So I’ve got a list of ten things I want to go back and work on. Two of them will probably take a bit of time, but hey, time I appear to have … er … plenty of. Hopefully a week or two from now I’ll have a third novel ready for market. I think that would be a first for me.

Progress Report:

I didn’t mean to go in this direction at all, but I’ve found myself about 60% through a rewrite of another of my earlier novels. This one’s origin was my very first Novel Dare (think NaNoWriMo before there was such a thing).

It started because I opened the file up as a writing avoidance technique, and suddenly found myself 100 pages into it and thinking, “hmmm…this is pretty good.” I ran into the Not So Good part at about page 150, and I think–as of today–I’ve got it pretty well fixed. Still about a hundred pages to read through, but I’m optimistic.

First, I decided I needed to make some small changes to the structure of the book I’m working on. The story involves subliminal travel (as well as some FTL travel, but that’s not relevant to this conversation). This meant I got to spend two hours playing with time dilation math.

While I know some folks would rather dig their eye sockets out with dirty popsicle sticks than do such weird math, I personally find this to be one of the great side-perks of being a science fiction writer.

[An aside: I recently had a small conversation with some friends at work wherein we briefly got into the concept of time dilation as a method for traveling into the future, and I had one of those semi-awkward quiet moments where I realized I had probably gone a sentence or two too far because everyone was just kind of looking at me strangely. "It's all true," was my only defense. "Real math, not made-up science fiction." But I could tell they just thought I was way-too-geeky for my own good.]

Second, I got word that a brief blurb I sent the WotF folks will be included in their 25th Anniversary coffee table book, and I’ll be receiving a free copy. Big Woot! there.

And finally, I’ve got a small project in the works that looks like it’s going to come to fruition. I’ll post more as it seems proper, but I’m quite excited about it…

On to the afternoon — it’ll have to go a bit to be cooler than the morning, but I know it will try its best.

I’m particularly happy to have resolved one of the sticking points I had upon rereading the thing a month ago. It was a consistency/anachronism thing that has been bugging me for a bit.

Much happier today.

I’m finding Frank Sinatra music is easy to write to.

Yes, me. Frank Sinatra. Got a problem with that? I guess it’s all those 4-4 beats and jaunty melodies, but it just kind of keeps the fingers going–at least it did this morning. I write with music on, but the sound down low so that the lyrics don’t jumble my brain too much. Actually, I write to a lot of classical stuff, too. I assume it’s not too unusual to write with music on in the background, but I’m willing to bet that I’m in a pretty big minority with the Voice today.

Just my little Ron-fact of the moment.

Progress: Officially completed the pilot bit as far as the novel is concerned. I think I need to add a small transition scene to it if I want to make it into a true short story, which I may do tomorrow. But for now it feels good to be done with this portion of the work. It grew to a considerably bigger project than I had first envisioned.

The sub-plot story of my two pilots is rounding into shape, but the process of getting it back into the book is quite tedious. The story is told in the novel via a series of scenes separated by some distance. And I decided that it would be a good idea to keep the two in sync, so as I change things in the short story I go back into the novel and change it there, too, assuming it makes sense, anyway.

So the process is a bit of a bear to maintain.

Still, the act of looking at this bit as a stand alone short was worth it.

For those of you who mow the lawn with self-propelled push mowers, here’s a little learning I had last night…when the self-propeller dies, those things are a pain in the tush to use. Yes, I passed up a trip to the gym yesterday after work in order to take advantage of the weather and cut the grass. I was actually bemoaning the fact that I wouldn’t get a full workout in, but the fates apparently listened. An hour’s work pushing along a 9,000-ton piece of equipment can totally kick your butt.

I know, my life is tough.

Progress:

I’m coming to the end of this little dalliance of mine to clean up my pilot sub-story–at least I’m coming to the end of this pass at it, anyway. I’m liking how the characters are working, but my spider-sense is tingling and I’m thinking I’ll need a later pass at it to make the rest of its message resonate at the book’s scope. Bottom line at this point is that I’m feeling myself learn again–which is great. Attempting to pull this bit into a stand-alone short story was a great decision, regardless of whether it ends up fully working or not.

I’ve always loved superheroes as a part of my kid-hood, and also because my uncle was a major comic-head. When I think of iron Man and the Green Lantern, and Spiderman, and may others, I think of Dennis. And that makes me happy.

He passed some years back, but man, would he have loved the stuff they are doing with cgi these days.

John Bodin and I once wrote a novelette centered around a superhero named Quantum. It’s a pretty fun piece, good enough (in my opinion) that I’m still submitting it to places where it seems to fit. We’ll see what happens, eh?

Progress Update:

Today saw good progress on the book, though I’m still struggling with my two pilots. They are important figures, though, because they carry the message of war I’m trying to create. Back in the day of the first draft I didn’t realize that this was their purpose in the story (admittedly this may make me seem lazy, but really I think it’s more a matter of me learning story skills. Now that I understand their purpose, I feel a much stronger connection to them and the words are flowing better.

Bottom line: I broke a couple chapters out differently, and added quite a bit of depth to one of the two. Started working on the second, but ran out of time.

This morning it was back to the novel grindstone. I’m nearing the halfway point, which means I’m still having fun. I can already pinpoint the time period where I’ll think it’s junk again. [grin]

At this point I’m thinking of taking the first week of May off work, so if this book isn’t ready to go before then, it should make it across the line during that span.

I don’t usually use Brigid as a pre-reader, but she’s really pretty good at it. So I’ll have to see how much more of her time I can beg, borrow, or steal.

I also spent much of last week doing a big-picture review of one of my novels. I had marketed this one before, and it had received some commentary and interest, but it also seemed to have problems–meaning that I grew tired of it and no one immediately grabbed it and said “this is brilliant!” (though obviously it is!).

With some distance between me now and then, I think I see what was bogging it down. I made two major structural changes to it this weekend that provide focus where it needs to be. Having done this, I expect it needs another 5-10K words. I like it now, though, which feels good since I had kind of written that off as a training exercise.

So, between working on those to pieces, two trips to the health club, and cutting the grass, that was my weekend.

Yours?