DIALOGUE VERSUS NARRATION

The good news is that I still haven't missed a day of writing in the four weeks I've been at this--averaging thirty-forty minutes a session--but I noticed something today worth mentioning.

In fiction (or the fiction I've written, anyway), the scenes with two or more characters where there is much dialogue seem to flow very quickly--even if there is action or inner monologue interspersed--and fill up pages very quickly. But since this book is, essentially, a ghost story, there are parts where the main character is alone and establishing an eerie or mysterious mood is critical.

This results in a lot of narration, with very little dialogue.

This is a much slower process because I actually HAVE TO WRITE!

I hit one of these parts today where the main character is up in the middle of the night and can't sleep. He is about to have a supernatural experience, but no one else is around--hence, no dialogue. I'm going to try to throw some other things in there to break up the dense sections of text, however. On the other hand, that might be a second draft thing.

I still try to be aware of pace, though, but also seem to constantly worry
that one)I'm not writing enough and two)I'm bogging things down.

As they say in Hollywood, I guess we'll work it out in post-production.

WEEK THREE

I will probably not do a status check at the end of every week--especially if I feel I am on track. But since it's still early in the process, I thought I should. As tomorrow is the end of week three, I wanted to see if I was close to the 30 page mark. Again, if I count the first four pages I wrote (which amounted to not much more than a literary throat-clearing), I have--as of today, Thursday--written the first thirty-eight pages of School Spirit.

And that's one day short of the full week and starting the week with a holiday and no writing at all.

38 pages. Nearly a full week ahead of my goal of 10 pages per day.

It may ALL be crap, but it's making a nice neat stack on the top of my file cabinet in the office.

That's the way these things start.

I may get there yet.

POINTS TO PONDER

• While I am grateful for a day off work, it is a writer's nature to feel guilty when he's not writing and, since I write exclusively at work, I was a little agitated during last Monday's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. I tried to recognize that it was normal, though, and forgive myself.
• I finished, spellchecked, and printed Chapter Two. 25 pages and counting.
• I'm already recognizing certain structural problems with the beginning of the book, like the fact that I'm starting Chapter Three and, so far, we've still only seen two characters (Drew and Ben). That's a problem. Not insurmountable, but problematic, nonetheless. I understand that this book is more of a mood piece--in theater we used to call them chamber pieces--but that doesn't excuse it being claustrophobic in terms of character.
  
• I just finished Twilight, Stephanie Meyer's YA sensation. While I give her props for great details, an unerring understanding of the history and lives of the characters, and a killer (literally) story, in terms of the structure, I'm surprised, quite frankly, that this book was ever published. About halfway through it just takes off in a completely new direction and follows this new tangent throughout the remainder of the book (maybe I shouldn't use the word "remainder" in a blog about my novel, hmmm.). The new direction was very tense and exciting but felt unrelated to what came before, as characters and story threads were dropped or ignored. I know that there are other variables--timing, social climate, luck, ,etc. But I'm still surprised an agent found this structural schizophrenia was acceptable.
• Another area that I'm operating on a ton of faith is this: School Spirit is the most "un-outlined" book I've ever written. I have a ton of background material, including a detailed treatment (what they use for screenplays), but there are still parts of the story that to quote an old colleague "have not yet been revealed to me."
• Got some good work done today, though--1,125 words in about 45 minutes.

STATUS CHECK

Disclaimer: This post is about quantity, not quality. Let's remember that, shall we?

My goal, as you may recall, was 500 w0rds a day and/or 2 pages a day, for a total of 10 pages per week. At the end of the first week, though, I neglected to check my progress. I just didn't think of it for some reason.

But today is the end of week 2. I figured I should have written about 20 pages, and that sounds pretty good to me.

If you include--and why wouldn't you?--the four pages (double-spaced) at the beginning that I was calling a prologue (and now think of more as a warm-up, really, that I already know I won't be using), then my two week total comes to 25 pages. Even without that, we'll call it 21 pages.

Still over the goal.

Twenty-five pages in two weeks, baby.

Not too shabby.


Note: In a related issue, my daily goal has been 500 words. Today I managed a longer writing session than usual--it ended up being about fifty minutes--and when I did the word count at the end, I was pleasantly surprised.

Final count: 1,812 words. Over three times my goal.

FIRST MILESTONE

Today I finished, spell checked, and printed out Chapter One.

It took me about five days and turned out to be 13 pages.

My plan now is to write a chapter about every three days or so.

I also typed up a title page. Then I put it on top of Chapter One.

It' s officially, sort of, kind of almost, starting to look like a real book.

Did I say book? I meant manuscript.

COLORS

One day, when I was lamenting to a work friend about the lack of success of my young adult novel Godtalk, and wondering how I might make it more accessible to teens and less "adult, " my colleague looked at me on our way out to the parking lot, and said, "More colors."

Such simple, yet wise advice from someone who, although he is a great writer, isn't particularly interested in writing anything himself. But I never forgot his advice. His point was quite literal. Young people like visual imagery, and as my friend suggested, by simply including more colors--saying it was a blue bathrobe, for example, or a red sports car--you are creating more visual imagery for your readers to hang their hat on.

In School Spirit, I am already heeding his advice. I have not only included much more visual imagery, but focused specifically on adding more colors.

I am already seeing the positive results.

Another thing I learned from this same colleague? Well, a few months ago, freshly stung, tired, and spent from the latest rejection from Godtalk, I was ready to give up writing forever. But when I started on this new project last week, I realized once more that it is the writing process that matters, not the publication. Easy to say, I realize, but hard to believe. Yet so true. The act of writing made me happier than I'd been in quite some time, and it reminded of something this friend of mine and I had talked about many times: the key to happiness is to find something TO FOCUS on that makes you happy. It is critical to find some hobby, pastime, or diversion that gives you purpose and focus. It just makes life better. If success (a volume on the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble, say) comes, then it comes. If not, then you've still at least had the benefit of having some purpose to which you are committed.

It will, I suspect, give your life "more colors."

Just a thought.

AND WE'RE OFF. . .

Figuring that my goal was to write two pages a day, and a page of manuscript contains an average of 250 words, my word count goal was about 500 words a day.

The first two or three days I worked for the thirty or forty minutes and barely met my goal--510, 520, something like that. I was getting to know the characters and trying to shake the cobwebs out of my keyboard (from lack of use and practice), and striving to get toward the beginning of the story.

Today, though, I hit what I call the inciting moment--the moment that gets the story going--and typing started to take off.

Today's forty-minute word count? 1,075.

AND ON THE THIRD DAY. . .

Starting this book was difficult because of the infinite number of questions that need to be answered about things like backstory, point of view, prologue or no prologue (no, if you can avoid it), etc. So I did write a few pages in the last few days that I'm sure I will eventually be cut--almost certainly--or, at the very least, end up somewhere else in the book. The other benefit is that I get to meet the characters and listen to their voices for awhile.

But for the most part, what I've written so far has been complete crap.

But today, the third day, I started what I suspect might be the beginning of chapter 2 (or possibly chapter one--the opening of the book--if I have no prologue). I described a dream that the main character--Drew Bacino--has that mirrors the way his girlfriend died.

And it wasn't complete crap.

In my previous writing experiences, I was usually pretty good at presenting the visual imagery (i.e., what the character saw or description of what was around. . .). But I've been noticing that I'm now better at including the other senses in the first draft--smell, taste, touch, and sound.

I'm hoping this bodes well for a better first draft.

DAY ONE

The background work for School Spirit has been completed for nearly two years, believe it or not. A series of circumstances prevented me from beginning the novel sooner, including continued revision of Godtalk.

But now it's time.

So I came to work this morning, set my School Spirit folder with all the background work by my computer, got a cup of hot coffee, opened up a blank Word document, took a deep breath, and then just sat there, completely unsure of what to write.

I haven't started a fresh piece of writing in almost two years--at least not fiction. And even though I'm aware of the paralysis that sometimes occurs when a writer stares at the blank page, I still felt all of the usual insecurities of "What if I can't think of anything?" "What if it's terrible?" "Where do I start?"

Eventually, though, after quieting my mind, taking a few more deep breathes, and attempting to envision what was happening to my main character--where he was, what his sensory experience was, how he felt--I began to type.

Before my half an hour was up, I had at least one full page typed, maybe even a little bit more. Whatever I wrote will almost certainly not be what I end up as my beginning with in the finished (and revised) product, but the key is I got something down.

It's on.

SCHEDULE

Without any particular plan, it took me five months to write the first draft of Godtalk. Keeping that in mind (and doing the math), I'm scheduling five months to crank out the first draft of School Spirit. I figure that works out to about ten pages a week, forty pages a month, for a total of a 200 page manuscript--give or take. This seems like a completely reasonable and manageable goal. I have about a half an hour every morning before work to get some writing down. That means roughly two pages every session. Although when you put it like that, it seems like quite a bit. But I've been known to be "in the zone" and work through four or five pages in that half an hour, so we'll see what happens.

WELCOME

Hello. As the description above indicates, this blog will be a chronicle of my journey through my composition of a young adult novel entitled School Spirit. This is not the first book I've written, however. I wrote a non-fiction teaching methods book entitled You're a Teacher. . .So Act Like One! Improving Your Stage Presence in the Classroom, which I self-published through iUniverse. I also wrote a mystery novel called Bad Moon Rising, which was mostly my education in how to write (and submit) fiction. Finally, I wrote my first "real" book, a young adult novel entitled Godtalk, which has come the closest to seeing the light of day. Four or five big time New York agents have read the entire manuscript and said very nice things about the book (and my writing), but so far no one has been willing to commit to representation. The most common feedback I've received is that Godtalk is "too religious." Mainly, what Godtalk has taught me is that although I can write well enough to be published, my first time out of the gate may just not be with that book.

Consequently, it's time to go back to the keyboard and try again with School Spirit.

Wish me luck.