Posted 8:50 AM by Tim
The novel has stalled. Today, I should be working towards 22,000 words. I've got 12,600 done. That means I'm only a mere 9,400 shy of today's goal. Not good. I'll see if I can get the 2000 daily in, just to keep me at par... maybe even shoot for 3,000. That'll at least get me started on the road back to where I'm supposed to be.

Posted 8:42 AM by Tim
The novelling is slow. I'm only up to 9,300 words, and it's day 7. I should have at least 12,000 down, and be working up to 14,000+ today. Not counting today's total, I'm 2,700 words down. That's just over a day behind. At this rate, I'll be in the low 40's by the time the 30th comes around. Unacceptable. I'll be putting off a little sleep today to try to push out a few thousand words. I figure that three or four hours should do it.

I'd really like to get ahead a bit. I can't count on having time available on the weekend. Yeah, the weekend is currently pretty open, but that doesn't always translate into writing time. No guarantees.

Posted 3:04 PM by Tim
The novel is coming along pretty well. I've got 6,385 words down, so there's only 43,615 words to go. Not that many really. This is Day 4, so I should be up to 8,000 words by the end of the day. It's not going to happen, of course, since I'm almost off to work, and there's no way for me to get home before the day ends. If I manage to do any writing tonight before I go to sleep, I might make a few hundred more words. Not likely.

Writer's meeting today went alright. People liked the exceprt that I brought, which is always nice to hear. Apparently, I'm doing well with the descriptions of things and places. That's good, becuase that's the bit that always stumped me last year. I could see the images in my head, but I had trouble getting all the details down on paper.

Posted 4:05 PM by Tim
NaNoWriMo update.

An inauspicious start yesterday. I wrote about 100 words before a writer's meeting, and about 550 more afterward. I've yet to get anything written today, and I might not get anything down today. I'm a little worried about it, but I should be able to get something going if I get a chance to sit and get started.

Posted 2:42 PM by Tim
Dan sat heavily on the worn steps of his porch. He sighed and put his head into his hand, half to hold it up and half to block out the sounds of his wife in the house who was still screeching at him. He was no longer listening to her, but he probably could not have made out the words if he tried. He had left her in the kitchen, and he was now on the front porch. Still, the noise of her yelling carried through the hallway and entrance, out the screen door and onto the street.

He wondered, briefly, if the neighbours would call the police again. He hoped not. His thinking was broken by the sound of the screen door banging shut against it's frame. He looked up at the sound, and saw his best friend Bill. Bill and his wife, Angela, had been invited to a backyard barbeque with him and his wife, Melody. Bill carried a foursome of chilled beers in his hands. Two of them were being offered. Dan took them both as Bill sat on the steps next to him.

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Bill opened one of his beers with a quick wrist action he had learned in college that not only opened the bottle, but also sent the cap flying away onto the lawn. Dan followed suit, twisting the top of the bottle without any sort of flair. He looked at the cap, bent it between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it into the grass angrily.

He took a long pull on his bottle and noticed that his wife had stopped yelling. At least, she had stopped being loud enough to hear from the front yard. A momentary thought passed about how it would look to police responding to a domestic disturbance call if he had alcohol on his breath. He washed the thought away with another long drink. He he was going to be dammned, he might as well be dammed for a reason, he thought.

"Propane," he said at last, breaking the silence of the yard. Bill, who had been taking a drink of his own beer stopped and looked at him. "We ran out of propane. I forgot to take the tank to the store to fill it." Dan risked a look back at the house. "That's what this is all about," he said, taking another drink, "or at least, why this one started." Bill nodded, but said nothing.

"It's been getting worse between us," Dan said angrily. "Melody and me. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the bills, or the new job," he paused for a few seconds then continued, "or the fact that we haven't had sex in months. Maybe it's all of it. Maybe it's nothing. Whatever it is, it's destroying my marriage." Bill took a drink.

"We're fighting all the time now. Hardly say a word to each other if we're not yelling it. I guess this is what they mean by 'good times and bad.' What I wanna know is: Where did the good times go?" He looked at Bill, half expecting him to say something, but knowing that he wouldn't.

"I know that the passion is supposed to come out of a relationship, but this is extreme." Dan took another long drink from his beer. "I can't keep going on like this. I can't keep coming home to anger and arguing. I just can't." Bill finished his beer, put the empty bottle down and opened it the same way he had the first.

"You've got to look for the good things," Bill said in his low voice before taking a drink from the full bottle. "It's not always easy to find them. Sometimes you have to look hard. If there's anything good there, you'll find it." Dan thought. What was good about his relationship with Melody. Had there been anything good lately? Anything at all?

"I don't know, man," said Dan, "there's some good things. Melody still does some things for me. Little things, like putting my paper on the table, or putting a glass of water on my side of the bed at night."

"Those are good things," Bill said simply.

"But they're so little. They don't take any effort. It's all just routine."

"You're wrong," said Bill, "Little things might not take a lot of effort, but they do take effort. The world may seem like it is made of big things and little things, but that's not true. The big things are made of little things. Everything is made from the little things. It's the little things that really matter. If you want to make your relationship better, start with the little things first. The big things take care of themselves."

Posted 2:57 PM by Tim
Goodness. I hadn't realized that the last entry was so... weird. And it's been up so long. Time to put something else here. At least drive that off the top of the page anyway. I've had so many ideas for stories that I don't get a chance to write them all down. I haven't got time to write anything today either, so I'm just going to put up a short list of the kinds of ideas that I've got milling around.

For NaNoWriMo, I've got the short list paired down to either: a "superhero" story about a bunch of teenagers fighting against deamons and a cult; or a story set in the post-apocalypse about a guy just trying to stay alive; or a story about an android trying to find his way in the world. The first one is the one I'm leaning towards. I've got at least a semblance of a plot for it, and I've worked out some of the characters already. More or less anyway. Trouble is, I've written things about it already, probably in this blog somewhere. I'll probably not end up using those pieces though, so I figure I'm still following the intent of NaNoWriMo - which is to write. The other two stories I see as being in the same world. Post apocalyptic. I could even see a way of joining the two of them together. But there's a lot of fuzziness in there, and I'm not sure if the stories there stan on their own well enough, or if they'd make any sort of sense together. I could see it being confusing to the reader.

Yesterday I had a though about a Vampire story. I'd like to try to stay out of the hair of the other vampire writers, especially White-Wolf and their publishing companies. The Vampire story I'm really liking becuse I can set it in today, and still keep it reasonably distanced from anything and anyone that I know personally. I've been toying with the idea of just writing it up now, and seeing where it goes. I might do that anyway.

Also, just as a bit of a look into the way I've been thinking, I've been toying with the idea of writing a trilogy. It seems that what's getting published now are long term stories. Books that have characters that have lots of things that can happen to them. Just look at the 3, 4, 5 and longer series of books being published in the Sci-Fi area of your bookstore. I think it makes sense for the publisher to pick up an author who can show that they've got plans for 3 or more books about well-thought-out and developed characters. That's continuing revenue for them. I mean, just look at Harry Potter. The first book suggests that it's at least a 7-book series (one book per year of school). That's a lot of books. Not to mention possible spin-off characters from those books, etc. Particularily in the case of Harry Potter, there's been several smaller books which are only tangental to the series (like the Quidditch books and such), not to mention other merchandise.

Anyway, that's what's been on the brain lately.

Posted 1:15 AM by Tim
It's been a while since anythings gone in here. Well, I'm starting to think about stories again, so there's bound to be some things coming up in here. For now, though, here's a welcoming phone message for a porn shop:

Hello, Satans Sex Toys. What's up your ass?

Yeah. Well, I thought it was funny.

Posted 12:05 AM by Tim
Well, this is going to be an interesting post. I've signed up with RedPaper a sort of freelance newspaper/publishing home. They're running a micropayment program for content. Basically, you can buy a story that interests you for some nominal fee. The fees are set by the authour, and they've generally been about $0.50 or less. I see a lot of them in the $0.10 range and such.

The pay structure seems pretty reasonable... if you have a large enough volume of readers. They don't have that big a userbase yet, but they've just started (opened July 4th, 2003). I expect the numbers to improve.

Anyhow, I signed up to provide content, and I'll be shooting at publishing a story or parts thereof on their site every week. Yeah, I know my track record with commitments like that, not good. But maybe all I need is the $0.10 or so that I figure I'll actually make at this thing. Who knows. Maybe I'll get popular. Yeah, right. :)

Anyway, check out RedPaper if you get a chance.

Oh yes, as a late addendum to this, I'm going to be adding a number of words (about 25,000) to the NaNoWriMo novel to get it up to about 80K so that I can finally submit it to publishers. That's hopefully going to be during the vacation time. We'll see if I manage that many words or not.

Posted 2:37 PM by Tim
Ok, here's a little question for everyone. I've got this idea for a novel, but it is based on another book. Now, writing a bit of fan fiction or whatnot probably falls under "fair use" and such in the copyright department. Writing an entire novel (and then trying to get it published and such) doesn't. What do I do? Drop the idea entirely? Modify the idea enough that it doesn't look like I'm working in the same area as the source of the inspiration? I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure that I can make enough changes to the premise and still keep the feel that I'm looking for. I suppose I'll have to try though.

Posted 12:33 PM by Tim
It's been a long time since I posted in here. But then, it's been a while since I've had anything worth saying.

Lately, my mind has been on a character idea. I'm finding that I really want to write something with the character in it, but I can't see a good way of making this character the main character. I don't see how I can write him in the first or third persons (and I'm not going to bother with the second person). I can see making him the protagonist, but I'm not sure how I'd get anyone to interact with him. At least, not yet.

Here's the deal. The character exits in all times at once. That means that instead of seeing time as a nice linear action (past, present, future - with constant motion towards the future), he sees everything at once. Of course, I've got to limit him a little, so I say that he still exists only in a single space. So even though he's in all times, he's still only in a single space.

Part of the trouble of writing him as a main character would be describing his perception to the reader and not being confusing. Think about where you are now. Reading this blog. Ok. Now, add in all the future entries. And remove all the past entries at the same time. And you don't have a computer. And you have whatever else will ever be on your desk ever. Well, at least as long as the desk stays in the same place.

So, I'm thinking that the easiest idea would be just to write him in as a protagonist. Trouble is, I'm not sure that I'd be able to make it all work. The character is pretty complex, and that means that the storyline that goes around him would have to be fairly complex too.

I dunno if I'll ever get any of it written. Oh well, glad to have at least mentioned the idea somewhere.

Posted 12:21 PM by Tim
I've officially abandoned the writing challenge I set for myself. I didn't get anywhere with it. I haven't written anything since the thrid or fourth day, and editing has been right out. I think I really need the community of NaNoWriMo to keep me motivated. That, or I really just need to relax on the goals a bit and just write. Who knows.

Posted 8:16 AM by Tim
So... the writing challenge seems like a bust. Here it is Day 7, and I've got 2200 words written. By now, I should be working towards 14,000. Gah. I am so disgusted with myself. I looked at the computer and thought about writing. That's about as close as I've gotten towards that goal.

Editing is even worse. I've done nothing with it. I have thought that I should be spending some time editing, but I just haven't bothered. Maybe I'll get a stroke of motivation today.

Day 7
Writing: ~2200 words
Editing: 0 hours

Posted 10:47 AM by Tim
I managed to get to about 2000 words total yesterday. That leaves me about 4000 words to write today. It shouldn't be a problem if I can just get a chance to sit down for an hour or two. I don't know if that's going to be possible though. I don't always end up with enough time to do everything. Poor planning usually.

Posted 2:42 PM by Tim
I didn't get very far yesterday. In fact, after writing the blog here, I didn't get anything else writing related done. Poor me. So, today I am trying to catch up for yesterday. It shouldn't take me that long to get somewhere with the story. I mean, I should be able to get 2000 words out in about an hour. The editing is time based, so it should take me an hour to get an hour of editing done.

Day 2
Novel: 1,717 words
Editing: 0 hours

Posted 2:52 PM by Tim
It's been a while since anything got in here. Let me update everyone. I've decided to start with another month of writing. I figure that if I'm ever going to manage to get anything published, I should at least be able to write a sequel.

I'm going with the same goals as NaNoWriMo. 30 days, 50,000 words. Of course, I know that I can complete that, so I've made the whole thing slightly more difficult. I'm tacking on the goal of NaNoEdMo. Which is, take your finished NaNoWriMo novel and put in 25 hours of editing over a 30 day period (well, their goal was a 31 day period, but I'm shortining it to fit with the writing too). Ok then. This is the first day, and I'm already behind on my goal.

Like the original novel, I've got the barest of outlines, and no idea of the middle or end of the novel as it stands. We're just going to have to wing it. Also, I'll be posting here daily or so with my progress report. Here's the current information.

Day 1
Writing: 102 words
Editing: 0 hours

Posted 8:12 AM by Tim
::Reader's Note::
I nearly started to prepare for editing again.... sad, isn't it?
::End Note::

Posted 8:20 AM by Tim
::Reader's Note::
Ok. It's been some time since I've been in here, so let me catch everyone up to date.

The NaNoWriMo novel has been more or less sitting since I got it finished. I get these brief flashes of energy to edit the thing (and I still want to get it ready for that contest), but I keep losing the momenetum and letting it slide. One of the people I know suggested that I just start blogging about it, so that I'd have some sort of goal and pressure to get it done. That's what I'm doing now.

Editing is slow. Very slow. I'm not sure what it is that's taking me so long to get it done, but it is taking quite a while. I find that I can get about one page edited per day. That's not a very good rate, considering that I have about 100 pages to edit. I think I'm just discouraged at the idea of spending about 1/3 of a year on this one project. I really shouldn't be discouraged about it though, I've had long projects before.

Anyhow, I'm going to be putting in updates on the progress here. I've got part of chapter 1 edited (both scratch edited on paper and typed). There are 18 chapters total, so I'm really early into the run.

::End Note::