One week in, One week behind

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Seems to be how it goes. “The faster I work, the behinder I get.”

Last week I wanted to explore whether I had the creativity, energy and brainpower to get writing done in the evening. Most of my writing days in the past were done that way — after school, after work, etc. But probably a good half of the words actually written issued forth on the weekends, though, and that should have been a forecast of what I found out.

Writing after work doesn’t work.

Last week was an odd one, too. I work under a monthly contract for a certain number of hours to certain clients, and so the “vacation” Francesca and I took last month was about two weeks long, one week at the end of August and one at the beginning of September. That way, I could cram 30% more work in the other three weeks of those months and still come out right.

So last week was crammed with work. AND it was Francesca’s birthday. AND we decided that we’re going to be moving to Portland, and we have no idea what that entails. Busy week.

Lesson learned: going to write in the morning. I should have known better.

I missed my Sept 30 story. That one is going to stay missing. (Feel free to pretend it was awesome.) I’ll hit both this week before Friday, and then just keep going according to plan.

About “The Cure For Everything”

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The Cure For Everything is an idea I flirted with years ago. All I remembered was the first line, about a Tuesday in April. Sometimes, that’s all I need to go on. The novel I’m planning had its genesis in a single note that I scrawled while driving on I5: “Film noir detective in Antarctica.” How can you get more noir-ish than a night that lasts months?

This story clocks in at 2614 words, written in about 3.5 hours. So I overshot my target a bit, but I think the initial test came back positive: I can think up and physically type out the 2000 words I need, in one sitting, in a time period that could conceivably fit before work.

I welcome comments about the story on that story’s post. I don’t think it’s a particularly good story, but it served its purpose. I hope to do things more interestingly in the future. There may be some exploration of my Antarctic Noir, and maybe some stuff set in a friend’s RPG setting that I’m currently playing, and maybe some original mish-mash.

Onward!

The Cure For Everything

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I remember it being a Tuesday morning in April when Dr. Yuki Dupree announced the cure for everything.

She was in Kyoto, and rumor was that she wanted the American stock markets to be closed because they were so overrun with robot traders. Vast server farms located on the same block as the NYSE so that the speed of light wouldn’t hinder the rapidity of their buying and selling. Dedicated fiber optic lines from traditional news sources and databases so that that packet-routing silliness that made the internet work wouldn’t impede their access to data. More servers than Twitter and Facebook combined, just to analyze the trending topics of social chatter on Twitter and Facebook.

All that automated moving of money made things volatile when the unexpected showed up. Markets were going to crash anyway, but if she could keep the humans involved then they might crash just a bit more gently. When she did this, healthcare services, pharmaceutical companies, massive insurance cartels, and all the politicians their lobbyists supported would all come crashing down to being near worthless overnight. She had dumped the plans for this dime-sized, 75¢ piece of gallium and silicon onto a dozen servers around the world, and with that she had cured… everything.

It was barely four days later that she regretted it, and six weeks before she became the first of the Healthy But Dead. Continue reading →

Go Go Go!

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I used to write.

I still consider myself a writer, one of those writerly types, a storyteller, a guy who fibs for entertainment’s sake, or education’s sake, or just to win an argument in my own mind. (Trying to cut down on the latter.) But I haven’t actually strung very many fictive words together — much less sentences or paragraphs — in quite a while.

I used to be good.

Not published. None of my screenplays got filmed. I had some actors actually say lines I wrote while on stage nearly twenty years ago, but that was back in school and they needed to do it in order to get their passing grade and move on to things more interesting. Some marginal success in writing competitions — won some local-only awards and placed more than a couple of times in national Big Time™ contests — but I haven’t won, and the producers who called to inquire never really called back. But I enjoyed writing, and I imagine that some few others enjoyed reading those strings of words I made.

I want to recapture that.

This blog is just so that I can exert myself in public. Or what I imagine might be public, despite my day job as an internet professional telling me that most blogs are abandoned in the first 30 days, and most that survive rarely achieve a readership beyond Mom, bless her heart. So, Mom, this blog is so that when I write, it is published in the etymological sense of the word — the Latin publicare, “to make public.”

I want to publicly challenge myself.

In November of every year there is a little-known event called “The National Novel Writing Month,” or NaNoWriMo. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, from November 1 to the end of the month. That’s about 1700 words per day — eminently doable, but rarely done. I like round numbers and I tend to use two words when one will do, so I’m shooting for 2000 words per day, for 30 days. That should give me something like the first draft of a 200 page novel. I know I can do it. I have written an entire 92-page screenplay over one weekend. It’s a typical romantic comedy, but the plot hinges on the Y2K bug so it’ll never get made — and it has some of my best scenes and lines. I’ve never once rewritten any of that screenplay after that weekend.

I want to learn to rewrite.

For almost everything I do — programming, homemade ice cream, bad jokes — the first draft is the final draft. I suck at rewriting, because I like creating new things from nothing. I’m pitiful at motivating myself to perfect good things that already exist. I need to be better. Writing a novel in such a way that I’ll need to rewrite it for me to tolerate reading it… that might just be the recipe.

I’m rusty.

I figure I need to stretch these writing muscles. To rebuild what has atrophied, to reinvigorate what has stagnated, and to focus what has been redirected. I can’t run a marathon tomorrow, but I could certainly run a marathon at some point. It’s not beyond me. NaNoWriMo is going to take some practice. Here’s what I plan to publish here:

  1. By Sep 26, a 2000-word story. Just to see if I still can form a sentence or two.
  2. By Sep 30, another 2000-word story. Because the first story was probably something I had already thought out.
  3. Oct 1-7: two 2000-word stories. Good grief. I suppose I need to do more of this.
  4. Oct 10 & 14: each day, one 2000-word story. Cuz schedules are important.
  5. Oct 16, 18, & 21: each day, a 2000-word story. All of this writing will occur before I start work for the day, but I can take multiple days. Note to self: figure out how to not fall behind on work.
  6. Oct 23, 25, & 28: each day, a 2000-word story written that morning only. Still before I start work; still without falling behind on work. Can I do it? I need to answer that question.
  7. Oct 28-31: nuttin’. You ain’t gonna see nothing here. I’ll be holed up, plotting and characterizing and generally panicking.
  8. Nov 1-30: Novelizing, bee-yotch. I’ll post updates. Sample bits. Whimpering and cries for help. Desperate requests for caffeine. Etc.
  9. Dec 1: I will post Cake. Downloadable, delicious Cake. It is not a lie.

Deadlines. Love ’em.

I might find that I cannot do this. I might find that my clients and co-workers who depend on me are being short-changed, and I can’t allow that sort of selfishness so I must re-adjust my aspirations. It won’t be the first time reality won.

But it’s worth challenging. Reality, on occasion, does back down.

And now, I need to go.

Go.

GO!