Staying Busy - Helped by the To Do List

If you've read this blog for very long, or my other blog about my writing life, you know I stay busy, really busy. Most of it is of my own doing, as I choose how to live my life. Some of it is "have to do stuff," such as maintaining house and vehicles. I'm pretty good at preparing and following to-do lists at work, not so good at home. But I do make them for outside work, and sometimes they help me. Last night was a perfect example.

I left the office around 5:30 p.m., stopping by the bank and grocery store on the way home, needing only a few items. Earlier I had prepared a to-do list for the evening, and knew, without referring to the list, all the things I needed to do. Among those things only one was something I could do that day and only that day: pick blackberries.

Okay, so that's an exaggeration. I can pick blackberries any day. But only today will I find certain blackberries at a perfect stage of ripeness. A day later and they'll be over-ripe; a day early and they'll not be as sweet as they could be. Yes, picking blackberries in the roadside bushes around the neighborhood was on the to-do list, even though I picked a pint at work on my noon hour.

But as I looked at the items on the list, I realized picking blackberries was perhaps the least important of all I had to do. So instead I did the following.

• Continue clean-up of the debris from our recent tree topping. I finished moving one pile to the street side, where on Saturday I'll load it in the pick-up and take it to the stump dump, and I drug another pile off into the woods. Some of the piles are so far down the hill that bringing them up to the street is much too much work. Easier to take them into the woods. Then I cut some of the larger limbs into moveable lengths/weights, and continued to pile them for later cutting into firewood length. I still have much to do on this, but it's looking better, much better.
• Continue to enter our expenses into my budgeting spreadsheet. I allowed myself to get way behind on this, as well as on filing. Night before last I picked up this long neglected task and made some progress. Last night I did the same, with additional progress. At the rate I'm going I'll be caught up on the spreadsheet early next week. Then I'll see about filing.
• Work on Documenting America, Civil War Edition. I completed chapter 1 in this, and worked on proper entries in the writing diary for it. This is early in the process, but I'm pleased with how it is at this time.
• When I finished my work for the night on DA-CWE, it was 9:30 p.m. Lots of time left in the evening to do something else. But what? The written to-do list wasn't in front of me, but I had it in mind. I remembered that I have two books I want to format for print editions. I decided to do this work on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. It's not hard at all, though it can be tedious. I chose paper size, changed the "Normal" style for font, input headers and footers, and added the front matter. This brought me to around 10:30 p.m. I quickly went through the book to look for oddities, and found and changed some. Then, I noticed that I had mixed up the left hand and right hand page headers. So I switched those around, chapter by chapter. That took me to around 11:15, which was later than I had intended to work on it. But it was done, or mostly done. Tonight I'll look at it and see if anything needs changing. But for sure it's very close.

That was far from everything on the list. And the blackberries didn't get picked. I decided a few can just get over-ripe, and the birds and bugs can have them. I'll try to pick a few tonight.

Family Time

This has been a different holiday weekend, sort of. July 6 is the birthday of my mother-in-law, Esther Moler Cheney Barnes. So we are normally close to home on this weekend, spending time with her. It's no. 89 this year, so next year will be a big one.

This year our weekend included work. Friday Lynda and I worked in the yard. I'm still working on clearing away from the tree trimming, while Lynda is planting flowers and vegetables in pots. She has some nice flower arrangements, as well as two pepper and four tomato plans, all in pots. Next year, possibly, I'll have prepared some ground down in the back yard for a real garden, but this year it's just pots.

I drug a bunch of leafy branches far down into the woods. Cleared off the outer-most row of brush piles. then I hauled some from the upper part of the backyard to the street and loaded the pickup to take to the stump dump. I rested a while, then trimmed some of our front bushes, which were way overdue for trimming. They look good, though I only got about half of them trimmed. Next Saturday, perhaps, I'll get to the rest. Lynda also planted some hosta in the planter under the overhanging windows.

Saturday we did more of the same, though not as much and not as long. All in all, the front yard is looking good, and the backyard doesn't look quite so much like a disaster zone. Two more weekends of similar production, with a few hours of evening work, and the two yards will be in pretty good shape.

We also watched our neighbor's little dog this weekend, which has been enjoyable. He's easy to take care of. In fact, he seems to like being alone in the day time, so we just left him in his house most of the day and kept him here at night.

Lynda's two step sisters and their families came to town, one from Kansas City and one from OKC, for the birthday celebration. They all came over for supper last night. Ten of us gathered around our dining room table for taco salad and fruit salad for dessert. We had expected only eight, but two who weren't coming did. One family of four stayed with us last night. That gave me less time to prepare for Life Group lesson today, but that worked out okay, as we had to cut off the lesson a little early so we could head to the restaurant for the last part of the birthday celebration.

I'm full of Bob Evan's Sunshine Skillet breakfast. Would love to take a nap, but I know that as soon as I lay on the couch the to-do list will pop up in my mind and I'll be too restless to sleep. So, onward now to finish dropped plot lines in Headshots. Then maybe I'll take some time to format In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People for a paperback edition. Then, maybe, I'll work a little on my budgeting spreadsheet. Or maybe I'll leave that for tomorrow night.

So many things to do, most good choices. I guess I just like to keep busy.

Genre Focus Disorder - is it real?

I've said it before: I have Genre Focus Disorder (GFD). I called it by another name before, but GFD seems more appropriate. The experts in the publishing business say you should stick to one genre. Make a name for yourself in it, carve out a niche, become known, build an audience, and you'll do better. If you write in multiple genres, fans from one genre most likely won't follow you into another genre, and you will have to build separate audiences, carve out multiple niches.

On the other hand, some publishing veterans say experimenting with different genres during your pre-published time is acceptable. Once you sell something, however, use all your efforts to concentrate on that. This is said more from a trade publishing perspective than a self-publishing perspective, but it somewhat applies to the latter as well.

For me, however, I've found I have to write whatever I have inspiration for. I have mapped out books and short stories into the future that will probably consume all my writing time till old age claims it. I write sort of how water, when released from a container or hits land during precipitation, runs downhill or seeks its own level. That's good for productivity, but probably not so good for audience building and sales. Since I'm self-publishing, when I complete something, I publish. The 16 items I've self-published so far are in ten different genres. Of course, genre definition is difficult to pin down. Another person reading all my pieces may say they are in only eight genres.

Only eight?

So what has happened this year in my GFD? In March I published Thomas Carlyle's Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles. This was not for sales, though I've sold three copies. It was for practice at editing, formatting, cover creation, all things publishing, and it helped fulfill my fasciation with this Victorian behemoth. It was good practice. But what happened afterwards? Ideas for four different follow-ups to it came to mind, one of them book-length. That one wouldn't let me go. For three weeks I worked feverishly at it: researching the subject, contacting people, obtaining copies of documents old and new, and putting a bunch of stuff in a MS Word document. At the end of the three weeks time I had a book diary with many entries, and a file that is probably 70 percent of the eventual book, though subject to formatting. At that point I said "This is madness" and went back to other projects. But by that time the GFD attack had run its course.

So I completed three other projects. One was my novel, a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I had been working on it since October (I think), so it was good to get it out of the way. Then I did the work of formatting The Gutter Chronicles for print and publishing it. That was okay as it was always on the schedule. The next thing on my publishing schedule was to add "It Happened At The Burger Joint" to my items for sale, which I did. My schedule then was a little imprecise. I could pick up the novel sequel, Headshots, and edit it. I could work on the next short story in the Danny Tompkins series, or the next short story in the Sharon Williams series. Those were on the to-do list, and made sense. I knocked out the Tompkins story, and published it this past Monday. Even made my own cover.

But then, GFD reared. Actually it reared even before I had finished the short story, "Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral". I was in Little Rock last week for a two day conference, and was in the hotel room in the evenings without much to do. I had brought a number of things with me to fill my time, as I always do, not knowing for sure what I'll want to work on. One of them was a volume of the Annals of America series. I used this series to find source material for my book Documenting America. When I published that in 2011 I saw it as the start to a possible series. I thought the next one would be from the civil war era, and the one after that would be from the pre-constitution era, focusing on the development of the constitution. But I had no hurry in doing either. Well, I suppose the civil war one could be considered subject to a deadline, since we are in the period of the civil war sesquicentennial and books about it might do better if released then.

But really, it wasn't necessary to work on this. I had my completed novel manuscript with me, and could begin editing in the quiet of the hotel. But the civil war book wouldn't let me go. I spent the first evening scanning documents in the Annals, and figuring out which ones to use as source material. I know how long I want the book, how long I want each chapter to be, thus how many chapters I need, and, knowing a fair amount of civil war history, know what subjects are needed. In one long evening, including getting to bed much too late (but who can sleep when GFD is at its strongest), I had the whole book planned, all but six or seven of the source documents identified, and even some specific parts of some source documents marked for extraction. I thought, Ah, GFD has now run its course. Back to my publishing schedule.

Not so. Monday and Tuesday of this week I was prohibited from working outside (I have much yard work to do) due to a combination of rain and a fall resulting in minor injuries. So what did I do? Instead of picking up and editing the novel, I worked on finding more source documents for the civil war book! And this morning I created the Word file. It is now officially a writing project. The pull of this book has become very great over the last week. What's going to happen for the rest of the week?

I really need to get back to my novel. I'd like to have that published in July, and need to give it two full rounds of edits before doing so, maybe even three rounds. I'm hoping to begin editing it this weekend, maybe by reading it aloud with my wife. So that gives me only a couple of days to allow GFD to run wild. I can handle that. Perhaps it will burn out. Then, when the civil war book comes up in the publishing schedule, which is maybe in October, I'll have a nice start to it and be able to build on. GFD flare-up concluded.

Except, I may have found a cover illustrator for my poetry book, Father Daughter Day. Which means I'll have work to do on it. Argh! Is there no end to it?

Writing—but not

This past weekend I was up a little early for a Saturday. I could tell Lynda was in the deepest part of her sleep cycle, and likely wouldn't be up for a while. My desktop computer, which is where I do most of my volume writing, was at the medic (still is) for an operating system transplant and other related computer health issues. All that was available for me to type on was the Dell Inspiron laptop. I don't much like typing on this, or any, laptop. But the house was quiet, I didn't have a lot of outside work to do, so I decided to write away.

I began by rereading a good chunk of the last two chapters I'd written, making a few edits as I went. I took note of two fill-in scenes that were needed. One was already marked as to subject, the other wasn't. What had I intended there? My plans were to read the novel during the weekend, so I put aside trying to figure out what that scene would be and set to writing new material.

An hour and a half later, when Lynda was up and I was reaching a good stopping point, I had about 1,800 words written. That was a good output for that much time, I reckoned. And on a laptop, not a desktop! I was quite pleased, and went outside for my home maintenance tasks, clearing a mound of oak pollen from gutter shields, driveway, and sidewalk; weeding in the rock front yard; clearing deadfall sticks from the front yard; sweeping the garage. Maybe a few more tasks.

After this was lunch. I knew I should walk after that, but all the up and down ladder work getting to the gutters had me tuckered out. I laid my head back in my reading chair and fell asleep. It was only a short nap, and I was ready for the next thing. Lynda was at the laptop, but that was okay, as I thought I should get to my reading. I went to the Florida room, ensconced with my printed manuscript, a box of crackers, and coffee. Two or three hours later I was 100 pages into the 237 page manuscript. I was reading for the purpose of refreshing my mind on the plot. However, if I found a typo I marked it (about 5); if I saw a place indicated for more information I supplied it (if I could); if I encountered awkward wording I edited it.

The evening gave me no chance to get to either writing or manuscript reading, between preparing to teach Life Group lesson the next day and reading aloud with Lynda. Sunday began with church, lunch, and my 3.1 miles walk. After a brief cool-down I was back in the room and at work reading. By 6:30 p.m. I had the full manuscript read and marked, and a pretty good idea of where the plot needed to go. I even had the subject of that other fill-in scene identified.

Alas, Monday night gave me no time to work on the text. Still no desktop so sharing the laptop. We were reading A Study In Scarlet aloud, and were within striking distance of finishing it, so we did. Tonight, hopefully, I'll get back to the writing. When I left off Saturday I was a little over 70,000 total words, with 1,500 of them in what I call the book ending section. I had been thinking all along that this book would be 70,000 to 80,000 words, with the ending section taking up 15,000 to 20,000 of those. I'm not too far off, it seems. Right now I'd guess it will come in around 85,000 words, perhaps a little higher. That will be slightly shorter than the predecessor book, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People.

The end is in sight. But I've said that before. I really hoped to have it published by now. Alas, I'm a month or two away still. But it's inching closer. Ideas have gelled for the front cover, and some are starting to come for the back cover.

Yes, the end is in sight.

On Baseball Slumps and Rained-out Games

Those few people who have read my baseball novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, know that the almost super-human feats of Ronny Thompson, ace pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, depends in part on rain delays. By the time the playoffs come around, Thompson seems to be the only Cubs' pitcher who can win a game. His normal rotation is to pitch every fourth day, but his manager bumps that up to every third day in the playoffs.

That begins in the NLDS. He pitches game 2 in Atlanta, then due to a rain delay he gets to pitch game 4 in Chicago to even the series at 2-2. After a day of travel, someone else is going to pitch game 5 in Atlanta. But, instead of a rain delay, it turns out major vandalism (terrorism?) had rendered the lights inoperable, along with the back-up system. Thompson then pitches the rescheduled game 5, and wins, propelling the Cubs into the NLCS against St. Louis.

Part of what Thompson and the Cubs are facing is a slump by their two best hitters, and a series of poor performances by their best relief pitcher, the man who usually comes on in the 9th and closes out the game. What has caused these slumps? Are they the natural result of the ebb and flow of any athlete's abilities? Some days you're hot, some days you're not? Or is it a case of bribery? The New York mobster who has bet against the Cubs is becoming more desperate, and he has associates more than willing to do his bidding. Bribing a few players is like old-time gangsterism. The Cubs' manager has a decision to make: Does he bench the slumping players?

The New York Yankees are experiencing this now. The slump by four of their starting hitters is deep, deeper in fact than the slump that the Cubs' stars sink into in the novel. And yesterday they experienced a rain delay. Now the manager has an extra option on the table as far as his starting pitcher tonight in the rescheduled game. Does he have an ace available tonight who wouldn't have been available last night?

Baseball is a good game for these kind of strategies. It's interesting to see the situation I wrote in the novel coming true in real life this playoff season.

All Consuming

[typed this once and lost it all; I'll try to recreate]
Yesterday, at the close of a busy day, I made out a to-do list for when I got home. Nothing fancy, just a list of six items I wanted to accomplish that evening, such as "go through mail" and "return EMB taxes to file". One item was "write at least 500 words on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People". One, "prep book for mailing", I decided to leave till at work. I also had a few unwritten items on the list.

When I got home, after heating up leftovers for us, I did a few chores that had been accumulating that I wanted to get done before I would allow myself to tackle the to-do list. That took till almost 8:00 PM, at which time I went into The Dungeon. I did just a couple of things on e-mail and Facebook (part of the unwritten list), then went straight to writing.

First I re-read what I wrote the previous night, and made a few edits to it. Then I began new stuff. The characters are beginning to converge on New York City for baseball reasons. By 10:00 PM I had 1,408 words added, a complete chapter, and had finally filled in the gap between a scene I wrote a year ago and all that comes before it. That was a good feeling. I did a little more editing, and headed upstairs around 10:30 PM to relax before going to bed. I read for almost an hour, a most enjoyable time. Then I went to give myself my Lantus shot, and there, next to my kit on the kitchen table, was the to-do list. I had forgotten about it. All I could cross off wast the writing portion. For everything else, 11:30 PM was too late to be doing it.

All my time to work my list had been consumed with writing. Why does it consume me so? Why did I, when my butt occupied my writing chair, forget all I intended to do and focus so exclusively on writing that my plans were not just laid aside, they were forgotten?

Of course, I was writing important stuff. Most of it was scenes that had been playing out in my mind for months, but which I didn't want to write ahead of other text. Other stuff was new, such as how I decided to have the protagonist's parents miss the most important game of his career through an airport going through a security breach. Important scenes should take concentration to write. But, all scenes in a novel are supposed to be important.

There I go again, letting my characters and story overwhelm even this post. Somehow I have to find a better balance, to be able to write yet carve out some time for other needed things, those things that must be done for me to be a good Christian, husband, father, grandfather, employee, churchman, and homeowner. Maybe by the time I start the next novel I'll find that balance. With only ten to fifteen thousand words to go on this one, I don't think I'm going to care much if I find the balance before I write, "The End."

Early Fall Prediction

Lunch: small in volume, calories, and carbs
Temperature: 74 F
Wind: NW between 5 and 10 mph
Sky: not a cloud to be seen
Knees: painful
Blood sugar: feeling normal
Woolly worms: out in force
Characters: in my head

Thus was my noon hour walk, just concluded. It was very pleasant. Even though my knees were aching, they've been worse recently, and the knowledge that the walk was good for them made me mostly forget about the pain. I did only one lap up and down the street of the commercial subdivision. Before the RA pain in my knees I did a lap in about 9.5 minutes. I'm considerably slower now. Although I didn't time it I'd say I walked between 10.5 and 11.5 minutes.

That's not enough walking to make a major dent in any health issue I have, but every little bit is good. If the weather stays like this, and my knees show just a little more improvement, I hope to be up to two laps by the end of the week. Then maybe I can drop a little weight, and get back to where I was in early June, before the combination of ehrlichiosis and 110 F temperatures sidelined me.

And yes, the woolly worms were crossing the sidewalks in front of me. I didn't count them, but surely I saw between 10 and 20. I resisted the urge to squish some of them. In fact, I'm not sure exactly what woolly worms are. Are they a beneficial species, or a bad one? Are these the early form of the beautiful moth, but which destroys decorative plants during their growth? People say you can predict how bad the coming winter is going to be by observing the woolly worms. I haven't read that book yet, so I'll make no prediction. Maybe I'll make an post on Facebook, and see what responses I get.

And Ronny Thompson, Tony Mancini, Colt Washburn, John Lind, and Sarah Jane Riley, and a host of their acquaintences, friends, foes, and three dead people were all in my head, kind of swirllng around. Each of these has another 15,000 to 20,000 words to make their big splash in the world. Mancini still has to say the words from which the book title comes: "I'm going to kill him in front of fifty thousand screaming people." Washburn still has to...have something happen to him, or do something stupid to someone, so that he pays the penalty as the bad guy he is.

Sarah Jane has already figured out her life is a mess, and that she can straighten it out, but has yet to take that step. John Lind has been silent for a few chapters. What will he do after it was his investigative reporting that threatened to bring ruin to the Cubs quest for their first World Series victory in more than a century? Can he make it up to Cubs' Nation?

And how will Ronny Thompson be reconciled to his parents and his girlfriend? Will he be? In the last thousand words he discovered his girlfriend has been lying to him, and he's cut off all communication with his parents. Yet tomorrow he has to pitch the biggest game of his life, and then a bigger one right after that. How will he handle it?

Last night I wrote the scene that is the "second plot point". This is the moment in the protagonist's life where something happens to him, perhaps in part his own doing, where he makes the decision to carry the quest to completion. This scene, on the Brooklyn Bridge, has been consuming some of my gray cells for over a year, but I refused to write it ahead of time. I finally got to that point last night. It came out pretty good, I think, almost exactly as I envisioned it.

I don't know what the woolly worms are predicting as far as winter is concerned, or if they really have any true prophetic value. But I make these predictions: These incessent characters will continue to haunt me until they have had their denoument. I will continue to be obsessed about finishing the book. And In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People will be finished in three weeks, give or take a couple of days. Then let the editing begin!

File Lost and Found

The writing life is like a man who didn't back up his files every day to a consistent, safe place. Then one day his hard drive on his ancient computer began acting up. A repair shop was able to clone the drive, but the file, with 5,000 new words not contained on a manuscript, was not to be found. So the man asked the computer to do an heroic thing: Despite the slowness of the ancient processor and the drive clone, the computer was asked to search for all documents with a certain four letter string. Not knowing whether the computer had the umph needed for the task, the man started the search, went to his newer computer, and began again on those missing chapters from the older back-up file. Later, with a thousand words of dubious quality added, the man checked the old computer, and found it had identified six files with that string. One of the six files turned out to be the missing one, saved with the wrong date. Does not that man, when he has found the file, contact his friends and associates who read his blog and say, "Rejoice with me, for my file that was lost is now found. The work is there, and the first writing is better than the second."

Yes, my lost file is found. This was my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People file. About a week before we left for Chicago I took some pages I had written in manuscript and entered then in the computer. As will normally happen, I changed things as I typed along, and I went beyond where the manuscript had ended. I recalled that I had added two or three thousand words, but wasn't sure how many. At the end of the session I saved the file, with a vague recollection I saved it to a wrong folder, but knew I'd remember that so didn't re-save it to the right folder. Also, I didn't do a poor man's back-up by e-mailing it to my office. I think I was in a hurry that evening.

Back from the Write-To-Publish Conference, with an editor wanting the manuscript and a publisher also interested, I went to look for the file. Nothing. All the files with that name in the right folder were older. I though, Oh wait, I saved that to a wrong folder, but which one? I went through all the folders I might have been working in the day I typed that chapter. Nothing. Oh, I found a FTSP file in one of them, but it was also an older file.

Now, I typed this on our 2001 Dell, which has been my computer for at least the last six years. It has been slowly losing performance, and I knew I would have limited use of it. I was planning to move all my stuff to our 2009 Dell, since Lynda doesn't use it any more. With no home network set up, I was going to do that through e-mails. But, two days before leaving for Chicago, the 2001 Dell gave me a blue-screen error, followed by a black-screen reboot, without rebooting. I dropped it at Computer Medic and went on the trip, telling them there was no hurry with it.

The medics took their time with it, and finally said the hard drive was dying, but that they thought they could clone it. Other projects pushed mine back, but they finally got to it, and I finally re-hooked-up the computer. It's amazingly slow, much slower than it was with the original hard drive. So I was actually searching on the clone hard drive.

I searched and searched for that file, to no avail. It seemed to be gone. I began to wonder whether I had dreamed about typing that chapter rather than actually typing it. Finally, I decided to use the Windows Explorer search feature. I wasn't sure if that old Dell could do the job. I searched for "FTSP" in file names only. It took literally twenty minutes for that poor computer to do the search, but came up with results as described in the first paragraph.

When I checked the original version against what I had typed that day, the original was much, much better. I've noticed this before on those few occasions when I started over due to something lost and later found. The original is always better. The found file actually had closer to three thousand words, in two chapters. Yesterday I added more than two thousand words to it, and the book stands a hair under 15,000.

Can 85,000 be more than two months away?

Time to Move to a Different Project

Documenting America, Volume 1, is finished, all but the Introduction, which I started last night and should finish tonight. My attention will now turn in three directions.

One is to proofread Documenting America and get it ready for self-publishing. I intend to go through it slowly, both my text and the text I'm quoting, looking both for typos and better ways to say things. I'll also hope my beta readers give me some comments.

Second is income taxes. I need one evening to file trading papers for the year (those not yet done; I have some filed), one to assemble all my documentation, and a third to actually begin. I think all my spreadsheets are built, so I'm ready to go.

Third will be to turn to another writing project. Unfortunately I don't have time to rest on my success of completing Documenting America. Gotta keep writing, keep researching, keep pressing on. I will call the Buildipedia.com editor this week about my next batch of assignments, and I may write one or two articles for Suite101.com. Those are on-going freelance work and I don't count them as projects. I also have a prospect to write for a legal website, concerning construction law. Don't know if that will come through or not.

I have to decide on my next writing project I could divide my available hours between two project for a while, but one must eventually have supremacy. The projects I have going, in various degrees of completion, are the following.

• In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, my baseball novel. I've written around 15,000 words on the way to about 85,000 words. Haven't looked at this for at least two months.
• Screwtape's Good Advice, a small group study. I have the introduction and four chapters done, on the way to 32 chapters. Given that the Narnia movies are being rolled out, which gives a little increase in the interest of all things C.S. Lewis, maybe I should finish this and self-publish.
• A Harmony of the Gospels, a non-commercial project. Last week I gave a copy of this to our new pastor, which has renewed my interest. The harmony is done. I have about 40 pages (estimated) to write to complete the appendixes and passage notes. It's tempting to plow ahead with this, even though it's not for profit.
• Essential John Wesley, a small group study. I've done some of the research, and would love to get this done and teach it next time my turn to teach our Life Group comes around. We have about twenty-two weeks of lessons lined up, so that's the time frame for completing this. This would be partly a labor of love and partly a ministry/commercial project.
• To Exile and Back, a small group study. I've done "all" the research on this, and outlined the project. Time to start writing. I put "all" in quotes because I'm sure as I write it I'll find holes in the research.

So, what say you, faithful readers of this blog, and drop by readers? Does any of these look like a good direction for me to go next? Anything that sticks out, positively or negatively?

Editorial Silence

In the seven (almost eight, actually) years I've been trying to be published, I think my biggest gripe against the publishing industry is what I call editorial silence. Let me think, though, if you include submittals to literary magazines I've actually been submitting for about ten years. There's always a time lag between submittal and answer. Magazines, agents, and book acquisitions editors almost all state what their response time is: 6 weeks, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, whatever. It's a little different if you meet an agent or editor at a conference and they ask you to submit something. That's a little less formal, though I suspect their posted response times could be considered to apply.

From my perspective, I don't mind the slow response. What I mind is non-response, or responses so long after the stated response time that it might as well be a non-response. That's the way this business works. A non-response most likely means a no. Most editors say to send them a reminder e-mail once you're a little past their stated response time. When you do you'll get a no.

Some examples. I met with an agent at a conference in Kansas City in November 2007. He asked me to send him the complete manuscript of Doctor Luke's Assistant, as he was planning to represent more fiction in the coming years. I did so about a week later, and heard nothing. The following April I learned this same agent was going to be at a conference I was hoping to attend the next month in North Carolina. I thought we could meet then to discuss my manuscript, if warranted, so I e-mailed him, now five months after he requested the material, and asked for a status report. He said he couldn't find my mss and would I send it again. I did, and talked to him briefly at the next conference. He said, "Your writing is strong, but I don't know if I can sell it. I'm still reading it. Send me a reminder e-mail every week until I respond."

That sounded strange, but I did as he asked. About two weeks later he passed on my book. Looking back, I now suspect he hadn't even looked at the book when I saw him the second time, and he was just giving me "agent-speak".

Another example. At that same North Carolina conference in May 2008, I met with another agent and pitched In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. She asked me to send her a partial (30 or so pages) and a proposal. I did so promptly, and heard nothing for four months. I sent a reminder e-mail, and heard nothing for two months. I sent another reminder e-mail, and she responded, passing on my book because she already represented something similar.

How strange that these two agents, who I met with and who requested me to send them some material, should totally fail to respond. Add to that about thirty magazine submittals where I've either never heard back or heard back up to a year after submittal, and I've concluded that the submittal process is broken across the board. Some writers call it the "query-go-round". Others have a less complimentary term for it.

It's enough to drive an unpublished author to self-publishing. For now, I guess I'll go do something that will make me some money.

Hate the Villain

Since some readers of my blog might not click on the comments, they might miss out on the discussion I've had with my friend Gary concerning villains. This has to do with posts I've made previously about what I've learned in writing classes (at conferences) about heroes and villains. The conventional wisdom is that fictional heroes must have faults that they overcome, and fictional villains must have some amount of virtue lest they become cardboard characters, someone who is not believable. I began this discussion because of my observations of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, a villain who seems to have no virtues, and thus successfully defies the conventional wisdom.

I have concluded that the experts are wrong. The hero does not have to have any virtues. The villain must simply be someone the reader dislikes, even hates. As Gary said in a comment to an earlier post, let his/her evil traits be very evil, exaggerated even, so that we can see our own negative traits in contrast to his/her. "Yes, I have my faults, but Voldemort is much more evil than I would ever be."

So now, what do I do with my villains? In In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People I have two villains: Tony Mancini, a New York Mafia Don, and Colt Washburn, a Chicago Mafia Don. Both have their eyes and hooks into the protagonist, Chicago Cubs pitcher Robo Ronny Thompson, a naive farm boy who breaks into the Big Leagues. I have Mancini as being too nice to be a Mafia Don. He grew up with some refinement and a distaste for violence. He dislikes having to resort to killing as a business solution. Yet Thompson's success could mean his downfall, and so he sets in motion things that are evil, while hating doing it.

Right now I don't really have anything in Colt Washburn's character that would mitigate his evil. But Thompson's success would mean his success. He would win his eight figure be with Mancini, bringing about his downfall and possibly take over his turf. So Washburn, who was a Chicago street thug who worked his way up to be the head of the Chicago rackets, employs the evil powers he has to try to guarantee Thompson's success. The twist is that the nicer Don is doing all he can to bring about an evil result, and the more evil Don is doing all he can to bring about a good result. Well, if you consider the Cubs beating the Yankees in the World Series a good result, which most of America would.

So what to do? I'm only 15,000 words in to a planned 80,000 word novel. I could easily change either Mancini or Washburn. I could find a virtue for Washburn, or I could make Mancini more evil than he is. I guess I'll think about it some over the holidays, and maybe get back to work on the novel in the New Year.

Still Thinking About Literary Villains

In response to my post about literary villains, my friend Gary left some comments. The gist of what he wrote was the people like to dislike the villain. If you give them some virtue, the reaction will be that they feel sorry for the villain. Then they won't hate him enough. Then their enjoyment of the literary experience will be reduced, because they will not be able to hate the villain enough. At least, I think that's an accurate summary. Gary, feel free to comment if I didn't get that right.

Part of this all must be the role the villain plays. In fact, perhaps the word villain is part of the problem. Take Scrooge for instance. He certainly starts out as a villain, but goes through a character arc that has him come out the hero. He is the protagonist who goes through a transformation. Darth Vader is the same. He is the antagonist who goes through a transformation from bad to good—or actually from good to bad to good when all six movies are considered. He is certainly villainous, but ends up good.

Voldemort fulfills a different function. He is a villain who stays a villain throughout the seven books, and in fact seems to get more villainous as the story progresses. In the back story, it's clear he wasn't always a bad guy (again, I'm basing this on the movies only, since I haven't read the books). I understand he doesn't go through a bad to good transformation, so remains a villain to the end. We hate Voldemort in the end. We love Scrooge in the end. We sort of love Darth Vader in the end, though he has less time to make amends than Scrooge did.

This all brings me back to my beginning point: Is the conventional wisdom, as taught in the writing classes I've attended, correct? Must we give our villains antagonists a virtue or two, to flesh them out and not be cardboard characters? I'm still working through that. Maybe I can leave Colt Washburn, Chicago Mafia Don in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, as a bad dude and not worry about giving him any redeeming qualities.

Literary Villains: Is the Conventional Wisdom Right?

Attend any class on writing fiction and before long you will hear this mantra: Your heroes must have some faults and your villains must have some good traits. You can't make your heroes so ooey-gooey nice and perfect that they are unbelievable. And you can't make your villains so absolutely awful that there is nothing redeemable in them. Well, you can, but your novel will be the worse for your doing so.

This was news to me when I first heard this in a fiction writing class at a writers conference, but it kind of makes sense. Fictional characters ought to reflect real life to some extent. Few people in real life are totally good or totally bad. Actually, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say no one is totally good or totally bad. Even if a novel is fantasy, and doesn't include humans at all, we human readers judge the novel by our human experience, and the non-human characters must be believable and real based on our human experiences.

But in literature, is this true? Do successful writers always give their heroes faults and their villains virtues? For heroes, I think this is probably true. A big part of any heroes' quest is to overcome obstacles, both those that the world throws at them and those that are within them. But for villains, is this so?

I'm thinking of the Harry Potter series, and of Harry and Voldemort. Now, I must preface this by saying I've not read the books! I intend to, and will be doing so within a year, I think. I'm basing this on the movies. I've seen all seven, and those who have both read the books and seen the movies indicate the movies are fairly faithful to the books. Harry has his faults. We easily see this in his movie portrayal. But does Voldemort have any virtues?

I looked hard for Voldemort virtues in the movies, and haven't found any. I suppose you might say he has a virtue of making an accurate assessment of his chances in a fight against Harry. He says he could not overcome Harry's wand and that Harry has a type of wizardry, provided by Lily Potter, that he, Voldemort, needs something more to overcome. He doesn't pump himself up by ascribing his failure to kill Harry to bad luck. But that's a pretty small virtue, I think.

We might be able to have some sympathy for Voldemort based on the circumstances of his birth and parentage. But sympathy and virtue are not the same.

So, as I write my fiction and flesh out characters, I wonder just how much virtue I should add to the antagonists, the villains. What good characteristics should I give to Tony Mancuso, the Mafia Don who wants to prevent the success of phenom pitcher Ronny Thompson, the hero of my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People? Should I add a couple of good characteristics to Claudius Aurelius, the corrupt government official who want to stop Luke from writing a biography of Jesus in Doctor Luke's Assistant? I've worked hard to give these villains some redeeming qualities, but I'm wondering if it's a waste of time. Perhaps readers like their villains to be really, really bad—to hate them thoroughly, not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for them. Certainly, if Voldemort's abject villainy contributes to the success of the Harry Potter books, one would think that is the case.

What say you, my few readers? Do you want the villains in the novels you read to have a virtue or two? Do you want to feel some sympathy for the antagonist, and think, "Oh, if only his parents had treated him better he wouldn't have turned out so bad."? Or do you just want to hate the villain and love the hero?

An inquiring novelist wants to know.

Exercise and Arthritis

For several weekends I've been planning to take a long walk. The weather has been good, and I need the exercise. But Saturday is a busy day of work around the house, resulting in very tired legs by 1 or 2 PM. Sunday we get home from church and, well, the Sunday afternoon nap syndrome takes effect, as well as the must watch football syndrome. So I haven't made that walk.

But yesterday, with excellent weather, I decided to do it. Coming home from work I sat in my reading chair, read for twenty minutes or so, and was overcome by tiredness. Rather than go to the couch, I just put my head back in the chair and slept for perhaps fifteen minutes. That was all I needed. I read a little more, then headed out. I had determined that I would follow a new route, which I estimate is four miles. My previous longest walk was three miles.

So I headed down the hill, and turned left at the bottom instead of right. This took me on the long loop around the golf course--probably just part of the golf course, to the bottom of the dam, then uphill all the way home. I had planned on the difficulty of the last hill, but not of two intermediate hills. The walk took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I was quite tired. Later, Lynda wanted to walk, and we did another mile.

But I felt good. Tired legs, a slightly hurting right knee, a tickle in the throat from heavy breathing, but I felt good. That old single cusp on my aortic valve gave no problem. My mind was fairly well engaged, and in the evening I managed to write 1,000 words on my novel.

However, this morning my hands and wrists are killing me. Not sure what is going on with that. I had a good week last week in terms of arthritis. Why now? Actually they were hurting on Saturday after work around the house, but felt better Sunday, even at day's end. Was it the peanut butter toast I ate as a late snack? I've always wondered if the sero-negative rheumatoid arthritis I have is really a food allergy.

Whatever it is, typing is quite painful this morning. Plus, it's 8 AM, and my employer is beckoning. Let's see what the day brings.

August Goals

Well, I've had two fairly productive months, and hope to make it three in a row. Here's what I have at present, subject to editing, of course.

1. Write 10 articles for Suite101.com.
2. Blog 12 to 15 times.
3. Study: search engine optimization; sources for royalty free pictures; and picture types for digital photos.
4. Finish chapter 7 in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; Begin chapter 8
5. Finish one appendix in a Harmony of the gospels; also one passage notes section.
6. Complete the engineering article on storm water detention that is due Sept. 1.
7. More work on Good King, Bad King. Try to identify and outline at least four more lessons.
8. Work on The Strongest of All study from the apocrypha. I have the five lessons prepared, but need to add some lead-in and conclusion discussions.
9. And, based on my incomplete goals from July, get some more work done on Life on a Yo Yo, in an attempt to make it a publishable study.

The July Report

Okay, let's see how I did relative to my goals.

1. Blog at least 12 times. Did this. I think I was at 15 or so.

2. Post 15 articles at Suite101.com. I beat this, posting 17.

3. Research, prepare, and submit 2 other freelance queries. I got the research done, but not the queries themselves. I drafted one but haven't yet sent it. I had to re-query one from the previous month, due to it being lost in that magazine's system.

4. Complete one set of passage notes for my Harmony of the Gospels. Got this done, as well as proofing and editing the appendix I almost finished in June.

5. Complete the first two lessons in Good King, Bad King (already started and maybe half-way done) and outline the full series. I can report only partial progress on this. I got the lessons done, and taught them last week and today. However, I have not yet outlined the rest of the series. I've brainstormed it a little, but brainstorming without getting something down on paper doesn't count.

6. For Life on a Yo Yo: Write a "sell sheet" for the Bible study; complete the first four lessons in publishable form. I totally dropped the ball on this, not even thinking about it all month. And it's not even in my draft goals for August. I may have to amend them.

7. Complete the new chapter of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People that I got half-way done in June. It would be nice to both complete that and start another chapter, but I'm not making that a goal, not with everything else I have going on. Plus, I'm a freelancer not, not a novelist. I did a little more work on chapter 7, but I cannot say it's done. I imagine it needs another hour or two to be called done. I sent the book as is on to a new beta reader who requested it. We'll see what he says.

So, I hit some things but missed others. All in all it was a productive month. I'll next post my goals for August, a month which I hope will be even more productive.

Progress By Inches

Last night, as promised in yesterday's post, I went to the Bentonville library after work. They forgave me the fine and renewed the book. I spent a little time in a genealogy magazine, checking to see if I could write for that one, then went to the coffee shop, bought a large house blend, and sat and wrote my article on The Notebooks of Robert Frost. I didn't quite finish it, but I came close.

This was my first time to sit in a coffee shop and write. My son writes or studies in coffee shops all the time. Somehow he shuts out the noise to background and then effectively uses his time. He says he can do certain work there better than he can in the quiet of his lodgings. I've tried reading in coffee shops before, but never writing. I was surprised to make as much progress as I did. The TV mounted up high behind my back kept blaring a sitcom re-run, then a CNN program. I looked its way on occasion. Still, in about an hour I wrote 500 or so words in a steno notebook. Having previously studied the key words for this article for search engine optimization, I felt I had incorporated most of what I wanted to. I headed to the house with the article needing only a closing paragraph and editing.

At home, after a simple supper, I keyed in the article, added a photo, and published. This was my first Suite 101 article in a week, and it felt good to be back in the saddle. I then shifted gears to working on my Harmony of the Gospels. I'm pretty much done with the appendix covering the trial before Pilate, so I went next to the passage notes required for passages in that chapter. I actually finished notes for two passages! I think I have two more passages and I'm done with this chapter. Except...

..as I consulted my workbooks, from which I pulled the passage notes, I noticed that what I wrote in the workbooks did not match what I had previously typed in the Harmony. One of the differences was significant, incorporating something in the gospels I had missed in the workbooks. Had I made the changes while typing, or did I have other notes in the workbooks? I searched a little for other notes, but didn't find any. I never got around to indexing the workbooks, so I have no way of knowing if I have supplemental notes in another book (I have three all together for this project, the last one being only 2/3 used). So I spent fifteen minutes indexing that workbook.

The hour was such that I could still afford more computer time, so I spent a little time on Facebook, still trying to learn how to navigate on that site and to use it for a combination of promotion, friendship, and networking. Found two high school friends who didn't show up on the alumni list and invited them to be friends. Last, before leaving the Dungeon for the Upper Realms, I e-mailed a friend a copy of my incomplete novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. He's a huge baseball fan, and when he visited us in April and we discussed this he said he'd like to read it. Only took me three months to comply.

I concluded my productive evening by reading in Robertson's Harmony of the Gospels (the book at the top of my reading pile), and read one article in a 2008 issue of Writers Digest magazine. Then I went to bed on time.

So, I'm making progress on most fronts. The checkbook is up to date. The budget is up to date. Papers are being filed. Dishes and kitchen are being handled (batching it again). Writing progressing on several fronts. Reading moseys along. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't play computer games.

The Kicking and Screaming Part

Yesterday I completed my first article for Suite101.com and posted it for editor's review. Your first article after signing on must be approved by an editor before it is viewable on the site. After that you post directly and an editor reviews it after it "goes live". This morning an e-mail was waiting for me, from the editor for this area of the site, saying some changes were recommended.

I checked in at the site and looked at the editor's suggestions. Turns out it's just to add some more white space by breaking things into smaller paragraphs, and maybe making a bulleted list of a couple of items. No change asked for in the text itself. After completing this post I'll make those formatting changes, resubmit, and the article should go live today. I'll come back either today or tomorrow and post a link.

Then I will have to go to PayPal and see if my long-dormant account is still there. That's the only way Suite 101 pays. Not that I expect a windfall any time soon. I have about thirty days to give them payment provisions.

But as I said in my previous post, I'm doing this freelance thing kicking and screaming, holding on to my novels, Bible studies, poetry, and even non-fiction books dream. I'm afraid every writing hour for a while will be devoted to freelancing, both Suite101 and other markets. So I'll have to carve out time for other writing. Doing it while driving doesn't work. I've tried it and I can't seem to concentrate, and I don't really want the distraction. Better to spend driving multi-tasking time with the radio and either music or talk.

My walking time on the noon hour provides opportunites for poetry. I'm usually working on a haiku, or a cinquain, or something else short, something I can remember and write down when I get back in the office. Most of these are not good and I do nothing else with them. although I've got two from the last month that are on Post-it notes on my desk, waiting for me to decide whether they are good enough work on some more.

TV time obviously isn't a good time. Although, I find I can write with the TV on whereas I can't read. But this time is better for editing something rather than writing new stuff.

But the time that has seemed effective at pursuing my "dream" is when I go to bed and turn out the light. I generally fall asleep almost right away. But lately I've been fighting sleep to think through scenes in my novels. I have at most ten minutes before whatever substance my body makes in excess sends me into la la land. Lately I've visualized the last few scenes in Doctor Luke's Assistant. I've played and re-played the scene of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People where Ronny Thompson learns his girlfriend is a fraud and he hurls his cell phone off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River. And I've ridden again on the Star Ferry across Hong Kong harbor, where the vanilla American family moves unbeknownst into an espionage adventure in China Tour.

Eventually I'll move on to other scenes. And I won't let this overcome me to the point where I can't fall asleep easily. Perhaps these last thoughts will lead to dreams that will enhance these books, and perhaps I'll begin remembering my dreams.

June Goals

I don't want to set any writing goals this month, but know I must. I have to spend time on many things this month, most of which have nothing to do with writing. I have to get some financial stuff done for our home business, and for our 2009 taxes (yes, I'm trying to get ahead of the curve). Yard work is probably at a peak this month. And we'll have another road trip, though that is partially writing related.

Mainly, though, I have to do more about my health. I have lost 21 pounds this year, which is good, but I'm stuck where I am. In the last two months I've been bouncing back and forth in the same four-pound range, not gaining or losing. To get going down again, I'm either going to have to starve myself or significantly ramp up the exercise. This weekend I ramped up the exercise, taking time Saturday and Sunday for walks and calisthenics when I could have been writing. And what was the result? A one pound gain. I did eat big Friday night (visiting with a relative at a wonderful bed and breakfast in Baxter Springs, Kansas) and snacked some on Sunday afternoon and evening. But it seems I must have breathed some heavy air or something, and it stayed on my bones. I shall have to go on Dad's diet: water only, and that just to wash in.

Well, here are my writing goals for June. They are somewhat bold, given the limited time I see for writing during the month.

1. Blog a minimum of twelve times.

2. Evaluate two or three additional freelance markets, and submit to at least one. This will no doubt require quite a bit of Web research as well as preparing some new writing shorts.

3. Complete one chapter of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, begun yesterday.

4. Complete my latest Bible study, tentatively titled, "The Strongest Of All". Actually, this should more be termed a small group study, since it is from the Apocrypha and not the Bible proper.

5. Complete one appendix (already started) and the notes for one passage in the Harmony of the Gospels.

6. Attend the Chicago Tribune Publishers Row Lit Fair next weekend, and, as a sub-goal, talk with at least three publishers who are real candidates for me to submit to.

7. Get back into Life on a Yo Yo and prepare it for publication while it is still somewhat fresh.

8. Submit a query for another article for Internet Genealogy. I will wait to make sure the article already submitted is acceptable to the editor.

The May Report

May was a strange month. The first four days of May I was on a road trip. After that I was faithful to the blog and active in writing. Some time went to genealogy work, consolidating research during the vacation. Writing wise, whatever goals I set at the beginning of May did not come to mind as I worked on various writing tasks. I wrote as the spirit moved me and as the need seemed, perhaps also following the path of least resistance. Now I'll paste in the goals from the earlier post and see how I did.

1. Complete and submit the article to Internet Genealogy. I'm well along with it right now, and I don't see this as a problem. I did this, turning it in a week early.

2. Find 3 to 5 more places to submit "Mom's Letter". The research is done; I just have to make copies and stuff envelopes. I did this, settling on three more places to send it to and doing so.

3. Blog 12 to 14 times. Did this with no problem.

4. Work on one appendix and one chapter note of the Harmony of the gospels. I did half of this. I have one appendix about 80 percent done. I did not, however, work on any passage notes.

5. Write one chapter in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I worked on this--today, actually. I didn't come close to finishing a chapter, but it felt good to get back to this.

6. Complete preparation for my two lesson Bible study, Good King, Bad King. It looks now that I won't be teaching it in May, or any time soon. But I've done the research and development, and would like to have it ready on the shelf for some time in the future when I do teach it. Hmmm, did I do this? I got lots of stuff done, and I could probably teach it tomorrow if I had to, but I did not really "complete" it. Complete for teaching it myself, yes. But not complete for a publishable Bible study.

7. Write some closing notes to the Life on a Yo Yo Bible study, perhaps even some promotional items to make it a potentially publishable work, and decide what to do with it. Well, I failed at this one. I don't think I even looked at LOAYY this month. I finished teaching it last month, leaving the final lesson to my co-teacher while I was gone. I guess I'll put this down as a goal for next month.

See you tomorrow for some goal setting.