Category: Journal

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Only one chapter, again, today.  Still on track to finish the book this week, but it’s slower than I’d expected.  I think most of the resistance I’m running into at this point comes from something I’ve had trouble with for as long as I can recall:  I know the story.  I know the story, so it’s harder to write the story.

When I just sit down and write, when I don’t know what’s coming next or where things are headed or even, in some cases, anything about what I’m going to write at all, it often flows quite freely.  Even with the Untrue Tales… where I know the basic character/story/universe arcs as well as I know my own past, I don’t know how it’s all going to come together on the page, and it comes pretty easily.  With Forget What You Can’t Remember, the most difficult parts to write came after I’d realized how it was all going to come together at the end, because then I had to push these characters through those situations and lead them to be at the right places at the right times … and that’s less like watching the story unfold as it is hammering cold iron into shackles.  And it’s always felt less like creative expression to me and more like work.

I’ve been doing somewhat better with this book than I expected, considering I’d had the bulk of the story outlined months ahead of time.  In fact, the parts of the story I knew the best, toward the beginning, were some of the easiest to write.  This may have had to do with the extent to which they were unconstrained; I knew what had to happen, and I knew what the last scenes of the book would be, but everything in between was unknown.  And until I’d reached the middle of the book, I didn’t even know how long it was going to be or how much more time/space/words/chapters I’d have available to get Melvin and Stacy and Frances to where they needed to be, when they needed to be there.

It was after that I slowed down, I guess.  After I’d more thoroughly outlined the remainder of the book.  After I’d created a bit more of a financial plan for the book.  Something vital happened in chapter 11, and getting everyone and everything in place for it has been a challenge.  Then, writing it was a challenge.  Now I’ve only got two chapters left: Chapter 12, in which I have to get everyone in place for chapter 13, in which Melvin has one more important place in the story to be, and Stacy’s final fate (in this book) is revealed.  I expect the core of chapter 13 to be technically exacting, but easy to write; this is my favorite moment, the brilliant thing that makes me love the book (and that I think will lead many to despise it/me).  I expect the vignette that closes out the novel to be reasonably easy to write and, in case I haven’t mentioned it, I plan to write a new short story to include in a 2nd Edition of More Lost Memories that expands on something that happens in that vignette. ((Actually, I plan to write two more stories for MLM; one based on that something in ch.13, one written from a zombie’s POV in the Denver outbreak.))

Ooh.  I’ve just had an idea about the length of Cheating, Death.  I could add a 2nd appendix which includes all these blog posts.  (I’m already planning on writing an “Appendix Z – About the Zombies” where I detail what the zombies are and are not in my book.  ie: they are dumb and slow, they don’t use tools or language, and they are spread by infection/bites, so the uninfected dead are just dead, and no one is coming up out of graves (Contrary to the cover image. Hah!))  They seem like they might be an interesting/relevant addition to the book.  I’ll look them over and consider it when I get to doing the layout.  Tell me what you think of the idea, in the comments.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Chapter 8 took me a long time.  Writing it involved a lot of procrastination.  I first sat down to write it at least an hour before midnight, Sept. 29/30 – and immediately spent an hour and a half re-writing the end of chapter 7.  (If you read the version that’s been on Smashwords since 9/29, which ends with Chapter 7, be sure you re-read the end of 7; I turned 2 paragraphs into a 900-word vignette.)  Then I stopped for food, watched a movie, and otherwise procrastinated & stalled, writing only ~600 words in the next 6 hours.  By 10PM on the 30th, having had only 3 hours of sleep, I’d read dozens of articles about Google Wave, started a blog post on Self Publishing, posted an episode of the Modern Evil Podcast, and only managed to get about 1500 words of chapter 8 written.  Then stayed up until almost 3AM on the 1st, adding only a couple of paragraphs in the next 5 hours.

Why was I procrastinating so much?  In a tweet I put it this way: “It feels like I’ve been avoiding an actual argument with someone I care about, rather than an argument between 2 of my characters in a book.” – If that’s not clear, I’m saying that I had become emotionally involved with the characters in my book, and I was avoiding writing the argument in a way similar to how one might attempt to avoid an argument they knew was coming with someone they care about in their real life.  But the argument was important.  I’m not sure I’ve got it right, either; I’ve been avoiding re-reading it in the same way I was avoiding writing it.

October 2nd I didn’t get any writing done.  I tried a couple of times, wrote a sentence or two at most, but it was a struggle.  And then it was the Art Walk, downtown.  And then it was the weekend (spending time with my wife seems to supplant getting work done – I realized recently that this probably represents an unconscious but real prioritization where my wife & my marriage are more important to me than my work/art/writing, which seems like a reasonable prioritization), and then… well, then last night I woke up at 11PM and … after checking my emails and eating breakfast and a watching an episode of Dexter, at around 3AM I was ready to get to work.  Monday morning, as it were.  In about an hour and a half, I wrote the final ~750 words of chapter 8, and updated it on Smashwords.

Ouch, that was a long one.  One hour shy of six days between updates, after having taken only five and a half days to write the first 7 chapters (over half of the book!).  Then, I spent the rest of today writing chapter 9.  Twelve hours is a lot better than six days, though it’s nowhere near as fast as I wrote the first half of the book.  There was plenty of stopping to think instead of writing right through.  It was a struggle.  It even required a change of venue (I wrote the 2nd half of chapter 9 at the library).

But Stacy is back in the picture for a while, now.  It’s a lot easier to write when there’s more than one living person present in the scene.  Heck, even one living person and some specific zombies is easier to write than one person and a nonspecific zombie infestation they’re effectively avoiding significant contact with.  I’m trying to keep this book from getting to be too introspective.  I mean, it’s still introspeculative fiction, but leaning toward action and somewhat away from contemplation.  With Stacy in all the remaining chapters (in one way or another), I’m thinking they’ll flow somewhat smoother.

If sleep goes okay tonight and I’m able to concentrate tomorrow, I should be able to finish at least chapters 10 & 11.  Maybe more, if I’m really on a roll.  Still on track for 13 chapters. Maybe I’ll hit the end of the first draft by Wednesday afternoon.  That would be nice.  If you haven’t started reading, yet, the first four chapters are still free, or you can buy access to the full text (including all future updates and the final eBook edition), currently priced at $2.99.  Remember, the price you pay is all you need to pay, so the sooner you buy in, the better for you.  Feel free to wait & buy the paperback from me, currently estimated to be ~$10. 😉

Go read Cheating, Death now.