Taking Shape

Finished drafting chapter 9 of “Gray Metal Faces” this evening — and that means I’ve reached a significant milestone.

Nearly seven years ago — the exact date was October 16, 2010 — I posted a character study for what would eventually become Coach Dan. This was the start of a novel I’d been contemplating for years, and knew I would never be satisfied unless I actually wrote the damn thing. With tonight’s post, I have completed the initial draft of “Gray Metal Faces.” It’s not finished, and it certainly ain’t pretty, but it now has a sense of completion it lacked before tonight.

It’s like seeing the shape of a bowl emerge on a pottery wheel. You know it requires a lot more work, but it’s no longer a lump of clay. It has a recognizable shape — it’s a bowl, and seeing its shape emerge gives you a burst of inspiration. That’s where I’m at now with “Gray Metal Faces.” I can see its shape, imperfect as it may be, but still, there it is, after seven years of work.

Experience has taught me to take a step back and catch my breath after reaching a milestone with this novel. Not sure when I’ll get back at it (the next milestone will be a revision of the eighth and ninth chapters), but that time will come. For now, I’m going to exhale, and let myself appreciate this accomplishment.

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Finish Strong

In a good position with chapter 9 as I head into the next to last weekend of the month. The first eight of the nine scenes have been drafted, leaving just the final scene in the novel’s final chapter. But I’m still climbing up a hill, rather than coasting to a conclusion; in many ways, I’ve been leading up to this last scene through all the years I’ve been working on this project. I can see the finish line, however, and I’m feeling a surge of psychic energy that I hope will allow me to finish strong.

Goal for this last scene is 6000 words (and I’ll say it again — having word count goals has been extemely helpful), a daily average of a little under 700 through next weekend. One last kick…

Getting There

Got a good start on chapter nine this holiday weekend. Eight hundred words or more each day, another five hundred the first day back to work. I’m at around twenty percent so far — still a long way to go, but at least I’m not playing catch up yet.

The pace will slow as the weekday grind sets in. Four hundred words on the days I work, double that on days off — I’ll have to pick up the pace on more than a few days to reach my goal, but I can get there. May have to push myself that final week, but this chapter is going to drafted at the end of September.

And now, chapter nine of Gray Metal Faces

There’s one more chapter of Gray Metal Faces that remains to be drafted, and I plan to cross that task off my to-do list this month.

Like I did with chapter 8 in April, I’ll be drafting the ninth and final chapter on a private site. (I’ll get around to explaining why I’m doing this at some point.) If you leave a comment on this post, I’ll send you an invitation to the private site so you can see the work in progress.

Complete the draft by October 1, and I’ll be ready to update the final two chapters for NaNoWriMo in November. A completed draft of the whole damn thing… not sure what I’ll do when I get to that point, but I’m looking forward to that great unknowing.

What Works

I’m not blogging regularly, and I want to change that fact.

There are reasons for my blogging inactivity, good ones for sure. Been actively revising some the stories I’ve drafted on this blog, such as The Land Without Mosquitos, with an eye towards getting those works edited and published. Also taken a more active role in my wife’s home business; she’s a cake decorator, and I’ve started doing a good portion of the cake baking, which to my surprise has been a wonderfully satisfying experience (I’ll have to expand on that last thought at some point). There have been several big events in my personal life as well — graduations, managing my brother’s finances, college applications, the bittersweet journey of selling my late parents’ house, and planning for a major career change. So yeah, I’ve kept myself busy, and while I’ve kept writing and have enjoyed living my life, I’ve never been able to ignore the niggling regret over not blogging, an activity that brings me great pleasure.

To restart my blogging, I’m going to revisit techniques that have proven effective in the past — reblogging, prompt responses, the occasional movie review and political commentary, and yes, more bad poetry. But let’s start with some good verse, from puttingthedogtosleep, an imaginative rumination about serving breakfast to Death.

Step In

Getting back to writing makes me feel like a kid again

Enough already! After a hiatus that has endured far too long, I’m going to resume posting on a regular basis — perhaps not every day, but certainly most days. I’ll begin by picking up where I left off with The Chosen, and mixing in the occasional prompt response, reblog, and commentary.

Felt good to step away for a while, but feels even better to step in once more.

Taking a Break

So much for not being a stranger…

The rough draft of chapter 8 was completed on time (final post was on April 30) and right on budget (just over 20K words). Not entirely happy with the result (that last post was particularly disappointing), but I knew when I started on April 1 that this wasn’t going to end with a finished product. But that’s fine — what matters to me is “winning” the CampNaNoWriMo challenge for April, and more importantly, producing an item that I can craft into a more polished document for this year’s NaNoWriMo event.

As I do at the end of each of these events, I felt satisfied yet enervated at the conclusion. Decided to step away from blogging for a while, until my energy and enthusiasm return. Which it most definitely will, perhaps soon — I’m contemplating a return to The Chosen, the sword and sorcery project I started on a lark and wound up enjoying considerably.

But for now, a little more rest, then get back to indulging my enjoyable obsession.

Update on Chapter 8

We’re half-way into the month of April, and the eighth chapter of Gray Metal Faces is progressing well. The goal was to draft 20K words, over ten scenes, and on Thursday I both finished the fifth scene and passed 10K words, putting me a couple days ahead of schedule. Not bad, especially considering that it’s only been about a month since I’ve given serious thought to the chapter.

As I mentioned previously, I’m drafting my remaining work on the novel on a private site (and yes, I will at some point explain why I’m doing this), but am inviting all followers of this blog the opportunity to read that work. Just like this post, or leave a comment, and if you haven’t already been added as a reader, I’ll give you access.

An Invitation

“Helping Hands” has been one of the stories that’s been kicking around in my imagination for years, and it feels good to have a draft completed. Much work will be needed for the revision, but at least now I have something to work with.

Time to move on to my next project, a return to Gray Metal Faces, but with a twist. I’ve created a new blog, which unlike the one you’re currently reading is private, meaning you should get a big ol’ error when you click this link. There’s a reason for making it private that I’ll explain at some point, but for now I want to extend an invitation: if you click Like on this post, or leave a comment, I will add you as a Follower to the new private blog — no questions or favors to ask — which will allow you to read the final two chapters (my plan is to draft chapter eight this month, the ninth and final chapter in July, and then revise both for NaNoWriMo this November). If you’ve followed my novel so far, you deserve the opportunity to see it continue evolving and at some point reach its conclusion.

Since I’ll be writing daily on the new blog this month, new posts here will be sporadic for a while. I’ll try not to be a stranger, but this man’s got some work to do.

Grinding

The revision of The Land Without Mosquitos is not going as well as I’d hoped. In the fall, I submitted the first three chapters for review by the local writers group I’ve joined, yet after nearly three months of work on chapter four I don’t feel I’m any closer to being finished. I’d hoped to submit for this month’s meeting (we meet the second Saturday of each month), but by the end of January I knew I wasn’t ready.

Part of the problem is that I’m introducing a character who didn’t appear in any of the earlier drafts, and that character will be the catalyst for a subplot that’s also new to the narrative. For those reasons, I don’t want to give in and submit what I have in its current state; this character and his story are important, and demand a proper introduction. No sense in creating a mess that I’ll have to salvage later.

I’ll play the role of reviewer this Saturday (there’s some good work done by this group), then push on with chapter four. Submissions are due two weeks before the meeting, so that gives me three weekends, with one being extended for the Presidents Day holiday. Think I should get out of the house, escape from domestic distractions; go to a coffeehouse, perhaps, or a library. Spend three, four hours just writing; repeat if necessary. Whatever it takes to grind out that chapter, craft something I’m proud to have critiqued by my peers.