DON'T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!!!

So school has began and I have to temporarily hide away from writing the stuff I love the most to suffer through class (I actually kind of like my classes this semester but that's not the point) but I figure I'd take this time to address someone that's freaked me out since I started writing. Those writer's tips lists, the ones every good writer and their mom have written, Vonnegut, Palahniuk, and dozens of others have these lists, more industrious authors have BOOKS about them and they all freak me the fuck out and the more I read the less I know.

So, I'm lucky, as far as writing goes because I literally don't have to think about it, not much anyways. Almost everything I write seems to just WILL itself into my mind almost fully formed. I just gotta nip off an extra toe here, a second head there, sew up the holes and BAM I'm done. Of course reading different authors and analyzing their styles has helped a lot too but it's more patchwork additions to my style than reprogramming my creative nerve center in accordance with the rules. But not thinking about what I'm writing is a double edged sword, when everything works it's all great, and I can normally feel it when it doesn't work, but it's sort of hard for me to explain to anyone else WHY it all works. I figure out the plot, figure out who the characters are, have the plot modify the characters, describe stuff, throw in some talky words and I'm done...but there's so much more beneath the surface that I just KNOW to do and here's where the effing instruction manuals fit in...they make me doubt myself.

I think I actually found Vonnegut's rules to writing first, then via Stumble: Writing I found a BUNCH of different guides to writing, what to do, what not to do and instinctively, wanting to do the right stuff, I read them all. This quickly turned into a creative mindfuck with me re-reading things and just musing over where I did that and made sure NOT to do that and generally overreacting to everything. According to everything I've seen and noticed about my fellow Columbia students and a lot of writers in general I'm not normal, not even close. Everything I do is a response to a simple question 'what would be cool'.

I've learned that with the way I work, I shouldn't worry about it, not that I think I know everything about writing, but I learn best by example and instead of reading someone's rules to writing I should READ their writing. That's what I've been doing, Reading Cormack McCarthy and Richard Price has really made me start looking at atmospheric pressure and pacing as well as McCarthy's beautiful use of negative space and what I would say is some of the best word choice I've ever. Price had a way of describing characters that I've been trying to mimic ever since. I find it a little weird that when someone tells me their rules I freak, but when I simply figure them out for myself...I'm fine.

Marathon Man

So, I've been done novel writing for a couple of weeks now...but it feels like forever. Everyone has always told me that you should let the smoke clear between bursts of work, while I've never heeded ANYTHING anyone has ever told me ever, cept maybe Tina Jens...school makes for good breaks, I get all of my horridness out then and then as soon as that bell rings and the last day of school comes around, I'm back on the horse and I'm riding it until it's legs break. Anyways I haven't even started to make a point yet, other than I'm going to miss the freedom to work of summer and the confining coffin of school, but only two more semesters to freedom.

ANYWAY.

I started on Chapter 2 of Black Dogs on August 30th and I finished the 27 page chapter off last night with an 11 page sprint, and a part of me doesn't want to stop. It was sticky at first, switching from noveling to comicing is a bit clunky, especially when you're shifting drastically in subject matter and tone...and I was doing both. After a couple days in however I hit my stride and took off like a coked out rabbit. I think a part of the reason I exploded so rapidly is because I'm more excited to work on the webcomic than I was to work on the novel, not because of the subject matter or anything like that because I love both of my incomplete children equally...kind of. But I like the comic more because as anyone who know me knows, I'm an impatient spaz; I want to be started yesterday and I personally think life has been taking to long for quite some time now. To make that a bit more coherent, I know the webcomic is going to take a lot less time and effort to get to the masses than my novel will.

The webcomic, Black Dogs, is a steampunk fantasy written by me with art, colors, and bloodysweatytears by Sarah Smith, a former Columbia Fiction Major. It follows the crew of The Black Dog (go figure) as they go on adventures and have problems. Sounds a bit like firefly if you replace space with steampunk. What I'm hoping really sets us apart from those inevitable accusations is the story or should I say stories, like your typical guys on a ship adventure series (Andromeda, FireFly, Babylon 5 ect) are going to be the fact that most of the stories I'm writing or dreaming up for the series are going to be big overarching plots that almost always develop characters and change the social dynamics of the crew, basically I'm not here to fuck around. As a writer I'm a plot whore, I like seeing people forced to do things they hate, I like palpable atmosphere and I like for people to feel connected to my characters and my stories, and I'm going to do everything in my power to evoke that from every orifice of Black Dogs, even the not so pretty ones.

Looking back on the chapter I really like what I did, I have plenty of ideas that could easily run the series for a decade or more and since I've plotted that far ahead I have hints that need to be dropped early, like first, second chapter early, and I'm doing my best to do that. As I've stated before I'm a huge anime and managa fan but I can only stand manga's that know where their going to end from the beginning, and that's how I write, the end isn't crystal clear yet, but I'm pretty positive of where I want to leave it off, but it's going to be a long and crazy ride along the way and I'm going to relish every moment of it.

The main characters in Black Dogs (for now DUNDUNDUN) are

Asher-the man whore of the crew, the son and great grandson of two legendary inventors who's more of an engineer than an inventor but is just as talented as those family members. He's also in love with Alex, or so he thinks, and he and Lucien have been kids since childhood. Like his father Asher is an inventor and creates all kinds of things on board; after a couple of unfortunate technological mishaps Cap and Alex stitched to the back of his coat "if you see me running, try to catch up".

Anastasia the female Captain of the crew known better as Cap, she's a feisty gun and sword wielding lady with a shadowed past (lulz cliche) and a bit of a drinking problem. Her crew is her family and like a good matriarch she does what she needs to do to protect them, even if she has to skirt the borders of morality.

Alex-the female first mate of the crew, she's more composed and quite than Asher or Cap and tends to be the voice of reason in the face of her emotional and compulsive crew-mates. No one but Cap knows where she's from but it is known she spent extensive time in the east in the circus, preforming as a trapeze artist and an animal tamer, she's deadly with her hands, and a whip.

Lucien-Lucien is the suave handsome man of the crew, he's the type that doesn't open his mouth unless something needs to be said. Lucien is the bastard son of a nobleman who was raised by his peasant mother to retain his status in spite of the fact that his father refuses to claim him. Lucien as a result does have a sense of regal poise about him that's more intriguing than arrogant, he's also an amazing swordsman and the ships main gunner.

Sir Roderick R. Clemens II-The son of the famous General Roderick aka General Rock a battle hardened soldier and renowned strategist his 19 year old son isn't exactly a spitting image of his father. Roderick II surpasses his father as a strategist but fails miserably as a fighter, he's also a surprisingly adept airship pilot with his mandatory year of military training.


Those are just some brief character biows of the crew...and now, A PICTURE!!!! YAYYYYY




These are the first two panels of the FIRST Chapter..the one I wrote last summer...but that's another less fun story.

Can't Stop

So I'm done novel writing for the summer, between broken computers and lost jobs and all kinds of shit life has thrown at me I managed to write 145 pages rounding out the writing at the end of Chapter 8. I've been done for about a week now and I've been working on my webcomic project (lord knows I can never just exist or anything) and I've come to find that I actually miss writing the novel. Don't get me wrong I love Black Dogs (Webcomic in the making), but I feel like I've been trapped in a room with a sibling I didn't know I had all summer and now that we're free I kind of miss them.

Writing the novel hasn't been easy as stated in my previous posts, Ch 7 and 8 turned out to be pretty difficult but overall it's been a crazy love hate relationship. Sometimes I would go out of my way not to write, just to back off but I always went back, I almost stopped writing earlier, but I was drawn back, I feel like I loved the writing and hated it to. The process of writing it had become like a living thing, not just the story, but everything that came with writing it too, it's an interesting almost mystical experience.

Writing Black Dogs isn't very different, well it is since Black Dogs is a steampunk, fantasy, epic and Publicity Tour is a Crime Thriller, but conceptually they're pretty similar when it comes to actually writing it. Working with a decent sized cast of characters and working out the plot while dealing with character relationships and interactions and subplots and all that good stuff, pretty much the same thing you do writing any big story...and yet I still find myself missing Publicity Tour, and a little sad that it has to go on the shelf while I go back to school. I've had other fiction students suggest steeplechasing it, but honestly I think steeplechase would only hinder the process, at this point I know where the story is going, changing perspectives and first to third person and putting it in script form, that's only necessary when you don't know where a piece is going, I never have that problem so it's not that useful for me. Though if I'm lucky I'll be able to do some writing on it in fiction seminar, who knows.

Either way, Publicity Tour is probably going to be on the shelf for the semester, and my blog title is going to become a lie because I'm going to blog about Black Dogs too, which is a project I'm really really really excited about and will go into on my next post, hopefully sometime before school starts on the 7th.

The Gift That Gives (all over your shoes)

So I came to a realization a couple days ago not only am I writing my first novel, I'm writing the beginning of a series that could be between 5 and 7 books long, it doesn't seem to be able to decide and I apparently have no say in the matter. I think working on the beginning of a series is different from trying to write a stand alone piece, at least it is for me since I'm such a picky and specific bastard.

First off I'm a huge anime and manga fan, every nerd has their pillars of geekdom and anime and manga would indeed be mine, especially manga. In Japan unlike America most manga is published weekly instead of monthly, this puts a lot more strain on the writers/artists who are in most cases only one person working with some assistants, as much as I love manga they suffer because of their scheduling. Most manga-ka have no time to really plot out a story and just run headlong into the mess generating characters and story arcs as they go with only the vaguest sense of continuity. Nothing pisses me off more than a random character that we're suddenly supposed to accept has some sort of history with the main character when they were never mentioned or even hinted at before that moment, one of my hugest peeves in manga writing, and writing in general.

So I went into book one of this series and I've been establishing a vast network of characters and relationships to be further explored at later dates. One of the things I love about a well done series is the vastness of the world the author creates. It's easier to do in comics than in novels I'd argue, but Series like Dragon Lance, Harry Potter and The Lies of Locke Lamora do a good job of creating an interesting world and filling that world with interesting people, even if you only see them once. I was once told that you should never name a character if you don't need to; I disagree with this assessment. I read Richard Price's Lush life about 8 months ago and he names a lot of characters and those characters matter, he managed to give them a sense of realism that's hard to encapsulate in such a short time. I think J.K. Rowling did that in the Harry Potter series creating a cast of secondary and third(dary?) characters that made the world feel real.

I think secondary characters that can potentially carry future stories, and play more vital roles down the line are integral to the realism of a world, especially in a series. I've heard mixed reviews of Terry Brooks but I read one of his Shannara books a while back and I hated it, the story itself wasn't bad, the writing was so-so but what I really disliked was how empty this VAST fantasy world felt. There was never any sense of bigness and I don't think he was quite going for the empty desolation of The Road, and because I knew he wasn't trying to do it, it made it all the worse when that's what I felt.

The first couple of books in a series should be the foundation, if I was writing a series like the Dresden Files or Sookie Stackhouse or something it'd be different, most of the times the books have the same characters but the story's aren't always arcing. But I'm writing a set story arc over 5 (or 7) books and I need a good solid foundation of characters to exploit, maim or kill along the way. I feel like I've been building my network of characters with the future in mind. That's all for now...

Writing (AGODDAMNNOVEL) IS WAR

This is at once symbolic and long overdue. Figured it'd be a good time to update since I hit 200 pages today (YAAAAYYYYY). It's been a long summer of writing, joblessness and computer problems. I'm on my sister's old comp as of now which is way better than The General, an Acer Relic from 2001 with 128 MB of RAM....yeah that was painful. But on to something relevant. Novel Writing is War.

I mean writing a real novel, if you're being formulaic for the sake of money, or essentially jerking off onto paper, that's something different, but writing something you love and have faith in...is fucking war. What sucks the most is that you're fighting it from every imaginable perspective too. The General(overall story planning and plot development) The Strategist (detailed plot planning, character development and growth and how the two interact with the plot, continuity, being true to your characters) The Lieutenants,Sergeants and Captains in the field (Individual plot planning and how it relates/is relevant to the whole) And of course your Privates, and Corporals doing all the work on the ground. (THE FUCKING WRITING and everything that comes with it). Not to mention the war of attrition that is writing a prolonged piece in general...and lemme tell you, it's fucking hard. It's hard to get up every day and agonize over if this thought is true to the character, or if this scene is too long or the biggest fear of all...will anyone even CARE about the book. It's hard not to just throw it away and go back to tossin out short stories or flash fiction instead...but it can be worth it.

When you finish a really good scene and you can think about it in context of where it fits in the storyline and really see it stand out in your mind, and you feel that you've done a good job and you show some unbiased person and they say the same thing. That shit feels great, downright addictive. So to all my fellow novel writers, don't give up because it's hard, swallow your tears, clean off that blood and get back to fuckin work.

The past three chapters of my novel Publicity Tour (Chapters 6, 7, and 8) have been some of the most grueling things I've ever written in my fucking life. I've been writing since I was 13 and I've written a LOT but this idea is easily one of the most complex plots I've ever come up with. There are all kinds of twists and turns in the story itself as well as in the personal growth of the main character and they're inseparably intertwined; this is good for the book as a whole but complicated to write. If I were to ever get famous for this novel and someone wanted to see my notes, they would see the notes for a completely different story. Much like soldiers in the field, I've found that some of the initial ideas I came up with when writing the outline for the novel had to be changed when it came time to actually write the scenes, so I had to adapt on the fly, completely altering character motivations, how certain scenes played out, adding subplots...it's been a wild and fun ride and it's only half over.

I've intentionally broken some of the rules of writing I've been taught at Columbia in certain scenes because I feel like it HELPS...but at the same time I've used a lot of what I've learned as well. Combining plots that weaves together the story and the character development almost seamlessly is something I learned in Pop Fiction, really getting that emotion into is something I learned in Prose Forms, and not writing awful parodies is something I learned in Fiction 2 (a joke for columbia fiction majors only). But above all I'm really leaning about my process, this is my first novel undertaking and since I hate people who take for fucking ever to write one novel (no matter how good it is) I really want it done quickly while still putting out the best work possible (which I seem capable of somehow...think it's all that meth my brain seems to produce). My process is simple...come up with an idea, fuck with it until you like it...lay down the foundation...then us some sort of physics gun to completely alter the molecules of said foundation into that of a living creature and continue to fuck with it until I have something completely different but still awesome. I started out with a house and now I have a tree...that is also a house. That's how I've been writing and I fucking love it.

My biggest hurdle so far in writing this book was catching myself. Okay that needs some context. There are two big villains over the course of the novel, and figuring out HOW to catch the first one nearly drove my ass crazy. That was Chapter 6 and 7, because not only were the characters trying to catch a badguy, they were also trying to prove ANOTHER guy was innocent WHILE fending off a higher-up who was trying to take credit for their work which was all pretty complicated, almost mind bogglingly so. Everyone who knows me heard me bitch, well bitch more than usual anyways. But in the end I LOVE the result and hopefully you reader people will to...when it's done...eventually.

But yeah man, this noveling shit isn't easy, not that I expected it to be. But I love it, I love writing and this is the biggest challenge I've ever had and I'm taking it headon. Keep reading and keep writing.

(P.S.: I'm going to try and update more I swear)

(P.P.S.:Seriously)

Back In the Saddle and Shootin Every Pale Face I See (No Racist)

So, as of yesterday, my first real day back at writing my inevitable masterpiece, I finished plotting my novel...almost completely. I mean it wasn't that disjointed, but there were still a bunch of hurdles to jump and a bunch of holes to fill, and as far as I can see right now, I fixed everything. Now all there is to do...is write.

I've joined Sam and a shit ton of other people in a summer writing club, and since I'm aiming for twice the daily number of words than they are...I'm hoping for at least 220 pages over the summer >.> which isn't counting all the comic work and short story editing I need to do.

But this is my first real finished plot ever...well at least my first big one. I normally dream up these huge ideas and cover them in lots of frilly shit but never complete the plot because I don't have an artist or the funds to complete such a project. Well with a novel I have no excuse and lo and behold...I'm actually getting shit done (more to my surprise than anyone else's it seems). Either way I'm happy as fuck and I plan on keeping at it.

Back to Basics

I've only continued to get my ass kicked since February, but I think I'm at least able to block now. I think one of the things that's been frustrating me is the fact that I'm writing short stories and I don't think that's what I want to be writing right now. But the problem with that is that I'm NOT sure if that's correct since I had an issue craping out my Revolution Story steeple chase...though that may just have been the fact that it was a steeple chase. Either way I need to get back to writing and chill the fuck out. I also need to get the 30 pages of my novel done before the end of the semester...which is roughly a month from now. YAY ME. *headdesk*