Writing Dare 2001, Week 2

michaeljasper.net

"Another Wrecked Web Site"

March 13, 2001

Feeling good about the novel, and a story...

Today's Quote:

“My mom said this town killed my dad,” the boy said. “Is that true?”

Today's Progress:

Almost done with ch. 9

The Official Dare Page

Hello again. As another Dare week draws to a close, with exactly 3 months to go (remember, I'm challenging myself to a Dare that runs until my birthday on June 13), I'm feeling pretty darn good about my progress.
I'm still working on chapter 9, the funeral and post-funeral chapter, and having had the time to re-read it again, I quite like it. I realized that I need to slow down in lots of places and let the emotions build and really paint a picture of the scene.
For example, at the end of chapter 9, when Clint, Riley, Titus, Race, and Joshua are alone, staring down at Peter's grave, I really want that to hit people hard. Right now it's just a paragraph. I want it to be closer to a page, as Joshua sings lightly in the background and the wind whips against them with the promise/threat of winter. I want each man to feel his own mortality, and his own loss. And beneath that emotion should be a growing sense of anger, as they realize Peter's death was not an accident at all. Revenge and justice are going to be their prime motivators, as they explore town and try to figure out what happened with their old buddy.
Yeah. Somethin' like dat!
In other news, I got a very nice email from an editory about my story, "Explosions." They liked the story, but the ending was a bit unclear. I'd originally wanted it to be a bit ambiguous, but I realize now that something needs to be resolved by story's end, otherwise it reads like a novel chapter and not a self-contained story. Now I have the perfect motivation (possible publication) and thanks to the magazine's savvy editors, I know where to start. Hopefully I'll have the revisions back to them by Sunday. I definitely don't want to keep them waiting!
Things always seem to work out like that, don't they? I was feeling a bit negative about writing yesterday, and this morning I get an email that renews my desire and affirms all my hard work. Groovy. Talk to you later.
mjj

March 12, 2001

Trying to wake up...

Today's Quote:

“Got the wrong pallbearer there,” a red-faced man muttered as they walked past. It was old man Maiers from the bank where Peter worked. Before he could stop himself, Clint had stepped down hard on the old man’s foot.

Today's Progress:

Fiddled with ch. 9

The Official Dare Page

Argh. What a total Monday today is. My back is sore from working in the yard all day yesterday -- raking and pushing that little seeding thing that's built for someone 4'6" did a number on me -- and I'm tired as crap. I almost slept in this morning, but my sense of duty pulled me out of bed.
I'm currently working on the funeral scene, switching all of the scenes into Clint's perspective (before it jumped from him to Riley to Titus, and that wasn't working). I have to decide how much to show during the actual funeral, because I don't want it to be overkill ("Pete's dead, boo hoo," etc.). And I want to keep that sense of dread going, adding to the sense that something is very wrong in Rosecroft, indeed.
Once I get through this section and the next, the following chapters ought to just roll -- there's the cool trip to Peter's house and Riley's run-in with the weird boys. The next chapter after the funeral is a little tricky, when the guys run into some of the townfolk. I think that meeting needs to be tweaked a bit so I don't give away too much. I want readers to be guess just who is good and who is bad in town.
I'm hoping to get the next 40 pages or so fixed up before the weekend, when I plan to do a ton of revising. I'm probably expecting way too much of myself, but I really want to get through this quickly, without losing momentum. Part of me is in a hurry because I want to work on the fantasy novel again, but the bigger part of me is in a hurry because I know this horror novel will sell, and I want to get to that point as soon as possible. I want to be done with this, badly. But in a good way -- I'm not miserable working on it. Sometimes it's frustrating not having the time to work on it, and I get annoyed sometimes with my collaborator (I'm used to working on my own), but for the most part, I'm having fun working on the novel again.
mjj

March 11, 2001

Organizing...

Today's Progress:

Reorganized all the chapters (all 42 of them)!

The Official Dare Page

Sort of a catching-up day, preparing for the week to come and looking at the week's work from last week. I took the draft of the entire novel and went through the original 10 chapters and broked them into 42 new chapters, along with a prologue, interlude, and epiloge. It was fun.
I also got some feedback from Greg on the 60 pages I sent to him, with some good comments, for the most part. I'm tempted to go back and do some fixing, but for now I think I want to keep moving forward.
I also went through comments my friend Chris made on the upcoming chapters last year, when we were still going to a local writing group. He made some excellent comments, which he is always good at doing. He sees the whole picture quite well.
So that's about all I had time to do today. I just got in from digging and raking and fertilizing our back yard. Whit, our greyhound, has completely ripped up the back yard ever since we fenced in the area for him. I think he flashes back to his time at the racetrack when he gets running back there. He doesn't have much space to run, but he's developed a nice little oval/figure-eight shaped track, going around our willow tree, past the deck, and around the wide end of the fenced-in yard. He's hilarious to watch.
And I've only got a few minutes before the Carolina-Dook rematch, when the championship of the ACC will be decided...
mjj

March 10, 2001

A busy Saturday, more or less...

Today's Quote:

While the six of them muttered, Race looked around for another tree branch.

Maybe not the best move I could've made, he thought, running into here with nothing more than a stick as a weapon. Then his eyes met the gaze of the dog pinned to the ground. The dog's clear, intelligent eyes seemed to speak words of thanks.

Today's Progress:

Finished final run-through of chs. 6-8

The Official Dare Page

Whew. Managed to squeeze in an hour of work after a lot of running and basketball games. I got up early this morning to do some work, but ran out of time quickly. Had a lot of odds and ends kind of stuff. Then we had to queue up for tix to Dave Matthews. After an hour in line, we got seats! Not the best seats, but much, much better than duking it out with drunk/high kids on the grass. It should be fun.
Then we went to breakfast @ Big Ed's, a great Southern-style restaurant where you can still get real Southern food - I had hotcakes and bacon and biscuits and our friend Clarke's grits (with red-eye gravy), and Elizabeth had the saltiest food ever made, country-style ham. Delicious.
I'm really, really happy about the way the first 60 pages have turned out. It took some doing, and a lot of work and cutting, but it was actually pretty fun. We watched "What Lies Beneath" last night (Lizzie's choice - I blame her!) and I kept thinking how much better a movie "Autumn's Fall" would be than that simple, predictable flick was. And it only had one really cool part (when they're in the water and the girl's body floats up and for an instant turns into the real girl who grabs the bad guy and pulls him down to his punishment). The film was really slow and dull, and the acting was pretty bad. Harrison Ford... Sheesh. At least our story moves and has interesting characters. And action. And humor. And (hopefully) some good twists and turns.
Tomorrow I want to try and begin chapter 9 of Autumn's Fall, or do a little drafting of Last of the Hand. Sometimes it's nice to write something new. It's a different kind of rush than revising, which so far has been pretty fun and refreshing. We'll see.
I've been messing with Via Voice, the voice recognition software, and I think it'll take some time for me to get that up and running. I just don't have any time, it seems! Crazy.
Oh, and the Tar Heels won today in the ACC tourney. They play for the championship tomorrow.
I have been finding time to listen to the soundtrack to "O Brother Where Art Thou" as much as I can. We went to see that yesterday. Loved it. The middle was a bit slow, but overall I thought it was a bold, hilarious, well-done movie that made me want to go read Homer. The ending was perfect, perfect. I love it when a movie has me clueless as to how it's going to end. When the three adventurers are about to be hanged, I was like "How the heck are they gonna get out of this??" Needless to say, I wasn't let down by what happened next. And the music is awesome.
"IIIIII am a maaaaaaann, of constant sorrooooooow!! I've seen trouble all my days!!" Well, not me, personally... I'm doing quite well, thanks.
mjj

March 9, 2001

Today's Progress:

Minor edits to chs. 6-8

The Official Dare Page

Another page comparison -- what used to be 84 pages in the original draft has been whittled down to exactly 60 pages. This is my submission - what I'll send to an editor at a novel publisher. So it's got to be the best. Am I repeating myself or what? I know I've said all this before. Just indulge me, eh?
Didn't have a lot of time to get much writing done today, but I did get a chance to look over my printouts of the first 8 chapters and the prologue. I have a little bit more work to do tomorrow on the last three chapters in particular (the wake, after the wake at the spot, and Race's night out), then I plan on messing with my voice recognition software the rest of the day. Of course, in the middle of that somewhere we have to make a side trip to School Kids Records to try and get seats to the Dave Matthews show in April (we are no longer doing grass tix - we're too damn old for that...).
I'm curious to see how this Via Voice software works. I know another writer friend of mine uses it - I should see what he thinks. I've got a headseat to talk into, and a book full of instructions. First it has to learn my voice and writing style, so I'm supposed to read to it. Talk about Artificial Intelligence, huh?
So I figure tomorrow after we get back from getting our tickets from the Ticketmaster monopoly (don't get me started), I can read the first 60 pages of the horror novel into it. Should be fun, huh? Yes, I know, I am a geek. But at least my arms won't hurt so bad anymore!
mjj

March 8, 2001

Wake me up, before you go-go

Today's Quote:

His sense of someone watching them had begun to dissolve, but Titus still squinted into the darkness, trying to see if someone had followed them to their secret spot from their childhood. He was met with empty blackness that stared back at him.

Screw you, boogey man, Titus thought, his paranoia replaced with a giddiness that made him want to cackle. As long as I’m with my buddies, you can’t touch me.

Today's Progress:

Revised chs. 6 and 7, some of ch. 8

The Official Dare Page

I'm off to an amazing start here, folks. I'm close to finishing the first 60 pages of the revision. I just pasted what I revised into the body of the doc that contains the entire novel, and I've managed to cut an even 4,000 words out of the story, taking it from 105,000 words to 101,000 words. We're at 350 pages right now. Not bad for a little over a week's work.
My energy level has been amazingly high, especially considering that I've been getting up early - I woke up at 4 this morning and tried getting back to sleep, but when it got to be 4:30 I decided to just get up and get to revising. Part of it is getting more exercise, part of it is getting to bed earlier, though I think a big part of it is just having enthusiasm for this project. And also being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We've been working on this bad boy for almost a year and a half now (really only a year of actual work, as I took the last half of 2000 off to work on other stuff). It's getting closer, day by day. That's a great feeling.
Now I'm wondering... What's the proper spelling for "boogey man"??? At first I tried "boogie man," but got an image of Dirk Diggler and Boogie Nights -- not the right spelling, I don't think. "Boogey" is closer, but not quite it. Sort of reminds me of "booger" (as in "to pick"), but not in a bad way. I've seen it spelled "bogey man," but that puts me in mind of Top Gun ("You got a bogey on your tail, Mav!"). Not right either.
See the difficult choices and decisions we writers are faced with???
Now then, where was I? Oh yeah, today's endeavors. I fleshed out the wake scene (hence the Wham! heading at top left there, sorry... "to do the jitterbug!") and added some dialogue between Joshua and Clint, and made the whole scene in Clint's point of view. I have to add a couple more concrete details to show a sense of weirdness. I've got the "Wildcat Club" standing in the corner during the wake, talking softly. I need something more, maybe even some action or event.
Then I moved on to chapter seven, which is a scene that echoes the scene at the spot from the prologue, with one notable exception (no Peter). This one's in Titus' point of view, his first. I want to add some more of his background, more of his troubles with his job and his wife, to develop him a bit more. Not a lot needs to be added, just a couple instances here and there. And maybe spruce up the spookiness factor -- the "boogey man"-ness...
And then I even found time to take a crack at chapter eight, with Race and his encounter with the weird boys, when he saves Hadji the German shepherd from their nasty little clutches. I really think having these boys in chapter one gives the story much more of a horror feel, because the reader now knows (after what happens to Peter) that these boys with the stink of motor oil and sweat, with their hoods and leather jackets and shades, are in cahoots with some heavy hitters, and they are capable of no small amount of mischief themselves.
I may have a little bit more time today to fix up what I worked on this morning. If so, I'll try and update this. If not, I'll see ya tomorrow!
P.S. You've got that Wham song running through your head right now, don't you??? I know I do... ("you put the boom-boom into my heart")!
mjj

March 7, 2001

An evening drive with the moon out...

Today's Quote:

Race's window slid down, letting the cold wind in with a roar. When they were even with the SUV, Race pulled his pants down and stuck his bare rear end out the window.

"Kiss it, baby!" he screamed through his laughter. "Kiss the big stinky hairy Bannister buttocks!"

Today's Progress:

Revised ch. 3 and 4, notes for ch. 5 (this morning); revised all of 3, 4, and 5 (later today)

The Official Dare Page

Okay, I apologize for the immature quotation over there on the left, but what can you do. If you have a mooning scene in your book, you've gotta play it up! That's what I think, at least. I could be wrong...
I read over what I'd revised this morning during my workout and really liked what I'd done, and I found some places where I think I should add more. I cut out a bunch of the guys' reunion, especially the dialogue between Titus and Clint, and the whole dinner scene when the guys are reminiscing got cut. I think I may want to keep some of that.
I'm also moving out of Clint's point of view a bit now, with a section with Race, then later a section with Titus, and finishing up the first section (hopefully not past page 60 or so -- that's what we'll send to the publisher!) with Race and his run-in with the boys who've been terrorizing the town. And Hadji enters.
I'm hoping we can squeeze in the scene at the wake, followed by the scene at the spot, with all the guys smoking the wacky weed and talking about the changes that have occurred in Rosecroft. If we can finish up with the scene with Race, all under 60 pages, that will make our excerpt going out to the publisher very tight.
The story really starts to pick up after that, with the funeral and burial the next day, the trip to Peter's house, Riley's run-in with the gang of boys, then church on Sunday, the tour of the school Monday...
But I don't want to give it all away...
Suffice to say that this month has been great so far, incredibly productive, and a lot of fun, even if I have been getting up every weekday at 5 a.m.!
Now if I only had more time to read -- I got Stephen King's book about writing from Amazon.com yesterday, along with my voice-recognition software (impulse buys, I admit, but they should both be worth it - the King book looks pretty good).
Quote of the day: "Success is a journey, not a destination."
Update from later the same day:
Woo-hoo! Had some time today to do a bit more tweaking. A lot more tweaking, actually. I was able to revamp the reunion scene that I'd worried was too skimpy earlier, doing a ton of cutting and pasting and wordsmithing (there's a stupid word!). I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.
I'm up to page 45 now, ready to start work on chapter 6, the wake scene. I'm glad I went back and fixed things up. I don't want to slow the story down too much, but at the same time, I've gotta develop my characters, and that's what the dinner scene does. And of course, the chapter ends with the weird boys on bikes whizzing past. I really like that scene.
Whew. Not a bad day at all...

Home

mjj

	michaeljasper.net *"Another Wrecked Web Site"*
March 13, 2001 Feeling good about the novel, and a story... *Today's Quote:* “My mom said this town killed my dad,” the boy said. “Is that true?” *Today's Progress:* Almost done with ch. 9 The Official Dare Page	Hello again. As another Dare week draws to a close, with exactly 3 months to go (remember, I'm challenging myself to a Dare that runs until my birthday on June 13), I'm feeling pretty darn good about my progress. I'm still working on chapter 9, the funeral and post-funeral chapter, and having had the time to re-read it again, I quite like it. I realized that I need to slow down in lots of places and let the emotions build and really paint a picture of the scene. For example, at the end of chapter 9, when Clint, Riley, Titus, Race, and Joshua are alone, staring down at Peter's grave, I really want that to hit people hard. Right now it's just a paragraph. I want it to be closer to a page, as Joshua sings lightly in the background and the wind whips against them with the promise/threat of winter. I want each man to feel his own mortality, and his own loss. And beneath that emotion should be a growing sense of anger, as they realize Peter's death was not an accident at all. Revenge and justice are going to be their prime motivators, as they explore town and try to figure out what happened with their old buddy. Yeah. Somethin' like dat! In other news, I got a very nice email from an editory about my story, "Explosions." They liked the story, but the ending was a bit unclear. I'd originally wanted it to be a bit ambiguous, but I realize now that something needs to be resolved by story's end, otherwise it reads like a novel chapter and not a self-contained story. Now I have the perfect motivation (possible publication) and thanks to the magazine's savvy editors, I know where to start. Hopefully I'll have the revisions back to them by Sunday. I definitely don't want to keep them waiting! Things always seem to work out like that, don't they? I was feeling a bit negative about writing yesterday, and this morning I get an email that renews my desire and affirms all my hard work. Groovy. Talk to you later. mjj
March 12, 2001 Trying to wake up... *Today's Quote:* “Got the wrong pallbearer there,” a red-faced man muttered as they walked past. It was old man Maiers from the bank where Peter worked. Before he could stop himself, Clint had stepped down hard on the old man’s foot. *Today's Progress:* Fiddled with ch. 9 The Official Dare Page	Argh. What a total Monday today is. My back is sore from working in the yard all day yesterday -- raking and pushing that little seeding thing that's built for someone 4'6" did a number on me -- and I'm tired as crap. I almost slept in this morning, but my sense of duty pulled me out of bed. I'm currently working on the funeral scene, switching all of the scenes into Clint's perspective (before it jumped from him to Riley to Titus, and that wasn't working). I have to decide how much to show during the actual funeral, because I don't want it to be overkill ("Pete's dead, boo hoo," etc.). And I want to keep that sense of dread going, adding to the sense that something is very wrong in Rosecroft, indeed. Once I get through this section and the next, the following chapters ought to just roll -- there's the cool trip to Peter's house and Riley's run-in with the weird boys. The next chapter after the funeral is a little tricky, when the guys run into some of the townfolk. I think that meeting needs to be tweaked a bit so I don't give away too much. I want readers to be guess just who is good and who is bad in town. I'm hoping to get the next 40 pages or so fixed up before the weekend, when I plan to do a ton of revising. I'm probably expecting way too much of myself, but I really want to get through this quickly, without losing momentum. Part of me is in a hurry because I want to work on the fantasy novel again, but the bigger part of me is in a hurry because I know this horror novel will sell, and I want to get to that point as soon as possible. I want to be done with this, badly. But in a good way -- I'm not miserable working on it. Sometimes it's frustrating not having the time to work on it, and I get annoyed sometimes with my collaborator (I'm used to working on my own), but for the most part, I'm having fun working on the novel again. mjj
March 11, 2001 Organizing... *Today's Progress:* Reorganized all the chapters (all 42 of them)! The Official Dare Page	Sort of a catching-up day, preparing for the week to come and looking at the week's work from last week. I took the draft of the entire novel and went through the original 10 chapters and broked them into 42 new chapters, along with a prologue, interlude, and epiloge. It was fun. I also got some feedback from Greg on the 60 pages I sent to him, with some good comments, for the most part. I'm tempted to go back and do some fixing, but for now I think I want to keep moving forward. I also went through comments my friend Chris made on the upcoming chapters last year, when we were still going to a local writing group. He made some excellent comments, which he is always good at doing. He sees the whole picture quite well. So that's about all I had time to do today. I just got in from digging and raking and fertilizing our back yard. Whit, our greyhound, has completely ripped up the back yard ever since we fenced in the area for him. I think he flashes back to his time at the racetrack when he gets running back there. He doesn't have much space to run, but he's developed a nice little oval/figure-eight shaped track, going around our willow tree, past the deck, and around the wide end of the fenced-in yard. He's hilarious to watch. And I've only got a few minutes before the Carolina-Dook rematch, when the championship of the ACC will be decided... mjj
March 10, 2001 A busy Saturday, more or less... *Today's Quote:* While the six of them muttered, Race looked around for another tree branch. Maybe not the best move I could've made, he thought, running into here with nothing more than a stick as a weapon. Then his eyes met the gaze of the dog pinned to the ground. The dog's clear, intelligent eyes seemed to speak words of thanks. *Today's Progress:* Finished final run-through of chs. 6-8 The Official Dare Page	Whew. Managed to squeeze in an hour of work after a lot of running and basketball games. I got up early this morning to do some work, but ran out of time quickly. Had a lot of odds and ends kind of stuff. Then we had to queue up for tix to Dave Matthews. After an hour in line, we got seats! Not the best seats, but much, much better than duking it out with drunk/high kids on the grass. It should be fun. Then we went to breakfast @ Big Ed's, a great Southern-style restaurant where you can still get real Southern food - I had hotcakes and bacon and biscuits and our friend Clarke's grits (with red-eye gravy), and Elizabeth had the saltiest food ever made, country-style ham. Delicious. I'm really, really happy about the way the first 60 pages have turned out. It took some doing, and a lot of work and cutting, but it was actually pretty fun. We watched "What Lies Beneath" last night (Lizzie's choice - I blame her!) and I kept thinking how much better a movie "Autumn's Fall" would be than that simple, predictable flick was. And it only had one really cool part (when they're in the water and the girl's body floats up and for an instant turns into the real girl who grabs the bad guy and pulls him down to his punishment). The film was really slow and dull, and the acting was pretty bad. Harrison Ford... Sheesh. At least our story moves and has interesting characters. And action. And humor. And (hopefully) some good twists and turns. Tomorrow I want to try and begin chapter 9 of Autumn's Fall, or do a little drafting of Last of the Hand. Sometimes it's nice to write something new. It's a different kind of rush than revising, which so far has been pretty fun and refreshing. We'll see. I've been messing with Via Voice, the voice recognition software, and I think it'll take some time for me to get that up and running. I just don't have any time, it seems! Crazy. Oh, and the Tar Heels won today in the ACC tourney. They play for the championship tomorrow. I have been finding time to listen to the soundtrack to "O Brother Where Art Thou" as much as I can. We went to see that yesterday. Loved it. The middle was a bit slow, but overall I thought it was a bold, hilarious, well-done movie that made me want to go read Homer. The ending was perfect, perfect. I love it when a movie has me clueless as to how it's going to end. When the three adventurers are about to be hanged, I was like "How the heck are they gonna get out of this??" Needless to say, I wasn't let down by what happened next. And the music is awesome. "IIIIII am a maaaaaaann, of constant sorrooooooow!! I've seen trouble all my days!!" Well, not me, personally... I'm doing quite well, thanks. mjj
March 9, 2001 *Today's Progress:* Minor edits to chs. 6-8 The Official Dare Page	Another page comparison -- what used to be 84 pages in the original draft has been whittled down to exactly 60 pages. This is my submission - what I'll send to an editor at a novel publisher. So it's got to be the best. Am I repeating myself or what? I know I've said all this before. Just indulge me, eh? Didn't have a lot of time to get much writing done today, but I did get a chance to look over my printouts of the first 8 chapters and the prologue. I have a little bit more work to do tomorrow on the last three chapters in particular (the wake, after the wake at the spot, and Race's night out), then I plan on messing with my voice recognition software the rest of the day. Of course, in the middle of that somewhere we have to make a side trip to School Kids Records to try and get seats to the Dave Matthews show in April (we are no longer doing grass tix - we're too damn old for that...). I'm curious to see how this Via Voice software works. I know another writer friend of mine uses it - I should see what he thinks. I've got a headseat to talk into, and a book full of instructions. First it has to learn my voice and writing style, so I'm supposed to read to it. Talk about Artificial Intelligence, huh? So I figure tomorrow after we get back from getting our tickets from the Ticketmaster monopoly (don't get me started), I can read the first 60 pages of the horror novel into it. Should be fun, huh? Yes, I know, I am a geek. But at least my arms won't hurt so bad anymore! mjj
March 8, 2001 Wake me up, before you go-go *Today's Quote:* His sense of someone watching them had begun to dissolve, but Titus still squinted into the darkness, trying to see if someone had followed them to their secret spot from their childhood. He was met with empty blackness that stared back at him. Screw you, boogey man, Titus thought, his paranoia replaced with a giddiness that made him want to cackle. As long as I’m with my buddies, you can’t touch me. *Today's Progress:* Revised chs. 6 and 7, some of ch. 8 The Official Dare Page	I'm off to an amazing start here, folks. I'm close to finishing the first 60 pages of the revision. I just pasted what I revised into the body of the doc that contains the entire novel, and I've managed to cut an even 4,000 words out of the story, taking it from 105,000 words to 101,000 words. We're at 350 pages right now. Not bad for a little over a week's work. My energy level has been amazingly high, especially considering that I've been getting up early - I woke up at 4 this morning and tried getting back to sleep, but when it got to be 4:30 I decided to just get up and get to revising. Part of it is getting more exercise, part of it is getting to bed earlier, though I think a big part of it is just having enthusiasm for this project. And also being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We've been working on this bad boy for almost a year and a half now (really only a year of actual work, as I took the last half of 2000 off to work on other stuff). It's getting closer, day by day. That's a great feeling. Now I'm wondering... What's the proper spelling for "boogey man"??? At first I tried "boogie man," but got an image of Dirk Diggler and Boogie Nights -- not the right spelling, I don't think. "Boogey" is closer, but not quite it. Sort of reminds me of "booger" (as in "to pick"), but not in a bad way. I've seen it spelled "bogey man," but that puts me in mind of Top Gun ("You got a bogey on your tail, Mav!"). Not right either. See the difficult choices and decisions we writers are faced with??? Now then, where was I? Oh yeah, today's endeavors. I fleshed out the wake scene (hence the Wham! heading at top left there, sorry... "to do the jitterbug!") and added some dialogue between Joshua and Clint, and made the whole scene in Clint's point of view. I have to add a couple more concrete details to show a sense of weirdness. I've got the "Wildcat Club" standing in the corner during the wake, talking softly. I need something more, maybe even some action or event. Then I moved on to chapter seven, which is a scene that echoes the scene at the spot from the prologue, with one notable exception (no Peter). This one's in Titus' point of view, his first. I want to add some more of his background, more of his troubles with his job and his wife, to develop him a bit more. Not a lot needs to be added, just a couple instances here and there. And maybe spruce up the spookiness factor -- the "boogey man"-ness... And then I even found time to take a crack at chapter eight, with Race and his encounter with the weird boys, when he saves Hadji the German shepherd from their nasty little clutches. I really think having these boys in chapter one gives the story much more of a horror feel, because the reader now knows (after what happens to Peter) that these boys with the stink of motor oil and sweat, with their hoods and leather jackets and shades, are in cahoots with some heavy hitters, and they are capable of no small amount of mischief themselves. I may have a little bit more time today to fix up what I worked on this morning. If so, I'll try and update this. If not, I'll see ya tomorrow! P.S. You've got that Wham song running through your head right now, don't you??? I know I do... ("you put the boom-boom into my heart")! mjj
March 7, 2001 An evening drive with the moon out... *Today's Quote:* Race's window slid down, letting the cold wind in with a roar. When they were even with the SUV, Race pulled his pants down and stuck his bare rear end out the window. "Kiss it, baby!" he screamed through his laughter. "Kiss the big stinky hairy Bannister buttocks!" *Today's Progress:* Revised ch. 3 and 4, notes for ch. 5 (this morning); revised all of 3, 4, and 5 (later today) The Official Dare Page	Okay, I apologize for the immature quotation over there on the left, but what can you do. If you have a mooning scene in your book, you've gotta play it up! That's what I think, at least. I could be wrong... I read over what I'd revised this morning during my workout and really liked what I'd done, and I found some places where I think I should add more. I cut out a bunch of the guys' reunion, especially the dialogue between Titus and Clint, and the whole dinner scene when the guys are reminiscing got cut. I think I may want to keep some of that. I'm also moving out of Clint's point of view a bit now, with a section with Race, then later a section with Titus, and finishing up the first section (hopefully not past page 60 or so -- that's what we'll send to the publisher!) with Race and his run-in with the boys who've been terrorizing the town. And Hadji enters. I'm hoping we can squeeze in the scene at the wake, followed by the scene at the spot, with all the guys smoking the wacky weed and talking about the changes that have occurred in Rosecroft. If we can finish up with the scene with Race, all under 60 pages, that will make our excerpt going out to the publisher very tight. The story really starts to pick up after that, with the funeral and burial the next day, the trip to Peter's house, Riley's run-in with the gang of boys, then church on Sunday, the tour of the school Monday... But I don't want to give it all away... Suffice to say that this month has been great so far, incredibly productive, and a lot of fun, even if I have been getting up every weekday at 5 a.m.! Now if I only had more time to read -- I got Stephen King's book about writing from Amazon.com yesterday, along with my voice-recognition software (impulse buys, I admit, but they should both be worth it - the King book looks pretty good). Quote of the day: "Success is a journey, not a destination." Update from later the same day: Woo-hoo! Had some time today to do a bit more tweaking. A lot more tweaking, actually. I was able to revamp the reunion scene that I'd worried was too skimpy earlier, doing a ton of cutting and pasting and wordsmithing (there's a stupid word!). I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm up to page 45 now, ready to start work on chapter 6, the wake scene. I'm glad I went back and fixed things up. I don't want to slow the story down too much, but at the same time, I've gotta develop my characters, and that's what the dinner scene does. And of course, the chapter ends with the weird boys on bikes whizzing past. I really like that scene. Whew. Not a bad day at all...
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