Keepin On

So, yesterday I did indeed do nothing with the novel. Today I have the ambition of working on chapter one some more, adding some history lesson between Tran and Parker, and ironing out those bad paragraphs in the sermon. Then I need to get a start on chapter three, where Parker goes to the restaurant and does some vandalism.

blah blah blah

That's a pretty good description of my mood today. Yesterday I was hot on the trail of finishing and got a LOT done. Today, I just don't feel up to any writing - oh hell, for that matter any WORKING - at all. But I have to send Dana a letter and a check, and I've got work piling up on my desk because the short Easy Season is now over.

I guess today I'll... um... I guess I could print out what I've got and clean up my notebook.

So far I've got most of chapter one done, though I noticed late yesterday afternoon that the sermon does a kind of loop de loop with its logic so I have to fix that. Then I've got to end it with Parker driving through town. I'm getting a better idea of what town looks like, so that's easier.

The next chapter, when Kelsey and Grandma Opal are talking in the back yard until Miriam makes her heroic effort to warn everyone, is about half written. The third chapter, when the events are explained a bit and Parker shows a trace of backbone, is mapped but I haven't started it yet. The fourth chapter ends in Grandma Opal's horrendous demise at the teeth of the erstwhile hero Miriam. I feel bad for both of them, but it must be done.

This morning it occured to me that some of the zombie will be individualized, so why not a CLOWN ZOMBIE? Has it ever been done before? *shrug* Dunno. But it'll be kewl. ;-)

Another Good Day

I wrote almost the entire scene where Grandma Opal gets it, while eating lunch alone at the IMU. I've already got it mostly typed up, and I'll be sure to print it before I leave today. My writing muscle is getting stronger all the time. Proof of this is being able to write even when I really don't feel up to it physically. Today I'm tired and dizzy from spring allergies (which I didn't use to have, thank you very much fucking IU), but I perservered. Been working on my outline, too, putting the bullets into even better order, and separating the chapters.

This is, like, fun!

Whoa Nelly!

A good day of writing yesterday - for me at least. I spent about forty five minutes up in 296 reorganizing my outline notes. I had hoped to do a little town work, you know, drawing rough maps of what it looks like and mapping everyone's routes, but I got stuck mucking around loading software onto the computer at Annie's request.

Something interesting I found yesterday is Lompoc, California, which is not far from where I put Skyview. It's square. The streets are straight and the whole town was totally laid out on a grid. On the google map it really drew my eye, and on a whim I went to the city's web site and read some of their history, thinking maybe it had been founded by a band of whackos. Imagine my surprise when I found it was the ancestral home of the Chumash Indians! From Buffy! I could see Wheden's total theft when I further read that the missionaries who offed the indians built their mission on sacred ground and it was destroyed in an earthquake.

So, after work Birdie and I had a good dinner at the Trojan Horse and then went our separate ways. She went to a Master Gardener meeting and I set up my laptop by the window over the street in the library. Got a LOT of work done, too, in the hour that I did work. I had made a quick note at the last minute in 296 about the order of things being done at the beginning of the book, mostly to up the suspense a little, have things lead into other things. I cleaned up chapter one and did away with the dufousy chapter two, and typed a fair bit on the new chapter two. I'm getting a better grip on Kelsey and Parker, but I'm falling into another of my writing traps.

I have a tendency to make my characters too logical, not in the least bit irrational, and certainly not passionate. There's precious little passion in my life, and that definitely shows in my fiction. So, I keep writing notes to myself to ramp it up, and I will go back through when I'm done and do just that.

I also keep making a note to FIGHT LOTS OF ZOMBIES. Duh. It's not all about, "Go here then go there, then say this, then do that." It's supposed to be a zombie novel, so I should do more with that. So far I've only roughed out one, and that's the neighbor lady Miriam, who warns the old lady across the street and then goes to get her cat and take it to the shelter with Kelsey and her Grandma Opal. But OOOPS...she doesn't make it back in time.

Nitty Gritty

This has got to be an organization day. I've got nearly all of the scenes bulleted, so I need to put them in order. I envision several files. One will be the master scene file, with the bullet of each scene, in order of occurance. The second version of this will be those bullets, with scene notes beneath each one. I intend to separate the characters' bullets into smaller files to make sure and keep track of what's happening to whom when.

Tonight Birdie has a master gardener meeting, and I get to go to 296 this afternoon, so I should get some good blocks of time. Time is becoming a problem again, as the semester heats up. I have GOT to make a time to write that is not AT WORK. Damn, I miss the days when I could get a few minutes a couple of times a day to be alone and unbothered. How I squandered those precious times. *sigh*

Slow Weekend

The weekend was a total bust, writing-wise. I never even opened my flash drive or picked up a pen. Still no title, but I'm just about over that. I did work out the bones of the scene where Kelsey and Parker first meet, and she thinks he's checking her out, which she resents like hell given the circumstances, and he's checking her out, wondering if that zombie-inflicted injury is going to turn her into a blue faced liability.

I also won a hundred dollars on "Live Lobsters Dancing Nightly" on my last twenty cents at French Lick saturday night. To say I was pleased is not entirely accurate.

Today I'm doing the dreaded research, though this time it's not really slowing me down. I need to know what my town looks like, what the street names are, etc., so I can have my characters doing understandable things. Kelsey wants to check on her girlfriend but is afraid to acknowledge that relationship. Besides that, she mostly just wants to kill zombies. LIGHTBULB! She's trying to kill them without much luck. He's getting grossed out and beginning to not like her very much. He mentions to her that in the movies zombies die after being shot in the head or bludgeoned. Now she has a little more use for him, but she still doesn't trust him.

Progress for a change

Yesterday was amazing. A confluence of improved mental health, a push in the back from Kate, a (finally!) quiet office and having "built up writing muscle" for the last couple of weeks gave me a great day of writing. At least, it was great for me.

I've been really concentrating on the outline. When I started, I just typed notes willy nilly, as I usually do. Of course, as usually happens I started making changes in my head and not changing the notes... Bleh. So, I'm going through those notes and separating the character notes, settings, scenes, etc., into separate files. For the outline, I'm taking out those parts of the first notes that still work and putting them into bullets and keeping only what still works.

So, I got a bunch done! I went upstairs to 296 at 4:00 because it was Thursday and there was NO ONE there. Before I realized it, it was 4:40 and I had gotten EVEN MORE done. I was jazzed for hours after that.

Title...title... "The Air That Kills"... That's crap. Hmmm......

It's all messed up

Not the zombies, but my head. Spring is here, and I'm stoned out of my gourd from simply breathing the moldy air. Damned IU. Make me work in a building that's full of toxic mold, then give me crap when I get sick from it. AND I've got permanent injuries, which is what I consider being OUT OF IT for weeks twice a year. Didn't used to have allergies.

Still no title, but Birdie was having fun goofing on it this morning. She suggested "They're Not Really Dead!" at one point.

One of the major problems I've had with writing in the past is organizing. I get bollixed up and can't get things worked out, and forget things. Something Kate insisted on is that I have an OUTLINE completed along with the first three chapters.

See, that's the whole deal. I took this semester off from school because I was going to get serious and write that CGUS (Coast Guard Universal Service) story/screenplay/novel (whatever it turned into) rather than take classes. But of course I got bogged down in a ton of (really fascinating) research and pretty much gave it up as a lost cause. Again. So Kate stepped in and twisted my arm practically off.

And now I'm getting into the outlining, after making the mistake AGAIN of trying to write without an outline and floundering in a sea of ideas which change (and get much better with age). I wrote about a chapter and a half, but I was getting things screwed up and beginning to concentrate on fixing what I'd already written, rather than just getting on with it...

Crap! Same old shit. And I chose a zombie novel because I thought it would be EASY, and FUN, which should have kept me writing. One of my other writing problems is losing interest in my current project or allowing a new idea to take over from the old. If I'm ENJOYING writing, Kate says, maybe I'll continue with it. So far she's been right, but then the outlining was beginning to kick my butt.

What format should I use, I asked her, and she gave me a kind of vague answer. I thanked her (because that information was useful - apparently there's no "formal" outline style for a novel) and went on-line to try and figure out how to do this. So there I am, getting bogged down AGAIN in research, when one of the reasons I'm doing a zombie novel is because you don't need a ton of RESEARCH. But novels are new to me, and I'm understanding, finally, how important the outline is.

So I stumbled on a format that seems to be working really well for me. Bullets, ironically enough. Each scene is a bullet, and there should be, what, about 60 scenes in the book, give or take? Then all I need to do is expand on each bullet and viola!

This is working great, so far. It's allowing me to take a quick glance at my cheat sheet and know what I need to push the plot forward. The expanded pages will be what I send Kate in a couple more weeks.

Title Blues

I know I'm supposed to not worry about the title, but dang it, not having a title bugs me. Maybe it's because there have been so many super zombie novel and movie titles, and that the the format is actually somewhat rigid that is keeping me from a good, or even somewhat good title.

Something else...I've always written really short stuff. What's with the sudden outpouring of text? Did getting through the dam of depression free up more than my mood?