Activate the wayback machine, Mr. Peabody

Okay, so last week I had a memory moment, one of those episodes where something gets dredged up out of the past. I don't know where these things come from, they just come out of the blue, like getting blindsided by a wing forward as you pop out of a scrum. (Three points to whoever correctly identifies that reference, sorry, Jeff, you're disqualified...) Anyway... look at the pretty lights when Sherman and Peabody punch that button...

Nineteen-sixty-one. The cold war and innocence battle for control of the minds of America's youth, and President Kennedy is worried about fitness. He forms the presidential council of fitness, and with the help of a famous stage and screen actor, sends to every (according to the propaganda, anyway) school, a six and a half minute exercise record. First graders and up are greeted in gym class, or on the morning PA, with which of the following?

A. Frank Sinatra sings "My way"
B. Richard Simmons does the Twist (and can't be seen on video, because it hasnt been invented yet)
C. Robert Preston takes a break from Music Man and sings "The Chicken Fat Song"

Anyone? Anyone?

I remember first and second grade, our once or twice weekly gym class teacher pulling out this record and playing, yes, "THE CHICKEN FAT SONG!" Oh, it was the most annoyingly mind-sticking song, we absolutely hated it. Nearly seven minutes of jumping jacks, push ups, and running in place while Mr. Preston belts out a broadway-quality, pre-video era exercise routine worthy of any boot camp. Marching music, a back up chorus, and words that, once triggered, probably mutated our little brains for all time. If anyone doubts that lines such as... "Give that chicken fat back to the chickens, and don't be chicken again, Go you chicken fat, Go!" hasn't warped todays generation beyond all repair, doesn't understand why both the United States and the Soviet Union spent billions on mind control research. ;-)

Anyway, the memory was jogged. Out of curiousity, I looked it up, and sure enough, someone was weird enough to archive it. Be warned, listening to this may cause epileptic fits, drooling, uncontrolled retching, smiling, giggles, and a reversion to childlike behavior. Be warned, but... Listen. It'll make you laugh. http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2003/276.shtml

I think it should be required on all exercise mp3 players.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

More to come writing wise later.....
TTFN,
Jim

Blah Blah, Blah Blah Blah.

Okay, so I'm not up for a catchy title yet. It's been one of those weeks where I've fought the arch villain, Inner Critic, to a standstill. He keeps poking at me, reminding me I'm doing it wrong, trying to turn me to the dark side. However, there are the occasional Rays of Hope (you hear me, Ray? I Hope?) I'm getting better at hitting a rhythm when I write, and I'm getting a sense for the feel of the tale better than when I started.

I can hear the question already, though. "You mean that you didn't have a feel for the tale when you started?" I suppose explaining what I mean by feel is in order. Starting out Imperfect Hope, I had a good sense of what the overall theme would be, the importance of "Hope". However, as I write, I'm getting a better feeling of the depth of how that theme will come together. The early parts of the novel will develop the main characters, Cerryn and Randir, showing their basic 'heroic' nature, as it has developed during their normally stressful but successful heroic lives. Then, crux encounter, which will change the fortunes of the protagonists. One will face his doubts through his faith, the other's faith, and hence hope, will falter. The feel for the tale incorporates a gradually darkening of situations, the playful banter of the early tale will later be replaced with grimness from the point of view of Cerryn and Randir.

Right now, I"m working on the pre-crux tale, setting the stage for the first reversal of fortune. I've introduced the antagonists, mysterious at first, and I'm building up to their first encounter. One of them is the Lord-Admiral of the Empire's fleet. He's a sympathetic character in an unsympathetic role, much like Phorix in "Sha'te Valley". Or so I hope.

At any rate, cheer me on. Word count keeps building, I've added more scenes and I've made notes on things the (Shhh, whisper his name lest he wake up) Inner Critic has identified. I promise, I"ll work on it later, just don't wake him up!!!

Clear skies,
Jim

Still writing, after all these years

Was that 'still writing'? 'Still crazy'? or 'Still trying, very trying'. Progress was less than I wanted this week, but I'm not concerned about it right now, because what I did do felt like it was falling into place. Dialogue is still a weak point, but I guess that's what revisions 1-4 will take care of, for now I'm just getting the basics of the conversations down, and I'll add the characterization and rhythm when I start revising.

I have done some reminescing about years back when I was writing IFGS games, I remember writing the first games without a computer. (can you say Corolla Manual Typewriter?) White out and photocopiers were my friends. That was work. I don't think I could do it that way today.

The other thing I was thinking about was how I enjoy listening to a piece of music (either without words, or in a different language) and imagining a scene that goes with it. Often movie scores are fertile grounds for exercising that imagination, though it's best if I haven't seen the movie that the music goes to. I guess I'm the opposite of a composer, he sees a movie without soundtrack, and imagines music to go with it. I listen to music, and imagine a scene that someday may become a novel.

Anyway, nuff said. Time to get my BIC/HOK..... Oh. Already there.....

So it goes.

Hey all.



Semi productive week here. I"m up to 16.5 k words, a little behind my target, but not terribly so. Guess I could toss some excuses out there, but... I know what's going on, so I'll deal with it.



I'm noticing as I go along that when I get into the zone, my writing feels good, and when I'm not, I feel stress build as I write. I'm not sure whether that means I shouldn't write when I'm not feeling it, or if it means I need to eliminate more distractions and focus on the "zone". The scene I've been working on tonight, for example, felt good. But yesterday's writing just doesn't feel right. Yet. Guess that's why the inner critic keeps trying to surface.



Anyway. One thing I was working on today was putting some emotional content into the interaction between the two main characters, Cerryn and Randir. IFGSer's will recognize that Randir is of the k'tath race, (similar to Tolkiens elves, though with significant differences, and no, it's not brandis, Art) is very reticent with emotions, at least as far as his interaction with Humans goes. On the other hand, Cerryn is the product of an upbringing that included most of her formative years training at a questors monastery, and they actively encourage their questors to keep a studied distance from outsiders. Randir and Cerryn have journeyed together for many years, and their companionship, though strong, has been kept safely locked behind closed doors. (figuratively speaking). Since growth in characters is an important part of the tales that I like to read, and keeping emotions locked away is a sign of non-growth, I've considered this to be a big part of the undercurrent of the story. However...



However. I don't want to fall into stereotypes. So I'm going to put some serious thought into how deep the relationship between protagonists should be. Many successful writers allow protagonist relationships to develop over the course of several books, giving readers a link between sequels that they can anticipate. (Call it the serial romance syndrome, my own title) Perhaps in book one, the protagonists recognize each other for who they are, but heroic circumstances being what they are, can't pursue anything for... See book two. If successful, the readers carry the anticipation from book one to book two, and perhaps by mid series, are screaming at the two protagonists, "For God's sake, man, Kiss her already! And you, lady, stop pushing him away because..."



We'll see if I can carry that sort of continuity through one book first.

Progress?

It's going to be quite a balancing act, between meeting the deadline and keeping everything else afloat. So far, this half week, I'm barely keeping up with my projected word count (I'm at 13500 at this point), in part because of a rather productive Monday, and some good grinding at work tuesday night. Cautiously optimistic? nah. Still daunted...

There's a lot of things I'm noticing about my writing progress, though. For one, I'm pretty good at inanimate description, at least, it feels that way to me. I feel pretty weak at dialogue. At work, I'm pretty good at identifying plot inconsistancies, and if I'm stressed, I'm no good at anything except seeing how bad my writing is. If only I could keep stress away..... (a chorus of me too's out there, eh?)

The other thing going on these days is fitness. In November, we (Irma and I) started working with a personal trainer in order to deal with our ongoing health issues. We actually started with a nutritionist, who besides confirming that in general, we knew what we were supposed to eat, gave us some useful tips on avoiding some of the many pitfalls. After that, we started with Charity, and the YMCA.

Though she varies the routine each week, basically she has us do 25 minutes of cardio warm up on our own before the 1 hour session. Often she'll come in and see if we're working ourselves hard enough on the elliptical, treadmill, or bike (we get to choose), if we're not sweating and panting, she'll speed us up or otherwise correct our laxness. Then, the tough part begins.

Yesterday, with Irma out with bronchitus, I faced the dragon-lady alone. For me, one of the goals of this program is to get off bp and cholesterol meds, Charity expects that by my next FAA physical, I'll be able to petition my doctor for just that. In order to reach that goal, however, she's hammering me hard. Yesterday, it was 45 minutes of hard hard weight training, focused on the upper body, followed by 10 minutes of crunches, sit-ups, and stretching. Oh, there was that 5 minutes of running up a 14 degree slope on the treadmill in the middle of the weight training just to break up the routine.

I'm really feeling it. And tomorrow, I'll feel it more. Remember Tim Conway's shuffling old man on the Carol Burnett show? That's me.....

However, building the muscle will help with the weightloss. So far, 11 lbs gone out of the 60 I need to lose. Since we're focusing on changing our exercise habits, and keeping our eating habits healthy but not "dieting", it's a more sustainable way of losing weight. The diet is balanced so that, with no extra exercise, I'd lose about 1 lb a month. With the exercise, it's about 1.5 per week, and a big part of that is replacing flab with muscle mass, which is heavier.

We'll see how it goes, but... belts are looser, my watch flops on my wrist and will need to be adjusted soon, and I'm not out of breath just hauling folded clothes from the laundry room in the basement up to the bedroom on the second floor.

Anyway... Fitness and Writing. Now, for that stress... Where's that bottle of "15 year old Macallen"...

Three steps forward, one step back

Well, the first half week has passed, and my word count has dropped. That would normally be a bad sign, except I decided that one scene I'd written last year just didn't fit with the plot at all, so I pitched it. 9500 words dropped to 7700, just like that. I spent a couple of days reworking the outline, tightening the plot, and then stepped in where I'd left off and ground out 1100 words to replace the 1800 I'd dropped. Now to keep the inner critic locked away.

I have to admit, I'm more than a little daunted. The word processor program I'm using has a feature that lets me set up a date, and a word count total, and keeps track of my daily word count production to let me know how I'm doing against the deadline. I"ve estimated that it'll take about 150,000 words to finish the first draft (more on what that means in a moment), and right now, ywriter tells me that means I"ll have to pump out 1380 words a day. Not bad, but that assumes I'll write that every day. Realistically, there will be some days I just don't have a chance to write. But... I've committed myself. (maybe one of you will be committing me later)

How is that going to come about, though. This week, I did do some writing at work on a break, I found it doable to write 200 words, allowing for time to set up, get my brain out of atc mode and into creative mode, type, then shut down. At home, my word count varies, some nights I glare at the screen and feel lucky to complete 600 words, other nights (or mornings before work) my fingers fly and can pump out 4-6 times that. If I set a schedule, I think it'll be easier.

So that's what I'm going to work on. Being consistent with writing, ask myself to write on at least one break at work a day, and see what happens. This week will be a peek on how that goes.

The other question I've asked myself, what does 150k words mean, and how did I come up with it. Well, in outlining the plot, I've broken things down into 59 scenes. So far, scenes are averaging 1600 words in length. I expect that will double in most of the latter scenes. Allowing for a few scenes that I expect to be much longer (crux situations), I came up with 150,000 words as a rough estimate. That's pretty average for a first draft/fantasy novel. It will probably lengthen when I start in with expanding descriptions and dialogues and such, and shrink when I cut ugly or unnecessary scenes. Final result? Hey, I'm new at this too, who knows.....

I'm still waiting for encouraging words, questions, or whatnot from most of you. Art did commment, and in response, I'd have to say... Ayup, winters in D'oril can be harsh to outsiders. Thats why wintergems are found only in D'oril, takes some really cold weather to concentrate that natural magics that make them so coveted by the Empire (and many mages in the south).

Here we go!

Welcome back. I've added a new element, at the top left column you should see my ticking time bomb, the countdown. I plan to update it weekly, and I'll be using it as a way of measuring my progress, as well as provide you, dear reader, with a chance to push me and encourage me, and perhaps build some interest in Imperfect Hope. If you think of something you'd like to see or hear about, let me know, one idea I've got is adding the "question of the week". This will require active participation from you. (both of you?). To be honest, I'm hoping you'll ask me questions about either the writing process, plot elements, stuff you'd like to read/hear more about from blurbs, or what my favorite color is. I'm betting that active participation will motivate me to look deeper into what's going on...

So today, I"m going to imagine one of you has asked a question... Any volunteers? anyone? Yes, you in the back with your hand up? can you go to the bathroom? Ummm. Certainly Ray, but I'd hope not here... Any relevent questions? Yes? you in the back with the blond hair and dulcet voice? How did I come up with the title "Imperfect Hope"? Good question.....

The writing fragment I'd posted a couple of days ago came from an idea I'd been nurturing for quite some time. I'd imagined a hero, deeply involved in the battles of light versus dark, normally filled with self confidance and hope (and perhaps a little bit of reality blindness) who one day finds herself being stripped of her support little by little. Eventually, she finds herself alone, seemingly abandoned. Her hope disappears, her spirit is infected with darkness and shadow. When help does arrive, it seems too late, but her companion, himself only recently recovered from his own battles with inner demons, never gives up, and shows her where to find her own forgotten hope. She tries to adopt his attitude, but her own imperfect hope (there it is, the title! Eureka!) keeps standing in the way of her ultimate salvation. Finding the path through the shadows to find that salvation is the gist of the tale.

From that idea, I had to develop a plot that first put her in her dire straits, explained how her companions disappeared one by one, and how eventually hope returns. Those of you who remember the IFGS game, Sha'te Valley, may remember that I built it's plot around a similar theme, the players start out ultra confident, but set back after set back finds them, by the end of the first evening, having little to no hope of succeeding the next day. Here is where the real heroes emerged, for even though they saw nothing but darkness ahead, they forged on, finding a tiny bit of hope within themselves that, with a little nurturing, would eventually blaze into a beacon of success. (or so I imagined the players in the game feeling.) Now, what happens if that spark of hope isn't nurtured. How can the forces of light rekindle it in one of their favored champions.....

Thus, Imperfect Hope. Now to keep my own beacon of hope lit in the quest for completion.....