Monday, September 7, 2015

"You are an Obsession... You're my Obsession..." Animotion

I have an obsessive personality, kind of comes with the job, I think.  Over and above the job stuff, though, I’m always surprised by the things that I become obsessed with.  The writing thing I get, as I say, I think all of us who do this for a living have to be obsessed with it.  But take something else…Dave Grohl, for instance.

Never a big Nirvana fan, or Foo Fighters, for that matter, I sat down and watched Sonic Highways from beginning to end and now I can’t get flippin’ Dave Grohl out of my life.  Part of it has to do with trying to understand how another artist (I know, sounds pretentious) goes about his work.  I go through this with other writers, but also filmmakers, musicians, anyone who creates crap out of thin air for a living.  I’m always trying to learn more, and part of that is understanding how other people do their thing.  The weird thing, and this might be where my obsessive weirdness varies from others, now I’m not just listening to the Foo Fighters and Nirvana, but I’m reading a biography of Grohl and seeking out the music that influenced him.

The same thing has happened to me with books.  I liked the work of the man who would become my mentor and writing partner, Max Allan Collins.  As I got to know Max I found out he had been influenced by Mickey Spillane, so I read Spillane.  I found out Spillane had been influenced by Caroll John Daly’s Race Williams mysteries, so I got my hands on them.  It’s this weird compulsion to not just figure out how people are creating what they’re creating in the present, but what in the past led them to the point where they are now.  I don’t know if others do this, but whenever I discover a new artist, regardless of medium, I want to know their process and how it became their process.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have a clue about myself.  Maybe it’s because I want to steal their tricks.  Just this morning, in fact, I saw an interview with Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders, and when asked about being a rock star, she gave a very modest answer, something along the lines of “I’ve never thought of it that way, it’s just what I do.”

When asked if she was being overly modest, she said she didn’t think so.  The interviewer then asked her about her talent as a songwriter and she said, “I can put a song together.”

“But you don’t think you’re a good songwriter?”

Hynde shrugged.

“And you don’t think you’re being overly modest?” the interviewer asked.

With a hint of a smile, Hynde said, “I’m the best band leader in the room, I know that.”

We all do what we do, and, if we’re lucky, we know what our skills are and how to use them to their best advantage.  Am I doing that?  I have no idea, which is probably the wrong answer, but I’m far more concerned with learning to write better to become the writer I want to be instead of the writer I am.  Maybe I should leave the judgments to the readers, I try to do that, but part of me is constantly searching for that thing I’ve missed, that thing that will finally let me get better.  This week, to keep the former English teacher happy, maybe I’ll concentrate on not using the word “thing” all the damned time.  My obsession with all things Grohl aside, that seems like a good place to start

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

On The Clock

I’m on the clock again.  Not just a deadline for the new novel, but quite literally, back on the clock.  I have the attention span of a hummingbird smoking crystal meth, drinking a triple espresso, and having ADHD.  It takes focus to write a novel, and that’s something that I always struggle with.  Not just because there’s other work to do (I always have a few things going on at once, most writers I know do), but because I am more easily distracted than Dug the dog in UP.

Doesn’t even take a squirrel for me.  The ding of an incoming email, a Words With Friends alert, Facebook, my fantasy baseball team, and if nothing else will steal my focus from work there’s the tried and true, totally lethal, completely unstoppable … computer solitaire.  All evil, and most days, I feel they are all conspiring against me.

So, I have gone back on the clock.  Fifteen minute intervals, five minutes between, then back at.  I stop the clock if I have to look up some research point, but if I’m doing that, there’s no checking Facebook just because I’m online.  Get my research dealy, then start the clock.  It’s silly, juvenile, and a trick to make myself do what I love to do but so often procrastinate on.  A successful author and friend suggested the timer to me a couple of years ago, and I’ve used it, at least occasionally, ever since.

Yeah, it’s a great job, and yes, I still love writing, but there are days when it’s more of a “job” than it is other days.  No one is at their best every day, and some days you have to find tricks to make it easier to get your word count.

There are as many tricks as there are writers, but the clock (mine is a digital oven timer) works the best for me.  I use it for a while, get my mojo back, then stop using it when things are going well.  It varies, but usually a couple weeks, at the most, and I’ve got my swing back.  I’m starting a new novel, and that’s when it’s the hardest to get back into the regular pace of my writing life.

I know people who write in total silence, others who listen to different genres, classical and movie soundtracks being especially popular since they’re instrumental.  I have a playlist of songs I like,  2500 songs I know won’t interfere with what I’m doing, yet relieve the silence.

As long as Reeder never says, “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run,” I figure I’m okay.

Music is another trick, though.  I have friends who poll social media looking for songs that might inspire them about a character, a setting, a scene.   I’ve always wanted to do that, take suggestions for music to listen to while I write a particular character or scene, but when it’s music I’m not familiar with, I find myself listening instead of working.

Some of my friends write in public places so the music is canned.  I do remember the day that while writing in a coffee shop my friend Lori Rader-Day mentioned hearing a particular band, one I was unfamiliar with.  Thanks to her, Soul Coughing now has several songs on my work playlist.

So, there’s just a couple of tricks of the trade.  Like any other workers, writers want to make their jobs easier…okay, maybe that’s the wrong word…more efficient, perhaps.  Anyway, both of those things help me.  What helps you?



Wednesday, August 19, 2015

“Where do your story ideas come from?”

The number one question heard by me, and most writers I know, from non-writers.  The answer is both simple and complicated.  My stock answer is, “Everywhere,” and that’s pretty much true.  Stories, like air, are all around us.  That’s the simple part.  The more complicated issue is, if I’m right, then everyone should be seeing these ideas everywhere, but they don’t.  Why?

For one thing, most people aren’t looking, they may not even know how to look for them.  It’s like me in the woods (always a bad idea).  I may be surrounded by mushrooms and all kinds of other edible plants, bugs, and the like, but I’ll starve to death because I don’t know what to look for or how to find these things.

Inspiration works the same way.  It’s there, but you have to learn to see it.  Yesterday, while walking toward the restaurant where I get hooked up to my coffee IV every morning, I chanced to see a pair of jeans hanging in a tree.  After making sure that everyone inside was wearing pants, I mentioned what I had seen outside.  The only four people in the place all ran outside to see for themselves.  They had all come in the same way I had, but not one of them had noticed a pair of blue jeans hanging in a decidedly non-blue jeans producing tree.

Seeing jeans hanging in a tree is only half the battle, though.  Sure, some drunk kid got pantsed and his jeans are STILL, a day later, hanging in a tree in a parking lot.  No one has claimed them, no one has bothered to take them down.  Some people have seen them and, I imagine, a lot are so focused on why they’re in the parking lot in the first place that they haven’t even noticed.

But what if, there are my two favorite words again, they don’t belong to some drunk kid.  Why the hell is a pair of jeans hanging in a tree?  Did a serial killer leave them there to announce his presence?  Let’s face it, it’s not like my partner Max Allan Collins and I have never written a serial killer novel.

I have a character that I’m working on solo.  His name is Jackson Seaker and he’s a high school baseball pitcher whose father is a police detective in a mid-sized Iowa community.  Imagine him out for an afternoon run when he spots the jeans hanging on the tree.  At first it might seem humorous to find jeans just hanging there, but if Jackson’s cell rings and his dad says, “You’re on your own for dinner, we just got a call about a murder.  Body out near Lancaster’s farm.  Weird one, no pants.”

Trust me, it will be better when I really write that, but all of that went through my head before the first cup of coffee even hit the table.  Inspiration is everywhere.  That guy over there, no, the other one, the guy with the scar on his hand.  How did he get it?  Old knife wound?  And we’re off.

By the time I’ve finished eating a meal in a restaurant, I’ve got back stories for the help, the patrons, and in a couple of cases, people that patrons in a nearby booth were discussing a little too loudly.  Did I mention inspiration can come from things you hear and that writers are notorious eavesdroppers?  Hmmm, maybe we can talk about that next week.



Wednesday, August 12, 2015

PYAITCAW

Weird thing happened today.  Two authors I respect as humans and admire as writers brought up the same topic at nearly the same time, though neither of them said the word out loud – fear.  These people are not beginners, each of them having multiple novels, nominations, and awards.  In short, solid professional writers who know their shit and do it.

I fall prey to the same thing every single day, fear is a mother…(Just talkin’ ‘bout Shaft).  That gut feeling that someday soon, no matter how many books we’ve sold, we will be found out to be frauds, hacks, wannabes who got lucky.  If it afflicts professional writers, you can be damn sure it affects the newbies out there.  That feeling that you have no talent and there’s no way you can keep on fooling people.

Stephen Pressfield (author of the novel, The Legend Of Bagger Vance) refers to this opposition force, in his dynamite book The War of Art, as resistance.  Resistance is the thing that makes us doubt our own skill, makes it hard to sit in the chair in the first place.  It is fed by each artist’s particular fear whether it be failure, success, mediocrity, or whatever.  Every day it must be overcome so we can do our jobs.  This is something I pound hard with beginners, you’ll never know if you don’t try, and by try I mean write until you have a finished draft of something so you know whether your great idea peters out after twelve pages or not.

For me, the daunting thing is the white page first thing in the morning.  It whines to be fed, filled, but at the same time it taunts.  You’ll never fill me.  You’re not good enough to fill me, you don’t have enough words or ideas to fill me, let alone the three hundred blank pages lined up behind me.

That white page is a hell of a thing.  It is the grade school rope climb, the cold glare of my high school girlfriend’s parents, the blank face of the history professor in college who doesn’t care that you know the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the names of the ships sunk, the number of casualties, he only cares if you know why it happened and you don’t have a fucking clue to that.  The white page sits silent, the accumulation of every challenge you have faced to get to sit in its presence in the first place.  It dares you to say something.

The thing is, it can be beaten, must be beaten, or I have to go back to that shitty day job I worked so hard to get away from.  So, especially if you’re a beginner, how do you beat back the white page of resistance?

Ernest Hemingway said, “Write one true sentence.”  Sometimes that works.

I frequently cheat and stop in the middle of a page, especially if I can stop on a question I know the answer to.  Starting up the next day is easier if FBI agent Patti Rogers has ended my work day by asking her consultant Joe Reeder, “So, what have you got?”

The next day then is easier to start even if Reeder’s answer is, “I haven’t got shit.”

Thanks, Papa Hemingway…one true sentence.

Resistance, fear, the white page, doubt, whatever you call the monster, if you write, play guitar, do crafts, paint, anything artistic at all, you have the monster and you’re the one feeding it, so only you can quiet it.

Art critic Robert Hughes said, “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”  There’s some truth in that.

The thing is, the monster can’t last in the face of mounting words.  Oh, it will be back tomorrow, but for today (the only one that matters) you can beat it by writing words, building sentences, telling your story.  That’s the simplicity we have a hard time seeing, even though we’re here day in and day out.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it every day until I die: Just plant your ass in the chair and write.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The Job of Writing A Novel

I want to talk about writers conferences some more.  Having recently attended the Midwest Writers Workshop, some of the things we don’t talk about at conferences have been on my mind.  One of the many mentors I have had, R. Karl Largent, always made a point of asking attendees why they were in a novel writing class.  It’s a question that doesn’t get asked much, and maybe should at least be considered.

One of the answers an attendee gave has stuck with me for years.  When Karl asked one guy why he was there, the gentleman said, “I just got laid off at AC Delco, and I thought I would knock out a couple of novels before I get called back.”

You can chalk that up to some people just don’t get it, but maybe it goes deeper than that.  Obviously, this guy didn’t understand the amount of work that goes into writing a novel, but his response also speaks to how people see the process.  There is the mindset among some people who believe that because they have read books, they can write one.  Not true, of course.  Those of us who teach at conferences can pass on the craft we have learned, cite the example of our own experience and how we approach the process, but I think there is something else afoot here, something we rarely discuss at these events.

Being a “writer” carries a certain amount of romantic cachet with it.  When newbies come to a conference, it’s a chance to rub elbows with professionals, with someone who is “doing it.”  Although the writers I know who teach at these things stress the hard work involved, most times we never talk about becoming a “writer” in the pragmatic terms of a job.  When you consider writing a novel, you have this work of art, this story that is pulling you in, and you get hung up on the writing of it.  We all do, and we all did, but on one level all we’re talking about is a career change, or if you’re planning on keeping your day job, taking on a really significant time killer of a second career.

If you take the romance away from it, look at the job of writing a novel, it’s not quite as much dreamy fun, but it gives you a more realistic idea of what you’re getting into.  This point has been brought home to me more than ever as writers I know, all in various stages of their careers, are leaving day jobs to write full-time.  Yes, full-time, as in job.  The writers I know who are doing this will be successful because they have already mastered the techniques that made them successful in their other careers and translated them to writing.  So, what are those traits?  Here are three steps of my outlook on my career, and luckily enough have been almost since the beginning.

1. Even though it’s a part-time gig now, set up a routine for writing, a schedule.  A regular schedule, like a job.  Here’s the thing, you have your whole life to write the first book, but if it’s published, your new employer is going to want the next book in a year, maybe less.  When you consider how long the first one took (usually a long time), you can easily be overwhelmed.  The sooner you get on a schedule and learn to stick to it, the better off you will be.
2. Work hard, do your best.  I know this sounds self-evident, but it’s easy to consider writing as a hobby, a toy you play with.  If you’re serious, give your book, your time, and your job (there’s that word again) the respect they deserve.  Be professional.
3. It’s art.  Yeah, it is, but it is also a product.  Along the way, you have to learn to separate the magic, the joy of creation, the fun of writing from the fact that, to a publisher, it’s a product.  I come from a factory life background so this was easier for me than some.  Within that paradigm, I am production, that’s my job.  I’m an assembler in the production line of publication.  Realizing that made taking criticism and revision easier because my job is to please the customer and the first customer (agents aside) is the publisher.  That doesn’t mean I don’t bust my ass to write the most entertaining, artful book that I can.  Because I’m a collaborator, my production process is slightly different, but that doesn’t mean that my intention is any different than any other writer.  I want to entertain the reader.  I want him or her to be moved, to escape their world and visit the one I’m creating.

So, Mystery Kids, that’s a beginning on one aspect of the writing life.  I hope it doesn’t sound jaded because I’m not.  I’m still in love with the idea of being a writer, but I’m realistic enough to know that this job, any job, for that matter, is hard work, and the more you understand the reality of it, maybe the easier it becomes to do.



Wednesday, July 29, 2015

LET’S TALK ABOUT STRESS, BABY

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not writing this for sympathy or atta boys or any other reason other than it might help someone.  That said, let’s talk about stress, baby.

Stress, everyone has it, everyone deals with it differently.  Like writers penning a novel, there are as many ways to deal with stress as there are to write a book.  I was pretty good at dealing with stress, I thought.  Maybe not as good as I thought, it turns out.

The first sign that I overvalued my ability to deal with stress was 2007.  That was when I had my first series of panic attacks.  If you’ve never had one, I heartily suggest that you don’t.  Mine are mild (according to my research) and they still suck.  My breathing speeds up, I sweat like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News, and I get as antsy as a hummingbird on a triple espresso with double sugar.  It’s not pretty…and these are mild compared to what many people go through.

It’s kind of like being a rookie in professional sports.  A game you have played your whole life turns on you.  It speeds up faster than it has ever been.  You try harder to keep up, it speeds up more, then the more you try, the worse it gets.  Pretty soon you’re hamstrung and helpless while everything flies past you in a blur.

Pause for brief backstory:  In 2007, while I was at a writers conference four hundred miles from home, my mother was withering away in a hospital back home, and for the first time in seven years, I didn’t have a contract.  While I was at the conference, the panic attacks hit…hard.  I came unglued.  I got through it, sped home and went straight to the hospital to see my mother.  That was a Sunday night.  The next morning we took her off life support and she passed away later that day.  I grieved, I got another contract, life went on, got back to normal, and the panic attacks faded away.

A couple of years ago, someone whose opinion I respect a lot said, “You go Chicken Little pretty easy.”

Me?  Moi?  I?

Example: “Why did you get six when I distinctly asked for half a dozen?”

Proceed immediately to DEFCON ONE, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.  Yeah, that was me.  I realized my friend was right and I’ve worked hard at not being that guy.  Slips out every now and then, but I’m working on it.

Still, no more panic attacks and all was well…until this last weekend.

Amid some stressors that were already in place, my computer crashed.  Same writers conference, same four hundred miles from home, and my computer decided to succumb to 170 viruses.  There were enough similarities from 2007 that I was, as my friend Aimee Hix put it, “Triggered.”

Three major (by my standards) panic attacks in two days.  No matter how innocuous your search history is, having total strangers digging through every shred of your digital life is…stressful.  For a guy who has, at least fictionally, assassinated Supreme Court Justices, sought ways to destroy Congress, assassinate presidents, and a whole slew of watchlist-worthy evil shit, the experience left me, well, panic-stricken.

My first reaction was to simply hide in my room, inches from the air conditioner, hoping I could simply freeze the panic by setting the thermostat at meat locker.  Naturally, that failed.  What works is getting assistance.

I’m lucky, I have a vast support network of people who like me enough to help me out.  I didn’t tell most of them why I was sweating like I had run a marathon, I simply sat down with them and talked.  We talked about all kinds of things, and, eventually, I stepped back off the ledge, calmed my breathing, stopped sweating.  I have thanked those folks privately, so there’s no reason to do it here, but my friends…they’re just the best people.

So, what’s the point of me spilling all of this?  To say that it’s possible to overcome panic attacks.  There are resources available.  I’m not going to list them all here, you can find them.  I am getting the help I need, and you can, too.  Don’t needlessly suffer from panic attacks or overwhelming stress, reach out.  I did, and it has helped.  My panic attacks are behind me…at least until the next one.  The thing is, I won’t ever suffer in silence again.  I will get help.  Please, if you’re suffering, get some help.  There’s no shame in asking for assistance when you need it.  The shame, in fact, is the opposite.  You don’t have to bear the weight of the world, it’s not your job.  It’s for all of us to share, and the more we share, the lighter the world gets.



Thursday, May 1, 2014

Day thirty-one of FULLY EXPOSED.

Last day.  I wrote some, I read some, I walked a lot.  I keep thinking that there’s something cool I can say, some epiphany I can share, but epiphanies don’t grow on trees, do they?

That your goals should exceed your grasp by even more than you think is unreasonable.  I didn’t achieve what I wanted, not by some, but the idea was to set high goals.

That it’s fun to write.  Once again, something I knew, but something I had lost sight of after chasing this whole storytelling thing around for a quarter century.  I let it become a job instead of a career.  I started taking something I love for granted, and that is always a recipe for disaster.

If you love something, or more importantly, someone tell them.  Better yet, show them.  We are, after all, in the show don’t tell business.

This is a career that involves solitude, but there are friends in this community that will help you along.  So, the biggest thing I learned is that I have a friend in my FULLY EXPOSED partner Kristi Belcamino.  You helped me find the right path again, kid, thanks for that.  Thanks for this.  I love you.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Day thirty of FULLY EXPOSED.

It would be so cool if I had saved up something pithy for this next to the last day of FULLY EXPOSED.  Some really great lesson that could help all writers everywhere, but you know what?  I got nothin’.  Damned honesty bites me in the ass again.

This is where I would normally throw in something I picked up from yesterday’s work, but the truth is, I screwed off all day.  Spent time with the former English teacher and most of what we accomplished was clearing stuff off the DVR.

I didn’t write, I didn’t walk, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t doctor anything for anybody.  Okay, here’s the one thing I did learn...sleep is my friend.

I know this because Monday night I got very little.  I woke up stiff and sore, feeling a little hungover despite the fact that I haven’t had a single cocktail since Bouchercon in Albany, and I was god damn well out of sorts all day.  Admittedly, I may have worked on a client’s novel, however briefly, but I was so fuzzy-brained I don’t remember.  Add all that up and you get sleep is my friend.

Some of my friends struggle with insomnia so I’m not even for a second going to pretend that I’m anything but a wimp.  Suffice to say, four hours of sketchy sleep no longer allows me to function in any sort of meaningful way.  The cool thing that came out of that mostly wasted day was I passed out about nine and didn’t so much as twitch until four a.m. this morning.

I’m a baseball fan and it’s easy to reach there for an analogy.  Sportscasters and players talk about what a “grind” the one hundred-sixty-two game season is.  Six months of “grinding” every single day.  The word has become an absolute cliche in the sports world.  The writer’s life?  Same deal.  Every day is a grind.  Find the words, put them in the right order, day after day.  Just as with baseball, when you strip away the romance, the poetry of it, you’re left with a job that not a lot of people have and a demanding job at that.  Though, the difference from baseball is there’s no off season in writing.  Just the occasional off day or rain out.  Okay, maybe you go on the disabled list if you’re injured, but you do have to play hurt.  Yesterday, I didn’t.  That bothers me, but I have to let it go and move on.  Today is a new day, and now it’s time for me to get back to the grind.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Day twenty-nine of FULLY EXPOSED.

Monday-

Yesterday was one of those sorta productive days, but Kristi Belcamino did a dynamite piece today on structure and the building of a novel.  So, here’s how my partner Max Allan Collins and I do it.

Because of the nature of our collaboration, we are more structured all the way through.  Kristi talks about being a little loosy-goosy, in the beginning at least, and we tend to have our ducks in a row, our plot points nailed down, and whatever other cliches you can think of for being prepared.

So, sometimes it’s a plot idea, sometimes it’s a character that comes first.  We’ve done it both ways.  All of the TV tie-in novels we’ve written, CSI, CSI: Miami, Bones, Criminal Minds, Dark Angel, all those books started with the characters that were already in place on the shows and then we came up with story ideas.  The easiest of those was Dark Angel because the show was cancelled after two seasons.  We did a prequel that was a lead up to the pilot, a book set between seasons one and two, and then when the show got yanked as we prepared our outline for book three, we became the happily ever after the show never got to have.

We’ve also started with a concept, that was how the J.C. Harrow novels came to be.  We had done so many forensics-based novels for other people, it seemed a natural step to create a concept that we owned.  Max came up with the idea of an all-star forensics team that traveled the country solving crimes, I came up with the idea of basing it around a TV show, think John Walsh with a cop’s background.

Then came the story.  We have, usually, a couple of brainstorming ideas where we come up with the plot, write out a basic synopsis (which is how we get a contract), then break that down into chapter sized chunks in a very...VERY...fluid outline.

Despite the fact that it looks like we have everything thought out in minute detail, we don’t.  In my draft, I have a great deal of freedom.  We have a pretty good idea of the main characters, but the rest develops as the novel moves forward.

In SUPREME JUSTICE, for instance, we set it up so there would be some romantic tension between the protagonist Joe Reeder and his accidental partner Patti Rogers.  Trouble was, in the writing of it, they never made that leap.  We just went with it.  Instead of trying to force something and making it...weird and contrived, Patti stepped up and became a full-blown partner.  What we had conceived as a Joe Reeder series is now a Reeder/Rogers series and the book is better off for it.

What this boils down to is there are a lot of ways to build a novel.  I am in awe of the partners who can just sit down and start writing.  That is a gift I do not have.  Every time I’ve tried that, somewhere in the middle the whole thing goes Thelma and Louise and drives right off the edge of the cliff.

I tried that with the non-fiction book that is my current WIP.  I am sifting through the wreckage to see if I can Scotch tape the remnants into something and still make it a book.

Everybody does it different.  Me?  I like having a road map, no matter how vague it is.  If the interstates are marked, I’m fine.  Getting off on that two-lane road to see the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine?  I can do that too, I just need to be able to find my way back to the interstate.

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 797 words written, 0 mile walked (rain), and 37 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 33,421; miles walked 36.9; pages read 582(twenty-three days).

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Sunday-

I’m not late, I’m not.  I AM, however, running on Hawaiian time today.  So, instead of it being eleven and almost lunch time, it’s only six a.m. and I’m already in the chair.  How cool is that?

Yesterday was another busy day dealing with writers and stuff more than my own, but that was the plan, so everything went pretty swimmingly.

In one chat with a writer, we talked about flash fiction.  If you’re not familiar with flash fiction, it is the telling of an entire story in one thousand words or less.  For those of us who take twelve hundred words just to say, “hello,” it’s kind of a struggle.  During the conversation, though, I mentioned that although it’s not my favorite form, it’s a good exercise.  The other writer, the wonderful Rebecka Vigus, replied that she uses flash fiction as a starter tool when she’s stuck.

So, to celebrate the end of the fourth week of FULLY EXPOSED, Rebecka and I will give you the gift of flash fiction.  We didn’t think of it, but we have found other ways to use it that might be beneficial to other writers.  If you’re stuck, try using some other idea and telling the story in one thousand words.  You’re still writing, and it might be the jump start your brain needs.  Plus, did I mention that there are places that actually buy flash fiction?  There are, and it pays.

My own usage is more drill-like.  Most writers have ideas laying around that aren’t novels, and might be short stories but you’re not sure, use one of them.  I’ve done this with short stories I’ve already written, that works too.

Most published short stories run about three thousand words.  Sometimes you get a little more space, but my experience is that usually, this is what we’ve (Max Allan Collins and I) been hired to turn in.  The idea is to take the three thousand word story and turn it into flash fiction.  It’s hard, really flippin’ hard, but in doing this, you can learn a bunch about how to clean up your writing. This is the He ate breakfast./Johnny gobbled pancakes. exercise on steroids.

It’s really REALLY hard to do, but, in the end, you can learn some really cool tricks to make your writing tighter.

This blog thing, for instance, is pretty chatty.  I try to type what I would say if you were sitting across the table from me and we were just talking.  Right this second, I’m at 429 words. The flash fiction version of this episode is shorter...write tight.

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 1367 words written, 0 mile walked, and 22 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 32,624; miles walked 36.9; pages read 545(twenty-two days).

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

I’m really late today.  I’m cranky and tired and really would rather kick back with some popcorn and watch a movie.  Machete Kills, maybe.  Something where I’m not looking for the deep subtext behind what I’m seeing.  Spell-check says “subtext” is not a word...fuck you, spell-check.  There, that’s an accurate appraisal of my mood.

The thing is, I’m pissed and lazy and I don’t want to do anything productive.  But, I have to.  That’s my job, and it’s a work day.  Everybody, no matter their job, has this day.

Beginning writers have no idea what I’m talking about, but those of us who have been in the life for a while, if we haven’t had the handcuffing paralysis of the hard funk, we know someone who has.

 

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Day twenty-six of FULLY EXPOSED.

Friday-

Well, I’m the lazy git.  My partner Kristi Belcamino is out covering a story about a family that had barely anything, lost everything, and now is in need of...well...everything.  What did I do?

I did a pretty decent job of not taking a nap.  It was harder than it sounds.

I got some words, read some pages, took a walk, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Okay, it’s not like I wasted my day.  I did talk to some other writers, maybe helped them a little, then basically just ran out of gas.  I stuck with it, but I think I spent more time online and on the phone than I did in the chair.  You’re going to have those days.  Business got done, and that’s part of the gig.  As the publishing industry changes, I find that “doing business” takes up a greater percentage of my time.  That is not a judgment that it is good or bad, or that I long for the “olden” days, it’s just simply an observation that the job of the writer is changing.  Unlike many people I know, I embrace change.  Change means an opportunity for growth.  It also means learning to adapt.  This goes back to what I preach to all beginning writers...time management.  Today, I’ll work on being better at practicing my own preaching.

While I’m in the middle of this mid-level rant, let’s talk about something that I don’t think we writers talk enough about with beginners...thinking.  We do a LOT of it.  I mention it here because thinking leads to research and also that weird mind space where you wear several hats at once.  Before I write a scene, I have already decided on whose Point Of View (POV) the reader will perceive the scene through, at least some of what action will take place, certainly the beginning, the setting, and whether or not I need to research anything to either learn something or verify what I’m about to write.  This all sounds SO simple, so absolutely ingrained at the DNA level that it should come automatically, but I constantly see writers screw it up.

They can range from the outrageous, a writer who plotted her book so tightly around a Christmas day snowstorm in Buenos Aires that the whole project went up in smoke when someone reminded her that Christmas is in the middle of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, to the minuscule, like a woman being addressed as Ms. in 1878.  I was once handed a piece about a nurse being sent to Pearl Harbor in 1941.  Everything was perfect until she told the cabbie to take her to O’Hare and he took the expressway, neither of which existed then.

It’s easy to get tripped up.  How to avoid this?  When in doubt, look it up.  When you “know” something, look it up.  I’ve told the story of an author friend who got a letter from a reader who called him for having a character wearing Reeboks and year before they were available in the U.S., and I have pointed out my own one star Amazon review where a reader said she couldn’t finish the book because the hero’s eye color changed.

It’s writing, but it’s also part improvisational acting, thinking it out beforehand, and making sure you have your facts right.  So, as Phil Esterhaus would remind us, “Let’s be careful out there.”

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 604 words written, 1.3 miles walked, and 12 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 30,598; miles walked 35.9; pages read 505(twenty days).

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Friday, April 25, 2014

Everything started out normal enough ... coffee IV, some reading, then it got a little weird.  Other writers wanted to talk.  Reason number one I love my job is that I get to write (and get paid).  Reason number two is talking to other writers.  First, there was a research question, then another author with a sticky editor situation, then a writer who wanted to know if I thought a particular investment in swag was worthwhile, then two calls from my writing partner who is working on synopses that I sent him a little while back.  Worth every second.

When we were working on SUPREME JUSTICE, it seemed I was on Facebook every five minutes asking my writer friends, Alan Orloff, Eleanor Jones, and especially Aimee Hix for some geographical note about Washington, D.C. or the surrounding area.  They saved me much time and much embarrassment if I had screwed it up.

The point of this isn’t that I was busy this morning or even that I had to beg for copious amounts of help.  I think the point is that this community of souls, some of us who have never even met in person, will give you time and information and insight and not ask for a damned thing in return.

I know the people who taught me.  I am aware of the writers who taught them, and in some cases, the authors who inspired those people.  In short, I can trace my writing family tree a ways back.  Carroll John Daly and his Race Williams stories inspired Mickey Spillane.  Mickey’s Mike Hammer inspired my partner Max Allan Collins, then he inspired me.  I can trace similar lines with my other mentors, too.  R. Karl Largent learned at the feet of Clive Cussler and John D. MacDonald.  We’re all connected through all these bajillion pages that we write and through the instruction we get from those who come before.  Collins and Largent, from day one, impressed on me that if I was successful, it was my burden to pass on my knowledge just as it had been passed to them.

Every single day I am amazed by this community of writers, and even beyond that to other art forms, be it painting or filmmaking or whatever, ninety-nine and half percent of the artists I’ve met are kind, giving people who will help you if you just ask.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Day twenty-four of FULLY EXPOSED.

Wednesday-

I already talked about having breakfast with fellow writer Kelsey Timmerman, so what’s left?

Managed to get some book doctoring done for a client and wrote almost twelve hundred words as well as getting in a major walk with the former English teacher to check out the post-Easter candy sale at the local Walgreen’s.  Yeah, I know, walking to buy sugar.  Still, Russell Stover chocolate creme eggs for sixty cents a piece.  C’mon, you woulda done it, too.

Today, more doctoring, more writing, and the added bonus of reading aloud.  While we’ve been talking about this as an editing technique, today’s is different.  Today I’m reading aloud to rehearse.  Yes, rehearse.  I’m about three weeks from Noir At The Cantina in Milwaukee, which means reading a piece out loud.  Right now, I’m torn between the short story which features DEA agent Dan Malmon, and the first chapter of SUPREME JUSTICE, the new collaboration with Max Allan Collins.

From a pure marketing standpoint, the obvious answer is to read Chapter One of the novel that will be out July 1.  Yet, I still vacillate because I like the idea of reading something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Plus, there’s a dark horse candidate.  There’s always a dark horse candidate.  This one is a short story Collins and I did for an anthology called CRIME SQUARE, a collection of crime stories set in Times Square.  Ours, “The Devil’s Face,” features amateur sleuth Damon Runyon, the author of numerous short stories, including the one that became GUYS AND DOLLS.  It’s a personal favorite, but that ever present marketing bug is whispering in my ear.

Many writers are introverts and the idea of reading in front of people is terrifying.  I love being in front of people, but I am not at all a fan of reading my own work.  Still, it’s part of the job, and the more you do it, the easier it gets – kind of.  Anyway, if you’re a beginning writer, work on it.  In today’s world, it’s another of those non-writing writing skills you need to survive.

Speaking of beginning writers, Kristi Belcamino and I are coming down the home stretch of this little experiment of ours, and it seems to me, that there are things writers may want to know that we haven’t covered.  With less than a week to go, now seems a good time to say, if there are questions you would like one or both of us to answer, send them to us.  We’re both on Facebook and Twitter, and there are links below to both our websites.  If there’s something you think we can help with, hit us up.

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 1168 words written, 2.8 miles walked, and 22 pages read, plus I listened to the first three chapters of Dennis Lehane’s SHUTTER ISLAND. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 28,662; miles walked 34.6; pages read 451(eighteen days).

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Day twenty-three of FULLY EXPOSED.

Tuesday-

Tuesday turned out to be another day of doctoring and writing.  Not a lot of cool stuff.  For that, check out the day twenty-three post of my FULLY EXPOSED partner Kristi Belcamino, a lot of truth there.

One of the true perks of my job is that I get to hang out with other writers and find out how they go about their writing lives and what could conceivably help mine.  Maybe they even get something from me that will help them.  Anyway, today’s breakfast was with Kelsey Timmerman, perhaps the world’s foremost underwear journalist.  Inspired to find out where his clothes actually came from, Kelsey authored WHERE AM I WEARING, giving a very human face to the people we never see in China, Bangladesh, and other countries where our clothes are manufactured.  The sequel, WHERE AM I EATING, shone the same light on the people who grow our food.

Now, off hand, it would seem that although we both write, our jobs would be decidedly different - and they are.  I’ve never actually had to travel to Bangladesh to research a novel (that dream lives on, though), and I don’t do a quarter of the public speaking that Kelsey does.  Still, there are similarities to what we do, especially in the writing of the book.

Once we have researched, he having traveled the world, me having visited Google numerous times (he so has the better end of that particular stick), we sit down and put the pieces together, building the book brick by brick.  When we discussed our process, I was surprised at how closely related our methods are.

We also spent time talking about space...writer’s space.  This is one thing we try to impress on beginning writers, the need for a writing space, even if it’s just the kitchen table, and a regular schedule...a routine.

In the last few years, we’ve both had big time changes to how we work.  Kelsey’s changes have come because of the arrival of his children, and mine because of the retirement of the former English teacher.  So, a lot of our discussion this morning had to do with our writer’s space, time, our worlds, and their evolution.

We talked about the division between work and home life, especially for two writers who work out of the house.  Kelsey got a real deal (and a supportive wife) which allowed him to get an office outside the home which greatly sharpened the division between home and work.  It also allowed him and his wife to not have to deal with the issues that come up when one is trying to write in a house with toddlers.

My office will remain in our house, but because I also have a very supportive wife, we have worked out the issues that would seem silly to non-writers but are huge to those of us who work inside our own heads.  We have developed a code that allows me to come out of the office to get a fresh cup of coffee, or go to the bathroom, or just walk around and think even though we’re both home all the time now.

Writers, especially those new to the field who have significant others who don’t get it (if they’re not writers, they don’t get it, I don’t care how understanding they are), have to work all this stuff out for themselves.  For them, and for me, it never ends.  Turns out there’s change in life, and it’s constant.  Maybe if I wasn’t locked in the office all the time, someone would have told me.

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 1187 words written, 1.5 miles walked, and 27 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 27,494, miles walked 31.8, pages read 429(seventeen days).

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Day twenty-two of FULLY EXPOSED.

One of the perks of this job is you do have a certain freedom in setting your hours.  Monday I started the day with twenty-six holes of golf, lunch, and a shower before I even got into the office.

The book doctoring brought up another point I want to talk about today.  We live in a society where television and movies get most of the attention in pop culture circles.  I’m not here to push books above either.  I love storytelling in all forms from cave paintings to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  The thing is, while movies and TV are great, they appeal to only two of our five senses.  Until smell-o-vision becomes a reality, the one advantage books will maintain over every art form is that, as writers, we have the ability to appeal to all five senses.

Here’s an exercise you can do with smell.  I love smell, it’s the sense that stays with us the longest.  I have a friend who could supply me with cotton candy, so when I teach with this drill, I use cotton candy.  You can use a lot of different things though.  Go into a bakery, smell the fresh-baked bread.  The next time you're at the movies, smell the popcorn.  Now, close your eyes and think back to the first time in your life you ever smelled that thing.  What do you remember about that day, that place, that time?  When I did this with kids in high school and the cotton candy, they were amazed at how far back they could go, some to three-years-old and memories they hadn’t thought about for years.

I can do it with my father who has been dead for twenty years.  I go to Walgreen’s, where they still sell Mennen Skin Bracer, and I crack the cap on a bottle.  It only takes a second and my father is there with me.  I can travel all the way back through the whole of my life with just a whiff of after shave.  Best time travel device ever.

The thing is, mystery kids, it’s not just what your characters see and hear.  It’s what they touch, smell, taste...what they feel.  Don’t fool yourself, if you’re writing a novel, you’re in the entertainment business.  And we all know which word of that phrase is the important one, so don’t give up your biggest advantage without a fight.  Appeal to all five senses.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Day twenty-one of FULLY EXPOSED.

Boot up the computer, sit in the chair.  Pretty easy, so far.  I deal with any email and other stuff I didn’t take care of during the coffee IV, then I open the WIP (work in progress).  First, a quick edit of yesterday’s writing.  This not only allows me some preliminary cleanup work, but it also allows me to sink back into whatever world I’m supposed to be living in.  Get back in touch with the characters, the scene, the setting, that occurs here.

The other step I take to make getting back easier is I try to end a chapter when I finish for the day.  Frequently, this doesn’t happen, so my backup plan is to end the day’s writing on a question.

Even though I know exactly what the suspect is going to say, I don’t type it.  That way, the next day, when I’ve done everything in the second paragraph, I have a jumping off point, a first sentence of the day to get me going.

I try not to write until I’m totally gassed.  A lot of writers do this, and it works for them.  I find that, for me, the more tired I am, the more mistakes I make, and the more I would have been better off stopping an hour earlier.

Anyway, I guess to explain it accurately, tomorrow’s writing ritual actually starts tonight.  With my current WIP, I’m hoping today will allow me to finish the chapter I started yesterday.  If not, I’ll find a question to end on.  This is a very dialog heavy chapter, so it should be easy.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Saturday-

One of my goals for this experiment with Kristi Belcamino was to become more consistent with my output.  I have previously outlined the issues I’ve been facing, ad nasueum. Lately, I’ve been better at getting something done every day, but I’m still regularly falling short of my two thousand word a day goal.  So, the number for the month has been this constantly growing negative number that seems like a tally of work I’m not accomplishing.  So, like the hitter that has been mired in a slump for far too long, this week, I’m trying something slightly different.  I seem to be able to do a thousand words in my sleep, even on days that I would ordinarily call a day off.

 

I am a glass half full kind of person, so seeing that negative number at the end of this post every day is doing nothing to improve my outlook.  It is, instead, leading me back to that area where I’m pressing, just plain trying too hard.

 

So, starting today, I’m going to work towards doctoring a chapter for someone else every single day, and writing a thousand words, seven days a week.  I think I’ve even put together a regular schedule that will make this easier.  You’re going to see a change in the numbers, if you’ve been following along.  I think I’ll get a lot further acknowledging the words I have written as opposed to the ones I haven’t.

 

Other than that, yesterday was pretty uneventful, on the writing side.  Took the former English teacher out for breakfast, celebrated National Record Store Day a little too hard, perhaps.  Unless you’re my Jeff Beck collection, then you think I had a fine day.

 

Even with that, got 1029 words and doctored a chapter for another writer.  Today, more of the same.

 

Yesterday’s goals were 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 1029 words written, 1.7 miles walked, and 24 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words written 23,870, miles walked 28.7 miles walked, pages read 365(fourteen days).  There, that sort of feels like I’m not the lazy bastard my friends know I am.

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Day nineteen of FULLY EXPOSED.

Friday-

Like Kristi, I took half a day off on Friday.  When the choices are work or have lunch and spend time with my two best friends and the former English teacher, I’ll pick my friends...pretty much every time.

Still, I made progress, got some doctoring done, and found even more stuff about revision that I want to talk about.

Let’s start with my favorite writing drill.  This is the key to revision because it’s about picking the right word.  Take a minute, make the sentence below better.  Don’t read ahead, just stop here, make the sentence better, then read the rest of this.

He ate breakfast.

Make that better.  Okay, go.

We’ll get back to that after you’ve actually done it.  Another thing I do in revision is look for unnecessary words.  They creep into the writing of all of us.  Red blood, three-wheeled tricycle, stuff like that.  My personal pet peeve in this area is something a lot of sports announcers and salespeople say, “very unique.”  Unique means being the only one.  It’s “very” the only one?  Argh.

There are less obvious bad word choices that we seldom catch:

Cold chill.
Tears streamed from his eyes. 
He thought to himself.

We say them without thinking, but when you write them, they stick out.  There is no such thing as a warm chill, tears come from the eyes of humans, and if you think to someone else, it’s either telepathy or just talking, but if you listen to people talk (including me) we do this kind of thing all the time.  Just don’t do it when you’re writing.  Now, one I say all the time...I’m fixin’ to get ready to talk about that writing drill, but let me make one other point about the right word.

There is a difference between eager and anxious, even though they are considered synonyms.  One comes from anxiety, one doesn’t, which do you mean?  What is cute?  What defines cute, lovely, beautiful to you might not be the same thing to me.  It’s the essence of fiction writing: show, don’t tell.  You want me to see something as beautiful, don’t just tell me...show me.  Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.

All right, the drill.  What did you do with He ate breakfast?  Do you have more than three words?  If you do, you need to work harder on your revision skills.  The drill is about making the sentence better not longer.  Johnny gobbled pancakes.

A person instead of an indefinite pronoun.  Not just that he ate, but how he ate, and finally, what he ate.  Same number of words.  Eighty thousand words to tell a story seems like a lot when you have eighty thousand words to go, but when you’re at fifty-five thousand and you’re not halfway through the story, it’s a whole different perspective.  Learn to write tight.  Your eighty thousand words are precious, use the right ones.  Remember, less words is more better.

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 845 words written, 2.8 mile walked, and 22 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -15159, miles walked +0.3 mile, pages read 341(thirteen days). 

Taking it easy on Saturday, late start.

Today’s goals: 1000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Short work day because of an early dinner with the Gravediggers.  For the uninitiated, this is my extended family of friends.  We have been together most of our lives and the name comes from the old joke, A friend will help you move, a real friend will help you move the body.

Anyway, more about the workday later.  This morning, my partner in this little adventure Kristi Belcamino brought up revision and this seems like a good time to put in my two cents worth on the subject.

When I first started studying craft back in the hunk of coal on a shovel days, I was told that writing is 40% writing and 60% rewriting.  As I have moved down the path, I think the ratio is more 30/70.

My friend Julie Hyzy says the first draft is her telling herself the story.  Boy, is there a lot of truth in that.  Once you get the whole thing down, you can start in on the revision process that Kristi talks about today.  I don’t do the Highlighter thing, but it certainly seems like a good idea and I’m all in favor of good ideas, so I’ll try it.

I’m looking for the right word, that all the threads pay off when they’re supposed to, all the normal stuff, but I’m also looking at white space.  A page really dense with text...every textbook ever...is uninviting.  I want to see some white space on the page, a secret sign to the reader that this page is “easier,” “faster.”  Consequently, my stuff tends to be talky.  Something else I have to watch, but dialog is action so my stuff tends to be chatty.  What you don’t want is for the characters to tell each other everything instead of actually living the story.

Knowing my weaknesses makes revision easier.  All the way through, I’m aware of chapter length.  They vary, that’s the nature of a book, but one of the things my writing partner Max Allan Collins and I differ on is chapter length.  He’s comfortable with each chapter being longer, like twenty short stories strung together that tell a bigger story.  I lean toward shorter chapters.  I liken it to popcorn.  Reader goes to bed to read one chapter before turning off the light, but the chapter is short, they’re still a little awake.  They look, the next one is short, too.  Just one more, then.  First sentence is good, last sentence is a bit of a cliffhanger, next chapter is short...just one more.  All night long until the reader has lost a night’s sleep.  That’s my goal.

Here’s an editing tip, again from Julie Hyzy.  She reads her whole manuscript aloud.  I do this with dialog, but until Julie suggested it, I had never done it with a whole book.  The thing is, your ear is a better editor than your eye.  For me, tinny dialog stands out even more when I read it aloud.  Turns out, that works with the whole manuscript.  So, there you go.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Day seventeen of FULLY EXPOSED.

Wednesday-

There are days, then there are other days.

Over the years, I have learned to put my emotions aside (somewhat) when I write.  If I’m pissed or worried or nervous or scared, I can compartmentalize enough to do my job.  I have, in fact, learned that while my mom was undergoing heart bypass surgery Gil Grissom and the CSI characters (and a looming deadline) were really good folks to hang out with when I was scared shitless.

The one thing that I can’t compartmentalize is exhaustion.  I have friends who actually suffer from insomnia, so I don’t pretend that’s even an issue, but I have found, especially as I age, that lack of sleep makes this job really hard.  It is the one obstacle, even more than the White Page Monster (thanks, Aimee, for putting a name to it), that I cannot overcome.

Wednesday was that day for me.

Actually, kind of proud of myself for gutting out five hundred seventeen words, but that’s not why I’m here today.  One of the other things I’ve learned over the years is that I know how to turn a suckass day into something positive.  While writing is my main gig, typing words is not the only way to be productive.

So, how did I spend my day yesterday?

I did research on the non-fiction WIP.  There’s a lot of facts that need to be verified and others that need to be filled in, so even if I couldn’t write, I could read.

I can also search the Internet for ways to improve my two fantasy baseball teams...did that, too.  But mostly I stayed on task and learned about diplomats in Cuba in the fifties that will play a part in the action of the book I’m working on.

Also, there’s helping others.  One of the really cool things about book doctoring on the side is you get to help other writers and you learn stuff, too.  For every conversation I have with another writer, I glean something I can use, too.  If nothing more, it will always reinforce my own beliefs in how this job works, and that makes me more aware of these aspects in my own writing.

So, I spent half an hour or so with a client whose novel I’m doctoring.  We talked about a plan of attack both for the book and some ideas about marketing.  That was followed by another hour or so talking to another writer about the protagonist of that novel and how to weave in back story without disrupting the flow of action during certain scenes.

Finally, there was another half-hour talking to a writer about the sting of rejection and when is enough enough?  We all get rejected, it’s part of the life.  How you react to it, that’s the key.  We also talked about other avenues to finding an agent or publisher.  There is, after all, more than one way to feed the cat.  I’m totally against skinning cats, that’s why I’ve changed that.

As a beginning writer, what you don’t know is WHY you were rejected.  Usually, you get the standard “this does not meet our current needs” kind of thing.  What you can never know is if you submitted Kramer vs Kramer to an editor on the day that editor found out he or she is going to get divorced.  Finding your agent, the right publisher, it’s like finding the right mate.  Sometimes you have to date a shitload of frogs before you meet your prince.

Either way, rejected or not, the job remains the same...just keep writing.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I just gave myself some good advice.

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 517 words written, 1.6 miles walked, and 15 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -12940, miles walked -1.3 mile, pages read 319(eleven days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

My thoughts all day were pulled away from writing and centered on friends that were doing really cool things.

Not long after the bombing, David “Big Papi” Ortiz stood in Fenway Park and told the crowed, “This is our fucking city!”  I cheered and wept that day.  I love Papi as a player and for that moment when he chose complete honesty over political correctness.  Boston Strong still resonates deeply with me.

Since then, I’ve met a couple of writers from Boston, Dana Cameron and Hank Phillipi Ryan who are not only talented, wonderful women, but truly good people.

Not long after Dana posted that, Hank Phillipi Ryan, whose latest novel THE WRONG GIRL is a bestseller, offered to match Dana’s donation.

 

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Day fifteen of FULLY EXPOSED.

Monday-

Finally.  I’ve been struggling a lot longer than the two weeks we’ve been doing this to get back to where I belong in terms of production.  Yesterday, I finally met all three of my goals on the same day.  For a moment, it felt absolutely great, then I realized I was utterly exhausted.  Still, a win is a win.

Yesterday, I talked a little about the boring nature of my life.  It’s true, I spend a lot of time in a chair in my office essentially alone.  It’s not that glamorous.  On the good days, like yesterday, my imaginary playmates come visit and we hang out together while they show me their adventures, which, hopefully, I pass on to readers.

Today, I want to talk about something that writers talk about quietly among themselves, but seldom share with others – the white page.  Talking about it aloud is sort of like saying the name of he who must not be named.  The white page is there every morning, for all of us, and some of us embrace it, some of us fear it, and sooner or later, we all have to deal with how we’re going to fill it.

When I first started down this writer’s path, the white page scared me like the boogeyman under my bed.  I always wrote with a light on, and I had the former English teacher check under my computer before I began.

Then, something happened and filling the white page was no longer scary.  I won’t go so far as to say it was easy, but for a very long time it was like pulling a slot machine handle and words poured out like coins.  For over a decade, when I pulled the handle, most of the time, I was rewarded with words.

I can’t tell you what made the white page less daunting, what made the process easier, but it was.  Likewise, I can’t tell you what made the handle start rewarding me with lemons, then not even those.  But for quite a while now, the white page has been my nemesis again.  I had gone from pulling the handle to pulling teeth.  It has been a frustrating time because in twenty-some years, I’ve learned a lot of tricks to outwit the machine when it doesn’t want to let me win.  A lot of it is just butt-in-the-chair and keep pulling the handle, but there’s more to it and that’s the part of writing that is...magical.  Sometimes, the magic is black, though.  We seldom confess that to those who follow us down the writer’s path.

Yesterday, for whatever reason, I pulled the handle and words came out.  Today, I’ll pull the handle again, as many times as it takes to get a win, because now I, again, know the machine can be beaten.  So, it’s time to pull the handle...come on, baby, triple sevens.

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, and 20 pages read. 

Outcome was 2002 words written, 1.5 mile walked, and 93 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -10989, miles walked -1.0 mile, pages read 279(nine days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Monday, April 14, 2014

When Kristi Belcamino first came up with this idea, it seemed perfect.  We would write about our writing lives, kick each other in the pants to get more done and, while we were at it, give other writers a glimpse into how each of us goes about our job.

You know what I learned from two weeks of this?  My life is pretty boring.  I knew this already, but while there are aspects of this job that are incredibly cool, a lot of days it’s just a matter of planting your butt in the chair and trying to come up with something to say, preferably, something that’s part of your current Work In Progress.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trading this job for anything and you can have my keyboard when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers, but the truth is there’s not a lot going on here except me trying to make progress on my WIP and trying to help a couple other writers make their novels better.

All the cool shit is going on over at Chez Belcamino.  Her novel, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD, comes out in June, followed closely by BLESSED ARE THE MEEK, the sequel.  She’s getting amazing blurbs from cool authors (read the one from Alex Segura, it rocks), she’s doing stuff with her publicist and editor, and the excitement (especially since the book is great) is just palpable.

The new collaboration with Max Allan Collins, SUPREME JUSTICE, isn’t due until July.  All the stuff she’s doing will not be on my plate for a while and even then to a much lesser degree since my name isn’t on it.  Max and I have a longstanding agreement that how the work comes to us determines the byline.  That means that a lot of the pre-pub stuff doesn’t really involve me doing any heavy lifting, which is actually cool.  That keeps me in the chair, which is my favorite place.

I once asked a cop buddy, one of my research sources, what his job was really like.  No TV and movie bullshit, reality...what’s the job like?

Oh, and the five percent shrill, shrieking terror?  Writers call that deadline week.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

A little done on a lot of fronts kind of day.  Doctored some stuff for others, bagged leaves with the former English teacher, got caught up on a dvd I’d been wanting to watch and even wrote 1076 words.

While the WIP continues to try and wrestle me over every sentence, I finally feel like there is forward movement.  While there was no walking, there was some reading, too.  Even after crashing hard Friday evening, Saturday still found me dragging a little, but no matter who you are, no matter your job, not every day is an A+ day, so you just keep moving forward, in my case, one word at a time.

Saturday was one of those days where there’s just not much to talk about.  Despite the romance of how writers are portrayed in the movies and on say something like Castle, which is as close to documentary as any TV show can be, a lot of days, it’s just like any other job.  You come to work, you put in your time, you try to play nice with others (which IS kind of cool since my co-workers are mostly imaginary), then at the end of the day you hope the boss doesn’t come in ten minutes before quitting time and ask you to stay late.  The water cooler talk is fun because I get to hang with Joe Reeder, Jordan Rivera, J.C. Harrow, and characters we haven’t thought up yet, all of whose first names evidently start with J, and discuss how they are going to stop this or that serial killer. Still, even though it’s not always romantic, and sometimes it’s a grind, still the best job ever.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Day twelve of FULLY EXPOSED.

Friday–

One of the nice things about being a full-time writer is the freedom to change things up.  Friday was that day.  I knew going in that this was going to be Hell Week for me, and it kind of was.  Just a lot on my plate, and by the time Friday rolled around, I was already tired.  Got some book doctoring done in the morning, but had a family thing that I knew was going to eat up the afternoon.  I had even scheduled for it, but by the time that was done and I finally got my walk in, I have to admit, I was exhausted.

So, the easiest thing to do?  Make Friday my day off instead of Saturday.  Today, I’m in the chair, and yesterday’s goal of 2000 words I’m retroactively resetting to zero.  Which I actually managed to attain.

I did, however, doctor parts of two different books by two very different authors.  I also noticed that two of my writer friends were discussing setting on Facebook.  After what I read, two chapters from very different parts of two very different books, and the settings involved in those works, it got me to thinking even more about setting.

On one level, setting, description of characters, the various things that ground the reader in the reality of the lie we’re spinning is simply about artistic control.  As the writer, and only half the collaboration, but the controlling half, how much of the picture are you willing to let the reader paint.

My partner, Max Allan Collins, and I exert quite a bit of control.  Our theory is that if a book is a movie in your mind, we want the reader, given that each reader brings a different set of life experiences to the collaboration, to see as much the same movie that Max and I saw in our heads as we wrote it.  That requires us describing a lot.

How do we do that without boring the reader?  We never do a laundry list (okay, not very often) of description.  What we are trying to do in each sentence is either to advance the plot or reveal character.  We’re not always successful, but that’s the plan.  Anyway, if we do that well, that means setting, descriptions, the grounding in reality stuff comes through the characters.  The idea is to get you to perceive the world the way the characters do.

The two writers I read yesterday both did this, but in different ways.  One used rich detail to set the scene, while the other used less description, but what was there was all absolutely funneled through the POV of the character.  Is one better?  Nope.  They both work, both drew me into the story, both grounded me in the world that each book is set in.

The upshot of this is, setting can be tricky, and I know really talented writers.  Makes book doctoring easier, for sure.

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words (changed to zero), 1.5 miles walked. 

Outcome was 0 words written, 2.3 mile walked, and 44 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -9589, miles walked -1.4, pages read 122 (six days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 0 miles walked (using lawn work as a substitute), twenty pages read.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Day eleven of FULLY EXPOSED.

Thursday-

Some days you just play hooky.  Thursday was that day for me, but not.  I knew this week was going to be hard because of all the outside stuff I have that isn’t usually on my plate.  So, I thought I was ready.  Not so much.

Okay, first thing after my morning coffee IV was to spend an hour at the community college talking to people about changing their lives, about imagining and living a life different than the one they have decided sucks.  As I’m talking it occurs to me that this was the day for me, this exact fucking day.  April 10, 2014, the twenty-second anniversary of the day I punched out of my day job for the very last time after fourteen years.  The day I became a professional writer.  It is also the day I took off my watch, which sounds like no big deal, but that watch had come to represent everything I hated about that time.  That watch told me when to get up, when to go to work, when to eat, when to do everything but breathe.  By April 10, 1992 I despised that watch.

When I punched the clock, the first thing I did, before I even went outside those doors and breathed real writer air for the first time, I took off that watch and put it in my pocket.  I don’t carry it anymore, but I haven’t worn it since 7:30 p.m., April 10, 1992.

All that hit me as I was talking to those kids yesterday.  That, and the one thing I try to remember every day...I am the luckiest human on the planet.  Your life never turns out the way you think it will.  I certainly never became a cowboy or a cop, the things I wanted to be as a little boy.  I never became a teacher as I wanted when I was in junior high or high school.  I didn’t become the doctor or lawyer that my parents hoped.  I flunked out of college, got a factory job that paid good money and good benefits.  Then I pissed that away in favor of a job with no security, no regular paycheck, no benefits beyond what my wife’s employment could provide me, and quite possibly no future.  Best decision I ever made, at least job wise.

All those things I never became?  Every day for the last twenty-two years, I have gotten to have those jobs, lead those lives, and oh so many more. 

So yesterday I celebrated.

I also found time to doctor a scene for a friend that was stuck and even though I played hooky, I still found 512 words.  Not a bad anniversary. 

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked. 

Outcome was 512 words written, 2.1 mile walked, and 32 pages read. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -9589, miles walked -2.1, pages read 78 (five days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Day ten of FULLY EXPOSED.

 

Wednesday–

 

Every semester the local community college invites me in to speak to two or three classes of students about changing their lives and achieving new goals.  They read one of the books, WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER this time, and the students get to meet a local author.  Someone who, like them, wanted something different out of life and went after it.

 

At heart, I’m a factory worker.  Did it for fourteen years in the real world before I returned to my first love and started writing again.  No MFA, hell, not even a BA, but I went to every writers conference I could find, and I worked my ass off to learn this craft.  I say that with a certain amount of pride, but also with the knowledge that my lack of education has kept me from an even greater understanding of the writing life.  I just sort of butted in line and started doing what those around me were doing.  In the broad strokes, I do okay, but some of the nuances may avoid me.  But all through this, I’ve kept the factory worker mentality.  This is a job, one I love, but a job.  I’m production, pure and simple.  My job is to turn out content.  Good, entertaining content.

 

Yesterday, I was actually surprised by the amount of support I got when I discussed my bad writing day.  That inspired me to put my hard hat back on, get my ass back down into the mines, and just dig harder.

 

It was a shortened work day yesterday because the morning was spent with the folks at the college, but I still did okay.  This morning, I’m back to the community college so it’s going to be a shorter day again.  But when I get home, the hard hat goes on, the pickax comes out, and I’m going back down into the mines again.  It’s what I do, and no matter how bad the day before or the ten days before or however many days before were bad, this might be the good one.

 

Like I tell the students, you really can be whatever you want to be, you just really have to work your ass off for it.  Bruce Springsteen said it best for me (He says most things best for me), “No retreat, baby, no surrender.”

 

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked.  Outcome as 1350 words written, 1 mile walked, and no reading at all. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -8101, miles walked -2.7, pages read 46 (four days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Day nine of FULLY EXPOSED.

Tuesday–

This is the day I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write about.  This is the day I was hoping this project would help put behind me.  This is the day I was (though I knew better) hoping would never come again.  This is the day where there are no words.

I played twenty-six holes of golf (it’s an odd course) in the morning.  I was relaxed.  I had, in fact, thought about where I wanted today’s scene to go, what I hoped to accomplish.  I was ready.

Had a sandwich, picked up a book at the library, walked a mile, everything was as it should be.  I sat down in the chair, turned on the computer, and I was off...like a glacier.  Nothing.

Crap, really?  I had this all planned out.  Come on, faucet, open...something...anything.  Nothing.

Play solitaire, clear your mind.  Check Facebook.  Okay, you’re ready.  Go back in.

Okay, a paragraph.  Now, we’re going.  Another one.  Yay!  Everything’s fine ... then nothing.  I’m being lazy, I tell myself.  Get in there and dig.

Every sentence that comes out is dull as dishwater.  Delete.

Stop it, you can do this.  You’ve been doing this half your life.  Just write.  I do.  It sucks.  I hit delete.

Fuck!  Sorry, if you’re a reader of Kristi’s stuff and have tender ears, but this is the most accurate way to describe my frustration...FUCK!  I am beyond angry.  I had this.  I knew what I wanted to write, why won’t it come out?

There’s a sports term...”pressing.”  Commentators will talk about a player “pressing,” simply trying too hard.  Writing, like most sports activities, is about being able to relax and let things flow, “let the game come to you,” as they say.

When you actively “try,” when you’re trying to force the issue instead of letting it flow, this is pressing.  And it’s exactly what I’m doing, what I have been doing for sometime now.  But today is bad.

I know I’m pressing.  I know I need to relax.  I know I’m actually thinking too much.  I have to stop.  Just relax...only about the thousandth time I’ve said that today.  I go back in.

Okay, I’ve got a page.  Life is good.  I’m going to be okay, and then it stops.  Nothing.  I want to curse.  I want to cry.  I want to quit, but I can’t.  This is what I do.  It’s in there somewhere, I just have to figure out what’s got it all bottled up.

But that doesn’t happen today.  Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.  Two things are damn sure...I’ll be in the chair trying because that’s what I do, and even if every word I write is like this until I die, if every word is like trying to pull the sword out of the stone, I don’t care, I’ll do it that way because I will never give up.

So...

Yesterday’s goals were 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked. 

Outcome as 259 words written, 1 mile walked, and I only read ten pages. 

Grand total for FULLY EXPOSED: words -7451, miles walked -2.2, pages read 46 (three days).

Today’s goals: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked, twenty pages read.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

There are days where the outside world does a better job of banging on your door than you do at keeping them away.  Monday was that day for me.  My wife, the former English teacher, does a lot with her parents, and occasionally she needs my help.  Did a couple of things there, came home and watched the home opening day ceremonies of the St. Louis Cardinals (Eileen Dreyer, if she reads this, is the one person I know will understand the importance of this particular baseball season ritual of mine.

Still, that left plenty of time to write, though I still came in under my goal...I am getting closer, and every day I’m feeling more like the writer I was and less like the layabout I seem to have become.  The rest of the week will be even more challenging, though.  Despite my best efforts to scatter outside stuff around, there are times it all seems to hit in one week.  From here on, this is the week where I find out if I have any discipline left at all.  Stay tuned, it’s about to get a little weird.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Day Seven of FULLY EXPOSED.

Like a great many writers, I’m jealous of J.K. Rowling.  I don’t begrudge her success or even her writing (which, truthfully, I find a little passive-voiced for my taste) but as a storyteller, my god, is she just frigging brilliant.  She set up things in book one of Harry Potter that she didn’t pay off until book seven.  The ability to see that whole universe so clearly, to write each novel strongly enough that it could be read as a stand alone or as part of that magnificent series...of that, I’m jealous as hell.  That is a gift I have coveted my whole career, but have yet to see ripen into anything of worth.  So, yeah, jealous.

Which brings me to something I find even more audacious, from a storytelling standpoint, what Marvel Studios is doing is simply mind-boggling to me.  They are creating a universe that stretches across four film series and a television show, and that’s just the stuff I’ve figured out so far.  It is Rowling times four.  If she had separate novels for Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, and so on, and then they became the Avengers in the Harry books, that’s the sort of massive undertaking I’m talking about.

I grew up on Marvel Comics.  They were discussing social issues in a comic book format before anyone else.  X-Men, for instance, in the sixties, was a metaphor for race relations.  These guys weren’t just entertaining kids, they were trying to say something.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Day Six of FULLY EXPOSED.

Ray Bradbury, a brilliant guy and someone you should read if you haven’t, said, “Just write every day of your life.  Read intensely.  Then see what happens.  Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.”

As I use this exercise in exposure with Kristi Belcamino, one of my goals was sort of to get back on the horse that threw me.  Writing has become a difficult task where it used to come so easily to me.  One of the things I’m finding as I re-jigger my life to find the thing about writing that has been eluding me is that reading fiction is terribly important.

I want to give a shout out today to another mentor of mine, too.  The late children’s author David R. Collins was a hero to me.  It was at David’s Mississippi Valley Writers Conference that I first found out I had wings, let alone that I could use them to fly.  Early on in our relationship, David said that, as a children’s author, “My job is to educate and entertain.”

So, got some work done yesterday, but got struck from the blue by a nap.  These things happen.  I am a little more forgiving of them on the weekend.  Today, though, there will be no such luxury.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Day Five of FULLY EXPOSED.

My blessed day off and I took it.  No writing, but I did see CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER.  No spoilers from me here, I hate that crap, but watching the film, which is quite good, I was reminded of something that I can talk about today...the willing suspension of disbelief.

There is a tiny logic issue I have with the Captain America movie, but it didn’t occur to me until I was out of the auditorium, so it wasn’t something so serious that it took me out of the story.

It doesn’t have to be a big thing.  It can, in fact, be anything, that pulls the audience out of the story...the hero’s eye color changes (one I was guilty of), a character can be wearing Reeboks in 1985 when just everybody in the whole freaking world knows they didn’t hit the American market until 1986 (no, I didn’t bother to look it up), which was something an author friend of mine was accused of, though.  Whatever it is, if you pull the audience out of the story, they may not come back in.

This is why I tell writers to write as compelling a book as possible.  My goal with every single book is to cause the reader to lose a night’s sleep.  They want to read a chapter before they go to sleep because tomorrow is a big work day and they need their rest.  My job, as I see it, is to send them to the meeting bleary-eyed and exhausted.  Because, my fellow mystery kids, if they put the book down, I have no guarantee they will pick it back up.

I don’t take weekends off.  I absolutely devote one day a week to the former English teacher and any honey-do stuff, go to the store and carry this heavy thing, car maintenance stuff needs to get done that day.  The other six days, I work.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Day Four of FULLY EXPOSED.

 I’ve done it since the day I turned pro and although I had a hiatus for a while, I’ve been asked to do it more lately, and it’s something I enjoy a great deal.  Yesterday, most of my day was taken up with doctoring two chapters for one of these authors.  Note to the author who got two chapters of notes from me yesterday, if you’re reading this, the length of time it took had nothing to do with the quality of your work, it’s fine.  The time it takes for me to do two chapters is long because I try to be thorough.

I also managed to have a lesson I learned a long time ago reinforced yesterday.  Last night I heard from one of the readers that I sent an ARC (advance reader copy) of SUPREME JUSTICE to.  She is a fan, and has always been kind about how much she likes the books Collins and I write.  Last night was different, though.  She said it was one of the best books we’ve written.  I say this not to brag, but instead to introduce a couple things that we talked about after that.  I was surprised by her reaction.  There are a couple things in that book that made me nervous and I asked about them.  She didn’t figure out the killer in Chapter One, always a plus, and she actually liked that the two leads didn’t have a romantic entanglement.

 

 All the income we get in this business is not monetary, some of it is psychic, and having one reader say that we made the right call is psychic money in the bank.  And for the writer who I have been preaching this very theory to...trust your characters, they will show you the way home.

 

I’m still lagging for the month, but the thing with 50,000 words in thirty days is, I’ve built in five days off. Friday will be one of them...Captain America, need I say more?  When I get home, if I get any words at all, I will be knocking off some of that negative number.

Today’s goals:0 words, 1.5 miles walked.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Day Three of FULLY EXPOSED.

Did you ever have that day, you know the one, where no matter what you do, it’s just...wrong.  Yeah, THAT day.  Wednesday, while it had some successes, was sort of that day for me.

 

As rejections go, it was actually quite nice.  I was told the woman who read my story “enjoyed it very much,” but that “the corpse scene might be too graphic” for their readers.  No harm, no foul.  Rejection is a big part of the business and something I am no stranger to.  There is still, though, no matter how long I do this, that split second where I think, wow, someone who has finally figured out I’m a talentless hack.  But then, you simply move on to the next thing.

Which brings me to synopses.  My friend Alan Orloff recently asked, “Is there anything worse than writing a synopsis?”  He then went on to answer his own question...”writing two synopses.”  Yeah, that, and my task for the last two days.

 Everybody’s publisher seems to want something different when it comes time for the next contract.  The publisher Max Allan Collins (my writing partner) and I work for wants a synopsis for the next two books (the length of the contract).  So, a couple weeks ago, Max and I sat down and had one of our marathon plotting sessions.  Something that is actually one of my favorite parts of the writing process and I took copious notes so I would know how to construct the two documents.

 Synopsis #1(for book two in the series begun by SUPREME JUSTICE) was pretty straightforward and I got that done Tuesday.  Yesterday, I tweaked it and was finally satisfied.  It’s ready for Max to take his pass at it before we send it to the publisher.

 

 

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Day Two of FULLY EXPOSED.

Tuesday–

Fail.  Not an epic one, but a failure which also contained at least moments of success.

My goals were 2000 words and a 1.5 mile walk.  First the wind conspired against me and I decided to put off the walk until afternoon.Instead, the morning was spent drinking copious amounts of coffee and dealing with the sorts of business activities that Kristi puts off until afternoon.  A friend in MWA posted that there was a place in Norway looking for crime stories for an Easter tradition.  Given that my readership is pretty much nil in Norway, I dug up FAMILY VALUES, the first short story I ever sold, and sent it on its merry way to Norway.  If it’s accepted maybe I’ll gain a reader in Norway, if not, I just hope my zero audience doesn’t turn into a negative one.

I also recruited a second writer for the blog hop thing I’ll be involved in next week.  Designed to bring more traffic to the authors involved, this couldn’t have come at a better time and tagging Kristi was easy, the second author actually took me a couple of tries, but it got done.

I figured I would still have all afternoon and evening to get my word count and my walk.  Then my wife (the former English teacher), handed me two slips of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Tickets for the movie we’re going to in Iowa City tonight.”

F-bomb.  F-bomb in ALL CAPS with three of those pointy things after it.  (Kristi’s readers might see this and they don’t yet know that I curse like a stevedore with Tourette’s who has just had his foot run over by a fork lift.  Let’s keep that surprise for later, shall we?)

I was the one who bought the tickets (a week ago) for the documentary NARCO CULTURA because I wanted to see it for research for a future book.  Downside is, Iowa City is an hour each way, the movie is two hours, and an hour for dinner meant the evening was shot.  F-bomb to the power of three.

One synopsis did get done, first draft anyway.  1110 words written.  Skipped the walk to get that many words.

Grand total -890 words and -1.5 miles walked.  Not a great beginning, but today is another day.

Goal: 2000 words, 1.5 miles walked.

Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll explain the synopsis thing...really.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Fully Exposed -- Matthew Clemens

So, it’s day one of FULLY EXPOSED.  Here we go.  Each morning, Kristi Belcamino and I will be posting what happened yesterday.  Here’s what I did on my last “off” day:

 

MONDAY–

 

Opening Day of the baseball season and my personal National Holiday of choice.  I walked 1.4 miles which won’t count toward my total for this, but still count as getting it done.

 

Between ball games, I also knocked out a 600 word proposal for a book I’m hoping to collaborate on with another author.  I collaborate a lot, mostly with Max Allan Collins, but occasionally, especially as book doctor with others.  This proposal is for a full-on novel with an author I both like and admire.  Hoping the other writer likes it.

One question I get a lot is why do I collaborate so much in what is, in essence, a very solitary activity?  For me, it’s like music, a chance to jam with others, so to speak.  We both bring something to the table, but in the end, there’s always the hope that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.  Plus, I always, ALWAYS learn more about the craft.  That alone makes the trip worthwhile.

Aside from that, I spoke to two first-time novelists that I’m mentoring about their projects and the writing life in general.  Time flies when you’re doing that and two hours flew by, but in the end, time well-spent.  I’ve been at this seriously for twenty-seven years and I was mentored by some amazing people.  Now, it’s about me trying to pass on what I’ve learned, and at the same time, learn even more.  The day you stop learning is the day you start to die.

Today, looking for two thousand words, mostly in synopses that I’ll explain more about tomorrow, and a mile and a half walk when the wind becomes a little less “Auntie Em, Auntie Em!”

Write tight, people, that’s the key.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Fully Exposed -- Matthew Clemens

So, it’s goal setting day here at FULLY EXPOSED.  It seems only reasonable that if we’re going to share everything for the next thirty days, you should know what we’re trying to accomplish.

At first glance, this seems like a pretty easy step, right?  Not so much.  For a while now, I’ve been stuck.  I don’t believe in writer’s block, especially if you’re a pro and this is how you make your living, but this is as close as I’ve ever come.  Writing has become a struggle, a BIG struggle.  So, when Kristi Belcamino came to me with the idea of this month long twin blog thing, I saw a chance to accept the kick in the pants that I so seem to need.

Maybe having people looking over my shoulder is just what I need to get back in the saddle.  I’m looking not just to give people an insight into what a twenty-two year vet of this business goes through every day, I’m looking for a major freaking life change.

With that in mind, here are my goals for April:
50,000 words written...2000 a day for twenty-five days with five days off.

Forty-five miles walked because I’m fat and I need to lose weight.  That’s an average of a mile and half for thirty days, something I’ve already started.

When I’m done, the WIP (Work-In-Progress for the uninitiated) should be done, as well as getting me started on the next project.  There will also be some side roads I hope will show unpublished writers how other parts of the business work.  It should be a fun ride.  Come along.  For the next thirty days, I’ll be FULLY EXPOSED.  Kristi is busy writing now, because she's all diligent and stuff, but she'll be posting her goals later. Stay tuned.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

FULLY EXPOSED

An Experiment by
Kristi Belcamino and Matthew Clemens

This was Kristi’s idea, and it started out pretty simple.

“We should trade word counts every day,” she said. That was how this began, then it grew. More than just a tool to hold ourselves accountable for meeting our word count every day, the plan has morphed into what I have taken to thinking of as thirty day job shadow.

Although everyone is welcome, unpublished writers are sort of our target audience here. No matter where I speak, this question always comes up, “What’s your work day like?”

For the month of April, Kristi and I will be showing you exactly what it’s like to live the writer’s life. Every day, we will each post our word count, how we’ve spent the day, what we have and have not accomplished, and generally just giving you an inside look at the lives of two professional writers.

Kristi’s first novel, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD, will be published in June and my twenty-second collaboration with Max Allan Collins, SUPREME JUSTICE hits the streets July 1. Other than both having books coming out this summer, we’re at different places in our lives and careers. She, for instance, has a family and a day job. I have a wife, two cats, and a very small office where I spend a good portion of my day.

So, come along, join in the conversation, maybe we’ll all learn something, have a little fun, and find our way through the first reality writing series.

You can follow us here or at 

www.kristibelcamino.com or www.matthewclemens.com 

where it will be on my blog, Bring Out Your Dread.

Teaser: We'll have more about our goals and what we hope to accomplish with this project on Monday and then we pull the trigger Tuesday, letting you all know what went down on Monday, which will kick off our 30 days of FULLY EXPOSED.

Friday, Mar. 14, 1013

I know I’m supposed to be obsessed with books and talk about books and the industry and all that stuff...BUT, I have other interests too.  My latest obsession was at least spurred by a book, so that sort of counts.

A few days ago, I finished reading Levon Helm’s THIS WHEEL’S ON FIRE.  It’s his autobiography and the story of The Band.  When all this stuff went down, starting in the fifties and going on until the mid-seventies, I was just enough behind the curve to keep missing being part of what was going on with them.

The advantage this gives me is that I can now more easily see the through line of how what they did as members of Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks led to them being Bob Dylan’s band of choice when he went on his world tour in 1965-66, then their own career as The Band and what went wrong.  But even as I read the book, then started rediscovering the albums, I started to see how they had to have influenced The Jayhawks, Wilco, The Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons, and the entire Americana music movement.

As someone who makes his living creating stuff, I have always been interested in other artists, how they create what they create, who their influences were, what their lives were like.  So, I’m obsessing about The Band now, and their music, and I find that those sounds, those lyrics are inspiring, but listening to music from forty years ago and knowing what came before and after, and now, what they listened to and what inspired them, I have thought about my own family tree...my writing family, that is.

Some families can recount their genealogy back to the pilgrims.  My writing family doesn’t go back quite that far, but I can count Kurt Vonnegut, Donald E. Westlake, John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane as direct antecedents who I either learned from myself or who taught my first degree of separation mentors Max Allan Collins and R. Karl Largent.

It’s funny what books can do for you.  Because I read one man’s story of his life, I got to reflect on my own, be inspired by other artists, and as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been listening to some damned fine music in versions I had not heard before.  AND, to top it off, the cherry on the sundae, as it were, I got an idea for a story.

Monday, Feb. 10, 2014

SELF-DOUBT NEVER GOES AWAY

Been away for awhile. Time to get my nose back to the grindstone. Writing requires discipline, something I've been lacking since before the holidays. I've let myself off the hook for too long. It's easy to convince yourself that "thinking" about a project is the same as writing. Although it's necessary, it's also a convenient place to hide when your confidence is flagging.

For those of you just starting down the writing path, the truth is, self-doubt never goes away. I always thought it was just me, but listening to other authors (some with sales figures WAY beyond mine), I've heard them express the same thought.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've come to believe that a small amount of self-doubt is part of the process, I mean, in a good way. It's the thing that drives improvement. It's the soft voice that says, "I have to make this as good as it possibly can be because I will NOT put crap product on the market."

What happened to me was I didn't just let self-doubt in the door, I let it move in like a relative with nowhere else to go, and six months later, the damned thing is running the house. The soft voice has become a constant wail, a cacophony of white noise. The thing I love to do, writing, became something I dreaded. Dread became paralysis. Sometimes I could see myself, like an out of body experience, sitting there, struggling, trying, failing. It was like swimming in a lap pool where the resistance is just set too fucking high. Eventually, your stroke fails, you flounder, you surrender, you drown.

I'm lazy, granted. I'm easily distracted, granted. There are people in my life whose company I find almost as fulfilling as writing, granted. All that shit, granted and granted and granted, amen. But I WANT to write. I NEED to write. It is as much a part of my DNA as the f-bombs I drop with stunning regularity. And I got robbed of it ... by me. I let self-doubt have way more power than it ever earned.

Weird thing ... I've been listening to the audiobook of WHAT DOESN'T KILL HER, the last collaboration with Max Allan Collins. Listening to the talented Dan John Miller read our words reinforced something I already knew ... I don't suck, but more importantly, together, Collins and I are pretty fucking good. I'm still proud of that book. But even with that ringing in my ears, I couldn't get over the hump.

What did it? What broke the dam? Talking to other writers, my friends. Most of them didn't even know what was going on with me, but somehow, these people pulled me back from the edge. Slowly, painfully slowly, I am regaining my edge. and I owe that to a list of people too long to name here, but I thank them all for their help. You people, you helped heal me.

And self-doubt? Oh yeah, it's still here, banished to the corner. Turn back to the wall, bitch, don't even eyeball me or the flying monkeys will swoop in and you don't want that. So, yeah, self-doubt is still here, but no longer does it have the keys to the house, and that voice isn't allowed to do anything more than whisper.

Now, if you'll excuse me, :::rolls up sleeves:::, I have work to do.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Telling The Story From Beginning To End...

Going to get off the time management bandwagon for a while and get back to talking about more honest to gosh writing stuff.  The last time we talked writing, it was about the first draft and racing from beginning to end as fast as you can.

This is one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do moments.  As much as Anne Lamott has given me permission to write the “shitty first draft,” I have trouble doing it. If there was one thing I could change about my process, it’s just letting go and allowing the first draft to just fall out.  Trust me, do it this way.  Don’t worry about anything but telling the story from beginning to end.

Part of my problem is that I’ve been working the same way for two decades, and I’m a bit of an old dog trying to learn a new trick.  Doesn’t mean I can’t, just means a little steeper learning curve.  My work method involves me doing a light edit on yesterday’s stuff before I begin today’s work.  That alone is not the issue.  It gives me a starting place and allows me to easily slip back into the mindset of the scene at hand.

It’s that “light” edit.  I really have to control my tendency to want to polish everything to a high gloss, especially when it’s all going to change anyway.  Trust me, it usually does.

The first draft is not where you’re making your money.  This is where you’re laying out all the ideas that will make up your novel. Where you’re making your money is in drafts two, three, and however many more you have.  That’s where you’re going to take that great story idea you have to the next level.

Anne Lamott is right.  The shitty first draft is the way to go.  There’s absolutely no reason to spend a bunch of time cleaning up stuff that won’t even end up being in the final draft.  For you, for me, it’s time we embraced the benediction of Ms. Lamott.  Now, let’s fire up that shitty first draft.  We’ll worry about making it pretty, later.

Next week, we’ll talk more about editing and the things you have to watch out for there.  This, also, is a multi-time activity.

Monday, November 18, 2013

New Trick...

Man, it just always keeps coming back to time and, more importantly, how we use it.  My writer's toolbox contains a boatload of the normal stuff, nouns, verbs, the well-placed (and very rare) adverb, and so on.  It's also where I keep my bag of tricks.

Thanks to New York Times bestselling author Julie Hyzy (the White House Chef and Grace Wheaton series), and Dana Fredsti, renowned author of the wonderful Plague Town and Plague Nation zombie apocalypse novels, I've added a new trick to the bag.  I have less focus than Dug, the dog in UP.  Not a happy admission, but a true one, and a condition I share with a whole clown car full of other writers.

Dana was fighting the same issue and came up with the idea of working for fifty minutes, then playing for ten.  We all have a tendency to hang out at Facebook like it's the local malt shop after a football game.  If you look up time suck in the dictionary, the picture will be the Facebook logo.  I tried Dana's plan, and it was, in short, an epic fail.  It wasn't the plan that was bad, it was my execution.

That was when Julie suggested using a timer.

"Shut off the Internet, and just write for thirty minutes," she said.  "Then check FB, and your email, then do it again."

It worked.  I mean IT REALLY FUCKING WORKED.  Over 800 words in that first half-hour.  I'm still figuring out how to use this new plan to my best advantage, but it has doubled my productivity...DOUBLED.  Whoda thunk?

I need a plan when I sit down, an idea of the scene I'm writing, otherwise it's just junk.  But, if I'm prepared, i can rock the house for thirty minutes and not SQUIRREL!!! even once.  Amazing.

Get a timer, figure out the right amount of time for you, make this tool your own.  It can help. Trust me, Facebook will still be there in half an hour.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Let's talk about characters...

  Not just any characters, but protagonists and antagonists.  These are the characters that carry the action, make us want to read the book in the first place.  Recently, a friend asked why people find Loki so much more interesting than Thor.  That set me to thinking.

The thing is, the antagonist has to be at least as interesting as the protagonist or we risk the stakes of our conflict not being high enough.  The bottom line there is that the reader will lose interest. This is the point where I confess that I was never a Superman guy.  I mean, seriously, how hard is it to overcome problems when you have no weaknesses?  A gross over simplification, I grant you, but the basis for why I was always drawn more to Batman.  Now there's a guy with more baggage than the cargo hold of the Titanic.  THAT is what keeps him interesting.

Loki is in the same boat.  He has more issues than National Geographic.  But, again, this is what makes him interesting.  He is the Jan Brady of Asgard.  The thing is, everything he does is not evil.  It is, however, self-serving.  The thing many beginning writers forget is that the antagonist doesn't view himself or herself as a villain.  In their minds, their actions, no matter how heinous, are not necessarily "bad."  Even murder can be rationalized.

Likewise, everything the protagonist does is "good."  Both characters live by a moral code that is not necessarily in line with the societal norm.  Be it Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, or even Batman, sometimes the ends justify the means.  Vigilante justice trumps working within the system.  And again, even murder (or execution) can be rationalized.

It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized Max Allan Collins and I, unintentionally, rewrote Batman with a female protagonist in WHAT DOESN'T KILL HER.  As a child (teenager in our case), she witnesses the murder of family, retreats from society, trains to track down the killer with vengeance as the driving motive -- Batman, in a nutshell.  And like Bruce Wayne, Jordan Rivera has a full set of Samsonite luggage to carry every step of the way.

The serial killer she's chasing has calculus level problems, as well.  Plus, he's physically better equipped for their showdown, and possibly smarter than her, too.  In short, he has every advantage and the question becomes as much about HOW she will defeat her enemy, assuming she can even figure out who he is in the first place.

In the end, it all boils down to making them both, protagonist and antagonist, three-dimensional characters.  This requires me to spend time in the POV of a serial killer.  Not a happy place, but a necessary step in the process.  Need to write a novel with Loki as a villain?  It would be cool to hang with a more joyful villain.

Thanks to Michele Oberlander for getting me thinking about this stuff.

Monday, November 4, 2013

THE FIRST DRAFT -- IT’S JUST THE BEGINNING….REALLY

Before I dig into the first draft, an addendum…

Whether it’s a collaboration with my partner Max Allan Collins or something I’m doing on my own, I have outlined the whole story (I hope), and done most of my research.  It isn’t until these steps are done that I start the first draft.



Most people who don’t write think you sit down write the book and you’re done, and it’s just that easy in much the same way that playing baseball qualifies you to be a brain surgeon.  The first draft is just the beginning.



One writer friend refers to the phase where she is telling herself the story.  This is sort of my approach to the first draft.  I think I know the story, but until it’s out there on the page, I’m not aware of how much of it I don’t know, what pits I’ve fallen into, what details are not quite what I thought they were going to be.  The first draft is like a party with your friends.  You know who is going to arrive, in what order (mostly), how long they’ll stay, when they’ll leave.  Once everyone’s there, you can sit around and get to know each other, because like every good party, the participants will be a mixture of old friends and some folks you don’t know quite as well, but you think might be cool to hang with.

The advice given me when I was starting out was that you should go like hell from beginning to end, spelling and grammar be damned, just get the story down on the page.  I try to do that myself, within the parameters of my own work style.  That involves starting each day by doing a light edit on yesterday’s stuff to get me back to where I was when I knocked off for the day. Aside from that though, I DO go like hell from beginning to end.  IT’S ALL GOING TO BE REWRITTEN.  Trust me, a lot of that first draft will change some as the process goes on.

The first chapter, in particular, will probably change by the time you get to the end of the book. Someone once said that the closets of America are filled with first chapters.  That could be true, especially if you polish and polish and polish until that first chapter is so tight it’s like bouncing a quarter off a soldier’s cot.  But how much time did that take you?  How much effort for something that will, most likely, be completely different by the time the novel is done, especially if every subsequent chapter is written in that same painstaking style.

Trust me, this is just step one...go like hell from beginning to end.  When Max and I collaborate on a novel, I read it as I go, my wife, the former English teacher reads my draft, too.  Max reads it as he does his draft, and his wife Barb, also a professional writer, reads it.  Then Max reads it one last time, then he sends it to me and I read it one last time to make sure we’re both satisfied with the final product.  Only then, after at least half a dozen revisions do we even consider sending it to the editor.

The first draft is play time.  That’s when you experiment, play with subplots, all that stuff.  It’s like taking a cross country trip.  You follow the map (your outline) mostly, but occasionally, you want to go see the world’s biggest ball of twine. Check it out, maybe it will help, maybe it won’t. Just remember that it’s a long trip to the end of the novel and you’re just starting out.  It can be a great trip.  Have fun.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM?

A lot of my writer friends, when they’re really under the gun, or going on vacation, or just need a break, bring in a guest blogger.

Now, I see why. I was going to talk about ideas here and on the writing stuff page of this site. Of course, it never dawned on me that I would say everything I wanted to say about ideas over there instead of saving at least one nugget for this page.

Consequently, even though on the other page I claimed ideas were everywhere, I’m typing this with absolutely no idea what the hell I’m going to say. Realizing that was going to happen, I immediately wished for a guest blogger. But who to ask? Certainly none of my friends. They are all busy, and even if one of them threw themselves on this particular grenade to save me, I couldn’t let them do it.

"Hi, (insert name of soon-to-be FORMER writer friend here), how would you like to do a guest blog on my website? My three fans would love to hear about where you get your ideas and that whole processy thing, You want to help me out?"

Uncomfortable response from soon to be ex-friend goes here.

"You will? Thanks. By the way, I needed it yesterday."

String of epithets from now definitely ex-friend.

So, that was out. But then...inspiration. I’ll have one of our characters come in and be the guest blogger, and voila, the problem has solved itself.

Now, which character....

Okay, all the bad guys we’ve dealt with over the years? Yeah, they’re all dead. Be a villain in a Collins/Clemens collaboration and you’ve pretty much gotten the kiss of death. Well, not every single one is technically dead, but the few who aren’t are locked down twenty-three hours a day in some federal supermax, so they’re no help.

The heroes are too busy saving the damn day, and the secondary characters aren’t interesting enough to carry an entire blog by themselves. If they were, they would have at least gotten a short story by now.

So, in the end, it looks like I’ll be doing this myself. Time to man up and get it done. But what to say about ideas that I haven’t already said?

I guess I’ll just repeat myself. Ideas, or at least the seeds of ideas, are everywhere. You just have to look hard enough to see them, and then occasionally, one will just fall out of your backside. That happens, too.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

THE SQUIRREL THING -- AGAIN

So, it’s a week later, and I’m still on the time management train. Finding time to write, like I talked about last week, is one thing. Sticking to it is tougher - life interferes.

Some of this is inevitable, granted. Those of you with kids get a pass I never will, but even so, coming up with a schedule and sticking to it is key to achieving your goals.

It’s easy for me to get caught up in what another writer and I were talking about this week...fake work. This is where you tell yourself you’re working, when, frankly, you’re not.

I’m doing research = screwing off on Facebook for an hour.

I’m doing PR stuff = screwing off on Facebook for another hour.

I’m networking with other writers = screwing off on Facebook.

I’m thinking = something shiny caught my attention and I either listened to the song, watched the YouTube video, or looked to see if I could buy this or something similar on Ebay.

These traps are easy to fall into. Well, fuck that. Not anymore, not for this writer.

I will, by the end of the day today, have a printed schedule for every day of the week. One that will help me to focus more and allow me not only to keep to my 2000 word a day standard, but increase it.

I will write six days a week. Not just do research and think about stuff, I WILL WRITE WORDS six days a week. All the attendant bullshit, the PR stuff and the like, that just doesn’t count anymore.

This job requires dedication, and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been slacking. Yeah, my writing partner Max Allan Collins and I have done twenty-two novels, comic books, in thirteen years, but I could and SHOULD have done more. I don’t know if you can make up for lost time, but I’m going to try.

You want to be a writer? Then, it’s time. This is my wake up call to me, but feel free to jump on the bandwagon, there’s plenty of room.

You want help? I’m here.

You want to talk about writing? I’m here.

Just know, that I’m on a mission myself. I NEED to become the best possible writer and human I can be.

t’s time to get to work. See you in a week.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

SQUIRREL!!!  

The Time Management Blog

This writing thing, it’s a lot easier to do if you have the discipline of a monk.  I don’t.   This topic is a serious case of do as I say, not as I do.

Guilty Admission: I have the attention span of a chimpanzee with ADHD, who is on two Five Hour Energy drinks, a pack of cigarettes, and has just discovered that shiny shit distracts me, too.  I can go SQUIRREL so fast that if going SQUIRREL was a talent measured at the NFL draft combine, I would be a surefire number one pick.  See how fast I got to talking about the NFL draft instead of how I manage my time?  Honest, I have an Olympic level ability to screw off when I should be working.  I know, I know, I’m a full-time writer, I have a certain amount of freedom, but even when I’m in the chair, ready to spend the day digging around in the fiction mines, I find myself giving into the time suck that is Facebook, checking on my fantasy baseball or football teams, watching YouTube videos,  or any number of things I can do with a computer.  And don’t even ask what happens if I get out of the chair and leave the office.

One of the things I talk to beginning writers about is time management.  It’s never easy, but for beginners, time management can be a major crisis.   They have day jobs, families, and usually, no idea of how to go about the business of writing a book.  So, almost as much as we talk about writing, we talk about having a plan to succeed.

My suggestion to them is to get a piece of paper, and lay their day out hour-by-hour.  Do it from the time you wake up until you go to bed.  Then,  go through each hour of the day and ask yourself, what is more important than writing?  If you want to be even more anal retentive, you can break the day up by half-hours.

    In theory, this is a fairly easy exercise that should help you find time to write every single day.  The thing is, once you find that time, you have to guard it like it’s the President and you’re the Secret Service.  This is where my one particular plan usually goes all Ford’s Theater, then I have a mess to clean up.

So, let’s look.

5:00 A.M., six days a week, this is when I get up.

5:30 A.M., I’m done making myself as human as possible, and I’m heading out the door.

5:45-7:45 A.M., coffee IV.  I know, two hours seems like a lot where I say I’m just drinking coffee.  During this time, I’m also putting out a morning greeting on Facebook, answering email, playing at least five different people in Words With Friends, and trying to figure out exactly what the hell I’m going to be writing that day.  Sometimes, I even get to read.

7:45-8:00 A.M. gets me the drive home.

By 8:15 A.M., in the office and firing up the computer for the day.  This is when online business gets done.  Yes, there’s more.  And yes, I’m checking out my fantasy sports teams, too.

9:00-11:00 A.M., Real writing time that begins with a quick read-thru and edit of yesterday’s stuff.  I don’t write by time, I write by word count...usually.  The idea being to get 2000 words a day.  Hopefully, by the time this first session is done, I’ve got 500 new words.

11:00-11:45 A.M., lunch.  This floats a little, depending on what else is going on that day.

11:45-2:00 P.M., at least five hundred more words.

After 2:00 P.M. is when my good intentions really pave the road to hell.  This is that time of day when the stay-at-home writer starts thinking words like nap; later; only a thousand more words, I can take a break.  All these things are ways for me to avoid work and generally screw off.  That’s where the Secret Service has to come in, whisk the President back to the Oval Office, or in my case, the sort of square office, and get his ass back to work.

    This week, I’ll be making out a new schedule for my day to see if I can tighten the process, become less of a screw off and make more efficient use of my time.  If you’re a writer, try it.  Sketch out your day and see if you’re making good use of your time.

    Another trick I’ll be trying…

    My wife, the FORMER English teacher, retired this year.  Now, she’s home a lot more.  A LOT MORE.  The problem for her is, she can’t tell when I’m coming out of the office for a normal reason or if I’m coming out just to think and she should leave me alone.  Another writer I talked to, spoke of wearing a writing hat that he wears when he’s working.  If he comes out of the office wearing the writer’s hat, wife and kids don’t speak to him.  I’m thinking of giving that a try.

Might be a good idea.  On the other hand, how much time am I going to waste trying to pick out just the right fucking writer’s hat?

 Bouchercon 2013 highlights. 

#Bcon2013: Thursday...In the morning, ran into my old friend Doris Ann, then met some new people in the book room.

Rode the coattails of our fabulous moderator Hilary Davidson, as well as those of fellow panelists Meredith Anthony, Helene Smith, Sarah Weinman, and Chris Ewan. Cool people talking about murder for an hour, what's not to love?

 
Spent the afternoon tracking down Facebook friends Terri Bischoff, Dru Ann L Love, and Eleanor Cawood Jones. Had lunch with the latter two.

It has been a productive, happy day. Makes you wonder what the evening has in store.

#‎Bcon2013‬, Friday update: As usually happens at Bouchercon, I've met cool, smart, interesting people. After a fun book signing with Max Allan Collins and his wife Barb, went to their panel on collaboration which was not just entertaining and informative, but personally gratifying as Al spoke glowingly over our thirteen year partnership.

 With Max Allan and Barb Collins, thanks to Eleanor Cawood Jones for the photo.

Followed that up with lupper where I was lucky enough to join Mollie Cox Bryan, Eleanor Cawood Jones, and Lisa Alber for both good food and wonderful conversation.

Ended the evening at the Hilton bar with the likes of Dru Ann L Love, Terri Bischoff, briefly with Meredith Anthony, and the ladies from lupper.

Now, with midnight closing in fast, it's time to go hang in the ficiton mines for a little while. To those who have made the phenomenon of walking uphill both ways a pleasant thing...thank you.

Visit the Gallery page for even more cool photos.



#Bcon2013 update: Dear Saturday, getting here a little late.  Went to the Hilton for "real food" breakfast with Eleanor Cawood Jones and Dru Ann L Love.  Left there and walked to the convention site.  Finding myself enchanted by this roly-poly-walk-uphill-both-ways city.

While this is a vibrant city, it is also a city of ghosts.  Both these buildings are in various stages of resurrection.  Interesting to listen to the voices of the former residents.

Outside the Con, I got a lesson in Albany history from the nice lady who coordinates the shuttle buses.  There is so much to learn.  The vast convention center was, evidently, the vision of Nelson Rockefeller.  Will try to post photos later today.  This is an amazing place that was first settled in the 1600s.

City started at the river, then when the Iroquois began raiding, a stockade was built halfway up the hill, the city expanded from there.

Off to the fiction mines for a while.  So far, what a day.

Tuesday, September, 24, 2013

I promised to post last thoughts about Bouchercon 2013.  I could name drop or talk about all the cool people I met, the new friends I made, but I’m not going to do that.

I’ve been saving up the memory of leaving the Hilton bar and all the camaraderie for a while.  My friend Eleanor Cawood Jones was hungry Friday night, but it was about 10:30, and those of us who were there can attest that the town pretty much closes up around 10.

We did, however, on Pearl Street, find a pizzeria that was still open.  We each got a slice and a lemonade.  There were maybe four other people in the place that weren’t employees.

Anyway, the owner came over, told us it was his daughter’s thirteenth birthday and they were having the birthday party.  She was a pretty girl with curly black hair, a happy smile, and both arms were filled with a black cat that was either her best friend or her birthday present.

We wished her a happy birthday, then the owner brought us each a slice of cake so we could share their joy.

Really, that’s all Bouchercon has ever been for me...a chance for us all to get together and share the joy.

Fully Exposed – Goals