Writing like the Wind

So I've had a couple of good days writing, and I'm rushing toward the middle of the novel. Somehow I just have more drive to write these days, the story is flowing like the Niagara falls after heavy rain.

I have decided to drop the flowery prose and get the plot out of the way, which seems to work. Once the story is out, I can colour the picture with characterisation and scene setting. So I lowered my targeted word count for the first draft, in order to leave myself with some space during the second draft rewrites to add in descriptions etc.

Don't worry. Since I'm not a fan of overly long descriptive passages, there won't be too many of them. I write what I would like to read, and I don't read passages that looks like they'll be boring. And you will never find me writing a scene describing a sunset in three pages. I'm just not that guy.

I guess it's my history of stage work, where much of the action is character and dialogue driven that lead me to this. Either that or my fondness for film and television.

Anyhow, I wrote almost 10k since 12 January so I am extremely happy. Now I just have to get a grip on this villain and all will be right with this book.

Happy writing,

L

A Quick Catch-Up

So 2011 came barrelling at me with the intent to maim or kill. Seriously, It is already the 25th and already enough things have been happening to fill up at least a chapter or two in my biography. (If you are reading this somewhere far in the future, you are welcome to use this blog as a source to describe the sheer awesomeness that is me).

This year I have decided that I will attempt to do all those things I've been putting off for a while.

The novel
I have set a deadline for the completion of my novel, and have called in the help of the cavalry with the pointy sticks to make sure that I deliver. My manuscript will be completed before or on my birthday. I am about halfway (after I deleted almost 5000 words because I did not like the direction the story was going) and I'm writing like a maniac.

The Masters Degree
Now I may or may not be completely insane, but I have decided to start doing my Masters degree in Criminology this year. I have decided on a topic and had preliminary discussions with the University yesterday. I still have a couple of things that I need to confirm/research before I make my final application, but it seems that I will get the approval I need to carry on.

From there on I have to do the burocratic two-step while jumping through hoops and cutting through about two rolls of red tape. If all goes well, I can start doing my research by mid-next year. I will be blogging about the process, keeping everyone informed about where I stand.

The Writers Blog
Along with the rest of my writer's group we started a writer's blog called Writers in Training, where we share our experiences of the writing process with other aspiring writers. We're in week three already and it is going well.

Crumbling Ruins
In December a couple of us (Dave, Jani, Craig and myself) were having one of our usual random discussions on Twitter when an idea was born. We were going to write a post-apocalyptic novel set in South Africa. It started out as a joke, but 9 chapters in it has turned into something a bit more serious (although still funny).

We each take turns to write a chapter and at the end of each chapter we try to leave the next person in as much doo doo as possible. This has led to a multitude of very interesting situations (including four people in one port-a-potty (as I said: As much doo doo as possible)) and a lot of gleeful "good luck in getting out this" emails which, in my head, is followed by maniacal laughter.

Look out for this, it is going to take the world by storm.

So that's my January 2011 update.

My 2010

This time of the year the internet is full of posts about "The best of" lists etc etc. I thought I'd share a bit about what 2010 meant to me.

This year has been one of the best years of my life. It has been rough, it has been unpredictable and it has been unbelievably fun. 2010 has been my year of friends and fun, of taking risks and following dreams. This year I learnt that it is OK if things change without my consent and that not all change is bad. I learnt that you do not have to meet a person in real life for them to change yours, and that you can have the best friends that you have never met. I have seen the kindness of strangers in support of people they barely know, and I have seen best friends become enemies.

In 2010 I learnt that although a lot of choices in my life might not have been the best, those choices made me the person that I am today. I have learnt that mistakes can never ruin your life unless you let them. I have learnt that a broken heart does heal. I have learnt what the word "love" truly means.

Love is one of those strange concepts that a lot of people throw around without thinking what it means. Think about what you are saying the next time you exclaim: "I love those shoes!". I have learnt that love is not a two way street, it is not a give and take concept. To truly love, is to give without hesitation or restraint. I learnt that love has nothing to do with romance. When I exclaimed loudly and passionately that I do not believe in love I was mistaken. I believe in love, I live the philosophy of love every day.

This year I have met people who have changed my life forever. Some of them I only spoke to once or twice, some of them have become part of my closest friends. This year I have laughed and cried. I saw two of my best friends get married, two people who go together like curry and rice. I got to share in their joy because seeing them so happy made me happy. I had the opportunity to tell them how much they mean to me.

This year I got to follow my dream. I am writing a novel, and although the process is a lot harder than I thought it would be (and I was not under the impression that it would be a walk in the park), I have found a way to express myself. I also got to meet my writing circle, people who through their support and encouragement carried me through the more difficult times behind the keyboard.

2010 was my year of Twitter (of course I was going to mention this). Through Twitter I discovered a whole new world filled with people who were a) not idiots and b) sincere (for the most part). I realised that people who should be strangers to me, became a part of my life. When I miss their morning greetings, or our daily random conversations about the most arbitrary stuff I feel as if a part of my routine has been skipped, as if I'm wearing only one sock.

These people became close friends, and one day I want to travel to the US, Europe and the UK to meet some of them. Hell, my first trip for 2011 is to the other side of my country to meet some of them.

This year I also learnt to say thank you, and I want to say thank you again. To each and every person who inspired me, helped me and supported me. Thank you to those who put up with my moods and tantrums, when the nicotine, caffeine and anti depressants just did not help any more. Thank you for believing in me, encouraging me and sometimes threatening me. Thank you, for being my friends.

2011 is going to be my year again, better yet: 2011 is going to be my dream year!

And yes, I am going to leave you with my "Best of" list, because I can.

Best book of 2010: The Passage by Justin Cronin
Best debut of 2010: Spellwright by Blake Charlton
Best Audio Book of 2010: I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
Most anticipated book of 2010: Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Best Film of 2010: Inception
Most anticipated Film of 2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Best Musical Score in a film: Inception
Best Graphics and effects: Alice in Wonderland
Favourite Animation of 2010: How to Train Your Dragon

Favourite Game of 2010: Dead Rising 2
Most anticipated game of 2010: Final Fantasy XIII

Favourite News event of 2010: "Don't touch me on my studio"
Spine tingling moment of 2010: SA's first goal in the 2010 Fifa World Cup when a whole country cheered at the same time

I hope you all have a happy New Year, may 2011 bring you only pleasure and opportunity!

Writing update...

I like statistics. Statistics make me feel safe. It also helps me make sense of what I am doing. So I started doing writing stats a couple of weeks back and I though I'd share it with you. These are the stats for my current WIP, for the moment called "Fated Children".

Words written: 25718
Chapters written: 9
Average word count per chapter: 2857.556
% completed: 21.43166667
Wordcounts per chapter:
1      2987
2      3126
3      2339
4      3203
5      3365
6      2631
7      2711
8      2541
9      2815

I wanted to make some graphs and charts, but I'll spare you.

Am I not nice?

Happy writing,

L

A slow week and a writing epiphany

You know those slow weeks where life just continues on and nothing really interesting happens? Well, I had a couple of those in a row. So with nothing interesting happening, I decided not to bore you to tears with the inane details of my non-existent life.

Then I went on leave, and I thought: "Maybe I'll blog." BAd idea, I sat staring at th screen trying to find inspiration for a blog post and gave up. Now that I'm back from leave, I actually have stuff to say. Well, not really, but I thought I'd update you guys in anycase.

The writing wasn't going too well. I wrote a total of 3000 words for the first part of September, which is way too little in my opinion. Then I eralised what I was doing wrong, and my approach to writing changed.

I had this epiphany on Sunday: I was approaching my novel the wrong way, I had no clear direction, just a vague idea of beginning, middle and end. The process in between was pretty much an exercise in discovery writing. But this epiphany wasn't entirely life changing, not yet in any way.

On Monday I started plotting the "in between" bits, and I realised that I was glad that I waited this long to do it. Most of my plot ideas came from thoughts I had while "discovering" my novel in the first 25k words of the novel, they only had to be refined. I plotted up to the halfway mark, and the plotting made me so excited that I stopped right there and started writing again.

And this is where I realised how I wrote. You see, since this is my first novel I had no idea how I would approach writing. I've always been the "set-a-goal-and-get-there-by-any-means-possible" kind of guy, so I jumped in and started writing.

So when the next book comes around I will do the same. I will start off and write the story to get familiar with the characters and the world. As their stories take shape in my head, I will sit down and plot the rest of the novel out.

I cannot garuantee that this will work for anyone other than myself, and I cannot garuantee that my characters won't surprise me along the way, but this is my plan and I'm sticking to it.

Happy writing,

Lood

Finally back online

It has been a strange couple of weeks in internetland for me. Firstly, blogger and blogspot got blocked by our IT crowed on the same day that my home network decided that is's speed would drop down to that of a cripple indian running telegram, causing abovementioned sites to time out. So blogging was out for me.

Apparently, so was writing. I only managed to write about 1500 words in the last two weeks, an average of just more than 100 a day. It's bad. But now I'm back on track. I know where this story is supposed to go. Sort of. If the characters let me. If they don't I'm going to make them fat and kill them.

Just a warning. If you are my character and reading this and you do not want to triple in size, play along. I'm not talking again.

Otherwise I might just prematurely kill one of my babies...

Lethologica

My brain is going to mush. I blame a stressful combination of work, writing and personal issues for that. You see, I managed to start suffering from lethologica, but not in any clinical sense, and I don't think it's necessary to go see a specialist but it is impacting negatively on my writing.

You see, when a person wants to write a sentence, they usually have an idea of what they want to say, so they sit down and write it down using the words and phrases that best articulate their thoughts at that time. I thought it might also be because English isn't my first language. I find myself knowing what I want to say in Afrikaans, but having to write it in English and somehow those thoughts don't always translate well. But it is part of the writer's bane, I suppose.

At the moment my head is swimming with story, and every piece of the story demands my immediate, undivided attention. The words want to break out and tell the story to the point that my fingers struggle to keep up with my brain. I think if it was up to my enthusiasm, this novel would be finished this week.

I have spoken to a couple of fellow writers, and read the same thing on a couple of author blogs and I must say that I've had a similar experience. The first 10 000 words were the hardest. It took me four months to hit 10k, and only two weeks to write the next 3000. I would like to describe this as the "honeymoon" period in my writing. The story is well on its way and the only thing standing in its way is the fact that it has to be channelled through me, an ordinary human being that has to try and keep one foot in the real world - if only so that I have food to eat.

I have another theory as to why there seems to be periods in time that writing just flows. There are two other writers in my writing circle, The Writing Circle That Has Yet To Be Named (although Dave calls us his fellow WITs - apparently that stands for Writers In Training) and between the thee of us we go through the same kind of writing spurts/slumps. A couple of weeks ago real life decided to get in the way of me writing and for the month of July I wrote a total of 1500 words. Disgusting, I know. But it seemed to me, and they're free to correct me if I'm wrong, that my fellow WITs had a similar issue - The words were just not getting out.

I blame the Universe, or thank it depending on what time of day you ask me. Maybe nature provides these slumps for our weary brains to rest a while, to gain perspective on our stories and give the seeds time to germinate, so to speak. It was just strange that it happened for three people roughly at the same time.

Isn't nature just wonderful?

My writing life

It seems to be the thing to do these days, blogging about writing. At least for me. Since I started taking this writing "career" of mine seriously, I am learning a lot from the other people. So I thought I'd chronicle my experiences on this blog, amongst all the other things I blog about.

Writing time
In the last few weeks, I've gained truckloads of respect for some of my fellow writers. I'm talking about the brave guys and gals holding down a day job, running a family and keeping up with the Joneses inbetween producing staggeringly beautiful and creative works of fiction (and non-fiction).

As many people here in South Africa know, full time writing as a South African is limited to a privileged few. Many SA authors have to have a day job, or at least do freelance work in order to pay the bills and put food on the table. Include in this those pesky social responsibilities and you're not left with much time to do what you love.

Most of us, I assume, try to do the next best thing. We declare "me-time" or "writing-time" where we switch off the internet, hide our cellphones and lock ourselves in a room to write write write. We also steal a few moments here and there. A quick email to oneself with a great line you thought of while stuck in a meeting, planning characters while stuck in Joburg traffic or making a quick note in one of the myriad of notebooks secreted in and around your daily living space.

Thanks to these moments, I have a wonderfully developed world for my Fantasy novel, with many fine details ironed out, and although my word count hasn't even broken 10 000 (officially) I have a good idea where this story is going.

Now if only I could find a way to make it unnecessary for me to sleep, and all will be well in this world.

Deadspin.com almost killed me

I have found a new favourite online haunt. It's the #ballsdeep feature on deadspin.com. It is absolutely fucking hilarious! Now the author of #ballsdeep (whose name I just cannot be bothered to look up right now) supply us with some of the funniest shit I've come across in a long time. First he had the "Public Humiliation Diet". He claimed to have undergone this transformation:

Not drastic, but noticable. The "how" however, had me in stitches. Click on the picture and go read it. Then, naturally, I had to read the other articles. Now the diet one doesn't even crack a smile on my face any more.


Here's a post that I found on the "Gay Mexican Edition", where the author plays agony aunt for readers' sexlives, or whatever the sarcastic i-could-hardly-give-a-fuck edition of an agony aunt is.

Women much like Susan Sarandon's Annie Savoy character in "Bull Durham" exist, insofar that they're cougars on the prowl for young baseball players, at least. During a summer league down south a few years back, my buddy was at a bar when he encountered one such woman. She was eying him from the bar and so, upon the encouragement of some of his teammates (who knew what he was in for but felt it wiser that he find out for himself), he played the game of drink buying and small talk until they withdrew back to her place.

Things were pretty standard to start off: they popped open another round of drinks, started making out and then some clothes came off. She told him to sit tight in the living room while she ran into the bedroom to get ready. At this point he was pretty excited to see what came next. After a couple minutes, she opened the door and beckoned him to come join her. Imagine his surprise, then, upon seeing a chair with a tarp spread out underneath on the floor.

Here's where the anal beads come into play. She has him sit down and tells him, while swinging around a string of anal beads, that she's going to very slowly insert the anal beads while she goes down on him. Naturally my buddy is a wee bit nervous at the idea, but he's had enough liquid courage to shrug his shoulders and give the go-ahead. So she starts doing her thing from both ends, making sure to mention just before she begins that he has to tell her when he's about to blow his load.And this is where the tarp comes in. She's blowing and slowly inserting and my buddy, for the most part, is thoroughly enjoying the experience. The beads aren't doing much but she's a consummate professional in the sloppy yawn department. A few minutes in and he's about to go Ol' Faithful. And right as he does, he tells her.

And right as he tells her, she yanks out the beads. And right as she yanks out the beads, he blows two loads: one from the front and one from the back. Hence the tarp.To this day he swears he's never had such a brain-exploding orgasm as that night. But that didn't change the fact that he had just shat all over this woman's bedroom floor, tarp-covered or not. She obviously didn't mind, but he was too embarrassed after that. I still give him shit for it (figuratively) because my argument is if that's how the first performance went, imagine what she'd have in store for an encore.

I mean seriously. Can anyone make this shit up? (pun intended) I would not be able to! But these stories will inspire scenes in my upcoming novels, just because they are so ridiculously funny I have to share.

So now you wonder, how did this poor man almost die (me, not the guy with the mind/ass blowing orgasm)? Well, imagine you are having your afternoon tea, lazily chewing on an eat-sum-more and you read the words: "And right as he tells her, she yanks out the beads. And right as she yanks out the beads, he blows two loads: one from the front and one from the back."

I'm still coughing up crumbs and trying to remove coffee stains from my pc.

Dear Universe...

So I had the most eventful morning. I woke up, hung over with stomach cramps (which I'm 90% sure is unrelated to the alcohol consumption) and decided to spend the day in bed. Then at 4:29 my phone rings, it's a colleagues wife. He needs a lift because, I kid you not, a drunk guy drove into their gate and then passed out, blocking their exit.

So I drag myself out of bed and was ready to leave by 4:45. Then I get the sms that says "don't worry, got out, take a benelyn day". But I'm already on my way to the car. So I go to work.

Halfway through Pretoria, said colleague calls again. He had a flat on the highway. I think "WTF?" this was 5 to 5. Because I live aan the gatkant of everything, I got to work after him (at 5:30), and decided to do what every miserable sad irish-person-who-was-diddled-by-daddy does, and write about it.

Thank you universe for my inspiration. I could not make this shit up if I was hopped up on smack.

I could most probably make other shit up if I was hopped up on smack, but it would be more gruesome and less funny. Speaking of being hopped up on smack, have you seen the new Olympic mascots for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. I'm sure there were a lot of illegal substances involved in this, or a Japanese guy or 2. Take a look: (Image taken from the Telegraph website...)

Apparently they had 40 focus groups involved in this project. I'm pretty sure they found the people for these focus groups at local Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Seriously WTF?