The Lousypoet

Ive been mulling over a new story these past couple of days. Like so many of my ideas in the past Im at that early love stage where Ive yet to become alienated. Im sitting in front of the computer staring at the screen. While Ive thought about the opening, I think Ive invested a little too much time in looking toward the direction of the story as opposed to actually writing it.

Now I find myself at the beginning and no matter what I write it just doesnt seem right. Sometimes the beginning is the hardest place to start. I suppose Im putting too much pressure on myself. The great audience catching opening can come in a later draft. For now, I should just try to actually write something from beginning to end. Maybe this will be the one. Or maybe this will be false start number 10.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. It feels like I’ve been moving so fast, that I don’t even know how much time has gone by. I suppose it’s a good thing that the entries are dated. From that little bit of info, it would be 27 days since I last logged in and wrote anything.

Truth be told, that’s probably the last time I wrote anything of my novel. I was stuck for the longest time. Then, in a matter of days, I wrote a chapter that I felt was the best so far, but it also meant that significant changes would have to be made to the opening. I don’t think that has me crushed. I mean, I always knew I would have to go back and rewrite those sections, and what it did to the story makes it more… compelling? It’s just now I’m stuck again, and moving at the speed I am, I can’t get my head wrapped around it. When I get the time I could be devoting to the book, I instead sit and waste my life playing Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. Every day I feel more like a loser.

Carolyn is working so hard at school, and some of the stuff she has produced has been amazing. But it seems every day the stress of it threatens to swallow her whole. It’s hard returning to that kind of life after so long. But at the same time, I am so proud of what she has accomplished and how far she has come. If we can just get through this term and the 3 that follow it, I have a strong feeling that this is going to open some incredible doors. Which is probably why I feel the way I do. I’m watching her fulfill what seems like her destiny. It seems all I can do is stall mine. And the worst part of that is it is entirely my fault. I do have time, I could be doing something more, but I just don’t.

Imagine my disappointment that Anne Rice has a new series entitled “Songs of the Seraphim.” I have been sitting on that title for so damn long. I knew it would be good. And now I see it in print. Don’t worry Ms Rice, I know you don’t know me and that my insignificant blog would have never come to your attention. No law suit worries here… Still, disappointed. I’ll have to come up with something entirely different. Ironically, the first book in the series, entitled Angel Time, sounds pretty cool. I might actually read it.

Which brings me to the horror that if I don’t move on this story, how long will it be until someone else uses ideas that will render my story as being a knock-off. Every day I wait is each day my ideas become stale and that some existing author is going to use similar ideas. Problem being, I just don’t feel good enough to write this. I have vague notions of how I want the story to be, but I really lack the training to make it happen. I’ve looked to see if there’s any workshops in my area, but I can’t really find anything. Not that it matters, I wouldn’t have the money for it.

I lost my dad to cancer almost two months ago. God, that’s a weird thing to type. At the time, I had no idea what to say. I thought a million times about writing about it here; writing about him. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It took me nearly a week to finally cry, and I think the tears have only come once more since then. Sometimes I feel horrible, like this should be killing me every day, but then how would I take care of my family that needs me. It hurts most when something happens and I realise he’s not there to talk to. Like sitting here right now, writing this, I feel like there’s million conversations I’d like to have with him, and I can feel the tears welling behind my eyes. I’ve never been one to believe in ghosts, or visitations from beyond the grave. But a part of me continues to hope I’ll see him. And I keep hoping that when that happens he’ll have some insight into my life that I’ve failed to notice. Yup, here come the tears… I’m not going to write a eulogy here. I wouldn’t feel like anything I wrote came close to encompassing my emotions or thoughts. All I’m going to say is that I loved him and I wish he were here. I suppose that’s enough.

Shit, I don’t know where that came from. I just feel like I’m unloading a bit. I don’t know where I’m going. I feel like my wheels are spinning and I’m driving without a destination.

So many ghosts haunt me. Not the literal kind, but, well, the deeds, the thoughts, those things you hope will die with time but never do. Sometimes their weight is crushing. Sometimes I think I won’t make it. But every morning I get up and do what I can to get through the day with my sanity and family intact. Why do we sin the way we do? Are we worthy of redemption? If an angel stood before me now and said I had a purpose, and that all of this was for good reason, just what would I say to him? Thank you… probably. Just for the comfort that it all means something.

Sorry for this post. It’s all over the place, and none of those places are much fun. But I do feel better. I suppose I should come here more often. It is my space after all. Besides, it’s not like anyone even reads this stuff. But if you happen to be the one in 6 billion who does, thanks. I hope I haven’t bored you to tears.

Just a quick couple of notes.

On my own writing front, I currently sit at 12,000 words and 40 pages. But the past two nights have yielded some sweet fruit. Talking to Carolyn about the story, between us we’ve come up with some key scenes, a running gag that I think will add some great little laughs for the series, and the grand-daddy end of the whole thing. In all, a pretty good two days’ work.

Now two links that I’m posting for myself and the interest of anyone who cares.

First up is Vonnegut’s Eight Rules of Writing Fiction. Sweet, simple, and so damned to the point that it’s hard to not be inspired by them.

Secondly, a link in regards to Guidelines for writing Young Adult Novels. Since my particular book is currently aimed at this demographic, I found this short, simple, yet informative article pretty damn handy.

Finally we have some writing tips from the Godfather of Horror, Mr. Stephen King. In the ten minutes it takes you to read the article, Mr. King promises to teach you all that is needed to write a novel. And the funny thing is, I actually did…

So I was reading Twitter entries, and one mentioned that MS Word had functions that would assess your writing level, ease of writing and would also check for passive voice. I decided to run this on the sections of SotS that I’ve written so far, and was not too surprised to find several instances of passive voice. So I fixed it. And funny enough, it felt empowering. It also seems I write in a fairly accessible form, as I scored better than 78% on the ease of readability scale. It also says that I’m writing at a level that should be easily understood by kids in grade 5. That would be about the age of 10. It’s a little low for the demographic I’m aiming at, but I don’t think that’s completely a bad thing. Besides, this is only the first draft.

I’ve never understood the word ‘procrastination.’ I failed to see how anyone could be ‘pro’ for anything so damaging and self defeating. Thanks to dictionary.com, I’m now aware that pro is Latin for forward, and that the rest of the word translates roughly into tomorrow. So, forward until tomorrow. Or in many people’s cases, next week.

I mention this, cause it seems to be exactly what I’m doing with my book. I sit here at the computer and instead of writing, I do damn near anything but. Last night I managed to do a very rough layout of the scenes within the book. So far, I’m at 40 scenes. If I made each scene 1,500 words, I would be at the magic number of 60,000, which is roughly the size of the average YA novel. Oddly though, I find I’m just being very slow on the uptake. I think I’m afraid to go to the places I have planned, because although I know the destination, I’ve yet to work out the itinerary for when I arrive. I suppose that frightens me, especially when all has been flowing pretty easily. At the moment I’ve written 10,156 words and 36 pages. I’ve also worked out a new title (though it does incorporate my working title in a sense). Anyway, I’ll wait to see what the book is ultimately called. For sake of continuity, I’ll continue to refer to it as Song of the Seraphim or SotS. In the end, I suppose a title selection will involve any agents or potential publishers.

It does surprise me how opening myself up to the story is seeing it go places I never really anticipated. Typing out the outline last night, I was really surprised at how it just seemed to flow. There’s a ton of gaps, but I’m hoping those things will open themselves to even more scenes and just to help further the story and develop the characters. I think that now I have my overall plot, I need to start working scene to scene. My initial scenes are written, though I know I’ll be rewriting them when the time comes. For now, I think I just need to keep plunging ahead.

I can’t help but feel some pains of jealousy when I read about authors and their various trips to conventions, then hopping planes to other locations for a trip, then moving on to even more locations for signings. I suppose it would be tough on a family, maybe one day I’ll be cursed (yeah, right) with the burden of figuring it out for myself.

Anyway, just another inane entry. I just thought I would update on the novel progress so far. Hopefully next time will show even more progress.

Wow, I am in a funk; and not the “play that funky music white boy” kind of way.

I just wrote two pages of Song of the Seraphim. I have 30 pages now, approximately 8,500 words. What fills me with optimism is that I still have more scenes to write; this is typically the point where my idea loses steam and I ask too many questions about the strength of my story and eventually give up. This time, I still feel that the story is strong, but I’m wondering what I’m really trying to say, or if this is just a tale for the sake of a tale. It just seems to me that this story is writing itself as I go, which is good and bad at all the same time. It’s good, because the easier the ideas flow, the better I believe the end result will be. Bad, because I know that this is going to result in endless re-writes if I ever finish the thing, becuase the end of the journey is outside of my reach.

Last night, I felt like the veil was lifting, and there was a sense of inspiration that I yearned to follow. So what did I do? I fell asleep. Yeah, seriously, I fell asleep. I’m such a loser sometimes. This kind of feeling occurs every now and then; I went into more detail in a post I wrote in October of 2008.

Tonight I feel listless, anxious, but at the same time trying to motivate myself is damn near impossible. With ideas that would carry me at least another 10,000 words onward, I should be hammering away, but it’s really not flowing tonight. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a bit better.

In the meantime, all the best in what you do. Sleep well tonight world.

So I haven’t been around this blog for the better part of two weeks. Life’s just been busy I suppose. I haven’t really had time to even sit down and continue Song of the Seraphim. I’m now almost 10,000 words into it. And what’s better is that I have at least double that already planned in my head (though I’m sure what I have writtten needs more expanding and the things to come are starting to very easily lend themselves to far more material.

Diet wise, I only lost 2 lbs on our past weigh in last Thursday. That’s because I cheated… A LOT! I also haven’t worked out in a while. I really do want to get back on track. Watching some health concerns of loved ones, I know that if I want to live a long and happy life, I really need to take better care of myself. So this week I am determined to do better. I’m off to a crappy start though. We went to Sudbury to check out Science North and Dynaimc Earth. And I ate my face off. Oh well, vacations, what can you do?

Speaking of Dynamic Eath, I was really impressed with that presentation. You actually go 65 feet beneath the Earth’s surface to an actual mine and they take you through what mines looked like from the early 1900s right up to the modern era. It was really well done, though it freaked my youngest out a bit. Science North was all right, but I don’t think my kids were quite in the right frame of mind (or age) to enjoy all that it had to offer. It might be also because we did that as soon as we reached town, which meant we were going into it after almost 4 or so hours of driving.

Sudbury itself is a bit bleak. We drove around, trying to find some nice areas, but everything looked a bit run down and industrial. A friend of Carolyn’s lives in town and I think her subdivision was rather nice, but to find only one nice area in a city of over 160,000 people is a little dire. And the roads! Potholes like mad and no matter which way I would go, I always seemed to loop back around somehow. And to think that I believed the roads in Barrie were bad! In the end, we all had a pretty good time, and I do have to say the the Raddison hotel we stayed in was really beautiful.

So that’s where I sit today. I have to go to work this morning, so I’ll wrap this up. Hopefully I’ll have more to write soon.

So after much thought and consideration, I have finally put some words to paper and have hammered out the first chapter of Song of the Seraphim! It’s not brilliant literature by any means, but it exists, and I’m excited by what I know is to come. And best of all, the things I envisioned in that first chapter actually happened and blended quite well together! The turning point was a dream I had two nights ago. Funny enough, I knew what most of chapter one was going to be. The only thing that was stopping me was that I was stumped about how I was going to move my main character from point A to point B. I also wondered just what event would bring my main character into contact with my secondary lead. The book will see the two of them traveling together, so how they were going to meet was a pretty critical point. I really wanted it to be a moment of impact, and a time that would establish my secondary character as a person of strength and determination. I just couldn’t come up with a few key points. Then, I had this dream. It didn’t fit specifically into the story, but in its core elements I found all the answers I had been looking for. Ironically, I didn’t actually get to that part with the writing yesterday, but I have a pretty solid idea. I also have a pretty solid idea of the main scene that will occur after my dream inspired moment. My only challenge will be connecting the two.

What is funny is that I had initially had an idea of the world I was going to be setting this in. I thought I had most of it figured out. Then I had this dream, and by incorporating its elements into the story, it took my initial ideas and twisted them ever so slightly. I now have ideas that I think are even better than my first! This is exciting. I’ve read a number of times where authors state how the story guides them and how ideas they had initially evolved because of how the story was guiding things. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this before, but I have now! There is something thrilling about discovery in writing. Now I need to channel that energy and enthusiasm and keep things up. My problem, I know, is that I’m going to stall after my next two scenes, because I haven’t formed a clear idea of where that is going.

I think in the grand scheme of writing, what I need to do is, instead of writing a full on Novel Blueprint, I should just write out the next few steps, write the story to that point, and then plot the next chapter or so, and so on. I think if I truly sit and do nothing but try and write a complete blueprint before I start the actual story, I never will write the story. Besides, as I said, it seems to me that much of this story is waiting to be told, and the more I force it, the more it will resist me. I think I really need to just take the journey and see what happens.

The final thought I’m going to write here about my current project, is that I’m learning to for give myself. I’ve always been a harsh critic of myself, and I’ve always had a tendency to stop being productive because I thought what I was doing was sub-par. I realise, especially after following a number of established, and aspiring authors, on Twitter, that rarely does anyone put brilliance on paper the first time around. I’m sure far more experienced authors do far fewer revisions because their style is established, but none the less, I take comfort that my first faltering steps are in good company. I agonised the last time I had to write my first line, but this time I just let it go. Right now, I think it’s more important to run with the story, and then go clean up the mess afterward. I’m thinking writing a book for me is going to be very much like painting.

Almost a month ago I wrote about the need for a Novel Blueprint; I was frustrated with my lack of success at just starting my book without having done much in the way of planning or research. Well, I’ve done some reading, made some notes, and I thought I was on track at getting this thing started. And then I made a mistake that I wonder if any real authors have; I went back and opened my folder of story ideas and false starts and read the whole lot.

While I did this, I realised that the story I was currently working on just wasn’t as good as I thought it was. It just didn’t capture me the way that one of my ideas that I had previously discarded did. And so I was left pondering, do I shelve this current project and return to my old premise, or do I forge ahead, with the constant buzzing in the back of my head that I’m writing the wrong story?

I wonder how established authors deal with having more than one story idea in their head at once. Do they write more than one book at once? Do they flip a coin to decide which to write first and then continue making notes for the other when thoughts occur to them? I wonder….

I figure that’s what I’ll do. I’m going to write the one story, and then if any ideas present themselves for the other, I’ll just add them to the growing notes. Then, hopefully when I’m finished book one (how long have I been trying to write a book now?) I’ll have amassed enough material to start book two right away. Yes, I live in a place of high hopes and few realised expectations.

I was talking to Carolyn the other day, and she pointed out the obvious; unless I stop talking about all these different ideas and just settle down and write one of them, I will never see this dream realised. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to just do that. I suppose I’ve never believed enough in myself or my ideas to sit down and write; or my ideas have not provided me with the inspiration to make writing fun, it just seems like a chore.

So I have finally made my decision. The story I’m going to write I will refer to under the working title of Song of the Seraphim. I’m not sure if that will be the final title. In fact, at this point I’m sure it won’t be, but I’ve always thought that would make a cool title, so I’m using it for now. I’m hoping as the process goes, I’ll find the true title.

In the meantime, so the work of the past has not been completely for not, I’m using some of the research I did for my previous idea in SotS. In fact, one of the reasons I abandoned SotS in the first place was that I couldn’t come up with a compelling villain. Well, my research for my previous story (Which was under the working title Ashdale) has provided me with one. So, that’s a big hole filled. I also liked the name of my main protagonist, so I’m going to use it in SotS, I’ll just have to find a new one if I ever decide to write Ashdale.

So, where to start? Well, I have some ideas plotted out for the start of the book, so that should hopefully get me underway. Then I think instead of trying to plot everything ahead of time, I’m going to let the story take me along, and show me where it wants to go. While planning ahead is a great pursuit, and probably works really well, right now it’s just something I’m using as an excuse to not get any real writing done.

I’ll update as I go along….

Several months ago, I created a Twitter account. I admit that I did it during a phase where I felt compelled to sign up for everything I thought might promote this here website. I suppose that drive came from an insane idea I had that by putting links for this site in numerous places, I might

a) Drive more traffic to the site

b) Improve my Google Pagerank

c) Make mountains of money from Google Adwords and Paid to Post programs

Well, I no longer do Paid for Post (as I stated back in May) and when I started using the new layout, I decided to fore-go the Google Adwords (no one was clicking them anyway), so all that linking was redundant.

According to my pagerank counter, I don’t get shit in terms of traffic each week either, so that was a huge bust.

And last but not least, my Google pagerank currently sits at 0, so that was about as big a bust as could be!

Now, this has been a long winded-round-a-bout way of getting to me being on Twitter. I never did use it until I convinced Carolyn that it might be a good networking tool; once I saw how much she was using it, I decided to join the fun.

One of my watches is Writer’s Digest. They’ve got a great mag, some really useful online content, and provide some great insight into the craft of writing. So they just posted a few tweets that I had to share.

The first is a cool little idea that could provide you with some much needed inspiration during those dry periods of creativity. It is to type a few words into Google and see the results that the autocomplete suggests. I’ll let them tell it in their own words, go check out How to Write a Novel Using Google’s Autocomplete.

Secondly, is a great list that might entice you to Twitter (if you want to be a writer). Meryl K. Evans (@merylkevans) wrote a great article called 50+ Writer Uses For Twitter. This one got me pretty psyched about using Twitter, and I added her to my following list.

I suppose it’s for links like these, and hopefully a whole bunch of others from Meryl’s list, that I’m trying to increase my Twitter presence. If you feel so inclined, you can Follow me on Twitter (@Lousypoet).