I never thought I’d try

A bunch of years ago — more than 15, I think — I first heard about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The basic idea is to slam out 50,000 words in the month of November. It seemed like a great idea for those who had time. Back then, I definitely didn’t have time.

But now, it seems, I do. Wednesday, November 1, 2017, I mentioned to my wife that I was thinking about doing it. She said words to the effect of “go ahead.” (I don’t remember her exact words.)

I thought, “Why not?”

But there were 2 problems:

1. I have a WIP (work in progress), the next Mason & Penfield Mystery. It has been a matter of fits and starts for the last 5 years. At that rate, I couldn’t finish a 3-question multiple-choice test in a month.
2. I write slowly. This meant that unless I had a definite plan (outline), I knew I had no chance.

So I have set aside the WIP. (Sorry Mason & Penfield fans, both of you. You’ll just have to wait.)

And I created an outline. But it’s not the kind of outline you imagine. When I hear “outline,” I think about a business-oriented document that’s more like a table of contents. This is not what I created. And I didn’t create it cold. I finally found outlining advice that was useful in this YouTube playlist. There are 5 videos, each about 10 minutes long. They are taken from a talk given by a successful author, Dan Wells, and he shows by example from stories you’ve read or seen on the screen how successful storytelling is structured.

So on Wednesday, November 1, 2017 (after talking with my wife), I sat down to create an outline, and did so. It took about 6 hours to complete. And since it was almost 2:00 a.m. on the 2nd of November, I went to bed. I was already a day behind. But today, the 4th, I completed my 3rd day of writing, and each of these days I got out more than 2,000 words. It’s just possible I can make it.

What is this new story? It’s a murder mystery (surprise!) set in the year 2101, in a beautiful dystopia. The victim is a wealthy, elderly woman, and the primary suspect is her caregiver. The tentative (and poor) title is Murder In the Future.

We’ll see whether anything comes of it.

Update 2017-11-15

As of last night, I have about 23,000 words written. Including November 1, I have missed (almost) 3 days. On the nights I have been able to work (drat that pesky day job!), I’ve managed about 2,000 words across about 4 hours. That means that tonight (assuming the pattern holds), I will be exactly halfway through 50,000 words exactly halfway through the month. Not too awful.

A plea to ebook publishers

I have at least 3 books on my Kindle in each of which the font is specified by the book, i.e., the the user has lost control of the presentation of the text.

See, in a physical book, someone (a worker, a craftsman, an artist) makes the presentation choices for the reader because there’s a physical product that has to be delivered. But in an ebook — and I mean a book of words: zero or few graphics (other than the cover); zero or few simple, narrow tables — the only point is the words. Almost all books are filled with plain, Roman text, with the occasional italics or boldface in the running text. (Chapter and section headings don’t count in this discussion).

If you’re publishing a book of plain text, please, I beg you, leave the font to the reader’s discretion: the face, the size, the line spacing.  These give the reader the ability to adjust the comfort level and get to the words.

A note about writing process

When I was writing Unthinkable, I had a pretty good idea where the story was going. Since it was my first novel, it took me about a year and a half as I filled it out and brought the story up to the expectations a reader should have, i.e., I sort of worked with a natural feel for what it should be.

When I wrote Seen Sean?, I have to confess that I wasn’t really sure what the outcome was going to be, so I wrote rather aimlessly. As a result, it took me about four years to write it.

There’s no reason for a genre novel of that length to take that much time. I learned my lesson. So with a bit of thought and some reading about story structure, plotting, etc., I found a "structure sheet" for my next Mason & Penfield Mystery, [title redacted]. Rather than getting a presentation board and sticky notes (the method I used to repair Seen Sean?), I set the structure thing up in a spreadsheet, as shown here. (Blurring in the image is intentional, naturally).

I.e., there are eighty blocks, divided into eight equal groups. Think of each block as a scene. A turning point comes at the end of each of these eight groups, a major turning point at the quarters. Notice there is something in the last scene of each block (except at the very end, where I left room for an epilog). The earlier blocks are filled in more thoroughly than the later blocks because I expect to learn things about the characters, have additional plot ideas, etc., as I write that will help fill in the later blocks — indeed, this has already happened with a character I realized needed to take a turn I had not expected; I can now write this character with a little better notion of where he’s going.

Notice there are some boxes that have some red text in them: The red color indicates the important story points (plot, story, theme, character, whatever) that are established in that scene. Where a scene has green text, I know there needs to be something on a particular subject that happens or is revealed or is foreshadowed or … but I know what the kind of thing is.

Will you share any thoughts on how your process is structured?

A book I’m not reviewing

I am currently reading a book in the Apocalyptic Fantasy subgenre that I won’t be reviewing. (Note: Capitalization of, or even use of, the term Apocalyptic does not imply that this is a Christian book. The best I can tell, it isn’t.) It is, to the 50% or so point that I reached today, morally “clean” (the protagonist-narrator at one point mentions in passing wishing to visit his girlfriend’s bed — and that reference is as far as it goes); the language, while sometimes strong, is like a medium bad day at work for me (YMMV).

Why won’t I be reviewing it?

Simple: I don’t post reviews of books I don’t like, and the writing is driving me nuts.

I don’t read a lot of fantasy, and if my current read is typical of the genre (or subgenre), I won’t be reading much more.

This book was free on Kindle when I got it, and that may or may not have something to do with my complaints (which I’ll get to specifically in a minute); some of the free books I’ve gotten on Kindle have been quite good. Search for my reviews on GoodReads or KindleBoards to see examples.

So what is driving me crazy? This is the second novel-length fantasy I’ve read (that’s not YA), and if these two books are a proper indication, the genre lives for description. Now, I know description is a weakness in my writing, but when it’s slathered on thicker than peanut butter (on a good peanut butter sandwich — I like a lot of peanut butter), reading becomes tiring. But it’s worse than that for the current read (which I’m not reviewing, see above): the quality of the description varies widely even within the same page, from “What the heck is the author trying to say here?” to “That’s sheer genius!” (NB: The other fantasy I read was much better in its use of description, but still tiring in its overuse of it, IMNSHO.)

As a side note, this book also has inconsistencies in spelling.

I suppose this is really a warning about editing. Here are the takeaways:

• If you’re writing in a genre you enjoy reading in, read your book until you like it. Work on it until you would pay actual money for it.
• If you can’t take the editor’s viewpoint (“I hate this book, but I can turn it into a book I like”) get a blinkin’ editor!
• If you’re using a word processor (Open/Libre/M$ Office), trust your spelling checker. If you have to make up words, add them (when spelled correctly) to the dictionary.