Finally doing some heavy lifting with the novel, and Chapter 5 is no more. I’ve been spending my time lately on Chapter 4, but thought I should read through Chapter 5, since I know it was going away. Just wanted to see if there was some idea expressed there that needs to find its way into Chapter 4. Out of the whole she-bang, only two paragraphs seemed necessary.

The hardest part of Chapter 4, which will take a while yet, is it is a very dense chapter. It has a framing device, flash backs, and a lot of time condensing, and it’s hard to get it just right. The other trick is that some of the stuff in this chapter is completely wrong for the book, but are taken from my real life. And they were stitched together pretty well, so it all flows nicely, until you step back and realize the character in this novel doesn’t have this issue. The author of this novel does.

So, the fourth draft will be even less autobiographical than what is already not autobiography.

Still having trouble getting to bed before 9 at the earliest, which I’m not happy about. When this happens, I’m in less creative space at 4 a.m., and usually around mid-afternoon, there’s a period where I’m really tired, and it happens after my caffeine moratorium for the day, so there’s nothing to do but ride it out. And then, I’m winding down, and then… I don’t feel as tired as I should at 8. So, I read some more, go on the web, but I’d rather sleep.

I admit it’s an unnatural schedule, but I keep expecting it to find its rhythm and be less managed. I woke up a few minutes before my alarm this morning, so my body is getting used to the rhythms of it all. I just need the night part to kick in and be tired earlier.

It has been more of a push to be creative in the mornings, because I’d rather go back to bed for another hour. But I never give in. In worst cases, I have energy drinks here, and I’m not afraid to use them.

Of course, the last time I kept this writing schedule, I was unemployed. So, I would get up at 4, write for a few hours, and go back to bed. But, with a job now, this is the only system I’ve found that works consistently.

Well, the book takes a major turn after this chapter, so it will be smooth sailing soon enough.

The hardest part is still sleeping. I’ve always been more night owl than an early riser, so going to bed around 8 p.m. remains a struggle.

Sunday night, I watched the Academy Awards, which of course, always run overtime. I was tired at the end of the ceremony, but since I don’t have a television, I had to walk home afterward, and then couldn’t get to sleep until after 10 p.m.

Last night, I actually was in bed shortly after 8 p.m. I put an old 30 minute episode of the Ricky Gervais podcast on, expecting to drift off afterward. I heard the end. Then, I climbed out of the loft bed, watched the episode of 24 that was being converted for this morning’s cardio entertainment, and finally got to bed after 10p again.

But I’m still up at 4 a.m. It just sucks a lot harder on less sleep. And I know I do better work when I’m rested. I’ve been using lunch as when I stop taking in any caffeine for the day. Although if I’m getting 8 hours sleep, I can probably just get rid of it entirely.

I think part of it is just routine. I expect to be tired waking up for work, or with this schedule, so I’m proactively making sure I’m alert and awake without confirming it’s ever required. So hopefully the sleep schedule will work better today. Since I’m on less than 6 hours sleep, I won’t start the no caffeine experiments today.

There was some interruption in my writing last week, when some drama on Oasis needed to be attended to, but that’s all resolved now. Just need to focus and remember that I’m sacrificing a lot to keep this schedule, so it’s ridiculous to not put amazing effort toward making it worthwhile every day.

I am amazed that I have this whole novel, in intimate detail, stored in my head. I’m reading stuff today and making sure the one sentence I added will set up something that happens 30-some chapters later.

I look forward to knowing the book is done, and briefly feeling the sense that all those mental cycles that now go to the novel can do other things. In short order, I’ll start the second novel, but even letting new characters and stories in there will be pretty amazing.

Soon enough.

Well, if you used my picks to win an Academy Awards pool, you did pretty well…

Only guessed wrong on Best Supporting Actress, thinking Viola Davis had a bit more heft in her supporting turn than Penelope Cruz in Vicki Christina Barcelona. Not bad, though…

Of course, this was a very predictable year with no major upsets. The biggest race was between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke, and Penn defies the odds (since he won a few years ago for Mystic River) and took another statue home.

Dustin Lance Black gave an amazing speech, which you can read over on Oasis.

I also just scheduled my copy of the Milk screenplay, signed by Black, Sean Penn, Gus Van Sant, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and Emile Hirsch to post on eBay tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. I’ll add the link here when it’s live. Proceeds go towards redesigning and adding features to Oasis.

Still cruising through the easy part of the rewrite, although the next chapter is marked for deletion, so that will be the first heavy lifting I have to do, making sure the removal doesn’t impact the chapter flow. I remember spending a lot of time on that chapter, too. I think that’s usually a clue. When you have to try hard to make something work, it probably doesn’t. Oh well, all lessons that will speed up book two.

A friend this weekend asked me when I’d be done with this schedule. And, honestly, I don’t think that will happen any time soon. I don’t want to squander a writing routine, once it’s established and working. It’s still a bit early for this to seem like a routine, I’m still forcing this to occur for the most part. But when you just get up and write each day, that shouldn’t end.

Of course, the goal is that the first book pays enough that I don’t need to have a job to write the second. But that’s not very realistic, not to mention I’ll be well into the second book before I’m even close to selling the first.

But there are obvious problems with this schedule long-term, such as a social life, dating, etc. And mentally, it is still strange to front-load my “free time” for the day to a 2-3 hour window first thing in the morning, then do a full-time job, and after that have time just to wind down and go to bed. I am aware that it is a luxury to be able to do this, though. And there are parents out there finding moments to write while raising kids and what-not.

I’m happy to report that without even doing major renovations with the book, that it’s already down by 1500 words from when I started. That number should climb much higher, though.

Well, time to go to the gym, can’t mess around, since I have an international teleconference for work that starts at 8:30a. Actually, let me check… OK, just popped on webmail and there is an agenda for the call, so it’s happening. Catch ya’ll later.

As many people know, I had a little vacation between jobs, during which time I got in a little credit card debt. Well, quite a bit.

In any event, this week I’m officially debt-free. So that’s nice to have finally achieved. Also good to finally put my money into future things, instead of past expenses.

Otherwise, today was sort of blah. Wasn’t very inspired this morning with the book, but pushed through it and got some work done. Delayed the gym, since the rain pounding on the window didn’t really inspire going outside. Did my job, again an OK day, but certainly nothing brilliant. Gave it what I had, though. Took an afternoon break, and got my cardio in, as well. Surprisingly, I was able to hobble down to the gym (did a leg workout on Saturday, and I’m still recovering) but it somehow doesn’t impact my ability to do cardio for 45 minutes.

A lot of people waited for that break in the weather, it seems. We actually had a gym person walking around with a sign telling us we had to limit our cardio to only 30 minutes. So, I did limit my cardio sessions. First I put in 17 minutes, and no one was waiting for the machines at that time, so I reset it to the machine setting, which is 28 minutes. I also showed the workout countdown timer for the latter workout, so it was clear I was doing a workout of less than 30 minutes, oh well… I never complain or look how long people are working out, and hate the pacers going around looking who should be done, or done next. Calm down, it will open up.

So, kind of a blah day, will just put it out of its misery and go to bed, wake up and fire on all cylinders. Tomorrow is a cardio AND back workout day, AND I have a 8:30 a.m. international call for work, so I can’t push the gym off until later. Gotta stick to the schedule tomorrow.

Well, I just spent the last 4.5 hours doing all the line edits for the novel. I think there was a disconnect of getting up at 4 a.m. and then doing something brainless. So, now, when I get up, my goal is to fix the overall book, remove some of the middle, move some character stuff around, and fix the ending. Or, rather, put the ending in there that, in the last read-through, I was surprised I hadn’t written yet.

I think having something that demands mental energy and a more positive, challenging task is a better fit with the time at which I’m doing my work. It’s better to wake up to a puzzle and get invested in solving it than just “On page 34, there is an extraneous that. OK, that’s removed… On page 36…”

It took a while to do it, but there is a clear crossover as the book goes on. The front of the book has more line edits and less pink FIX THIS sections, but the end of the book has more pink and far less line edits. That’s not to say there weren’t line edits that could have been made, just that… well, if you’re going to be gutting while sections, why bother fixing sentences that are in mortal danger anyway?

Yesterday was fun, since I got to experience a rare live performance. I do appreciate performers who do matinees much more on this schedule, so I got to see Bill Cosby for the first time in person. Strangely enough, Bill Cosby may have been one of my first celebrity autographs ever. I remember being alone in NYC, so I had to be somewhat older, and saw a group of people standing at a stage door. I want to say it was Radio City Music Hall, and it very well may have been.

I didn’t see him perform, but the people were there hoping to get his autograph after his show. I didn’t even see his show, but hung out to get one, as well, as I was a big fan of The Cosby Show. But as it got later, and no Cosby, it was getting close to when my bus was departing from Port Authority. So, I went into a stationary store, and bought a pack of however many index cards were in a pack and a stamp. I put a stamp on one index card, filled out my own address, and gave it to one of the people at the very front of the line that I’d talked to earlier, telling her I had to leave, but could she get him to sign in. A few days later, it showed up in the mail. I have no clue if I still have that anywhere.

Seeing him for the first time was nice. It’s just amazing how easy he makes it all seem, but that discounts his 50 years doing it onstage at this point (He’s 71 now). He told more than two hours of stories, and is just as smooth and as funny as you can imagine. It will certainly make my next trip to a comedy club different, showing how green they are, how anxious, how unwilling to let a joke build, and grow, and wait, and when the payoff finally hits, just sit there because you know it’s funny.

Definitely worth seeing. He comes out with a bottle of water that he barely touched the whole time, a box of tissues mainly used for a visual, and no other notes or anything else. One thing that puzzled me was over his chair (oh yeah, at 71, he’s not exactly a stand-up comic anymore), before he came out, there was a T-shirt draped over it that said “Hello Friend,” which seemed a sweet, low-rent way to greet the audience. Then, he came out wearing a sweatshirt that also had “Hello Friend” in block letters across the front.

I kept wondering what Hello Friend meant, but poking around online, you can quickly discover that “Hello Friend” was the typical greeting of his son Ennis, who was murdered a while back. Cosby and his wife also started a foundation called Hello Friend that gives money to learning disabilities, which is the career Ennis was studying to enter when he was killed.

It was a somber coda to the event to read all that, but in a way reinforced how amazing Bill is. I especially liked how he did an extended bit on the Garden of Eden, dissecting a lot of the inconsistencies in the story. He really should be putting out more comedy CDs. As near as I can tell, his last stand-up release in audio or video was Bill Cosby Himself in 1983!

But yeah, definitely worth seeing a master at the top of his game and seeming to be having such a good time this many decades in.

Just noticed something this week that needs to be changed, which is… I’m good at adhering to the new schedule, but I’m not embracing it yet. It seems like I view it as a to-do list, and not an amazing opportunity.

It’s just “OK, I’m up… let’s work on the book…”

And that vibe sort of flows all day. “Now I go to the gym… now it’s time to work… ”

Whereas the proper thing to think is that I’ve reorganized my life so that I can create art and finish a book I believe in with characters I love. Just this morning, I added two lines to the book and smiled at how much fun it was to be the puppet master and make a character do something completely against type (but plausible in the situation).

That needs to be the point. I’m not a fan of the schedule, and possibly never will be, but if this gets words on the page, so be it.

I think the difficult part is, and will remain, that it’s hard to go to bed so early. I used to go to work, including commute days on 3 or 4 hours sleep (and caffeine, of course), so now I’ve not only flipped my schedule but I’m also demanding 8 hours because I can’t create unless I’m well rested.

Not to mention, when you’re awake, tired, it’s dark out, and 4 in the morning, there’s an easy solution. But one nap and then you’re not tired that night at 8 p.m. and you screwed up the schedule for two days.

So, yeah, definitely need to switch this around so it’s less like something I have to do, and think of it as an amazing opportunity to create that I’m giving myself. Of course, this isn’t self-deception, just the truth.

This morning was the first day of actually working on the text for the fourth draft and changing it. Not reading it and making notes. Not thinking about the new ending. But the roll-up-your-sleeves time and work on Chapter One. Admittedly, the hardest chapter to work on, it’s been so worked-over at this point.

Today was also the switch from the alarm radio back to the Zen Alarm Clock, so I woke up with a bell quietly chiming (The radio would blare 15 minutes later, just in case).

Today’s lesson was to treat the revision marks as two different processes. When I was revising the draft old-school pen on paper style, there were two pens involved. My black pen made any additions and revisions, and my pink marker indicated where I was to refer to the notes for more detailed instructions.

So, I wake up this morning and start in with the revisions, but it’s sort of anti-climactic, since I’m waking up at this crazy-early hour and it’s just “OK… two paragraphs down from here, remove the word ‘the’ in the second sentence… OK now, on the next page, make that long sentence into two shorter sentences…”

That won’t happen again. Anymore, the only stuff that will be ready for me to review in a chapter are the pink marker sections, where I’m actually changing and improving the text. Because the start of the writing window was sort of mundane housekeeping, it never really broke into an amazing session. It’s all progress, but I have a higher goal for what happens these mornings. So, I already went through and did the line edits for Chapter Two, so as long as I stay ahead of myself on the line edits, that won’t be a problem.

Also, upon waking up, I made breakfast. Well, made is a stretch. Pour fiber into bowl, disembowel a banana, drown both in fat-free vanilla soymilk. Then I put on a YouTube while I ate.

New strategy. Before I go to bed, launch Word and set it to where the work should begin the next morning. Bell goes off. Make breakfast. Sit down and start working. Eating can stretch throughout the writing window, it doesn’t have to be completed before stuff can begin.

But this is all part of the routine of rebuilding a routine. And, speaking of routine, it is time to hit the gym, do my cardio and, yes, start weight training.

So, not the most exciting of weekends as far as extra-curricular activity, but definitely did some good work. I powered through the entire third draft of my novel as I prepare to tackle the fourth. I had been going linear, until I read in a few books that you need to read the whole work in a short period of time so you know the big picture and can edit toward that. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of line edits.

Some observations:
– For some strange reason, I was really adverse to contractions. Like, if the whole point is pulling readers through the book and keeping up a quick pace, contractions are your friend. I actually wrote on the inside cover of the third draft all the phrases that could become contracted, so that will be a separate find/replace exercise, although that probably has to occur outside the main writing window, since that’s a bit too mundane for filling the whole window outright. Maybe that will be an eBay commute task on the laptop.
– I used to overuse the word “that” a lot, but for some reason, there were a ton of extraneous “just”s. I can’t even think of one in the context I dislike, but they’re in there.
– Completely retooling the ending is actually more cutting than rewriting, and it’s completely surgical, only 2-3 references earlier in the book need to be massaged for it to work. It was nice being in Chapter 2 and seeing something stand out as half a sentence that can be tweaked to set up the ending.
– There’s a whole middle section I never liked much, but I used to always find reasons to keep it. I didn’t find those reasons this time.

And, the part that always surprises me and I hope indicates I’m on the right track: once again, after how many freaking years now, I still enjoyed reading it. That still seems strange.

On other fronts, it looks like my job is kinda-sorta safe, a few shenanigans in the way I’m paid, and it continues. In a bad economy, that’s great news.

This week, although I may have promised this last week and not followed through, I start weight training on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. Those are typically non-commute days, so even after waking up at 4 a.m. to work on the book, there’s enough time to fit in cardio and lifting.

I’m a bit torn on my cardio workouts. With no TV, and only commuting two days, I’ve been working out while watching TV. The other day, I didn’t feel like watching anything, so I just did music and it was a LOT faster and I burned a lot more calories, so I’m sort of like, “Dude, more music.” That said, on the heart rate monitor, I’m still at the beginning of the cardio zone, not dipped down into the fat burning zone, and I do keep my heart rate where it’s supposed to be. So, I’m sure it’s fine.

The job sticking around is very good news, as I’m debt-free in two weeks, so I’ll be able to start funneling the money into savings a little, but then fund my web projects Vegocentric and the next generation of Oasis, turning both into full-on social networks, with Vego hopefully even generating some revenue at some point.

Well, time to chill out now, so I can fall asleep in an hour (8:15p). This schedule does require attention. It could go off the rails easily.