Another speed run in blogging.

I really want to go to bed on time tonight. I slacked off too much today and I’m just now getting to writing my blog post. So let’s see how many words I can do in ten minutes. The only problem is that I’m looking at a computer screen, which research shows keeps one awake for a while. If I had time I would open another tab on my browser and conduct that research and insert a link somewhere. Or maybe I wouldn’t—I’m not sure I care enough anyway. That story’s been out for a while now.

I didn’t get enough sleep last night as stress kept me awake until around midnight. Today I had a lot of stress at work which seemed to have the opposite effect. I’m just worn out. I probably should have just gone to bed earlier. Remembering that I skipped blogging yesterday kept me up until I could think of a topic. Alas, as you can see, I haven’t.

I also want to make sure that I get enough sleep as I’m going to the club in Portland tomorrow. (Note to self: look into getting an E-ZPass.) I can afford to go and have a beer or two but I can’t afford to stay another night in a hotel. I probably could if I didn’t have so much credit card debt or if I didn’t owe more money to the dentist right now. Of course, it’s still an option if I really can’t drive home, but I want to avoid it. Does this mean I shouldn’t go if I can’t afford a hotel stay? I never thought of it that way. It sounds practical. But in this case I’m not so sure that practicality applies.

If I haven’t lost fellow WordPress bloggers, I have a question for you. Recently they revamped their “Edit Post” screen again. Fine, but I’m noticing that when I get to the bottom of the screen my web browser isn’t automatically scrolling down. That means that I have to keep scrolling when I get to the next line or just trust what I’m writing without having to look at it. Is anybody else having this problem? I’m using Mozilla Firefox. I haven’t tried using Microsoft Edge yet.

That’s all of the time that I’m going to give myself tonight. It’s not a bad word count. I just wish I could have thought of content better. But hey, these speed runs are probably good exercise for something. Aren’t they?

Writing Progress: I started revising my new screenplay.

I once again have to report that I don’t have much to report for a writing progress blog post this week. However, my lack of information isn’t because I’ve been lazy or too busy (or saying that I’m too busy to mask my laziness… but when does that ever happen?). I have started the process of revising the screenplay. As a result I just really don’t have anything to say about what I’ve been doing. I made some notes in red on a printout. There—that’s about it.

Final Draft probably has a better, more ecological method than me using paper to work on but as I got the paper for free when a former employer went out of business I won’t worry too much about it. Besides, there’s one point in the third act that an entire section of writing got copied and pasted in a weird place, and for whatever reason I couldn’t figure out what the fix is. I’m hoping that by looking at it on a printed page in front of me I’ll be able to figure it out. I may even have to spread multiple pages out onto my dining-room table to see it more coherently.

That, and having a binder and red pen at a coffee shop just somehow makes me feel more scholarly. I don’t think anybody else in the room picked up on it but if it somehow feeds my ego and gives me more confidence, can it really be counted as a total loss?

I have noticed that in some cases the scene descriptions include too much exposition, so I had to do some cutting. I also think I need to spell out exactly what characters are in a scene right from the beginning of that scene. I just noticed a moment when I described a bunch of “GUESTS” gathering in the main hall of one of the character’s mansion, only to name them throughout the scene right before they have any dialogue. I have to remember that a screenplay isn’t just a work of writing but a set of instructions as well.

There’s one potential problem in the story that I have to research and possibly fix. It isn’t a major issue but it’s one that’s going to bug me if I don’t look into it. The mansion where the bulk of the story takes place is in Maine, and clearly in the northern part of the state. However, the main characters are on their way from Boston to a ski lodge for a week’s vacation when they have to stop during a blizzard. My problem is that I’ve been throughout most of this state, at least as far as the roads will go, and I think this might be wrong. The location that I have in mind takes place north of any of the mountains that I know of in Maine, and subsequently and ski lodges. Putting the story south of those mountains may not make any sense, either as I don’t think those wide stretches of road with one or two houses that I’m thinking of don’t exist (at least, not with the characters’ excuse that they can’t make it to the next town over in time). So I may have to change the destination to a log cabin or something. It’s a minor fix, but one that I need to address.

As usual with these Writing Progress blog posts, I have a couple of short stories for sale. Links can be found at the top of this page.

Writing Progress Wednes—I mean Thursday: I think I have to trim this one down a bit.

Yesterday I finished my writing session on page 61 of my screenplay. At a page a minute, and an average movie length of ninety minutes, you would think that I’m about two thirds of the way through my story. But I’m not even halfway through my outline. This means that either the movie will be long or I need to cut a lot out. But it’s too soon to worry about editing the screenplay yet. I want to focus on getting the first draft done first.

I’m at a point in the story when the protagonists start to discover that there’s more than what they initially thought to the group they’ve been interacting with so far. The next scene I have to write is a humorous one, where the daughter of the leader of the occult group tries to warn one of the protagonists. He thinks she’s just crying for help, though, and the scene involves them making noises like they’re having sex so nobody gets suspicious. I’ve noticed that this screenplay is taking on a slightly more humorous tone than I had initially intended. I’m not worried about that other than I don’t normally write humor. I usually don’t think that I’m capable of it. However, we’ll see where this goes. Perhaps this will turn into some sort of horror comedy. Or maybe the humorous bits are the ones that I have to cut out for length.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this weekend about another screenplay that I wrote years ago. When I was about to graduate college I entered a screenplay to this competition to get paid tuition at a screenwriting school out in Los Angeles. I didn’t get in but I did get word that I was close, which shows it had promise. I abandoned that screenplay but my friend made a point that if it was that good, perhaps I should try again. I should find out which school that was. I should also be cautious, though, and find out whether or not this is really a school that I want to get into.

I don’t know how much I’ll get done today. I know this sounds like an excuse, but I really am distracted by the pain in my mouth. I went to the dentist today and had two fillings done. Now that the Novocaine is wearing off, I’m feeling the work that he did. I took some Ibuprofen in the hopes that it will at least ease the pain enough so I can chill for the rest of the evening. If I don’t get too much writing done, that’s okay. As long as I get something. Hey, I’ve slacked off enough for this long and today I do have a somewhat good excuse. What’s one more day?

How do I know when it’s finished? #writing #publishing #editing

Now that life has calmed down again and I’m getting back into routine, I’m back to editing the second short story that I want to self-publish on Amazon. Now I have to figure out how I know when I’m finished. Maybe I should just set a deadline and get it as good as its going to get by the time its done. After all, judging by the sales from my first e-book, I still have some room to breath, as it were. In other words, very few people bought a copy, which means I can go upload a later draft if I caught some mistakes. On top of that, I know that most of the people who bought the first book were people I know personally, and they would be understanding if it needs improvement. I can only hope that they would find the time to send me a list of corrections that they would like to suggest.

I know that the lack of sales from the first book are primarily my fault as I didn’t promote it enough. I at least partially intended that. As I’m only publishing short stories so far I want to have another one or two uploaded before I really start heavily promoting myself. One could make the point that who am I to make a big deal about a short story that’s only ninety-nine cents? Of course I could answer that I’m a writer trying to promote his work. But it should come to no surprise by now to my regular readers that I have confidence issues.

Besides—and I probably shouldn’t say this because it might detract sales from individual short stories—I’m planning on putting a collection of the stories I publish in the future, with one or two bonus stories that were unavailable before. I should say that I’m not totally convinced that’s a good idea yet. I’m not sure how many more short stories I’ll have available before I can sell an anthology of them. Not only that, I’m also working on two novels at the moment. I might as well stop trying to say that I’m working on one novel and started jotting down ideas for a reworking of an older one. I’m writing two novels, damn it.

Therefore, it should take me some time to get all of this work out there. I’m sure I’ll get more ideas for new short stories to bang out in the meantime. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about getting them absolutely perfect if I’m going to publish them again, anyway. Of course, I could be dwelling on another confidence issue. My work could be publishable after all, but I lack the confidence to put it out to the world.

At the same time, I’m impatient. I want to not only work on getting this stuff online. I want to have had it online. I want the feeling of seeing a listing of my work available for public consumption. Of course, I want to see sales. But my wanting to get everything done at once isn’t about the money. It’s about being able to say “I’ve done it” as opposed to “I’m doing it.”

What started out as a blog post regarding knowing when a story is publishable became a rant about publishing quickly. I really wanted to ask for writing tips. Then again, I suppose the question is a means to an end and doesn’t warrant an entire blog post by itself. So, again I ask: how do I know when I’m finished?

In the process of editing another short story. #editing #writing

Today I went to a coffee shop in town to work on editing “Gravedigger.” I get the feeling that I should have started with this one and published The Diary of Lost Suicides afterwards. It’s not that I think that I would have sold more copies right away. Given that I’m a “new” author and haven’t really promoted myself enough yet, I doubt that would matter. But I definitely think that “Gravedigger” is a better representation of my writing at this stage. I also think it’s just a better story.

I’m also noticing that I’m not as hard on myself as I’m editing the manuscript. It could just be that I’m missing mistakes due to the distractions of a coffee shop (especially one such distraction that sat down next to me while I was working). It could also be that the writing is stronger than Diary, and I don’t have as much to edit. Then again, maybe the last story was as good and I was too hard on myself. There’s a concern. I don’t really know how much editing a piece needs before it’s acceptable for publication. It may be possible to edit too much. As a result I might make the piece worse.

I probably should get more feedback from others before I publish something. I’m pretty confident about Diary (and I did in fact have a couple of people read it between earlier drafts). I would like some more feedback on “Gravedigger” before I go too much further with it. I remember I brought this up in an earlier post and a reader recommended that I try meetup.com for a writer’s group. I might consider doing something like that. For somebody as socially awkward as myself it’s hard to meet new people so it’s a big step for me. But it might be a practical step to take.

I did make one change to how I’m editing this one. I’m not focusing so much on the verb “to be.” I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m keeping the concept of E-Prime in mind while editing. I’ve taken out a lot of instances of “to be” from Diary as well as the novel I’m working on. While that might work in a lot of places I wonder if it was really necessary. Obviously, I’m not so strict about it on my blog. Why kill myself over it when editing my fiction, when I don’t really agree with E-Prime to begin with?

I really dig this Kittery coffee shop that I’ve been going to. Despite the aforementioned distractions (and no, I wasn’t just referring to attractive women, that was just a joke), I’ve been quite productive there. I got through a lot of “Gravedigger” today. I’ve written song lyrics there. There’s just a more creative vibe that I get from that place than my usual haunts in Portsmouth. Portsmouth is starting to lose its appeal to me. It can be a fun place to go once in a while but I’m starting to get bored with it. Besides, the Kittery Foreside is easier for me to get to. I know that I’m trying to save money so I can go on that long motorcycle ride later in the year, but I may have found my new hangout.