2014 Projects: Finish the Spanner Edit, Write Book 0, and Get Published

The holiday season was my excuse to slack off from editing and writing at the end of 2013. The combination of a Blu-Ray player and a new widescreen TV didn't help. That's over now. I've had my year-end vacation. It's back to work. And the muse is obliging with the craziest story ideas I've had in a long time:

1. The entire plot to Spanner Book 0, complete with new title ("Banned in Japan"). Now it begins with a Yakuza-Triad war interrupted by a certain masked prankster and graffiti tagger who goes by the handle Spanner, and ends with a political crisis that may end in a devastating war between an increasingly fascist Japan and Chinese Communist Party (Holdings) Limited.
2. A new graphic novel idea incorporating the "Blake Island incident" repeatedly referred to in Spanner Book 1, and which takes up one night during the time period of Spanner Book 0. On the night of July 14 this year, Jennifer will kill 52 hitmen, mercenaries, and serial killers. Now I know how it begins: with her and some far more broken female former child soldiers robbing the Seattle Triad (under flashy young boss Ringo Wing) of money, sex slaves, and a snuff pornographer who resembles an infamous web cartoonist, as dozens of disposable gangsters die John Woo style (I ask myself the question: how would Lone Wolf and Cub artist Goseki Kojima do a "heroic bloodshed" shootout?). Because it's so action-oriented, it will not be called "The Jennifer Theory"; I'll have to find yet another new story to match that title.
3. Three final tweaks to Spanner Chapter 1 (Jennifer's "Red Baron name" changed from Blonde Phantom to White Phantom; Shira kicking Johnny-Johnny in "his nonexistent manhood" to begin a recurring motif linked to the Blake Island incident and ending in Chapter 11; and a rewrite of the fourth flashback) and such a complete overhaul of Chapter 2 R5 that I'm even switching the positions of 2.2 and 2.3 to avoid pointless time reversals.

Getting that graphic novel off the ground necessitates, of course, that I start drawing again and actually improve my skills so I can actually draw real comics. I decided I'll even throw in a "comic within a comic", of the bad-webcomic kind, which I'll draw in the inferior style I abandoned in 1999, when I stopped trying to ape Masamune Shirow (and failing) and began developing my more recent Clamp-influenced style, which I'm now modifying in a more Takeshi Obata direction that allows me to incorporate more of my "school of Alex Raymond" influences: Neal Adams, Ryoichi Ikegami, Tony Wong, and Raymond himself (with elements taken from Will Eisner and midperiod Frank Miller).

Meanwhile, I'm going to get one non-Spanner novel published this year. In March, during NaNoEdMo, I'm going to pick one previous NaNoWriMo novel and edit it to as close to publication quality as I can in one month. I have four options: Bad Company from 2007, Black Science from 2008, Dirty Pop from 2009, and Freefall from 2013. Once I feel it's ready for release, I'll publish it online. Thus, after 25 years of practice and planning, I will become a published author at last. Then in April, now that Script Frenzy is dead, I'll throw myself into NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) the way I do FAWM. To be a NaPoWriMo winner, you must write a poem a day for 30 days. I'll do my usual stuff inspired by the Surrealists and Beats, of course, but I'll also make my first attempts at traditional forms such as the sonnet, ode, and villanelle.

Above all, 2014 will be the year I complete the final edit of Spanner Book 1. Last year it took me 5 whole months to edit Chapter 1. One reason is that I completely changed certain older story elements (e.g. removing Hope and Karen and replacing them with Elle and new character Rico) and threw in new ones (e.g. the propaganda-video opening). I will not spend that much time on any later chapter, no matter how much I change it, not even Chapter 2 which I'm radically overhauling. Books 0, 1, and 2 are set this year, so I plan to get at least Book 1 published this year, Book 0 if I can squeeze it in.

And so it begins again...

NaNoWriMo 2013: The Heroic Effort to Victory #8

It took a heroic effort to get me to victory in NaNoWriMo 2013, my eighth consecutive victory. I only managed to squeeze out a few thousand words in the first week and a half. After editing Spanner Chapter 1 for so long (fortunately it's finished and formatted so I don't have to do anything more to it), it took me that long to convince my muse to switch from editing Spanner to writing this year's NaNo novel.

On the 18th, I succeeded at last.

Then came what you might consider the early equivalent of Panic Time. Starting that Monday, I had, in order, 6K, 6K, 4K, 10K, 4K, and 6K days before resting that Sunday, leaving me with a word count of 41,000. I slowed down the following week; the 50,000th word came on Thanksgiving, when my family (fortunately, it turns out) did not go to the nearest tribal casino for Thanksgiving dinner.

So what's the next thing I'm going to do to Freefall? After converting the Markdown format original to RTF so I can import it into yWriter5 for editing, I'll let it set for at least a week. Once I return to it, I'll begin the edit process. As I learned from two years editing Spanner, editing is where the real art of writing exists because it's the sculpting of the raw mass of first-draft words into the finished novel.

Speaking of editing, I have two other non-Spanner NaNo novels ready to edit (2007's Bad Company: A Corporate Terror Story and 2009's Dirty Pop) that I can also import into yWriter5. However, my big challenge for the "SpaNoEdMo" in December is Spanner Chapter 2, which right now has bloated to twice its Fourth Revision size and from which I'll have to cull story elements, some of which may have been present from the original draft.

There are some NaNo contestants who now feel (as I read in one post) "a novel-shaped hole in [their] heart". Not me. When I look at all the work I still need to do, especially all the editing, I have to take a deep breath. The sheer amount of editing to be done is daunting. But still I must do it.

The work continues.

Dictel Corporation and the Holy Grail

Once again, I took my usual break after an intense NaNoWriMo (which is why I usually have to do Panic Time in the final week of any WriMo). When I started preparing for NaNoFiMo '09 at last, I did it by reading books that I thought would be important sources for Bad Company. Were they ever! On the side of realism, there's Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World by Jeb Brugmann and Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (Canadian name: The Rebel Sell: Why Culture Can't Be Jammed) by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. On the more mystical front, I found the notorious book by Otto Rahn called The Crusade Against the Grail, which is also redirecting me toward some books that have been languishing on my bookshelves. All are transforming the plot of Bad Company. I can feel the plot actually transforming into something coherent. And, considering the trouble I've had working the various plot threads of Bad Company into something coherent since I started writing it during NaNo '07, that's saying something.

NaNoWriMo 2009: My Progress Report

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo, and for the first time I can take a rest. Well, I did do some writing today, but I decided to stop at 85,317 words. That's more than I've written in any Writing Month, ever. I can rightly say that this time around, I was on. And at no time was I more on than on Friday the 13th, when I wrote over 11,000 words to clinch my victory, before finishing the first draft of Dirty Pop just a week later.

I've definitely made progress over previous WriMos. The first two, in '06 and '07, I got my 50,000 words in a final-week push I came to call Panic Time. NaNo '08 was all Panic Time, as I wrote all 54K words in the final week, after a nearly four-month bout of writer's block that began on the first day of AugNoWriMo while I was still struggling to finish my '07 monster, Bad Company.

As for word counts, I've been breaking personal records in the last year. In last year's NaNo, I wrote over 54,000 words in that final week. Two months later, I beat that record with 63,161 words for JanNoWriMo. And now my NaNo best, 85,317 this month.

Winning NaNo on some day earlier than November 30? Actually finishing a first draft, and without using an outline or even an index card? Those are absolute firsts for me. Forget my record word count; those are the actual firsts.

NaNoFiMo is starting now. I'm not starting it yet, however. First, I want to get out my index cards, the ones I didn't use during NaNo, and do some replotting. I'll replot Dirty Pop in order to edit it, and I'll replot Bad Company so I can find out where the plot holes are and what important characters and storylines are missing so I can finish it. I might take a break in the next few days. Maybe. But there's still writing (and editing) to do, and a book (or two) to finish...

NaNoWriMo 2009: And Now The Victory Is Official

On November 14, 2009, I wrote my 50,000th word for NaNoWriMo. On November 21, I finished the first draft of Dirty Pop, and my first complete first draft ever. November 25 is the first day of validation (okay, validation's a little bit early in my timezone for some reason), so I followed the instructions and pasted the text of my novel into the text box so the word-counting bot could count the words. It counted 67,029 words, so at last the green bar I earned during my long 11,000-word Friday the 13th session turned purple. So the NaNoWriMo victory I earned at the end of week 2 is now official. I've won NaNo! But, interestingly enough, my three-year streak of come-from-behind victories has now been shattered.

NaNoWriMo 2009: The First Draft Is Finished!

This is a month of NaNoWriMo firsts for me. First, I wrote my 50,000th word in my long 11,000-word Friday the 13th session that lasted well into the morning of the 14th. That counts as the first time I've ever won a WriMo (one that's not FAWM or Script Frenzy, anyway) early, without a Panic Time. Here's another first: I've completed the first draft of a novel for the first time in my life! What's more, I finished it on November 21, just three weeks into NaNoWriMo!

Character Profile: Charlie Richter-Thomas (to be revised soon)

(Note 8/15/2010: This profile will soon be updated to include Charlie's appearances in the Dictel Saga [Bad Company, Black Science, etc.] and Spanner as well as Dirty Pop and its upcoming sequel Bigger Better Faster MORE!)

Dirty Pop revolves around Charlie. She's the main character, and the narrator who tells the tale of her own adventures. So who is Charlie Richter-Thomas, really? She is the star of two of the four novels I've written for NaNoWriMo, so I'm giving Charlie her first public character profile since I created her.

In Bad Company (NaNoWriMo 2007), she is the very first character to appear in the main story, and with her sister Desiree one of the two narrators. She is the fallen pop star who uncovers a monstrous conspiracy surrounding the murder of her reporter fiancé by the giant military conglomerate Dictel Corporation in the novel's opening scene, and must overcome her bad reputation in order to get the news out to an indifferent and seemingly doomed world. In Dirty Pop (NaNoWriMo 2009), she tries to build a singing career of her own, independent of her tyrannical cult-leader stage mother, only for it to be threatened with destruction by the record industry.

NaNoWriMo 2009: What? I Won Already?!?!

#NaNoWriMo #DirtyPop #nanopanic
Remember that I said in a previous post that there will be no Panic Time for me this month? I followed through on my promise. I've now written over 50,000 words this NaNoWriMo and earned the green bar of provisional victory. On the 25th, I'll send my text to NaNo's validation bots for counting, and the bots will grant me the purple bar bearing the all-important word "WINNER!!!".

Of course, I'm still not done writing Dirty Pop yet. There's still some plot holes left for me to fill. And if you know the way I write, you know just how hard it is for me to fill plot holes. Which is why Bad Company and Black Science aren't finished yet...

What drove me to push my way over the top? One: it was Friday the 13th, which I consider my Lucky Day. Second: ambition. I had 11,000 words left to write before victory, so I decided to dedicate Friday the 13th to writing all of them. And so I did.

Of course, writing sessions in which I write 10,000 or more words tend to strain my forearms, shoulders, and neck. Especially if I do them back to back. So I earned my rest. On Saturday the 14th, I wrote only 1,440 words before allowing myself to get distracted reading about punk rock and New Wave bands on Wikipedia. (Did you know that New Order broke up in 2007? It was a surprise to me to see one of my favorite bands gone already...)

In this year's NaNoWriMo, victory alone isn't enough, and can't be. I have a bigger goal, and that's to actually complete the first draft of a novel in November. That's my next goal, and now I'm working toward it.

Stay tuned...

NaNoWriMo 2009: Land Speed Record!

As I write this, I've written over 25,000 words of this year's NaNoWriMo novel. I hit that mark at 11pm my (Pacific) time. That's the fastest start I've ever made during any WriMo. Usually during any WriMo, I procrastinate long enough that it takes me a last-minute "Panic Time" to win. This won't happen. The way I'm sprinting now, I'm going to write my 50,000th word and win NaNo by the end of this week, and I'll complete the entire first draft of Dirty Pop before NaNo ends. This is as new to me as NaNo itself was when I did my first one back in 2006. And Dirty Pop has turned out to be more coherent in its first iteration than any other novel I've attempted to write. I'm beginning to awe myself.

But...

Remember those other novels I've written the past three NaNoWriMos? Let's see: they're called The Jennifer Theory, Bad Company, Black Science, and Points of Authority New Race New Flesh. Yeah. Those. They're still not finished, not a one of them. And not one of them still has a coherent plot, or more than a semblance of one. So far they still resemble nothing so much as the "practice songs" Charlie and her band play to warm up before recording sessions and live shows in Dirty Pop. The rest of the year, except for FAWM and Script Frenzy, is dedicated to trying to finish all these novels, one by one.

I will finish Dirty Pop this month. First the first draft, with which I'm going to win NaNo in just two weeks; then the edited version that I'm posting online as my very first blog novel. But then I'll have to return to Bad Company one more time for one more NaNoFiMo before I can consider it ready for NaNoEdMo at last. I'll have to completely replot the story before I can write the final words of the first complete draft. And those plotlines and story arcs that still want to fly apart? I still need to tie them together so they can operate as a unit and reinforce each other. Then during JanNoWriMo, I'll be taking on Black Science and write the majority of the novel I still haven't written even after four years. Even after I start serializing Dirty Pop online, I'll still have to finish that unfinished business.

As for the "land speed record" of the title, it's my personal record, not an actual world record. Just forget about Kateness and her one million words in just one month...

NaNoWriMo 2009: No More Panic Time!

This is not about my NaNoWriMo novel. It's about NaNoWriMo itself. Specifically, what I usually do every year, and every WriMo too. That, of course, is procrastinate. That's going to change. This is not just a promise. I'm so impatient to win NaNo this year that I've already started writing. So far, even despite some nasty procrastination (I took time off writing to unfollow most of the news feeds I was following on Twitter and transfer them into a new "Newsfeeds" list, using Twitter's new lists feature), I managed to write 1,100 words from midnight to midnight on November 1! Since I'm not procrastinating this month, there will be no Panic Time.

First, I must explain Panic Time, Usually, I procrastinate so badly that by the last week or 10 days of any given WriMo, I find myself so far behind that I panic. Panic Time begins, and it puts me into Panic Mode, during which I write most of my words. Usually, I've written about 20,000 words by day 20, and I have to write the remaining 30,000 words in those final 10 days. The most extreme panic situation I got into was during last year's NaNo, when I wrote absolutely nothing until the final week; then I wrote over 54,000 words in that final week, including a 13,600+ word day on November 29. When I write over 6,000 words a day, I start to cramp. I certainly pay the price for Panic Time.

My usual pace is about 4,000 words a day. If I keep that pace, I can win NaNo '09 early, and then I can rest. But my goal is not just to win NaNo '09. I also intend to complete the first draft of Dirty Pop so I won't have to struggle with it for years like I'm still doing with the Dictel trilogy (Bad Company, Black Science, and the newly renamed New Flesh, formerly Points of Authority — my '07, '06, and '08 NaNo novels respectively). Since Dirty Pop will be shorter than those epic political thrillers, this should be relatively easy; it shouldn't be much more than 50,000 words anyway, since it's intended to be the "grownup" equivalent of a Japanese "light novel".

So, coming full circle back to Dirty Pop, I'm not just going to write the first 50,000 words of it this month, just enough to win NaNoWriMo. I'm going to finish the first draft this month. Then I might even do some editing on it, so I can dedicate NaNoEdMo to wrestling those difficult Dictel novels into publishable shape. Once I get Dirty Pop just right (or at least suitably coherent), I'll serialize it online. And when I do, I'll let you know.

Stay tuned...

NaNoWriMo Prep: Dirty Pop, the Record Companies, and the "Law" of Social Darwinism

#NaNoWriMo #writers
Lately, my villains have started invoking what they call the "Law of Social Darwinism". What is Social Darwinism? Basically, the game of "king of the hill" turned into an all-encompassing worldview. "Survival of the fittest" and all that, you know. Capitalism is based entirely on Social Darwinism, if you believe the most ruthless robber barons and the fiercest anticapitalists. When you hear the words "Law of Social Darwinism" come out of the mouth of one of my characters, especially if the character gives it a positive spin, you know you've facing a villain, and our heroes are in trouble. Case in point: in Dirty Pop, the ruthless record company chairman, based partly on the Ned Beatty character in Network, who tells our poor heroine Charlie that he owns her.

NaNoWriMo Prep: Characters for Dirty Pop

At this point in my preproduction of Dirty Pop, I think I should give some thought to the novel's cast. After all, the characters make the plot, and I need the right balance of characters if I want the story to work. I have the right balance between our heroine, Charlie, and the archvillainess, her mother Drusilla. But their epic conflict requires various supporting characters as well. So let's see what I can come up with...

NaNoWriMo Prep: Pop Culture Research

I'm not touching my index cards for my NaNoWriMo novel Dirty Pop till just one week before NaNo begins. But that doesn't mean I can't do some Internet research on the pop culture world in which main girl Charlie is trying to make her mark in.

First of all, there's the behind-the-scenes stuff that's going to be the tricky part: managers, crew, labels, legal stuff, etc. What you see on MTV or YouTube has a huge infrastructure behind it, and it needs to be part of the story.

Second: fashion. That's always been difficult for me to imagine, much less draw. In the non-Disney pop music world Charlie is trying to break into, it's important to have the right style — and right now that style tends to be a cross between the outrageous and the science-fictional.

Third: What real-life pop-cultural figures do I want to loosely base characters on? No, there won't be any roman à clef type stuff with thinly disguised real-life characters; my imagination is too powerful and strange for that. Knowing as well as I do how I work, I'm likely to mix, match, and mutate characters till they only vaguely resemble their real-life inspirations. Case in point: Charlie's mother Drusilla, a major villain in Bad Company and Black Science as well as Dirty Pop. As a New Age cult guru, I threw together at least half a dozen real-life cult matriarchs into the blender and set it to "puree". Dru has elements of JZ Knight (of Ramtha fame), Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Sylvia Browne, and my family's ex-guru from the late 1970s and early '80s, along with the fictional character Erica Kane (from the soap opera All My Children). (My suggested casting for the role: Cate Blanchett, unless it's Meryl Streep in full "Nuclear Wintour" mode.) This is the kind of character mashup I have in mind.

A good idea to keep in mind is that sometimes even the most frivolous pop-cultural confection needs some intensive research, even if it doesn't need quite the research that a political thriller about an evil military corporation that invades America needs. Of course, it shouldn't be overdone; that way lies procrastination...

Black Science: Two New Scenes for Desiree (Pre-NaNoWriMo Update)

Sometimes ideas simply come to you. Like these two scenes that emerged pretty much full-blown today. One overwhelmed me in the library. The other emerged out of a conversation I got into at my local guitar shop. Both involve redheaded Desiree, one of the two main characters of Black Science.

The first is a love scene. A new male lover convinces shy Desiree to remove her inhibitions with her clothes (actually, he removes the latter) and make love. This scene — is he a character from Bad Company, or a new character? I haven't decided yet — serves as a counterpoint to Desiree's incubus-seduction by the terrorist villain Rashid in BadCo, so I realized that it belongs in Black Science, which is in part a sort of "Desiree Thomas' Lehrjahre". This new man (if it isn't BadCo's Billy Hunter) in effect initiates her into the true pleasures of lovemaking, at least the heterosexual variety. I'll find a place to put it in the Black Science plot where it will advance Desiree's character arc.

The other new scene for Black Science features a cameo appearance by Desiree's sister Charlie. The sisters are out shopping in some mall in the Seattle area, I haven't decided which one. As you'd expect, there's packs of teenage girls running around, each one representing some conformist school clique. Some of them scowl at the two nonconformist sisters in unison, partly in disgust at Charlie's politically incorrect hairstyle, never mind the clothes (which all but have a whole novel to themselves in Dirty Pop). Desiree, still only 18, is concerned, but Charlie (already 21) shrugs it off. Charlie says to Desiree, "Don't mind them. They still don't know how to think for themselves. We're the cool ones here. They're merely 'in'."

As you can tell, I'm still getting new scenes for my previous NaNoWriMo novels. I'm getting new song ideas too. It isn't till the last week of this month (October) that I'll shift my focus entirely to my '09 NaNo novel, Dirty Pop.

NaNoWriMo is coming again, and I've got my novel...

#NaNoWriMo #writers
...only it's not actually part of the Dictel trilogy. Bad Company and Black Science are still so unfinished, there's no way I could get all three novels in the trilogy finished before NaNoWriMo 2010. So I'm writing a side story.

It's called Dirty Pop, and it accounts for Charlie's absence from Black Science. So what has she been doing in 2009? Why, trying to restart her singing career, of course! When we meet her early in Bad Company, she's about to kill herself, partly over the fact that her own mother, the narcissistic cult guru Drusilla Becket, destroyed her career over a forbidden lesbian fling. For Charlie, success is the best revenge.