Category Archives: My first book

NaNoWriMo Update #6

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I was upset when I tried to update my word count shortly after midnight, today.  NaNoWriMo.org shut that feature down.  Had I been allowed, I would entered 11,968.

This morning, NaNoWriMo sent me a consolation letter informing me that I did not win.  (?!!)  They define ‘winning’ as writing 50K words.  So, I guess they have a point.  I certainly did not win.  But, at the same time, I didn’t lose.

Nobody said I was done, either.  I will tell the world when this story is finished.  I will define whether I win or lose.

NaNoWriMo Update #5

Good afternoon everyone.  I hope everyone here in the U.S. had a good day of Giving Thanks.  Thanks to the NaNoWriMo community doing this every year.

Confession:  I did not write yesterday for my book.  Only for my journal.  So, I didn’t update my word count yesterday, marking the only day I have missed since beginning this project on November 6th.

Confession number two:  Until I update my word count later tonight, I only have 9033 words.

Confession number three:  I am undaunted.  At current rates, this should only take four more months to complete!

NaNoWriMo Update #4

Everyone can laugh at me.  There are people with 20k words, 30k words, or even 40k words by now.  And then there is me.  I passed the 8K mark today!  While the pace has been slow, some amazing things have happened.  My muse is working overtime for me.  As I have worked up this story, several times a good night’s sleep results in waking with a completely re-arranged and deepened understanding.  Several days this past week were spent describing the story in broad strokes, or doing character sketches.  (Character sketches do not show up in my word count.)  I had my main character doing all of these amazing things.  And then I would sleep on it.  The next morning, these amazing things were in the hands of other characters.  Stories are developing within the story.

All week long I found myself pushing late in the evening to make a difference that day’s word count.  Two nights ago I asked myself why I was doing this so late in the day.  After all, every day I begin writing early.  But writing in my journal, and writing this story, are two different forms of doing.  Writing in my journal is second nature to me.  I look forward to it each day.  I haven’t missed a day of journaling in about four years.  Writing creatively is a different matter.  There is a voice for this book.  Some days, writing with that voice is next to impossible.  On those days, it is just so easy to waste time in my journal, fooling myself into believing that journaling is good enough.

Two nights ago I made a renewed commitment to write early.  My new motto is: Create Early, Create Often.  I don’t write fast.  But I am making progress.  No more broad strokes, though.  The focus now is on creative writing.  (Until the next day that the wheels of my mind inevitably gum up on me.)  I begin each day with a few paragraphs in my journal.  Just enough to verify that I am capable of documenting my thoughts.  And then I begin by reading my opening.  Reacting to my own writing.  Fixing what I don’t like.  Changing wording.  Providing more context.  Then I get to the end of what I think of as ‘the book.’  Everything after that is just broad brush strokes.   And then I work on the next paragraph of the story.  Tomorrow I will edit today.

NaNoWriMo meets Shut Up & Write!

On Monday evenings I like to go to Durham for Shut Up & Write!  I began going around February or March of this year.  It’s a way to get together and hang out with other writers for the purpose of writing.  We meet at 6 pm.  There is usually fifteen minutes for people to socialize.  Then there are quick group-wide introductions where we share our names and what we are working on.  A timer is set for one hour.  And then we work.

After the first hour, there is a break.  And then we do a second hour. During the sessions, no one talks.  Everyone writes.  There is something about sitting down with other writers and committing to an hour of work, together.  Maybe peer pressure plays a part.  But I find that during those two hours each week I can often get a surprising amount accomplished.

Last week I began narrating the NaNoWriMo novel in a certain voice.  I was able to maintain that voice for several days.  But by late last week I had to switch out of that voice, and start describing the book to myself.  I am not a pure pants-ter.  As ideas for structure come to me, I build that structure out.  I write with Scrivener, so building structure into the story is easy.  For me, this is necessary.  I can’t just write, page after page, from beginning to end.  I have to sketch out key scenes that define the story first.

Last night, I spent two solid hours sketching the full story.  Trying to identify all of the characters I will need to get to the end of the book.   Then I began trying to imagine their little world.  Their concerns.  Their issues.  Their hangups.  It was a very productive session.  But there is so much more still to do.

NaNoWriMo puts a focus on word counts.  But when describing a story to myself, I try to only make brief statements identifying the core developments of the story within that scene.  I try not to be wordy when describing the book to myself.  I don’t want to inflate my sense of accomplishment.

That said, last night I set a goal of reaching 5K total words.  I couldn’t make that happen during the Shut Up & Write session.  I got close.  I left for home needing 255 more words.  Once home again, I was able finally able to slip back into voice and begin write.  I called it a day when I got to 5010 words.

NaNoWriMo Update #2

Last night the word count reached 3196.  I wrote another scene.  Then I began sketching scenes and characters.  Today’s work will be similar.  The hero of my story is a guy in his late twenties.  He needs a love interest and an ally.  So I am putting a lot of thought into her, and the dynamics of their relationship.

This week, starting today, I need to step things up.  Yesterday I proudly declared myself a tortoise pen.  This coming week i have a relatively open calendar.  But a week from today my brother and his family are coming to North Carolina for Thanksgiving.  I have to get ahead of the curve this week.  During Thanksgiving week, daily high-volume-output will not be sustainable.

 

NaNoWriMo Update #1

Between yesterday and today my total word count is up to 2370.  I spent a lot of time tilling the same ground, not contributing much to my overall word total, but improving the story told.  Better to feel good about 2370 words and a quality opening, than 5000 words that will need to be cut by half.  I don’t see any way around this.  I am a plodder.  Call me tortoise pen.  I am proud.

NaNoWriMo 2017

The past several years have been an up-hill struggle.  But I am nearing the crest of this mountain.  Physically, I bottomed out four years ago.  That was the year my body quit working.  Everything became so difficult to do that anymore, I wasn’t able to do anything.  I woke up tired every morning.  Sleep apnea, brought on by weakening muscles in my face and throat, and two or three dozen extra pounds, had me waking up gasping for air whenever I would fall asleep on my back.  I would doze off, the wind pipe would constrict, and dreams became nightmares about dying.  Wake up!  Adrenal glands would pump me with a hormone and neurotransmitter.  I would wake up choking.

Waking up was not enough.  My body needed to breathe.  Alerting the mind and synching it with body was just the first step.  Generally, I needed to sit up before I could breathe again.  But I had lost the ability to sit up.  So instead, I would roll myself off the bed or couch and onto the floor, and get up on all fours.  It never failed.  That first breath again was so calming.  So welcome.  Over time, this became routine.  Falling back to sleep was becoming an act of conscious faith that the driver of events in this world still wanted me to live.  What seemed to sustain me through these dark times was a story that wanted to be told.

Stories are mystical in nature.  As a writer, I am aware that I am writing a story.  It is a conscious process.  It is an every damn day decision to write.  But I am driven to write by the story itself.  She began by seducing me.  And then, once she had me, she tormented me and twisted our relationship.  She gained a certain power over me.  And she used it to beat my ego into submission.  I am not telling my story.  I am telling hers.  Hers is the voice that whispers to my intuition, not often enough, telling me to pay attention.  Pay attention to this or that.  There is something of significance here.  And then she would vanish.  I was being seduced by an elusive and unheard voice.  She was teaching me to listen.

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This past weekend I attended a writing conference, at Wrightsville Beach, put on by the North Carolina Writer’s Network.  This is now my fifth writing conference in the past nine years.  My first in North Carolina.  Their conference pricing was an incentive to join.  So I did.  I joined an incredible community of writers here in my new home state.

My last conference was in Tucson, Memorial Day weekend, 2016.  The Pima Writers Workshop.  That was the first (and still only) conference in which I submitted a manuscript to be critiqued by an agent.  An agent looking for special stories good enough to market.  I wasn’t looking to sell my manuscript.  I was looking for an honest opinion.  And I found it in an agent who took the time to tell me that I need to re-think my approach.  He told me that anyone who can write well can get published in fiction.  But that in order to actually sell a manuscript in non-fiction, you have to be someone.  And I was no one, he told me.  My professional background is in mathematics and computer science.  I am writing about philosophy and religion.  But he also told me that the opening of the book could stand alone on its own as a magazine piece.

A lot has changed since then.  When I heard these things, I thanked the agent for his time.  Later the next day the conference ended, and I headed back to Tempe, where I was doing everything within my strength to change my situation.  I was still married then.  I made the decision to separate in 2010,  with only inklings of what was to come.  We still owned a house together.  I was still working on that set of problems.

Now, I am divorced.  I sold off or gave away almost everything.  Many things, like bicycles and power tools, I could no longer use.  Other stuff had simply become clutter.  I am down to a bed, two couches, a table for the kitchen, some kitchen tools, some clothing, and my grandmothers old dresser.  I also have a desk for writing, and an incredibly comfortable chair.  A few simple hand tools for gardening.  Now I have a small house centrally located in Chapel Hill.  I can carry out my daily routine most of the time with just my wheelchair.  The only time I need to drive anywhere is to go to church on Sundays, to visit Mom or my sisters family, or to attend writing meet-ups.  Groceries, banking, most shopping, coffee shops and much much more are all within a mile or so of my house.

My muse is no longer elusive.  She has become something of a live-in partner for this project.  She like’s to stay in my head.  She’s always nagging.  Write.  Write.  Write!  The problems I had just solved were preventing me from closing a writing chapter, and moving on.

I am writing.  I have been writing.  But what I thought was just a book is actually so much more.  The book that I was working on will now be published in pieces.  I am going to plant the seeds of this story in journals and magazines, and let it begin sprouting in the minds of others.  Meanwhile, a kernel of fiction is sprouting in me.

Until now I have never had both the time and energy needed to tackle NaNoWriMo.  At the writing conference in Wilmington, after the business of Saturday was done, there was a NaNoWriMo launch party.  We didn’t write.  But wine was served and people who were launching a book got together with people who have completed NaNoWriMo projects.  I got home late Sunday night.  Monday was my official start.  I have 1388 words.

A new direction

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What I originally envisioned as a book has instead become a project to occupy me until my death.  Instead of a book, I have decided to begin publishing papers and articles.  The last few years left me with a lot of time to think about what I wanted to write.  I have so much more than a simple book.  Eventually, (hopefully), a book will come.  But my goal at the moment is to stir the cultural pot.  I seek to challenge conventional religious thinking.  I am convinced that Christians and Muslims see the world incorrectly.  I am convinced that for many, faith has become an obstacle to thinking.

Without rationality, we are socially controlled by a dynamic system of opinions.  Without knowledge to compare with our beliefs, we cannot know whether our opinions are actually true.  A correct understanding of the world allows to make correct decisions.

My goal is to marry rationality with our collective spiritual practices, by challenging the idea that Christians and Muslims speak for God.  I am an atheist who believes in God.  My goal is to demonstrate that within Christianity and Islam, a false understanding of God is being taught.

The Limits of Faith

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This has been in the making for some time.  I was inspired to write a book.  I was disturbed enough to try.  For the past few years I have been hard at work developing the themes and concepts I wish to discuss, and integrating them into a model of the book.  The book itself was too complex to write in one go.  I had to build a model of it, to help me see what I was trying to say.

In some ways, the book has been a healthy diversion from life’s problems.  I have a form of muscular dystrophy that makes things quite challenging.  Several years ago I was forced to quit the working world, and deal head on with this.  It took a lot of effort to learn how to live with failing strength.  But I have.  Recently I moved from Arizona to North Carolina.  Soon I will move from an apartment into a home.  This was unthinkable three and four years ago.  But think it I did and now here I am.

Last year, at the beginning of summer, I made my first road trip, on my own.  I went to the 29th annual Pima Writers Workshop, in Tucson.  I submitted a manuscript to be critiqued by an agent.  First time doing that.  The guy likes my writing, but not as a book.  This did not stop me.  But it got me thinking about the scope of what I am trying to describe.  I have an awful lot of material that contradicts our understanding of ourselves.

One of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this year was to write for an audience.  Begin publishing.  This blog has been on and off the back burner since its inception.  It has been difficult to keep this up while dealing with everything else.  But when I found the home, it occurred to me that I had achieved a goal I had set when I first could no longer work.  I had gotten myself out of one living situation I could no longer handle physically, and into one that I could.  A couple weeks ago I met at the house with a contractor to get a quote on a wheelchair ramp and a front deck, to replace the wooden staircase leading to the front door.  Afterwards, getting back in my van, I had to pause for a vision.  Something was telling me that I could finally pick up the blog again, and sustain it.

We live in a world gone mad.  I have been following the problem of radical Islam with intense disturbed fascination.  My writing interests have converged with world events.  I have spent my life finding the words to describe a phenomenon that regularly now is making the news.  Then, in the past few days, news broke of the pending executions of 14 pro-democracy demonstrators in Saudi Arabia.  As a writer, I feel a need to do something.  It is time to put an end to this madness.

My goal is to stop these executions from happening, by bringing attention to their plight.  But this is a short term goal.  Long term, my goal is to challenge our understanding of God, so that radical Islam loses its power.  My method will be to counter the narrative of radical Islam by describing it in new terms.  Religions like Islam and Christianity present a false view of God.  I am building a case.  We need a new understanding.  Something rational.  Because we have reached the limits of faith.

A Creative Grind

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Last week I didn’t post anything. I was too close to a creative moment, and I was too distracted channeling the creative vision to break out of that and try to describe it to others. Does this make any sense?

Last Wednesday began with journaling. I wound up making a lot of notes. These notes helped me see something within my narrative. Some potential.  After writing those notes, I couldn’t stop thinking about them.  Later that day I tried to post something here on this blog. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the morning’s notes.   The blog had to take a back seat.  By Thursday, I had missed a self-imposed deadline. I decided not to beat myself up about it. I would just move forward. I still had those notes on my mind.  I got back to work and expanded on what I had written the day before.

Those notes then went into the model of the book I am building. In my last post, I mentioned using mind-mapping software to build out models for this book. I have created a number of models over the past few years. Each one getting closer to my vision. As I worked with the current model, began to feel that the moment was at hand. I have been building these models to help me think about what I have said, and what needs to be said, as I write. Without the models I’m writing into a void. I can’t just wing this narrative without some structure.  This is too complicated for a seat-of-the-pants approach.

I need to see all of the talking points and where the statements have to be made within the narrative in order to keep the suspense, while still informing the reader. I began building these models with the conviction that at some point writing the book would become fairly easy.  At some point, with enough development, I anticipated that the model would trigger the narrative with a mere gaze.  Working with the mind-map this week,  I began responding to the model in just this way.  Two days ago I began a new Scrivener project.  I needed a fresh blank slate for this draft. Yesterday I began composing.  Today the opening began to expand.