And on the Eighth day, there was progress....

Things are going well at the Story Factory this month. We are currently on chapter 22 of the novel currently in revision, and the other eight are patiently waiting their turn. Ok, I say chapter twenty two, but who knows how many chapters there are going to be. I am almost in the middle. That much I know. And the September 15th deadline is looming large.

Of course, I am happily skipping over little things like laundry and house cleaning. Because nothing says "writer lives here" like muddy paw prints on the carpet and a washer full of sour clothing...

It's all about the tools...

And Ernest Hemingway used Dixon Ticonderoga Number 1 pencils. For those of you who never took drafting, that is the extra soft. Number 2 pencils are used to fill in all the little dots when you take standardized tests in non networked environments. Surely you remember the humble scantron. I believe my children will forget about scantrons and blue books before they graduate from college.

Anyway, the number one extra soft that Papa preferred was perfect for editing bacause it is thick and dark. Yet you can still erase things when you change your mind yet again.

I ordered four dozen number one pencils from Lasermonks and they arrived on Friday. Can you say Happy Campers live here?

IT'S ALMOST TIME!!

Sorry to shout, but it's almost time. Time to start thinking and plotting and daydreaming about a set of characters for the time-honored tradition of National Novel Writing Month. So far, I will be a Municipal Liaison again, mosttly because I really want a t-shirt this year. But the thing was a blast and there should be some cool ways to get more people involved this year. I may even send out the press release to some of the local papers. Publicity, what a concept.

So, I have my fountain pens and Dixon Ticonderoga's on order from lasermonks.com and I will be equipped to write huge quantities of really bad novel. Because that is what November is all about.

Turtle writing

"It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have
endless drafts, one after another; and I try out fifty,
seventy-five, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I
work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple
of nuggets of gold out of fifty tons of dirt. It is tough for me.
No, I am not inspired."
--James Dickey


See, I am not alone. I have been working on this one novel, oh, for about three years. Consistantly. Quite a few thinking about it before that. Thing is, the questions every one asks, "Is the book published? How's the book?" stop being nice after the first year or so. Because John Grisham can churn out three books and year, as can most romance novelists, the general, non-book writing population thinks that is the regular production level. And we laugh here at the storyfactory. Actually, Lego the dog laughs, I just want to cry and get the stinking thing done.

But it's a lot like baking bread. There are some things that cannot, in anyway be rushed. It has to proof, like yeasty dough. All you can do is make sure the conditions are right and let the little yeast critters do their thing. With books, you have to make the conditions right and then let the story do its thing. Otherwise it feels forced and fake. Madeleine L'Engle calls is serving the work. The story grows like yeast and you know when it's ready, when it is strong enough for you to work on it without killing it.

And then there are the huge rabbit trails you go on and get lost, and have to back track and rewrite and yeesh...



"I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and
then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around
again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another
sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I
read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie
down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and
start from the beginning."
--Philip Roth

And there's a day's work.

Slow and steady wins the race...

I have been editing a 550 page novel at the amazing rate of 20 pages per day. Okay, it was 20 pages the first day and then I planned to revise twenty pages each day after that. The best laid plans...

But the good news is, it's pre-season football season. There is nothing better than curling up on the sofa with a stack of pages and a Dixon Ticonderoga Number One, extra soft (like Papa Hemingway used to use). See, there's replays, so I don't have to watch the live stuff. And I can even fire up the laptop.

So hopefully, things will progress this week and I can be starting new work by September 15th. Or 21st, you know, new season, new book.

The What If department

What if the same folks who produce Ambien, also sell weight loss pills? Hmmm