Revision! Revision! Revision! (Alpha Readers!)

I had to travel on a commuter train today. I generally enjoy travelling on the train when I have to as it means I don't have to pay much attention to my surroundings. It takes all the stress of driving my commute and leaves them behind. At the same time, I get to sit on a crowded train with lots of people I don't know and their stinky sandwiches.

Focusing on the positive, it means I get to spend 2 hours (1 way) doing just about anything else, provided I have enough battery power. I spent today's train ride starting in on a clean-up pass on my book. I've run through the first 3 chapters and surprised myself at how much I cleaned up. I was either very sloppy, or my writing has vastly improved in the last 6 weeks (both are distinct possibilities).

I'm going to drop some PDFs in the Alpha Reader Dropbox for my Alphas to pick up and take a read over. I hope they'll be pleasantly surprised with what I've done, and give me hell for anything I've screwed up or dropped the ball on. I want you guys to know that I appreciate any and all feedback as long as you're honest and clear with me. I promise I won't take any of it personally (unless you target me personally :P)

I'm going to be taking at least a week or two off from daily writing related work to put some time in on some other things, that's not to say I won't be working on it at all, but it won't be every night for the next little while. I intend to have these Alpha drops fairly frequently and I'll be doing a full run through of all the chapters before going back to work on the feedback.

Let me know in the comments if you want something other than a PDF to mark up and get back to me and I'll do my best to accomodate. If you want to be an Alpha Reader, drop me a line in there as well and we'll chat.

- Grimm

Wordasaurus Rex!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the challenge is simple: write 50,000 words in the month of November. This was my second year participating in NaNo and my second year winning it.

That's right... I'm a winner!


Rather than start a new work I continued my work in progress, and used the inimitable @FeakySnucker's term and tag #NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month) to signify that I was doing things a wee bit off the reservation.

I checked with the Office of Letters and Light (the wonderful folks who run NaNo) and they said as long as I was writing 50,000 new words on the story it still counted. After a short discourse in which I asked if I had to create 50,000 brand new words that weren't in any dictionary, (they replied that I didn't. I could actually re-use existing words, I just had to put them in arrangements that weren't pre-existing within my story), I set about writing the rest of my novel.

The word count that I finished NaNo with is 50,417 NaNo words, and 100,439 words on this draft. The draft isn't entirely complete yet, there's still a chapter and some extra text to go, and there's a LOT of revision to do on this one, so that draft number will definitely change as I edit and polish.

I'm beaming right now. It's past midnight, I have to get up at 7am and go to work, and I'm literally buzzing with energy.

I'd love to dig into finishing that last chapter and the extra text, then dive into cleaning up some of the stuff I've left myself notes all over Scrivener to do, but my Scrivener trial expired at midnight!!! I can't buy a full version until my "Winner" status officially comes through on December 5th. It's almost enough to make a man gnash his teeth at the unfairness of it all.

I leave you with the term Wordasaurus Rex. I'm not 100% sure where or why it came about, but it's most definitely NOT something I've created. But it's how I feel when I finish NaNo. Like a great big excuse eating dinosaur made out of words! RAWR!!!

Not so easy now is it?

Remember when I said "the words were easy"? Yes, well. In the days since, not so much. I wrote that post having just passed 80K words. Tonight I wrestled my way past 90,000 words, just barely keeping on track to finish NaNoWriMo and this last 10K has been quite the struggle.

I'm neck deep in the climax of my book and all I can say is that it's going to need a LOT of revision to make it flow. I've got a fight scene that feels like a badly choreographed, by the numbers, blow by blow account; I've got some not-so-engaging and oh-so-stilted dialog, and I've had to struggle to get every sentence on the page.

The annoying part is I can picture it all in my head and it's just so much fun when it tumbles around in there. I just have to get it out to share it with everyone/anyone in a manner that's as exciting and engaging for them as it is for me. The last thing I want on the page is a dry and boring step-by-step technical manual on how to get your ass kicked.

I have 4.5 chapters left of my outline to finish writing, which at approximately 2.5K words per chapter should put me just over 50K for NaNo, and 100K on the draft as a whole. I intend to take the first week of December off in it's entirety and not look at it. I can't promise I won't, as I tend to obsess over these things, but I'll sure as hell try.

Then it's time to dive heavily into revision and clean-up and there's plenty of that to go around.

The good news for the Alpha Readers is that you'll be getting revised chapters dropped into the DropBox bin on a fairly regular basis. They'll be in order, and they'll add up to the whole book when all is said and done.

I've got another week of writing (and possibly a bit more) to go, then my two week break before that gets started, so let's just let me stay concentrated on finishing NaNo first shall we?

- Grimm

P.S. If you don't have DropBox, it's fantastic and it's free, and I get more space if you use my referral link to sign up, and I'm always hungry for more space :D

Today the Words Were Easy

If I could have writing days like this all the time I'd be published by now. There's a saying that you have to write a million words before you get published. Well, if I could pull off the ~3,400 I did today every day, that would only take me 295 days.

To top it, look at that, two blog posts in one day! And I had a productive day at my paying job too! Of course, if all of my writing consists of starting sentences with conjunctions and ending them with exclamation marks, well, let's just say I'd need one hell of a good Agent and a very tolerant Editor to get published.

My draft just ticked past 80,000 words and it's on the steep uphill slope of the final climax in the book. The one piece I've drafted over and over and over, and it seems to be flowing pretty damned good right about now.

If it wasn't for the heaviness of my eyelids I'd probably continue writing. Let's just say I've learned not to do that. Now I just make myself some quick notes and wobble off to bed.

That said, it's time to commence wobbling.

- Grimm

P.S. Be sure to check out The Next Big Thing Blog Hop entry on my blog. I'm kicking it over to Brandi M Lynch on her blog at http://www.branwrites.blogspot.com. I'm looking forward to what she has to say!

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

I've been invited to participate in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop by Laura Hughes (@MittensMorgul on Twitter). It's a blog series where aspiring writers and published authors have been answering ten questions about a work in progress or a recently published novel. As I only have Works In Progress, I'll be answering based on the piece that's furthest along and closest to submission. 

There's been some concern about getting to this blog hop late in the game, but if you follow the link above or go to the google query results you'll see that I'm not actually THAT late. Thankfully, writers can be a lazy lot and leave these sorts of things languishing in their inboxes for days, weeks, even months at a time. For me to be selected isn't something magically mystical and wonderful (I volunteered). It's more a matter that nearly every other aspiring writer out there has already participated and, well, they had to get to me eventually.

So, on with the show!

What is the working title of your book?

Egads! Starting with a nasty one aren't we. I suppose "BookB" isn't going to cut it. The sad truth is, I haven't thought up anything cool or witty enough yet and I don't traditionally name anything I've written until after it's in a state I'm reasonably happy with. BookB is most definitely not in that state.  That said, I do have a couple titles tumbling around.

"Crows Blood" and "The Other" come to mind presently.

Where did the idea come from for your book?

It's been bouncing around for some time now and everything about the book, the plot, the gender of a number of characters, and their roles have all changed drastically. My stories generally start with a single seed, or an idea that I want to explore. It's usually a setting, theme, or character, and everything grows outward from there. 

The seed of this particular idea came from one of the characters who was set to be the original protagonist. In the changes mentioned, he's changed to a she, and is now a secondary side character. In the course of outlining the book and whipping through the first draft I simply found one of the other viewpoints to be far more compelling.

What genre does your book fall under?

Clearly another unfair question, though if I had to narrow it down it would be YA Fantasy. I'm targeting a Thriller/Adventure style plot and pace.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Laura/MittensMorgul thought she was the only author to have not spent time on this question. Truth be told, it never occurred to me either. I have a clear picture of my protagonist Flynn and the main side characters he interacts with. However, likely due to my ongoing love affair with Anime, Manga, and just about anything Animated, I haven't really lined any of them up with real actors.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

[deep movie guy voice] In a world where...[/deep movie guy voice] no wait, that's not right. Let me start over.

Flynn, a young and talented thief, is the only suspect in a series of grisly ritual killings and the only way to prove his innocence when everyone else has stopped looking is to catch the killer himself.

Yeah, I'm going to have to tweak that a bit. It's hard to fit it into one sentence when I could talk about the book for hours.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The plan is to query and try to get representation (agents be prepared to run away screaming in around March of next year). At the very least I hope to receive feedback to help me hone my craft.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

About three months for the first draft, which I've gutted since and almost completely rewritten. Now I'm  almost four months in and nearing completion of this pass.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Um, uh. In the wider fantasy genre I'd have to say Mistborn because of the heist type elements. Beyond that there are the same coming of age themes found in most YA.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I've wanted to be a professional writer for most of my life. Somehow, in the need to make money and provide for my family I ended up working in Technology (which is still fun). 

If I were to nail down a single catalyst I'd have to say it was planning to have our second child. We had our first daughter pretty early, and there was no discussion prior to that, so I'm not sure if it's normal. I don't know how other people do it, but when my wife and I started discussing it I started evaluating myself. My career, my health, our finances, etc. to make sure we could handle the responsibility of raising and keeping up with another child.

Let's just say I was in awful shape. I'd let my health go and I was starting to spin my wheels at work. I also realized that beyond a few short stories I'd make up on the spot to entertain our older daughter, I hadn't created anything in years.

I started with my health and career, and both are in considerably better places now, which is good because my youngest daughter is a handful and then some. More recently I've started back in on my writing in earnest. It's my place to unwind and I'm a much more relaxed and calm person when I'm writing regularly. I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

That, and my absolute hatred for my daily commute and a need to have a bright light at the end of that tunnel keep me pretty well motivated.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

My biggest hope is that the characters and the setting draw the reader in. I want the book to be a fun ride, but I also want the reader to be engaged and hungry for more time with both.

I've spent a lot of time with each character, even if you don't get a viewpoint with them, to make sure that they're deep interesting individuals. 

I've also taken a reasonable amount of time world building and fleshing out the society, government, history and magic with detailed notes to keep myself honest and consistent. I hope to be able to explore them further beyond this first book, as I already have a rough idea of a few more stories to tell in this world.

That about wraps it up. Now the impossible quest of trying to find even one more aspiring writer or published author willing to take part, let alone five. If you're one of the above drop me a line here or @RedAntisocial on Twitter

Update: I'm kicking this over to Brandi M Lynch on her blog at http://www.branwrites.blogspot.com. I'm looking forward to what she has to say! I'll update this post if I find any more people to pick on... er, I mean pass it on to.

Full of Awesome and Worry.

Ok, I'll try to keep this one short, as I'm bagged and liable to ramble.

One of my secondary characters is turning out to be simply amazing. I have two that are already really strong, but the more I write about this one, the more I absolutely adore her. I worry about that. I think that it might be a bad sign, and I hope it's not.

You see, one of the things I always hear writers talking about is how they've all had to kill their "darlings". "Darlings" in this case usually refers to characters, or scenes, or purple prose that they're just so damned happy with, that their agent or editor tells them simply must go. I don't think that will be necessary in this case, but I always need something to dread.

I've written about 3,000 words today (2,998 if you listen to Scrivener), which isn't bad for the short timeframe that I had to write, this character helped with that, they just liven up the scenes they're in. Oh wouldn't that be great? If an agent or editor asked for MORE of this character? I could live with that. Not sure HOW I'd pull it off, story-wise, but I'd sure as hell try.

In short I'm enjoying writing her and having her in the book is making hitting word count goals easy.

There, see, I kept that pretty short.

- Grimm

Like a Madman!

Work has been driving me barmy lately. Between the nightmare of dealing with Windows platforms integrating with Linux NFS WatchFolders and other platforms integrating with those Windows platforms I could just about lose my mind.

I spend at a minimum 6 of my 8 hour workday up to my eyeballs in configurations, log files, xml traces, and metadata, then I spend at least 3 hours a day commuting to and from my job. It's a wonder I have any time to write at all.

The key is, I make time. In the evening, after my kids are in bed, and my wife is gently tucked into her Pandaren in World of Warcraft, or Facebook, or Pinterest, I shut down my browser, put on my headphones and write.

I started behind the 8-ball on NaNoWriMo but I'm slowly and steadily catching up. I even took a night off for Skyfall (go see it) and I'm still gaining ground.

Tonight I hit ~70K words on my draft. I started November at 50,000 words even on the draft. I went so far as to change a few wordings here and there to make it even out so I could do NaNo and keep on track with minimal math. I'm supposed to be at 73,333, putting me 3,333 behind, which is far better than the ~7K hole I've been climbing out of.

So anyone out there who's having trouble catching up on their NaNo. Sit your butt in the chair and shut down your browser. Disconnect your internet (turn off wi-fi or unplug it) if you must. If I can do it with only 2 hours a day, then you should be able to.

- Grimm

P.S. Natalie Bahm and her agent Sara Megibow are running a promotional contest on her book The Secret Underground with all the profits going to help a sick baby boy named Jayden. The contest is simple, comment on the contest blog post for a chance to win a 50 page critique by Sara Megibow (agent extraordinaire) on a finished or unfinished manuscript (yours or your friend's).

While you're at it, buy the book, the cause is most definitely worth it and from what I gather it's a damned good book (I haven't received my copy yet).

Skyfall (and some writing)

I've been looking forward to Skyfall for over a year now. Pretty much as soon as I heard that Daniel Craig was in for Bond 23 I was all over it, watching for any tidbits of news. When Miramax ran into financial trouble I was seriously worried about whether or not it would even get made.

I've been a fan of the Bond films since my first encounter with 007 as a child at my grandparents. Sean Connery in Thunderball was on late night TV and I opted to watch that instead of getting a good night's sleep like I was supposed to. I had no idea that it was a "Bond" movie, or even what that was, or that there were so many more to see. Needless to say I loved it, and over the years I've seen every Bond film ever made, even the unofficial ones as bad as they are.

My favourite Bond for the majority of my life was Connery, whether it was because he was the first I'd seen (despite there being 4 bonds before I was born!) or because he was simply the best I couldn't say (though I'm going to go with the latter, even if his last 2 movies as Bond are some of my least favourite).

Brosnan was good fun, and I enjoyed Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies immensely. I enjoyed watching Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough, even if her acting was flat. I had a huge crush on her at the time. Die Another Day, however, almost made me quit the franchise. It was just too... goofy I guess.

When Daniel Craig stepped into the role for Casino Royale I had just finished devouring all of Fleming's books, and pulpy as they were, I was hoping for a Bond that could reach their potential. A cold-hearted, yet human 007. Craig delivered.

He was hard, yet not impervious, he was funny, without losing his edge, he was a lady killer, without looking like a pretty-boy. This was my Bond.

Quantum of Solace, yeah, I actually really liked it. So sue me! When you take into account that the whole thing was nearly improv because of the writer's strike, they actually managed to fit a lot of neat call-outs in there.

Skyfall (I know, I'm long winded, bear with me) is the penultimate Bond movie in my books. It's got everything a great movie needs. Action, Suspense, one HELL of a story, and my favourite Bond in his best performance.

I don't want to ruin anything, but some of the stuff that gets pulled out in this movie to tie it in with the past, add in Dame Judi Dench as M and the powerful relationship she's cultivated with Craig's Bond over the previous movies and this one, and it's all so far beyond amazing that I have every desire to rush back to the theatre, hand them my money and watch it again and again.

The pacing is perfect, the twists are just the right amount of "I saw that coming" and "OMG I never saw that coming" and Javier Bardem as the villain Silva is bloody awesome!

The chemistry between Silva and Bond and M on screen is simply electric. It blew me away.

So, as you can imagine, it's made #1 on The List, just edging out The Avengers. With only The Hobbit or Django Unchained left having the potential to unseat it this year. I don't know that that's going to happen.

Oh right, writing, about that. I busted out a nice run on words today (~2,600), after slumping the past few days between clipping the puppy's nails too close and having a veritable fount of blood in my kitchen (no really, who needs corn syrup and red food colouring for a horror movie? Just cut one of my puppy's toenails too close!) and a nice head cold (still have it, yay!).

Key(board) Dependencies.

I swore I'd never turn into a "Mac" guy, and as far as I'm concerned I'm still not. The commercials annoy me, the dogmatic love of a product/company/brand despite things like price or functionality or open flexibility always irks me.

When I was given a MacBook Pro (late 2009 15" model), I grumbled and groaned and whined, "Why can't I just have a Dell, or an HP", something that I could install Linux and run Windows or whatever in a Virtual Machine.

Those systems weren't the "Corporate Standard" and weren't supported, so they wouldn't let me purchase one. Here, take your used MacBook Pro and shut up.

So I learned to work on a Mac, while still using a PC at home, and playing games on my HP laptop. See, I was flexible. I could adapt!

Well, adapt I have. I forgot to bring my MacBook power cord home with me from work this evening and it only had 36 minutes of juice left. There was no way I was going to reach 1,667 words in 36 minutes, not coming in cold without time to get my head in the game anyway.

So I despaired. Here I was, falling madly in love with Scrivener and cranking out words, good words, into my book for NaNoWriMo/NaNoFiMo, and I was going to have to use my HP to write for a night, without Scrivener!

Then it clicked. I could grab the Scrivener demo for Windows! I'm saved! I don't even have to export my draft to a word doc and go back to the "old" and "clunky" way of word processing.

I set things in motion, got Scrivener installed, opened up my draft and got started. Only to find that the keyboard on my HP is INFURIATING to type on. Keys don't take my input at a tap, I have to PRESS them firmly (F in particular, which is really no fun when your main character's name is Flynn), and the shift and return keys are all kinds of messed up in their location and size.

Anyway, long story, um, long I guess, I met the minimum word count quota for a single NaNo day in about twice the amount of time it takes me to write 2k words on the keyboard I'm used to and I'm calling it a day.

Does anyone else find they can't work near as productively if their environment or tools change?

- Grimm

P.S. This blog post took over 15 minutes to write on this keyboard :-/
P.P.S. Give me a keyboard like on my MacBook Pro with any other OS (that supports Scrivener) and I'd be just as happy, so I'm NOT a Mac guy, just a guy who loves his keyboard and hates change.

Secondary vs Tertiary Characters and the Princess Bride

I spent what time I had for writing this evening getting out half a scene with a secondary character.  This character will only show up twice in the entire book, but I think she's going to be pretty memorable, and I really like how she's turning out.

That's the thing with secondary characters, they can't be a cardboard cut-outs or props. To me that's a Tertiary character, the type that doesn't have anything to say, or any motivations beyond ,"Hot dogs, get your red-hots." as far as the plot is concerned. There's certainly a place for that sort of character, the stand-in.

But in my not nearly as humble as it should be opinion, secondary characters should be fully realized and if not necessarily memorable, at the very least believable.

Think Miracle Max in The Princess Bride (we'll go with the movie). William Goldman could have easily written a throw away scene of someone performing CPR on Westley after the Pit of Despair, or Billy Crystal could technically have phoned that character in and gotten away with it. It would have made for a much less memorable part in a much less memorable film (or book if you want to discuss the book).

Instead, Goldman opted for a truly memorable secondary character, and not just with Miracle Max, but every secondary character, from the torturer, to the old King are all wonderfully realized (with a good bit of camp, but it fit the story perfectly).

That's how I want my secondary characters to be (albeit with less light-heartedness in this particular book). I want them to be memorable and true to the story, and I really didn't feel that was 100% necessary until I was working on this one.  Of course that means I'll have to pick up some slack on the next pass and figure out exactly which characters fit secondary vs tertiary, but that's what revisions are for.

What are your thoughts on secondary characters? Do you like to flesh out as many as you can or do you leave them as stand-ins/tertiary characters unless they're truly needed?

- Grimm

P.S. Surpassed my #NaNoWriMo/#NaNoFiMo word quote for the second night running. Shouldn't have too much trouble catching up to where I'm supposed to be.

Home Playing Catch-up

From ~2,600 words in 3 days to ~2,400 in 2 hours I think I can catch up now that I'm at home. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed without a 3 year old flopping around.

I'm also quite happy to be home with my writing space, my selection of loose leaf teas, and my beasties.

My cat Mal, who was quite sick when we went away, and a constant source of worry for me over the weekend, seems to be doing better. He's being his usual social self again, and eating and drinking. So it's quite possible he's passed some of the foam rubber and stuffed animal fluff that he ate.

My blog posts will likely be just as frequent during NaNoWriMo/NaNoFiMo, but they will likely be shorter, as I'm conserving my word count for actual writing instead of blogging.  Even my Twitter use has dropped a bit.

If anything momentous happens, or if I come across anything like, oh, say an Auction to promote Kids Literature and Sandy Relief that includes several chances at having your picture book or manuscript professionally critiqued by a professional (sorry for the redundant sentence, I had to use enough words for all the links). There are 42 items in all (currently). Go have a look.

I really need to get my book in shape for these sorts of things.

- Grimm

A Slow Start in a Hotel

My family and I are away from home at the moment at a hockey tournament (it didn't end well but Monster played fantastically) and I'm finding it hard to write in a hotel. I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year (dubbed NaNoFiMo or National Novel Finishing Month by Laura Hughes on Twitter), as I've said a few times recently and it's making for a slow start.

I don't know what it is about sleeping in a hotel that just doesn't work for me. Whether it's being in an unfamiliar environment with no white noise (I sleep with the en-suite fan on at home), or whether it's my 3 year old (AKA Bear) constantly tossing and turning next to me but I just don't get a good night's sleep.

It could be the food. I've gotten quite used to eating home-cooked whole foods, and you really don't get that when you're away from home and at the mercy of restaurants or other parents (pot-lucks are great for socializing, and the food is often delicious, but ugh).
~
My writing has sucked while here, in 3 nights I've knocked out only ~2,600 words. I'm exhausted tonight and definitely looking forward to going home tomorrow and sleeping in my own bed, with my cat and my dogs and the only other person in the bed with me being my wife.

Alright, I'm done whining. Tomorrow I'll try and get back on track, or at least get a little more done.

- Grimm