kyrademon's Journal

NovelWatch: Week 83 -- The foot delivered an unending holocaust of pain
Just finished a second draft. I tentatively think it is much improv'd. Cut about 16 pages worth of material and added about 40 pages worth of material. I'll need to look over the new stuff after I get some distance from it to see where the whole thing really stands right now, quality-wise.

One interesting thing about writing a work this long is that, since it is of necessity written in stages, it is much harder to catch repetition of a certain word or phrase the first time around. I had been worried about overusing common words like "actually", but in the last round of proofreading, I discovered that there are apparently a bunch of odder phrases I'm very fond of, but since I forget I've already used them, I sometimes use them again the next time I write. When I sat down and read through it as a whole, I realized I had to do some rephrasing to keep that from happening.

Some things that came up a surprising-to-me number of times in my writing:

"the implications of that"
"a waste of time"
"looked at her sadly"
"glared"
"tried to gauge his reaction"

I'll keep trying to catch those. It always bugs me when I come across that thing in novels. Authors can get really fond of their habitual expressions, e.g. Laurel K. Hamilton: "He was happy to be here", Dan Simmons: "The clockwise stirring of his passion", Stephen R. Donaldson: Any conceivable sentence containing the words "vitriol" or "clenched".

Hmm. I wonder what it means that at least two of the three above examples are phrases intended to describe guys getting an erection.

Rewriting
The novel now contains 100% more PLONTOS!

(There are, I think, exactly two people in the world who understand what that means. You know who you are.)

I'm in the middle of a massive overhaul of the book. I've cut out huge swathes and added in even huger swathes.

If I continue at this pace, it is possible I will have a draft I would be willing to show to human-beings-other-than-Io by mid-December or so.

It is also, of course, possible that I will hit a snag, or decide it needs another massive overhaul before I send it out, but I'm trying to be optimistic.

panic at the goth club
Clove cigarettes are apparently now illegal in the U.S.

That will affect some people I know.

Well.
I just finished the rough draft of a novel.

Ohmigod
Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod my girlfriend is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

Out of the slushpile, into the ... slushpile
So, ever since some parts of Vamp got published in some scenes & monologues books, I have had requests for the full script that have begun to approach ... double digits in number. The requests have come from people as diverse as frantic teenagers who need the full script immediately so they can do a scene for an audition, competition, or class project, to the mothers of frantic teenagers who need the full script immediately so they can do a scene for an audition, competition, or class project.

Working on the assumption that if there are a few people who e-mailed me, there may be as many as a few *more* who never found my e-mail address, I have decided to self-publish Vamp so that it can be found and ordered on-line with a google search or similar, and do my bit to unfranticize high school drama students. So, it's now up and available at Lulu.com, and supposedly it will likely be obtainable from Amazon in a few months. $13.50 for a printed copy, $5.00 for a download off of Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/vamp/6830783

I'm glad I'm doing this, but I still feel weird about self-publishing. Io says this is the wave of the future and stuff, but I still can't help but feel that this means I've joined the ranks of people who write 900-page conspiracy theories about the pyramid on the dollar bill or slim volumes of poetry about their cat Fluffy.

A history lesson in verse
Oh, an epileptic saint was stoned and killed,
And then they brutally cut off his head;
You can touch any of his three reputed heads if you are ill,
And so we have Valentine's Day.

Oh, they used to grease up naked teenage boys,
And the emperor would tell them who to bed,
As they were beaten with whips made of freshly slaughtered goats to everybody's joy,
And so we have Valentine's day.

Oh, in France whoever you happened to see first
On that day you would generally have to wed,
Even if they were stupid or ugly or otherwise cursed,
And so we have Valentine's day.

So when you give a present to your love
Of poetry or flowers that are dead,
Remember exactly what you're doing and what this is a celebration of,
And why we have Valentine's day.

Things seen and read
Finally finished "Vanity Fair". Great, and very cynical, book. It amuses me that, apparently, people are still debating whether or not Becky Sharp killed Jos Sedley more than 150 YEARS AFTER THE CREATOR OF THOSE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS ESSENTIALLY SAID SHE DID IT. Including in the (very stupid) afterword of the edition I read, which flat-out accused Thackery of LYING TO HIS READERS ABOUT HER(!) So, a toast to Becky Sharp, a charismatic sociopath so talented that, more than a century later, and even though she never existed, some people are still so taken in by her that they can't believe she's guilty. (There is also, apparently, an ongoing debate about whether she was an adulterer, which to my mind simply misses the point entirely -- her husband wasn't actually pissed that she might have been whoring around, he was pissed that she wasn't sharing the money with him.)

Also just saw "Hellboy 2". Very pretty film. Entertaining. Plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through. Kind of sexist, to the point that no one in the film thought of the obvious, simple solution to the main problem because a Woman would have had to do it.

NovelWatch: Week 12 -- Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.
In obsessive word-counting news, I passed the 30,000 mark today, which calls for a small celebration. 40,000 will be a bigger mark, since that is the point when this officially becomes A Novel according to the generally accepted modern definition (rather than just a really really long epigram), but nonetheless, 30,000 is happiness-inducing. But man, these things take a freaking long time. I suppose that shouldn't be surprising, though, since a short novel is about three times as long as a long play. I look forward to the point where I can finally start sending this around for commentary, critiquing, and, ultimately, humiliating rejection. :)

In other news:

We watched the fireworks off of our balcony. That was pretty awesome, and did not require hunting for parking.

Io's performance at Camera Obscura was a stunning success. She rocked. And I finally got to participate, with a couple of other audience ringers, in one of her pieces, which I have wanted to do for a long time. Also, I got to help paint her blue beforehand.

So, yeah. All is good.

NovelWatch, Week 11: Dawn Burst Like a Blister
The last two weeks of writing have gone slowly, but steadily. I've been doing revisions on the earlier chapters before moving forward with the last third of the book, and as expected, there has been some signficiant expansion. I've revisited three chapters so far, and added about 4,000 words, bringing the current total to just shy of 29,000 (or about 116 pages). I suspect that there will be less room for expansion in the middle chapters, but we'll see.

So, right now, as things stand:

Chapters 1-3: written with one revision, currently about 13,000 words
Chapters 4-10: rough draft only, currently about 16,000 words, would like to expand to about 22,000 or so, worried about this
Chapters 11-15: outlined only

I'd vaguely planned on producing a first draft being a six-month project, which means that I'd need to be about halfway through in two weeks to be on schedule. By that measure, I'm doing all right, although I expect at least one more stall at some point. But hey, if it takes more time than that, it does, as long as I eventually get the fershlugginner thing finished.

Movie Reviews
Actually went and saw some movies:

Wall E: Quite a good movie. Actually somewhat daring in it's conception (long swathes of it are essentially dialogue-free). Highly recommended.

Kung-Fu Panda: Not bad. A cute movie with a lot going for it that suffers from an overdose of Hollywood banality. Worth seeing on video, probably.

Wanted: An astoundingly awful movie. (Minor spoiler alert; you find out most of this in the first few seconds of the movie:) The premise begins with the concept that, a thousand years ago, a group of textile workers discovered that one of their looms was magically sending them binary-coded messages telling them which people needed killing, so they naturally immediately formed a secret society of supernatural assassins. We are meant to take this seriously. The film goes downhill from there. Do not pay money to see this film.

Aw, how sweet.
Got one of the nicer rejection letters I've ever received today, from a theater in Burbank:

"I adore Vamp! It is my kind of play, with lots of laughs and real heart. Unfortunately, our Artistic Director does not deem suitable for our subscription audience, and has elected not to produce it. She has, however forwarded it to another theatre in the area, one that specializes in edgy fare ... I hope our efforts will result in a local production, because I would love to see it on stage."

Is it weird that one of my first reactions was, "Yay! I'm too edgy for Burbank!"

NovelWatch, Week 9: In 3010, the potatoes triumphed.
Writing has resumed.

Good.

Post break, I've decided that what I've already written needs cleaning up before I can move on ... there are plot points lying scattered about that could do with some serious scouring, and it wouldn't hurt to take a second look at the prose, either. My goal for the next, oh, two weeks or so is to do a revision on the first half, hopefully growing it from 25,000 words to 30,000 or so in the process, and then move on to new chapters.

Meanwhile, life continues. Astonishing.

NovelWatch, Week 7: I Dreamed I Didn't Exist for Six Months
So, I ended up taking the whole week off. That's OK.

Means I have little to say this time, though.

Dead Cat is getting a performance in North Carolina.

NovelWatch, Week 6: Just Remember That You're Standing On A Planet That's Evolving
This has been a tough week, novel-wise. I've managed to crank out 1200 words or so, bringing it up to 25,000, but even that has been a chore, and I can tell it's not my best work. My writerly instincts are telling me to put this down for a few days or a week and let the juices revivify. I'm *very* uncomfortable doing this, however, since I had this whole grand plan with quotas and deadlines and not putting it down in the middle and that all just got shot to hell.

I will be really upset with myself if I end up not finishing this. I think I'm going to try to start again Monday. Fingers crossed.

In other news, the San Diego performance of Vamp is tentatively scheduled for May 3-June 7, 2009.

NovelWatch, Week 5: A Man, A Plan, A Canal - Suez!
Just finished Chapter 8, adding an additional 3,000 words or so to bring the total just over 23,000. I'm going at a slower pace this week. I'm keeping above my daily minimum, but I'm now well past the first rush of obsessively scrawling passages in pen on whatever is handy, such as Io's sleeping body, at any time of the day or night. Now that I'm theoretically working on the back half, it's become more of a slog, which will likely continue until the end of the rough draft is closer in sight, at which point the pace will likely pick up a bit while I race to the finish.

I've identified I number of problems in earlier chapters already (e.g. everyone talks too goddamn much), but I'm leaning towards getting a full draft out, and then going back and revising, rather than trying to fix things as I go along.

As predicted, I've started to have massive self-doubt issues. "It's a first novel - it's OK if it sucks" has become something of a mantra that keeps me going. I want it to be good, but if I end up not hitting the bullseye on my first shot, that doesn't mean I'm a terrible writer.

That means that the second novel, however, will of course have to be perfect.

NovelWatch, Week 4: By This Time My Lungs Were Aching for Air
Io comes home tonight. Yay! Her webTV appearance was awesome, and it sounds like she has yummy data from her run.

After four weeks of working on the book, I have 7 chapters, 20,000 words (80 paperback pages), and half a rough draft. That's good, but pretty scant - the draft is probably going to have to expand significantly on rewrites, by an average of about 500 words per chapter at least, to be as long as it "feels" like it really should be. That's a lot of extra material to get in somehow, and at present I have no idea what it's going to be. Description? Backstory? Subplot? All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy?

NovelWatch Week Three: The Noveling
Just finished Chapter 5, just over 15,000 words, which is ... a little scant. If I stick to my outline and keep up roughly the same rate of words-per-chapter, I will theoretically exceed 40,000 words (the loosely accepted minimum to count as a novel), but only just. However, Io reminds me that I invariably underwrite on the first draft. It is true. If I were writing a book about a guy who ate babies, my first draft of the first chapter would look like this:

Chapter 1

Bob ate a baby.

"Good baby," said Bob.

In part this is because I hate writing descriptions. While I am enjoying writing a book, I am by inclination much more inclined to write plays, I am realizing once again. Give me some dialogue to establish context and I'm a happy writer. But you can't get by on dialogue alone in a book (the only one I can think of that did so successfully is "The Graduate".) So, slowly but surely, I am working in descriptive passages. After much agonizing, I decided it was OK to mention that the POV character's hair was brown. It is the only established physical fact about the character right now other than gender. This may be just one area that can be expanded on revision.

I am glad I picked what is for various reasons a relatively easy project my first time out. Goddamn but books are long.

Soon, in theory, I will start a tricky chapter upon which much of the plot depends. It will also, I recently realized, likely contain the first sex scene I'll ever have written - at least, I'm pretty sure it'll be my first. You can't really do them in plays. At least, not in most states.

In unrelated news, a theater company in San Diego is going to do a production of Vamp in early 2009. Maybe I'll go see it.

NovelWatch: Week Two
Fair warning: For the forseeable future, this is going to be the journal of someone who (A) is writing a book, (B) refuses to talk about the actual content of said book until a draft is finished, and (C) is far too preoccupied to talk about anything other than the book. The result is likely to be extraordinarily boring.

So far, I've been doing all right with meeting or exceeding my self-imposed 500-word-a-day/2,500-word-a-week minimum, and after two weeks I've actually written about 10,000 words and three chapters. That feels nice, since 10,000 is a big round number and three chapters is when you are officially allowed to say "I'm writing my first novel" at parties, but at best it's less than a quarter of a way to the end. So it also makes me feel like I imagine a mountain climber feels when they've just done a very tricky bit and are feeling quite tired but also happy and then ask, "How much farther to the top? ... We've made it almost a quarter of the way up, you say? Er."

It helps that, since this is my first one, I've allowed myself to feel OK about the possibility that it won't be a good one. I mean, I'll be thrilled if it's good, and I hope it is, but if it completely sucks I can still say, "Well, that was just my first one. No one expects a *first* novel to be brilliant." Since my fear of being less-than-perfect has sometimes gotten in the way of my actually getting words on paper, I think that's a good place to be.

Io mentioned that she can tell when I'm about to start writing not because I become neurotic (although I do), but because I get all "dreamy" and distracted. I have to say, I like that description a lot better than "neurotic".

Things What Have Been Going On With Me, Boy Howdy
So, the first draft of the cell phone book went off to the publishers last week, and I have been taking a much-needed weeklong break from work. Io and I went to Kauai for a few days and explored caves, mountain trails, seascapes, waterfalls, and the only vegan restaurant we've found in Hawaii so far. Much fun, and very relaxing. But Io has already returned to work, and I am about to do so, and we're already getting all tense again.

I am now about 2,500 words into writing My First Novel. My goal is to write about that much every week, which would mean a completed rough draft in perhaps five to six months. If I write more than that, great, but I don't want to fall below that ... it's a daunting project, and I don't want to end up abandoning it in the middle. Io said she was able to tell I was about to start writing a day or so before I actually did, because apparently I become COMPLETELY NEUROTIC when I'm about to dive into this kind of thing. I'm very nervous about writing this, for some reason. Many fears about my writing abilities, habits, quality, etc. coming to the surface.

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