First Draft, We're So Over.

Dear First,

It’s you.  Not me.  I just want that to be clear, in case you’re confused about this break up.

I went out into this world looking for something magical and honest and true, and I found you.  At the time, you were everything I was looking for, but I’m sad to say that I’ve grown since then.  I’ve changed.  But you wouldn’t.  You refused.  For a while, I thought it wouldn’t matter, that you'd be enough.  I had dreams of the perfect match, blinded by my love for you.  Those days were the best of our time together, when everything we did was magic. It was honest and true. 

Then the doubt seeped in.  You felt it, too, I know.  Our love faded, as did the newness of us.  I saw you with different eyes.  You, content for me to parade you into the world your flaws open and exposed as if you were proud of them, and me, seeing your potential inside that you refused to grasp. 

Maybe I wasn't being honest with you.  Or with myself, for that matter.  Maybe I wanted to change you all along and just wasn't able to admit that what we had going wasn't working like it should.  For that, I'm sorry.  That’s a relationship, I guess.  You never know what you truly want until you’re in one.

If I’m being honest, I’m glad we met.  I’m thankful for the time we had together.  For the things we discovered when our bond was strongest. 

We’ll always have 4am.

I learned a lot, thanks to you. I learned what worked for me and what didn’t.  Not to kick you when you’re down, but you’re unbelievably sloppy.  Even proud of it, I think.  I mean, seriously.  You’ve never once even bothered to fix yourself up.  Like you didn’t care about how you reflected on me.

I do.  I do care.  I know we were always about substance, but I’m sorry - in this world, appearances matter.  But I guess not to you.  And that’s okay. You are who you are.  You gotta be you. 

So, we’re over.  I’m moving on.  I’ve met someone, already.  Someone a lot like you, actually, but cleaner and with better manners and a better body.  It’s shallow, I know. 

Such is life.

You’ll always have a special place in my heart. For now, though, we must say goodbye. 

All the best,

Me

TWILIGHT

No, not that Twilight. 

It’s 4am. 

Early.  Way early.  Especially for me, a guy who digs his beauty sleep.  (Though, it hasn’t helped much thus far.)

Even better, it’s this early and I’m up.  Writing. 

Do you know what’s happening at 4am?

Jack squat.  For about three weeks now, I’ve been getting up before work and cranking out from four to six a solid one to two thousand words.  At least three days a week.  I’m averaging five thousand words of free words. 

Yeah.  Free.  The words come no matter how busy my day.  No matter how hectic my life is after work, or what social events hang in the balance.  When getting the nursery is ready, and all I’d rather do is piss off with a glass of whiskey and vegetate in front of the television. 

Five thousand words.  No matter what.

But really, this progress is just a symptom.  It’s an ailment to the greater infection.  The disease? 

Wanting it.  Ambition.  Desire. 

My goal since November has been to write professionally.    Not necessarily as a profession (I’ve yet to get paid for any of my words and baby needs a new pair of, well, frigging everything), but write in a way that respects the craft and respects the amount of hard work that it takes to get anything in this world.  Professionally.  Life will always be there, getting in the way, but if the need is great enough, you can make it happen.

Use the time you have.  All of it.  4am included.  And that’s my cheesedick advice for the morning.  I know.  It’s very Nike of me.  But seriously.  Wake up.  Go for it.  Follow your heart like a pro.  There’s nothing to lose at 4am.

Just do it.

YA HIGHWAY ROAD TRIP - THE DREAM WRITING RETREAT

Over at YA HIGHWAY, this week’s Road Trip is a little more literal than past iterations.

The question is, Where is your dream writing retreat?

I think I’ve touched on this a little in past posts.  I’m one of those writers who believe that places inspire the writing – I mean, that’s the crux of INKROCK – so trust me when I say I’ve thought long and hard about where I’d go.  Also, considering its ninety eight year old founder George Whitman just passed away, a little tribute to what he gave to us is the least I could do.

Without hesitation, if given the opportunity, I would spend a month or two in Paris.  Specifically, the Latin Quarter, where I’d work, and even bunk for a while, at Shakespeare & Company, the little English bookstore just across from Notre Dame.  I’d drink wine, maybe even smoke a cigarette, and write in only the way one can write in Paris.

It’s the history, you see?

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein.  The list goes on.  In their day, they all frequented that store.  In many respects, they still do.  Ernest Hemingway even goes to some length about what a resource it was to him in A Movable Feast.

Shakespeare & Company is just one of those places, you know?  It is literature.  It is prose.  They embrace it and they pride themselves on supporting the art of the word. 

If you’re a broke writer in Paris, they’ll put you up for free, provided that you work a shift or two.  Heck, when you’re there, maybe we can share a bottle of red and talk about the world.

WWII, Pearl Harbor, and Sacrifice

It’s tough not to reflect on December 7^th, 1941, and what it meant to the United States. 

Currently, my work in progress is about a thirteen-year-old boy and his life during the London Blitz.  I won’t go into detail, but writing the book has required a heftier-than-usual research load, which I absolutely love.  This time in history completely captivates me.

The late Thirties and early Forties must have been a strange time to live in.  This morning, I’ve been thumbing through my AMERICAN HERITAGE PICTURE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II.  If there is a common theme across the borders and oceans, I think it would be sacrifice. 

As an American, December 7^th, 1941 meant a call for greater sacrifice.  The nation, possibly for the last time, set aside political, class, racial, and religious differences to band together and meet the call of duty.  Certainly, that is a romantic view of what happened, but for the most part, it is also an accurate view.

Still, it would take a few more years for the USA to get involved in Europe.  By 1941, England was on its own.  They had already weathered the Blitz but danger still surrounded them.  Europe was Hitler’s to do with what he pleased and he had begun to look east.  To Russia.

I think of my grandfathers during days like December 7^th.  One, Edward Floyd Lemox, landed on Normandy, only to be shelled by a mortar and spend the majority of his war in a London hospital.  The other, however, had a distinctly different experience. 

Lt. Lyman Cleveland Duncan was a B-17 pilot in the 463^rd Bomb Group, 775 Bomb Squadron.  He flew over fifty missions out of Foggia, Italy and received among his many medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.  That's him in the picture, top row, furthest to the right.

His war, like may others, was a long, harrowing experience, filled with nightmare stories such as the time his navigator lost his head from a direct hit to the nose of their airplane by flak from a German 88 anti-aircraft gun. 

Sacrifice.  That is what they all shared in those days. 

So today, if you’ve got a spare moment, perhaps you can reflect on what those brave men, women, and children sacrificed so that the better parts of our humanity were not outcome by the worst.

NaNoWriMo: A Retrospective

A day or so before the start of November, I happened to trip across a post about the upcoming NaNoWriMo or, for those who don’t know what it is, National Novel Writing Month.  Writers participate, writing every day in hopes of reaching fifty thousand words in thirty days.  Now, that ain’t a novel (a middle grade children’s book, maybe) but it is a damn good start on one. 

Typically, this sort of thing I don’t get into.  Good or bad, I’m sort of set in my ways as a writer.  I try to write every day, but I don’t always.  And sometimes, I’ll sit and crank out 10k at a time in creative bursts. 

NaNo was one of those things as a writer that the NASCAR race at Talladega was for me living in Alabama: something I always heard about after the fact but didn’t have any desire to participate in.  (I neither care for NASCAR, nor being told how and when to write.)

This year, though, I caught sight of the competition, (or whatever it is) early on a blog.  I figured, what the hell.  With THE REVELATION SAGA awaiting its fate and a YA Civil War revenge story simmering, I decided participation might be a good opportunity to jump into something new. 

So, off I went.

I had a nice start, wrapping up about 10k in half as many days a that amount should take.  I spent some time on research, some time on outlining.  And then I realized I was telling the story from the wrong perspective. 

One of the rules to NaNo is never erase a word.  Here is where I start to diverge from this whole thing.  These rules.   There is something to be said about keeping continuity, quality, and art in mind while you write.  Sometimes those horrible bits need to be removed, lest they spread like cancer to the good parts.  Bad writing is infectious. 

I’m not saying you should edit every bit, but I find that writing a novel requires a reread of some passages, especially if tones and themes are being bookended or mirrored elsewhere.  The better written those passages are, the better the new stuff tends to be. 

Keep in mind that I like my first draft to be as strong as possible.  That doesn’t mean it’s not shit.  It likely is, but at a minimum the story should be structurally sound .  Not perfect, but sound.  It should survive plot and character scrutiny.  A first draft is like the bones of an athlete.  The muscle tone, training, and talent are built and cultivated in the later drafts.

Of course, there is no judging panel ready to crack your knuckles with a ruler.  So, pissing on the rules, I decided to continue in the spirit of NaNoWriMo. 

My final word count is 36,387.  Not too bad, considering I was only able to write for a little over half of the 30 days.   With a pregnant wife, both families in town for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and football season winding down, that’s all I was willing to spare.

The important thing is, what I’ve written has me excited. There is momentum.  And it’s likely something that I would still be procrastinating about if NaNo hadn’t prodded me into the draft. Mind you, it’s still a mess, but a workable one.   

HUGE CONGRATS: AUTHOR MINDY McGINNIS

It can be woeful journey, this business of getting published.  No wonder that while doing so, many of us hopefuls band together, hand-in-digital hand, to give support, encouragement, and when needed, a shoulder to cry on.  I've made several friends, some of which I've even shared bacon-infused whiskies with, such as Alexa Martin (Girl Wonder, Hyperion 2011), Rachel Hawkins (the Hex Hall series, Hyperion 2011) and Lindsay Leavitt (Princess for Hire series, Hyperion 2010). 

One particular place that I've called home over the years is a website called AgentQuery Connect.  There, a few of us 'veterans' have forged wonderful friendships together as we queried onward, went from agent to agent, or dipped our toes into the shadowy process of submission. 

Well, this year is shaping up very nicely for our group.  First, Sophie Perinot had wonderful success with the sale of her upcoming book The Sister Queens.   Today, it is my pleasure to offer congratulations to Mindy McGinnis!  The press release, per Publishers Marketplace: "Mindy McGinnis's NOT A DROP TO DRINK...to Sarah Shumway at Katherine Tegan Books, in a good deal, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Adriann Ranta at Wolf Literary Services (World)."

It's a great success story and couldn't happen to a nicer person.  To give you a little persective on what a dream-come-true this is, Mindy went from a YA librarian to this:

Nice deal is $1 to $49,000
Very nice deal is $50K to $99K
Good deal is $100K to $250
Significant deal is $250K to $499K
Major deal is $500K and up

Who says the publishing industry is dead?

Spike Jonze's MOURIR APRÈS DE TOI

If you’ve been following this blog, you might have seen me mention Shakespeare & Co., the Parisian bookstore that has made my bucket list of places to experience.  It’s a famous little store in the Latin Quarter that has hosted greats like Hemmingway and Fitzgerald.  And if you’re a writer, and happen to be in Paris without any money, you might find yourself lucky enough to be put up for a few nights, right in the store itself, provided you can pay for it with a shift or two in the bookstore. 

So I came upon this little short film by Spike Jonze that gives you an idea of what magic might unfold on the shelves while you sleep between them.  This is a truly amazing, beautiful film, an absolute must see.

I give you, Spike Jonze’s MOURIR APRÈS DE TOI (To Die by Your Side).