I'm in a tough spot. I did something that few people have done. In the space of three months, and spending no more than an hour a day, I completed a first draft of a novel. It is by no means complete and ready for gift-wrapping but it does not present any noticeable holes like (INSERT CHAPTER THREE HERE). My issue now is with the first edit. I don't know what to do with myself.
I don't think I have the 30 pages needed to contact an agent. The main reason for that is I want to show the first 30 pages. That presents an issue because my fourth chapter, which starts around page 10, is 60 pages. Each chapter of the manuscript is an episode, generally happening in no more than a couple of days. The majority of them are in the 10-15 page range, which I think is good and there are breaks in the middle for people who like that sort of thing. This chapter probably took more than a month to write. It's the tale of a guy who has to arrange a funeral of a man that he doesn't know very well. I don't consider every word of the chapter to be golden but if I'm honest with myself and cut back some of the fat it's probably still going to be around 50 pages.
I had an idea. I decided to chop this chapter down to normal chapter size, normal being normal for this book. I ended up either summarizing what I wrote in a longer form or doing shortcuts like having my 12 main characters explain something that happens (yes, I have 12 main characters) in the form of a text message or an Internet message board post. That's telling, not showing. I want to show.
I'm not going to say that it's easy to produce what could someday be a novel. I'm going to say that it's hard to know when to stop. I literally wrote a "14th anniversary director's cut" of a manuscript I wrote in college, almost half a lifetime ago. I know that an author can tinker until the end of time. I'm not going to do that in this case. I just don't know if I'm in trim the fat mode or liposuction mode.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Zach writes: Process me
OK, I just wrote 500 words of crap that will never see the light of day. I want to write about my writing process, seeing as I'm working on a manuscript and taking a good amount of my free time and money pursuing it. Yet when I write about it I sound like a Ritalin-addled ten-year-old.
That's actually close to the truth. I just took some generic NyQuil and a Mucinex to crush this cold I got last week. I might have a cold because I drank a Charles River of beer while in Boston. Eating a "jumbo" triple pepperoni pizza with three of my colleagues at 1 a.m. last Wednesday might have contributed a little.
Seeing as my writing process involved me getting up early to pound out a couple thousand words, this trip did not help with my rhythm. Well, I had to write in the afternoon or during lunch or right before bed. I'm not married to writing at any time of the day. I think my mind can find that groove in the record and get back at or close to the spot where I was the day before.
It helps to do it every day. If you want to get good at something, do it every day. At least you get good at doing something every day. I can't say that my writing is better after all this time. It's never a struggle to start writing. I heard a little bit of advice at a writer's conference last Saturday. The idea was if you were daunted by a blank piece of paper, start with the truth. Write about what you see out the window or something that's on your mind. You'll get back to the story.
I enjoyed the little challenges of writing, like figuring out a different way to dispose of ashes in each chapter. I had the dead guy's ashes in a coffee can like in Big Lebowski. But I just saw the ashes in a coffee can trick in an upcoming movie featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis. Now it's become a cliche. Yep, I need to find another moderately priced vessel.
The NyQuil is starting to take effect. I don't have much time. It's like I was hit with a dart from a stranger in the corner. Or the cat who's getting revenge for me giving him his daily pill. Either way, I am not long for this evening.
The discoveries of writing are the best. Having your characters do unexpected things is fun. There's a scene in which a married man is set up to have a date on New Year's Eve who is not his wife. He's in a near panic because he's faithful and doesn't even want the hint of infidelity. He finds out that his wife is cool with it, and she even sends him a short video message telling him this. It changes his conflict. Instead of trying to hide, he has to figure out why she's OK with it, and if he's really OK with it.
My ultimate goal is to keep things moving and keep them interesting. This is a guy book. The characters are mostly guys although there is plenty of female influence. I'll always be interested in female characters but the guys are going to be my forte.
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg...ha, thought I passed out on the keyboard, didn't you? OK, that was a lame attempt. I can't always be touched by the muse. Sometimes my hands just dance across the keyboard and ultimately it means nothing. I'm fine with that. As long as the needle keeps moving.
That's actually close to the truth. I just took some generic NyQuil and a Mucinex to crush this cold I got last week. I might have a cold because I drank a Charles River of beer while in Boston. Eating a "jumbo" triple pepperoni pizza with three of my colleagues at 1 a.m. last Wednesday might have contributed a little.
Seeing as my writing process involved me getting up early to pound out a couple thousand words, this trip did not help with my rhythm. Well, I had to write in the afternoon or during lunch or right before bed. I'm not married to writing at any time of the day. I think my mind can find that groove in the record and get back at or close to the spot where I was the day before.
It helps to do it every day. If you want to get good at something, do it every day. At least you get good at doing something every day. I can't say that my writing is better after all this time. It's never a struggle to start writing. I heard a little bit of advice at a writer's conference last Saturday. The idea was if you were daunted by a blank piece of paper, start with the truth. Write about what you see out the window or something that's on your mind. You'll get back to the story.
I enjoyed the little challenges of writing, like figuring out a different way to dispose of ashes in each chapter. I had the dead guy's ashes in a coffee can like in Big Lebowski. But I just saw the ashes in a coffee can trick in an upcoming movie featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis. Now it's become a cliche. Yep, I need to find another moderately priced vessel.
The NyQuil is starting to take effect. I don't have much time. It's like I was hit with a dart from a stranger in the corner. Or the cat who's getting revenge for me giving him his daily pill. Either way, I am not long for this evening.
The discoveries of writing are the best. Having your characters do unexpected things is fun. There's a scene in which a married man is set up to have a date on New Year's Eve who is not his wife. He's in a near panic because he's faithful and doesn't even want the hint of infidelity. He finds out that his wife is cool with it, and she even sends him a short video message telling him this. It changes his conflict. Instead of trying to hide, he has to figure out why she's OK with it, and if he's really OK with it.
My ultimate goal is to keep things moving and keep them interesting. This is a guy book. The characters are mostly guys although there is plenty of female influence. I'll always be interested in female characters but the guys are going to be my forte.
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg...ha, thought I passed out on the keyboard, didn't you? OK, that was a lame attempt. I can't always be touched by the muse. Sometimes my hands just dance across the keyboard and ultimately it means nothing. I'm fine with that. As long as the needle keeps moving.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Zach writes: Making sweet manuscript
In my last post, oh too long ago, I mentioned that I am working on a book. I could say that I'm working on a novel, but what I am supposed to say is that I am writing a manuscript. A manuscript is your pre-publication novel. I wanted to come up with a more pithy version of this laborious word but "mani" and "manu" don't do it justice.
The next obvious thing is for me to give you my elevator pitch for the nov--... boo--... manuscript. I have problems with this. It's not easy to tell the tale of this story, since it's still germinating, in a Tweet-sized bite. I'll start with genre. There is a well-known literary genre called chick lit. This covers most novels written by women about women. I'm sure there are exceptions. My book is on the other end. It's dick lit. This is fiction for guys.
About four years ago I wrote a "year in the life" series of stories that were about a guy named Larry Smith. The stories could together be considered a novel, although I never completely finished the ending. Read it, if you dare. http://ztlwrites.blogspot.com/
This is in the same genre. The Larry Smith story was about a single guy's quest to keep his life the same when events conspire to change him no matter what he does about it. He's in a fantasy football league. One of his friends dies and there's funeral. I did try to shoehorn in some time travel but it didn't really work as much as I loved the idea of writing time travel.
That's what writing can be. What you think is the "good stuff" doesn't work. Every word feels like a new life you have created and sometimes you have to suffocate them.
Anyway, on to the story. About three months ago a friend of my wife's talked about the plot to an Amy Tan novel about a woman going to China after a friend's death.
That was my starting point. I would write about a group of guys in a fantasy football league. One of the league members dies suddenly. They decide to "honor" him by following his beloved Lions around for the entire season. The Lions make an incredible run to the Super Bowl and the guy wins the fantasy championship.
In writing this, I can appreciate why the writers of the FX show The League focus on five guys. This is a comedy about a fantasy football league and it focuses on only a part of the league. It's hard to have 12 "main" characters, including the dead guy. My initial idea was to have each chapter be from a different character's point of view. I can't say that every character will get equal time.
I was in a one-day novel-writing class and the guy said that you need to write every day. He dedicates four hours a day. I give myself one. I don't always write for an entire hour. I have written every day in the past two months and I've missed maybe one day in the past 100. They say that the first draft is the easy part.
I'll attempt to post at least once a week and write about whatever strikes my fancy regarding the process.
Current progress: Just finished chapter 10. 163 pages or 66,937 words.
The next obvious thing is for me to give you my elevator pitch for the nov--... boo--... manuscript. I have problems with this. It's not easy to tell the tale of this story, since it's still germinating, in a Tweet-sized bite. I'll start with genre. There is a well-known literary genre called chick lit. This covers most novels written by women about women. I'm sure there are exceptions. My book is on the other end. It's dick lit. This is fiction for guys.
About four years ago I wrote a "year in the life" series of stories that were about a guy named Larry Smith. The stories could together be considered a novel, although I never completely finished the ending. Read it, if you dare. http://ztlwrites.blogspot.com/
This is in the same genre. The Larry Smith story was about a single guy's quest to keep his life the same when events conspire to change him no matter what he does about it. He's in a fantasy football league. One of his friends dies and there's funeral. I did try to shoehorn in some time travel but it didn't really work as much as I loved the idea of writing time travel.
That's what writing can be. What you think is the "good stuff" doesn't work. Every word feels like a new life you have created and sometimes you have to suffocate them.
Anyway, on to the story. About three months ago a friend of my wife's talked about the plot to an Amy Tan novel about a woman going to China after a friend's death.
That was my starting point. I would write about a group of guys in a fantasy football league. One of the league members dies suddenly. They decide to "honor" him by following his beloved Lions around for the entire season. The Lions make an incredible run to the Super Bowl and the guy wins the fantasy championship.
In writing this, I can appreciate why the writers of the FX show The League focus on five guys. This is a comedy about a fantasy football league and it focuses on only a part of the league. It's hard to have 12 "main" characters, including the dead guy. My initial idea was to have each chapter be from a different character's point of view. I can't say that every character will get equal time.
I was in a one-day novel-writing class and the guy said that you need to write every day. He dedicates four hours a day. I give myself one. I don't always write for an entire hour. I have written every day in the past two months and I've missed maybe one day in the past 100. They say that the first draft is the easy part.
I'll attempt to post at least once a week and write about whatever strikes my fancy regarding the process.
Current progress: Just finished chapter 10. 163 pages or 66,937 words.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Say something new, I dares ya
Is originality dead? This is my premise for my first Zachrilege in a while. I can't even spell the name of my own blog so that might need to be dealt with.
I went to a bookstore recently, and what I noticed besides that there are a lot of books out there is an interesting trend in popular culture. We are treading over familiar territory. There are metric tons of vampire fiction out there. Is this a new idea? I admit that the writers of this stuff can come up with new wrinkles on the subject, but there's a lot of standing on the shoulders of giants, or just a lot of normal-sized people.
And don't get me started on movies. We just survived a summer in which nearly every movie was a remake or a sequel. Even bad movies get sequels now. And bad sequels, like Sex and the City 2, will probably get even more bad sequels. I was disappointed that the remake of Red Dawn didn't come out. Maybe it did and I just didn't notice.
My favorite music download of the year is "Strange Arrangement" by Mayer Hawthorne. It's a throwback that sounds like it was recorded in Detroit in 1963. As a derivative, it's a pretty good one.
And we finish with this weekend's Restoring Honor rally in Washington. Having it on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech made it kind of a super derivative. Say what you want about the Beckster, but if you can get a really big football stadium full of people to watch you speak, you're doing something right. Let's not pretend that he's saying anything dramatic or new.
Perhaps that's the key to this seen-this, done-that popular culture. The Emmy winner for best dramatic series is Mad Men, and that's a big time throwback show. There's nostalgia and familiarity wrapped into one. We have an instant emotional attachment to the familiar. It keeps us coming back for more.
This doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the manuscript I'm working on. That's right. I'm crafting what could become a novel some day. There is almost zero nostalgia involved. It's about a year in the life of a fantasy football league. I'll be posting regularly on my progress. I'm already 100+ pages in, and I would say that at least 20 are good.
I went to a bookstore recently, and what I noticed besides that there are a lot of books out there is an interesting trend in popular culture. We are treading over familiar territory. There are metric tons of vampire fiction out there. Is this a new idea? I admit that the writers of this stuff can come up with new wrinkles on the subject, but there's a lot of standing on the shoulders of giants, or just a lot of normal-sized people.
And don't get me started on movies. We just survived a summer in which nearly every movie was a remake or a sequel. Even bad movies get sequels now. And bad sequels, like Sex and the City 2, will probably get even more bad sequels. I was disappointed that the remake of Red Dawn didn't come out. Maybe it did and I just didn't notice.
My favorite music download of the year is "Strange Arrangement" by Mayer Hawthorne. It's a throwback that sounds like it was recorded in Detroit in 1963. As a derivative, it's a pretty good one.
And we finish with this weekend's Restoring Honor rally in Washington. Having it on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech made it kind of a super derivative. Say what you want about the Beckster, but if you can get a really big football stadium full of people to watch you speak, you're doing something right. Let's not pretend that he's saying anything dramatic or new.
Perhaps that's the key to this seen-this, done-that popular culture. The Emmy winner for best dramatic series is Mad Men, and that's a big time throwback show. There's nostalgia and familiarity wrapped into one. We have an instant emotional attachment to the familiar. It keeps us coming back for more.
This doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the manuscript I'm working on. That's right. I'm crafting what could become a novel some day. There is almost zero nostalgia involved. It's about a year in the life of a fantasy football league. I'll be posting regularly on my progress. I'm already 100+ pages in, and I would say that at least 20 are good.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Faith restored in the Apple Store
Faith in humanity is in flux. If you get cut off on the interstate or have bad service in a restaurant, the entire human race is painted poorly. It's how we are. At least when something good happens, we should give it the same positive response.
This morning I had a task. It was a critical task for me and far less important to others. My iPod petered out a few months ago. I could get no more than the Apple logo to appear on the screen. A simple solution was to borrow my wife's rarely used model. She had the next generation Nano, which had a radio tuner, an external speaker, and the annoying habit of randomly switching to a song when it barely moved in my pocket. I could tell that even though she didn't use it much, there was a bit of resentment that I was taking it to work every day. I left it at home a couple of days this week as a compromise and a reminder to get my machine checked out.
I got to the mall at 10. There was a line outside. If there's a positive bubble in the economic downturn, it's at an Apple store. At 10 a.m. I was able to get an appointment at the "Genius Bar" at 11:15. Say what you want about Apple, they know how to name stuff. I made a short side trip to Trader Joe's and thought I might be able to sneak in early. No chance. The store has at least 30 employees and each one is constantly busy. There have to be hundreds of people there. Even the huge anchor department stores may not have that kind of traffic.
I did get in a few minutes early. After explaining my situation, the attendant attempted to download new software to my machine. It downloaded really slowly. I attempted a dial-up joke but this guy might not have been born when AOL was in its heyday. He told me that if this didn't work I could get a replacement machine for $79. Ugh. I really didn't want to spend any money. We sat and waited while I used my inferior Blackberry. The software loaded. All that was left was to restore my machine and I would be out of the store for no cost other than my melted groceries in the car.
The restoration failed. Crap. Oh well, this iPod had a good year and a half life. It served me well. It allowed me to isolate myself from society just a little more. This was the turning point. The guy told me to get the Apple Care extended warranty the next time I bought an iPod. He then extracted another model exactly like mine, brand new, and put my broken Pod in the packaging. I signed my name a couple of times and left the store before he changed his mind.
How about that. A random act of kindness. It makes me more likely to want to go the extra mile and take the extra step for others. It makes me less likely to get more upset than I should about relatively small things like LeBron, politics, or the scattered details of my life. We can all use an act like this when we're so easily put down by random acts of ignorance.
This morning I had a task. It was a critical task for me and far less important to others. My iPod petered out a few months ago. I could get no more than the Apple logo to appear on the screen. A simple solution was to borrow my wife's rarely used model. She had the next generation Nano, which had a radio tuner, an external speaker, and the annoying habit of randomly switching to a song when it barely moved in my pocket. I could tell that even though she didn't use it much, there was a bit of resentment that I was taking it to work every day. I left it at home a couple of days this week as a compromise and a reminder to get my machine checked out.
I got to the mall at 10. There was a line outside. If there's a positive bubble in the economic downturn, it's at an Apple store. At 10 a.m. I was able to get an appointment at the "Genius Bar" at 11:15. Say what you want about Apple, they know how to name stuff. I made a short side trip to Trader Joe's and thought I might be able to sneak in early. No chance. The store has at least 30 employees and each one is constantly busy. There have to be hundreds of people there. Even the huge anchor department stores may not have that kind of traffic.
I did get in a few minutes early. After explaining my situation, the attendant attempted to download new software to my machine. It downloaded really slowly. I attempted a dial-up joke but this guy might not have been born when AOL was in its heyday. He told me that if this didn't work I could get a replacement machine for $79. Ugh. I really didn't want to spend any money. We sat and waited while I used my inferior Blackberry. The software loaded. All that was left was to restore my machine and I would be out of the store for no cost other than my melted groceries in the car.
The restoration failed. Crap. Oh well, this iPod had a good year and a half life. It served me well. It allowed me to isolate myself from society just a little more. This was the turning point. The guy told me to get the Apple Care extended warranty the next time I bought an iPod. He then extracted another model exactly like mine, brand new, and put my broken Pod in the packaging. I signed my name a couple of times and left the store before he changed his mind.
How about that. A random act of kindness. It makes me more likely to want to go the extra mile and take the extra step for others. It makes me less likely to get more upset than I should about relatively small things like LeBron, politics, or the scattered details of my life. We can all use an act like this when we're so easily put down by random acts of ignorance.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Third site is the charm
Image caption: This was the original background image for tripmakersonline. Sadly, it didn't fit with the rest of the design.
I created my third site! tripmakersonline.com is live. Here's how it came to be.
Months ago my wife volunteered me to create a travel site for my in-laws. My mother-in-law is part of the dying breed of travel agents. She's based out of Chattanooga. I told them that I would work on the site in my spare time. Spare time was hard to come by. I decided for ease of uploading to create one page with tabbed panels. Tabbed panels is a Dreamweaver trick that creates JavaScript to allow you to click different tabs to access specific content. I used this technique when creating my second site, thehoeyfirm.com.
I was dying to create something cool looking for the site's background. I thought of an old travel standby, the postcard. I found a bunch of cool looking old style postcards and stacked them jigsaw-puzzle style to make a coherent background. It didn't go over well with my testers (wife and in-laws). Sadly the creative part was good but it didn't work with the rest of the design. I instead used a background image of sand. We all like sand. It indicates vacation in a way few images do.
Today I got the green light to upload the site. My wife bought the hosting account through godaddy.com and I uploaded the files. It took a few tries because in godaddy.com 's file upload system you're unable to upload new content after uploading once. I'm sure there's a way around it but I have to log out and log back in every time.
The site's live although there are some steps to take. The forms go to my e-mail address because I need to set up the e-mail account through godaddy. I don't have meta tags yet. SEO isn't a big deal yet since traffic will come through the in-laws contacting customers directly. We may even do an e-mail campaign.
It's fun to create and it's even better when you can get the site live for the world to see. Now it's time to re-design my own page, zachlawonline.com.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sweat equity
I welcome summer on a day when I cannot stop sweating. I'm not an uber sweaty person by nature. I don't sweat at work, or in the car, or on long elevator rides. I sweat when I exercise. Yesterday I hosted some friends to watch the USA/England soccer match, because draws are so quaint, and I overindulged in food and drink. This was a long burn, so instead of drinking five beers in two hours it was more like seven in four. Plus there were sausage rolls from our Scottish friend, a full on grill meal and two boxes of Keebler cookies that prove I will eat anything if it's dipped in fudge.
I felt like fudge this morning. It didn't help that we stayed up until one in the morning in part because I had to watch the NFL Network re-air of Super Bowl 34 and we had one more episode of Big Love to watch before turning in the Netflix disc. The cat puked at 6. He's very prompt that way. I had to purge.
I mowed the lawn first, because home maintenance is important. I knew that the logical follow-up to a lawn-mowing would be a run. I'm no super athlete. The lawn takes about 20 minutes to mow and is more of a warm up.
As my eyes were bigger than my stomach yesterday, my brain was ahead of my body in terms of running. I usually start running cold, without a warm-up, so running after mowing had me going at a good pace. It was only when I reached the point of no return which is a huge hill that's a lot more fun to run down than up that I knew this was going to be a challenge. It was about ten in the morning and in Atlanta summer is here in full force. That means heat and that means humidity. I had a lot more shade on the way in than the way back. As I talked myself into another 100 seconds and another I felt really hot.
It took me about 30 minutes outside reading the AJC sports page to slow down. I went inside and started a load of laundry. The sweat continued. I'm writing upstairs, which is the warmest part of the house. Sweat continues. Right now I feel like I could sweat for the next eight hours. It's no longer cooling. It's annoying.
I felt like fudge this morning. It didn't help that we stayed up until one in the morning in part because I had to watch the NFL Network re-air of Super Bowl 34 and we had one more episode of Big Love to watch before turning in the Netflix disc. The cat puked at 6. He's very prompt that way. I had to purge.
I mowed the lawn first, because home maintenance is important. I knew that the logical follow-up to a lawn-mowing would be a run. I'm no super athlete. The lawn takes about 20 minutes to mow and is more of a warm up.
As my eyes were bigger than my stomach yesterday, my brain was ahead of my body in terms of running. I usually start running cold, without a warm-up, so running after mowing had me going at a good pace. It was only when I reached the point of no return which is a huge hill that's a lot more fun to run down than up that I knew this was going to be a challenge. It was about ten in the morning and in Atlanta summer is here in full force. That means heat and that means humidity. I had a lot more shade on the way in than the way back. As I talked myself into another 100 seconds and another I felt really hot.
It took me about 30 minutes outside reading the AJC sports page to slow down. I went inside and started a load of laundry. The sweat continued. I'm writing upstairs, which is the warmest part of the house. Sweat continues. Right now I feel like I could sweat for the next eight hours. It's no longer cooling. It's annoying.
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