Edits Complete

 

Your author considers Tor headquarters…

My third book, A King in Cobwebs, has come through a brief back-and-forth of the editing process over at Tor, and is now finding its place in the future plans of that illustrious publishing house.

Details will follow soon enough, but a cheque appeared in my mailbox this afternoon (hot on the heals of a rather alarming estimate from my local transmission shop).

In the meantime, I may have to think about a new author photo. The old one isn’t exactly an accurate representation of yours truly anymore….

MisCon Bound

This weekend, we’re heading off to the possibly magical land of Missoula Montana for MisCon 29 where my daughter is looking forward to making a tornado in a jar, building her own minion and creating a sock puppet. (She’s really excited).

We’re quite grateful to be going. My lovely wife is guest of honor (along with her author Terry Brooks and John Picacio, both of whom are quite ridiculously nice guys), and the convention organizers have volunteered to pitch in and help with transportation costs to get our whole little clan to Montana.

There seems to be niceness in abundance.

Me? I’m looking forward to playing writer, meeting a some nifty people, and reconnecting with at least one old friend. It might also be nice to see a few unpaved spaces. (It’s been a season or two since I’ve seen the great outdoors).

The organizers have kindly popped me on a panel or two, and I’ll do my best to bring something to the conversations. (Odds are that I’ll be the only one who knows my work in any given conference room these days).

Writing with the Burger Clown

For some, it can be tough to sustain the necessary focus to get real writing done. (For me, it can be tough to sustain the necessary focus to get real writing done).

Sure, life gets in the way. (Life gets in the way like an angry glyptodon in a Hyundai). But, when I find a rare moment of peace and contemplation, I find that distractions come crowding in.

Captured time, I find, is invaluable. These are the chunks of time (stuck on a bus, crammed in a basement corner) that sensible people arrange their whole lives to escape. But, for me, there is nothing quite like the concentration I can achieve when I’m stuck wedged between strangers with a note pad. (There’s no where to go — but in).

A couple of mornings a week, our school starts a little later than usual. In those small chunks of time, I buy a cup of coffee and write with the burger clown.

It’s been very useful.

(Currently writing a new transition at page 534 of Dave’s 3rd Book).

The Tiny Jugglers of My Mind

From moment to moment, everything is forgotten. I think. (What was I saying?)

It’s not uncommon for writer-types to advocate the carrying of notebooks. Ideas, though they may seem as ineffable as the pyramids of Giza, are effing evanescent. (There’s a line for you!)

Case in point…

I’m clever enough to know that I am often interrupted in my attempts to pen the perfect novel. (I’ll be right in the flow of things when two parent-teacher conferences and a bit of emergency dentistry will pop up and knock the flow off track — what was it doing on the track in the first place?). You would think people would give me a nice smooth two-year patch so that I could finish the job, but do they? (They do not).

So, I write notes. (Sometimes quite dutifully).

In this case, I wrote the following sentence: “The Lady of the Bower gets to the point where she realizes who Durand is — but I’m thinking she……………………”

The dots (above) represent the moment when someone walked in. It was only a moment. But, when I looked back at my page — pen still poised — I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what, exactly, it was that she…………. And I still haven’t. 

Amatuer students of psychology (with the same possibly-crucially outdated understanding of the field as myself) will recognize the oft-cited George A. Miller’s Seven Plus or Minus Two. I will include a reference to the relevant, ancient study (and not the Wikipedia article where I found it — a guy must have some pride).

For our purposes, it must suffice to say that the little jugglers of our minds can only keep so many big, jagged thoughts in the air at the same time before they lose a finger. And clearly, my little jugglers dropped one. (And I bet it was going to be good, too!)

At this point, I feel that there ought to be some sort of conclusion to this piece — something uplifted about how there are always more, better ideas. What care I for the transitory motivations of fictional persons?

But I had my pen right there! It was poised!

Writing, Guilt, Progress and Dubious Holidays

Keck Works Columbus Day… continuing the forward motion

Keeping the writing warm (on those ever-important back burners of the mind) is a toughy during the school year. Teaching is a busy job that, if done reasonably well, involves a considerable part of a person’s creativity. Still, if that person wants to finish a book, writing must get done.

This year, I am wrestling with the problem in a more bloody-minded way than I have for several years. (The logistics of having a school-age child are getting complicated. Apparently, being somebody’s dad seems to require a little time and attention. Who knew?) I have written on family trips, in a McDonalds on the way to work, and today….

About today. Today, my daughter is in “camp”. The day cost $55. The daughter has a bit of a cough. There will be swimming. It’s probably nothing; she looked a little peaked as I sent her off. (Her friends called her name when she arrived. That’s good, right?)

I am revising page 525 and posting this nonsense on a blog.

(There may be guilt).

The Gnomes of Our Unconscious Mind & Other Nonsense

The author mentions the gnomes of his unconscious mind.

Since my last report, I’ve been plugging away in stolen moments. (The best ones seem to be on the weekend– though there is a price to pay for holing up with a keyboard on a family outing while one’s wife entertains one’s five-year-old on a rainy day).

As time gets harder to come by (with the planning and marking and deadlines of a teaching day job crowding things out), I find that the toughest thing is to keep the book clear in my mind so that I know what the next steps were meant to be and what the current puzzles are.

We have all had moments where we’ve been stuck on a problem only to have a light bulb moment in the shower or the grocery store or some other place nowhere near a desk. We fill our minds with our work and then find that the ingenious gnomes who populate the unconscious corners of our minds are working through the night.

My current challenge is keeping my head full and the gnomes gainfully employed.

Wish me luck!

PS: The book is tight to page 504 and we’re in the midst of the most muddled.

Lost on Page 493

Lost in a haunted forest, characters express their optimism about further progress.

Your author is striving to maintain something like progress as he makes the transition to moonlight part-time writer.

It’s fourth day of the school year (if you’re a teacher in the New York system responsible for various things), and the rewrite of the ghastly haunted forest scenes is underway. 

On page 493, the characters have put their noses in the terrible forest. And, while you and I know that scenes have been moved and motivations are shifting, the characters are only just getting started (the poor dears).

If you work in a creative field, you will know that it doesn’t take long to get your head out of a project. 

My characters might be lost in the woods, but, if I don’t keep pushing them forward, it’s likely that I’ll be lost in the same woods until the Winter Break. (And that really can’t be how this turns out).

[Author shakes fist at universe].

 

Time: I Could Use More

Your author creates a creative graphic in order to complain about needing more time to write.

Revisions of Dave’s Third Book, have reached the middle of the manuscript’s biggest muddle — just as the school year is beginning.

The situation: My characters have blundered into a terribly, repetitive and deeply confusing series of chapters in a haunted forest. Readers are in grave peril (should they somehow encounter the book). The thing needs some real adjustments. I’m cutting scenes, remotivating nearly everything and moving the beginning to the end. (Or nearly).

It’s fiddly work and will take concentration.

The danger here is that, as school sucks up time and attention, the whole project vanished (with the characters) into the mists and trees and repetition.

Is there hope? This weekend, I worked in stolen moments during a little family getaway. (We know these lovely people with a pool and a house in a patch of woods on the side of a hill — it’s a bit of the gilded age up there). This was actually something of a test. I managed to keep chomping through scenes as friends and family swirled around me. (I’m not usually able to do this).

Now, the big challenge starts. School kicks off. I’m already fielding email and sending information to teachers. I’ve got to find a way to hang on (and hit the manuscript daily to keep things alive in my tiny mind).

Wish me luck! (Except reports as news is available).

 

The Struggle of Stolen Time

Somehow your author believes this image represents a struggle of some sort.

The summer of 2014 is coming to an end and with the arrival of autumn I expect a return of the curious version of writer’s block created by the totally-otherwise-occupied mind.

Any of you who has read a little about creativity will have discovered for yourself the idea that people need to keep projects simmering on the various back burners of the brain.

When I, for example, am teaching, I spend a lot of mental energy on teaching. To teach the way I do requires a constant search for resources and the constant development of new tools. (Everything my students do each day is mounted online and loaded with links. They run into video presentations created by their teacher, they find themselves referred to online posters and screens with graphics and all kinds of things mostly designed for them by their teacher).

The back burners of a teacher are often filled with teaching.

This fall, I am very close to having a solid draft of Dave’s Third Book finished. This fall I will be a little better at stealing time.

Dictation Software Surrealism: The Dragon Speaks

Keck talks with dragons. Things get unsurprisingly odd.

Dictation software can be a great help, but I’m not sure that it will ever handle medieval fantasy.

I’ve been in the habit of scribbling scenes directly into notebooks (usually with a lovely Japanese fountain pen!)

The idea was to keep myself away from such distractions as web searching, social media and incessant polishing by taking my notebook and pens up into a park or coffee shop and writing without the aid (or distraction) of modern technology.

My intention was to capture all of this scribbling with a popular speech-to-text package whom I will refer to as the dragon from here on out. 

Sadly, in my haste to go bowling through page after page of scrawled text, I’ve tended to miss those moments when the dragon went wrong. And, where a human secretary might have interrupted me to ask a clarifying question (“I’m sorry, are you insane?” or words to that effect), my dutiful old dragon just kept on going.

The end results adds a touch of surrealism to every page.

A partial list of the oddest is provided below:

I would have you with for your oaths to be if you will.

He took her small head.

Ottawa, he she was booed a dream or two yet.

Hassan is a perilous thing, do you know? They do not warrant a man.

Durand still felt the graph presence of Google

Two of the rats allies detach themselves from the fracas.

He glanced endurance direction.

with manic goals or colors of iron clamped around the man’s ankles.

Antidrug to the ground.

I’m not sure that the dragon and I are writing the same book.