Sparsely updated blogs like to throw out the occasional “well, now I’m back” blog posts as if you, the reader, would take that to heart.
I know better.
Looking over my blog history (ie, sitting here with a cup of coffee and using The Way Back Machine in my brain), there are a lot of gaps, the last month or so being the most recent example. It isn’t that I don’t like sharing with you, my largely faceless, nameless audience. Its just that real life has become so much more involved of late that taking the time to write out more than a few words has been a struggle that’s best saved for when I have the time to give it some attention, which is usually on the weekend, if other obligations permit. This morning’s post is only because I woke up too early to start on my other obligations for the day, which speaks volumes for the chaos that is our lives these days.
A few of you, lovingly, are wondering where the < expletive > my writing update is. Fair enough, its a good question, given how much real estate goes to my attempted writing in this blog.
As you may have guessed, I’ve shelved Aspect Ratios again. It was close to being done, I know, and this may just be the usual self sabotaging shenanigans that new writers go through, but as I wrapped up the story and made my tweaks to bring it into a cohesive whole, I couldn’t help but note that it was really a string of action scenes with no catch your breath breathing room to break it up.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing some research into creating a properly flowing plot/outline. Dan Wells’ recorded sessions on how to plot your novel have been really great at putting the layout and flow of my stories into perspective. Also a big help have been Mary Caroll Moore’s “Your Book Starts Here” video which explains the three act, five part structure of the “W”. To be honest, I’d never heard of Ms. Moore before, but this video was actually very enlightening.
When I took the lessons from these two videos and applied them to my own work, I saw the problem immediately. Although each scene, taken individually, is (in my lame opinion) well written and “tight,” when put together as a whole what I have is just a long series of escalating action scenes. There’s not breathing room for the reader, no downward turns for the reader to digest and mull over what they’ve learned before the next active bit.
So I set out to outline another flopped work in progress that I have equally high hopes for, the Dragon Queen’s Bride. DQB saw more than 20 or 30k words written in my last stab, and a lot of that is in scene notes (“so and so does this here. then they do this.”).
Which brings us back to what the heck is going on with my writing these days. Not a lot, truth be told. Juggling is hard when you have no coordination, and as you can see, coordination is something I severely lack in. I currently have more balls in the air than I know how to rotate through, and when compared to things like work (which pays for things) and kids (who put actual bottled joy into my heart), writing places a distant fifth after wife and maintaining the order of things.
Yes, my wife, when she reads this, will be thrilled to know I’ve implied she is a potentially close third in that list. The fact that tomorrow is Mother’s Day (*cough*artificial holiday*cough*) will only make the flavor of that extra sweet. For the record, wife and kids are the same first tier, followed by work, followed by everything else. Or something like that. Crap. I think I just admitted to being a workaholic. Why are my fingers still taking dictation?!?
Wow, who knew I had so much post in me this morning? I should go now, before I type something else, like Mom’s secret recipe for unicorn brownies (its all in the horn quality). More later after some yard work can beat and drain the talkativeness out of me.