Back to business, answering some questions, plus a preview of the novel.
So…that “Comment Challenge” thing…not so successful. I guess I overestimated my audience. Oh well, gotta keep moving on. I’ve had some problems writing my novel as my life is in huge flux right now, but it’s riding along at about 20,000 words right now. I thought about killing it since I’m not entirely happy with the direction it’s going, but I decided to soldier on and finish it. After it’s done, I’ll do an autopsy on it, see what I did wrong, what I did right, and see if it can be salvaged. Hemmingway said “the first draft of anything is shit”, right? Well, he also blew his brains out…but, that’s sort of beside the point, unless he was really distraught over the first draft of…what? Too soon for Hemingway jokes? Really? OK, moving on.
Now for Q&A time, brought to me by the one person that answered my call for comments, Mr. Ryan K. Lindsay. So here we go!
Where do you write? And when?
I write almost exclusively at my computer, though my iPhone has gotten a bit of a workout as a rudimentary writing pad when something comes to me. As for time, I usually write at night, once everyone has gone to sleep and it’s quiet. I tend to get distracted by the smallest of things, so it helps me focus in.
What helps you write? Music, darkness, virgin’s thighs,etc.
My most frequent companion when writing is a pair of earplugs. When all I see on the screen is words and all I can hear is my fingers hitting the keys, I can really get into the zone and pound out a ton of work. Of course, being a writer, especially being a writer of hardboiled crime, a stiff drink makes its way to my desk every once in a while. I’ll sometimes mix up a whiskey sour or a gimlet to put myself in the right mood to let my mind wander and feel out my story. I don’t write drunk, ever, but a drink sometimes provides nice lubrication for the brain
What websites do you most frequent?
When I’m not writing…well, hell, even when I am supposed to be writing, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, paging through my Google Reader news items, and I waste way more time than I should on Wikipedia doing research (it starts off as research, anyway…but usually ends in me looking up astonishingly obscure facts about things not even remotely related to what I’m writing)
Do you eat/drink when you write?
I usually have some sort of drink with me when I’m writing, but I usually don’t eat anything while I write, it’s too distracting.
When you write do you edit in your head, or just dump it out and you’ll heavily edit later on?
It’s a combination of both. I go back and edit details every once in a while, but I try not to. I try to keep my momentum going, because I feel when I have to spend my time fixing spelling errors, I just lose it. I guess I’d say that I write to write, not edit. Editing can be done later.
Please list a top five/ten of some of your favourite things, it’s the ultimate way to get to know someone, High Fidelity style!
You know, I’m really not good with lists. Never have been. Sorry. My favorite movie of all time is Chinatown if that makes it more info-y
Alright, and here’s (maybe) what you all have been waiting for. Here is a little sample of the novel I’ve been working on. Be warned, it’s the first draft of it, completely unedited. Things will be changed, hopefully it’ll get better. Enjoy.
Tina Hampton writhed in bed, the four aspirin she’d taken didn’t do anything to dull the pain, and she was fairly sure that she wasn’t going to stop hurting for a while. She hadn’t gotten to bed until seven in the morning, stripping out of all her dusty clothes and collapsing onto the matress, exhausted at what she did, her hands aching and bruised at the knuckles. Tina was sure that she wasn’t going to wake up until well into the night, and if it weren’t for Mrs. Thompson’s call at around one in the afternoon, she would have. Mrs. Thompson asked whether or not she’d heard from Sarah that morning. Of course, Tina hadn’t, so she told Mrs. Thompson the truth and assured her that Sarah’s phone probably just died or she was hungover, or a litany of other excuses. All of them were within the realm of possibility, right?
Tina looked at her cell phone by her bedside. Three in the afternoon. The pain wasn’t going to get any better just laying in bed, and maybe if she did something with her day she’d forget about it. She hoped she’d be able to forget about the whole thing, but there was no way she’d be able to just give something like that up. She rolled over and got out of her bed, and she didn’t get more than a few feet across the carpet of her bedroom before she felt her stomach throb more intensely than she’d ever felt before, and she had no choice but to dive toward the toilet as fast as possible, nausea getting the best of her as she threw up violently sitting on the floor of her bathroom. If she’d actually been able to stomach food in the past twelve hours, it would have been worse, so Tina was thankful for the one positive to come out of this situation. After she finished vomiting, she rested her head against the tile wall of her bathroom. She didn’t want to confront reality about her situation, but her body was forcing her to. Fighting against whatever her body was saying, Tina got up from the floor, wiped down her face and chest with a warm washcloth, and stared at her face in the mirror. After everything, at least she still had her looks…nothing she did could take that away. No matter what path her life would go down beyond this point, she was still a knockout. Maybe not as much of a knockout as Sarah, but she was pretty sure she’d be able to deal with that.
Word Count Update: 7/24
I missed my target today, but that’s alright since I’m considering this a day off, even though I wrote over 700 words. Some days I just don’t feel like working my story out in my head, the details and particulars, and this is one of those nights. I’m going to take it easy and head back into it with a full head of steam tomorrow.
UPDATE:
I realized how stupid it was to say I didn’t feel like writing. Days like this are the days where I need to man up and just power through the thing. So that’s what I did, and ended up at about 1,500 for the day, and it only took me about a half an hour to put down those extra 800 words.
Word Count Update: 7/23
Yes! I got to my 2,000 word quota today, and then some! The book is getting fun to write again, and I know I just need to commit to it a little bit more and I’ll have no problem meeting my goals. It probably helped that today’s writing involved guilt, a murder investigation and a main character in the bathtub, which if you ask me is always good for a book.
It’s a short update today on the word count, due to the exciting news I’m posting about previewing my novel in its raw, first draft state. Take a look above this post for the details.
Word Count Update: 7/22
I didn’t even make 1,000 words today, and this marks the third day in a row where I’ve missed my word count target. I only have myself to blame, really. But at least I’ve been writing something every day since I started this project. Giving myself a deadline, even if that deadline does happen to slip past original projections, is a good thing for a writer to have. If you just say “I’m going to write a novel” and you don’t give yourself any sort of goal or timetable, it’s pretty likely that you won’t finish it. Now there are some people that might be OK with writing a novel over the course of a few years in bits and pieces, but I just see that as such a waste of time, and no way to actually get the thing published. I have a goal to have this book finished, possibly even published by my birthday on November 1st. Looking at how few days away that actually is, I know it’s very unlikely it will happen, but it’s something to shoot for.
I’m going to try to overwrite a little bit in the next few days, an extra 500 words or so, to make up for these shortcomings. All things considered, seeing that I’m about to start a new job, about to move, and dealing with some familial issues, I’d say the pace I’ve been chugging along at has been sort of admirable. Still, this thing doesn’t mean anything to anyone until I write “The End” at the bottom of the last page. So, the quest continues.
Word Count Update: 7/21
I missed my target by about 800 today, the second day in a row I’ve done so. Things are still on track, and I think the book’s first draft will be finished within my 30-day timespan, but I’m going to have to log some major 3,000 word days to make it happen. Oh well, I have to do it.
And, in completely unrelated news, I got a job today! I’m excited, though it’s not what I would call an ideal position (or even a career for that matter) but it’s something that will pay the bills. It’s going to be tough as hell to save money to get to New York in a year, but I’ll manage. I guess some money is better than none at all.
Word Count Update: 7/20
I didn’t quite make my goal today, but I only missed it by under 900 words. I figure they 400ish I wrote past my goal a few days ago and the extra hundred or so I routinely pile on top of my 2,000 word goal when I do hit it makes up for the slip. I still need to try to get to 2,000 words every day, but sometimes a day can really take it out of you.
Not a ton to say today, really, but I am happy to say that my book’s getting its own voice and the characters are forming up and becoming human. The book is changing every day from what my outline says it should be focusing on, but I think I like the way it’s going. I was able to add in a main character that I previously thought I was going to have to lose from the book, the character I could see spinning off into a series of short stories or subsequent novels if I get ambitious about it…though I know I need to focus on finishing this novel and not caring about the further adventures of my characters.
OK, I said there wasn’t a ton, so, that’s it!
Word Count Update: 7/18
To contrast with yesterday’s utter failure, I actually exceeded my word quota for the day, breezing through 2,400 words in a little over an hour and a half. I could have written a lot more, probably cracking the 3,000 or even 4,000 word mark, but I wanted to stop at a place where I could pick it up tomorrow with some momentum. Stopping in a place where you know you can keep going is really difficult, but I think it helps build the habit of writing every day no matter what. If you can’t help but to get back to your computer next day to polish off the end of your cliffhanger, you’re more likely to linger around and bang out some of the more slow-paced (boring, maybe?) portions of the exposition or rising action. I think if you end at the end of something, you’re left the next day with pretty much nothing, staring at the blank page without a thought in your head, which is one of the most terrifying things a writer can experience. But, if you leave your writing while you’re in the heat of the moment, you can plow through a ton more and get a lot more work done. It’s sort of the writing equivalent of tantric sex…without, you know, the sex part…just the whole thing about reserving your energy to make the whole experience enjoyable and energetic, that’s what I’m getting at. Oh, whatever, it’s late and I reserve my good material for the books anyway…
My plot problems with the novel were also solved today, as I added an entirely new main character to the story. He’s the character I had to initially cut out of the book because I thought I needed to focus more on the two protagonists, but I feel that adding him back in fills the book out very nicely and allows me to move things forward at a better clip (if all of this sounds like I’m being tight-lipped about things, I assure you it’s not because I’m fearing that somebody will steal my ideas…there hasn’t been an original idea in literature in a little over 3,000 years, it’s just that I don’t want to sit here and blather about a book that’s still in progress and ruin it for anyone who’d like to read the finished product)
I finished Jason Starr’s Cold Caller today, also. It’s certainly not his best work, that honor for me still goes to Twisted City, the first book of his I read, but it was still a grim trip to absolute hell with a protagonist that I alternately loved and hated. I’ll post a full review tomorrow to get into some more detail about what I liked and didn’t like.
Word Count Update: 7/17
Noooooo!!!!!!
I totally mishandled today and therefore blew my word count goal by about 1,700 words. It was a combination of just general procrastination, taking some time with my wife to watch a movie (A Simple Plan, which was really amazing by the way), and then nausea from dinner to cap things off. All in all, it really sucks and I have nobody to blame but myself.
I think another reason that I missed my wordcount today is I feel that my novel is sort of running off ahead of me in a direction I’m not sure I want it to. My original outline is staring me down and saying “You’re headed down the wrong road…you’re lost and of course you’re not going to ask me for directions.” Call it a crisis of conscience, call it what you will, but my book is starting to show signs of health problems.
My characters are saying things they don’t need to say, I’m finding myself writing out situations that I have no honest explanation for as to why they’re in the novel, and I’m just all together breaking down with this thing.
Tomorrow will be occupied with trying to wrest this thing back onto the right course, because I’m terrified that the book will degenerate itself into a lifeless blob that I can’t do anything with. I need to whip characters back into shape, get my plot points straight, and just beat the shit out of the novel until it’s where I want it to be. I’ll try my best to make up for the 1,700 lost words tomorrow, as well.
Wish me some luck, because I need it!
Now Free: My story “The Cleanup”
So, it looks like nobody on the Amazon Kindle marketplace found it in their hearts to buy my short story “The Cleanup” for the low, low price of $0.99. I understand, I’m not upset…if I could do it, I would have just given it away to everyone for free on the Kindle, but Amazon doesn’t allow you to set the price of a work at $0.00, as far as I can tell. But this post isn’t just about me complaining that nobody bought my story, even though I could complain about it for a while.
The failure of “The Cleanup” on the Kindle store is your gain, my readers. Since nobody would buy the thing, I decided to just give it away, in a nice little PDF that should work well for just about anybody. I do have a couple of stipulations about giving this tale away, though:
1) Link it on your site/blogroll/twitter as much as you’d like to. I love free publicity. I’d love it if you’d send your readers directly to my site, though, instead of just dropping the file onto your site, even if you attribute it to me
2) If you really like it, or even really hate it, leave me a comment on this page. I’m a beginning crime writer and I’m still learning the ropes of everything, so there will be rough spots, and I’d appreciate if anyone with more (or less) experience in writing this kind of stuff could give me some pointers.
3) The story is licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. This means you can do whatever you want to the story: make a short film of it, draw up a comic book based on it, or stage it as a play in your living room…anything. Do whatever you want with it…and if you do, I’d love to hear what you did with it, and chances are I’ll post whatever you do on this page and give you a little bit of free publicity.
Alright, with all that out of the way, I present to you: The Cleanup
The Cleanup by Sean May is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Word Count Update: 7/15
I got through another 2,000ish words today. I’m getting into the rythym of doing this as a habit, and I think it’s really going to pay off. I have a lot of things I want to mess with in this novel, and I think my biggest challenge will be to focus in on what I really need to say and what can be cut without much harm. I have a character that I really, really like and want to write 500 novels about, but I might have to just rip him from the book alltogether, because he might just not fit. Such is the life of a writer, I guess. Kill your darlings and all that.
Alright, well, short post tonight…I’m tired and I have a novel waiting to be read sitting next to me (Jason Starr’s Cold Caller, if anyone is interested).