The Unification Chronicles

Another bang up week­end, a grand total of 196 words added to Cru­sade over two days. I did, how­ever, do a fan­tas­tic job of orga­niz­ing my Writ­ing Music playlist, all 108 hours of it. Nice that all the tunes are con­sis­tently named, for­mat­ted and all have album art, but it’s not writing.

Why am I blocked? The same gor­ram rea­son I’m always blocked. Because I’m ter­ri­fied. And why am I ter­ri­fied? Because I don’t know where I’m going.

I am a rare and very con­fused species, the Type A Bud­dhist. I want to go with the flow, let go of expec­ta­tions and all that, but I’d feel a lot bet­ter about it if I had an out­line and a set of require­ments to fol­low (yes, this is prob­a­bly a holdover from my days as a soft­ware devel­oper; I have a deep and pro­found fear of scope creep). I need to know not only where the story is going, but I need to have a rea­son­able idea of what I’m going to see on the way.

The prob­lem is that Rev­e­la­tion changed the story and the char­ac­ters so much from the orig­i­nal novella that very lit­tle of the orig­i­nal Cru­sade novella is still usable. Again, I know the basic beats of the story, where it has to end up and who has to die before we get there, but every­thing else is dif­fer­ent, and I find myself floun­der­ing try­ing to put one word after another in the dark.

My writer’s group says I’m just tired, hav­ing just fin­ished a novel in six weeks, and it’s okay for me to slow down for a while, gather my thoughts. They might have a point. In between writ­ing, I’m tran­si­tion­ing from one com­pany to another in my day job, said day job is migrat­ing users from one Exchange server to another, so I’m a lot busier at work than usual, my mom just had (suc­cess­ful) can­cer surgery and I’m des­per­ately try­ing to save up enough money to file bank­ruptcy (which seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but there it is). I’m under a lot of stress, and my body is start­ing to break down. I’m in near con­stant pain and have resorted to tak­ing mus­cle relax­ants just to get by. And I no longer have the NaNoW­riMo com­mu­nity to bol­ster my efforts and cheer me on.

All of that is a per­fectly accept­able excuse for why I’m not writ­ing Cru­sade at the same pace as Rev­e­la­tion. But it’s not a rea­son. It’s just an excuse.

Because the real rea­son I’m writ­ing so slowly is that I don’t know where I’m going. Again. My out­line for Act 1 of Cru­sade is a dis­or­ga­nized mess of vague story ideas. No won­der my nar­ra­tive prose sounds like aim­less wan­der­ing. That’s what it is.

So today, in between all the other stuff I have to do, I’m going to really tighten up the out­line for Cru­sade Act 1. I’m not going past the act break, because I want to remain flex­i­ble. But every­thing up to that act break needs to be thought out, delin­eated. Because only when I know where I’m going can I really open up the throt­tle to get there.

I got a pal­try 267 words yes­ter­day, bring­ing the total word­count for Cru­sade to 4032. Need­less to say, this is not what I had in mind. Par­tially, my per­for­mance yes­ter­day was fatigue. I was hella tired, and wasn’t moti­vated to do much of any­thing. I also didn’t get my daily dose of Chipo­tle, which I’ll dis­cuss in a sep­a­rate post.

But it wasn’t all fatigue. This morn­ing I lis­tened to the lat­est I Should Be Writ­ing pod­cast, and Mur absolutely nailed it. I’m over­think­ing things. I’m sec­ond guess­ing myself because I know that I’m going to be post­ing my rough draft, and I don’t want it to suck or even worse, be bor­ing. And I’m at the begin­ning of the book, so I’m doing a lot of lay­ing ground­work right now (although I have already had one bloody shootout). And if I feel like what I’m about to write is going to be bor­ing, I freeze, and don’t write any­thing at all.

This is hor­ri­ble, and I damn well know better.

The first com­mand­ment of writ­ing is Thou Shalt Suck. It’s okay. That’s what first drafts are for. I love a draft­ing and edit­ing like chil­dren, I can’t really pick between them. There is magic in each. But I do know that one of the things I like best about edit­ing is find­ing new and excit­ing ways to improve the stuff I wrote while draft­ing, play­ing with the craft of sto­ry­telling rather than the art. First drafts should be art, even bad art. They should be pure sto­ry­telling, just blue-​​sky daydreaming.

And the fact that I’m post­ing my first draft has got my stymied. I real­ize at this point only a dozen or so peo­ple stop by, and even they don’t read every­thing, so my rough drafts aren’t really being seen by the judg­men­tal hordes I imag­ine, but that’s rea­son. Fear, by def­i­n­i­tion, isn’t rea­son­able. So the big ques­tion is, how can I keep my promise to pro­vide the whole kit and kaboo­dle as an exam­ple to other new writ­ers, remain trans­par­ent about the entire process, and yet write the rough draft fearlessly?

We’ve all heard the old saw about how writ­ing is such a soli­tary endeavor. And while that’s tech­ni­cally true, I’ve real­ized recently how much the sol­i­dar­ity of writ­ing along­side other writ­ers mat­ters. Consider:

Aver­age daily word count on Rev­e­la­tion while I was still par­tic­i­pat­ing in NaNoW­rimo, ie. up to 50,000 words: 2,041

Aver­age daily word count on Rev­e­la­tion after hit­ting 50,000 and writ­ing “on my own”: 1,161

So my word count dropped by almost 900 words a day once I was no longer “rac­ing” against the NaNoW­rimo com­mu­nity. This is why writ­ers so often hang out with other writ­ers, and this is why I’ll be rac­ing my writ­ing part­ner, Josh Curry, in my sec­ond book, Cru­sade, against the first book of his Pan­theons series. At present, he has a 5,218 word lead on me because I’m still two scenes away from fin­ish­ing Rev­e­la­tion even though we’re five days past the mutu­ally agreed upon start date. I hope to fin­ish that today and start eat­ing into that lead.

Which brings me to, why is it tak­ing me so damn long to fin­ish the first book? My aver­age daily word count over the past five days is a pal­try, even pathetic, 496 words. Why am I stalling? I know how the book ends, I have the out­line straight­ened out, and when I make myself sit down and write, the words flow as freely as they ever have and I enjoy the writ­ing itself. But some­thing in me is resist­ing, might­ily, fin­ish­ing Rev­e­la­tion.

I think part of it is fear of the unknown. I know where Cru­sade is going in broad strokes, but haven’t out­lined it in nearly as much detail as Rev­e­la­tion. I think that has me freaked out and try­ing to avoid start­ing the new book for as long as pos­si­ble. And the best way to do that is to drag out fin­ish­ing the first book for as long as I can. I know this is a dumb idea, and I know that when I actu­ally do start writ­ing Cru­sade I’ll be sur­prised and delighted by it just as I was by Rev­e­la­tion. It’s just been really hard to trans­late that into motivation.

The other thing that slowed me down, frankly, was this blog. Not post­ing itself, writ­ing these sorts of things, but rather get­ting gun­shy about post­ing my rough drafts. Because I’m tak­ing Mur Lafferty/​Anne Lamott/​Stephen King’s advice to heart in these last five chap­ters, folks. These chap­ters suck. I’m doing way too much telling rather than show­ing, rush­ing through things or gloss­ing over them, and I know they’re pretty much going to have to be rewrit­ten from scratch in revi­sions. And if I weren’t doing this in pub­lic, for all to see, that wouldn’t be so bad. But in the inter­est of allow­ing this project to show the process of a work­ing writer, that means you folks need to be able to see the “before” pic­tures, as it were. So please, just bear with me through revi­sions. The end­ing of Rev­e­la­tion will get better.

Okay, back to writ­ing. I have just two scenes to write, and I just fig­ured out this morn­ing that not only is Jack the leader of the demon hunt­ing team in the next book rather than Daniel, but the team isn’t backed by the UN as it was orig­i­nally. It’s backed by the angels them­selves, in a bold and pretty sub­ver­sive move against the demons. This is actu­ally the first vol­ley — okay, sec­ond, giv­ing Susan the data­base was the first — in a war the demons don’t real­ize they’re fight­ing until it’s already too late. Angels are sneaky.

For the past cou­ple days I’ve been stalled in my story. Now a cou­ple days of not writ­ing — well, writ­ing very lit­tle, aver­ag­ing 1,156 a day over the past five days, only 207 words yes­ter­day — may not seem like the end of the world to most peo­ple, but when you’re try­ing to main­tain momen­tum in a 600,000 word project, it’s a con­cern. I’m still moti­vated about my story over­all, but the out­line beats for the last two chap­ters of Rev­e­la­tion fill me with the over­whelm­ing desire to pol­ish my andirons—and I don’t own a fire­place.

In the past, I would have thrown my hands up in despair, cursed my muse back a hun­dred gen­er­a­tions and set­tled in to watch some TV. And as it hap­pens, I did watch two episodes of NCIS and one of Crim­i­nal Minds last night, but this morn­ing, it’s time to get back to work. Because I know why writer’s block hits me.

In the immor­tal words of Richard Drey­fus, this means something.

For me, at least, writer’s block means there’s some­thing wrong with what I’m about to write, and my sub­con­scious is throw­ing on the brakes before I tum­ble off a lit­er­ary cliff. So let’s take a look at those story beats for the last two chapters.

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Susan and Daniel find out what hap­pened to Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Susan pub­lishes her proof
• The media runs with it, and pub­lic opin­ion wakes up to the immor­tal threat

30: The Hunt Begins

• Gov­ern­ment refuses to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of immortals
• Jack leaves the FBI to join a UN anti-​​demon task force
• Jack recruits Daniel

On the sur­face, they look per­fectly nor­mal, the dénoue­ment of the novel. But that’s the prob­lem. The big bat­tle in chap­ters 27 and 28 was unsat­is­fy­ing to me — a big focus point of things to fix in rewrites — and after that, these two chap­ters lookzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Huh? Exactly.

But why are these chap­ters bor­ing? Every­thing that hap­pens in them has to hap­pen, and noth­ing jumps out as hav­ing to hap­pen than isn’t there. So what’s the problem?

Plot-​​wise, these chap­ters are the equiv­a­lent of pas­sive voice. Our char­ac­ters don’t really do much. Stuff just hap­pens around them. They’re react­ing, not acting.

So how do I fix that? By mak­ing the char­ac­ters take a more direct hand in their fate. What really needs to hap­pen in these chapters?

• Daniel and Susan need to learn the increas­ing price — in addi­tion to los­ing Jeff — of bring­ing the truth to light
• Susan has to pub­lish her proof anyway
• While the pub­lic and the media go crazy with the news, the US gov­ern­ment has to dis­count it, set­ting the stage for Cru­sade
• Jack has to leave the FBI — quit or fired? — and join the UN, then recruit Daniel. They’ll get jus­tice for Jeff, Stan, Daniel’s fam­ily and every­one else by tak­ing down the demons. This is where a call­back to Jeff’s tale of post­war vengeance I’ve yet to trans­plant from the orig­i­nal into this ver­sion will add some resonance.

Okay, so how to we make all that hap­pen in two chap­ters and make it char­ac­ter dri­ven, rather than the char­ac­ters just pup­pets act­ing out the plot?

29: Rev­e­la­tion

• Uriel meets the team at Frank­furt with Dante, breaks the news about Daniel’s fam­ily and Stan
• Dante and Susan pub­lish Susan’s proof from Frank­furt, Ger­many (Dante has to help because the demons have take down New Amer­i­can Century)
• Daniel, Jack, Dante and Susan return to the US under Uriel’s protection

30: The Hunt Begins

• Jack calls Lou from a secure loca­tion, Lou reveals that the only rea­son they were allowed in the US at all was that bar­ring them would lend weight to Susan’s story and fires Jack
• Susan deals with the gov­ern­ment pub­li­cally refut­ing her story and the wild suc­cess of her new blog
• Jack recruits Daniel, promises jus­tice for the vic­tims of the demons

See how much bet­ter that is? Now every scene is focused through the eyes of our char­ac­ters, and they’re act­ing, not just hav­ing the story fall on them. It’s stronger, more directed, more inter­est­ing. I also like how Susan’s scene in chap­ter 30 rein­forces the theme in the chap­ter title, given how her hunt is going to shape up in Cru­sade. It’s a nice bit of sym­me­try I wasn’t expect­ing, the kind of thing your story will tell you again and again if you listen.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some writ­ing to do.