I'll write more on it later... But this is looking like a solid NaNo win this year, already close to 50k words on the current draft, but a long way from finishing the damn book, which is my goal for the month.
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Sunday, November 10, 2019
NaNoWriMo 2019: The Properties of Dust
I'll write more on it later... But this is looking like a solid NaNo win this year, already close to 50k words on the current draft, but a long way from finishing the damn book, which is my goal for the month.
Sunday, November 03, 2019
The Yellow Painted Man is Done!
So, the book we were slaving away on is out! I am very excited about this! I hope folks enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed helping Jason out with it.
The book description:
In 1863, as war rages in Mexico and the United States, another millennia old conflict is escalating. Fueled by the whims of an eldritch intelligence, all of mankind is subject to its sway. Samuel Sheldon is a chosen heir of the Trust, an enigmatic and gold obsessed cabal with origins seeped in the secret history of the world. When his prisoner, Mangas Coloradas, is murdered on Sheldon's first assignment, an unpredictable series of events threaten to upset the Trust's flawless designs. Determined to prove his worth, Sheldon is tasked with recovering a vast horde of missing gold; an endeavor that swiftly spirals into a supernatural odyssey of violence sprawling from the siege of Richmond to the wastelands of Mexico. Obstructed by treachery and confronted with the strange secrets of his employers, Sheldon must decide if the rewards of power are worth the price.
From Jason Roberts:
The time is nigh! I promised a big announcement this week and so I shall deliver! Today I announce the publication of my first novel, The Yellow Painted Man, now available for sale on kindle, print, and soon to be audible! It’s been a difficult but rewarding process, filled with humbling but educational experiences. I have to give a shout out to A.F. Litt Creative for the dogged determination to see this project through and to my wife Kim for her encouragement along the way.
See my author page here:
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B07ZQMYSW1…
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B07ZQMYSW1…
Or my website here:
http://www.jasonrobertsonline.com
http://www.jasonrobertsonline.com
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Almost Done!
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| Photo: A. F. Litt, 2019 |
I've been pretty quiet here, especially when it comes to creative content, because I've been busy working hard all year editing a novel for a client.
The good news is that we are almost done, in the final stages of editing, and should be hatching that bad boy out into the world pretty soon!
It's been a lot of hard work, but I am so excited to share my client's writing with everyone in the coming weeks. It's a hell of a story he's told, and I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as I have!
More details to follow as they become available!
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
NaNoWriMo 2017: Finding Victory in an Inevitable Defeat
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| The terror of the blank "page" November 13, 2017 |
How to lose National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? Start late, do little prep work in October, change your plan in the first week, and, finally, be sidelined by uncomfortable health issues that make it impossible to focus on much, let alone write, for days on end.
I don't mean to sound like I am giving up, but, oh... I am giving up. But only on reaching 50,000 words by the end of the month. I will continue (uh, start?) working on my novel this month and it will be interesting to see where my final word count for the month lands, though I truly doubt it will be anywhere close to a "win."
Of course, giving up when it is the 22nd and I have less than 500 words written is something of a misnomer. There really isn't a path to victory left at this point.
I first sat down to write this post on the 14th, but I have not had the headspace to even finish writing these words since then. At that point, a win was still technically possible. I would have needed to average 2,700 words per day for the rest of the month, but that was not far off from my 2012 average. However, it would also have required doing little but writing for the rest of the month, which would not have been possible even if I was healthy, especially if I was healthy, so I was already prepared to claim my defeat for 2017 at that point in time.
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| NaNoWriMo 2017 |
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| NaNoWriMo 2012 |
I knew that completing 50,000 words this year would be a challenge heading in, so my initial goals were very much the same as 2013, which was to get back into the habit of making creative writing a regular and integral part of my creative process and routine. That year, the goal was to work towards finishing the 2012 novel, but this year I started off with the plan to bang out a simpler novel by the seat of my pants.
A couple things happened this year creatively on the way to NaNoWriMo "failure," though. First, the health issues took me out of the game entirely after the first weekend. This was the primary roadblock this year. But very close behind those issues were the lack of prep, the lack of "October work," heading into the book.
I very quickly found that a vague idea for a starting point for the novel was not quite enough to inspire the large daily word counts I enjoyed in 2012. Sure, this was meant to be a seat of the pants project from the get go, but I very quickly found that I needed more than a vague starting point to really get the story rolling. I needed to identify a few characters, I needed a solid hook for the opening chapter, and I needed a better sense of where the plot was heading beyond "a stranger comes to town and takes the protagonist on a journey."
Being a sequel to the 2012 novel, I did know "the stranger" well and the world was fully built before diving in, and I looked forward to learning about the new protagonist as I rode the story out by the seat of my pants, but it just wasn't enough to really get the ball rolling, to get to the point where the story was alive enough in my mind to write itself through physical discomfort and pain, to inspire me to find extra time to write instead of needing to talk myself into sitting down to write anything at all...
The idea was strong, but it was still only just an idea, it was not a living story in my mind yet.
Through this, I've gained a ton of appreciation for the thorough prep work I did in 2012, before starting in on the first draft. I had long character sketches for all of the major and minor characters so they were "alive" to me long before they were ever introduced on the page, and I had detailed, scene by scene outlines for the first half of the novel and a more open, chapter by chapter outline for the latter half, which was getting filled in to the scene level long before I reached those later points in the story.
Because of all of that work, the story was so real in my head that the actual writing often felt more like I was just typing up the fully formed scenes in my head rather than wrestling through the match word by word... Of course, there was still room for spontaneity and new ideas, but they all served the outline, for the most part, rather than being creative farts blowing me down dead end rabbit trails.
In some ways, it was like reading a book after seeing the film. I knew what was going to happen, for the most part, but it was fascinating to see how the vision became realized on the page, to learn all the little nuances and details passed over in the movie...
For all of the benefits that come from this very structured approach to writing, I still miss the days where I would sit down with a vague idea, pull out a notebook, and follow the words one by one through a story. Of course, that works better for simpler, shorter stories. I still think that the new novel would be a good candidate for this sort of writing, but I still need to have a little more put together than I have so far.
Finally, diving in a few weeks ago, because of the lack of prep work, I turned to the earlier novel to "brush up" as I was starting in on the new book. The good news is that I fell in love all over again with the older story. This was also the bad news, and quickly I decided to work on both at once, to go rebel in 2017, with a goal of writing 50,000 words and finishing at least one of the books. I needed to re-read the old book before working on it, but I figured I could make a solid start on the new book while this was happening.
Unfortunately, almost immediately I became so physically miserable that I was unable to muster the concentration for any of it. For close reading the old book, for hauling the new book out of the dust and rubble of creation...
So, with all of this failure with NaNoWriMo 2017, how can I find any victory here? Well, easily. I am thinking about writing in a very real way again, and regardless of my November setbacks, these novels are not going back on the shelf to collect another year or two's worth of dust. I am fired up to finish the 2012 novel and to write the 2017 one, more so than I have been in years. I did complete enough prep work on the new one to get started (though I want to rewrite the few paltry words I did complete), and I am solidly reacquainting myself with the world the novels are set in.
I've been going through something of a creative slump for the last year or more due to some complicated life issues, and writing is where I've decided restart. The projects that have occupied so much of my time for the last several years, and the other photo / video work... These endeavours are not going away completely, but for right now, writing is the best fit for me logistically and creatively due to some huge life transitions going on right now. The reset button has been hit on my life, and as I start rebuilding, I find myself wanting to start with the neglected loose ends, which definitely means finishing up the oldest loose end first.
I am very excited about the future, and I expect great things to come out of the next few years, knocking down these books, completing the non-fiction project on the Historic Columbia River Highway, and continuing work on the National Parks and Monuments project, which is still in a phase of early development, really.
NaNoWriMo 2017 has been the start of this process. While I may end up accomplishing little during the month itself, I did start something, and I plan on sticking with it through to the end. By this time next year, the 2012 book will be done, and the 2017 book, I hope, will have, at a minimum, a solid first draft.
Starting over, this is where I choose to dive in and to devote the bulk of my creative time and energy. I am very excited by this, and cannot see the inspiration provided by NaNoWriMo as anything but a victory as it lifted me back on my creative feet, ready and willing to move ahead once again.
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| Well, barely... |
Monday, November 10, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014
No, I am not participating this year, but a fellow in the local Facebook community asked this question a little bit ago: “How does NaNoWriMo fit into your larger writing goals? Do you have any?”
My response…
A great question that has been on my mind recently. It's been a couple years since I participated in any real way in NaNoWriMo, and watching everyone ramping up in October got the bug going in me again, I had a blast in 2012! Unfortunately, while I "won" in 2012, I failed to finish my book, which has seen little progress since due to family needs and a shift in focus artistically towards photography and filmmaking.
Last year, my failed attempt at NaNoWriMo was designed to get me back into the habit of writing regularly. 50K was not even close to my personal goal, but doing a creative writing activity (writing, editing, plotting, cooking-up...) at least 5 days a week was my goal. A few weeks into 2013, though, I concluded that I just had too much on my plate, researching and writing a non-fiction book and documentary and on-going family issues being my main distractions, and that my novel would just have to be on hold for a while longer.
Another year passes... Continued work with the family, stumbling but consistent work on the non-fiction book and movie, a ton of time spent attempting to launch a photography / cinematography business...
And now it's NaNo 2014!
I had no illusions that 2014 would fit into my current schedule, but it has led me to think a lot about creative writing again. I still have 2/3 of a draft of a novel that I love. I've got two follow up novels gelling up in my head, one of which has been evolving through various incarnations since I was 17, and I miss writing, a lot!
As my photography and video "hobbies" have transformed into work, I also find myself craving another creative outlet to pursue in my "spare time," filling the role that photography used to fill before it became more of a vocation than a hobby. Writing is bubbling up to the top.
So my main writing goal right now is pretty simple. Start writing again! I am in the process of stripping down my life a bit, simplifying, and finding some time to make this happen. I've got to clear a few small film jobs first, but then it will be time to get back into creative writing.
As for the role of NaNoWriMo, it has been crucial. Even the last two years when I did not participate, it has led me to evaluate the role of creative writing in my life in a very meaningful way, and, at the very least, it reminds me that I am a writer!
Next year, I'd like to use November to kickstart my next novel, which depends on me finishing the first draft of the current one first, since it is a sort of sequel. So there's some timelines and goals that come directly from NaNoWriMo, regardless if I decided to go all out for 50K next year or not.
And this is the sort of long term role I can see November filling in my life. And I may, depending on what is going on earlier next year, utilize the Camps to motivate me through a second draft, or even to launch the 2nd book a little earlier, depending on where I am at the time.
I wish that NaNoWriMo came in December this year, since I probably will be writing more by then, but even if I am not an active participant, it is still huge and helps me out a lot, reminding me that books don't write themselves and that one of these days I've got to sit down and put the work in to make these stories come alive.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2014
NaNoWriMo 2013 & 2014
Last November and next November are a long way off, and it is a testament to how busy this year has been that I still haven’t posted about my 2013 NaNoWriMo belly flop until now, but I wanted to preserve this piece of joy before taking it down off my blog:
I was going the rebel route and trying to get some work in on my 2012 novel, which still needs to be finished. Here is the counter for the novel, same now as it was at the end of NaNoWriMo 2013:
I wrote about my goals for 2013 last November, so I won’t go into detail here, but they were not about writing 50,000 words in a month, or even finishing the novel, but they involved getting back in touch with that novel and, mostly, carving out time in my schedule and building routines and habits to work on writing every day.
So what happened?
Mostly, I realized that I already was writing a book, though a non-fiction one, Recreating the Historic Columbia River Highway, and that my schedule did not allow me time to work on two books at once while trying to raise the boys and start a business and… and… and… all the things that fill my days.
Sure, I had a book as a part of the overall general plan with that project, but it wasn’t until last November that that piece started to feel real to me. Until then, my focus was on the movie, and research to support the movie.
So where am I now with these projects?
With the novel, it is pretty much written in my head, so to finish the rough draft it is really just pounding out the details and dialog into the computer.
However, people change over time and the stories we want to tell changes with us. While I still love that story and am dying to get it out into the world, the way I want to tell it has changed a bit, so I after finishing the rough draft, I will be going back and rewriting the whole thing before sharing it.
And when will these drafts be finished? I have no way of telling, right now. There are a lot of variables, but I hope to get a draft out to some test readers sometime in the next two years. Best case scenario, it will be 2015, but considering that the HCRH book is my main priority right now, and that I want to have it on sale by the fall of 2015, 2015 is pretty unlikely for the novel, since I doubt I will have time to write two books at once.
And then there is all the photography and video work to be done…
And then there are the boys’ tutoring and homework and…
Oh, bother.
I can sleep when I am dead!
But I love this stuff, and it will all get done eventually. Of that, I have little doubt.
Oh, and NaNoWriMo 2014? Not sure yet. Maybe. Probably not. We’ll see what happens once the boys are back in school.
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Monday, November 18, 2013
NaNoWriMo 2013: Past the “Halfway” Point
…and my word count is ZERO.
That’s right, goose egg. Nada y nada…
So I should be in a state of panic, flailing through the murk and mud of desperation, frantically flinging that mud at a blank page just so I have something that just might stick, right?
Wrong. Because, so far, NaNoWriMo 2013 has been a success for me.
How can this be?
Well, it is a success because it is accomplishing its goal; it has me thinking about writing and the writing process every day. It has taken my book out of its 11-month hiatus and put it back into the forefront of my mind, not as a “Once I get some time, and the fairies flutter, dancing through the air ‘midst the flying pigs, I will sit down and finish my book…” sort of project but as a real and active project that requires scheduling and thought and work and sacrifice of sleep and a revision of other goals to happen.
NaNoWriMo 2013 has been a success for me, so far, because it has allowed me to do these things and to, therefore, be a writer again for the first time since early December 2012.
Unfortunately, because of that 11-month hiatus, my writing process does not allow me to dive immediately right back into writing on this novel. Sure, I could review my outline and notes, re-read the last 20 pages and dive in, but I know that the inconsistencies this would create within the draft would take more time to hammer out later than it is worth, and there is always the danger that some of those continuity errors, from style to major plot points, might survive through to later drafts, so I’d rather take the time to do this right, and that means reading before writing.
And I have been reading, so I can say work on the novel has resumed, which is a very exciting thing for me. Plus, the process of reading is getting me fired up to do some writing, hopefully very soon.
So I should end November with some points on the board, though it may be nowhere near 50K mark. But this is okay. As I wrote at the beginning of the month, my goals are different this year.
And so far, considering my personal goals for this year, I feel that this has been a very successful NaNoWriMo for me, even if my word count is still at zero.
It has been a struggle, though, to start building the habits I’ll need to see this project through to the end. Working on my novel every day? Not even close, yet, but I am getting closer. It is a process and, like I mentioned before, it involves scheduling time and revising goals in other areas of life and it involves making a few sacrifices, not only in the sleep department. But it is a win, so far, because, for the first time in a long time, I am doing these things instead of thinking about doing these things or, my favorite cop out, trying to do these things and failing.
As for the novel itself, there is a lot to be gained from reading it after such a long break. I remember the broad strokes but not all of the details, and this break has really allowed me to see the text with fresh eyes, seeing where my backstory is clear and where it needs to be fleshed out more, what details are redundant and can be trimmed and which need to be emphasized a little bit more.
Overall, I am pleased with the way the narrative is holding together, though some structural concerns I’ve had since early November last year will need to be addressed in the next draft.
To be sure, reading and editing are considered mortal sins in NaNoWriMo, and I’d be crazy to do much editing at this point in the draft anyway, so I am limiting myself to some light red inking and the occasional sparse note. If I am not careful, I could easily get lost in the lotus fields of endlessly tweaking the first chapters and never finishing a complete draft, and this is a trap I know not to fall into at this point in my development as a writer.
Moreover, what this process is giving me is not only the desire to see the first draft through to the end, but to also get started on the rewrite pretty darn quick when I am done with the first draft. I do not believe, due to that 11-month break, that a normal incubation time will be needed between the first and second draft because I’ve had a year break already on the first 86,000 words.
My eyes and ears are clear and ready to work and I am excited to see what this will look like when it is done, hopefully much sooner than later. And if it were not for NaNoWriMo 2013, I am not sure that the end would ever arrive. For that, I am very thankful. Regardless of how much actual writing I accomplish by the end of the month, I already consider 2013 a personal win because I am working on writing once again, and since I am working, reaching the end of this novel is actually possible now.
I’ve got two novels already, for various (and valid) reasons, laying half written on the dust heap. It would break my heart to add a third…
Of course, for this year to truly count as a win for me, with my personal goals, I have to keep working on this novel past the end of November, through December, and on into and through 2014. So, unlike most people, I will not know if I have “won” NaNoWriMo 2013 or not on December 1. It will take some time to tell whether or not I’ve met or exceeded my November goals, and that is my challenge this year.
Zero words, no problem. So far, so good, though, and I am making real progress towards accomplishing my November goals.
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from tag Writing
- Suburban Eschatology Part Two: NaNoWriMo 2013: The Plan
- Rubble: Writers on Writing: Daily Routines
- Rubble: Writers on Writing: Writing the books I want to read
- Rubble: One Day On Earth: 12.12.12… So it begins
- Rubble: Where I am with what now…
- Rubble: NaNoWriMo 2012: Won but not Done
- Suburban Eschatology Part Two: a life full of changes… christmas 2012
- Rubble: What’s next? Another video, some editing, & some writing…
- Suburban Eschatology Part Two: NaNoWriMo…. So it begins
- Rubble: NaNoWriMo: Halfway Point
- Rubble: December is a cruel month
- Rubble: A photo & some thoughts on NaNoWriMo
Sunday, March 10, 2013
What’s next? Another video, some editing, & some writing…
Forgot to set my clock for the time change and now my computer is running slow. Annoying morning. Rushing to get out the door for church (or not) and, later, an old friend’s memorial service.
But I wanted to take a few minutes (precious minutes) to pause and take stock for a minute…
Finished my Dead Can Dance video last week. A LOT of hard work went into that, all during a very hectic time in my life. I am proud of it, but I know that it is not what it should be.
At first I was very relieved that it was done and I was looking forward to being able to really take some down time and to re-focus my attention on some family issues (the little one is having a pretty rough time right now and, of course, part two of the great move…) and on still photography and writing…
This was supposed to be the first time since mid-October when I didn’t have a big project deadline hanging over my head and big ticket life stuff going along at the same time.
Of course, there is still the whole chore of getting a house, but we are taking a time out from that endeavor to focus on getting stabilized as a family after all of the big ticket items going down since November.
However, with my video, at the last moment I realized that it might not be eligible to win because of the sculptures I used in it. It was all public art (or visible from the street, at the very least) and I thought that it would be all right to use those images without releases. However, a closer look at the fine print, and it might not be.
So, if my video is selected as a finalist or as the winner, there may be a crazy 72 hours running around trying to get clearances for the sculptures in the video. However, unfortunately, I don’t think it is going to be an issue.
I wanted to spend a lot of time working on the editing for that piece, and it ended up being a last minute rush job because real life intruded heavily the week before the deadline. I sort of feel like I submitted a first draft, not a final draft.
Because of these two issues, I am left feeling really unfulfilled after all of the work I put in.
Genero has another video project up, though, that I would really like to work on. I can use a lot of footage I shot for the Dead Can Dance video, shoot a little bit of new stuff, and bang this one out pretty quick with proper time to edit the thing.
In some ways, it will feel like a re-do of the Dead Can Dance video. Not really, because it will be exploring slightly different themes, so maybe it is more like a follow up?
Considering all the unused footage I have left from Dead Can Dance, some lessons learned while working on the DCD piece, and the fact that it is a shorter song, this should be a project I can knock down without disrupting our lives too much between now and the April deadline.
And it doesn’t feel like a big crazy deadline project because of this, though there will still be a little bit of dropping everything and running during the three or four days of sunshine we have between now and the deadline. Need more time lapse footage!
Of course, it does look like I am allowed to re-tweak the Dead Can Dance video and re-upload it. The deadline is met, but I can still modify the thing, apparently. However, I need a couple more days distance before deciding whether or not to spend a crazy 24 hours or so re-cutting the damn thing.
Pretty much I feel like I’ve done the work I can put in on this one and that it is time to move on, though if a couple small changes might help it, then maybe… However, I am not going so far as to take the worrisome sculptures out, because that would involve re-thinking the whole video. I could do this, but it would not be the video I wanted to make at all.
Then there is the writing. After the two big video projects (One Day On Earth and the Dead Can Dance video), I need to get back on finishing the first draft of my novel!
A plan has evolved. First I will re-emerse myself in the novel through this month’s National Novel Editing Month, and then I will finish the first draft during April’s Camp NaNoWriMo.
This is something of a change in direction for me. I haven’t looked at the thing since the first week of December or so, so I knew I’d have to go back and at least read the draft I have so far, but then I discovered that a group is running NaNoEdMo this month (National Novel Editing Month). My first reaction was that I did not want to get bogged down with editing the first 2/3 of the book before I’d written the ending…
Yet, since there will have to be some reading this month anyway, and that will be accompanied by some red inking and notes… So yes, I do have a fair amount of editing to do this month, one way or the other, before I feel comfortable resuming the actual writing.
A late start, yes, but NaNoEdMo is on. I am still setting this up, but I know this so far. There will not be any attempt to reach some crazy goal. I am not going for a “win” here. I will try to get to the end of the draft with a bunch of red inking and some minor notes, and that is about it.
So why participate in the first place? Well, NaNoWriMo was a wonderful experience where I could interact with other people who were having the same experience I was with their artistic efforts. I haven’t had that sense of community with my last two project and, well, I miss it.
Sure, I post a lot of crazy manic stuff about my projects on Facebook, but no one there really can relate (or cares that much, let’s be honest!). But with NaNoWriMo, people did relate because, in those forums, they were all going through the exact same thing…
This is all in prep for the April Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’ll be using that venue to finish the damn book. This is cool because, unlike November’s NaNoWriMo, this event has variable goals, and I can set them to meet the projected length of the novel.
Right now I am aiming for 110,000 words. That will involve some significant cuts during NaNoEdMo and a rather economical run to the end of the novel. I am worried that it will be hard to fit it all in in 30K words, but there may be up to 20K that I can trim (10K is more likely) this month.
So, I am looking at up to about 50,000 words to churn out in April, but I think it will go quickly, once I am settled back into the world of the book and, from where I left off to the end, everything is practically written in my head already. It is just a matter of banging through to the end.
NaNoEdMo: http://www.test.nanoedmo.net
Camp NaNoWriMo: http://campnanowrimo.org
Dead Can Dance Video: http://genero.tv/watch-video/35247
Olafur Arnalds Video: http://genero.tv/olafurarnalds/
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Monday, December 17, 2012
NaNoWriMo 2012: Plans for 2013
Someone in the PDX NaNo group asked about our writing plans today, and it gave me a chance to sort of take stock of where I am with my novel at this point…
My response:
Finish the first draft of the NaNo novel by Feb. 1. I want to make this a fairly hard deadline and it may require November style efforts the last two weeks of January to make it possible.
Since I am going to have a lot of downtime on the writing front between now and then, I will probably begin revisions at that point, since I will have "been away" from the first chapters for about three months by then, giving me some space from those early words.
I am not sure if I am going to do an entire re-write or just edit the existing draft at that point, I will decide when I read it and have a chance to triage the thing. I will be doing a full rewrite eventually, but if it is holding together somewhat, I may just do heavy edits and then send it off to readers first.
I suppose I would like to be at that point, sending it off to readers, by some time in April if I am editing, or late May/early June if I am rewriting. Then, after I start getting some feedback, I'll go back to the drawing board and make further plans from there.
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December is a cruel month
Two images tell most of the story…
The first is a countdown on the One Day site for the deadline for us submitting our films. The second is progress on my novel. See a connection?
On top of this, I am not on some sort of artist’s retreat down here is Sacramento, I have a lot of hard work to do to get my mother and I out of here by the time my kids’ winter break is done.
Finally, I have a couple of days’ worth of prep work on some photography contests with an end of the year deadline. I will probably be using pictures from the big August camping trip, most of which I have not looked at since, well, August.
So, a while back I set a sort of deadline for myself… I would like to have the first draft of the novel done by February 1. This is still achievable, even if little work is done until the last two weeks of January.
We have 21 days or so to get the move done. And I have 26 days to get my video done, which should go a lot better than last year’s since I have a better computer to work with and “better” clips shot with a better camera.
It is a much more complicated video, I suspect, than last year’s, and I am breaking it down into segments, the first of which I’ve already completed (long weekend). The only thing really intimidating me about the video right now is how many clips I have to run through and organize, and some untested, by myself, editing techniques that I hope to use with some of them.
And the arts work will be morning and evening work with the days spent working with mom on the move and assorted other issues.
I can do it, but I need to stay focused and I need to remember… The next couple of months will be full of hard work, but the rewards will be tremendous when it is all complete.
Here is the first completed segment for the video, though it may be the last piece to appear in it. I’ll also post it as it’s own post later for my own indexing purposes…
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Thursday, December 06, 2012
Random thoughts on Asimov’s I, Robot
From Goodreads, where I gave it four out of five stars…
Goodreads | Aaron Litt's review of I, Robot:
So, as I run through my reading list, I'll be writing a few words in the reviews. These are probably less reviews than just a few notes on the books I've been reading, more of a book blog for my own use rather than anything else...
First of all, this is a classic, and that status adds a star. Also, I did read, this time, the version with the unfortunate cover. I bought this at Powell's and they had countless copies of this version and one with one of the older covers, and they were asking a lot for that one. So I ended up with one of the cheap ones with the movie cover.
Asimov is a fun writer, more about ideas and concepts, than a master of prose. But his ideas, and the robot books in particular, have defined certain Sci Fi concepts for ever after. Not quite the same effect as Tolkien had on fantasy, but it would be hard to read about a robot after Asimov, or watch one in a movie, that didn't owe some debt to Asimov.
Of course, I am reading this and the rest of the robot novels by Asimov right now because I am working on a novel about robots myself. Need to check in with the master as I move ahead with that project. In many ways my robots are very different than Asimov's, in other ways they are very similar, and I am sure that, if I trace back the ideas in my book, even the idea of writing a book featuring robots as central characters, I owe quite a debt to Asimov myself.
As for this book, this is the second time I’ve read it. The first time, when I was a kid, I read it after the Bailey/Olivaw novels and was not a big fan of it. It felt like a short story collection slapped together with a feeble framework to turn it into a novel, and that is what it is in many regards. Reading it again as an adult, with far too many literature classes under my belt, I can see that it is more of a novel than a collection, now. It is not Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, for instance, which is definitely a short story collection masquerading itself as a novel (The Illustrated Man is brilliant, don't get me wrong, it is just not a novel), and I, Robot does hang together better than that as an episodic "history" of robots. The first episode is the only one that seems to be a little out of place here, though it is one of the stronger episodes and the strongest single short story of the novel.
When I first read this book as a kid, it was disappointing because it was not a more traditional novel, like the Bailey/Olivaw books. Now, though, I do appreciate it much more and I understand more that this is where Asimov developed the ideas that made those later novels possible. In the history of Science Fiction, it is a must read and, probably, if one were to only read one of the robot novels, I, Robot should be the one read for this reason. Still, it is not quite as fun of a read as the later human/robot detective stories, which belong in the Science Fiction canon as well, no doubt, but this is the higher ranking, important, and critical book on that list.
Yes. While reading this, I finally broke down and watched the movie "suggested" by the book. No. Don't do that. I talked myself into it, despite the previews, telling myself that maybe it was just another story set in this universe and that I should give it a chance, but no. It does not hold up like that. It doesn't utterly break with that possibility, but no. It pretty much does. Avoid it.
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Monday, December 03, 2012
NaNoWriMo 2012: Won but not Done
Around 9:15 PM on November 28, I crossed the finish line with 50,276 words.
Plowing through to the end of the month, at about ten minutes to midnight on November 30, I reached 66,724 words.
So what does this all mean?
Well, winning just means that you validated with the NaNoWriMo website that you have written 50,000 words by the end of the month. It works on the honor system, so yes, I could have pasted 50,000 words in to the widget from an eBook and validated for a win, but I did not, I wrote them all.
It does not mean that I am done. I still have to finish my novel, which is only a little over halfway done as I write this, though I am certain that I would still be on the first chapter or two if it were not for NaNoWriMo. Especially considering everything going on this month. It was a very tough month.
The evening I won, I shared this on Facebook:
Yes, I am excited because I wasn't sure if I could do it, especially considering what a month it has been.
But, I did not and will not finish the novel itself this month because it grew, a lot, since I started working on the outline last October. So while I have written a piece of fiction that is the minimum length for a novel, I have not actually written a novel yet.
Still, 50,000 words (approximately 144 paperback pages) in 28 days is a pretty decent accomplishment and one that I should be proud of.
Finally, it is kind of lonely. Strange, huh? This is a solitary accomplishment, as it is a solitary art, and while everyone looked up from what they were doing here to say "Good Job," no one else quite felt like dancing around the room shouting, "Hells Yeah!"
Considering what everyone in this room has been through the last few weeks, I didn't feel much like doing that either. Which is kind of a shame.
But when I actually finish the novel? Jumping around the room and yelling?
It's on.
Honestly, I looked on with envy as many people in the Portland NaNo Facebook Group rolled up to the end of their novels. There was also some fear there, because I was (and am still) not sure if I will be able to finish the novel.
And then, all the editing and rewriting.
I busted my ass to get to where I am with this book now, and I am no where near done with it. There are months of work ahead, maybe years.
To be honest, over the weekend this started psyching me out a little. I spent almost every waking free moment I had in November working on this project. I read nothing, I watched almost nothing, I took few pictures and edited even fewer…
This weekend, it really sunk in. I cruised ahead to a word count of 74,848 by last night, but it was a full day’s work both on Saturday and Sunday to continue that progress.
Unfortunately, after November, what I probably needed more than an expanded word count was a couple days of real rest, and I did not get it.
So this is an important week for me. I need to figure out what role this novel will take in my life as I move ahead from here.
I put the work in over the weekend because I wanted to make sure that I continued after November 30 and I wanted to get to a certain point in the novel where I felt like the end was closer than the beginning, and both of those things are going to be critical if I ever hope to finish this thing.
However, I cannot necessarily continue through December like I did through November, I need to slow down a bit. Or do I? Maybe I should just continue as if it were still November and pound through to the end?
But that may mean setting aside some photography projects that I really want to accomplish by the end of 2012. Also, I have a lot of hard work ahead over the next couple months helping my mother through a lot of difficult life transitions.
Of course, as I wrote yesterday on Facebook, this month, December, is supposed to be about hard work, and if I really dial it in, I am sure that I can accomplish many of these goals. Maybe not ending December with a finished first draft, but being pretty close.
And the photography projects are not huge ones. Of course, One Day On Earth: 12.12.12 could be a huge project, but my participation is scalable, and being in a relatively unfamiliar part of the country, I may need to scale it down anyway.
I do not need to figure all of this out at once. Writing this is merely a piece of that process for me. A lot of it will be determined for me by life events beyond my control, as well.
That all being said, it was one hell of an experience. While this is the 3rd novel I’ve started, it is now, by far, the most complete one I’ve written and NaNoWriMo was definitely responsible for that, and for getting me over all the humps and though to the point where I know this is a valid project worth dedicating significant time to and worth seeing through to the end.
Personally, I think the final result, a couple drafts down the line, will be pretty solid and worth taking to the next step, trying to get it published. Of course, no one, including myself, has read it yet, but I do know what I have written was interesting enough to keep me parked at my keyboard through some long hours last month, so it feels like it is off to a very good start.
I will be writing one more post about this year’s NaNoWriMo, maybe later today, maybe tomorrow, and then that will be it for the 2012 event for me. Work on the novel will continue, but I will spare everyone my daily Facebook updates and my semi-regular check ins here.
The time I’ve been taking to write those words and to post those posts will be spent elsewhere, working on some other interesting things.
One last quick note, someone in the PDX NaNo Group found this: NaNoFiMo – National Novel Finishing Month. I registered but I do not think I will be attempting this in any sort of formal way.
I would like to finish by the end of 2012, but it is not my most important priority for December.
Instead, I will be trying to stay focused on writing a little every day, most days, and I’ll be setting smaller, short term goals that, hopefully, sooner rather than later, will carry me through to “The End.”
NaNoFiMo – National Novel Finishing Month
1. Your mission is to finish your NaNoWriMo novel or any other unfinished novel from 2012.
2. The official goal is 30,000 words and writing 'the end' on your manuscript.
3. If your novel needs less than 30,000 words (or more!), you can also set your own personal goal. The most important thing is reaching the end.
4. All word-counting is based on the honour system, so when you report your total just tell us what your own word-processor is telling you.
5. Be nice. This is a friendly, all-ages site. No swearing, mature content or aggressive behaviour will be tolerated.
6. No, there won't be Personal Progress Threads. Instead, we have daily reporting. You can check the 2011 archive to see what this looks like.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Writers on Writing: Writing the books I want to read
“I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.” Toni Morrison
It will be awhile before I can type the metaphorical "The End" on mine, but yes. And I hope that I end up writing several more that I want to read. Whether or not they are novels anyone else wants to read will be determined later, but I cannot picture doing work like this any other way and, in the end, I really don't care.
The odds of ever making a living wage from writing fiction are so long that if it is not a labor of love, there is no reason to do it at all. And I suspect that the only people that I actually care about reading it will read it if it is published or not.
Don't get me wrong, I'll try, and it would be wonderful if all the hard work pays off with publication, but that cannot be my motivation for actually doing this or I never will. What is driving me is not the desire to start collecting rejection letters, but the simple desire of seeing how the story actually ends, not as I plan, but how it works out through the actual process of putting words onto a page, one at a time and seeing how they fit together and where they ultimately lead.
As for the novel I am working on now for NaNoWriMo…
It does not look like I'll get much writing done until Thursday. I am 5K away, which for me is about two solid writing sessions or one long one. Would have liked to have validated for a win already, but life got in the way, so it looks like its going to be something of a squeaker this year.
But, the ball is in my hands. It is up to me if I win or lose. The great thing, when I started on November 1, this was my first year and I had no idea if I could do this or not. 26 days later, I know I can, whether or not I get the last 5K in on time or not, which is a pretty awesome feeling, especially considering what an insane and heavy month this was for myself and my family.
As I’ve written, here or elsewhere, I am not sure, this is the third novel that I’ve started. The first one was a fairly formulaic fantasy novel that I wrote about 140 pages of in high school. The second one was a complex, strange thing that was both semi-autobiographical and a dive into magical realism (though I never quite got around to writing those parts)…
The second one kind of broke my heart. I was in a transitional place in my life and took about six months or more to just work on the novel. And then it died on me. I just couldn’t find the thread of the thing that pulled it together and pushed it towards any sort of resolution. Really, I knew this then and over the 12 years since then, I can see this even more clearly, I just wasn’t ready to write that book yet. I did not have the life experience I needed to pull that one off yet. Someday. I still have a hard copy, though the word files died on a hard drive several years back.
That was a tough experience, though. I put a lot into that work only to have it die on me, unfinished and unfinishable. It may, in fact, be why I have done almost no creative writing since then except for a few poems back around 2005 or so and a few song lyrics back in 2008. I didn’t want to risk another broken heart and I didn’t want to risk a six month or longer investment on a project that could die with no real returns on my investment.
As for the first novel, in some ways the novel I am working on now is a direct descendant. I never really let those ideas go and over the last quarter century or so, those ideas have morphed into another, complex and long novel that I will probably write in the next couple of years. I’ve actually spent years researching and developing the world that novel is set in.
My NaNoWriMo novel is not that book, but it is set in the same universe.
So, as I head back south to California today and finish my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo tomorrow and Friday, I am remembering. Yes, this may be the first novel I finish (or have a fair shot at finishing), but it is not the first, and while I may not have been writing much for the last decade or so, the process of being a novelist has been happening the whole time, quietly in the background.
I am very excited that all that work is starting to actually pay off with some words on a page and, in another month or two, I look forward to finishing an actual draft of a book. While I might not actually write “The End” on the last page, it will feel damn good when I reach the point where I can, if I choose to, write those words.
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Thursday, November 15, 2012
NaNoWriMo: Halfway Point
Today is the halfway point on the calendar. I am a little behind, but one solid day of writing today or tomorrow and I will be right on target for reaching 50K words by midnight on the 30th.
20,062 as of this morning. No writing yet today, those 278 words were from yesterday, I just updated my word count. It would be nice to hit 25K by the end of today.
Even still being within reach of 50K is a miracle considering how hectic my life has been this month. If the month had gone as planned, I’d probably be close to the 50K mark already and well on target for reaching the 80 – 100K goal I have for this manuscript.
But that is all right. Important things are going on and I need to divide my efforts. Over the next few months, it looks like I will have plenty of time to write, and probably more in December than in November anyway, so I am not worried about finishing this draft in a fairly prompt manner.
Reaching the 50K mark, though, will be still be a challenge considering everything that is going on.
I know that there are probably a week’s worth of days before the end of the month where I will have little to no time to write. Even on the less crazy days, finding time to keep up with the book with everything else going on is bound to be difficult and because of the nature of these “distractions,” the book is definitely a secondary goal.
Of course, writing three or four blog posts this morning would seem like a tertiary goal, and it probably should be, but I needed some time to sit down and take stock of things. Keeping an eye on another project I am working on, One Day On Earth, and just to check in with myself and others.
And I’ve cleared my schedule today of as much as I can. Today is a work day.
Some thoughts on the draft so far…
It is going well. All the work I put in during the last couple weeks of October is really paying off. So far, most of the draft has veered way off of my planned outline, but not really. It is telling the story I planned, just in a way that is a little different than how I thought it would. And the original outline is still handy, because I will be looping back into it some time during the next 10,000 words or so.
A lot of the story that I thought I would be filling in later on is just being told earlier in the book than I expected, and as I write, it feels right. Plus, I was worried about needing to break up the plot with flashbacks, etc. later on that I will not need now, which is probably going to be a good thing.
As I was organizing my outline in October, I was a little worried that I would be writing too much to the outline anyway, and this is definitely not happening. I was worried that I would not be following the flow of the story but rather herding the narrative so it would fit the outline.
From past experience, I did not think that following the outline more than the natural flow of the story would be a good thing. Plus, I originally planned for this to be more of a fun, seat of the pants writing experience than it seemed to become after all of my outlining and plot development in October, but that sense of fun and of watching events unfold, almost as a third party reader, is still present as I write, which is usually what happens when I produce my best work.
So, bottom line, things are good.
Slogging through the middle of the month, I am at the point where a little more discipline is needed. The novelty of the project is wearing off and now it is feeling more like a chore; a fun chore, but still a chore.
I expected this. These feelings also tell me that I am probably right where I am supposed to be with this project at this point in time.
And so forth…
Update: 10:15 PM
I've got one scene to write before I am done with the unofficial first act of my novel and I am eager to write it, but at the same time I am tired, it is getting late, and it has been a long day. To be honest, I am trying to figure out if the scene will be stronger if I write it now, when things are flowing well but I am tired, or in the morning when I am rested, but still warming up. And it is a fairly important scene (but I suppose all of them are or they shouldn't be in the book at all).
Going to take a short break before I decide. In case I call it a night, today's stats...
Your Average Per Day 1,704
Words Written Today 5,785
Target Word Count 50,000
Target Average Words Per Day 1,667
Total Words Written 25,569
Words Remaining 24,431
Current Day 15
Days Remaining 16
At This Rate You Will Finish On November 29, 2012
Words Per Day To Finish On Time 1,527
Yes. Officially halfway to 50K. Back on track. It has been a long day.
Also thought I’d share this semi random comment I wrote as a reply to another comment when I posted tonight’s stats on Facebook. A friend asked me about my professional writing, and I replied…
Unless you've spent time as semi-slave labor in Malaysia, working as a copy boy for an evil corporation, as a data entry geek for ten year dead dot com, or other such hells, you wouldn't have read any of my "published" professional work.
This is my first serious swing at fiction in over ten years. It's National Novel Writing Month where the goal is to complete 50,000 words, at least, of a first draft, and hopefully a complete draft, in 30 days. This is more of a motivational thing for fiction writers than a real competition, but its fun and hopefully I will produce something that I can try to get published a couple more drafts down the line.
Next spring, after I finish a second draft, I'll probably be looking for volunteer readers to give me some notes on the thing, so let me know then if you would be interested. I won't be keeping it a secret that I'm looking for readers when I am ready for them.
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