Category Archives: Writing

Coffee and mating rituals of the young and obnoxious

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Yesterday evening I worked on my book at a coffee shop. I know it’s cliché, but it’s nice to get out of the house for a while and visit places where actual living people dwell during the daylight hours. There was the added bonus of getting a high dose of caffeine. Score!

As I sat alone in the corner of the coffee shop, minding my own business, I couldn’t help but overhear an obnoxiously loud college-aged boy going on and on about his class schedules and all the essays he needed to write. I glanced upwards and he was standing about ten feet away from, and from the looks of it, trying to impress a similarly aged, and I have to say, very attractive young woman.

It’s not the obvious primping that bothered me so much. No, I lie. I wanted to punch the douchebag square in the face. I already have a predisposed hatred to overly cocky ass holes like him, and a similar hatred to women stupid enough to fall for it. But it did get me thinking, have I ever engaged in such displays? If so, did some other guy want to punch me in the face? Did the girl fall for it?

I don’t have a good answer for you. I want to say that I doubt very much that I’ve ever behaved thusly, mainly because I rarely interact with other people. For example, I went to a bar ages ago with a coworker. A woman, one that I never met before, tried to talk to me. I gave very short, concise answers, so much so that I annoyed her and she turned to my friend and called me an asshole. Whoops! I don’t mean to give off that impression!

But then again, sometimes I’ve been caught primping for someone I find attractive and I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. It’s a bit embarrassing when your jerk friend calls you out on it. It’s good for a laugh later but it’s a bit of a bummer at the time.

Our mating rituals – and yes, the little dance you were doing boy was very much a mating ritual – are complex and sometimes to the observer, just plain hilarious. Unless you’re doing it where I can hear you and I’m trying to work on my book. In that case, I’ll label you a douchebag and call you out for it on my blog. And you attractive young woman? You’re an idiot if you fell for it. On the other hand, if I had been the man trying to win your attention and you found me charming, then obviously you would have been an intelligent and discerning human being, worthy of being lavished praise for the world to hear.

In other words, I’m getting too old for this shit and I’m obviously jealous. I should probably let it go, but at least the coffee was good.

Fixing Gwyn

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I’m currently at the Georgia St. Roasters, a coffee shop in Amarillo. I’m still working on my rewrites, struggling to fix one of my characters. I haven’t been as diligent on my writing as I should have been, but I’m back on track, again, and I hope to keep up my momentum.

I just finished Chapter Three and oddly enough I’m about to tackle Chapter Four. I’ve lost a few scenes, ones that just didn’t fit with the story. While I liked what I had written, it served no other purpose than to add to my word count. With no function in furthering the story, I had to make the decision to cut it out. Deciding to do it was harder than actually cutting it out.

This whole process feels like a surgical procedure. Snipping away the excess while keeping the integrity of the whole intact. What makes it all the harder is that I don’t want the whole thing to unravel. I just need to stitch it back together seamlessly so that the reader won’t miss what I cut away. So far, so good.

But the trouble lies ahead with my character Gwyn. Who is she? What’s her motivation? Is she crazy? (Yes!) Does she suffer from Dissociative Personality Disorder? (I don’t think so.) So if not, what then? I know she suffers from social anxiety, but what else? I don’t know.

It’s this question that has me stalled. It’s driving me crazy, all the more because I have another story that’s brewing in my mind that I would love to turn my attention towards. I have to get this one done.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to finish this and walk away. Maybe it’s not worth trying to fix, but if I give up on every story that has problems I’ll never finish anything. This is my line in the sand! I will get this one finished or die trying!

For now I’m going to get off and let my brain rest. I have a meeting to attend at work, which should only last an hour. Then I’ll go home, get out my red pen and start editing the next chapter. It’s not an easy task, but anything worth doing is worth suffering for. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

My first hurdle

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Well, that didn’t take long! I hit a slight pothole while working on my book. Honestly, it feels more like I drove off the side of a cliff, tumbled down the embankment, and landed in turbulent seas. Though I have miraculously survived, the car is quickly filling with sea water, sinking, and I don’t know how to swim. This may be the end. If I don’t make…*glub glub*

I love a belabored metaphor. Sorry about that. Everything I’ve found so far have been relatively easy fixes. For example, one of my minor character’s story arc will be reduced, though not entirely eliminated. I want my main character to try to help her friend out with her problems while my M.C. is grappling with her own situation. What a friend! It’s all about putting everybody’s story arc in their proper perspective.

There are paragraphs, and a few scenes, that have been reduced or eliminated. Some didn’t fit, some took me as the reader out of the book, and some were just unnecessary. I’ve continued to refine my language, trying to say what needs to be said in as succinct a manner as possible. It’s hard work to write effortlessly.

The problem I found involves another of my characters. Something about them isn’t clicking. I like the character, and they have a part to play, but the issue is that their part grew the more I wrote and I’m having trouble unifying who I wanted them to be versus who they ultimately became. Their arc became more convoluted and the fix took me out to such an extreme that they became a cliché instead of a complicated character. Fixing it has plagued me for a long time.

I’m sure a lot of rewriting is in my future, and I’m okay with that. I’m confident that I have a strong story, minor problems notwithstanding. It’s just going to take more work than I originally planned on dedicating to this project. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, I’m going to have to figure out how the hell to fix it. I guess I could simply give up, but I feel giving up isn’t truly an option.

It’s not as bad as I thought

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It bleeds! It hurts! It – it’s not that bad. Huh! I expected it to be harder to cut things out, but one I started, it was quite easy. I’ve just now started chapter three, and there’s one section that I want to move until later, but there’s a chance I’ll cut the scene completely. It’s seven pages showing the reason my protagonist left her ex many years before. I’m still not sure about that. I’ll see where the story leads me, and if it’s necessary, I’ll find the right place.

I’m glad I chose to print it out, for the umpteenth time. It’s so much easier when I have an actual document in my hands. It makes it real somehow, more real than the glow of a computer screen can manage. I get a thrill seeing my words on paper. It’s magical and euphoric. I can’t wait until it’s printed and bound in an actual book, ready to be read by the masses. I hope it finds an audience.

But I’ll try not to get ahead of myself, which I really have a bad habit of doing. I want to finish chapter three before bed. I want to do at least two chapters a day, more if time allows. A two-hour round trip to work sure makes life harder, but I’ll do what I have to in order to move on to the next phase. I wonder what the next phase will be.

 

Making the cut

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I’m going through my book, again, and mercilessly slashing it to bits. I have a bad habit of keeping things in solely because I wrote it. I’m a genius, after all. Only I’m not. I can’t even fool myself into thinking that.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read and reread each single line. Some are great, some need a little bit of polishing, and some are crap. On one particular paragraph I added this little note: Who cares?! Shorten or delete paragraph! There are other lines and paragraphs that I have marked as needing to be cut out. Those parts have bothered me, but I resisted. Enough is enough! I’m taking care of business now.

I’m finding it difficult to delete those words I worked so hard to write. I’m discovering that not everything I wrote is worth saving. I say I’m discovering that fact, but the truth is that I already knew. I guess what I should say is that I’m finally accepting that I need to be a little more discerning as to what makes the final cut of the story.

I’ve read, and I’ve cut, and I’ve rewritten and finagled spelling, grammar, syntax and I’m still not satisfied. As a whole, I’m pleased with the story, but there are those places that cause me distress. I’ve reprinted the whole book, or I’m in the process of doing so, and it comes in at 400 pages, double-spaced. I want to trim that down some.

I’m only on the second chapter, but I’ve managed to cut out maybe a thousand words. I’ve cut out a secondary character’s story arc, one that adds nothing to move the plot forward. There’s another character that needs to be rewritten. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do that. It’s a puzzle that I need to put together, and I have no idea how the finished picture is supposed to look like. I’m a little stressed.

I’m going to continue reading and making my notes, tweaking it so that I can finally send it to someone to proofread. I’ll correct as many of those as I can find, but I’m sure there has to be several stupid mistakes per page. I can’t wait to be done with this. Why did I think I could do this? I must be mad.

I’m also really tired.