taking breaks and staying active.

It’s a mistake to graph progress as a diagonal line going upwards. It’s more accurate to graph progress as a line shaped like a staircase. One goes up, and then there is a flat spot because rest is required. The plain fact of the matter is I cannot physically write as fast as I would like. All I can do is ask myself, at the end of the day, am I making reasonable progress?

I think so, yes. Could I do a bit more? Sure, but I need to balance it out with everything else I need to get done, as well, without feeling like I got pins in my eyes and feeling sick from the headaches. I don’t win any prizes for beating myself up unnecessarily.

In regards to the writing, I continue to plug along. I got through more chapters and added another 1,500 words. I won’t get through the second draft this week, but I think the end will be in sight. I still have quite a few messes to clean up, but I have fewer messes than I did after the first draft. I will keep dialing it in, dialing it in, dialing it in.

I’ve mainly had to beef up the roles of a couple of characters. I’m also starting to get all of the individual plot threads braided together. My prose polishing has kind of taken a backseat to plot straightening at this point in the book.

In regards to reading, I am still working my way through Koontz’s Phantoms, as well. Bad eyes also affects reading, so that slowed down, too. I’m mostly engaging in activities that give me a break from looking/reading/focusing too hard on screens, pages, etc.

Until next time…be seeing you, blurrily!

3-8-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about ten weeks now…

Current word count: 60000/65000

I did not get as much done this week as hoped. First, I hit the muddiest part of the book when it comes to the plot. Second, I had issues with eye strain and ocular migraines, so I had to take writing down a notch. Nevertheless, progress still happened. Not every day is a good day. Not every week is a good week. One muddles along regardless.

I continue to get the plot sorted out. At lot of reshaping is happening. The gist of a chapter might stay the same, but the particulars get altered. For example, maybe Jacob Cable goes to a park to talk to Character A in the first draft. In the second draft, Jacob Cable goes to a park and talks to Character B…or maybe he just goes to the park to think. I can usually keep the same structure of the chapter. Sometimes just dialogue changes. Sometimes I just fatten the story.

Since I slowed down, there is no way I finish the second draft this week. Right now it is looking like the second draft will take approximately two more weeks. Fortunately, all my deadlines are self-imposed, so my schedule doesn’t upset anyone’s apple cart.

Otherwise, nothing profound happened this week in regard to writing. It was a good example of a butt-in-chair week. Morale got low. Motivation waned. Nothing to do but sit down and put in the time because it will add up eventually.

Reading-wise, I continue to work my way through Koontz’s Phantoms. The novel is kind of like Lovecraft jazzed up. I often find the idea of Lovecraft better than the reality of Lovecraft, so sometimes it is more fun to read stuff that is “Lovecraftian” rather than genuine Lovecraft. Like I suppose the movies Alien and The Thing are Lovecraftian. They show the influence of Lovecraft, but they up the action, same as with Phantoms. I also watched the movie Phantoms not too long ago. The movie seemed kind of truncated, in my opinion, but them’s the breaks. I find it interesting that Koontz wrote the screenplay and had a producer credit, though. I wonder if he got them to make the movie he wanted them to make or not.

Onto this week…

3-1-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about nine weeks now…

Current word count: 58000/65000

I continue to grind away on the second draft. I made decent progress this week. I’m putting in more than one hour a day, though. I’m not sure how much exactly but enough to get eye strain. I may even take the rest of today off due to blurry vision.

As I get deeper into the second draft, I removed another character or two and created a character or two. They are not major characters. They simply serve plot. I also discovered that I need to rearrange chapters a bit. I am getting into the middle section of the book, which I muddled my way through the first time. Now I’m sorting the mess out.

Basically, my plot should go like this…

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10…

Currently, it goes like this…

1, 2, 3, 6, A, &, 4, #, B, 7, @, 9, 10…

But that’s all right. I’m getting there. I am approximately half way through the book and still on track to finish a second draft near the end of the current 30-day block.

Other than that, not much to tell about writing. I simply need to keep grinding away at it. Once I get the second draft done, things will look a lot better.

Reading-wise, I am reading a short story by Robert Chambers, a book about the book of Leviticus and Phantoms by Dead Koontz. I’ve been sorting through all of my books recently. I don’t have a huge amount of them, but they got unwieldy in their organization. Now I know what titles I actually have again. I see a bunch of stuff I’d like to reread.

Until next time, I will keep grinding away on the second draft. I hope to get through the worst of the muddled parts of the book this week.

2-22-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about eight weeks now…

Current word count: 56000/65000

The second draft is proceeding. I am trimming, fattening, removing, adding, getting plot ducks in a row and establishing consistent tone and characterization.

The second draft is still a lot of work, but it’s more leisurely than the first draft. I’m getting through about three-and-a-half pages a day, so I’m currently on track to get the second draft done within this thirty-day block. I’m not as militant about my one-hour-a-day schedule presently. I am probably putting in a bit more time than that. It is easier to lose track of time when doing the second draft. With the first draft, I pretty much count minutes.

What are some of the more interesting things that occurred as I loop back through the book a second time? Let’s see if I can think of a few examples…

In the first draft I had two victims. In the second draft I have one victim. Two was unnecessary and overcomplicated, so I streamlined that part of the plot.

I had a couple of characters come into the first draft about halfway through. They played big enough roles that I realized I had to introduce them earlier. The serendipitous way I did that for one character was interesting. I had a throwaway character in the first draft that never showed up again. I realized I could insert one of the bigger characters into that part. It worked like a glove.

For the other character, I’m going to mention them in an earlier chapter so the reader is at least aware of them when they appear. Speaking of that, I forgot to do that in the chapter I intended. I can either go back and do it now or wait until the third draft. We’ll see…

Finally, I wrote one new, short chapter because I needed to raise the stakes a bit more.

Next week I will start getting more into the second act of the book, which will require more work. It might slow me down a bit. Tune in next week to see how it is going.

2-15-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about seven weeks now…

Current word count: 55000/65000

How did I finish my first draft with such a pathetic weekly word count of 1,000 words?

I deleted a bunch of notes from the end of the document that are no longer relevant. Whatever new stuff I wrote this week was counteracted by those deletions.

For now, I’m content with 55,000 words. I wrote the first draft thin, so the second draft will fatten things up. 65,000 words is still in play, no problem.

Once I get to the end of a project like this, a feeling of that wasn’t so bad always exists. I still hate first drafts, though. I dislike that feeling of dealing with first-draft prose and not knowing if things will fit together.

Did everything fit together? In a general sort of way, to a degree, yes and no. I have a lot of adjusting to do in the second draft, but that is what second drafts are for.

Speaking of which, I’m going to take a day off and go directly into the second draft. I will try to keep the same schedule — work one hour on the second draft every day. I will set a 30-day goal and see where I am at the end of that 30 days.

Other than that, I have nothing profound to say upon finishing the first draft. That may sound anti-climatic, but that is writing. Perhaps something profound will show up in the prose, but the prose is written by a guy in a sweatshirt and basketball shorts, sitting in a recliner with a laptop on a lap desk in front of a TV typically tuned into the Heroes & Icons channel, or occasionally old movies. Sometimes I get up for a drink. Sometimes I get up for a snack. Sometimes I get up to go to the bathroom. Nothing too glorious about it.

This is where I think some first-time writers stumble. They view writing as a mystical act. Nope. It is planting one’s self in front of the keyboard and producing words every day (or according to whatever schedule works for them) until a first draft is finished. Then that first draft is revised, revised, revised and revised until one ends up with a final draft.

Sometimes digging a hole can be more fun that writing because you are outside, moving around a bit and you might even dig up the occasional worm for company.

Check in next week for the update on how the second draft is going.

Meanwhile, I also wrote another review for Last Movie Outpost, and I never did finish Floating Dragon. I will set it aside and come back to it some day. For now, I’m reading The Initiation by Robert Brunn. It is a vampire book for young readers that I first read in grade school and never forgot about. It is part of the Twilight Series (not to be confused with Stephanie Meyer vampire series) of horror books for young readers that came out in the 1980s.

2-8-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about six weeks now…

Currently word count: 54000/65000

I only got 4,000 words done this week. I didn’t slack off. I hit a point in the story where things started coming to a head, and I had to take time to think them through. Plus, I had some bigger action scenes to work out.

I hope the end of the first draft will be in sight after this next week.

I made no more progress on Floating Dragon. I don’t really remember what happened this week. It was one of those weeks where every day blurs together.

I did watch the Super Bowl last night. It is hard to believe Tom Brady got another Super Bowl ring. Super Bowl rings are won with practice and preparation. The games are an extension of that. I suppose it is the same with writing. A book is written by revision. One has to show up and revise every day. A finished book is an extension of that work. No way to get around it. Time and work are the stuff dreams are made of…

I suppose it is easier to motivate one’s self when they are in the middle of success. Like Tom Brady has built the sort of life where it is his job to do the work of winning Super Bowls on a day-to-day basis. He doesn’t have to fit in all of the practice, exercise, eating right and studying while holding down a nine-to-five job in addition to all of that. And more power to him. He did the work and gets to reap the benefits.

But what about us folks who are trying to win personal Super Bowls, plus doing regular life?

I don’t really like to examine that question too much. It can have a victim mentality to it. For example, what does writing truly cost me at the end of the day? It basically costs me down time that I might have spend vegging out in front of the TV. It is not like it is a great struggle to find time to write. It is simply discipline. No sense in making it anything more or less. One either does it or they don’t. There’s always a reason to do work. There’s always an excuse not to do work. Whichever side one falls on, the days pile up regardless, and it is more satisfying to have something to show for the days than a broad knowledge of TV programs.

Plus, I still get plenty of TV watched anyway.

2-1-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about five weeks now…

Current word count: 50000/65000

I hit my 30-day goal. My original plan was to write one hour every day and see how far I got after 30 days. 50,000 words is where I’m at…

I had a high word count this week — 13,500 words, but I cheated a bit. I took an excerpt from my original draft of Shiny Things that I cut and can now use in the book I am working on. That gave me a free 5,000 words.

Since I’m not done with the first draft yet, I will continue this writing schedule. I will add another two weeks to it and see where I am fourteen days from now.

Plot-wise, I am through the gray lands of the second act. I know where the story must go from here. It is simply a matter of writing it. I will end up with quite a few problems that will need to be ironed out in the second draft, but that’s how it goes. As long as I stay consistent with putting in the time, I will end up with a final draft.

Lots of theories exist on how to write a book. I’ve read numerous articles on the subject and tried various methods, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the same trick — time.

One can make outlines. One can write biographies of all the characters. One can use notecards and special writing slippers, but ultimately, it is all about putting in the time until the book is finished. It’s that simple. It’s that complicated.

Speaking of writing methods, I always liked Michael Crichton’s procedure. He wrote ideas and scenes for a book on notecards and threw them in a shoebox. Once he figured he had all the ideas and scenes he needed, he emptied the shoebox, put all of the notecards in order and started writing. I tried that method once. It didn’t work for me, but it might work for someone else.

Reading-wise, I gave up on Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon for a while and read an autobiography about a band instead. It was interesting how that worked. I was struggling to get fifty pages of Floating Dragon read each week, but I plowed through a 400-page band autobiography in about three days. As I said earlier, I am having trouble following the characters and story of Floating Dragon. I have read Straub before. He can have labyrinthian plots, but I didn’t have a problem with any of his other books I read.

Maybe it is just me. Writing a book takes up a lot of my brain power. I have to rob Peter to pay Paul so other areas of life get shortchanged while writing something lengthy. Perhaps the fiction-reading part of my is getting tired. It’s all about balance. There is time to do it all if I use my time wisely. I will keep grinding on Floating Dragon, too.

(Side note: I got the idea to read some review of Floating Dragon on the Internet. There are many reviews that say what I’m saying.)

The last five weeks are basically a blur of sitting down at the laptop and grinding out prose in between regular life and everything else that comes up. As I said earlier, I hate first drafts. Once I get to the second draft, the process will be a little more enjoyable. Then I have the lay of the land and can spend less time being confused.

I will check back in another week with a progress report.

1-25-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about four weeks now…

Current word count: 36500/65000

I did not have as good of a week as last week word count-wise. I went from almost 10,000 words back down to 5,000 words, and I had to put in EXTRA time to hit those 5,000 words.

The reasons are simple:

1. The words did not come easy this week. It happens.
2. I had to stop writing and start thinking some things through before going further.
3. I devoted some time to an article for a movie website.

Regardless, I’m still 5,000 words further along than I was last week. Progress was made. I expect this week to have a better word count. Hopefully…

Another thing that slowed me down was I needed to look through some old files and see if I could find some thing I wrote 20 years ago to put into this book. When I wrote Shiny Things I had a section about an event from Jacob Cable’s past in it. During rewriting Shiny Things, I decided not to include it. I can use it now.

I had given up on finding it. I looked through old print outs. I even had to see what was on some old 3.5-inch floppy disks. No luck. Then I decided to look in one more place as a long shot, and I ended up finding it, not in its completely original form, but most of it was there.

Add all that up, and it all slowed me down.

Reading-wise, I am still grinding away on Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. I didn’t make much progress there either, I’m afraid.

That is how it works. Some weeks are a grind. One just has to keep their nose to the grindstone, chalk it up as a bad week and don’t let it turn into a bad two weeks…

1-18-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about three weeks now…

Current world count: 31500/65000

I had almost a 10,000-word week. That is pretty good.

I didn’t break my 700-words-a-day pace because I started writing faster, however. I put in a couple of extra hours in anticipation of days when something unforeseen happens to prevent writing. I basically stored some extra words away like a squirrel stores acorns.

The writing is going okay. My first-draft prose is probably at about a 70 percent level, meaning the basics are there, but it needs seasoning.

I’m hitting that point in a book where one can get discombobulated by the possibilities. Starting a book is easy. There is only one place to start. Ending a book can be relatively easy. Once you get to the end, you stop. The space in between can be a murky area of uncertainty, however, as possibilities multiply. What are characters doing to pass the time? Where are they going? Who are they interacting with? When are they doing certain things?

Don’t outlines prevent such confusion?

Sort of, but an overview is one thing. When one gets down to ground level, it might become apparent that getting a character from point A to point B isn’t as simple as expected, timing can be off, contradictions can happen, one becomes aware of lulls, etc.

One muddles along, hoping it will all work out. That is where the discipline of grinding comes into play. One has to keep moving forward and take it on faith that it will work out in the end. Once the whole picture is in view, one can go back and pull it all together like they knew what they were doing the whole time.

Otherwise, I am reading Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. I am around page 200, and I am having a hard time following what is going on and keeping characters straight. In that regard, Floating Dragon is a good book to read while trying to sort through a plot myself.

I don’t even know what to say about Floating Dragon because everything happening seems unconnected. The book is about a cloud of chemical that gets released and affects people, but so far there is not a lot of cloud and affecting. There is a character who was a former child TV star. Him and his wife move to a town. They buy a house and go to a party. There is a policeman. There is a kid who has psychic powers, I think. Some other kids smash mailboxes. That is all I’m getting out of it so far. Have to see how it all ties together.

That is what I will have to see with my first draft, as well.

1-11-21 Entry

I have been working on a Jacob Cable book for about two weeks now…

Current word count: 21900/65000

We are moving in the right direction. I got about 5500 words done this week. That’s a smidge over 700 words a day. I’d like to go faster, of course, but since I am only writing an hour day, 700 words is what I’m getting. Slow and steady wins the race. Write 700 words a day for a year and that is 255,500 words.

Currently, I write half hour in the morning and a half hour in the evening. I prefer writing for a specific time rather than trying to hit a certain word count. I’ve been pretty disciplined so far. If I write for 26 minutes and find myself in a good place to stop, I don’t stop. I continue to work for four more minutes. If I wasted four minutes every day for 30 days, that is 120 minutes, or two hours, of wasted time. It adds up.

I’ve also been reading more to keep me inspired. I recently discovered James Cain. I read Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. They were both short books but fairly educational.

Cain has a unique style, but what struck me most was that he writes pages of nothing but dialogue, and I mean nothing but dialogue. Not even “he said” or “she said” shows up. He doesn’t describe the characters, what they are wearing, their expression, if they are sitting or standing, just back-and-forth dialogue…for pages.

“Hi, how are you.”
“Fine, but it’s been a long week. I need to take a nap.”
“Where will you take one?”
“I’m not in the mood for Dad Jokes…”

Only Cain will let the responses run much longer than those in my example. One person’s response might be a paragraph ten sentences long.

Is that allowed?

If James Cain did it, it’s allowed.

Another useful thing about reading other authors when I’m writing is that I often think what I’m writing doesn’t make sense. Then I read another author and think…does that particular plot line work upon thinking about it? Not really, but the way they delivered it makes it work.

My story is going okay presently. Some things are a bit tenuous, but that is par for the course. I have to get to the end to see how it can be tightened up. For now, I am getting around 700 fairly polished words a day. We’ll see if that continues this week, as well.

Until next time…

1-5-21 Entry

I have been working for about a week on a Jacob Cable book.

Current word count: 16,400/65,000

Hold the phone, didn’t I say I had 16,500 words down in my last entry (see below)?

Yes.

Then why does my word count currently say 16,400?

I started out by revising the 16,500 words I had. I cut about 2,000 words from that and added about 1,900 new words. I have just gotten to a point where I am starting to break new ground on the story beyond those initial 16,500 words.

Do I use outlines?

Yes and no.

I’ve written books with no outlines, but I still jot down notes and ideas at the end of the document as I write, which serves as a primitive road map. For the book I’m working on, I did create a basic outline. It is not every in depth, though. I will use Raiders of the Lost Ark as an example of my outline process.

Raiders of the Lost Ark Outline
Indiana Jones introduced in exciting opening. Belloq is there.
Army guys come to Indiana Jones at school and tell him they want him to find Ark.
Indy has to visit Marion to get something to find the Ark.
Nazis follow Indy.
Fight at Marion’s.
Indiana goes to Middle East with Marion and meets another friend.
The Germans are always on his heels.
Marion “dies.”
Indiana has a scene with Belloq.
Indiana finds the Ark.
Marian is actually alive.
Germans take the Ark
Indiana Jones gets Ark back and puts it on a boat.
German U-boat stops the boat and takes the Ark back.
Indy pursues.
Ark is opened on island and wipes out everyone but Indy and Marion.

As you can see, it is a very basic outline without any real details, but it gives me a general direction. Things will flesh themselves out as I go along. Then I might add to the outline, which I keep at the end of the document as things occur to me.

For example, Indiana Jones gets Ark back and puts it on a boat might eventually become Indiana Jones chases down a truck convoy on horseback and gets the Ark back and puts it on a boat.

How did I pick a 65,000-word goal?

Basically, it is a number to shoot for at the end of the day. Jacob Cable books should not be that long. 65,000 words is a target. The first draft could go longer. The first draft could go shorter. For now, it simply gives me a way to measure my progress.

Until next time…

12-30-20 Writing A Book #1

Where have I been? Horribly busy and distracted, but I have been getting some writing done in the meantime. I just finished a short story that I submitted to an anthology.

Now I’m going to write the first draft of a Jacob Cable novel. I plan to keep a running diary of the process. Weekly entries is my goal.

Commencing entry one…

My dislike for first drafts if immense. Spiders are preferable to first drafts. Liver is preferable to first drafts. You know that one actor everyone dislikes? He is preferable to first drafts.

Some writers love first drafts. More power to them. I find first drafts ugly, repulsive, difficult, terrible, no good, very bad and all around horrible, horrible things. They are tedious. The require a great deal of effort. They take a lot of time. The ruin every day that contains them.

Some writers dash off first drafts with nary a care in the world, never looking back, never questioning, never stopping. For whatever reason, that does not work for me.

What works best for me is being fairly meticulous on my first drafts. I try to get a chapter pretty polished before moving to the next one. I believe Dean Koontz writes in a similar fashion. He goes page-by-page. He works on a page until it is perfect. Then he moves on to the next page, and so on and so forth all the way through the first draft.

If I go full speed ahead and don’t look back, nothing makes sense. The plot does not seem logical. The characters are meaningless. The dialogue is confusing. The action is pointless and shallow. It is all only gross to me. Hence, on a good day, my first draft pace is plodding.

My initial plan is this: work on the first draft one hour every day for thirty days and see how things are going. That’s it, that’s all, one hour a day.

One hour of complete focus on the draft. No checking email. No getting up to get a drink. No flipping on the TV. Nothing but writing for one hour every day. It doesn’t have to be one hour all in one chunk. It can be two half hour chunks. It can be four fifteen minute chunks. Whatever. The goal is one hour every day and see where I end up after thirty days.

One other note: I am not starting completely from scratch. I had almost 16,500 words down on a Jacob Cable story that I started about 18 years ago. I don’t particularly remember where the story was supposed to go, but I can start with those 16,500 words and see what can be built from them. That will speed things up a smidgen at least.

Now is a good time to write a longer work. The weather outside is frightful. The days are short. The nights are long. All that the one hour of writing per day will cost me is time spent in front of the TV.

Check back in a week to see how it is going…