Something I Wanted to do at Least Once in My Life

Today I officially held and fired a firearm; a pistol to be exact.  In celebration of my wife’s birthday, we decided to all go to the shooting range.  Part of me was looking forward to this just because I was going to get an opportunity to shoot a real gun, but the writer part of me was looking forward to all the details and experience I would get from it which I would be able to use in future writing.

There were so many interesting facets from the feel of the heavy, solid bullets, all lined up in a box.  The toughness of loading the bullets into the clip, and how it’s pretty tough and not as easy as they make it look on TV.  The extreme noise the gun makes with each shot, as well as the constant shooing going on around you with everyone else firing their pistols or rifles.  (I can only try and imagine what it must be like with automatic weapons!)  The great (and in my opinion, best) feeling of loading/jamming the clip into the gun, then chambering a round, and the feel of squeezing the trigger slowly and having this hunk of metal pieces turn into an astonishing and terrifying killing machine.  A weapon.  Then there’s the expended shell launching into the air, often hitting you with its hot metal surface.  It even jammed a few times, adding another great experience.  (I of course took some shells home with me.)

I tried two pistols: the Beretta and the Sig Sauer P 229, which were similar and at the same time different, with the balance of the weight, the feel of the gun going off, and being able to somewhat tell where I hit.  We were using 9mm rounds.  We all actually managed to hit the targets a number of times, with some shots in the center too.

It was a truly fantastic experience that I do look forward to doing again at some point (though it can be expensive, especially with the cost of all the rounds) and possibly trying out a rifle.

And as a final note, a small part of me is somewhat horrified that our species has created this assemblage of metal, gunpowder, and pieces to be this mortifying killing machine.  It just feels so dooming, firing off an explosive bullet and imaging it going into someone’s body.  I don’t think there are really any people who, when shot, can get up and walk away like they do in the movies.

Wyrd Progress Update VI

After putting it off for a few days, with the combined advent of rain (see earlier post), I was able to tackle this difficult scene today.  It was going to be necessary to do some important back story for my two main characters in conversation with another main character, but I forced myself through it and it came out really well and interesting and added some great new facets to the characters once again.  Also developed an interesting technique of having interludes or interludium in Latin (though the plural may be interludus, but I’m not worrying about that at the moment) of having the narrator give some important back story and whatever else may come to mind for the character.  This may be something that in future drafts may get completely changed and/or removed, but at the moment it’s working for the character and the manuscript.

And now for a sample of today’s writing:

“And the supposed ‘wiser’ and older brother, Cateyrn, angrily pushed through the bushes and fell face first into the dung pit!” Vortimer said and everyone in the tent burst into simultaneous laughter – Vortimer, Artorus, Yric, and the two guards.

“I made sure I was out in the countryside all day, running an important errand for my father.  From what I heard, Cateyrn was quite a sight when he returned home to clean up.  And no one had ever seen him that angry before, not even Vortigern.”

WORDS: 1865

PAGES: 8 1/2

Writing in the Rain

Well no, not literally writing in the rain, but rainfall does something special to me.  I don’t know why, but for me, when it’s raining, I always feel like writing.  It’s like a mental switch that just sets everything off in my body to do some writing.  As if the falling water from the sky is preventing me from going anywhere, so I should therefore be writing.

Of course, it doesn’t always rain under the most ideal of conditions, meaning I’m usually working and so don’t have the time to savor the falling drops and be writing at the same time.  Fortunately today was one of those special occasions where I had the day off, it was raining — actually torrential downpour would be a better description for the precipitation at some points — and I was planning on doing some writing anyway.  Though at times the rain was falling so heavily that the noise distracted me, and I had to just look at the window and admire it’s ferocity.  It was a very human moment, being able to appreciate the strength of a large amount of water falling from on high and saturating the ground, while I was safely warm and cocooned in my home, behind the waterproof windows.

I often wonder if I were to move to somewhere with higher precipitation, such as Seattle or London, would my body force me to write more?  I wonder if anyone else is affected in this way by rain?

The good news is fall is really here now, with our first storm and heavy rainfall, and part of me is hoping it will be a wet season, since I’ve just begun a novel.

Plus I’m sure our reservoirs could use it too!

Wyrd Progress Update III

Today was a pretty successful day for getting words on the page and a decent amount of writing done.  As I mentioned in the previous Wyrd update, it’s been a while since I was working on a novel-length project, and I’d forgotten about the drawing, pulling, gravitational feeling it has over me.  When I’m not working on it, writing it, I have this feeling in me that I should be, as my characters impatiently wait on the page for their next moves and actions.

Ended up completing all of Chapter One today, which is an excellent goal achieved, with 15 pages done and 3,324 words written.  I really like how the chapter turned out also.  After meeting with my writing group and discussing the original manuscript and what I hoped to accomplish in the new draft, it seems to be falling into place.  I was somewhat worried I’d just regurgitate the same original draft, but no, this is quite different, with new and interesting character elements that just revealed themselves without my incessant prompting.  That tells me my characters are alive and well!  Now I know how Dr. Frankenstein felt, hehe.

I look forward to moving onto the next chapter tomorrow.  And now for a little of this work in progress:

Artorus smiled, always delighted at the way Yric took to learning, enveloping himself in it, using the new and strange words, and asking questions when he didn’t know something.  He reminded Artorus a lot of himself during his classes back in Byzantium.

WORDS: 3,324

PAGES: 15

Wyrd Progress Update II

Chapter One, tentatively titled “The Forum of Londinium,” has begun. Managed to get 544 words done, 2 1/2 pages before I had to go to work. It’s a start.

And now I have that drawing, longing, almost “sucking” feeling of a new novel begun, as it constantly calls to me to be written more, to send the characters further and the plot along. And the only way to satisfy it is to write more . . .

WORDS: 544

PAGES: 2 1/2

Who Needs a Writing Program? Word Does the Job Just Fine.

As I started getting stuck into the thick of the start of my manuscript yesterday, I soon decided I wished I had a little tool to use that I would expect to be the basic add-on for just about any writing program or writing aid software available.

I’ve always been a fan of Microsoft Word, and I’ve become very familiar with its layout and design, its shortcuts and fine tunings, regardless of the critique that others make against the program. And I’ve never really planned on getting any of the programs that help in writing. Jeff Vandermeer makes himself very clear in Booklife in that he believes while it is up to the author’s own choice, the programs do more to hurt than help in making writers lazy with the shortcuts and easier ways of doing things that may not do anything to actually improve the writing, but serve more to distract the writer with gadgetry and quick fixes. While I am at times curious about the programs available, I tend to agree with him. Even Word itself has some shortcuts that can atrophy a writer’s abilities in some way with the spellchecker and the thesaurus and the preset grammatical rules to make it simple for a writer to have Word tell them when they have made a mistake.

As a writer, a firm credo I’ve always believed in is that it is key to understand the rules of English in writing (for obvious reasons), but in this way it allows the writer to bend or break these rules of language, resulting in something new and more spontaneous. When you’re working on a piece — whether it be a short story, a longer project, or even a drabble — you can write in two ways:

1) with the safety net in place, telling you when there’s a spelling error, a grammatically incorrect sentence — or simply that it is too long — or you’re stumped for a word and automatically go to the thesaurus, giving little creativity and originality to your work; or

2) you can work without the safety net, come up with your own wordage, your own complex sentences and choose to use the same word over and over. It may get removed during future edits, but it will make the sentence look completely different, making you see it in a totally different and unique way that you wouldn’t have had you had the safety net in place. Perhaps the repetition may serve to work make the sentence stronger or work for a particular character or piece of description.

Though I admit I keep the spellchecker automatically on because I just find it easier that way. But I have customized Word to suit my own needs in writing and don’t have any of the grammatical rules in place.

And then there’s the new tool I discovered.

It allows the user to add comments to the document. As I said, this is something I would expect most writing programs to have, where you’re working on a document and want to add a note to a word or section to remind yourself when you come back to it later to change or add, or just do something to it, but not at this particular moment in time. The Comments option allows this. You can find it under the Insert menu or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M. It will highlight the word and pop up a section at the bottom of the page, numbering the comments by “ACTs,” allowing you to add as many comments as you wish, forming a list for easy reference. You can choose the color of the highlight option, though yellow is the least distracting I find. There’s probably also a way of numbering the comments differently, but I’m fine with my “ACTs.”

And now I feel comforted in knowing I can leave lots of comments, thoughts, and ideas, as well as changes I will want to make during future drafts and edits.

If anyone has anything else they’d like to share on this subject, please do.

Wyrd Progress Update I

I know, I know. It’s never going to get old: when you see Wyrd, you automatically think “weird,” even though it’s Old English for fate and the name of my novel. It’s okay, I do it every time too. And “Wyrd Update” is even better, I know.

Managed to get the prologue done today. 1225 words, just over 5 pages. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it was an accomplishment for me, as the prologue involved setting the story and involved constant reference to notes and research, which is why it was heavy going. Plus I’m pretty sure I’m going to eventually edit it down to three pages or less, even though I liked everything I kind of said, I just know it’s going to need to be a lot shorter and tighter, and it’ll get there, eventually, after a number of edits.

And tomorrow, I’ll begin with Chapter One. As I did with the second rewrite of Nothing is an Accident, I’ve made up a spreadsheet with dates and numbers of words written and number of pages written. This serves a number of purposes: 1) it boosts my ego a little to see that I’ve actually put something on the page, or more like a lot of somethings strung together to form sentences and paragraphs; 2) it helps me keep track of how I’m doing and for these updates and just in general; 3) I keep track of how much I’m writing each day and each week. I’ve laid it out through the end of February and at the moment I’m sticking to my own made up goal that I borrowed from James Rollins. On my days off I need to do 4-6 pages; on the days I’m working at least 2 pages.

We’ll see how that goes and how much I stay on goal. But I’m going to be tough on myself to get the writing and the work done. And try not to give myself too many excuses when I get little or no writing done.

WORDS: 1255

PAGES: 5

The Journey Begins . . .

I’m all dialed in. Got my research done and all my pages of notes surrounding me in a protective circle of paper. And I’m about to embark on the writing of a new book called Wyrd (which is Old English for fate).

I first started this book in 2005 under the title of The Ruin (from the Old English poem), and got about a hundred pages done. Then my cast of characters stood on the shores of England looking out at the channel for four years. And now they’re about to be picked up again and continue with their journey. Except I’m starting from scratch, with some resets, revamps, and redos (or is it redux). Some big changes that I may talk about here, not sure how much I want to give away yet.

I’m sure they’ll be a few stalls and stops along the way– probably some more research too — and while I might have the option of doing this for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), I know this book is going to be long and going to take me a while and I want to go at my own pace, while juggling a full-time job and running BookBanter. But after meeting authors like Seanan McGuire and reading Jeff Vandermeer’s BookLife, I feel a little less intimidated and overwhelmed as there are many published and successful writers who do this every day.

So for now, here goes and . . . see you on the other side . . . along with the million stops and updates along the way . . .

But first I have to move the laundry into the dryer.