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Showing posts from May, 2011

The Unlimiter

I woke up with this crazy desire to go back to the manuscript I put down four months ago. I thought about it all day, piecing it together like a puzzle, and I think I've settled on something good. The thing is, it's completely different. Well, not completely, but enough that I don't know if I'll be able to reuse a single chapter. I have the characters and the setting, though. I know them. I won't need to go through that process again. Most importantly, I'm excited about it again. And I know it takes me about three months to turn out a decent rough draft from this point. I've developed a habit of writing queryesque blurbs about books before  starting on them. (Just to make sure I have an actual plot.) It's kind of fun. So, here's Brian explaining his problem. If you want to see how it looked before, click the In Memory  tab near the top of the page, just under the blog title. I’m not particularly talented. I do well in school, make friends e

The Best Bookends in the World

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I'm not exaggerating. Ever since we moved into our house five years ago, I've needed a set of bookends for my dresser. That's where I keep a bunch of books that I'm reading, intend to read, or think I should read. I've been getting by with one plain metal bookend and a picture-frame/old-trophy combination that sometimes lets the whole line fall over. My wife, who is not only beautiful but also unbelievably multitalented and infinitely creative, (it's okay for you to feel a little jealous—of either of us,) asked what I wanted for my birthday. This was, like, six months ago because she also plans waaay ahead. One of the things I mentioned was a set of bookends. A couple weeks before my birthday, she asked what I like. Not the same question, you'll notice. I really had to think about that, and she had to ask follow up questions to get the answer she wanted. But I settled on three things:  books, stars, and bikes. Forgive me some bragging, but my wife has

Write the Truth

And the truth shall make you fees. Or something. Yesterday, I went back and rewrote the first scene of Drivers . (BTW, I really like that Blogger now recognizes Command-I as a shortcut for italics on Macs.) I wanted to add a little action. There wasn't any in the original, and I wanted the hero to do a little something heroic for his girl right off the bat. You know, to kind of foreshadow bigger things later and make people like him. Here's the deal:  They both arrive in a foreign country on a private jet. They're among strangers, under armed guard, and doomed to die in a few days. The security guy at the airport lets Ash and two other men pass without so much as a metal detector scan, then announces that he has to search Zephyr because she has a violent criminal record. She's embarrassed and protests, since she was searched before getting on the plane and has been under guard ever since. The problem now is that there's nothing Ash can plausibly do to rescue h

Theme Song

I finished the first draft of Drivers on Saturday. It's a good thing, too, because I was raptured that afternoon. Ha ha. Kidding. Anyway, a funny thing happened on the last page. Third-to-last sentence: "We're. . .back in the sunlight." Cue the music! I know a lot of writers make playlists of songs to go with the novel they're working on. (I'm going to leave that preposition right where it is, thankyou.) But when paraphrased lines from songs work their way into your manuscript, does that mean you're listening to that playlist a little too much? The thing is, Follow Me Back Into the Sun is the theme song for this novel. I originally had it near the beginning of the playlist as a bit part to go with one chapter because it's a nice song and kinda sorta fit. Then I realized it neatly condenses the feel of the whole book into four minutes, and I promoted it to the end of the playlist. It could have been written about my characters—but, of cou

The Heart as a Compass

I had a bunch of words written about singing in my car and how it's like writing and never showing anyone, and blah blah blah. They felt like a rotted log, hollow and dead. And something Napoleon said kept running through my mind:  "Follow your heart. That's what I do." Yeah, that's Napoleon Dynamite. Like I'd know anything the other Napoleon said. Gosh. So I'm following my heart. It says I'm in the same place I left Ash (my protagonist) yesterday morning—on a minefield. He's still there. I couldn't write this morning because all my ideas felt like that same rotting log. How do you get through a minefield? Metaphorically, life is a battlefield. (I said LIFE, not love. Did anyone else hear Pat Benetar just then?) The battlefield is mined, meaning there are bombs that blow up when you step on them. Stepping on a mine is a mistake, the kind you make when you're not being careful and start following the wrong tracks, going off the path, e

Drivers: Another Try

So, I have two early versions of a query. The first one I wrote just recently. It's short. (And I'm almost done with the first draft of the book.) Ash had nothing to lose when he took the job. He wanted to die, and it sounded like a good way to go, hidden inside a supposedly driverless robotic vehicle fighting in a foreign war. Speed, guns, explosions and all that.  But Ash is better at staying alive than he thought. Since meeting Zephyr—since falling in love with her—he also has a lot more to lose.  And he'll lose it all unless he and Zephyr can escape from two armies, a corporate security team, and their own inner demons.   Aside from their desperate new love of life and each other, they don't have much to work with:  Zephyr's brains, Ash's photography skills, and a cell phone with no service. And the following is what I wrote before I wrote the actual novel. I thought that one up there ^ was much better, but this one has a lot going for it: Ash is trapped

No News is Good News

I'm still not sure what that's supposed to mean. Does it mean that not getting any news means nothing bad has happened? Or does it mean that all news is bad? Are those basically the same thing, and I'm all confused about it for nothing? Is this statement even true, for cryin' out loud? The first time I read Life in the Woods  by Henry David Thoreau, I got to his rant about news and felt a little—miffed? He basically says news is worthless unless it directly involves you. At the time, I was in my first year of college, idealistic, and very much into news and politics. Lately, I'm not really into either. Why? Jaded cynicism, I suppose. What passes for news largely consists of the following: Congress isn't doing anything. Each party blames the other and/or the White House. (Insert clips of politicians spouting meaningless rhetoric.) In other news, (insert latest disaster or coup I can't do anything about), (update on celebrities I don't care about), a

To Kill a Mockingjay (with spoilers!)

It was either that or "Jay Mocking" for a title, and I flipped a coin. I'm sure there are some other good puns I could've used, but I haven't thought of them. A while back, when I finished reading The Hunger Games , I wrote a blog post about the moment I realized I was the audience consuming violence for pleasure. I said the book was horrific in its conception and execution, and I still think that. I don't plan to ever read it again. (I never reread, though, so that doesn't say much. Too many new books to read, too little time.) But I liked it. When I finished Catching Fire , I hated the ending and wrote a little about that here . Spoiler Alert! Stop reading if you haven't read Mockingjay . Seriously. I finished Mockingjay last Friday, and as if to prove wrong what I recently said about crying over books , it brought tears to my eyes. It was the moment when Katniss realizes and enunciates why she needs Peeta and not Gale. Prior to that, t