So I opened the box, and now I have to close it. The box in question, of course, is a research How-To; yesterday I talked about how important research is, but I ran out of lunch hour before I ran out of talk. Not an unusual problem for me, of course, but it's OK...lunchtime happens every day.
So...a research How-To. It's a task I've become rather used to through my various jobs and educational programs. As a teacher, I was always researching something...in part because I was curious about new stuff in the IT industry as well as questions of why it got where it was the way it did, but also because my students pretty much demanded it. Granted, none of them ever said "You need to research," but they did ask lots of great questions, many of which stumped me at the time, and the only way to maintain credibility is to come back with answers. Later, then, in the business and in my Ph.D. program, I had to research as a matter of course in order to generate the thousands of pages of reports that I haven't read or seen since.
Research as a fantasy author still draws on the basic techniques of academic research, but it's fundamentally different. For one thing, nobody really cares if I'm "right," only if I present a believable argument that keeps their suspension of disbelief going. While there's still a significant burden of factual reliability inherent in that, it's not like I'll have a Ph.D. expert in the field skeptically reviewing every fact and opinion. In other words, for the first time in my researching life, "wiki" is no longer a four-letter word. Well, OK, it's got four letters. But it's not a dirty word any longer.
Used to be. In fact, I've seen teachers who threaten to fail any paper that cites a wiki as a source. The reason is that it's a popularly-edited site. I, for example, could go into the page on Saturn and write a blurb about them finding a new moon for Saturn at CERN, and that blurb would stay there till somebody challenges it...which hopefully wouldn't take long. Sure, I could...but why would I, you ask? Well, most of us wouldn't, but there's enough possibility of it happening to render anything coming from there as a target for skepticism. Instead of wiki, then, an academic researcher is supposed to use credible sources, such as primary sources (them what saw it) and peer-reviewed sources...if ten people in politics say something's a good idea, it's probably a dumb idea, but if ten people in any academic field say something's a good idea, then by definition it's a good idea.
Wikipedia.com is, though, a great resource for researching for my book. For example, when I tried to figure out what the primal emotions were...as in a list I could use...I opened the site up and typed in "list of emotions". The list I found on the page that appeared magically before my eyes was from a work a decade or so ago...or at least, I think it was. I didn't follow the citation and check the reference, because...well, who cares? All I wanted was a list I could use. The list I got could've been a crackpot's listing of another crackpot's list, but it sounded right to me, so I used it.
I've had to research other things as well. For example, there was a scene at Stanford University. Now, I've never actually been to Stanford University, so I started from a bit of a deficit there. True, I could've picked any other school on the west coast, but it would've been the same deficit, and Stanford, by reputation, has the best physicists. That, and I wanted Matt to have had experience there...no plot spoilers, though. In any event, the scene at Stanford took me a few solid hours to research enough to write.
My computer, by the way, hates me when I'm researching. I typically open Internet Explorer and start going, leaving each screen open as I continue moving toward other information, and I open as many tabs in IE as it will allow (yes, there is a limit!) and then launch another copy of IE. With Stanford, I think I had two windows of IE maxed out and a third started with a few tabs open. I also only close a window or a tab once I realize it's useless to the matter at hand...which does happen to some, but for most only occurs after I'm done writing the scene.
The process is straightforward and fairly standard. First, I open Google and launch a search for whatever keywords I think will get me closest. Since the Stanford scene was set in the physics area, my keywords to start were "physics Stanford University." Google opens a bunch of hits...I have Google set to display the maximum number of results per page, which is 100, since it's much easier to scan the top 100 than it is to dink around with 10 at a time. There's another setting in Google that requires each link to open in a separate window, but I prefer to use tabs, so instead I right-click anything I want to see and select the "Open in Separate Tab" option. I'll usually open 8 or 10 different tabs...typically, many of the top 100 are repeats, so 8 to 10 is the total relevant options. Once I've read each one, some of them generate another several tabs each, with links coming from links. Anything that's potentially useful is opened.
Stanford was a special case, in that the university maintains its own pretty sophisticated web site. You can get a lot there, which in my case meant looking at the map (they have an interactive map, so you can search by room number or building name, which was nice) and perusing the list of faculty and seeing where on the map their offices were. Not trying to be creepy, but there's no point saying that the noble heroes wander down a hall of first-floor offices if all the offices are on the third floor. There were some guesses I had to make, but again--writing fantasy isn't an exact science. I had to be reasonably close, but not perfect. A class schedule was also mildly useful, as it said which rooms classes were held in, and lab classes are usually held...well, in labs.
I was able to find reference to the vibration-resistant labs two stories beneath ground level in an article I found on somebody (can't recall who) who did some famous research in those labs, and the journalist who covered it was kind enough to describe them for me. I had actually been hoping to put the physicists to be rescued in a metal shop, since I know that research physics departments always have a well-appointed shop to build all their 30kV capacitor charging circuits and other doomawhatzits, but I couldn't find anything pinpointing where that was in the Varian building. Ah, well...the underground labs made a good Plan B for the scene location. I was also kinda thinking how nice it would be to have something happening in SLAC, but there's really not much information out there readily accessible in the public domain on that little secret spot of Stanford, and I'm not interested in hacking for it, and I'm also not interested in putting the book writing on hold for weeks as I conduct extensive research. Basically, when I'm researching fantasy fiction, I'm a low-hanging-fruit kinda guy.
The San Francisco main public library was another interesting bit. You can get a listing of the staff...at least, the important ones...off of their site. This is where my own background comes in, because I have spent enough time chatting with the librarians who have worked for and with me to have an idea how many people would be working there based on the structure of the primary staff. I'm probably off by a few, but again, it ain't rocket science. As for imagery, Google's image search helped me a lot. When you do a Google search, you can select Image from the text links at the top of the screen to just pull up a page of images, and there were enough pictures of the library out there that I was able to successfully build a description into the story.
Had some trouble with flowers early on. There's a scene where the family gets to a country cottage, and I decided it oughtta have some ever-present flowers to decorate the English-cottage style landscaping. So, in the initial draft, I wrote about it having lots of perennials such as pansies (Heide's favorite) and columbine (my favorite). Second time through, I got this nagging little doubt. Once again, I turned to Wikipedia, and bam! Columbine is a perennial, but pansies aren't. Oops. A little verbiage change, and I was OK, but I'm glad I checked. Based on what I've read by other authors, every person who read the book and knew anything about flowers would've written me an e-mail yelling at me for calling a pansy a perennial when, in fact, it's a biennial.
Hope this helps somebody. As I said, I've done a lot of opening links from links, usually in a separate tab, and spinning through them to see what I can learn. I close the tab immediately if there's nothing useful on it, but most tabs I leave open as I then write the section I was researching...there's nothing like knowing you've seen something, but having no idea where, and not being able to find it again.
Happy researching!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Joy of Research
Back when I was in high school, and later in college, the word "research" was a dirty one for me, a term that conjured dark and scary visions of musty piles of books surrounding a hapless redheaded stepchild (me) on all sides, closing in with their teeth bared. Yeah, I know, books don't have teeth, but I have always had an active imagination. So sue me. Later, in my Ph.D. program, research was far quicker and easier due to the availability of large and diverse databases, most of which allowed me to pull up all the articles on, say, "student outcomes assessment," written in the last five years in less time than it took me to write this sentence. Reading them was another story entirely, of course, but at least the information was readily available. That said, I still hated the word as well as the activity it represents.
Research, in an academic setting, sucks. At least, it sucks, in my opinion. That's not what you'd expect a Ph.D. candidate to say, I know, but it's how I feel. Research in terms of "hey, let's learn something" is great and exciting and fun, but all too often academic research is more for "hey, I already know this but need to find somebody else who said it before I can say it" or "hey, I don't know this, and never really cared to, but I have a paper due on it" or, worse, at the dissertation level: "hey, I don't know this, and neither does anybody else...mainly because it's pretty boring and nobody will care even after I publish it."
One might think at first that a fantasy author doesn't need to research. After all, it's my world. If I say the trees are all pink, then the trees are all pink. Why are they pink? Well, it's because this world's version of chloroform, or whatever you call the green stuff, is pink. Why? Because it is. And when a reader informs me that the green stuff is actually called chlorophyll, I can get all author-huffy and walk away complaining of anal-retentive idiots.
That's not how it works, though. A quick Google search will prove it...see? I did research. Bruce Coville, author of over 100 books, says:
In my efforts currently, it's even more important to do research, because I'm trying to create a quasi-realistic world based on our own. Yes, I remember a lot from my physics and psychology and engineering classes, which helps, but I have to look up things all the time anyway. An example is this morning's efforts to take on a god's voice as he explains emotional magic to our noble heroine. When he does so, it's only natural that she'll ask questions, mostly about the distinction between primary and secondary emotions, because that distinction forms an important boundary for the magical powers she will be able to wield. I vaguely recall there being a difference from some psychology class I took somewhere, or maybe it was a psych class I observed as Dean, but regardless I needed to really know it if I was going to speak, as a god, authoritatively. So...research. And I enjoyed it.
I'm even having a bit of fun in the writing...I think this will be the first fantasy novel ever to mention Lagrangian mechanics, mostly because it brings me joy to bring them up in a fantasy book, but also because it plays into the system. To do so effectively, though, I had to not only be able to simplify the topic so that the average fantasy reader could understand it, but I also had to solidly grasp, myself, how it fits into the magical structure I've built. Otherwise, the reader would be greeted by a scene where two people just up and started talking about advanced physics. Does that happen often in your circle of existence? Doesn't in mine. That said, though, in order to advance the story well I had to go back and research classical mechanics some...in my grad school experience, we quit talking about Lagrangian mechanics, really, and just started using energy equations, so it's been a couple of decades since I studied them. But once again, I found the research fun, because it was focused on something I really wanted to understand and then use.
Lots of research, then, is involved in writing a good fantasy novel...and just as much in writing what I hope will be a great fantasy novel. The "how" part of that I'll likely cover in a future blog...I have plenty of bits left in my blog for today, but my lunchtime is over. It's been an interesting journey, though, refining my research efforts to meet the demands of fiction writing.
Research, in an academic setting, sucks. At least, it sucks, in my opinion. That's not what you'd expect a Ph.D. candidate to say, I know, but it's how I feel. Research in terms of "hey, let's learn something" is great and exciting and fun, but all too often academic research is more for "hey, I already know this but need to find somebody else who said it before I can say it" or "hey, I don't know this, and never really cared to, but I have a paper due on it" or, worse, at the dissertation level: "hey, I don't know this, and neither does anybody else...mainly because it's pretty boring and nobody will care even after I publish it."
One might think at first that a fantasy author doesn't need to research. After all, it's my world. If I say the trees are all pink, then the trees are all pink. Why are they pink? Well, it's because this world's version of chloroform, or whatever you call the green stuff, is pink. Why? Because it is. And when a reader informs me that the green stuff is actually called chlorophyll, I can get all author-huffy and walk away complaining of anal-retentive idiots.
That's not how it works, though. A quick Google search will prove it...see? I did research. Bruce Coville, author of over 100 books, says:
- The best fantasy writers do the best research.
- You better know your lore, because you’d better bet your reader knows it.
- You can break the rules (lore, etc.) but do it with intent. You have to know it first, too.
- Research can often help you find the solution to a story problem.
- You have an obligation to do your research.
In my efforts currently, it's even more important to do research, because I'm trying to create a quasi-realistic world based on our own. Yes, I remember a lot from my physics and psychology and engineering classes, which helps, but I have to look up things all the time anyway. An example is this morning's efforts to take on a god's voice as he explains emotional magic to our noble heroine. When he does so, it's only natural that she'll ask questions, mostly about the distinction between primary and secondary emotions, because that distinction forms an important boundary for the magical powers she will be able to wield. I vaguely recall there being a difference from some psychology class I took somewhere, or maybe it was a psych class I observed as Dean, but regardless I needed to really know it if I was going to speak, as a god, authoritatively. So...research. And I enjoyed it.
I'm even having a bit of fun in the writing...I think this will be the first fantasy novel ever to mention Lagrangian mechanics, mostly because it brings me joy to bring them up in a fantasy book, but also because it plays into the system. To do so effectively, though, I had to not only be able to simplify the topic so that the average fantasy reader could understand it, but I also had to solidly grasp, myself, how it fits into the magical structure I've built. Otherwise, the reader would be greeted by a scene where two people just up and started talking about advanced physics. Does that happen often in your circle of existence? Doesn't in mine. That said, though, in order to advance the story well I had to go back and research classical mechanics some...in my grad school experience, we quit talking about Lagrangian mechanics, really, and just started using energy equations, so it's been a couple of decades since I studied them. But once again, I found the research fun, because it was focused on something I really wanted to understand and then use.
Lots of research, then, is involved in writing a good fantasy novel...and just as much in writing what I hope will be a great fantasy novel. The "how" part of that I'll likely cover in a future blog...I have plenty of bits left in my blog for today, but my lunchtime is over. It's been an interesting journey, though, refining my research efforts to meet the demands of fiction writing.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
My portals of discovery
"A man's errors are his portals of discovery." - James Joyce
I've started closing out my manuscript when I end each writing session. Before, I'd leave it open and, when I sat back down to write, just take right up again where I'd left off. I find, though, that having the document open to page 1 and then scrolling through it--yes, I know the keystroke to go to the end directly, but I force myself to scroll--engages me in skimming over what I've already written, thus making my activity a little less prone to error. Or, technically, it makes me more prone to catch the errors I've made, which unless I blog about my errors later is pretty much the same result.
Found one this morning, in fact. A couple of days ago, I'd introduced an adept named Patrick (so named because "Humor Element #15" didn't sound right) to Crystal. Patrick was wearing an orange robe. He bragged to her about studying fire magic. Last night, then, I'd discussed the colors associated with the elements of magic, and fire is red, not orange. Ah, crap. I suck. It's an easy fix, but still, it shows to go ya that I'm just not as prefect as I think to like I am.
After my writing spell this morning, though, I was sitting in my library reading a book, and found this:
"Andrew Carr! Andrew Carr! It was an illusion, of course. No one within three hundred miles of this place knew...."
Flip forward eight pages, and the same apparition that had saved Mr. Carr from sure death in a snow bank by calling to him by name says that she doesn't want to keep referring to him as stranger, and so he gives her his name for apparently the first time.
Oops. Good to know, I guess, that other authors aren't prefect either.
I must point out, though...this wasn't just another author. This is a Darkover novel...Marion Zimmer Bradley, herself. On the Easter Island of great authors, there's a statue of her. She stands together with such greats as Piers Anthony and Tolkien. She didn't write fantasy fiction; she defined it.
And she wasn't perfect neither.
Well, I guess that puts my little mistakes--my portals of discovery--in decent company. Till later, then!
I've started closing out my manuscript when I end each writing session. Before, I'd leave it open and, when I sat back down to write, just take right up again where I'd left off. I find, though, that having the document open to page 1 and then scrolling through it--yes, I know the keystroke to go to the end directly, but I force myself to scroll--engages me in skimming over what I've already written, thus making my activity a little less prone to error. Or, technically, it makes me more prone to catch the errors I've made, which unless I blog about my errors later is pretty much the same result.
Found one this morning, in fact. A couple of days ago, I'd introduced an adept named Patrick (so named because "Humor Element #15" didn't sound right) to Crystal. Patrick was wearing an orange robe. He bragged to her about studying fire magic. Last night, then, I'd discussed the colors associated with the elements of magic, and fire is red, not orange. Ah, crap. I suck. It's an easy fix, but still, it shows to go ya that I'm just not as prefect as I think to like I am.
After my writing spell this morning, though, I was sitting in my library reading a book, and found this:
"Andrew Carr! Andrew Carr! It was an illusion, of course. No one within three hundred miles of this place knew...."
Flip forward eight pages, and the same apparition that had saved Mr. Carr from sure death in a snow bank by calling to him by name says that she doesn't want to keep referring to him as stranger, and so he gives her his name for apparently the first time.
Oops. Good to know, I guess, that other authors aren't prefect either.
I must point out, though...this wasn't just another author. This is a Darkover novel...Marion Zimmer Bradley, herself. On the Easter Island of great authors, there's a statue of her. She stands together with such greats as Piers Anthony and Tolkien. She didn't write fantasy fiction; she defined it.
And she wasn't perfect neither.
Well, I guess that puts my little mistakes--my portals of discovery--in decent company. Till later, then!
Monday, April 25, 2011
What do authors look like?
So Stephen King's recommendation has caught me, hook, line, and stinker. I read everywhere. It's been a while since I've really read a lot for fun, but now that I've given myself permission to do so and even accepted that it's an important thing to do, once again it's become a drug to me. A good drug, I'd say, but still...I read everywhere. I have audiobooks in the car. I have books piled so high in my "library" at home (my privy...toilet...whatever polite term you wish to call the john) that they're a bit of a falling hazard. I have several by the bed, though that pile at least I manage to find ways to avoid when I get there.
It's no surprise, then, that I was reading this weekend while waiting for my car's oil to be changed...and, right after that, for the tires to be rotated, since the service man at the dealership made a solid enough argument that it was needed. I found myself in the foreword of Anne McCaffrey's book containing one novella and several short stories about dragons. Yes, I'm sure there's more than one book meeting that description, but that's all I remember about it right now. In any event, the topic at hand was her dealing with others' recognition, or not, of her as she does her author-y stuff: stuff like appearing at conferences, riding airplanes to and from book signings in such strange places as Fairbanks, AK (just kidding, my frozen friends up there!), and going shopping in bookstores for her son's first published novel.
"You don't look like Anne McCaffrey." She's reportedly heard this line an awful lot. Probably more, in fact, than I've been told that I don't look like Stephen King. Which is absolutely true in my case, assuming you're talking about the same Stephen King I'm talking about. But she IS Anne McCaffrey, and as far as I am aware, the only one on the whole planet.
So what exactly do we, the reading public, expect Anne McCaffrey to look like? I mean, I've seen pictures of her, and...well, she didn't look like I expected, either. But I also happened across the web site of Alex Kava, whose detective mystery I'd just finished. Boy, she looked EXACTLY like what I didn't expect. So what did I expect, you ask? Honestly, I have no idea what I expected these folks to look like. I just remember looking at the picture and thinking, "That can't be her." It's not a gender-specific thing, either; neither Robert Jordan nor that other Stephen King looked one iota like I thought they would.
This, of course, led me to two separate questions, one of which I can answer now. The first question was "does anybody know what an author is supposed to look like? A quick and quasi-scientific Google search tells me that the answer to that is "absolutely not." I couldn't even find a site addressing the question, honestly, and heck, I went two whole search screens back. It appears, then, that the problem of not knowing what we expect an author to look like, followed closely by the problem of authors not looking like we would have expected them to if we had known what to expect in the first place, is a nearly universal problem. Or perhaps I should say problems. I'm just too tired after a long day of work to care. Or grammar, for that matter.
The deeper and more engaging question--to me, anyway--is whether I'll look like what I'm expected to look like once (OK, fine...if) I become famous. When people read my work, what picture will they get in their mind when they think of the guy who hammered it out on a keyboard? And will it be a different picture for Evan Koenig than it is for Bob, the Grumpy Dean?
Can't wait to find out, which means I better get to hammering, right?
Word Count: 24,773 and climbing
It's no surprise, then, that I was reading this weekend while waiting for my car's oil to be changed...and, right after that, for the tires to be rotated, since the service man at the dealership made a solid enough argument that it was needed. I found myself in the foreword of Anne McCaffrey's book containing one novella and several short stories about dragons. Yes, I'm sure there's more than one book meeting that description, but that's all I remember about it right now. In any event, the topic at hand was her dealing with others' recognition, or not, of her as she does her author-y stuff: stuff like appearing at conferences, riding airplanes to and from book signings in such strange places as Fairbanks, AK (just kidding, my frozen friends up there!), and going shopping in bookstores for her son's first published novel.
"You don't look like Anne McCaffrey." She's reportedly heard this line an awful lot. Probably more, in fact, than I've been told that I don't look like Stephen King. Which is absolutely true in my case, assuming you're talking about the same Stephen King I'm talking about. But she IS Anne McCaffrey, and as far as I am aware, the only one on the whole planet.
So what exactly do we, the reading public, expect Anne McCaffrey to look like? I mean, I've seen pictures of her, and...well, she didn't look like I expected, either. But I also happened across the web site of Alex Kava, whose detective mystery I'd just finished. Boy, she looked EXACTLY like what I didn't expect. So what did I expect, you ask? Honestly, I have no idea what I expected these folks to look like. I just remember looking at the picture and thinking, "That can't be her." It's not a gender-specific thing, either; neither Robert Jordan nor that other Stephen King looked one iota like I thought they would.
This, of course, led me to two separate questions, one of which I can answer now. The first question was "does anybody know what an author is supposed to look like? A quick and quasi-scientific Google search tells me that the answer to that is "absolutely not." I couldn't even find a site addressing the question, honestly, and heck, I went two whole search screens back. It appears, then, that the problem of not knowing what we expect an author to look like, followed closely by the problem of authors not looking like we would have expected them to if we had known what to expect in the first place, is a nearly universal problem. Or perhaps I should say problems. I'm just too tired after a long day of work to care. Or grammar, for that matter.
The deeper and more engaging question--to me, anyway--is whether I'll look like what I'm expected to look like once (OK, fine...if) I become famous. When people read my work, what picture will they get in their mind when they think of the guy who hammered it out on a keyboard? And will it be a different picture for Evan Koenig than it is for Bob, the Grumpy Dean?
Can't wait to find out, which means I better get to hammering, right?
Word Count: 24,773 and climbing
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Writing what you know
So, I finally got to the part I'd been looking forward to...specifically, the hazing of Crystal. In the interest of not spoiling too much of the plot I'll be general in my comments, but boy, is this part fun to write. It springs from the fact that Crystal can't just jump right from being a human to being a god...she's got stuff to learn. A LOT of stuff to learn, of course. And sometimes the only way to teach a LOT of stuff is to use "alternative" teaching techniques. Hazing, in other words. Technically, it's not hazing in the traditional definition of hazing, but it's still not the most comfortable way to learn.
I know this because I've been through it. It seems like most of the learning points from the Army and the Infantry were so important, so "LOT"-worthy, that the Army's normal mode of teaching was the "alternative" mode. It was rare, as I recall, for us to sit in comfortable, climate-controlled classrooms listening to the gentle lecture of a subject matter expert. It was far more frequent that we were given requirements that obliquely taught us stuff that we needed to know...usually not in what would be considered a climate-controlled classroom, either.
At least, that's how I remember it. Thinking back, we really did spend a fair amount of time in traditional learning activities, but the ones that made the biggest impact on me, and thus stand fresher in my recall, were the other ones. Maybe there really is something to it?
In any event, a great many authors, editors, and agents across several publications I've read preached the gospel of "Writing what you know." It's important, as the truth of what you know comes out in a way that no level of research can really make up for. Luckily for me, I know education. I know teaching. I know learning. I know hazing, too. What that does is make the writing of these passages fly by. I don't plan what's going to happen; it just does, and it sounds good and right as I discover it at about 80 words per minute.
So...while Crystal is going through a rough time, I hope all my friends out in the real world are having a happy Easter today, full of all the alcohol, chocolate, marshmallow, and pig parts that you all desire. Tomorrow it's back to work, but today is a wonderful holiday.
Word Count: 21,615
I know this because I've been through it. It seems like most of the learning points from the Army and the Infantry were so important, so "LOT"-worthy, that the Army's normal mode of teaching was the "alternative" mode. It was rare, as I recall, for us to sit in comfortable, climate-controlled classrooms listening to the gentle lecture of a subject matter expert. It was far more frequent that we were given requirements that obliquely taught us stuff that we needed to know...usually not in what would be considered a climate-controlled classroom, either.
At least, that's how I remember it. Thinking back, we really did spend a fair amount of time in traditional learning activities, but the ones that made the biggest impact on me, and thus stand fresher in my recall, were the other ones. Maybe there really is something to it?
In any event, a great many authors, editors, and agents across several publications I've read preached the gospel of "Writing what you know." It's important, as the truth of what you know comes out in a way that no level of research can really make up for. Luckily for me, I know education. I know teaching. I know learning. I know hazing, too. What that does is make the writing of these passages fly by. I don't plan what's going to happen; it just does, and it sounds good and right as I discover it at about 80 words per minute.
So...while Crystal is going through a rough time, I hope all my friends out in the real world are having a happy Easter today, full of all the alcohol, chocolate, marshmallow, and pig parts that you all desire. Tomorrow it's back to work, but today is a wonderful holiday.
Word Count: 21,615
Friday, April 22, 2011
Looking back, and forward too
Sometimes it's useful to look back and assess how far we have, or have not, come on our paths of personal productivity, and then to build on that assessment with future practices which will help us go farther, do more, and reach our goals in the future.
There. That gets the management-speak crap out of the way for now, I guess. It's what I get for coming in to work early and blogging in the quiet of my office in a business suit rather than at home in my pajamas.
It really is interesting, though, to re-read the first post I wrote. No management-speak...just a bit of introspection.
Heh. 32K words seemed like "quite a bit" then, certainly. Now that I'm nearing 100K? Not so much.
"But this one will be different."
I guess "different" is a good way to describe what I've created here. It's true that I've kept it going nearly every day for a couple of months now. That, in itself, is different from the blogging experiences in my past (and from many others, from what I read and hear). Hopefully, at the same time, it's made for at least a semi-interesting read. It has for me, but then again, I'm the knucklehead who wrote it. Of course it's interesting to me.
I created this blog "so that once I'm done I can look back through what I did and why I did it." But it's morphed into more than that. As I've plunged through writing the book, I've learned...not just about writing, but also about the overall process, and about the industry, and believe it or not, a fair amount about myself. This blog has, so far, indirectly tracked along that learning curve, sometimes explicitly discussing what I've learned and why, but sometimes instead just bumping lightly or smacking up wetly against my new discoveries in the world of novel-writing.
I've had to research some of the posts, and that, in itself, has been a great experience. I love learning, and the deeper I've dug into the art and science and business of writing, the more I've learned that I have to learn. It's like I keep peeling off layers of onion to reveal other interesting layers inside...or it would be, if I liked onions. It's the diced celery in my stew of crushed metaphors.
No, I don't know what that last bit means either, but it sounds like something Douglas Adams might have written. That, in and of itself, makes me happy.
All that said...I must admit that I've truly enjoyed the ride so far, and I hope that you have, too. This weekend is being set aside mostly for yet another extreme write-a-thon, since I've only been gallumping along at 1K words a night this week and need to make up some ground. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm also looking forward to being able to write more blog posts about it.
Have a great Good Friday!
There. That gets the management-speak crap out of the way for now, I guess. It's what I get for coming in to work early and blogging in the quiet of my office in a business suit rather than at home in my pajamas.
It really is interesting, though, to re-read the first post I wrote. No management-speak...just a bit of introspection.
"At this point, I've done quite a bit. I'm up to nearly 32K words, and still have a lot of the story to get to."
Heh. 32K words seemed like "quite a bit" then, certainly. Now that I'm nearing 100K? Not so much.
"But this one will be different."
I guess "different" is a good way to describe what I've created here. It's true that I've kept it going nearly every day for a couple of months now. That, in itself, is different from the blogging experiences in my past (and from many others, from what I read and hear). Hopefully, at the same time, it's made for at least a semi-interesting read. It has for me, but then again, I'm the knucklehead who wrote it. Of course it's interesting to me.
I created this blog "so that once I'm done I can look back through what I did and why I did it." But it's morphed into more than that. As I've plunged through writing the book, I've learned...not just about writing, but also about the overall process, and about the industry, and believe it or not, a fair amount about myself. This blog has, so far, indirectly tracked along that learning curve, sometimes explicitly discussing what I've learned and why, but sometimes instead just bumping lightly or smacking up wetly against my new discoveries in the world of novel-writing.
I've had to research some of the posts, and that, in itself, has been a great experience. I love learning, and the deeper I've dug into the art and science and business of writing, the more I've learned that I have to learn. It's like I keep peeling off layers of onion to reveal other interesting layers inside...or it would be, if I liked onions. It's the diced celery in my stew of crushed metaphors.
No, I don't know what that last bit means either, but it sounds like something Douglas Adams might have written. That, in and of itself, makes me happy.
All that said...I must admit that I've truly enjoyed the ride so far, and I hope that you have, too. This weekend is being set aside mostly for yet another extreme write-a-thon, since I've only been gallumping along at 1K words a night this week and need to make up some ground. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm also looking forward to being able to write more blog posts about it.
Have a great Good Friday!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Sound of Life
I can hear life. No, really. That whooshing sound I hear when I work late, only to get home and write for a couple of hours? That's the sound life makes as it's whooshing by.
OK...no, not really. But it seems that way sometimes. I got home from my "day" job last night at about 9:00, and then spent as long as it took to get my 1000 words in, and got right back up and back at it at 5:30 this morning. Hey, it's my life...somebody's gotta whine about it. *whoosh* See? There it went again.
Every discipline has its "gotta swim the moat to get to the castle" times, it seems. As a teacher, I had to take whatever classes got tossed my way till I got some seniority. As an Army butter bar, I had to put up with a couple of years of being a butter bar. It doesn't take reading too many authors' biographies till you realize that nearly all of them did what I'm doing...writing despite one, or sometimes two, day jobs that kept them away from family and pillows.
But it's the dream. And yes, it's the money, but it's not entirely the money. I know there's a decent chance I'll never make much of anything. But I also want the opportunity to call myself a "published author."
And...can't forget...I've also blogged numerous times about the fact that writing for fun is, well, fun. It's really very enjoyable to sit and spin this story, despite the fact that it's a multi-week process that takes me away from other things for a matter of time. In all honesty, I wouldn't have gotten this far with it if I didn't enjoy it greatly. So my whining, then, really is just empty whining. I could quit. But I won't.
So...for what it's worth, keep all this in mind if you, Gentle Reader, ever decide to write a book...the next life you hear whooshing by might be your own. And next time you pick up a "first novel" of somebody's, think of all the times that person heard a "whoosh."
OK...no, not really. But it seems that way sometimes. I got home from my "day" job last night at about 9:00, and then spent as long as it took to get my 1000 words in, and got right back up and back at it at 5:30 this morning. Hey, it's my life...somebody's gotta whine about it. *whoosh* See? There it went again.
Every discipline has its "gotta swim the moat to get to the castle" times, it seems. As a teacher, I had to take whatever classes got tossed my way till I got some seniority. As an Army butter bar, I had to put up with a couple of years of being a butter bar. It doesn't take reading too many authors' biographies till you realize that nearly all of them did what I'm doing...writing despite one, or sometimes two, day jobs that kept them away from family and pillows.
But it's the dream. And yes, it's the money, but it's not entirely the money. I know there's a decent chance I'll never make much of anything. But I also want the opportunity to call myself a "published author."
And...can't forget...I've also blogged numerous times about the fact that writing for fun is, well, fun. It's really very enjoyable to sit and spin this story, despite the fact that it's a multi-week process that takes me away from other things for a matter of time. In all honesty, I wouldn't have gotten this far with it if I didn't enjoy it greatly. So my whining, then, really is just empty whining. I could quit. But I won't.
So...for what it's worth, keep all this in mind if you, Gentle Reader, ever decide to write a book...the next life you hear whooshing by might be your own. And next time you pick up a "first novel" of somebody's, think of all the times that person heard a "whoosh."
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