Bad Company: Preparing for June's "BadCoFiMo"

So far this month, I've been pretty much content to take a break from writing. Mostly, I've been focusing on my guitar lessons. But on June 1, my break ends. Sure, I'll continue with my guitar practice; after all, I've got songs to rerecord. But on June 1, I will return to the '07 NaNoWriMo novel that has given me so much trouble over the past year and a half. For me, June '09 is "BadCoFiMo" — "Bad Company Finishing Month"!

I have a whole bunch of small files in the BadCo directory on my hard drive, built up over a period of about two months from mid-December (NaNoFiMo '08), through January (the JanNoWriMo in which I pulled off my most spectacular WriMo victory ever, with over 65,000 words), and fizzling out in February (in which I shifted my emphasis from NaNoPubYe's FebNoWriMo to FAWM). Some of these files contain scenes from different chapters in widely separated parts of the book. My first challenge, which I never bothered to get around to during NaNoEdMo, is to assemble all these files and all these scenes, putting them all into their proper places in the book. That is my first task for BadCoFiMo.

Even once I've put every scene back into its place, there will still be some plot holes remaining. My second task is to fill them. I will plot every single storyline, determine where each scene fits within the various storylines, find where the plot holes are, and write all the new scenes I need to fill them. This will give me my first complete draft.

My third task: a one-pass revision to create the second complete draft. In her workshop, Holly Lisle strongly suggests that her method will get you "from first draft to last in one cycle". I'm going to see if I can actually pull off such a feat. The first draft will still be rough, even after all the revisions I put into my many incomplete drafts. The second draft will be much smoother and read much easier.

Once I get the second draft finished, I'll prepare an "e-book" version that I'll have certain friends, relatives, and fellow "wrimos" read and critique. They may give me criticisms and ideas that could result in a third draft — but if I don't have the time left, I'll leave a third draft till later, like after I'm done writing the first draft of Black Science during JulNoWriMo and AugNoWriMo. Interestingly enough, it was on the first day of last year's AugNo that I burned out on BadCo, pretty much preventing me from even touching my computer till almost the end of NaNo '08, which I would have lost but for one of my most productive Panic Times in my entire WriMo career. A book never emerged out of it, but at least I won...

Now I'll get back to my guitar practice, and spending way too much time on the Web, and trying to find some way to get broadband access (I'm poor, I'm afraid) so I can avoid those long dialup load times. And I'll continue my rest from novel writing till June 1. But in June, I'm going to finish Bad Company, no matter what!

Bad Company: The Script Frenzy FAILS!

I made my third attempt at Script Frenzy last month. However, it seems, attempting to adapt my NaNoWriMo novels jinxes my Screnzy. Once again, I failed to adapt a novel. Plus, I had a huge complication: I moved across town. Moving takes your attention away from creative things. And so all I ended up writing was 15 pages of the movie adaptation of Bad Company, basically the "Intro" and "Outro" from the novel.

So I decided to take a break for an entire month. I'm skipping MayNoWriMo.

So what am I doing this month? Mainly, I'm focusing on learning how to play the guitar. My guitar lessons started almost serendipitously in the middle of FAWM, while I was furiously writing 38 songs (write 14 and you're a winner — some extremely productive FAWMers actually wrote over 100 songs). Early this month, I got this year's birthday present from my mother two months early: a new Stratocaster-type electric guitar. One of my goals is to record all the FAWM songs I haven't cut demos for, and rerecord almost all the songs I've already recorded (the one exception being "Stayed Up Too Late" (MP3 link), the "Casiopunk" tune, in which I'm keeping my MIDI-simulated guitar sound). I'm not practicing my guitar(s) as regularly as I'd like, but at least I can actually play guitar now.

As for Bad Company — after the failure of my Script Frenzy in April, and limited success in NaNoEdMo in March, I've decided to dedicate June to finishing the first draft. Sure, I'll still be continuing my guitar lessons (in part, to prepare for 50 Songs in 90 Days). But my main focus in June will be what I call "BadCoFiMo": Bad Company Finishing Month. My goals:

1. Assemble the many fragments I wrote during NaNoFiMo and JanNoWriMo and import them into the main manuscript file.
2. Fill in all the remaining plot holes, and finish the plotlines I've left incomplete.
3. Give the finished manuscript a one-pass edit.

During Script Frenzy, my goal was to adapt Bad Company into both movie and graphic novel scripts. As I said, I only managed to adapt the novel's prologue and epilogue. Since the adaptation attempt was unsuccessful, I'm going to focus on the novel for one more month. Any adaptations will then have to wait.

Meanwhile, I've started to get a fresh new set of story ideas for Black Science. But I'll save that for future posts...

Bad Company: The Script Frenzy!

It's been way too long since I posted here. The reason? I got way too wrapped up in FAWM! Well, after 38 songs, 24 of them recorded, and after nearly missing out on NaNoEdMo, I'm working to complete the first draft of Bad Company again. This time, for Script Frenzy, I'm writing not one but two scripts: the movie, and the graphic novel! And I'm drawing the latter, and may even release it in regular installments (the frequency depends on how fast I can draw) as a webmanga like Spanner.

I have these periods when I can hardly write anything (like 4 whole months last year), and others in which I get so obsessed with something that I can't do anything else. In February and March this year, that obsession was FAWM. February was the month in which I discovered I can actually write songs, and write them well. I don't have the guitar or keyboard skills to actually play those instruments yet, so I used TuxGuitar and my MIDI keyboard to simulate a rock band. The result sounds okay, but the MIDI-simulated rock guitar is only satisfactory, and the simulated acoustic guitar is even worse! I'll eventually redo all my songs with real guitar and keyboard parts, and they'll sound tons better.

Bad Company: The Spectacular Finale of JanNoWriMo

For those of you who have been paying attention, one of the goals I made for this year was to finish Bad Company once and for all. So, when I found myself falling behind in the last week of JanNoWriMo, I pulled off a series of 10,000-word marathon sessions. I won JanNo in spectacular fashion, breaking my all-time WriMo record in the process. However, even though I ended up with pain in my neck and shoulders to go along with my satisfaction, I didn't finish the first draft. That's my next goal: finish BadCo before NaNoEdMo begins on March 1.

Bad Company: The Mid-JanNoWriMo Progress Update

It's the middle of the month, and I'm attempting to finish Bad Company, or at least write 50,000 words of it, for JanNoWriMo. How am I doing so far? Right now, I'm behind on the word count — just a little over 15,000 words — but I'm ahead of where I usually am during any given WriMo. So far, so good...

Last year, I tried to fill in some of the many huge gaping plot holes that have always plagued BadCo. Most of them remain unfilled. This year, I'm determined to write every single chapter and scene that's still missing, and there's still a lot of them left to write. However, I've already written some very important scenes, and there's now at least a sense of continuity between the "trial of Desiree" subplot and the leadup to Dictel's invasion of America.

However, most of the early part of the novel remains unwritten, including everything Charlie's in until the "trial of Desiree" sequence. Also, I haven't gotten to the corporate invasion at all yet. However, the month is only half over, so I have more than enough time to take care of it all.

Stay tuned...

The Project Site Is Up...Finally!

At last, I've finally put up the Spanner's World project site — after many, many years of delay. I only put it up last week, so it's still crude and still has hardly any content yet. But at least it's up. Now I have a central site for all my projects in the Spanner "universe". From now on, when I mention any of my fiction projects here in this blog, I'll make a direct link to the project page on my new site.

Now, the hard part is thinking up exactly which content I'll post. I need to come up with story synopses and character profiles, and these take some thinking. Another challenge is the character designs I'll need for each profile, and the cover designs and logos I want to create for each story. I'll need to do this pretty soon.

Now I have no more excuse to delay my art or my site updates. (None except early burnout due to lack of sleep, something I've been struggling with recently due to the fact that I now have to wake up early, and I'm normally very much a night own...) Another thing to spur me back to the drawing table is my new DeviantArt page, which right now still doesn't have content — something I will correct very soon as well.

More project and WriMo updates coming very soon!

A New Goal: A Drawing A Day

On the NaNoWriMo forums, I discovered something called Project 365, in which you take (and preferably post online) a photograph a day. Digital cameras make it easy. And so I set up a Flickr account and a photo blog just for this. (My blog entry on this is here.) Which got me thinking: shouldn't I do something similar with my drawing? If something like Project 365 can make you a better photographer, then posting a drawing a day (drawn and scanned that day, of course) can make me a better artist.

Bad Company: Finish It This Month!

I've started JanNoWriMo with a bang. Word wars, that is: I'm writing 10,000 words today, and writing the entire climactic scene of the trial sequence, the trial of Clayton Starr, Charlie and Desiree's persecutor and the head lawyer of Dictel. For my second word war, the first 10,000 words count toward the 30,000 I'm writing by the 5th. Why so many words so soon in a WriMo? Because I intend to finish the first complete draft of Bad Company this month!

Bad Company has always been incomplete. After every WriMo I wrote for it in, I left scores of plot holes, some of them humongous. I had many story ideas I never wrote. I've decided to write them all now.

The trial of Clayton Starr is the first of many plot holes I'm filling this month. Writing the unwritten scenes allows me to win a WriMo without cheating. I'm spending the first 5 days of JanNo writing as many unwritten scenes as I can so I can get the major word count job out of the way early and do some major rewriting till the last week of the month. I'll do all the rewrites starting the 6th; once I run out of chapters to rewrite, I'll go back to writing unwritten scenes and hit my word count target (I chose 50,000) and score my JanNoWriMo victory.

Meanwhile, I decided to do a simultaneous project that I think will help me with the novel. For a January challenge in the Script Frenzy, I announced that I would write the script for a BadCo movie adaptation. To this end, I'll be downloading the latest version of Celtx, a popular free scriptwriting program. (I hope Celtx has a comics template by now, or gets one by April.) Writing the novel and the script at the same time will help me put the long and complicated novel in better order.

Writing the "trial of Clayton Starr" chapter went a whole lot more smoothly than the rewrite of chapter 2, in which Desiree runs away to half-sister Ruby's apartment while Charlie is hiding out there. I didn't realize at first that Ruby would be a "mentor as threshold guardian" kind of character until I was in the middle of writing it. Chapters 1 and 2, therefore, will be the first chapters I'll rewrite once I've written my 30,000th word of new story.

I have my primary goal for January now. Soon I'll get Bad Company written, rewritten, finished, and ready for NaNoEdMo.

And now, back to writing...

My Big, Fun, Scary Goals for 2009

While I was writing more of Bad Company for NaNoFiMo, I got an email from Chris Baty of NaNoWriMo about the 2009 Big, Fun, Scary Challenge. Since I achieved several (though not all) of the Big, Fun, Scary goals for 2008, I got the winner's badge to the left and a winner's certificate in PDF format. I posted my 2009 list of Big, Fun, Scary goals in the BFS goals thread on the NaNoWriMo forum. But I'm posting them again here, to make sure I don't forget them.

So here's the complete text of the post:

Like last year, I'm going to divide my goals into "WriMo" and "Extra" categories. This time I'm going to achieve a greater percentage of my goals than in '08.

WriMo Goals:
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1) Finish '07 novel Bad Company and start submitting it to publishers.
2) Finish '06 novel Black Science and get it ready to submit.
3) Rewrite and finish the entire first volume of Spanner and get it ready to draw.
4) Complete all character designs for Spanner.
5) Win JanNo, FebNo, FAWM, EdMo, Script Frenzy, JulNo, AugNo, and the next NaNo and FiMo.
6) Enter NaNoMangO.
7) Post the first issue of Spanner online.

Extra Goals:
----------------
1) Exercise regularly.
2) Post on my blogs (project and opinion) regularly.
3) Set up a personal webpage that will be the center of all things Dennis Jernberg, from blogs to webcomics.
4) Create a web course on how to draw comics.
5) Learn at least one of these languages: French, Spanish, German, Japanese.
6) Learn how to play the keyboard, play the guitar, and sing.
7) Start a relationship with my first girlfriend (the really hard one, since I'm notoriously unsociable...).

If, like last year, I find I need to add extra goals, I'll add them in this thread. Only this time I should link to this post.

Here goes...

I call on my friends and fellow Wrimos to help keep me to 'em!

Back to Spanner’s World...

Bad Company: NaNoFiMo 2008

I decided not to continue writing this year's NaNoWriMo novel this month. For NaNoFiMo, I decided to pull out my '07 novel, Bad Company. I'm both rewriting previously written scenes and adding new ones to fill plot holes. I'm even adding a new and important story arc, "The Trial of the Dictel 10".

While rewriting a previous scene during my idle Christmas Eve, I realized how much better I write now than I did before BadCo burned me out in August. I've completely rewritten the Intro so that my first preview is now obsolete: the entire prologue which began with this scene is now gone, replaced by something almost completely different. Those who like this scene shouldn't worry, however; the second part of the new prologue, which follows and contradicts the new opening (the Dictel corporate spin), is a news report of just this event, edited to increase the urgency.

Chapter 1 has also undergone some pretty radical changes, too. I thought this opening was cool enough when I wrote it. But now I have Charlie overreacting for one paragraph, after which she drops the melodrama (says Ruby: "Stop it, Charlotte! You're acting like your mother!"). And I realized that the first two chapters should each act as if they were television episodes or (more accurately) issues of a comics series (a prequel to Spanner, to be exact), each a mini-movie with a cliffhanger ending. Each should build up in tension and action till the climactic cliffhanger. So my Chapter 1 preview is obsolete, too.

Both of these radical revisions occurred when I rewrote the Intro and the first two (originally four or so) chapters for NaNoFiMo. That's because, I now realize, I can write so much better now than I did when I originally wrote these two scenes for the second incomplete draft.

I only started writing again on the 23rd, almost two weeks after I last wrote (my first session for FiMo). On Christmas Eve, I managed to write several new scenes (fast) and rewrite several others (much slower). I managed to write the definitive versions of certain previously written scenes. What got me writing again? I was struggling to find some way to put the structure of Bad Company back into place. Then, the night of the 23rd, I read two books: Hooked by Les Edgerton, a book about how to open your novel; and The Triumph of Narrative by Robert Fulford. I read the former first and the latter second. Reading Hooked again after having put it on the bookshelf months ago, I realized I understood the book and its principles better than I did the first time I read it. And so I started writing, and what I wrote was the new opening: part 1 of the Intro (the Dictel propaganda video) and the first parts of chapters 1 and 2. Finally everything fell into place, and now I'm writing (and rewriting) BadCo again.

I'm currently up to 8,900 words, exactly. I have absolute confidence that I'll make FiMo's minimum recommended word target of 30,000 by the end of the year. The more I write BadCo, the more interesting it gets; the more it interests me, the more I write it. For the first time since I started writing Bad Company last November, it looks like I'll actually be able to finish it.