Saturday, July 21, 2012

It's still not right yet

I've had over a dozen people read G-157 and they all freaking loved it. That's a good sign, but after I read through it again last weekend I realized that even though its a good book, it's still missing something. I've felt it was missing something for the longest time, that the book wasn't quite there yet and still needed something more. I couldn't figure it out for the longest time, but after a week of racking my brain I think I figured a few things out.

First off, the book is too short. It's just under 70k words, which means something is missing.

The characters aren't developed enough. Yes, most of them are supposed to be a little bland and blur into each other because that's a major part of the story. But my main peeps just aren't there. They have no soul.

The beginning is way too slow. I do like slower books to a certain extent, but there isn't enough action going on to keep the reader's attention. I do a hell of a good job at keeping the oddities up and making the reader go, "hmm, that's weird," but there's not enough omph to keep your adrenaline pumping.

There's not enough back story. G-157 is supposed to have a bit of mystery in it, but at times its too much.


I don't think my list of needed revisions is very big. Hell, I thought I'd have two pages of things that needed to change, so four things is pretty darn good. And that's because it is a good book with a great story. So I'm hard at work this weekend cranking out those changes. I've added some freakin awesome, page turning back story scenes, spiced up the characters, and so far have added another 30 pages of material to the whole thing. I'm not sure how many words that is because I hand write everything and sometimes my writing is micro, sometimes its huge and sprawling, but I'm guessing I've added around 5k words to it over the last couple days.

And the great thing is, I'm getting excited about this book again. For the longest time I haven't been totally stoked to be working on it, and I think that's because the damn thing has been through like 8 revisions and  I feel like it should be finished already. But it's not, because this book is my problem child. It doesn't mean it's less good than the other novels I've written, it's just more difficult to complete it. Unlike the Sledgehammer Club, which flowed like molten lava out of an exploding valcanoe. I've been slowly working on that one now since it's almost finished, and truth be told it is a freaking badass book that I'm so proud of, which is why it's been coming along so slow. I don't want to leave that world to go into another.

I love that story, love the characters, love being completely wrapped up in that world of evil. One of the main characters is a kid named Goat, and he is the most evil character I've ever written. He's also my absolute freaking favorite. He's so fun to write about, and I love showing his reactions and creepy tendencies. He's also the character that has made me most uncomfortable to write. I know he's not real, but some of the things that come out of his mouth make me so uncomfortable. I know that sounds really weird to non writers, but writers understand how words just seem to come from nowhere and land on the page, words they had no intention of writing. And that's how it is with Goat. Because he rocks. Well, except for the whole evil thing. But he's badass evil, so that makes him awesome, like the Joker in The Dark Knight movie.

Anyway, I'm so glad I had another break through with G-157 and have figured out of what it's missing. I'm sure after I go through this round of revisions and edits, let it sit, and go back to read it again, I'll find something else that's not quite right with it. But that's okay, because with each page the book gets a little closer to being completed. And really I'd rather edit a book 15 times to make sure I feel like its right than to say, well it's been revised 6 times so it must be good enough. Nope. That's how people publish totally crappy books, and I refuse to publish a totally crappy book. Sure some people will think its kind of crappy, but that's okay, because even those people will find a lot of good things about the book that they like. And the rest of my readers? They'll either like the book or love it, because it's a great story on the verge of being greatly written.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Good Dogs

I have these two mongrel dogs that I'm still not quite sure how I ended up with. One is a cocky little whippet mix that was rescued from the pound. The other is a total baby dog that's afraid of his own shadow. He showed up at my cousin's house one day all scratched up and scared of everyone. My cousin couldn't keep him, so I went over to see if maybe this dog and I would be a good match. I took one look at his sad little face and instantly fell in love. I think he did too because he came running over to me and sat right down on my lap. I'm still not sure what kind of dog he is. He's got a fat pit bull looking head with the soft face of a lab, and his hair color and patterns are trying to look like German Shepherd markings but don't quite cut it. And to top it off, he's only 40 pounds, so there has to be something smaller in there. He and my other dog aren't the best dogs I've ever had. They do bad things they know they shouldn't sometimes and on occasion get on my nerves, but they're still good dogs, and last night they really proved that they were exactly what dogs are supposed to be.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch trying desperately to finish reading the last 80 pages or so of Stephen King's IT while my boyfriend was on the other couch watching a movie, but it was a losing battle and I nodded off just after page 1000. I slipped into the normal world of my strange and sometimes utterly boring dreams (don't you hate when you dream that you're at work answering emails or that you're in the grocery store debating which brand of chicken to buy?). My dream started out normal enough as far as dreams go; I rode a roller coaster through a lake, ran away from some terrible demon creatures, and flew through the air in my truck just like it was Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang.

Then I got back to my house, and the terror began.

You see, I fell asleep while reading it at the very end where they're trying to kill the evil monster that takes the shape of whatever scares you. There's a ritual that the kids do to try to kill the thing, and it is strangely similar to stories I hear from people who have dropped acid. It wasn't terrifying like other parts of the book had been, but it was strange and though provoking and kept me on the edge of my seat. And, it seeped into my dream.

I had just gotten into our living room and went to go sit on the couch when my cocky little whippet dogs started growling at me and trying to attack me. In my dream I realized it wasn't my dog at all, but rather the evil things that plagued the town of Derry in Stephen King's novel had taken hold of my dog and was using her against me.

I tried to leap over the couch just as she bolted towards me, but I didn't leap over the couch like I could in real life, I leapt above the couch. Our house has vaulted ceilings anyway, but as in the bent rules of the reality of dreams, our 20 foot vaulted ceilings grew into 50 foot vault ceilings, and my tiny little whippet mix jumped 30 feet in the ceiling and sand her teeth right into my neck and lower jaw. And then we were in the darkness as we spiraled into that strange, tiny huge place that is made of everything and nothing, where we were everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time.

It scared the crap out of me.

I bolted up screaming at the top of my lungs like a harpy. My boyfriend sits up with a stunned expression, looks at me, and screams, which makes me scream again because in my delirious state I have no idea why he would be screaming unless there were something terrible standing behind me waiting to cut my head off or something. Both of my dogs, yep my chicken baby dog too, come rushing in barking and growling with their hair standing up and their fangs bared and stand on either side of the couch ready to rip whatever was hurting their mom to shreds. And then, when I stop screaming and sit there panting and clutching my chest, fighting back tears because I'm so bewildered and trying to make sense of everything, my boyfriend says "what the hell?" AND GOES BACK TO SLEEP!!!!!! My hero (insert eye roll here).

So there I am, clutching my chest all freaked out and trying not to cry while my super awesome boyfriend falls back to sleep like nothing happened, and who do you think is right there by my side? Yep, my dogs. Both of them snuck onto the couch with me and just laid there, not fighting with each other for attention like they always do, but just laying there with me in a quiet, comforting way while I got my bearings and calmed down.

And then I started laughing.

It started as a little giggle when I thought about the whole thing, me screaming, my boyfriend screaming, me screaming again, and then my little giggle turned into full blown laughter the more I thought about it. The whole thing was so much like something from a comedy movie that I burst into uncontrollable laughter and had to go outside to let it out. Of course my dogs followed me and sat there wagging their tails with those goofy little looks on their faces as they stared at me laughing so hard I was crying and clutching my stomach.

When I finally calmed down I went back to the couch to try to fall back asleep. Both of my dogs followed me and settled down on the floor next to me, their ears perked, their eyes alert and watchful. I fell back to sleep almost instantly knowing I had two dogs that were there to protect me, to comfort me, and to laugh with me when the whole thing was over. Last night they were everything dogs should be; guardians and companions who are there for you no matter how frightened and tired they may be. Yes, I've got a couple of good dogs.

Friday, July 13, 2012

If only the Tommyknockers were real...

I started a new job recently. It's not my dream job, but it's a damn good one. The company is awesome, the people are great, and I enjoy what I do. But even with good jobs there are days when you just don't want to be there. The last couple days have been like that.

It's been raining for the last few days, which is really, really weird because it usually only rains in Arizona during August and March, and on occasion in January. But rain in July? That's weird. I think it's a trade off from nature to make up for all those dust storms we had last month.

Anyway, it's been raining for the last few days and every time I look outside at work I just think, "Man, I wish I was at home writing...and sleeping. At the same time." I told this to one of my friends and she laughed and told me, good luck with that. Well guess what friend, it could be true if the Tommyknockers were real.

For anyone who doesn't know, Tommyknockers is a Stephen King novel about aliens who crash into our planet and give the people of this small town super abilities. One woman in the story is a writer who invents a typewriter that will write her novels while she sleeps. Best idea ever!! I want one of those.

If the Tommyknockers were real, I could sleep and write at the same time. I told this to my friend and she said, "true, but I don't think you're allowed to sleep at work."

Damn.

Ruin my dreams why don't you.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Mr. Bucket

It rained for the first time in months on the 4th of July. I'm not talking about a typical Arizona rain that does nothing more than add overwhelming humidity to 120 degree heat and drizzles just enough to make your windshield muddy. It was a real rain, a steady drizzle with a few downpours in which the Heavens gave us a good two inches. That is a lot of rain for central Arizona.

My better half and I spent much of the day reverting to our childhoods by playing in the rain and eating pizza on the back porch. An adult moment kicked in when we realized that the cover over our old boat we inherited was so overloaded with water it sagged to the seats.

 Now this boat is nothing fancy, it's old and practical and in no way flashy, but it's our boat and we want to have it for a long time so we take good care of it. Since the water that had collected from the day's showers was straining the cover, my better half decided we better take care of it. We tried to lift it up and let the water run onto the ground, but it was way too heavy for that. So he says, "I need a bucket." The first thing that came to my mind was "Mr. Bucket is buckets of fun."

Of course he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Many people may not remember this, but Mr. Bucket was a little kid toy that came out like 15 years ago where the kid has a bunch of plastic balls that they scoop up with a shovel and throw into him, then he spits them out of his mouth. Cute idea right? Right.

After I say that my better half says, "Oh yeah, I remember that now."

"Yeah?" I ask. "Do you remember the little song they used to sing on the commercial?"

Nope, he didn't.

Now when Mr. Bucket came out I was at that age when I was becoming more aware of the adult world, but many innuendos still alluded me. Mr. Bucket's jingle was one of them, and when I did realize what his cute little theme song meant in the dirty adult world it couldn't have been at a better time.

At this time when Mr. Bucket was new and his commercial played fifteen times a day on Saturday morning I was friends with a girl who had two mortal enemies that were always picking on her and trying to beat her up. It was after school one day and my friend and I were on the football field when these two evil girls showed up and tried to start a fight again. They did their usual routine of making fun of her, calling her names, doing whatever they could to provoke us to get into a scuffle with them.

Well my friend had had enough and she told the one girl, "Yeah well at least I'm not a Mr. Bucket like you!"

The three of us stopped and looked at her like, what in the hell are you talking about and I asked her what that meant. She rolled her eyes and said, "You know, like Mr. Bucket's theme song? 'Mr. Bucket, balls pop out of my mouth, Mr. Bucket, buckets of fun!'"

That was really how the jingle went for this children's toy. "Mr. Bucket, balls pop out of my mouth." None of us had EVER caught onto the adult meaning of that until my friend called this girl a Mr. Bucket and we all realized that my friend was callign her slutty. We were all so taken back by the fact that we had never realized this before that all three of us starting laughing our asses off when just seconds before we were ready to get into a fist fight with each other.

Needless to say our fight was diffused for the day. Who can keep fighting with someone after your all just laughed your asses off together? So I thank you, Mr. Bucket, for having such a perverted song at a time in our lives when we were caught in that strange and scary place when we weren't quite girls anymore yet still weren't quite women.

My better half laughed for a good ten minutes about this story, because he never realized how dirty innocent little Mr. Bucket was either until I sang the song again as an adult. And that boys and girls just goes to show how much you've changed through your life without even knowing it.

The Magic of Reading

It's been forever since I posted, and one of the main reasons besides the usual excuses of why you didn't do something (like work, college, family, friends, housework, writing) is because I've been working on reading It by Stephen King. Normally when I read one of Mr. King's novels it takes me a day, maybe two or three if I start it during the week. But not with It. Oh no, not with It. This book is over a thousand pages, and I've loved every word.

Now, some none readers would say, why in God's name would you want to spend  hours reading one story? My better half looked at me like I was a little bit more than bonkers when I told him that I think I've spent 20 hours reading this novel and still have a couple hundred pages to go. That is a lot of time to devote to one story, to one thing that, on the surface, doesn't have any value or purpose other than to entertain me. So why spend that much time in solitude doing something that doesn't immediately help build relationships with other people or better your situation in life? Hell, why don't you just spend three hours watching the movie if you want to be entertained? It takes a fraction of the time to hear the story of Pennywise and you can enjoy the fear and fantasy with someone else. Well, I love reading the book simply because there's something magical about reading.

The technology used in cinema today truly amazes me. Phenomenal 3D movies like Avatar boggle my mind with their touch of realism, with how, especially in 3D, it seems the movie really is jumping out of the screen into your world of reality. The Adventures of Tin-Tin really blew me away. So much of the computer animation in that movie looked so real, the ocean, the boat, the plane, everything. It's truly remarkable what we can do with technology today.

Now, I'm a die-hard movie buff and love everything about cinema. I love all types of movies, from the old black and white silent films to the brand new super technological thrillers, bad movies, good movies, horror movies, funny movies, romance movies, everything. Movies freaking rock. But much as I love them, they're still never as good as a great book by a great writer.

When people read my work they say its like watching a movie, that they can see and hear everything that's going on and it feels as though they're not reading at all but simply watching a great story unfold. I'm always flattered when I hear that, because as a writer nine times out of ten I'm going to assume that what I wrote and revised a half a dozen times is still going to suck. But, what I hope to achieve as a writer is to one day be able to make the reader feel like they're in the story, because this is where the magic of reading really comes out.

Stephen King is my favorite writer. I know there's a lot of people out there who don't like his work and think he's terrible, and that's fine. He just warps my imagination in ways few other writers can, and he does it with almost every story. Oh yeah, he's written a book that I really didn't like and it felt like pulling teeth the whole time I was reading it, but does this mean I wrote him off and thought he'd lost his mind? No. To me he's a master at what he does, and the fact that he's only had one baddie in my opinion is really freaking amazing. He's the master of the craft of fiction because he sucks the reader into the story, and that's when the magic of reading kicks in.

It is a particularly good example of the magic in reading. As I drift off and get happily lost in this story for an hour at a time I feel like I'm one of the kids in Derry, Beverly's sister perhaps. I can smell that damp mugginess after it rains, can hear the mosquitoes buzzing in my ears as the Loser kids trek around the woods. I can feel the cold when it snows, I  can feel the terror as the psycho kids chase our heroes. And at times, I can feel the evil clown Pennywise right there in the room with me, lurking in the shadows of my mind, waiting to pounce into my world of the real and take the shape of what scares me most. With this book I sometimes have to put it down because it scares me too much, it seems too real to me. When the world of fiction and the world of the real blur together in a way that confuses the mind so much that it's no longer sure of what is real and what is a story is when the magic of reading comes alive.

I saw the movie It when I was a kid and oh yeah, you bet it scared the crap out of me, but it never scared me in the way it does now that I'm an adult reading the book. When I was a kid, sure I was creeped out after I watched the movie and had a nightmare or two, but movies aren't real. Kids are taught from an early age that movies aren't real, and we carry that with us as we morph into our adult selves until we become people who are difficult to scare because we know what we are watching is nothing more than a farce. But when you're reading something scary? That's when things suddenly become very scary again, and very, very real.

I'm not sure why reading is so very different than watching a movie, but I know there are forces at work within the mind that simply aren't there when you're watching a movie; they're only alive within the pages of a book. Perhaps reading makes stories so much more real and terrifying because your mind already has to work a little harder to see this fake world. Your mind has to make an image of a tree in a grassy park with a swing set in it, it has to form features of the characters that are talking, has to put clothes on the characters, has to set the pitches of their voices. Your mind must create the majority of the story when you're reading, and really reality is nothing more than your mind's perception of the world. So therefore when you're reading and your mind is creating the majority of the world, it makes sense that it all seems so real, more real than watching someone else's version of reality on a screen.

For me the magic of reading is that a story no longer becomes a work of fiction, it becomes another world that you're apart of, somewhere you belong. I once watched an author who asked the audience, "how many lives can you live?" That's what reading and writing is, living another life for a few minutes to a few hours. With reading we could live a thousand lives in fifty years if we wanted to. How much more magical can you get than that?