On the personal side, have taken some time away to get caught up on…well, life.  Writing can be like swimming I guess.  You duck into the water, look into the murk below, wrestle around looking for something you can’t quite see, and finally grasp it.  Whatever it is.  Then…after what seems like a very long time…you come up for air. 

And take a long extended breath.  

Meet Mark Simon – Chief Security Officer of the Sun Voyage cruise line.  And introducing Bishop Harris, a formerly impoverished youth from the streets of Chicago, now raising a young family from afar as he starts his new career aside Simon as First Officer.  Glass Dolls – the first Deck Zero novel – should debut around Christmas.  Credits to my family and co-conspirator/critic/web designer/cover designer Brion Sausser for helping me get it this far.

All in all, I liked the way Inbetween turned out.  A little crisper than Denver Nights, although I still like the melancholy the first Alex Carr/Jack Blain novel held.  Will get back to that in time…have a whole series of events in mind…but I’m turning attention to a different project for now.  Deck Zero.

Oh, and the second thing?

Inbetween was structured very methodically to convey a invoke a certain set of feelings.

They go, in order:

Depression, anger, confusion, terror, heartbreak, then more heartbreak, then rejuvenation, and finally redemption.

Will see if that's how it reads.

A couple of things come to mind tonight.

The first is the idea of writing.  And the motivation behind it.

A few years ago when I was first getting to know Denver Nights - and it's not so much a writer creating the narrative as it is the narrative helping create the writer - that I wondered about how people made a living from the craft.

I researched a wide array of tips on how people brought their materials to market.  The one thing that sticks with me today is a post I came across from a poet.  This isn't verbatim, but it went something like this:

"I've put my heart and soul into a collection of poetry reflecting my deepest challenges and struggles.  Now how do I make money out of it?"

Huh.

It was...paradoxical?  The idea that something so compelling and vivid to someone instantly turned into the thought of money.

While the idea of sustaining an existence on writing is appealing (for every writer, I imagine), I think that person had it wrong.

But what do I know...

Inbetween is now finished.  Time to print a few copies and see what people think.

This is the weird time of writing.  You've put the effort into things...and now need to see if any of it makes sense to the folks reading it.

But as I've said before in this blog...

Fuck it.

Mentioned earlier how my brain tackles the writing process.  Looking at it creatively, then technically, etc.

I had a period earlier where everyone was out of the house and I was plucking away at things.  Then Beth came back, a neighbor came over, the TV went on, and the silence I was working in was suddenly gone.  I should mention our place isn't that big so I couldn't just relocate somewhere else.

I initially tried to simply block things out, but that didn't work.  The thought train I'd been riding had bucked me off.

But...I did find that it was a good time to switch to the technical aspect.  Without thinking too much about the story itself, I just ran through the lines looking for overused words, typos, and sentence structure.  I still didn't get a whole lot done, but I was able to go through about five pages and correct a handful of things I'd overlooked.

One other thought...may or may not be helpful.

But in reviewing one's work, I recommend doing it in a few different ways.

The first is to check the story for continuity.  Does it flow?  Or does it hiccup along the way?

The second is to shift the mind's focus and look at it from a realism standpoint.  Do the characters sound real?  Or the plot?  Are there aspects in there that somehow cheapen things?

The third is to again refocus the brain.  This one's kind of hard.  But you have to ignore the first couple things, and simply read through the work from a purely technical level.  Are there misspellings?  These are easy to overlook when you concentrate on the above two things.  Should you combine or space out paragraphs?  Does something pop more with the use of italics or bold?  Should you use an exclamation point instead of a period?

All of those things.

This is kind of an interesting thought.

Working on finalizing Inbetween and I drew a parallel of writing to sculpting (Note: you'll notice a lot of analogies in my blog.  For me, they're helpful mind exercises to correlate what I'm doing to things I witness in day-to-day life).

But the similarity I found - and I've never been a sculptor so there's some level of speculation here - is that you start with a block of something.  Granite, marble, whatever.  That's your starting point.  Then you start to chisel the granite, or chip away at the marble, until you've roughed in the vision.  Then after contemplating, debating, doubting, and criticizing, you see the extra edges.  The additional materials seemed beneficial earlier, but now take away from the intricacy of what your trying to convey.  Maybe the intimacy?

So you start to trim words.  You start to hone the edges.  You sand, you polish, and you...in general...clean it up.

With that being said...

Inbetween is about ready.

The story is called ‘Inbetween’.  I won’t describe it as my hope with this is for anyone who reads it will go into it with absolutely no idea of what they’re about to dive into.

But my hope for the outcome?  Compelling, of course.  Something that people can let themselves drift into. 

Mostly though…I think what I’m going for is haunting.  Not in the spooky, slasher, don’t-turn-out-the-lights type way.

Something that sticks with people.  Doesn’t quite let go.  Even long after the pages have long since been read.

I’ll post it here once completed.  You can be the judge.

I muddled through that one for about a week.  Then an idea came to me.

Sticking with the athlete motif, I applied that to writing. 

Maybe what I really need is a stretching of the writing muscles.  Not going from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds.  Not jumping back into a playoff game from a long time on the bench.  But rather…taking a few laps on a smaller field.  Not developing an intricate plot with sub-plots and twists and conflicts around every corner.

Just some warm-up drills.

A short story.

I’ll try that.

You hear the term “writer’s block” frequently in writing circles.  For me, it’s not quite like that.  I have the ideas about plots, characters, what they’ll look like, what they’ll say, where the conflicts will arise, and so forth.

Although when I started penning those ideas, the sentences don’t necessarily get stuck between brain and keyboard, but they come out…um, clunky?  Not smoothly. Something like that…

The best analogy I could think of was a wide receiver on a football team who’d been out of the game for a year.  And not actively practicing.  His first time back on the field he still made it down field, but his steps weren’t as quick.  He wasn’t as graceful.  He’d lost his edge.  He was…clunky.  Maybe that was the right word after all.

Here’s where writing can be particularly challenging when you haven’t done it in awhile.

Let’s say you finally ‘make the time’ and carve out 2, 3, or (if particularly lucky) 4 hours to sit down and pluck away at it.

And then 2, 3, or 4 hours later you lean back in disgust, look at the words and shake your head.  Thinking maybe you’re just too close to it at that particular moment.  And if you step away for a day or two you’ll come back and see some beauty in the paragraphs.  And then you do.  And then you realize there still isn’t.

One good thing I did with my time?  I got married.  Beth…mentioned many times in this blog…and who got a ringside seat to the (sometimes ugly) creation of Denver Nights, jumped in with me in an impromptu ceremony in Las Vegas.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/19/entertainment/la-et-ct-cinemacon-wedding-20130418

Actually…regarding my last post…maybe that’s not quite true.  I think a lot about writing.  I sometimes jot down outlines of particular scenes, or sometimes cool lines that I think could be incorporated somewhere.  The skeleton of Arizona Mourning is completed, as are maybe 30-40 pages of what I call ‘test material’.  The kind that will never actually see the light of real paper, but lets you bat around some idea.

The writing part of me still feels very close.  But the reality is that the output isn’t there.  The proof is in the pudding as the phrase goes.  And there ain’t much pudding.  Nothing anyone would want to eat, anyway…

Since the contest ended last March, my application of time has gone mostly to the most relevant parts of my life.  Beth.  My stepson.  My family.  Friends.  Work (the non-writing, money-making, time).  Keeping up a house.  And sadly…not quite in that order.

As for writing?  That hasn’t made the cut in a long time.

One of the most challenging things about writing is finding the time.  Or making the time.  I find that phrase interesting.  Making the time. 

It’s something you hear often in the context of work, or health, or relationships.  It goes like this in a conversation - “I know I should do fill-in-the-blank-here, but I don’t have the time.”  The response will come, “You have to make time for the things that are important.”

But how?

You can’t quite pull out a toolbox and make time.  

Wow...

It's been a long time since I've posted.  After the contest ended...and real life kicked back in...there hasn't been much time for book writing.

But there is now.

Actually - as I type this - I realize there really isn't.

It's been an interesting road.  And a challenging one.  Lot of things have happened since I last posted.  I'll get to those eventually.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Mr. Steve Diamond of Tucson, Arizona for successfully solving the Denver Nights riddle.  I will be at the Tucson Barnes and Noble store, located at 5130 E. Broadway on Friday, March 9, 2012, at 3 pm to present Mr. Diamond with the grand prize.

If you're in the area and feel like attending please feel free to join us!

Contest launched.

http://www.geoffrod.com