80% rule in writing.

80% of a book's existence is the writing.

20% is everything else: the beta readers, the editing, the dealing with publishers/agents, the book covers, the formatting, the getting up online, the garnering reviews, the publicizing.

That last 20% is responsible for 80% of the problems, the hassles, the stress, the delays.

Up to that point, every decision is in your own hands. You can make snap decisions. If something needs to be done, you can do it.

Suddenly, you're dependent on others, and shit happens.  I mean, sometimes it goes smoothly, but usually there are hiccups, delays, misunderstandings and occasional disagreements.

(Note to Publishers -- you've been great, it's just that it's not all in my hands.)

I could of course just throw my book up online without most of those things. It's possible that might work out -- but pretty improbable.

As you can tell, I love the 80% rule.  It works for just about anything.

I think it's 80% right.

Trapped by my genius.

This is going to sound like a silly complaint.

How do I put it?  I feel trapped by my creative urges.

Around 7:00 last night, after spending 8 hours in front of the computer, I felt like I was in prison.

When did writing become a burden?

Here's the thing -- the creative flow keeps coming.  I darn't turn it down.  After 25 years of getting nowhere, after struggling with ideas after my first 3 books in the 80's, this creative energy is somewhat of miracle.

So I took it and ran with it.

Three years later I'm in an intensive rewrite of a book that I think could be good. I have some time constraints and I have some opportunities.

The opportunities are what I set out to achieve 3 years ago -- so it would be pretty stupid to blow it now.

But this book along with my other "responsibilities" (finished and unfinished books) means that the rest of this year is going to be spent in front of a computer screen. This is the endgame -- or an endgame of sorts. Crazy to slack off now. 

Part of the problem is that I spend as much time in rewriting mode now as I do first draft mode, and rewriting is a chore. 

It has to be done. I've seen enough feedback to know when the rewriting has been noticed and when it hasn't. Basically, it is always noticed, it is always an improvement. It is what makes a book better -- maybe what makes it good.

So there is no fucking choice. So I wrestle with it day after day.

I've never been a terribly outgoing person, but this is a bit much even for me.

I do need to get back to walking in the wilds. This is the one activity that I can do to get out of the house that doesn't disrupt the creative flow, may even enhances it. I burn off some nervous energy, and I refresh the brain.

I need to keep my eye on the prize. The good book. 

Carry on, my man, carry on.

I was in an emotionally volatile mood yesterday and I don't know why.  If I had been drinking I would pin it on that.

Got into a fight with Linda over her watching a game show during the day, cut my ties with the CBIA, and had loud animated phone calls with Matt and Cameron where Linda poked her head in and wondered what I was doing. (Harmless, I was just being animated.)

I also wrote one of the best chapters I've ever written.

I felt those weird tingles all over my body that I get when something is really affecting me --  and Linda teared up.  It was all done without being wordy, in fact by being somewhat oblique.

I think I'm getting better as a writer, some of it by getting feedback, but most of it by simply writing so much.

Carry on, my man, carry on.

Making my wife cry again.

I'm a monster.  I try to make Linda cry.

I have a huge advantage as a writer.

Linda listens to each chapter as they emerge. By reading out loud to her I catch mistakes, she catches mistakes, but most of all I can see her reaction.

I trust her judgment completely. So when she says it's great, I've done something good. If she says it's good, I'm probably still OK. If she scrunches her nose and says, it's OK.  Well, probably have a problem

When I write what I hope is an emotional chapter, I'm hoping to get a reaction from her.

I read her what I hoped was a sad chapter last night, and sure enough she teared up.

Success!  I made her cry again! 

I was a little surprised to feel some tingles myself, which is even rarer. In fact, I think it's only happened once before. So that chapter probably works.

Less is more. I did it all obliquely, and therefore it was more successful. A well crafted chapter, by god.

All I ask if for one of those every once in awhile and maybe someday I'll string a whole bunch of them together and maybe one day every chapter in the book will be that way.

The Brazilian and the World Cup.

An old customer of mine who I hadn't seen in awhile came in looking for a book and said he was leaving the country.

I mentioned that I'd written a book, ahem, and showed him Led to the Slaughter.

He did the usual, "...hmmm, interesting..." as in Not.

As we're talking a young woman comes in and fixes eyes with me, and moves between us and says, "Are you Duncan?  I've driven here to get a signed copy of your book, which I loved."

"Well thank you!" I say.

"I wanted to tell you that my Brazilian cousin was so hooked by your book that he was reading it during the World Cup!  I'm sending him a copy as a gift."

"Wow," says my friend. "A Brazilian and the World Cup!" He picks up a copy of the book and places it on top of his pile.  "I've always loved the Donner Party," he says.

Sold out of my copies of Led to the Slaughter at the store.  I'm going to have to use my personal copies until I can get some more.  Such troubles...

All I can ask for.

I've always found writing down on paper the story I've already thought of in my head to be anti-climactic. I want to just wave my hand and have it done already.

I've written five new chapters for Blood of the Succubus.  All of them have come, dare I say it, easy.  I already knew what I wanted them to do.  There are some surprising details and twists while I write, but mostly, you know, they are simply coloring within the lines.

The story exists in my head (and it exists in some extra dimension somewhere -- which is where I'm pulling it from in the first place.)

If writing is pure, then thinking of the story is even purer.  But just as writing the story is different from getting people to read the story, thinking of the story doesn't do me any good unless it is written down.

I know this seems obvious, but the more I write the more I realize that writing has nothing to do with what happens afterwards.

Writing the book is its own thing.  It is the book and nothing but the book.

Really hammering this home is the fact that I'm sitting on complete books. That experience is complete. The story is complete.

But it might as well be a black hole as far as meaning anything, because even though I had the experience of writing it, and even though it exists -- no one will ever know unless I can find a way to get it out where people can find it.

The Internet has changed the equation.  At least now I know if I write a book I can put it someplace where the possibility exists that someone will read it.

The possibility...

I think that is all I can ask for.

Extended length or expanded story?

Just like that, my 58K word novel is 68K words and I feel like I've barely started. Blood of the Succubus.

Linda says it's good, it's great; the best thing I've done since Led to the Slaughter, which was her favorite. 

It certainly is coming easy.  Too easy.  I'm pretty sure an asteroid is going to land on my head, because it is so easy and the universe demands balance.

Went for a walk in the Badlands yesterday. Thought it was going to be cool weather, but halfway through the walk, I realized I'd made a big mistake wearing a black shirt. It was about 80 but felt hotter.

Anyway, made my usual circuit, wrote half a chapter, and came back home.

The whole book with expansions is mapped out.  I just need to sit down each day and write at least one chapter and I'll be done in no time.

What's cool about it is that it doesn't contradict or disrupt the existing story in any way. Hopefully it only enhances it.  The only difficulty so far is trying to decide where the chapters fit best.  I'm making my best guess, but I'll need to read it through when I'm finished to see if it works.

I had a comment that Led to the Slaughter wasn't "long" enough for a mass market book. So I decided to push Blood of the Succubus into 80K words. The bonus is that I think it is improving the book, giving it extra layers of depth.

But last night I looked up Led to the Slaughter and it was 78K words, which I would have thought long enough for mass market.  I think the format -- a larger tradepaperback -- and the font -- Garamond -- made it seem smaller than it was...

Anyway, Blood of the Succubus will be the size it is -- probably around 85K words, I'm guessing now.  I might be able to push that to 90K words by further fleshing out.

Doesn't matter, I suppose. The book has been improved by expanding. Enough so that I'm determined to take the extra time to do that to all my books. But not so much because of the extended length but because of the expanded story.

Creativity is not a limited resource.

What works best for me is to not consider creativity a limited resource.

I get an idea and think, "I can do that."

Then I get started. Sometimes it takes longer than expected, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's impossible, sometimes it's a false start.

But I never turn down the idea. I never think it's too much work.  I never worry about whether it's commercial or whether it fits anywhere.

I just try to write it. I think I can do it all. I try to do it all.

There is also the idea that if it doesn't work, no harm. I can set it aside, or change it.

There's always more where that came from.

This openness to writing, without filters, has been incredibly productive.

There is an important caveat.  I need to finish most of what I start.

It's probably only possible because of the digital world, with the assumption that if I finish and if it's any good, I can put it out. Nothing blocking me.

So write it.

Flashback city.

I chose a story element for The Blood of the Succubus that probably isn't going to go well with some readers.  I kind of wish I had come up with a different solution, but it's too late now. The "element" will take some convincing since it is so outlandish. The emotional response by the characters has to be believable. So I've been rewriting these chapters a lot.

I have 3 threads, more or less. The first thread is the original plot. The second thread is the introduction of another character, who is a good guy separate from the first characters. The third thread is the Succubae themselves.

In the first draft it was 50/30/20.

The addition of new chapters is going to make it more like 40/30/30, more equal in weight.  I'm hoping the story can maintain it's cohesion.  The main thread still has to carry the forward momentum, since so much of the other parts of the book are flashbacks. I'm thinking it will turn out 60% current, 40% flashback.

That's a heavy use of flashback, but I think I can make them interesting enough and pertinent enough to the story to not be too distracting.

I hope.

I may not know until I've finished the book.  If it doesn't work, I'll pare back the flashback chapters and have a shorter book again.

Very cool.

Man, I love the invention.

Doubts can come later, but I love the first drafts, especially when they are going well, especially when the words are just flowing.

I've written the first new chapter of Blood of the Succubus and I love it.  I feel totally energized by the potential of this book, and I'm so glad I decided to take another look at it.

Spent most of yesterday finishing Bren's critique.

Then somehow started rewriting the second chapter. It became quite the project, taking most of the evening, but in the end it was completely redone, beginning to end, and came out much, much better.

That's only the second chapter.

So, I do have a fair amount of work ahead, but I'm excited by the possibilities.

Sex is a big idea, it turns out.

I'm going to be finishing Bren's critique of The Blood of the Succubus today, and I have to admit the book is improved.

I had thought it was already ready, and now it's more ready, but...

I have some ideas.

Sex is a pretty big idea, it turns out.  Lots of ramifications.

The original idea was that the Three Daughters of Lilith, the Succubae: Eisheth, Naamah, and Agrat Bat wander the earth to tempt man and drain him of his lifeforce. A group of men and women try to stop them.

So what about women? Are evil women temptresses a harmful stereotype? How about aggressive men? What about gays? When is sex wrong?  What about....so much more...

I'd sort of decided not to address many of those ramifications in an effort to keep things simple, but I'm beginning to think there is no way to avoid them. I at least have to say something.

Anyway, I've thought of a whole bunch of historical flashback chapters I can write, and a few new current chapters that won't disrupt the continuity too much. These should provide information, answer questions, but most of all add some depth and complexity to the story.

It's daunting.

There are so many landmines in this story that I probably can't escape at least some censure for getting something wrong in one way or another.  Not just the appropriateness of the sex, but more dangerously, the sexual politics. I'm bound to get the political correctness wrong, just because gender politics are so fraught.

It would be so much easier to let the book go the way it is.  It's "Good Enough" but that's just it -- I told myself going into this whole writing gig that I wouldn't let those words be my scale of success.  "Good Enough" isn't good enough.

So I'm sort of bound to do this further rewrite.

There is a added bonus of making this book longer, and I need to start writing longer books.

The advantage is the 90% of it is new material, and I do like writing new material.  There will be some adjustments, but hopefully the puzzle won't fall apart.

So off I go, doing something I hadn't planned on. Which pretty much describes my writing career.

Making up for lost time.

If you had told me three years ago that writing would become all consuming, I probably would have said, "Good!" After all, I'd just spent 25 years not writing, or trying to write and only coming up with the first few pages of a story.

So, yeah, the goal was to incubate the writing. To get writing.

I had a bit of slow start, but about six months in I forced myself to finish my first book. I gave it to a couple of beta readers who didn't much like it. I had to take a second look, and realized they were right. Anyway, I floundered with this book (still am 3 years later, though in some ways it is still my favorite story and I intend to finish it one way or another.)

Then came what I think of as the miracle year when I was so engrossed in writing, I barely poked my head out the door.  That was fine, that was fun, and it is particularly impressive to me because I had no indication at the time whether it was going to do me the slightest good.

I call it the miracle year because it was purely for the love of writing.

The very next book gave me a clue, then the next book really got me rolling, and the book right after that was Led to the Slaughter which I thought was pretty good. Then The Vampire Evolution trilogy, which I also thought was pretty good.

At the end of the year I had so much material I thought I should reach out, and it's been more complicated ever since. Lots of attention must be paid to practical matters like rewriting, copy-editing, covers, uploading, marketing, reviews, social media, publishers, you know, the actual books.

Occasionally I still break off from the business aspects to do the pure writing. Tuskers came to me in a rush, and I loved it, and I thought it turned out exactly as I intended.

So by now, if you had asked me 3 years ago, I would have expected to slow down, but now the momentum has set in, the habits, the need to finish, the need to revise, and it seems like all I do is write.  Not even time for movies, or gardening, or most other things.

I'm glad that I work at the store every week, and frankly wouldn't mind another day of that, but my guys are doing such a bang up job there that I don't want to mess with the formula.

Sometimes I go out into the real world and it's like, "Wow. Look how fast everyone is moving! Look at what they're doing! Listen to what they're saying!  Wow!"

But then I get sucked right back into writing.

I've managed to go kayaking a few times this summer. A couple of movies. A couple of times in the garden.

But I've not even been going on walks, which I was doing in my miracle year. I intend to start that up again when the weather gets cooler. (Like today, yea!)

I'm still operating on the assumption that this can't last forever, and as long as the muse keeps supplying I will keep worshiping at her altar.  I'll try to keep my head in the real world, though sometimes it's hard, sometimes I resent having to leave my current story.

I'm obsessed, compulsive, and I can't really argue with the results.

I think I'm trying to make up for lost time. I'm in my 60's, which is pretty old to be a beginning writer.  I think a few more books and I can probably give up the "beginning" label.  (This is all in my head -- to me a writer earns a living at writing, and I'm far from doing that.)

I keep making progress, new stories keep coming to me.

A new wrinkle is that I've decided that rewriting -- revising -- is really something that improves a book and I should do more of that, so add that to my compulsive agenda...

So I'm giving in to this compulsion, despite some doubts about the healthiness of it. Art must be done! I'm incredibly lucky that things have worked out this way.

It would be stupid to stop now.

P.S.

I read this to Linda and she said, "You were that way in the store. That's why we survived..."

Second thoughts.

I'm starting to have second thoughts about changing my writing process and how I deal with completed manuscripts.

Giving it another rewrite is a good idea and I'm going to do that.

But trying to expand 60K novels to 80K novels -- that I'm not so sure about. These are good books as they are. Expanding them wouldn't necessarily make them better, they would just fit some outside perimeter of what publishers might be looking for.

So I think I'll not do the expansion thing unless there is a specific request to do so.

What I've been doing as been working pretty well. I write the best novel I know how, and then move on the next novel, trying to make it better. I think it would be mistake to linger on books that I've finished and that I already like.

As I said -- the extra rewrite -- that's O.K.

Otherwise, just keep on trucking.

Headline puzzlers.

Nazi gold train.  How do you lose an entire train for 70 years?

*****

All men, no women on Ashley Madison. So what the hell was everyone doing?

*****

Stephen Hawking's new 'discovery.' Didn't he, like, discover this years ago?

*****

Water parks and water slides and "historical canals" -- and fires and fires and more fires.

***

Hottest July in history. Just saying...

*****

I just can't get worked up over Trump.

*****

So there's this theory about Jon Snow and it goes like this.  Oh...fuck it. Who cares?

*****

Not once have I been "astounded" or "stunned" or "thrilled" by a bait click headline...well, except for cat videos. That happens every day.

*****

Damn. I swear I do all those "Things Rich and Powerful Do."  Unfortunately I apparently also do all those things "That Keep You From Being Rich and Powerful."

*****

Man, I'm outraged. Totally outraged!

Wow...am I tired.

*****

The Dreaded Rewrite.

I'm working on a full rewrite of Blood of the Succubus (formerly known as The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders.)

Bren did a great job of critiquing it. I was already doing considerable rewriting while addressing her suggestions. I may as well really bear down, beginning to end.

The Last Sombrero was going well, but I'm going to leave it for now to work on the other books.

Both The Last Fedora and Blood of the Succubus were complete, and I'd planned to send them off...but....

I've decided I can probably write at my current level forever. Which is fine. But if I want to make progress, I really need to try to take a step up.

So from now on, I'm going to give every book one more full rewrite, even when I think they're finished, because I've discovered that there are still enough improvements when I do this to make it worthwhile.

It takes up to a full month to do a thorough job.

I flesh out the story with telling details, smooth out story inconsistencies, and strengthen connections.

I don't LIKE doing it. But I can see the value. Taking one more month per book to make them better just makes sense.

With some firm rules.

1.) I will not change any part of the manuscript that pulls apart the puzzle. That is, if adding or subtracting the piece destroys the whole, I won't do it. Additions or subtractions that don't do this are OK.

2.) I will not obsess over the language to the point where I lose feeling for the story. The dreaded "word-jumble." This is going to take some fine judgement about how little or how much to do, but I've done enough rewriting to think I can negotiate the traps.

Another reason I'm doing rewrites is that I've decided that every book should be 80K words or more, instead of the 60K words I've been doing. 60K words are fine for ebooks, but 80K are better for physical books, and if my ultimate goal is to be in every bookstore, I'd better get started.

Every book I've put out so far has been as good as I knew how to make them. I've got quite a few "trunk books" which may or may not ever be published, but so far, I think I've chosen correctly which stories to pursue.

This is just a continuation of that process.

Schrodinger's Cat books.

I have a bunch of book that are alive or not alive, depending on whether I look at them.

I have three or four that I could pick up and give the final push.

I have a bunch more that require full rewrites.

But my heart wants to write another original book, and another, and that's what I'm doing with the theory that none of it is wasted. Inspiration is the currency here. Hard work is the payment.

I can always put the hard work of rewriting in, even when I'm not necessary inspired. But I can't write new stories without at least some inspiration, and despite all the advice not to wait for inspiration, I also believe its dangerous not to take the inspiration when it comes.

By that I mean the words flowing, the excitement I feel to see where the story is going. That feeling can't be manufactured -- it can be incubated, but not forced.

I've been expecting it to flag for about 3 years now, but it just keeps flowing and damn if I'm going to stop it.  Something will probably happen someday that puts the brakes to it, so I'm just going to keep writing until that happens.

Hopefully it will never happen.  Hopefully I'll just keep writing, getting slightly better with each effort.

All I know is I enjoy the inspiration...I'll let Schrodinger's Cat alone for now.

When the Villain takes over.

Villains are inherently more interesting to write.

And because of that there is a constant temptation to turn them into good guys.

You see it all the time on TV shows. Some bad guy, who makes the show interesting, and over time they start becoming "nicer."  I heard this phenomenon often happens because the actor who plays the villain starts to agitate to make his/her character more "human" or "rounded" and thus the character loses what made the character fascinating in the first place.

That's probably so, but I also think any creator who has an interesting character wants to do the same thing.

So I try to resist.

Still, my new Golem, who's name is Mud (yes, his name is Mud) is the titular bad guy, has taken over my book. Which is good, in a way, because he is the title character, the wearer of The Last Sombrero. I think it's OK to make him a tragic character, one that the reader can sympathize with, but not make him good.

Last night I thought of the ending, which is one of the landmarks in any book, maybe the most important.

I don't know how the full book is going to play out.  About 15K words in I always realize that I need to add more elements, and I've begun that process.  I want to keep it as simple as possible.

The major bad guy left from The Last Fedora is still out there, but I intend to save him for the third book.

Thing is, I'm excited to wake up every morning to write. The book has me in it's grips. I stopped writing before dinner yesterday, as usual, but the ideas kept coming and finally I just sat down at midnight and wrote another chapter.

I need to remind myself whenever I'm in the doldrums of rewriting that this part of the process is so fulfilling and so much fun. Rewriting is totally necessary, and it makes the book better for the reader, but the first draft is so much more fun for the writer.

What a pleasure it is...

What a pleasure it is when the words come spilling out, fully formed, the characters alive, the plot making sense. A story that seems to exist outside myself and all I'm doing is writing it down.

I needed this. After struggling with Gargoyle Dreams and then spending a month rewriting Tuskers III, it is nice to get back to inventing again.

It's a cleansing of the palate, a reminder of why I do this.

I have no doubt that finishing a book I'm struggling with is the right thing to do.  I have no doubt that rewriting books is beneficial.

But the fun part is the storytelling.

It's thrilling when an idea loops around and becomes thematic, when you didn't even plan it.

It really is like reading a good book. I'm discovering the story in the same way, and when the story works, I like it in the same way.

It just reminds me that the book itself is everything. It is self-contained. It doesn't matter what happens after, or marketing or any of those things.

All that matters is how well you tell the story.

Walked away from the dead.

SPOILERS:


Fear the Walking Dead.  

Basically Walked away from the Dead.

Every time I thought they were winding up for a scary scene, it fizzled. Instead, we had about the most annoying Johnny Depp imitator acting all weird for 60 minutes, while Mom is a tight ass and stepdad a wimp and little sister a little twit.

That's it.

Family dynamics to Fear.

So they constantly had scenes where there could have been a confrontation -- not one but two separate visits to the scary church where we met the zombie at the start of the show. Nothing.

Old guy in the bed making scary noises, and Johnny Depp tied to his bed. Nice nurse comes in and unties one of his hands, and I'm ready for a nice Old Man Zombie trying to chomp on a one-hand-tied Deppster.

Instead, the old guy is taken away and Johnny Depp minces out of the hospital and acts weird for another 30 minutes. 

That kind of thing -- all the way through the show.

Really hope this isn't what they're going for.

Try for emotion.

Emotion is hard to write.  Oh, it's easy enough to talk about it. To put in all the words that are supposed to signify emotion, but unless the reader feels it, it's just sentiment.

I set out to write Gargoyle Dreams as a pure love story, a sort of Hunchback of Notre Dame kind of tale, but as it evolved it became more of an adventure story -- as I am prone to write.  Nothing really wrong with that, and I still like the book. Linda did actually tear up as I read the last chapter, so I must have succeeded at some level.

Still, to write about Love for an entire book is a hard thing to do.

Maybe I shouldn't even try. Maybe the emotion is a byproduct of the story.

But it is my intention to try harder to have real emotions in my stories.  To have characters who feel real enough for people to care about.

To my great surprise, I'm writing a second Golem book.  The first three chapters came spilling out of me. But this morning, I needed to decide on where to go from here.

I came up with a plot turn, but...well, it seemed kind of standard,  somehow. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing that great about it either.

Instead I asked myself, whose personality needs to be expressed?  Which character do I need to go into the head of?

So the fourth chapter is going in a different direction than I thought. I'm going into Jacob the Good Golem's head. He's become human, or has he?

There is a lot to milk there -- philosophically and emotionally.  The Frankenstein story of what makes a human.

I'm hoping I can keep making these decisions about the plot that feel true and surprising.