Like Beer Goggles, Without the Alcohol...

I'm aware that it's been, well, forever since I posted. I'm aware, in a distracted, inattentive sort of way. This is because I've been plowing through my ms, hacking and sawing, carving away some 40,000 words. I know. The very fact that I had so many words to start with that I could loose 40k of them and still have a novel is ridiculous. But apparently, I like to say stuff, multiple times. When it was first suggested that I get rid of at least 40k words, I shook my head. Not possible. It won't flow. You'll loose important relationships, vital information.

Well, now that I've stop snorting milk through my nose in amusement at my own high drama, I'll get to the point of this post. And the point is this: I've cut OVER 40k words from my ms and it's only tighter and better paced. And I'm still trolling. I was too close the work, too embroiled in the telling, to see HOW I was telling. I reiterated things, I nagged in places, I over dramatized, and strayed from the fundamental natures of characters. And I never noticed. Not until I let the ms sit for a few weeks and then looked at it with fresh eyes. What I thought would be impossible, was desperately needed. My ms is now hovering around 123k words, and might wane yet. It 's longer than what some say a debut should be, but I think 120kish is a good length for fantasy, especially epic fantasy where it's important to flesh out the world and all its workings.

I have a quote from Ray Bradbury written on a Post-it note, stuck to my laptop where I see it all the time. I've had to rewrite it several times because the Post-it has warn out. It says "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." It's probably one of my favorite quotes. The trick is in remembering that in staying drunk on your writing, you develop writer's beer goggles. I'm sure that there are plenty of writers who never (or think they never) suffer from this malady. But I'm not ashamed in the least to say that I, for one, do. And all the more because I still refining my skill, still honing my craft. It's not all bad though. I believe in my ms, and the good of it was always there, waiting for me to toss the beer goggles and find it. But first, I had to realize that I had the beer goggles to begin with. I imagine that they'll show up again, probably already have, in other wips that I've been neglecting in my editing rampage.... But now I know how to deal with them, and each snippet of wordiness that I hack, teaches me how I might have better formed a scene or interaction, information I'll tuck away for a rainy day and the next blank sheet of paper.

My zombie heart...

These are the sort of people I spent Saturday night with. The Zombie sort. My mother teased me as I was getting ready to leave. "Getting ready to spend some time with 'those people' again are you?" She laughed. It was said tongue and cheek, of course. She knows exactly what kind of people the 'those people' she was talking about are. Good people. Kind and generous people who are gracious to their fans and are willing to take time to TALK to you. People who wear their success with a casual and unassuming grace.

Andy Deane (posing zombie with me) is the lead singer of Bella Morte, a goth/industrial sort of band which has traveled all over the world and put out numerous albums. I met Andy before I knew about the band, in the art store where he still works when he's in town. He's also the author of a book called The Sticks which I've just started reading but I already know is going to be a great. It's available on Amazon. Andy is a guy who goes out and does it if he wants to do it. He's also a guy who'll spend 45 minutes trying to help you work out an art supply problem. Or, in my case, a guy who will stand there cutting paper to size while telling me everything he can about his experience getting published. Since he already has a huge following with Bella Morte, he was a sound investment and publishers were happy to chance his writing success. I, on the other hand, am nobody important (yet). But Andy still took the time to talk to me and give me what pointers he could.




The cherry young lady is Donna Lynch. She, along with her husband Steven Archer, are part of Ego Likeness, another goth/industrial group. They also both happen to write. Donna has several books out, including Isabel Burning, and Ladies and Other Vicious Creatures. The former is a novel, the latter a book of poetry. Don't be swayed by Steven's fierce countenance, he's written at least one book I'm aware of, a lovely children's book called Luna Maris. Their books are available from www.rawdogscreaming.com. Donna and I had never met before Saturday, but she was happy to stand and talk to me at length about her writing experiences and what might or might not help me.


Where am I going with all this? Well, I'm going to hearts people. Writing is all about heart. For most of us, it IS our heart. And if your writing comes from your heart, then it doesn't much what the rest of you looks like. Not every successful writer is nice, outgoing, and personable about their successes, willing to talk to those who haven't succeeded yet. That's okay. Being nice isn't a requirement for life, or writing. But the world is a better place because of the people who have gone before, who have succeeded, and who remember what it's like to stand in the shadows waiting for their chance to shine. People whose writing comes from their heart. The people I spent Saturday night with, are people I would choose to spend any day of the week with. They're people many folks would cross the street to avoid, just because of their appearances. They're zombie people, late night strobe light people, eyeliner tattooed people. They're people with heart. People who want to see others succeed as they have succeeded. People who have won my own zombie heart. People that I'll still be thinking about 30 years from now, whether or not I'm ever successfully published.

Check out the books I've mentioned, seek out your inner Zombie. You might be bettered by the experience!

Gutter Maintenance...

So I stayed up way too late last night talking to a friend I hadn't talked to in ages and showing him just how not well I can play the jaw harp. We finally managed to say goodnight to each other at 11:30 pm, parting with jokes about not getting washed away before we got a chance to see each other, what with all the rain we've been having. I woke up 45 minutes later to the steady drumming of water on the kitchens air conditioning unit, which is directly above the outside basement stairwell. I was instantly overwhelmed by a sense of imminent doom.

Leaping off the couch (yes, I'm sleeping on the couch, which is a long story) I ran downstairs. Sure enough, water was SPEWING in around the basement door, rapidly gaining ground and threatening all of the 'stuff' that lives down there with the camel crickets. Pounding back up the stairs, I woke my parents (yes, I live with my parents. It's cheap, and convenient, and besides that I happen to love them and get along with them) and then ran around the kitchen trying to see outside and flipping lights on pointlessly. Mom and Dad dashed downstairs, commenced with cussing and exclaiming and Dad proceded to jerk the laundry room door open to look for the wet/dry vac. Problem was, that the alarm system was still engaged. It immediately began threatening a missile drop, so I bolted for the key pad and got there about three seconds too late. The alarm began screaming. So dad came thundering up the stairs to halt that crisis while I went back downstairs just long enough to point out that the wet/dry vac was one of the things that Mom and Dad had been jumping back and forth over to get into the laundry room. Then while they addressed the flooding floor, I went outside and hauled a ladder out in the slashing rain and climbed up to clean out the gutters, which were jammed full of maple helicopters and last years leaves. At 1 am all this was going on.

My point? Clean you're gutters people! And I don't just mean the ones on your house. I, at least, find that periodically, my mind starts to get clogged with various ideas for books or short stories or even oddball things like screenplays, which I will likely never write. Usually, I try to write an idea down immediately, while it's fresh, just so it's there to go back and look at. But sometimes, ideas don't get written down. And they start piling up. This is one of those times, and for the last few days, I've been scrapping things together and struggling because while I'm moved to work on some large things that need my attention, I'm not able to dig my way through all the ideas for other things that I've never yet put down on paper. You'll get thousands of ideas over your career and only some of them will ever turn into a book, only a few of those a book that will see publishing glory. But that doesn't mean that all those thousands of ideas are crap either. Every idea can teach you something, and has the potential to get you to see things differently, or explore something you've never had an interest in before. But if you start ignoring those ideas, they'll start piling up, and eventually, they'll clog the gutters of your brain. And then you'll end up like me, running about in the middle of the night soaking wet and hanging off a ladder trying to get things in working order again. So keep your gutters clean. Write down all those random ideas and who knows, maybe your crowning achievement will be floating around in amongst the maple helicopters, just waiting to be plucked out, polished up and sent out into the world!