So, it kind of hit me that I didn’t have any real plans for the Thanksgiving weekend after the consumption of a small, vegan feast on Thursday.

Then, I recalled that I always bitch that I don’t have adequate time to focus on my writing because of work and other commitments.

So, a need to focus on writing, and a 4-day weekend with no work or commitments. You see where this is going…

Yes, it is time to see how productive I can be when I have nothing to do but write. And I do mean nothing. I just went grocery shopping on my way home from the Beck concert, so there is food to last through Monday morning. There is even some junk food, which I can ration over the four days, or ravage ASAP and mourn the loss of the rest of the weekend. I’m not going to the gym.

I am unhooking the phone, the Internet, unplugging the TV, and shutting off my clocks, and putting black electrical tape over the LED clocks I need to keep working (microwave, stereo). Basically, I will write, sleep, think, read, edit, write, sleep, bathe, etc., etc., etc. for four days. And, I will report what happens with this experiment on either Sunday night or Monday.

So, this will be my last missive until the experiment ends. It doesn’t start until about 1:20 to 2 p.m. on Thursday, but I have some obligations Wednesday, and I may go catch a movie Wednesday night. We’ll see…

Have a great holiday everyone.

Jeff

Work has been unfortunately busy lately, and when I am robbed of the ability to think of my book in the background all day, the nights go slower and run longer. Another product launch Monday, and that’s it for the year, so all should go smoothly again now, but it’s been a dry patch.

I guess I could subscribe to the notion that any progress is a positive step toward finishing. But unless I crank out a pile of text in any given night, I kind of feel like I’ve been wasting my time and I would have been better off going to the movies, or out to a play, etc.

So, this morning, I went and saw Harry Potter, and again I am struck by how much I don’t like that style of writing. Same with Lord of the Rings. It just seems like there are just huge, spectacular passages/sets, loosely strung together. You don’t connect with Harry, he seems to be very passive about everything that goes on around him, and something entirely unexplained always saves him at the last possible second.

I’m not saying it is bad storytelling. It just doesn’t resonate with me. I like surprising elements in a story to exist within the dynamic of what I know as an audience member. Even in the Sixth Sense, the fact that he’s dead isn’t really a secret, he was shot in the first scene. The audience is led to watch the movie from a specific perspective, but then it all lines up when we are told something different.

HARRY SPOILERS NOW: In Harry Potter, it’s always just something happens and needs not be explained before or sufficiently after. Harry is fighting a big snake and can’t look in his eyes or he will die. So, he’s hidden in the chamber of secrets which no one knows how to find, and as soon as the snake appears, Dumbledore’s phoenix comes and pokes its eyes out (so that Harry can now fight him), and brings the sorting hat. OK, this is a stretch, but the bird knew how to find him, fine. Then, as the snake gets closer to Harry, a sword appears inside the hat. OK, great, but it just becomes a bit much for me. Even Harry never seems to think his life is in danger.

In the Quidditch match, a ball (or whatever it’s called) is on a rampage trying to kill Harry. It is literally smashing huge holes through wooden structures trying to knock him off his broomstick. He is still trying to play the game, annoyed that his life is in danger more than concerned, everyone else is just watching like anything goes at Hogwarts.

Harry and Ron are trapped by the spiders and their flying car just shows up and saves them, in much the same way it randomly disappeared when they arrived at school. And how is the station where you get on the Hogwarts train only accessible to wizards, etc., but the train itself seems to exist in th real world after it leaves the station.

I mean, why am I supposed to care about this kid’s life if he doesn’t, his friends don’t (OK, Hermione wants to use her wand to stop the ball), and all the faculty of the school seem disinterested with everything, too. My guess is that even at Hogwarts, a Quidditch ball under a spell trying to kill one of the players should be against the rules.

Maybe that is how they get away with this stuff, by setting them in these alternate worlds. LOTR was more of the same. Kid is chosen, gets the ring, and then has one random adventure after another, is indifferent about it all, and goes places for the most threadbare reasons where some adventure happens, and he barely escapes. But since it isn’t set in the present-day criminal justice system or someplace where the same rules that apply to the reader exists, we just have to shrug and accept their world, since they apparently do the same.

Now, I know the criticism already, and people are going to say that you have to read the book to get the real picture of these stories. I disagree. I did read the first Harry Potter, and I thought the same thing about it. I was so disinterested with the first Lord of the Rings movie, I can’t imagine reading the book. But, the deal is, I shouldn’t have to read a book to understand a movie. That’s why I am in a movie. Movies aren’t supposed to be abstracts for books.

Of course, I am writing transitional book chapters a lot lately, too, so this is exactly what I’m fixated in my own book right now. Maybe the audience doesn’t care about transition of continuity or there being a point as to why one chapter comes before another… would certainly make it easier.

Jeff

Been feeling a little lost lately, so the writing has been… iffy.

It’s kind of like I have all the big scenes in the book worked out, and now I have to go and just write all of the connective tissue between them. Except, I don’t want to dismiss this stuff as mere connective tissue. So, my challenge as of late is to take a necessary chapter to get from point A (which is already written) to point B (which is already written) and somehow bring something that elevates the text past its purpose.

It is taking a mere sentence fragment or sentence from the short story and trying to build it into its own relevant world. The good news is I only have about 7-8 more of these chapter to write and then I will be done with the first to acts of the book. I’ve already written the end of Act Two, where things start heating up, etc., but I really haven’t thought about what would happen next. I want to nail everything up until that point first.

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately. Writing a lot more nonsense than usual, just to see what works, what doesn’t, and just explore the scenes in different ways. But it is taking far more work than the scenes that have clear direction and purpose.

Jeff

Tonight went better than expected.

The company I work for announced a new product today (clue #14 for people trying to stalk me in real life), and after work there were invites for drinks, junk food, and (being my team has a fetish), karaoke.

Now, I am not opposed to karaoke, I just tend to be indifferent since I do have a digital piano in the next room, sheet music for anything I care to play, and the Internet for the chords for songs I want to play.

So, I go for a drink after work (malibu and pineapple, my usual) and I can see they are settling in for a long night. So, after I finish my drink, I peel off from the group, get a ride home, and jump directly into the writing without any of my usual procrastination. Well, I did play one game of Ms. Pac Man.

And in about 90 minutes, I cranked out 7 new pages on the novel, which is a bit on the high side as of late. In fact, everything I wanted to get into this chapter is in there now, so it’s time to put this on the edit and polish pile, since the writing is done.

Before leaving, I told my co-workers that if I got my writing done early enough, I would join them for karaoke. Otherwise, I would have stayed longer and had some company-financed alcohol after work.

And, since I’m done writing, it’s early, and my last load of laundry will finish in 30 minutes, it looks like I’ll be singing karaoke tonight.

So, a good case of getting everything accomplished that I wanted to. Well, I would be fine without karaoke in my life.

Of course, it has yet to be seen how my gym routine will appreciate late night karaoke and alcohol.

Jeff

UPDATE: OK, sang a few songs tonight (You May Be Right, Mr. Jones, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers (full Neil DIamond vocal inflection), Creep, and Addicted to Love).

Been a long time since I rock ‘n’ rolled on here.

Let’s see, had a few days of “This chapter still isn’t working,” segued into two days of insomnia, which means I was awake and able to write more than ever, but lacking any ability whatsoever to do it. And today, I finally put like 2.5-3 hours into the chapter, and finally got it on track. So, the story has a happy ending…
I ended up listening to a lot of Bright Eyes to nail this chapter down. The usual NIN was a bit much. I will go as far as to say that Bright Eyes’ new album “Lifted, or The Story’s In The Soil, Put Your Ear To The Ground” is one of the best thing released this year. Totally amazing.

Also worked in a good device to let me get around the I’s a whole hell of a lot, which I always love.

So, looking optimistic now that I can finish the chapter up tomorrow, at least in first draft form, and move on down the list. Hopefully the transitional chapters don’t all end up being this much of a pain in the ass. We shall see…

I’m not sure if I mentioned this on here before since, well, I don’t actually read this diary. I write it. Anyway, the goal is to start writing my second book in January 2004. I just think the fall is way too crazy and distracting, all the cool bands are touring on the albums they hope to sell at Christmas. All the movies that want to win Academy Awards are starting to roll out. There’s that whole holiday season thing. The play season I belong to has been averaging a play or two a month, it seems.

So, I think I need to be a winter writer, or rather a rainy season writer by San Francisco standards, since we don’t get the whole snow thing here. So, if I want to start writing book number two in January 2004, that means, I would need to start doing the research for that book by summer at the latest.

The short of it is that this book needs to get written and on its way. I am still optimistically hoping to nail this draft by the holidays, do a little scrub and polish in January, and print up minimal copies for friends, just to get a sense of where it’s at.

I’ve also committed to reading something in January from the book, so that should be interesting. Too far out to worry about yet.

That’s about it for today. Back on my weekend schedule and it worked great. Yeah…

Jeff

I’m not very happy with this chapter, yet I continue to flesh it out. Hoping that something I write will crystallize what I’m supposed to be doing here.

The problem, of course, is that this chapter is all story. Wall-to-wall plot. It lacks action. In a movie, this chapter would be a montage.

I keep wanting to just dump the whole chapter and just let readers make the leap of faith that these things happened. But, something keeps me here. I’m supposed to find something.

Stephen King described story in terms of archaeology, that you see a bone in the sand, and you have a tiny brush and you have to keep brushing the sand away a little at a time to see what is there. It may just be a bone, might be a whole skull, might be an entire dinosaur, or a gargoyle on top of an entire building, or a city underneath the sand, but you just have to keep brushing the sand away and eventually whatever it is will reveal itself.

My problem is that all I have is sand, so far. I’m still trying to find the thing from which the sand needs extraction. I know I will find it, or it will find me, whatever that whole process is.

I keep trying to stay within the confines of the setting that this scene needs, push my way into the corners of the rooms to get a different perspective. What would I want to experience as a reader at this point? I don’t let my mind wander and try and think of bigger, grander ways to find a way into this, because, as T.S. Eliot said:

“When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost — and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.”

This is a claustrophobic chapter and needs to remain as such. It needs to get smaller and scope and bigger in vision. There’s enough ‘over the top’ coming in future chapters, this is all set-up, empathy building. Even sympathy building in some cases. And, of course, it needs to be funny. But funny is less important now.

I think my primary goal is to get a story I like from beginning to end with this draft, and then all the comedy can be tuned, all the interpersonal relationships can be further developed. All of those things require subtlety, whereas the bare bones of laying down the plot and the character interactions are more workmanlike. It’s the same as the differences between writing and editing. Two different muscles.

OK, it’s actually still too early to give in on this chapter yet. So, this diary was more of an intermission than a finish line for tonight. Back to the drawing board.

Jeff

Yikes, a lot of craziness in the city as of late. An estimated 300,000 revelers were in my neighborhood for Halloween. A few stabbings, a few near riots. I saw the cops take a gun off someone in the street. But for the most part, Halloween was a good time.

The night started out with a Strokes concert, which would have been fine were it not for two opening bands to sit through. The Strokes were exactly what I expected, almost too much so. Julian, the lead singer, really has no stage presence. Much of the time, he seemed to be frozen there, not even tapping a foot. But, his voice sounds great, and their new stuff sounds just as good as the stuff off their debut album.

After the concert, I head down to the Castro, stopping at a bar before getting too close to the insanity for the first of four or five Malibu and pineapples for the night.

Oh, that’s right, this is a writing diary… you don’t need granular detail about my life here. Um, Halloween, day off, La Boheme, The Ring, and… if all goes well, I’ll see Secretary tonight, since I had insomnia last night, slept in way late today, got the writing nailed early and am certain I won’t be able to sleep before midnight, so may as well catch a 9ish show.

Basically, I didn’t do much on the book since Halloween. It sort of became a weekend to just chill out and unwind, which was necessary.

This afternoon, I dove into Chapter 4, which I don’t particularly like yet. There is something not right about it. As it stands now it is mainly just four pages of randomness with no connective tissue. I was supposed to write it on Saturday, too, and spent way too much time trying to sort out what the chapter needed, with no results. So, today, I decided to just plow through some of the themes I want to explore in that chapter and just write as much as I can off the top of my head on the matter, which I did.

Chapter 2 is the inciting incident, and Chapter 3 sets up Act 2. But, Chapter 4 just hangs there. Chapter 5 is written and takes place a few months after chapter three, so it seems like there needs to be a short chapter in between just transitioning the two.

The hope is that by writing all these random things out in some detail tonight, that tomorrow or later this week, I will just find a way into the material that organizes it properly, tells the story in a compelling way. I’m not a big fan of scenery-chewing, so if this chapter ends up serving no purpose, it may just get scrapped. Myabe some of this info just needs to lead off Chapter 5 and it doesn’t merit its own space.

Well, after a few days off, I’m just glad to get back into the chair here and push words onto the screen. My activity level, as far as the extracurricular, is on a downturn between now and the holidays, so I’m trying to get very focused on the book, since I do believe that I could wrap up this draft before Christmas if I hustle.

Of course, there will still be a lot of editing after it’s written before I start letting some friends read it.

OK, enough yammering for the night…

Jeff