Yeah, right.

I was still worried about the last chapter. This morning I’ve determined that the problem is not with the last chapter, but really just the last four pages. Of course, this is not really much better news as this story line leads to the next storyline (which is another book already in draft). A substantial change here will reverberate all the way down the line.

And, yet, that is what is so clearly needed.

Hmmmm …

Such is life, eh?

And so I opened the hood and peered in and got to work.

I think one of the problems I have with this one is that in the root of my mind I think it has the chance to be something special. I’ve written a few novel-length works, all fairly standard fares. Good stories (I think), but not particularly unique beyond the events of the stories themselves. But this one is different. I’m not sure I’m good enough to write it as it needs to be written, and so it’s been easier to just let it sit there.

Strange, isn’t it, this writing thing?

Whew…

On to the next project, eh?

It’s a strange little piece that I expect to discuss a bit more over the next couple days, but I’ll just say now that if you’re actually hanging around here these days you can expect to find a free copy available for download fairly soonish.

So, uh, yeah. Hang around, all right? [grin]

Pretty danged cool.

I sat down to write this baseball-ish fantasy on November 10, and actually finished the draft last Friday, December 10. Even better, the structure is–in my opinion–pretty solid, and the story is clean. I’m pretty sure the second draft rewrite is going to be a breeze.

I tend to not talk about what I’m working on too much because I guess I’m one of those guys who doesn’t get much help from talking about it before the fact. But now that it was done, I told Lisa it was finished and we discussed parts of it. “You seem like you really enjoyed writing this,” she said at one point. And I did. I had a total blast. Better yet, I think writing this might really help me as I turn back to the more pure-SF thing I was working on before taking this detour. It really honed this sense of character in me. At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.

Anyway…

Between shoveling snow and whatnot, I started the re-write this morning. We’ll see where it goes.

[grin]

But don’t worry…I’ve not fallen by the wayside. Not too far, anyway.

I should start this by saying out loud that I had no intention of doing anything like a NANOWRIMO. I was in the middle of this science fiction thing, you see? That science fiction thing I’ve been wrangling for a couple months now and was just maybe-kinda getting to the point with where I was ready to have that break-through that was going to get me to the end. I had no _need_ for another project. No interest. No. None. no NANOWRIMO for me, thank you.

And then came November 10, and I started looking at a baseball sim league.

[ Aside ]: for the uninitiated, a baseball sim league is a computer simulation of baseball wherein totally real human beings run totally fake teams of totally fake players. This is not to be confused with Fantasy baseball, wherein a bunch of totally fake humans create totally fake teams out of totally real players. [ /Aside ]

I love baseball sims, and this one was really interesting–a group of guys and a fake construct that included a “replacement” US major league system with a Japanese wing, and baseball in Mexico, San Juan, and the Dominican Republic. That was interesting as all get-out.

And then …

There’s this writing component to being part of that league. And, well, I got an idea about a tour of the ball parks in it…I got to thinking about how a kid getting out of school with nothing to do might find his way from park-to-park, he might have a buddy and together they might get into a little trouble
here and a little trouble there, and they might … I wrote it down. Words began to flow in ways I couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t want to if I tried.

And so …

It’s 18 days later and I’ve got about 30K words down and there are maybe another 15 or 20K to go. Yeah, I know that’s small for a novel. Screw it. It is what it is. Maybe it’ll be a little bigger in second draft, maybe not. It’s a baseball story, natch. And it’s got a bit of travelogue, with a bit of Thelma and Louise, a shake of On the Road, a flavor of Field of Dreams, and maybe even a hint of the Sopranos. Who can tell right now? It’s baseball, right?

All I can say for sure is that I’m having a blast and that words are rolling from the moment I sit down until the moment I pry my fingers off the keyboard. It’s a wave, you see. A wave of words. And, baby, I’mma so gonna ride it.

This “one solution” is generally a problem.

For years and years I’ve drilled myself to discard the first answer to various situations because the first answer is generally trite and, well, obvious. If you want your fiction to be interesting, the thought goes, don’t settle for your first idea. So I’ve been down here searching for an alternate and more surprising answer to my LBP dilemma.

Each fifteen or twenty minutes I would say to the story: “How about we try this?” And the story would reply: “That sucks.” And I would say: “Hey, humor me and try it out for a couple paragraphs.” Not being able to defend itself, the story would try my idea out for size and eventually say: “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”

Today I finally decided to give in.

I wrote a paragraph that led down the obvious path. It felt pretty good. So I wrote another and another. Next thing you know I felt the familiar sensation of having things moving again.

Perhaps, I thought, this was the obvious answer because it just flat-out makes the story work.

Feel free to ignore the smirking story behind the green curtains.

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.