April 6, 2007 Finished! The book is done. I did the last edits this morning and changed a few minor things in the last couple chapters back to something from a previous version. And it's done. Printed. And Nora's reading it as I type this. Holy god... Two years and two months, 93,000 words, two hundred single-spaced pages. From where I'm sitting (still very close to it) it just seems like months and months of brainstorming, changing things one way, changing them back, deleting weeks of hard work and doing it all over, only to delete it again and start from scratch. But I've created a coherent entity now, seamless, hewn and chipped and puttied and painted and now there it is for everyone to see. I think I'm going to take a bit of a break.... April 5, 2007 Finished reading all the way through for the fifth draft. Oh, and got up to Chapter 19 in editing. This thing's humming along. I am determined to have it all done tomorrow. April 1, 2007 The fourth draft is done! I did the last chapter first thing this morning and then worked my way through my over-all fix-it list. Four hours later, here I am, satisfied as I can possibly be without a huge chunk of perspective. Now all I need to do is print it out again and give it a final go-through. I should be able to do that this week. And barring any freakish incongruities, it'll be ready for anyone to read! March 31, 2007 One chapter to go and I'll be finished the fourth draft. I'm kinda ticked that the second and third last chapters are too long. But I tried my best to cut inessential stuff this morning and was able to turf 700+ words. But they're still too long and I may end up making three out of the two. It's going good though. March 25, 2007 I spell checked the whole thing this week and now I'm up to Chapter 14 in content editing. It's going good. Since I can work on this thing in small bites now, I'm able to chug away on it during the week a bit, so it's moving faster now. I now have a very clear idea of what needs to be done to the first book to bring it up to snuff. It's gonna take a fair bit of time to do it. But with luck, both books will be aced by the end of the summer. I've got all of July to work on it. March 19, 2007 I stayed late at work and finished reading my book this evening. I gotta say, I'm blown away. Yeah, yeah, there's a ton of typographical errors to fix and one major thing I'm going to shorten. But holy god... This book is an experience. Now, more than ever, I'm worried about bringing the first book up to par. I want to keep it the same length. Just boost its strong points (like characterization) and chill a bit on the action. But man... I can't wait for this second book to be done. Whoever reads it is going to have a few comments to make on my bizarre sense of humor. I guarantee it. Halfway done the fourth draft. Ga! It's been an hour since I finished reading it and I'm still reeling... I think that's a good sign. March 17, 2007 The fourth draft is well under way. Though I'm up to Chapter 23, I don't think you can actually say that I'm over half way through. More like a quarter of the way. I printed it out for the first time at the beginning of the week and I'm now reading it over, making margin notes. When I'm done reading, I'll go back and fix all the little stuff I found. That'll be the end of the fourth draft. The I'll do the same again. If all goes well it'll be done in a month or so. This stage is far less work, far less pressure than the ground-up writing. I find myself reading this thing like a book I read two years ago. I only have a faint recollection of what's coming, but knowing it, however faintly, really adds to the experience. The way I think of this kind of book is, it's the phenomenology of the events. You get what happened, but you also get the writer's-slash-main-character's internal dialog about the experience, which is half the ride. And man... am I ever enjoying this thing. Ha! I guess I should. It's completely my sense of humor in there. I just hope the rest of the world shares my loonie idea of what's funny. March 11, 2007 Third draft is done! What a huge thing this is. My brain is still all wrapped up in the ending. But I had to check and edit a few lines mid-book this morning and man... what a freakin saga this is. So many gut-splittingly funny bits. It comes in at ~91,500 words. Just a few chapters shy of double the 49,000 of the first book. Yikes! No wonder it took twice as long to write it! Still don't have a whole title for it. Just one word away. If I'm going to name it the way I want, I gotta edit a couple little things in both books first. But it's within a hair-breadth of being done! March 10, 2007 Holy crap! I chopped two chapters off and redid the end. I liked the ending of the first book, they way it points to the second one. And man... did I ever do a number on the second one to lead to the third. I still have some minor editing to do on the book - which I can do tomorrow. But then I can print it out and give it a look through before I let anyone reads it. As is, it's completely readable. But I just want to pump up the ending with stuff in the middle a bit. Man... do I ever like this book. March 4, 2007 Yikes. I got to the end today. Chapter 40. I actually finished up to Chapter 38, but I couldn't resist reading till the end to make sure it was good. Up to 38 is fine. A lot of work this morning on them to make them that way. But they're fine. Really good. But I'm going to have to redo the end. No biggie. Just gotta trash the last two lame-assed chapters and do it right. Do it quick and do it right. So I should be finished this third draft next weekend! March 3, 2007 Done up to Chapter 36 this morning. Tons done. But after a week of nothing, I'm a bit crazed to be back at it. I was sick as a dog last week. Had to take three days off work. Fever like I've never experienced. But I'm back, and the book's going well. This final bunch of chapters is going to take a lot of work. But man... I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. February 18, 2007 Oh... man... I didn't even want to get out of bed this morning, knowing what I had to face. I spent a good two and a half hours trying to plan a recovery from yesterday's disaster. But it was no go. I had two chapters that could be changed any which way from Sunday to correct this thing. I had half a dozen workable ideas... but nothing was anywhere near good enough. And the morning was starting to end. The last thing I wanted to do was leave this thing for another week. My god... there had to be something, some way to fix this! And then I found it. Holy shit... did I ever find it. Thankfully it was an in situ solution. I didn't have to change one word of the first of the two chapters, the preceeding chapter or the following chapter. And I wrote it. It's done. And it packs a serious friggin punch that's completely in line with the flow of the book. Halla-freakin-lujah!!! It was a hard morning, a hard weekend of writing. But wow... what a payoff. February 17, 2007 Strange morning of writing. Everything was going along just peachy. I got Chapter 30 in ship-shape and started on 31. Or was it 32? Anyway, I got three quarters of the way through it and realized I was kicked completely out of it. The thread, the believability, was gone. I'd lost it. I sat there for like, ten minutes just staring at the page, not knowing what to think. It didn't work. The first thing in this entire book that was THAT wrong. I was in shock and shut down the damn program. That was it. I had to retreat and regroup. Nora asked me later in the day if I had a plan for fixing it. I did. Actually I had an idea all along for an alternative way of doing it. But holy god... it's going to be a lot of work. Sucks. But hey, it'll be a better book for it in the end. February 11, 2007 Up to Chapter 29 done. What a freakin book this is! I laughed myself silly for like, the last three hours. This is why I don't write for a living. Writing what I want is the whole reward. There was this one line that was pretty damn funny that needed a bit of editing. I thought I could do better. It went through about five versions and each one completely slayed me. Nora could hear me laughing all the way downstairs. Man... I've said this before, but I feel like an overflowing cup. I cannot wait for someone else to read this thing. You know what the key to writing a novel is? Perspective. Being able to switch from writer mode to reader mode on demand. Why did Aldous Huxley "foozle "? Why did Balzac drink his black coffee? Why do writers have to go for a walk in the middle of their writing time? Why are bathroom breaks and all the refreshment rituals necessary? Perspective. Simple as that. You gotta get your writer brain away from it and engage your reader brain. The reader has no investment in all the work you've done. To him, you could chuck the whole thing and start another book if it ain't good enough. And it's the reader who has the great ideas. He's the one that, as he's reading, has the flashes of anticipation, the premonitions and the hopes that events go a certain way. The writer just has to get the hell out of the way and give the reader a great experience. But when you get tired or bogged down, its tough to get perspective. When Nora and Candyce won the Three Day Novel competition, heck, they didn't stay up all night. They had normal nights' sleep. I think they even went out for beers one day. What does that tell you? February 10, 2007 I had to edit an event sequence in the last few chapters, so that took a chunk of time this morning. But I got to do one fresh one, so Chapter 25 is done now. There was a promise made in the book early on, and at this point, it's time to deliver on it in spades. It's really tough to know if I've done it justice. But man... at few different points I was laughing my head off, so I'm going to try and not out-think myself and trust that laughter. The challenge now, of making the first book as good as this one, is really starting to bug me. February 4, 2007 Two chapters this morning and it's going good. It still feels like a long haul. But man... around every corner there's something cool. Some little tidbit that makes it worthwhile, not just in a big picture way, but chapter by chapter. I love the way this thing is structured. February 3, 2007 I am now 60% of the way through this draft. Finished Chapter 22 this morning in a bit of a marathon session. All freakin week I think about writing and when I finally get time to work on it... man... I'm gung ho and work till I drop. This morning, four chapters. Up to this point, the book is certainly good enough for someone else to read, even a hard-nosed editor. There are one or two tiny little things yet to check in the first half and a bunch of hard editing left toward the end, but I can now see it done. There are no major obstacles. I'm now getting antsy about fixing the end of the first book. This one is so much better, it's crazy. I guess my anxiety about living up to the first book has paid off... January 28, 2007 Finished Chapters 17 and 18 this morning. Almost half way! 17 has all this descriptive stuff about Alberta farmland/wilderness and man... it's such a pleasure to visit them again in a story. I can't tell you how many happy hours I spent on private land that's too rough to farm. Three, four, six hour walks with nothing but my dog and a pack of smokes. Gotta love this place. Ironically, writing these books is keeping me from one of my most loved diversions: bushwhacking. Just walking and exploring in the middle of nowhere. January 27, 2007 Redid two major chunks of Chapter 16 this morning. Not that it was bad... but it was one of those things where the reader might think there was insufficient justification for a character's action. So I changed the action and motivation so that everything was up front, clear, and obvious, and in the process had the opportunity to create a nice, revealing character collision - and drop in some really funny stuff. January 21, 2007 Chapter 16 done. Man...oh...man... Couple times in there the story just completely blew me away. What a freakin riot this book is! In some ways, it's really tough to do. But I just thank my lucky stars that I'm able to write something this close to my heart. Action, humor, big picture, little moments... I love it all. My job with this draft is just to smooth the minor bumps along the way - 'cause the freakin thing has a complete life of its own. I'm just the light-handed editor of a dumb-assed kid's ramblings. I just gotta make it flow and not mess with his story. Man... gotta love it... January 20, 2007 Finally! back at it. I made a major change to the action in Chapter 9. It made the chapter twice as long as it should be so I split it into two, 9 and 10. Then I went on to edit Chapters 11 and 12. So I'm happy. That freakin plague laid me low for a loooong while. But I'm finally back at it, full force. January 6, 2007 Last week, Saturday, I only did one Chapter, 9. I wondered what the heck was going on, since my energy dropped like a stone that day and I could only do half the daily work I'd done for the previous week. Then Sunday it hit our house - me, Nora, and three of the kids. Some freakin plague that has laid us low for seven straight days. I thought, Ah, it's just a cold and will pass in a day or two. But I was so sick that there was absolutely no hope of going to work this week. So, workaholic that I am, you can imagine what kind of squirrelly I've become in seven days, unable to do much more than watch TV and shove a computer mouse around, reading movie and news sites. Gack! I don't do pathetic very well ordinarily, but this week I've become a bona fide expert. December 29, 2006 Oh... my... gawd... This is quite the story... Anybody gets this far, they're gonna go... Ok, never read anything like this before... Just finished Chapters 7 and 8. A darn good morning's work. December 28, 2006 Done Chapter 6 and it's going good. Man... I just want to continue working, but I know the rest of the day would be a write-off (no pun) if I did. From this point the book builds this crazy momentum and it's really hard to stop working on it. Oh, well... mañana... December 27, 2006 Except for Christmas day, I've been doing a chapter a day. I go over each one twice, so it takes a whole morning to do one. This morning, though, I got through Chapter 3 twice and Chapter 4 once - and I'm pooped. So far, so good. I don't know what you'd call this draft. There was the plotting phase. The first draft was just doing it, making it happen. The second was fixing major errors and in this case, rewriting the whole third act of the book. Now I guess this is a polishing phase, concentrating on the flow of each sentence and each paragraph, making sure they're as effective in their job as possible. It's much easier on the brain than any of the rest. Sort of like a crew boss doing a walk-through of a nearly finished building, getting his troops to finish up all the last minute stuff that's not up to code, patching all the little holes they made while installing bigger things. December 24, 2006 Just started the 3rd draft, finishing Chapter numero uno this morning. Feels like I got a long road ahead of me, but actually, it'll go pretty quick now. Only two major chapter edits to do and the rest is just polishing. I got hold of an actual physicist this week and left them with the two big questions I have. They're going to pass the problems on to a grad student and get back to me, hopefully within the next month. I've got enough info to give an educated guess at the answers, so nothing will be held up by them. It's just cool to know I'll have some numerical backing for my fictional events. December 16, 2006 I took a bit of a break last weekend. Instead of writing I did some hard thinking about certain key story elements and did a ton of research. How would those things in the story work? What is the physics of this hypothetical event? I realized I was completely out of my element with some things. I think what I'm going to do is have a cursory chat with an actual physicist on the subject, wing it with what I then know and then get the guy to confirm the finer details. Anyway, I started feeling antsy about not working as hard as I could on the book. (Breaks don't work so well for me.) This morning I did a bunch of drawings and more research and finally said, screw it. I have to actually accomplish something today! So I ended up editing the description of a particular key thing in both the first book and the sequel. So that's the second biggest editing item off my list. The first one still remains and I'm going to leave that till I have a quick chat with an authority on the subject. In my editing today, I really got a sense of the huge scope of the story I'm telling. The freakin domino effect I've created - that takes dozens of chapters to unfold. Pretty cool. That's the real joy of the novel form. Ping a bell in Chapter 2 and nobody realizes they've heard it till Chapter 25. Gotta love it. December 3, 2006 Second draft done! Thirty nine chapters, 87,000 words. After I wrote Chapter 38 this morning, I was still unsatisfied with the ending. It needed these particular elements to be good. It needed sauce. So I wrote what I figured it needed and that still didn't do it. So I sat and had a think for about two minutes. What about this, What about that? All of them things that, in the nearly two years of writing this book, had not occurred to me before. Then Blam! in two sentences I had it. The perfect ending. I still have some warts to burn off and a few little descriptive clarifications to make. But screw it. That can all wait. I can do all those in one writing session. And then I will start the third draft. But first, I need to take a bit of a break, cool my heels and enjoy this plateau. December 2, 2006 Big push this morning. I finished Chapter 37, the last real chapter and all there is left to do in this second draft is an epilogue. Man... I can hardly believe I've gotten it this far. I realized first thing this morning that the first draft contained all of the essential elements of what I wanted to do, so why not just edit that instead of writing from scratch? Man... it worked. I know I have much to do in subsequent drafts, and even if I treat this ending as a pencil sketch, who cares? It's all part of the same process. Looks like the book will come in at around 86,000 words. And whoa... for me, to get all this way without a single major screw-up is a really huge deal. All the cogs are in place, most of them turning smoothly already. In another couple of months, this whole Big Ben will be done. November 26, 2006 Whoa... Edited Chapter 33 this morning and wrote a really long Chapter 34. Still two or three chapters from the end. I'm in some kind of happy groove now, getting used to the wacky intensity of this ending. I don't know if what I wrote today is the perfect thing, but at least I know it's good. God... it just keeps going on... and on... the work I do in the next couple weekends will polish it off. And then I'm up for a break. I don't even want to think about the third draft till I've caught my breath. November 25, 2006 Last weekend was almost a complete write-off (sadly, no pun there). I edited Chapter 32 about 3/4 of the way through and had to call it a day. I was so burnt out there was no continuing. I didn't even try Sunday. It was write and die or chill out and get my act together. This morning was another matter. I took great care to rest Thursday and Friday nights, get to bed early and gather my myself for a serious onslaught. So this morning I edited the whole of Chapter 32 again and wrote all of Chapter 33. And because I took the time to prepare myself, it paid off hugely. 32 could use a chunk more work, but the core of 33 is so freakin good, I can't wait till it's polished. I had pretty serious doubts I could write this chapter with oomph and believability. I've been thinking about it with trepidation for months now. Man... am I ever relieved it's going to work. I had to lie down after I wrote it. Emotionally, it just killed me. It's one of those chapters where (I hope) the typical response will be either, a) "Is that ever fucked up!" or b) "I really want to know what happens, but I can't bring myself to read any more. It's too much!" Whatever the reaction, if they ever made this into a movie, I'd be one of those geeks camped out for days to buy tickets. All I gotta do now is write it well enough that it's worthy of publishing, let alone making a movie out of. "Go long or go home." Man... I'm trying to go long... but it ain't easy. November 13, 2006 Yesterday, planning and plotting. And this morning, first thing the same. I think I've pretty much got a clear path to the end now. There were so many possibilities, it's been a wasteland for weeks with me now. But I think I got it today and I started on it. Wrote Chapter 32 this morning and though it's much longer than I'd like it, I'm fairly happy with it. - One of those first draft things where the core is solid, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. It'll get fixed up in subsequent drafts, so I'm not concerned about it. What a freakin' story! Yikes! November 11, 2006 Wrote Chapter 31 this morning. And man... did all that planning ever pay off. I got to the end of it and had to lie down. If the reader gets this far, they gonna go, "Fuck! I don't even want to read any more. That's just too friggin cool to believe." Or maybe that's just me... If the book left off at this point, I wouldn't care. This fevered a pitch is so hard to accomplish, I'm happy just because I nailed it. Everything else is secondary. As I've said ten million times, I cannot wait for someone else to read this thing. November 5, 2006 Spent the weekend planning Chapter 31 and editing prior sections of the book to lead up to it. Not a heck of a lot of time this weekend to write, but what work got done, was solid. Was talking to a friend last week who mentioned that there are three types of artists. Those who do it full time and live that life in all respects (late nights, artistic purpose inextricably entwined with the need to pay the rent), those with family who put their art aside for a full-time day job (to ensures their kids have stability), and those who try to do both. The latter, my buddy said, are all crazy, are junkies, alcoholics or worse. I'm kind of right in the middle of the second category, by choice. But man... when I lean more to the third category and try to do too much, everyone pays. Sucks. So I resign myself, get done what I can get done and bide my time. I don't need to write for cash, I have a job. That means, as an amateur, I get to write what I want. But in the same way I refused to play the starving artist in my youth (and always had a job), I refuse to let the luxury of my amateur status direct the content of my writing. It's too easy to get caught one of the two major pitfalls of artistic freedom: either using that freedom to be exclusively experimental (the Ivory Tower syndrome of academic artists) or because there is no external push (like the pro's need for cash) getting stuck in a rut of undisciplined mediocrity. So here I am... dog friggin tired after a work week, trying my best to write something decent on the weekends, and attempting to navigate unscathed between frustration (at not doing enough) and burn-out (from doing too much). Oh, good... tomorrow's Monday... Can't wait... October 29, 2006 Whew! It took me three writing sessions to do Chapters 29 and 30. But they're done. Tons of rewriting in the midst of fresh stuff. But wow... Is this ever over the top. Hellish thing to work on, this series of scenes. I described it to Nora as building a big log house with really huge tree trunks. Each one has to bear a lot of weight, so each one has to placed perfectly from the beginning. So now that chunk is done - and what a relief it is. This was key to correcting the faults of the first book and the first draft of the second. A huge bunch of the ending is already done, so what's left is meshing this new section and what's already been scribbled. And... holy god... is it ever cinematic, this book. Years and years ago I wanted to write something completely modern. No historical stuff, no retro, no nostalgia. Not having done it, I had this lingering doubt whether I could do it. I'd written tons of SF, tackled historical fiction and scads of poetry that had no particular time frame. Well... now I've faced that demon head on and made it my best friend. And it feels really great. October 22, 2006 Tons of work this morning. Spiffed up what I wrote yesterday and got 1500 words into Chapter 29. I blanched at the prospect of finishing the chapter this morning. It was near noon and I was serious burnt. But what I got is good. I can't imagine what the rest is going to be like - and holy shit... once the whole chapter is done... I don't even want to speculate on it. But I can't wait to read it. October 21, 2006 The new Chapter 28 is done. Calm before the storm. October 15, 2006 Worked on a bunch of little lead-up stuff this morning and rewrote Chapter 27 pretty much from scratch. I'm getting to the stage now, where I can see the end in sight. Each chapter is taking on its own personality and when I'm done, they'll each be like their own little journey. I ended up writing something quite silly at the end of the chapter. God knows where that came from... but the opportunity presented itself and well... I took it. I think I'm going to tone down to understated in the next draft... in light of what's coming. But my god... I'm so close to the end of this way of doing the book, it's taking on a really cool shape. When I first started this sequel, I was paralyzed for a good long while by the daunting task of living up to the first one. I find it completely entertaining from this vantage point to know, clearly, that the shoe is on the other foot. The second book is far better. And now I have to go back and make the first one just as good. ...Freakin hilarious... But it's a really pleasant task to have to do. I cannot wait for people to read this thing. October 14, 2006 Finished to the end of Chapter 26 this morning. This is the point at which the revision of the lead up ends and the new ending begins. I'm so happy to get to this stage. There are only a few chapters left, a couple of them already written. The end of the second draft is within reach. And my god... the way it's going is friggin joyful. Today's text is pretty manic, but I'm not terribly worried about it. I'll massage it into the right tone in subsequent drafts. I'm just amazed that I got this far into the book and it all works... October 9, 2006 Good day of writing today. Woke up dog tired after a wild Thanksgiving out at the island (think rolled quad, two ambulances, five police cars, late night). But I'm getting so bugged and worried about the length of time this book is taking that I really needed to push it. Five hours later,I had a long chapter done and two exquisite scenes. One that completely took me by surprise. I'm so used to "driven" scenes, scenes where the plot is clearly in charge of what's going on, that it's a bit of a shock to let the characters take over the wheel. I mean completely take over, with not one speck of me or my story or ideas in it. Why did they do that? Because that's who they are, with all their faults. For better or worse, that's what happened in that place with those people. Resolution, reason, purpose all bedamned. I found it completely satisfying. Like you punch a hole in the earth and stand back. Whatever pops up, that's what you go with. This rewrite is really going well. It's operative word is restraint. I applied the reins to the last third of the book, and now it's paying off, big time. October 8, 2006 Starting "killing my darlings" this morning. Wiped out a very cool scene in Chapter 22 and completely re-wrote the action. I got as far as plotting the core of this chunk of three chapters and writing the first half of 23. Gad.. Reworking this end game is exactly what I'd recommend if it wasn't my book. It's just dang hard when it is my book. I'll get over it by the time I'm finished tomorrow (Thanksgiving holiday monday) morning. By then, I won't be rewriting anything.and it'll all be fresh fun. September 30, 2006 This morning I rethought the last third of the book, from Chapter 26 to 40. I'm going to ditch it and do it a completely different way. The same problem I had with the first book has happened to this one. I'm going to bring it back close to the ground. And my god... is it ever going to make a difference. It'll be perhaps ten chapters shorter, but it'll be worth the sacrifice. As soon as I'm done I'm going to go back to the first book and do the same thing: bring it back close to the ground. Holy god... I finally have a clear path to a really good story, but it's going to take that much longer to write. What the hell? It'll be two full years to write this thing! September 17, 2006 Done Chapters 25 and 26 this weekend. Been dead sick this past week, dragging my butt around like a sack of potatoes. 25 was an easy go. 26 took quite a bit longer. I had initially rushed through the action and wanted a bit more detail. So far, so good. Anyone reading these first 26 chapters wouldn't have much to complain about. I just gotta make sure the rest lives up to the precident. September 9, 2006 After the last writing session I had before my honeymoon last week, our internet connection was down, so I couldn't update anything. I'd done Chapter 23. And today, I just finished the second draft of 24. So far, so good. When I started scribbling this morning, I spent a huge amount of time reassessing the second half of the book. Could I do it better? Did I need to revamp the plot? In the end, I decided to work the existing first draft and put my scruples down to the uncertainty that comes when you've been away from a piece for a while. From a distance, it's easy to kill your darlings and imagine you can write something better. But for the next couple of chapters, I realised, there is nothing better. This is the arc of the book. Everything has been leading up to this. I just have to improve what is already written. I did my best with what info I had available at the time. Now I'm going to do my best from this vantage point. Period. And not waste valuable writing time second guessing my best efforts. It just sucks that it takes so long to do this. Oh, well. It's a novel. Not a one page poem. Nature of the beast. August 21, 2006 A really solid weekend of writing, though in pages there isn't much to show for it. I spend both Saturday and Sunday working on Chapter 22 again. Saturday I laid the groundwork and Sunday... wow... I can only describe the changes I made as revelatory. This is one of the two scenes that I've been agonizing over for a year. I kid you not, I've probably spent 10 or 12 hours of brain power on this one section in the last twelve months. When I was finished the chapter Sunday morning I sat back and had this little mental spasm. Holy shit... It's not only good, it's fucking great. It fit nicely on top of the first 21 chapters of this book, which I'm quite confident in. In Ch 22 I was far from confident, not because none of the drafts were good, but because it failed to fulfill this book's mandate of subverting expectation. The way I had written it initially, it merely delivered on expectation in a unique way, which wasn't good enough. Anyway I'm damned happy about how it turned out. Sunday I was able to tackle Chapter 23, and got that up to a decent second draft. But man... as stands right now, I'm little over the halfway mark in this book and I have the feeling I'm going to be chopping big bits off the end before I'm done. August 12, 2006 Qualified relief. That's all I gotta say about today's scribbling session. Chapter 22 is down, but it was no easy chore. The first half of the book is perfect, as is. But this is the beginning of the end, and for a couple of weeks now, it just wasn't sitting right. Turns out, all it needed was some more brain power. Being a naturally lazy human critter, working my butt off at 7:00 on a Saturday morning is not my idea of fun. But long term gains outweigh everything else. If I do this right, this will be one killer book. But wow... to get there is only rarely downhill. August 8, 2006 Gad... two writing days and only two pages written. What a striking contrast to Saturday! I knew this particular task was coming. I'd done an adequate job of it in the first draft, but making it great was a quantum leap away. Or rather, two writing days. It was a huge amount of work with little to show for it. Every minute I'd want to drop it and go do something else. But it's done, and will only get better in subsequent drafts. August 5, 2006 Wow... what a long week. But I'm physically back in one piece and rested and finally sharp enough to tackle this chapter with skill instead of just effort. I've redone Chapter 21 again, this time taking a kind of string trio approach to it (in contrast to the solo cello that was going on before), and it worked beautifully. There's much to be said about getting psychological distance on a problem. What seemed nearly effortless this morning was, last week, an horrendously laborious and unfruitful slog. It's going good again. But now I've got serious issues with the rest of the book. Tonal issues. It's like the first half of the book is a completely different animal from the second. But there's a cure for that. It's just going to take a huge amount of work, both in what's told and how it's told. July 31, 2006 Did a number on my back carrying concrete block the other day, so I've been out of it since. Yesterday I managed to do a little plotting, and today I got it together enough to re-write Chapter 21 - which is going to be a consolidation of 21-24. All week I've been agonizing over this section of the book. It's like it hit a brick wall of mediocrity - action without interest. But for the life of me couldn't figure a way out of it. Truth be told, in my mucked-up physical state, I was totally intimidated by it. It was a high vertical wall and I was a freakin cripple at the bottom. Anyway, I think I nailed it. Same action, completely different way of telling it. And now my holidays end... and it's back to weekly instead of daily writing sessions. Gack. July 27, 2006 Two more chapters done. But holy god... what a lot of work. I shoulda been a veterinary dentist - 'cause this was like pulling elephant teeth. July 26, 2006 Done up to Chapter 21. It was a good morning. Heck of a long story, though... my god... I'm only half way through. I'm starting to feel the pressure of my month-long holiday ending this week. There's no way I'll be able to finish this draft in 5 days. Sucks. I'm completely spoiled, racing through this thing at record pace. And next week, it'll be back to a couple chapters a week. Gack. July 25, 2006 Worked on the timeline this morning, adjusting Chapter 17 so everything seems like real-time. Had to add a chunk and modify the rest. From here on it works perfectly. I read ahead a few chapters and just about had an aneurism. Funny? Holy god... Funnier than anything I've read in decades. I really, really can't wait for somebody else to read this thing. This one little page is worth five times the price of admission. The trick is to get people to read to that point. July 24, 2006 Freakin heat wave in Edmonton - too hot to think, let alone write. But I'm up to Chapter 17 now, so I'm grateful for whatever progress I'm making. So far, so good. July 22, 2006 Well, I don't know what happened, but I just finished Chapter 15. And I'm now two chapters longer - so it's at 41 now - whatever that means. I was kind of bummed after yesterday's big slog, fearing the whole rest of the book was going to be like that. But wow... it just zings along and is so hard to put down, I couldn't stop myself from continuing this morning. I just feel like handing what I've got so far to somebody to read so I can have someone to talk to about it. It's been a long year, and it kind of jolts me to think I'm the only one who's read this - that it's not some universally known thing. Bizarre. July 21, 2006 Chapter 11 is down. Long freakin haul for a long chapter, but it's down. So much for my three-chapter days. Gad... At this rate it's gonna be Christmas before I finish. July 20, 2006 I had to add a big chunk to Chapter 10 this morning. I ain't keen on making this book bigger, but it had to be done. It's now smooth as glass from the beginning to this point. Unfortunately, half of Chapter 11 is hanging in the air now, too short to be a chapter on its own. Oh, well... no biggie I can't solve tomorrow. July 19, 2006 Got three more chapter done this morning. Up to Chapter 9 now, and it's going pretty well. Couple hurdles, but man... a few parts that completely wiped me out. I sort of remembered writing them, but holy god... I forgot how funny they were. I'm up over 90,400 words now, whatever that means. The book will be well over two hundred pages, a far cry from the 150 or so for the first one. July 18, 2006 Thank god I feel the most effects of this flu first thing in the morning and later in the day - leaving me a writing window of a few hours. I just finished Chapter 6. A friggin miracle by yesterday's standards. And I certainly wouldn't have gotten this far if it was the first draft I was working on. I don't know how many times I trimmed down this section of the action, but it had to be two or three already. The book rocks up to this point! (If I may say so myself.) I bought a kid's mystery novel on my daughter's recommendation yesterday. Wow... it's been a long time since I read a book written for the same target audience I'm aiming for. And there's a good reason for it. I don't want to mess with my vision. Call it what you will. Not wanting to be influenced. Not wanting to be diluted or polluted. I can read it in the evenings, no problem. Their book is what it is and I completely enjoy it. But this morning I got up wanting something to read while I was eating breakfast and it was like, man... keep that thing away from me. Far away. I got my own road to pave, thank you very much. Weird how that works. I used to think it was snobbery or some odd quirk of my being an inexperienced writer (that fact of being an unwilling sponge for all styles and techniques). But now I see it's something completely different. An occupational hazard. Not of a weak personal style. But of a strong one. I now know it is a problem to have to think of my writing objectively in any way while I'm doing it. It hinders the process. I want to be 100% in it. Not above or below or beside any other writing. It's like a chef trying to make a world class dish while eating someone else's fabulous concoction. Why would you do that? July 17, 2006 Aced Chapter 3 this morning. Still recovering from the plague, but feeling ten thousand times better. July 15, 2006 Got the plague. The same plague that's been making the rounds of our house the last few weeks. It's gotten worse throughout the day and now I'm friggin paralytic with the cornucopia of symptoms of this hell sent thing. So there won't be any scribbling till I get over it. This morning, I worked on a particularly troublesome page of Chapter 2 and wrote a whole new chunk in Chapter 3 to emphasize the same point. In doing so, I ended up adding a chapter at the beginning. So now I'm up to 40. Gack. July 14, 2006 Worked on Chapter 2 this morning. The original timeline left a shadow of a doubt about the realism of it, so I changed it - which involved a extending the chapter by about a half - which sucks. But hey, whatever it takes. I've now turned the beginning of the book from a fourth or fifth draft into a first draft, so I still have a pile of work to do on it. But it's way better - and that's all that matters. July 13, 2006 Well, after a few days holiday, I'm back at it, starting at Chapter 1 again. I went over it twice this morning and have it in better shape. But man... is it ever weird to be back at this point of the story. After last week's triumphant completion, it's like someone's tossed me back at the bottom of the mountain, getting me to climb it all over again but now do it with serious attention to style. This time, though, I've got the ropes and footholds from the previous ascent to make it easier. How weird. But that's the game. At this point it's no longer structural. It's painterly. If a raw, unfinished effect was what I was looking for, it'd be fine as is. But being a whacked-out perfectionist, I gotta long way to go. And it's a big book. July 6, 2006 Yup. Done the first draft. Finally! When I went to bed last night, all I could think about was getting to finish this book today. But when I woke, I was paralytic with fatigue and had a murderous headache. So I went back to bed for an hour. I got up at 7:30, ate, came upstairs and had a hell of time just finding the friggin computer keyboard, I was so tired. Then I thought, screw it. Whatever it takes. Around 10:30 I hit my max for a chapter - around 2000 words - and realized I still had a ways to go. Glancing at where I'd left off, it was the perfect ending to a chapter, so I went downstairs, refilled my coffee cup, took a couple deeps breaths and came back up here to write another chapter. Come hell or high water, I was determined to finish today. And I did. It's completely different than I thought it was going to be. I tell you, this story has the coolest arc of energy of anything I've ever written. Funnier, more intense, more personal, gentler and yet fiercer. What the hell? I'm taking the weekend off and will be back at it next week. Man, this is one hell of a chunk of words I have to edit. It's at 87,000 words right now and 39 chapters. A huge bunch longer than the first one. But wow... when it's whipped into the same shape as the first one, my god... it'll be quite the read. July 5, 2006 Just finished the penultimate chapter, Chapter 37 - and it's a long one. I also mapped out what I'm going to do in the last chapter - so tomorrow I finish the first draft! July 3, 2006 I'm halfway through Chapter 36 and everything's just rolling along. Hugely draining. But holy shit... is this ever a story and a half. I can't wait to read this thing from beginning to end. Can't wait to finish it this week (now that I'm on holidays) and begin the process of acing it. I'm just about at 80,000 words and it's going to take a few more chapters to polish it off. Even then, I know I have to flesh out a few sections a bit more. And I'm now dead certain I could write a third one. June 25, 2006 Right. Chapter 32 done. It's pretty tough for me to adequately describe my journey with this book to someone who has, really no friggin idea what I'm talking about. The first one isn't out yet. Nobody but me has a clue what this second one is about. But I tell you, once this friggin thing has been read by a bunch of people and they come back and check out this little record. You'll know what I'm going through. This fucking chapter is so over the top... I don't even know where to begin to describe my reaction to it. Could it be more intense? I doubt it. It's going to take me days to get over just reading the friggin thing, let alone wrap my head around what it will be like once I hone it in subsequent drafts to be even more effective. Will it work? Will people like it? Hate it? I don't know. But holy shit... this chapter kills me. I'm now two or three chapters from the end. I haven't entirely ruled out writing another one today. Once this thing is done though, man... it's going to be a huge job starting from the beginning again and finessing it, twice, three times, probably more. But holy god... this is good work if you can get it. June 24, 2006 Holy god... I spiffed up the ending of Chapter 31 this morning and wrote 32. I had to lie down afterward. It was so intense I could hardly write it. I actually had to hide the words I'd written so I didn't read them and get so wound up I couldn't continue. What a fleapin blast this book is. Man... if I were a twelve year old reading this, I'd be going, Thank you! Finally a book where the writer actually gives a crap about what I like! That might be a little extreme, but I tell you... this book is a prime example of my barber's saying: If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space. June 17, 2006 I happily finished Chapter 31 this morning. Man... it's getting down to the wire. Only a couple more chapters to go. I wrote this one in record time. It's a bit long and not as exciting as I'd hoped it would be, so I'll be cutting it back, making it much more personal for my main characters, and pumping it up once I've got the ending done. My god... only a couple of more weeks till this first draft is complete. And then I get holidays! A month of writing every morning! I can't wait... June 11, 2006 Took me two writing days to get Chapter 30 down. It's a long one, but it's behind me. Another bunch of work that proves the old axiom about 90% perspiration. June 4, 2006 And Chapter 29 is done. I finally can see my way to the end, probably about three or four chapters away. What a huge relief. June 3, 2006 Got Chapter 28 down this morning. I know it may seem like this is somekind of clockwork thing. But man, it ain't. When I left off last week, I had written myself into a corner. I had written what was believeable, and ended up in a place where one of the cornerstones of the book - yet to come - was literally impossible to have happen. I banged my head against it for a while, till I was exhausted, and wandered around all week thinking, great, I either have a ton of rewriting to do, or I'll have to add five shapters just to steer the book back to accommodate this idea. Crap! I sat down this morning with pure dread. Will I have to come up with something completely different? How can I make this thing happen? Ha! Two minutes into my first coffee it hit me. Bing! A very simple way to do it. Completely consistent. But completely different than I had planned - well over a year ago. I scribbled out the new outline and polished off Chapter 28, even more realistically than it had started out. Friggin cool. May 28, 2006 I'm halfway through Chapter 28 - with 27 down pat. Nobody ever said this job was easy. Half the time its like careening down a slope, trying to maintain control. The other half the time it's like slogging uphill with a 100 pound pack and mud caked boots. I gotta love this story, though. My god... if I can figure out a way to get these next couple ideas on paper, it'll be a friggin miracle. One idea's a pure visual. The other is the revelatory ending. Both need a serious amount of delicate planning to make work - without turning my characters into plot puppets. I tell you, as far as pure calories used, writing has got to be on par with marathons. Except with running, you make your body work at its limits for hours. Writing is making your brain and emotions work at their limits for that same amount of time. Draining? Holy shit... A marathon would be a piece of cake next to this. Hmmm... just be you and give 'er? Or be multiple personalities going through blood, death, fear and insanity for the same amount of time? Hour upon hour, day upon day, week after week? Gimme a treadmill and an iPod any day. May 22, 2006 Chapter 26 is done. Extremely slow progress. Nothing to do with the book - just one of those, "flesh is weak, spirit is desperately willing but psychotically frustrated" chunks of time. If I had a week with nothing else going on in my life, this puppy'd be done. Right now in the outline, I've got four chapters left to do. The way things are going, it'll be at least six. I'm currently at 11 thousand words longer than the first book, and easy, another 10 left to write. This ain't a big deal, since I hope to bulk out the first book a bit more and trim this one in subsequent drafts. May 7, 2006 No scribbling last weekend. (Was away on very important business. ) And this weekend, after five days of brain and body numbing multitasking, I'm so completely burnt you'd be hard pressed to find a bit of residual char. Did a couple hours on backstory yesterday and today, but that's about it. I cannot wait to write the rest of this book. April 23, 2006 I wrote chapter 25 this morning. And I gotta say, a couple of little words sprinkled here and there made the whole book worthwhile. It made it real, made it solid - even though the reader won't have a clue what's going on - it's the establishment of hope that something big is going on - and not just a wacky tale. It was so much fun to write... man... I can't wait to do the revisions, 'cause it'll be like polishing a rough stone I have every confidence is amazing underneath. April 17, 2006 Five chapters down this weekend. I just finished 24. And holy god... this lovely little machine I've built is just humming along. April 16, 2005 Two chapters written today, 22 and 23. Holy shit... this thing is really rolling now. Long weekends are completely great for writing, but they're hell on my health. I could use a three hour nap right now and it's not even noon. I am really happy this book is zipping along. I've long passed the word count of the first book and I'm nowhere near the revision stage - where I'm sure I'll add more. Man... if I was a 12 year old looking for a book to read, I'd be jumping for friggin joy if I found this one. April 15, 2006 Chapter 20 written yesterday and 21 written today. Holy god... it's a lot of work. Every step of the way, the visualization takes as much time as the writing. But it's going good. Huge friggin progress, but I think my I'm about two chapters ahead of my plot outline. Everything's taking longer to tell than I'd anticipated. Overall, it means the book might be five chapters longer than the first one, and each chapter an average of 300 words longer. But whereas the first one arrived like a thunderstorm after a hot day, this story's unfolding like an new shirt with lots of pins, tissue paper, cardboard and plastic clips. Gotta love long weekends. Four days straight of writing. It's a huge deal - not having to go over last week's stuff. I can just pick up where I left off the day before. It's just roaring along. April 9, 2006 Revised 19 a bit and started on 20. Slow going... but it's going. I'm up to 60 major writing sessions on this book and still a fair ways to go. The first book was only 38 in total. What's the diff'? Well, much of it can be attributed to wrestling a superfluity of ideas into a self-consistent universe. That is, of the ten million things that could be done, I had to identify not only which were best, but define the scope of the whole freakin thing. The first book was easy. Whatever I wanted to happen I made happen and defined it's rules later. In this book, them rules have to be followed perfectly, eleborated, and sixty new things introduced that conform to the beefed-up rule set. Change a single small event, and this freakin cascade of redefinition occurs. And believe me, it ain't no fun till all the ducks are in a row and the actual writing begins. April 8, 2006 Same damn chapter again - number 19. Two weeks ago I spent my entire writing time reworking the outline of that damn thing - again. Then last weekend I was too burnt to write. Seriously, just fried green tomatoes - and needed to chill or I would have croaked. I had the outline 90% of the way to being able to write it. And this morning I went at it. Finished the outline, revised the end of 18 and for the third(?) time did 19 from scratch. The action will now span at least two chapters, maybe three. But that's the way it goes. Word-count-wise, I'm now within 6000 words of the last book - and I still have a long way to go. I wouldn't be surprised if this one hit 30 chapters. I wish I could say I have 100% faith in this version of the action. But I just finished scribbling it half an hour ago, so I'm too close to say. But it's miles better than it was. Guaranteed this chapter will take two more revisions before its done. But tomorrow I'm moving on to 20. I'd be too damn discouraging to not to make more progress in the action. I tell ya, I can't wait to read this book. It's much more relaxed than the last one and yet there are bigger payoffs. Some scenes are so over the top funny I live for the moment to read it all in sequence. March 19, 2006 Gad... I wrote Chapter 19 yesterday and was all prepared to do 20 today, but 19 was just to unbelieveable for me to go on. So I spent this morning making it work. I'm sure glad I'm not on somekind of schedule 'cause holy god... if the rest of the book was going to take ten or twelve hours per chapter I'd be screwed. March 12, 2006 Chapter 18 done. And what a big deal this is. Up to 17 received essentially two drafts and 18 is the first one were I carry on with the story. And holy shit... did that recursion ever pay off. Everything works now, everything has a reason, a purpose, a dominoe preceding it and one following it. Whatever I do with the final chapters, the third act, only has to be fixed in the third act. No insane ripping and editing of any of the stuff that came before. Yesterday morning I spent planning 18 and yanking 1100 words out of Chapter 17. They were darlings I will sorely miss, but they had to go. March 5, 2006 All done Chapter 17 and poked my nose into 18. I have lost track of how many weeks or months it's been since I started at the beginning of the book again and revised the structure. But I'm finally back where I left off at the forefront of the story. All the first and second act stuff is done. Now for the third act. Man... what a lot of work this has been to get here - to a place I'm completely confident in the story. In many ways it's way better than the first book. And that begs the question, should I do another major revision of the first one? Right now, I'm thinking, yeah. It needs it. Especially if I end up writing a third one in the series, it'll be essential to sprinkle a bit of opaque foreshadowing here and there. Right now, I've got seven chapters left to write. And with all that has to happen, that might not be enough. Ten seems more likely. But we'll see. February 25, 2006 Chapter 15 and 16 are down, baby. I just ripped through them this morning. And man... I finally got to write this scene I've been waiting for for months. Completely slayed me. Laughed so hard the tears were pouring down my face and I had to continually wipe them away in order to write the next line. And then all afternoon I've been walking around with a goofy smirk, bursting out into laughter again every time I remember this one line. I tell ya, I like being a reader way more than being a writer. It's just that, to reach the fun, I have to write the dang stuff first. February 20, 2006 Excellent day of writing. Went over Chapter 14 and wrote Chapter 15 today. Completely satisfying. Having three days straight to write has been friggin heaven. I was 100% into that world and did a totally satisfying job of bringing it to life. Man... if this book continues like this I'm going to be over the moon. Ch15 is getting split into two chapters, 17 is already written and 18 is half done. I tell ya, I'd give anything for two weeks off work so I can finish this thing. February 19, 2006 Reworked little things in Chapters 12 and 13 yesterday and wrote 14 from scratch this morning. I'm really getting to love this book. It has a heck of lot more breathing space than the first one. Time for everything to happen, time to savor little things - like scenery, smells and real country weather. I can't tell you how many walks I took, places I visited like the two kids in this book. I don't dwell on any of it, but it's there. Blah. That's where it happens. And I tell ya, when it's calm it lies low and waits. When it's wild, man... it's over the top. Tomorrow I write a chapter that I've been waiting to write for months. And I finally have everything else in order to do it right. February 12, 2006 My god... how many weeks since I last scribbled something here? Last weekend I took off. I was just too burnt from work and home stuff to write anything. And my mini-hiatus came at a good time. I'd finished the plotting right to the end of the book, all of it clear as day. So this weekend, yesterday morning and this morning, I started putting it all into effect. Chapters 10 and 11 yesterday and 12 and 13 today. And they're friggin magic for what they add to the book for lead-up. Man... do I ever wish I could write every day. This thing would be done in no time. January 28, 2006 And again more plotting. This morning it was a bunch of sequencing and integrating work on Chapters 15-17. I originally had a different character doing something and wanted my main characters to do it. But that meant shifting a whole ton things around. This morning, the guiding principle was "let each element breathe". With so much going on I was faced with a few time crunches. I wanted to put just the right amount of space between the dominoes. So a whole other chapter came out of it. And now... my god... even if I write the rest of this novel following the outline word for word... it'll be quite the book. The end point is cool. But the ride to get there... whoa... January 22, 2006 So it was more plotting this morning - right to the end of the book. It was really satisfying fleshing out all the endgame mayhem. If this were written solely from this little script, I would not be satisfied with it. It's a first draft of the action, a far cry from what it will be after several more outlines, a first written draft and god knows how many editing drafts. But, as I say too much, so far, so good. If I had a week of holidays and had to have a first go at it scribbled out in seven days, I could write something pretty darn good with this. I just realised I'm more than two thirds done the "first draft". A huge deal in itself. January 21, 2006 Spent this morning plotting. Writing up to the end of Chapter 11 is done, and from there to the end is just about all laid out action-wise. My big task tomorrow is either editing 12-15 or continuing plotting - just to make myself comfortable that the payoff at the end is big enough to support the long ramp up to it. 'Tis going good, though. But, wow... what a huge amount of work... January 8, 2006 Yesterday's writing time was entirely taken up with plotting what I wrote today. I'm now 3/4 of the way through Chapter 9, and up to this point, everything's going swimmingly. After this, the next, what? four or five chapters are done. Just one edit of time frame and I can go on from where I left off at Chapter 15. And up to that point the sequence of events will be like dominoes falling. This causes that, causes that, and so on. Unlike the first book where almost everything's out of the main character's hands, this one is like, "Oops, ping!" and everything follows. January 2, 2006 This was one happy day of writing. All the lead-up stuff done in the past week had its big pay-off today. It was fall-out-of-my-chair laughing day. I don't know if anyone else will think it's funny, but any kid with my demented sense of humor will just love this scene. So I'm up to Chapter 8 now. And I tell ya, that's a hell of an accomplishment for me to get this far into the book and be a hundred percent confident in it. The rest will go much easier now. December 31, 2005 I'm working on Chs 6 to 9 and backtracking to add a few tidbits to lead up to them. Yesterday I got out the crowbar and spent the day looking underneath the second set of 5 chapters. And did I ever come up with a serious of events that, well... made me laugh out loud. It's goning to be great. Yesterday morning was spent getting my ducks in row; this morning making it happen. I've heaved Chapter 8 entirely and added a new one around Chapter 4. But I still have a ton of work left to make these first 15 chapters solid enough to continue. December 29, 2005 Chapter 4 and 5 are done. Poifect. All the mediocrity has been erased and replaced. Man... am I ever happy this is going well. But with the foundation laid yesterday, today was an easy write. And from here on, all I have to do is maintain the tone, which has been solidly established with five fulll chapters. Has this ever taken me a long time to get to this! What the hell?! The first book took, like, twenty minutes to plot. This thing has been months upon months of serious labor. Today was like ascending a 20 degree slope. But for the most part its been straight up, even tipped backward, for pete's sake. Gack... There's nothing easy about this, no matter what anybody says... even me on a good day. December 28, 2005 Breakthrough time, baby. Got the first three chapters aced and started working on the fourth. My god... when I first started working on the end of the third this morning I had a feeling of pure dread. I was writing words, but completely without reference to the larger picture, hoping something in the story would spontaneously rear its happy head and fix everything. Ha! No such luck. So I went back to the (black-with-scribbles) drawingboard and used that old device called, "What is the worst possible thing that could happen here?" And it worked beautifully. But it effectively wiped out every word I'd written in Chapters 3 and 4. Anyway, it's going great. Completely on track, finally. And I tell you, with my own confidence in the work restored, it's ten thousand times easier now. I'm back in a place where it will write itself. December 25, 2005 Wrote a new version of Chapter 2 yesterday. It went incredibly well. And this morning (yeah, yeah, Christmas morning, before the hordes woke up) I banged my head against the bones of Chapters 3 and 4. I'll be writing them from scratch - again. There are just too many other ways that that part of the story could go, almost every one of them better than what I've got. Right now it's friggin Jane Eyre when what I need is Dumb and Dumber meets the Bourne Identity. But I've got the Christmas holidays to crowbar out the mediocrity and nail down the tonal foundation for the last half of the book. It's such a cool story I don't want to blow it. December 17, 2005 Back on track. Actually I started at the beginning of the book to today. Chapter 1, page 1, word 1. I got halfway through the chapter and made it tonally perfect - and I'll proceed from here. The deal is, I spend so much time catching the reader up there's no friggin room for the new stuff till much later on. I don't give a crap about the old stuff. The reader (the other hat I wear right now) doesn't give a crap. We/they want a new story, so screw all the retrospective. Whatever it takes to keep the tone right, I'm going to do because everything else rides on it. I don't care how good a tale it is, nobody is going to read it without a spectacular presentation. Line by bloody line. So that's where I'm at. And for the first time in a month, I came downstairs afterward grinning from ear to ear. December 11, 2005 So, Chapter 15's half done. Gack. I spent a huge amount of time rethinking the structure of the book. The main thread's fine, it just takes for flippin' ever to get to it. Do I add another big thread? Today I went so far afield in my replotting I could write an entire other novel with a parallel plot and timeline and not have two events the same. Is this the best I can do? I don't think so. It's one of those 'back to the drawing board' weekends. Bring it down to the bones and build it back up. Hellish thing... this doubting oneself. But in the end, I know this is the way a book gets written. There's nothing easy about it. Even when things are flowing smoothly, ya still gotta go over every sharp rock and touch every speck of sand on both banks. November 13, 2005 Chapter 14 done. I've spent this weekend sequencing the action in the second half of the book. Time to stand back and say, "Alright, we've got liftoff, we've got a destination, now what's the absolute best way to get there?" Truth be told this is one of those weekends when I'm so burnt out from doing other things (house renovations) I only have the wherewithall to do "utility" lit work. A very long time ago I clued in that I'd never get any serious work done if I sat around waiting for that bugaboo of tyros, "inspiration". There's a wealth of tasks that can be done when you're unwilling or unable to forge ahead with fresh copy. Licking stamps, spell-checking, formatting, researching, the list is pretty long. So this is one of those weekends. October 30, 2005 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another chapter down. Up to 13 now. And my god... I don't know what I was doing before, but whoa... this is the real deal. Completely unlike the original book, but the same characters doing completely insane things. Things you can't take your eyes off of. I'm having just too much fun with this book. October 29, 2005 Well, this may sound a little tiresome, but I finished Chapter 12 this morning. And it just rocks. What's funny is that I wrote exactly the opposite events than what I intended to write when I woke up this morning. And it's ten times better than what it would otherwise have been. Talk about giving yourself leeway to change things on the fly. October 23, 2005 Yeah! Chapters 10 and 11 done. This is what the novel is all about. I realized after writing this morning that I was spending ten tons of time on the first ten chapters entirely because everything had to be perfect for this one, numero eleven. I'm so happy I don't have some kind of deadline and have to rush through it - so I can go back and make everything great that leads up to this. I tell you, I was beaming this morning... October 20, 2005 Chapter 9 done. I feel like a little kid on Christmas 'Eve - getting to write Chapter 10 this weekend. September 24, 2005 Finished Chapter 8 this morning. It's one of those, "Oh my god... I can't believe I'm reading this" chapters. I spent a big chunk of time considering how to improve everything I've written so far. Big waste of time this morning. Some mornings it works; some it's just a reflex after being away from it for six days. "What the heck did I write that for? I can do better than that!" I'd be much farther ahead if I resisted those impulses. But then, there's going to be much less to do in subsequent drafts. September 19, 2005 Slow going. September 12, 2005 Feels like weeks since an update. Part of the reason for no update is I got a new computer to scribble on (and hadn't installed my Web editing software on it). The other part is plain old business. Had to build a room for my youngest daughter. She's in it now, so I can relax a bit. Anyway, I've scrunched eleven chapters into six and turned the thing from a rambling epic into a tight little tale. Only one real day of writing this weekend and two shortenened ones last. I'm well over the intro hump and into the core action, but it's one of those books that's going to drive me bonkers till nearly done. I have a very clear idea of what it's going to end up like. I give myself tons of play to craft a scene, but I always know how much work it's going to be to turn it into a steel jigsaw piece in the end.   August 21, 2005 Five chapters into two, baby. Since I was working all last weekend and couldn't write, I was carrying around this image all week of what I was going to accomplish this weekend. And it's done. There's only so much retrospect I can take. Sure there's stuff that absolutely needs to be said just set the stage. But the reader doesn't need to know everything. They bought this story, not "everything that happened after the last story". Now that I've got that straight, it's free sailing. August 7, 2005 Two weeks I've had some kind of viral plague and this morning it broke. I got up at six and nailed down the first two chapters (the original first three squished into two). Next weekend I have to work (switching over to a new mail/file server), so I don't know how much I'm going to get done. But there are only a couple small issues to resolve with the beginning before I can continue. The deal is, they're clearly identifiable issues, whereas before it was a friggin miasma of ponderous storytelling. No more word from the publisher about the first book. I've got my fingers crossed.   July 31, 2005 Rough ride these last few days. Got the first (long) chapter whipped into shape. But I'm so burnt from it I need a good amount of distance before I can even look at it again. So it'll be on to the second scrunched chapter next weekend. And from there, amping up what's been written so far before I continue. July 30, 2005 Back at it yesterday. Been down with a hot weather plague since the 24th. Was in the Caribbean last week, went swimming one day and came back into heavy air conditioning and immediately my throat seized up. It developed into this debilitating fatigue, wicked cough, etc, etc. Anyway, I'm getting back to it now. Been ripping the first couple of chapters apart and putting them back together in more amusing ways. Making it funnier, quicker. I had about four chapters I crunched into two. The two are a bit too long right now, but that's fixable. It was a hellish task, messing with an established rhythm. But when you rip apart something that substatial, it's got to find its own new rhythm in the end, so it's not worth worrying about till a later edit. So far so good. Couple things in there just slay me. But then I'm wierd, so what the hell. Got one more morning of writing before I go back to work on Monday. Gack. July 9, 2005 Finished Chapter 10 this morning, but man... it took a lot out of me. I would have been fine if it didn't have this lovely emotional hit. In a previous plot draft I had something intense happen in this place, but I threw it out the window with that old draft. But now, in writing it, I thought of another way of doing it - for another reason - and oh...my... it took its toll on me.Called up all kinds of demons I didn't even know were there. Freaky when that happens. Tomorrow will be the last scribbling for a few days. Maybe even two weeks. That'll be rough. But the last week of the month I can do another half dozen chapters and get at least half way through this beast. July 8, 2005 My god... And here I thought this tale was only going to be mildly gross - like the first one. Whoa... this takes the cake. And I'm not even halfway done. Chapter 9 is finished. The last thing I want is for a reader to be so grossed they have to put the book down. I don't think it's quite that bad, but there'll be a few parents who are gonna flip out on it. Too bad for them. If I was a kid reading it I'd be in some kind of ecstasy. What 12 year old doesn't like a good gross out? Especially if it's fall-out-of-your-chair funny. That's one thing about Spielberg's War of the Worlds that will limit its shelf life. I can't recall a single humorous scene. Close Encounters is still rented because it doesn't take itself so seriously. Anyway, I don't want to get off on a rant or anything. But it'd watch Independence Day long before War of the Worlds again just for the scene where the Will Smith character punches the alien. Variety. Dymanics. Wide spectrum. Love it. July 7, 2005 Half way through Chapter 9. Wrote like I had a mind-meld with the computer yesterday. Today, like every word was a Sisyphusian boulder. So it goes. Man, I've got double the text I thought I'd have when I wrote out the plot. Not that that matters. I just don't want this to suffer from EEHPSS - the Ever-Expanding Harry Potter Sequel Syndrome. It's going pretty well. A very straight telling, as I said the other day, which will be ironed out in subsequent drafts. Man... I don't know if there's ever been a book like this. If I had to roll my plot style into a ball it'd have to be, kid faces a challenge even a very capable adult would have trouble with, and in a kid way, triumphs - by the skin of his teeth. Most adults would go, I ain't going within sixty miles of that. My characters go, Sounds cool, let's do it. I don't know what that says about me. Maybe I'm living vicariously through my characters. But then, isn't that the point of any literature? I just think, what would I like to read? What kind of characters and story would get me off my ass, out the door and straight to the bookstore, vibrating with excitement to get the next book by that author? Lit fiction? Never. This stuff? Oh, yeah. Not that I have anything against lit fiction. God, I spent easy, a quarter of my life reading it and loving it to death. But today? writing it? Naw... give me a few years of this and I'll get back to it. July 5, 2005 Feels like real slow going. Chapter 7 down. I tell ya, when you're on holidays it doesn't mean you got nothing to do. Holy crap.... It's like the floodgates have opened. Where did I get time to do laundry, do stuff with my kids, buy groceries, go running, do music, see movies before? It all takes time. And none of it is writing time. I'm not even a third of the way through, and the end seems a million miles away. So far, so good though. I'm writing it pretty straight, knowing that in subsequent drafts, if it moves too slow I have about sixty other threads I could pop in to make it click. I tell ya... to be a kid and have this to read? Whoa... fun cubed. July 3, 2005 Chapter 6 is happily down. Yesterday was spent making the first chapter crisper. It's still not where I want it. I actually hope to scrunch the first few chapter down to a point where I can turf one of them. I'm on holidays now, so I can spend at least an extra fifteen mornings writing. Having that continuity's going to make whole process much smoother. I don't hope to get the first draft completely done by the end of July. But I figure by mid-August, it'll be done. Then I can work on it during the fall and early winter and finish it before Christmas. You know, half the work is just showing up. Once I got my butt in the chair, it's not a big deal. Not something I can't handle. It's kinda like someone who's made a few clay sculptures before going at a new one - of a subject he's never done before. There's lots of adding, lots of subtracting. It's never been done before in exactly that way, so there's no pressure to make some weird exact copy of anything. Just show with an idea and don't stop working on it till its done. Blah. June 26, 2005 I spent four or five hours yesterday reworking the first three chapters. Something major just seemed too contrived and it took forever to switch it to something else. I also worked on the tone of the whole thing, making it more in sync with the first book - snappier, funnier. It was a long haul and I ended up napping for about four hours that afternoon. Completely burned myself out. Alex (Nora's 15 year old daughter) read the first book Friday night and really enjoyed it. She's the third person to read it and had the same reaction as her mother. They're both avid readers, so it was great that they thought it was as good, if not better than most books for kids out there. Finished chapter five this morning. I got enough ducks in a row to write the whole dang thing now and feel confident I can up the ante of the first part based on what goes on after this. It's kind of cool knowing the reader has certain expectations of this book after reading the first one. They know there's going to be a big payoff for whatever happens and I can toy with those expectations with little teases here and there. But man... I'm just still laying groundwork. Once the story starts gaining momentum, it'll be like, holy shit... I didn't know I signed up for a ride on a 6G rollercoaster. Like I said often before. I'm writing this so I can read it. Sure the writing part's fun, but wow... six months from now I get to buy tickets for that rollercoaster. June 24, 2005 Two excellent things happened yesterday. Two copies of On Spec arrived in the mail with my short story, Spring in the Shadows, in it. I'm really proud of that story. It is a modern reworking of a piece I wrote in 1994 as a straight fairy tale called The Rope and the Oak Stick. That old story never worked and it bugged me that it had some pretty cool ideas in it that were executed badly. So this is the result. The other excellent thing is, a letter arrived from the publisher saying they really liked my novel and its been forwarded to the editor for the next step in their consideration process. That's pretty dang cool. And a really good sign. I was walking around the last couple of days thinking about the sequel, what a bumpy road it is getting it started right. Way in the distance (in the plot) is this huge payoff. Is it worth it? Is that all there is for this big bunch of prep work? And then I remembered a scene in the middle. Holy shit! Anybody who reads that and doesn't fall out of their chair laughing and going, What?!! He's doing what?!!! is made of stone. And then there's the other insanely cool scene that I hardly want to think about because I want to savor every little speck of it. Anyway, a few doubts, each wiped out by plot elements that will just be too much fun to write. June 19, 2005 Spent yesterday and today making the fourth chapter better. Hard to go forward without sufficient tension. I've also started editing an old fairy tale, "The Boy Smith and the Giant of the North - or - The Four Tasks". I'm thinking a few of these stories are just too darn long for magazines and took short for individual books. So why not send them out, say, four of them in one book? I'm thinking The Miller and the Old Hag, The Seven Sisters (both of which have been published), the Boy Smith and maybe The Lamplighter's Daughter. It's just a shame for these to be sitting around doing nothing. I'm turfing long sentence and any arch language - making them a smidge more modern. I figure another month and I'll have it together. June 12, 2005 Just finished the fourth chapter. Weird to be writing something from scratch. In the first book, it's all done and polished and seamless. This first draft stuff is so wierd. Like making homunculi come alive when they aren't fully formed. But like I always say, it's way easier to edit than to create. I can't say I enjoy one over the other. If there's any part I enjoy the most it's the reading - when the damn thing's all done and I can ignore the fact that I wrote it and just enjoy it for what it is. June 5, 2005 Second chapter done. She's rolling now. The first chugs of the train. And there's no looking back. June 4, 2005 Had one day to write last weekend, and no time to do a Web update. After a "week from hell" I didn't hold out much hope of doing anything decent in the few hours I had. As it turned out, it was the best work I'd done on the book yet. Completely re-wrote the first chapter and damn near aced it. This morning, I got it to a "First Draft" stage. Pathetic, eh? For me, there's nothing worse than trying to write a novel building on the shoulders of gnats. If I can nail the first chapter or two, it's home free after that. Tomorrow I'll finish the chapter and next week be able to continue. During the week I had some doubts about writing this book. My little brain immediately jumped to the question, Ok, if not that, then what? ...Pause... Little brain snaps to the story line I would most want to write. ...Pause... Little brain realizes that THIS story is that same story line. Hmmm... The next day I spent a bit of time trying to plot how I would write that "most desirable" tale. And holy shit... Shiver time... Like I said, if I had to write any story in the world right now, that would be it, head and shoulders above any other. To say I am excited about actually getting to do it would be the understatement of the century. I'm nuts about getting to do it. I'm intimidated to near paralysis by the thought of that cool a story in my hands. Yup... I can't wait...   May 15, 2005 Long haul. Been working on the first chapter the last few weeks. Trying to get a grip on the staggering amount of info to relate. Then last week I realized it wasn't the info that was important, it was the tone. So last Sunday I got that right and yesterday and today I've been expanding on it, inching forward, paragraph by paragraph, like a soldier sneaking up on an enemy. I've only got three pages done, and though that may not seem like a lot, to me it's the most important part right now. If this bit ain't good, no one's going to get any farther. And holy cow... once this foundation is built, watch out... I have a hard time picturing the amount of fun I'm going to have writing this. All I can say is, it'll be an ecstatic experience. April 24, 2005 So I've started. Started scribbling the sequel. Last weekend I spent fine tuning the plot and yesterday I fleshed every detail of the first chapter. There was one detail of the second chapter left to work out this morning (so I'd know where I was going) and that, despite weeks of trepidation, took all of ten seconds to solve. So I had no more excuses. I waited till the house was quiet and bam! began the journey that will likely take the next five or six months to complete. April 10, 2005 Still plotting, yesterday morning and this morning. Much of it was either a process of distilling or expanding. The distillation was taking what I had and chipping it down to a half page of short one-liners, then chipping it further to a five line story arc. Then back I went to the detailed plot and ripped and added till it conformed to the shape of the arc. I'm very conscious of the mythic legacy of my little hero. When I first started this second book, all I had was a list of things that had to happen, given the events of the first book. Now, I'm so far past that it isn't even funny. I'm taking the tack that the original and the sequel are actually one book. That the main character is on a very specific journey and there are no seams connecting the fabric of the beginning part and the end part. The first book worked because it was a cohesive vision, a single determined journey. Last week I clued in that the second half, as I'd plotted it, was not one vision, entirely because I wasn't aware of the necessity for it. And now... holy crap... What changed? Re-reading Northrop friggin Frye. I hadn't read The Educated Imagination since 1980 and lacking anything good to read last week I picked it up again. God... do I ever love the way that man thought. His clarity is infectious. In my 20s (before kids) I lived in that lovely world - the deep multi-layered world of Carl Jung and Northrop Frye. I gobbled everything by them I could lay my hands on. Re-reading this book has been like taking up a musical instrument I haven't played in decades. All the million hours of technical exercises, favorite pieces and phrases and associations come flooding back. And truth be told, I needed that kick to get perspective on this book. I knew what I wanted for a result, but I forgot what ultimately made any book get there. April 3, 2005 Sluggin away at the plot of the second book. Got the first half done and have some killer ideas for the second half. The ideas are so wild (and conflicting) I'm going to sit on them for a bit - get some distance and see which would be the best to implement. But its going well. Yesterday I came away from my plotting session with friggin shivers. Today it's just plain old hard work. Was sicker than a dog last weekend and couldn't do a thing, so this is all part of getting up to speed now. I'm suffering from too many ideas and not enough brain power to lasso the best one. But that's cool. As the plot stands right now, I could start writing tomorrow, no problem. Scribbled a couple of haiku last weekend. Wanted to write but only had the energy for something short. I've always thought the haiku form sucked. Ended up writing four of the little things. Turns out, there's nothing wrong with the form, only the zillion implementations I've read. Now that I know what to look for, I've found a few really great haiku on-line. I should have known. There is nothing inherently flawed with any form in any creative endeavor (words, music, visual art, etc). There are only varying degrees of quality in the goop people pour into the form, pardon the image. March 20, 2005 I've been puttering around for the last three weekends plotting the sequel. An hour or two here and there. I've got the basic structure down and a couple of killer scenes. I'm trying to walk a fine line between under-planning and over-planning. I had so much fun with the huge latitude I allowed myself for the first book, I really don't want to blow it for myself in the second. The first one's all formatted and long gone to a publisher. It may be months before I hear from them, but that's fine. There is absolutely no question in my mind that someone's going to buy it. And if they like it, they'll sure like the second one. I was going to do three books in the series and spent waaay too much time planning for both. Last week I decided, screw it. I'm just going to write this one as if it completes a perfect circle. If I have a great idea for a third somewhere down the road, fine. Till then, I don't care. The minute I made that decision, the finitude of it suddenly lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. "That's it, I can throw everything at this one book and the future be damned." In the beginning I was kind of worried at how I would top the first one. It's a hard act to follow. But man... over the past three weeks, I've had no trouble coming up with ideas that will make the second one better in some readers' minds than the first. I can't wait to write it. I tell ya, there are some scenes that are just beyond every kind of fun I can imagine. The reading has GOT to be a step down from what I get to do.   February 19, 2005 Wow.. almost two months since I finished the book. Nora's read it and laughed so hard in some sections it took her five times to try and get it together to continue reading. Just the thought of what had just happened sent her into peels of laughter. She found only two little typos in the whole thing, really minor things, and no plot errors or stumbling points. Criminey... that's a huge deal coming from someone who made their living as an editor. I've got the cover letter written, the publisher picked and the first draft of the plot summary done. This (long) weekend, I'll have it ready to ship off. Over the past few weeks I've been vaccilating between leaping into a sequel or writing something completely new. I think I'm going to do a sequel. Two of them in fact. I tell you, since writing this book, I've become incredibly intolerant of bad writing. I was critical of it before, but more willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a few hours of entertainment. But now... my god... it just seems like there's no excuse. I am totally disinclined to forgive glaring literary blunders. We went to see Million Dollar Baby and Sideways on Valentines Day. The former was nearly flawless in every way. The latter made such pathetic goofs in characterization I could have walked out mid-way through and felt glad I hadn't wasted that hour of my life. If that mediocrity gets the Academy's Best Picture award I'm going to barf. Then we went to see Constantine last night, knowing full well it was a time-killer movie with cool SFX. Yikes... what a mistake. How many people put that thing together and no one said anything about it being, despite its ooh-aah FX, a huge snore. Who is John Constantine? Ha! Who cares?!

 

 

 

- First Book -