Butterfly Moments

How do you know when something you’ve written or planned out is good?

That’s my question for the weekend, folks. Thanks!

Okay, I’m kidding, but it’s an honest question, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For me, it has something to do with the butterflies in my stomach and the racing pulse.

This week, as I’ve been planning out my next book, I’m still doing the notecard method I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. My routine is up at 5:30 to write/prepare/think for an hour before I have to prep for the day job. In that time, with no music, TV, or anything other than my cup of coffee (in my awesome Halloween mug!), I visualize the story unfolding. 

With a schedule like this, I have already spent the last day idly mulling various aspects of the story. I’ll write them down in my comp book and then get started writing the notecards, one at a time. Oh, I’ll spread out a dozen or so to remind myself where I am in the story. 

There were a couple of days this week when, as I’m seeing the movie in my head, I can actually feel the butterflies in my stomach flying around. I start writing faster (and sloppier), trying to get down all the details. 

In other moments, I can literally feel my pulse pounding in my wrist and arms as I’m writing. I realized it’s not just the coffee, but the story that’s making me excited.

Will others find those scenes exciting? I hope so. It does depend on me writing compelling prose to suck in other readers, but I’m comforted knowing that if folks like the stuff I like and *I’m* digging these scenes, there’s a good chance others will, too.

Time will tell. 

But I love those butterfly moments.

Year of an Indie Writer: Week 18

One of the ideas we had when we created Do Some Damage ten years ago was to talk about the writing process. We've done that, and continue to do so, but sometimes there's some advice so good, you just walk away from your keyboard.

Advice from a Veteran Writer

The Monday post on Dean Wesley Smith's blog was a fantastic way to kick-off the week. With permission, Dean shared writing advice from Joe Lansdale. A fellow Texan who lives in Nacogdoches, Lansdale lays out his philosophy of writing in a multi-page post from Facebook. I know it's multiple pages because I printed the thing out to have near at hand when I'm feeling low about writing.

Read it. Just read it.

A couple of days later, Dean excerpted a paragraph from Joe's piece. Pay attention to the last sentence.

“Write like everyone you know is dead. To hell with everyone else’s opinion when you write. Write for yourself. I don’t have a perfect reader in mind. That works for some, but it makes me write for them which means I might not be writing for me. I have no idea what anyone else will like. I only know what I like, so I write for me. It’s a wonderfully selfish moment. When I’m done, and the book or story is out there, then I hope a lot of folks like it. But face it, you can’t be universally admired, so don’t try to be.”

Yet More Writerly Advice

On the most recent episode of Fatman Beyond, writers Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin took questions from the audience. Usually, it's about the movies and comics and such. This time, we had a guy ask about writing advice. Paraphrased, here is what I captured from each of them.

Kevin: Your voice is your currency.

It's my voice. Like it or not, but it's me. Tell your story at all costs. That's what you've got. Live and die by your voice. You can't guarantee success, but you can make it perfect for you. So if no one else comes to the show, it's still you.

Nothing bad ever came from you doing you.

Marc: Always be making something. You'll get better at it. You'll keep making mistakes, but you'll learn, and then make new ones and then learn from those.

Iteration is what it's all about. Because someone may not buy your first or second or whatever thing, but when they finally sit up and take notice, you'll have a "barnful" of stuff that you've been making all the while.

You can't get better by reading or listening, but by making the thing. Make that thing true to who you are.

Encourage Others Because It Comes Back Around

How often do you talk to other about your writing career? For me, not often, but when those moments occur, I try to make it worthwhile.

I've got a new co-worker at the day job. Yesterday, she mentioned she wanted to write a book. I asked her what held her back. She came back with the same kinds of barriers you frequently hear, but it boils down to this: the critical voice keeps getting in the way and the idea of writing an entire book is so daunting, one just doesn't begin.

I chatted with her, giving her the pep talk I give to other writers--and sometimes myself--about writing with abandon and joy, track your daily word count as a default cheerleader, and keep that pesky critical voice out of your head.

I also told her that writing "The End" on drafts never gets old, but the first time is a Cloud 9 experience.

I also mentioned she out to set a start and end date (Memorial Day to Labor Day) and let that be her bookends.

She got excited. I did, too, because talking about writing and encouraging others is a thrill.

Peter Mayhew

Hats off to Peter Mayhew, arguably one of the greatest cinematic sidekicks/partners in all of moviedom. Met him once here in Houston, late on one of the days, might have even been a Sunday. He was tired. My boy and I were, too. I'm not a huge autograph guy, but I wanted to meet Mayhew and be the millionth person to tell him how much I enjoyed his work. He was nice and gracious. Based on what I've been reading, that was how he was all the time.



That about wraps things up for another week. Hope y'all have a good weekend, and tune in next week when I'm going to review five of my favorite podcasts starting on Monday.

May the Fourth be with y'all. And go get some comics today!

Writer's New Year's Day - 2019 Edition

It's been six years since I resolved to complete a story, and it has  made all the difference.

The Vision

Before 1 May 2013, I struggled to complete projects. I had one book done in 2006, my first. But I hadn't completed anything since. But I had an image in my brain--a man, wearing a fedora, knocking on the door of a 1940s-era bungalow house, and being answered with bullets--and I wanted to know what happened. I told myself I'd write that tale and complete it.

I did. That story ended up being WADING INTO WAR: A BENJAMIN WADE MYSTERY, the first book I published.

The decision, back in 2013, was inspired by a quote whose origins I have been lost to time: “A year from now, you may have wished you had started today.” Since then, every 1 May, I take stock of things since the last Writer’s New Year. This is the 2019 edition.

The Year of Calvin Carter

While I didn't publish much in 2017 or 2018, I kept writing. The end result is six books featuring Calvin Carter, actor turned railroad detective. For 2019, I decided to publish six books, one every other month, starting on New Year's Day. EMPTY COFFINS is the first book, while HELL DRAGON is the second. Today, the third book, AZTEC SWORD, is published.

Halfway there.

It's an exciting time, and now the advertising can really start. I gave a few thoughts to putting the books out one a month, ending in June, but I prefer the 60-day version. Now, with three books out, I can start creating buzz, get more people to read these books, knowing three more are coming before the year's out.

It's a business decision, one I never knew I could make back in 2013. Now, I make decisions like this all the time. I'm a small-business owner.

The Other Big Project...

...is still under wraps for the moment. I know it's crappy to tease something and not reveal the thing, but know that it is a major aspect of my business as I start Year Seven of this fun adventure. This time next year, I'll be able to assess whether or not The Other Big Project was worth it. In my head, it is. Now it'll just be up to me to make it a reality.

Keep the Writing Fun

Speaking of fun, I'm still doing my best to entertain that first reader: me. Taking a cue from a post Dean Wesley Smith wrote earlier this year--"No One Cares"--I'm still writing for myself. I know we're all supposed to do that, but if a particular book hits with the public, the temptation is to do it again and again. Granted, that's a little what the Calvin Carter books are, but they are still an experiment. Maybe the world doesn't need the exploits of a man I envision as the combination of Jim West, Artemus Gordon, Bret Maverick, and Brisco County, Jr. Only time will tell, but I know I'll be writing Carter yarns for a long time.

Because they are fun for me. This year more than most I'm spending time on the business side of things. But that aspect of this adventure never enters my head when I'm writing. In that one hour at 4:30 a.m. when I'm drinking coffee, writing, the only sound the clicking of the keys on the Chromebook, that's my fun writing time. My imagination expands and entertains me.

If you have any designs on writing stories for the marketplace, be sure to keep up the fun.

A Daily Blog?

Somehow, I stumbled into writing a blog every day. I suspect I'll break the streak someday, but I'm having too much fun. It's a good way to keep my writing chops fresh. Yes, it's not fiction, but it is still writing. And I suspect all those analytics and algorithms must see I'm publishing everyday at 6:00 a.m. and will help me along.

I've kind of broadened what I write about to include nostalgic and retro things in addition to the usual books, comics, music, movies, and such. Heck, I've even started writing about Foods From Childhood. Tell that to my past self who started that first Ben Wade story six years ago today.

Bookmark this page and follow along.

A Good Place

Writing fiction is not my day job, but the day job I have I enjoy quite a bit. The folks are nice, the work is challenging, and the constant paycheck enables me to work on this side of my life without too much stress. That's an awesome place in which to be. Who knows if, on some future Writer's New Year's Day, I will be able to report fiction writing is now the day job. It isn't 2019, and I'm perfectly fine with it.

It's been a great six years. I can assess where I've fallen short and cheered at all the things I've done reasonably well. This writing career--this second career--is constantly evolving. I keep learning new things to try and shedding things that don't work. It's a blast. Or, as Robert Lamm wrote in a song, "It's a Groove, This Life."

Tune in Tomorrow...

...for an unexpected find in a comic book store.

More Writing Lessons from Pulp Writer Frank Gruber

When I reviewed THE PULP JUNGLE by Frank Gruber and how modern writers could learn from one of the most prolific authors of the pulp era. Reading through all the true struggles he endured to bust through and actually make it in 1934, I realized that I, in 2019, with a full-time day job, have it pretty good as I work at my writing craft and pursue my own goals.

But Gruber’s odyssey as a writer can also speak to us writers today. What follows are some key facts and quotes I took away from his book.

The Life of a Pulp Writer Wasn't Glamorous 

From August 1932 (when he arrived in New York) until June 1934 (when he sold the story that enabled him to break big in the pulp fiction market), Gruber wrote 174 “pieces” which totaled 620,000 words, all on a Remington manual typewriter. He called himself a sloppy writer, so he had to retype everything after he corrected the manuscript. The fiction spanned the gamut: Sunday School stories, detective stories, love stories, spicy stories, sports stories, etc. Those words were not solely fiction. He wrote tons of articles often on topics he had to learn on the fly. In the book, Gruber lists the dollar amounts he earned for various pieces. Even in 1932 dollars, those meager sales didn’t add up to a living wage.

My takeaway: Yeah, he had it bad, real bad. I don’t. Not really.

The Big Break Comes When You Least Expect It

The Big Break came in 1934 in one of those great true tales you hear. Gruber gets a call on Friday afternoon. Operator #5 was going to press the next day but was a story short. Could Gruber write a 5500-word story overnight? In his retelling, he started at 8pm and had a character. Two hours later, he had his leading lady. By 3:30am, he had his big finale…but still needed a plot thread to weave it all together. He got it, and delivered the 18 pages by 9am. He didn’t hear back for a few days. He started to worry, so he called on the editor. Oh, he was told, we pay on Friday. Pay? Yup, the story was purchased. And then he was asked for another. According to Gruber, “I was ‘in.’”

My takeaway: sometimes, your best work can emerge out of your brain and through your fingers in whole cloth. Don’t be afraid of going with it. I also mentioned something like that yesterday.

Income from Writing Along Can Fluctuate

His income in 1934 was less than $400 ($7,500 in 2018 money). In 1935, he made $10,000 ($188,000).

My takeaway: Yikes!

Just Keep Learning

Even after his Big Break, Gruber worked steadily and for higher paying markets. The key factor here was that Gruber never stopped working. Yes he had made it, but in those days, a writer was only as good as the next sale. So he kept working on stories, then branched out into novels, both detective stories as well as westerns. All the contacts he had made during the lean years paid dividends later on, including when he moved to Hollywood.

My takeaway: Always keep learning. Always maintain your contacts when you make them. You never know what will happen and with whom.

More Writing Equals More Selling Opportunities

Frederick Faust, the real man behind the famous pen name “Max Brand,” trained himself to write 14 pages every day, year after year. It added up to 1,500,000 words of fiction per year. It took him 2 hours each day. Then he would often drink.

My takeaway: Constant writing and constant production will produce material you can sell. Keep at it. We may not all type as fast as Faust and we may not all have 2 hours in our days, but we do have an hour or so. The words will come, and they will come faster and easier the more you do it.

A Takeaway Quote

"There is equality of opportunity. There is no equality of talent." Gruber said that about the days of yore. With independent writer opportunities, the field is even more wide open.

The story of Frank Gruber’s professional life suggests that hard work, determination, and perseverance will enable a writer to hone the skills necessary to become a full-time writer. It also demonstrates that writers must recognize and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Don’t think you could write a story overnight (or Insert Your Own Personal Challenge)? Perhaps Gruber didn’t think he could do it either…until he said “yes”. And he delivered. Only then did he discover he could. Then he did it over and over again.

A Writer and the "Right" Way

In his Monday post, Dean Wesley Smith talks about the wrong direction for a writer. Like many of his posts, this one hit home.

Dean sees the Critical Voice as one with the sole objective of stopping the Creative Voice from having fun. The Creative Voice is the little child in each writer who only wants to tell stories. Critical Voice is the adult who keeps trying to say what the child is writing isn't good or isn't up to some vague notion of what will sell. Worse, we might write ourselves into a corner and, not knowing how to get out of it, might trash thousands of words as we rewrite ourselves back onto the "right" road. Or, most recently for me, wondering whether or not to publish a story that doesn't quite match what I've published to date.

Boy have I used that excuse more than once. And it has worked more than once. But like Dean wrote in his piece, how do we writers know we've gone in a wrong direction?

We don't. We have no clue what or how a reader will react to anything we've written. I recently had an experience like that.

When I posted the first chapter of a short story titled "Amber Alert" to my newsletter, I got some feedback. It was a different type of story, a modern crime story with a completely different vibe than the westerns or historical mysteries I usually write. I was actually a tad worried it wouldn't be greeted well. Granted, it wasn't going to stop me from publishing it, but I figured it might be a story that doesn't resonate.

Yet some folks really dug it. And they took the time to send me an email telling me so.

Looks like I was wrong. Why? Because a writer's job is to write stories. Promote those stories and get them out to readers. After that, it's out of a writer's hands. Then, and most crucially, write the next story.

Get ON With It

Twenty two chapters.

What does that mean for us this morning? That’s the number of chapters it took for the action to get started in Dan Brown’s latest novel, ORIGIN. Heck, I’m not even sure that’s the exact answer—it might have been twenty three or twenty one, but I just don’t care enough to toggle back in my Audible file to find the answer because it’s beside the point.

What happened for all that time up until Chapter Twenty Two? Talking. Lots and lots of talking. And even after the action gets started, there is more talking. Lots of talking. Mini lectures, actually. It’s almost like a Michael Crichton novel. I have a distinct memory of reading RISING SUN and, every now and then, I’d turn the page and there’s be wall-to-wall text and I knew I was in for a mini lecture. Heck, Crichton even had footnotes. At least Brown mostly put his lectures—but not all—in the form of dialogue.

I never disliked Dan Brown. I was one of those millions of readers who jumped on the THE DA VINCI CODE bandwagon. That was a thrilling book. Think about it. In that book, chapter one showed a murder and introduced the bad guy, chapter two introduced hero Robert Langdon, and we were off and running. I even diagrammed the first 100 pages of DA VINCI CODE to see how Brown made it work. It was an “aha” moment.

From there, I happily jumped back to ANGELS AND DEMONS and enjoyed it. In some ways, it was better than DA VINCI CODE. I read THE LOST SYMBOL (AKA, “Da Vinci Code in America”), but something must have happened because I completely bypassed INFERNO. For whatever reason, I felt the tug of ORIGIN and, with a new, long commute, I thought “why not?” With the audiobook clocking in at eighteen hours, it would certainly get me through a week or two.

I lasted for about twelve hours before I bumped up the speaking speed to 1.25.  At least then I’d be able to get through the novel in a shorter amount of time. I’m not even done (about three hours until the end) and I’m more or less still listening because I at least want to know the big reveal at the end.

But come on! If the book is supposed to be a thrill ride of a story, put some thrills in it. And speed up the pace. I’m not advocating Brown write a pulp fiction novel. He’s got something to say and has clearly done a lot of research—most likely, it all found its way into the text. But at least Crichton put lots of chases and escapes in his stories. They were exciting to read. Heck, DA VINCI CODE was an exciting and thrilling read. ORIGIN is simply dull.

Maybe the ending will be worth it. We’ll find out.

Coincidentally, in my science fiction book club, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight III: Master Race was selected. This is yet another sequel to his seminal 1986 work, The Dark Knight Returns, a fantastic graphic novel. I intentionally bypassed DKIII because I so loathed The Dark Knight Strikes Again (or whatever the second book was called). With that book, I got the distinct impression the good folks at DC Comics didn’t care what Miller produced as long as he gave them something they could sell. One might argue he didn’t really have an editor, because if he did, some of the stuff he threw in would have been chopped.

Same with Dan Brown, at least with ORIGIN. There’s a story here, but it is one that should have been tightened up, trimmed down, and streamlined. Maybe he’s of a particular stature now that he can pretty much write whatever he wants and it’ll get published. Maybe not, but if  you’re an author who writes a chase book, please start the action way before chapter twenty two.

*UPDATE*

I finished the book on Sunday. I'm not one to write a full review of a book I didn't like and I'm not gonna start now. But of the four Dan Brown books I've read, this is fourth on the list. I suppose there was a reason I skipped INFERNO. Now I know. 

A Charles Dickens/Writing Style Question

(Lest anyone think I've abandoned all mystery-related posting in favor of bad Haiku for a bad NFL team, today's post is presented.)

I started Charles Dickens' "The Cricket on the Hearth" today. I've never read it and am looking forward to reading it in these days leading up to Christmas.

What struck me was the style of prose. Not the lofty, lengthy sentences Dickens was prone to write. I'm talking about the insertion of Dickens himself into the story. Or, rather, A Narrator. Exhibit A is the first paragraph:

The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peery- bingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy- faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp.

The Narrator knows the story and is telling the story. He has authorial asides but also knows the inner thoughts of the main characters.

Is there a term for this type of writing? My first thought was that it was third person omniscient, but, usually, the Omnipotent Author doesn't insert himself into the story. C. S. Lewis does this, too. Is this an English thing?

Any thoughts?

(NOTE: My writing at this blog has been pretty sparse in recent months. I plan on re-upping on my blog commitment starting in January. Thanks for reading.)