novels

How I broke on through to the other side

“The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” –Randy Pausch

I’ve discovered that when you’re writing a book, you lose some of the filters you’ve set up against the world. Words, sentences, ideas, thoughts, feelings, colors, moods, the weather, and the shit your Dad says all strike you as inspiring or instructional or something you should steal. These words, sentences, etc. can come from anywhere.

It’s no secret that I love trains. The characters in my novel work on trains, ride trains, try not to get run down by trains, would enjoy consensual sex on trains. I was reading the latest newsletter from Lance Mindheim, the man to go to if you want to hire a craftsman to build your model railroad, when I found this gem:

At some point, there will be folks who want to transition from casual recreationalists to modelers. Doing so entails moving out of your comfort zone and learning how to use new tools and new techniques. The techniques are usually pretty simple. The moving out of your comfort zone? It’s a lifelong roadblock for many.

Mindheim was talking about using an airbrush (“Using an airbrush isn’t like running a nuclear power plant. You push a button, and paint comes out.”), a barrier that forever restricts casual recreationalists to paint brushes and rattle cans. But I immediately thought of my career as a writer.

My comfort zone was writing short fiction. Novel-writing was my airbrush. I had to break out of that zone to write a novel. It was indeed a roadblock, and that roadblock stood fast for a long time. Mindheim described it more succinctly that I could.

One thing writers don’t have to worry about but modelers do is using too heavy a touch when painting or weathering your work. One coat too dark and you are screwed. But in writing, we can counteract too heavy a touch with two handy inventions: the backspace key and your editor.

“Have fun!” Mindheim concludes. It is fun. It’s too good to miss.

Word count: 73,548.

I’m done.

I began writing this book in the window of Common Grounds Coffeehouse in Portland, Oregon, and finished writing it on a late-summer afternoon, under the enormous Oriental plane tree outside the FireHouse Arts & Events Center in Bellingham, Washington.

Between “Once upon a time” and “The End,” I wrote in the basement of our Portland home and on the top floor of our Bellingham home. I wrote in many more coffee shops, where I mostly enjoyed the music. I wrote at the Clark County Public Library in Vancouver, Washington, with its glass face, astounding sunsets from the fifth-floor terrace, and its pleasant and good-looking librarians. I wrote in the lobby of our car dealer while our car was being looked after, and in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, where the music can only be endured.

Now all I have to do is read this damn thing.

The kind we grow here.

Scoreboard update

As I write this, I have published four stories in four years. How have I maintained this blistering pace? When the railroad was invented in the 1830s, scientists were concerned that women were too delicate to travel so quickly. A forward velocity of 20 miles per hour would surely make a woman’s head explode, whereas we now know their heads explode because of Donald Trump.

I was paid well by today’s standards for all four stories. That’s a miracle here in the 21st century, when writers are so often compensated with likes, hearts, clicks, and “exposure” (that thing you die from). I remember Harlan Ellison hollering “Pay the writer!” in a documentary about his life. “Are you paying your printer? Your webmaster? Your artist? Pay the writer!”

Two of my stories featured women and three featured people in middle age (another miracle, given that most editors graduated from college about a week ago). Two are behind a paywall. My topics included chess, trains, sex, family, marriage, and baseball. All the major food groups. They were all fun to write, though the one I wrote based on my parents came close to killing me.

I find it interesting—to me, anyway—that I’m finding homes for these stories after I decided not to write more short stories. I swore an oath to the head of my order to write novels from now on.

That brings me to my first novel and my first draft, which today hit 52,300 words. I ended last week with 51,920 words. 380 words in one week? That’s barely more than 50 words per day. That’s how things go in the first draft, I suppose. Sometimes the words flow and sometimes I have a lot to think about. Anyone watching me would commit suicide to escape the boredom.

I’d like to finish my first draft by the end of June. How long will my draft be? My guess is 65,000 words. That means I have 12,700 words to write, or 2,546 words per week, or 363 words per day. That’s just a long email…if you know where you’re going.

I’ve been writing 10,000 words per month since December, so I’m confident I can do this. 10,000 words per month, or 120,000 words per year, isn’t much. Barry Malzberg, at the height of his career, claimed to be writing a million words per year. I imagine that Ray Bradbury, Norah Roberts, Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Robert Silverberg, and several others, in their prime, hit one million per year. They are out of my league. My current pace will get me where I want to go, and without my head exploding.

Lucky and Tango rest after a some major deconstruction in my archives.