Just returned from my evening walk, bringing me up to my 10,000 step a day goal.
I am now listening to Prince Hal's Dirge by Loudon Wainwright, and trying to psych myself up for the opening scenes. It's a good song for that.
I would like this twenty minutes to go away now please.
Friday, August 31, 2012
T-2 hours, more or less
I have, in the last two hours, gone for a walk, consumed more calories than anyone should, especially on the diet I'm on, and had a revelation that changes the nature of my book and makes a goodly portion of my outline kind of useless. So, that happened.
It is just shy of two hours until the writing begins. I've tidied up my writing area, and I'm about to compile some music playlists to play as I work. I'm one of those people who needs music to work efficiently. Too much silence, and I get distracted by every little noise that does pop up. The music also acts to put me in a kind of altered focus. it's like a trance state, so I pick the tunes pretty carefully.
Music is kind of important to this book, also. One of the main characters is a musician.
This time right now? The time a couple of hours before the work starts? This is the crazy time for me. Will I write the book I worked on the outline for? Is that the book I want to do? Am I able to write it? Should I throw away my outline and wing it?
(the answers are yes, yes, I hope so, and no, you asshole, stay on target)
I am full of nervous energy. And cheese. Oh god, so much cheese. Nervous eating, my old enemy, has taken me hard. Once I get to actual writing, I'll be okay.
To occupy myself, I'll talk a little about the book I'm planning to write, and how it came to be.
Last year I started a book, and then got really ill, and had to bail. In the long run, that was probably a blessing. With hindsight I can see I had some good ideas, and one great character, and the plot was bad. it was just bad.
So this year, I'm taking the one good character, and a much simpler story, and running with it.
The character is Will Sturgis. He's a thirty-something guy with dark brown hair. He's not bad looking, but he's not ravingly handsome. He is nobody you'd look at twice. He's very bright, though not a genius. He's angry, he's got a ton opinions. He doesn't speak.
He can't speak. He's completely mute. He knows sign language, but more or less refuses to use it. He communicates, when he has to, by using a pad and a pencil. Quick words, and little sketches to communicate. He feels it expresses him better than the sign language. He also has a thing about using the sign language because he feels it marks him as "disabled".
Will has a lot of opinions that are very controversial about disability, and I'm more than a little worried that people will take his opinions as my opinions. They aren't.
Will makes his living as a professional eavesdropper. Sometimes he uses this for anonymous blackmail through a website he maintains. Other times, he just wants to know things. On rare occasions, he is hired to do it by one of a small group of clients who know who he is and what he does.
He accomplishes this by seeming to be deaf. By appearing to be disabled and, to all intents and purposes becoming invisible.
So, he's the quiet one.
In this book he's hired to look into the mental well-being of a popular rap musician DubbleD. DubbleD's manager is convinced someone in his entourage is gaslighting him. Will is supposed to find out what is going on, and who's responsible.
DubbleD is actually a kid named Dennis Dunlop. He's in his early twenties, comes form a dirt poor trailer park home. He's had family trouble, is going through a custody battle, and is having a hard time dealing with not just being suddenly famous but being a white trailer park kid in a traditionally black musical genre. Resemblances to actual persons here are largely coincidental. Honest.
Dennis cannot stop talking. He's a pathological talker, a fountain of expressed thoughts. I think his reaction to Will, once Will becomes more than scenery to him, is going to be a need to fill the silence.
So he's the talker.
I think, obviously, there's a premise here that can work.
The plot is, of course, slightly supernatural, but less outre than is typical for me. It's tempting to call it a buddy comedy, but I'm still not sure that the two of them are going to like each other much. They have some very serious commonalities of abuse and bad parenting in their backgrounds, and this commonality is what drives each of them. Their approaches to life, though, are pretty much diametrically opposed.
I like going into the story expecting some surprises.
I'm still grappling with the title. Titles are hard.
One more thing, and then it's time for another little walk.
I think part of the problem with my book last year was that I felt I had to really explain the premise of Will's life and career. I'm not really going to go into it much in this story. It begins, as most mystery type stories do, with the client meeting, but I'm treating this like the third or fourth book in a series. I'm assuming that the audience knows the deal, and by making that assumption, I think they will actually pick it up quickly.
I've picked up countless mystery series somewhere in the middle, and picked up quick. It's probably better that way.
And that's a half an hour killed.
More walking.
It is just shy of two hours until the writing begins. I've tidied up my writing area, and I'm about to compile some music playlists to play as I work. I'm one of those people who needs music to work efficiently. Too much silence, and I get distracted by every little noise that does pop up. The music also acts to put me in a kind of altered focus. it's like a trance state, so I pick the tunes pretty carefully.
Music is kind of important to this book, also. One of the main characters is a musician.
This time right now? The time a couple of hours before the work starts? This is the crazy time for me. Will I write the book I worked on the outline for? Is that the book I want to do? Am I able to write it? Should I throw away my outline and wing it?
(the answers are yes, yes, I hope so, and no, you asshole, stay on target)
I am full of nervous energy. And cheese. Oh god, so much cheese. Nervous eating, my old enemy, has taken me hard. Once I get to actual writing, I'll be okay.
To occupy myself, I'll talk a little about the book I'm planning to write, and how it came to be.
Last year I started a book, and then got really ill, and had to bail. In the long run, that was probably a blessing. With hindsight I can see I had some good ideas, and one great character, and the plot was bad. it was just bad.
So this year, I'm taking the one good character, and a much simpler story, and running with it.
The character is Will Sturgis. He's a thirty-something guy with dark brown hair. He's not bad looking, but he's not ravingly handsome. He is nobody you'd look at twice. He's very bright, though not a genius. He's angry, he's got a ton opinions. He doesn't speak.
He can't speak. He's completely mute. He knows sign language, but more or less refuses to use it. He communicates, when he has to, by using a pad and a pencil. Quick words, and little sketches to communicate. He feels it expresses him better than the sign language. He also has a thing about using the sign language because he feels it marks him as "disabled".
Will has a lot of opinions that are very controversial about disability, and I'm more than a little worried that people will take his opinions as my opinions. They aren't.
Will makes his living as a professional eavesdropper. Sometimes he uses this for anonymous blackmail through a website he maintains. Other times, he just wants to know things. On rare occasions, he is hired to do it by one of a small group of clients who know who he is and what he does.
He accomplishes this by seeming to be deaf. By appearing to be disabled and, to all intents and purposes becoming invisible.
So, he's the quiet one.
In this book he's hired to look into the mental well-being of a popular rap musician DubbleD. DubbleD's manager is convinced someone in his entourage is gaslighting him. Will is supposed to find out what is going on, and who's responsible.
DubbleD is actually a kid named Dennis Dunlop. He's in his early twenties, comes form a dirt poor trailer park home. He's had family trouble, is going through a custody battle, and is having a hard time dealing with not just being suddenly famous but being a white trailer park kid in a traditionally black musical genre. Resemblances to actual persons here are largely coincidental. Honest.
Dennis cannot stop talking. He's a pathological talker, a fountain of expressed thoughts. I think his reaction to Will, once Will becomes more than scenery to him, is going to be a need to fill the silence.
So he's the talker.
I think, obviously, there's a premise here that can work.
The plot is, of course, slightly supernatural, but less outre than is typical for me. It's tempting to call it a buddy comedy, but I'm still not sure that the two of them are going to like each other much. They have some very serious commonalities of abuse and bad parenting in their backgrounds, and this commonality is what drives each of them. Their approaches to life, though, are pretty much diametrically opposed.
I like going into the story expecting some surprises.
I'm still grappling with the title. Titles are hard.
One more thing, and then it's time for another little walk.
I think part of the problem with my book last year was that I felt I had to really explain the premise of Will's life and career. I'm not really going to go into it much in this story. It begins, as most mystery type stories do, with the client meeting, but I'm treating this like the third or fourth book in a series. I'm assuming that the audience knows the deal, and by making that assumption, I think they will actually pick it up quickly.
I've picked up countless mystery series somewhere in the middle, and picked up quick. It's probably better that way.
And that's a half an hour killed.
More walking.
It begins again
Once again, I am doing the 3-Day Novel Contest over the Labour Day Weekend. For those of you not familiar with the contest, starting at midnight tonight, and finishing Monday at midnight, I, and about umpteen thousand other people will be trying to write a short novel of approximately 100-130 pages (about 30,000 words). We then submit these novels, in whatever condition they're in, and whatever condition we are in to be judged.
There are prizes, but you don't do it for the prizes. You do it because you enjoy pain. It's the literary equivalent of a marathon, and it is a rush. Big highs, big lows. When it is going well you feel like a tiny god. When it is going poorly, you consider your failure as absolute, swear never to do this contest, or any other form of writing, ever again.
I use this blog to update folks on my progress, track my word count, and chat with people to keep my morale up as I go.
My novel this year is tenatively called, "The Eavesdropper". I don't care for the name, and I'm sure a better one will come.
Feel free to keep checking back. I'm happy to answer questions, and if you want to see what I've written so far, I'm always looking for honest in progress feedback.
I'll be updating later tonight as I countdown to midnight, and talk a little bit about the book and the characters and that sort of thing.
There are prizes, but you don't do it for the prizes. You do it because you enjoy pain. It's the literary equivalent of a marathon, and it is a rush. Big highs, big lows. When it is going well you feel like a tiny god. When it is going poorly, you consider your failure as absolute, swear never to do this contest, or any other form of writing, ever again.
I use this blog to update folks on my progress, track my word count, and chat with people to keep my morale up as I go.
My novel this year is tenatively called, "The Eavesdropper". I don't care for the name, and I'm sure a better one will come.
Feel free to keep checking back. I'm happy to answer questions, and if you want to see what I've written so far, I'm always looking for honest in progress feedback.
I'll be updating later tonight as I countdown to midnight, and talk a little bit about the book and the characters and that sort of thing.
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