January 22nd, 2010 by Neal

SUCKED. The Fear had me. Hard to describe to anyone else. The worst thing about The Fear is that it 1) Cannot be described to anyone else in a way they will understand 2) Involves a great deal of the mind saying you’re fine and should be producing when really, you need nothing but Two and A Half Men or something equally brainless, maybe a shot of booze, maybe a goddamned bike ride or long walk. Not that it worked yesterday, anyway. Anyway, point of bullet point is that your brain recoils in horror, rebels, and tells you things that aren’t, in fact, logical or with point. 3) It is usually a product of paranoia and is unpredictable given its similarity to laziness and lack of corollary (often) with exhaustion. It grips you and makes you second-guess things eternally, everything, and I am absolutely positive it is the result of the beaten-dog syndrome I seem to have whereby I can’t trust anyone since I’ve been hit so many times for trying to do normal good things like eat, clothe myself, or be kind.

Usually it comes with a bout of sleep loss, random crying, and the screams. Last night was fortunate. I had new shoes and new socks and a few things to cheer me up, so it only came with a few jags and I went right to sleep, mostly because I realized the day a loss and calmed myself with six hours of reading. I still lost most of a day of work. Good to note, even the worst of the jags now come with about 1,000 words, which is enough to give a college student the runs.

At any rate, the reason I share these deeply personal things is that they are a necessary part of the process, often, and in the end, when you come through them, they often inform the work in ways, making them better. Sometimes they make them worse, but usually, if you bork a whole chapter, you find one line in there from your day you “lost” that is one of the better ones of the rewrite.

I woke up today feeling much better, and managed this thereby:

I can now go into the weekend happy, and let all the bad shit go. That’s as it should be. And now I can go for walks to vent it out, thanks to the shoes. That’s an undoubtedly good thing.

There is something fucked up to be said for how wrong artistry can be when one can produce two novels in a year, successfully survive a barrage of atrocities, and even manage savings, and then immediately go into a spiral fear of failure. I think it’s something in the brain chemistry, part of what makes people write. Then again, many, many people are successful writers who never experience such things, so maybe it’s a product of dysfunction. And maybe, ironically, the thing that makes me wonder why I am not more successful than I am at the age of thirty is the very thing that has stopped me from being a success at thirty, my paranoia, my dysfunction in myself from the way I’ve lived. The Fear.

But like I’m always told when I point out that I’m afraid of being a bad father because I’m worried I’ll fuck it up, and as I advise others, that fear alone is the first step most others don’t dare to take, and thereby, perhaps, I will be able to triumph.

Hope springs anew.

October 19th, 2009 by Neal

So, I’m actually way ahead on the word count, now that I’ve looked at the last book. BCS draft 2 ended at 73,000 words, draft 3 ended at 82,000, so if things progress, then I very well could end up with a 90-95 thousand word book. Which is awesome. It’s right about at that sweet spot I wanted to be at without going too long.

I think I can do it, man. I think I’m ready. I’m gonna nail it! I’m gonna pull it off!

No kobeyashiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

PAH PAH!

October 8th, 2009 by Neal

I think I need a break. My productivity is slowing down. I’m still doing okay, though. I’ve added about eight thousand words or so, edited up a good deal more, and I’ve rounded the corner on the second draft.

I’m going to go after the next novel in a different way, I realize as I’m doing this one. I’m going to throw more into the first draft so there’s less revision down the line. I realize that it’s faster, and it really is, but I also get tired of the repetition of it. I just got a big thrill out of going from, say, a novel in a year, to a novel in six months. I can still do the novel in six months thing, but now that I’m not as burdened with side stuff, I have to realize that I can take my time more and do it right the first time just as easily. I used to be more about that, but that’s because I used to only get one or two days to work on novel stuff in a given week.

I also realize that there’s a lot of stuff to add at the end of the book, which is good. I missed two big scenes like an idiot, and one big plot resolution. Boo.

August 28th, 2009 by Neal

I was soured on the comic medium by something for the better part of six months (personal, not going into it, sorry charlie).

I’ve been trying to fix that, because I do love comics. It’s like the time when I took a poetry class and had a bad teacher, and didn’t want to write poetry for many months. Or when I was forced into Shakespeare, and didn’t want to touch his work for many years.

Anyway, point of that being, I just wrote an outline for a small OGN Hal Taylor mystery. I’m going to block it out a little better tomorrow, but my thinking is that since I’ve been finishing my three thousand words with some time to spare, it couldn’t hurt to write 3-5 pages of an OGN after, even if it turns out to mean nothing.

I also like the idea of what a visual medium could do for Hal, in particular his gross proclivities and the proclivities of the people involved in this case. Let’s just say it involves a sex club and some very strange fetishists. And Bankers. Notoriously good combination. Add a little bit of alcohol, and you have some sweet pandemonium.

I also truly relish the idea of a scene showing just how crazy Bitch can be. I have labeled it “CRAZY SUPERTIME BITCH REVENGE ACTION SCENE”, and though I won’t do it, in my head I have this image of the whole comic suddenly dropping into anime with motion lines and naked people with knives.

The only real story bit I want to share of yet, before I even begin it, was an interesting little thing I noted. Hal walks into the sex club with a beer in his hand. He takes a swig, and a mammoth fat woman with a riding crop and electrical wires stuck to her nipples turns to him, points to the beer, and says, “Hey! We don’t allow that shit in here!”

July 31st, 2009 by Neal

The heat has broken, or at least gotten to the point where it’s tolerable to sit in the writing room, and shit has come pouring out of me in a way that it hasn’t since I had food poisoning on the 4th.

I didn’t do much TIME work, but all of the thinking and meandering and planning I’ve been doing in my head came out in a kind of a pre-write flush, and I have now outlined the entirety of No Weak Sister. Outlining is a new thing for me. I used to hate it. I still kind of do. But it helps when constructing a mystery, it’s almost necessary.

I realized that while Stephen King touts the idea of letting the story organically write itself (still an idea I wholly support), there is also an inherent danger when you’ve read too many books and have a bit of a general scorn for genre. In other words, when I go to the book store, I hardly ever head for the racks that are categorized… I just head to general fiction. At least until Powell’s, where I found that every section is like three women in bed.

At any rate, point being, when I just spin MY wheels, I don’t do what Stephen King does, and keep it a piece of pop fiction fun that rocks your ass. I make a piece of work that should go into the GENERAL FICTION area. This was originally the sole goal of my life, but I’ve been reading a lot of the modern version of that lately, and it hasn’t turned my gears. A good reason why is the book I just finished, Lush Life, by Richard Price.

It’s essentially the story of a robbery gone wrong that ends with (spoiler) the murderer coming to justice. It takes 450 pages to do it. It reads a lot like The Wire watches. You yell and you scream at it to get to the fucking point already, and it keeps shouting back, “But look! Look at this intriguing character moment!” so you don’t shut the damned thing off. And I read the whole book, true to my moronic form, when I have Sharpe’s right next to me, Working by Terkel, and a bunch of other fun books that I need to read to gear into No Weak Sister.

I can read that stuff, because I admire the craft. The average reader will read it and go, “FUCKING BORING!” Especially when there’s no broader existential point made, as was not made in Lush that I could see, really. In Clockers? Yes. There was a much broader point, that stereotypes inform who we will become and take us away from what we will become. Clockers is a tale of nature vs. nurture. Lush Life was a tale of a yuppie gone wrong and a dumb street thug. There didn’t seem to be any redemptive point. It was superbly crafted from the character and dialogue standpoint, but that’s not what I want to offer. I want to offer a good story, strong character, kickass dialogue, a point, and a motivation to read the next fucking page if you’re not a big reader without going BOH-RING!

In other words, I still like Richard Price, and I’ll read him, but I don’t want to be like him in my work.

The biggest problem I’ve had with Hal is the larger picture. The arc of his character, which still must (and will) form organically and grow and shift over time. I look to Atticus Kodiak as a model, and Matthew Scudder. I want to do it like Chandler did with Marlowe over the course of The Big Sleep, but I don’t have the patience for THAT much longform, and beyond that, Marlowe is patient and doesn’t seem to repeat mistakes, whereas Hal is a general fuckup, even if he’s lucky and can find a way out of situations. I’m learning a lot as I go here, and having fun.

Maybe I do have the patience for the longform, who knows? The outline for BCS was 1,500 words, NWS is 3,500. We’ll see if I actually have to cut stuff.

June 30th, 2009 by Neal

86,638 words.

Blue Collar Slut is finito.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been engaging in the prewriting for the sequel. I have a bunch of fragments and ideas, and it’s already coming together. I won’t start for about a month, but I think I have the title already:

Weak sister:

Origin: 1855-1860

–noun Informal.
1. a vacillating person; coward.
2. a part or element that undermines the whole of something; a weak link.

I can’t explain the title, alas, without giving a good chunk of the plot away. But it makes total sense.

Neal is pleased. And now Neal is off to format a manuscript.

PS: ZOMG 120 pages of editing today.

June 26th, 2009 by Neal

Draft four is in the can

June 24th, 2009 by Neal

(It’s hard to hear over the motor)

I have been spurred by wise advice (thank you Karen and Nunzio) to seek feedback on the new book. I’ve been so caught up in the fun of writing it that I didn’t realize I was reaching the point of nearly turning it in without having shown it around as much as I typically do, and that might lead to an insular fuckarow.

I know it’s pretty silly to ask for you to read the whole book in a week (because that’s when I’m likely to turn it in), but I’m more than willing to let folks, if you want to.

Instead, I propose another idea. If you want, read the first three chapters, and let me know how you think the flow is. Or read one chapter. Or some other idea.

Bottom line, I’m looking for a little feedback, the book feels close enough for me to do that, and if you’re interested, shoot me a line:

bailey.neal @ comcast.net

If I can get a response by Monday, I can pop in your advice, roll with the ideas, and if it seems like there’s some systemic problem I’ve missed, delay the send-in.

Here’s your chance to check out what I’ve been babbling about!

EDIT: I suppose I should throw in a bribe. It’s only sensible. Anyone who reads and responds to at least three chapters by Sunday night gets a copy of Michelle signed in the mail. Anyone who reads the whole thing by Sunday night gets Michelle and some signed Smallville Mags. That might make up for my short notice here.

Howzabout that, kids?

June 23rd, 2009 by Neal

Might as well stop using the graphic, because the book is now proceeding without much change. I’ll just drop a final word count when it’s done.

I did about 40 pages of editing today, and for some reason I don’t feel like that’s enough, so I’m just going to smack myself.

I’m more than halfway through the fourth draft, and with any luck I’ll hit a good clip and be done with this draft by Friday.

If the fifth draft reads as quickly as this one did, I should be done by the end of the month, which is my goal.

June 22nd, 2009 by Neal

Hal goes well. I’m not adding much, not deleting much, and that’s the desired state. I did two and a half chapters today, and the day was actually not balls-out, so I’m guessing that I’ll really start plowing through tomorrow now that I’ve had a few days to get back into the swing.