So, July 10th is coming up.  It will mark a year since I began the Mendoth project (now titled “Children of Cabal”).  I’ve had ups and downs.  I’m sitting at around 150k words now and I’m about halfway through my 2nd revision pass.  Lots of other things in life have taken time away from writing, but I’m hoping to get more going this summer, to finish my revisions by August and begin querying this bad boy.

It’s a lot of work.

Especially considering that I’m toying with the idea of changing the beginning yet again.  It could be time to revisit Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. My later-middle and end seem solid, but I’m struggling with what comes first.

Issue #1: Distinct POV arcs.  Of my 6 main POVs, two are really giving me a difficult time in terms of individualizing their arcs.

Issue #2: World-building that isn’t as efficient as it could be.

issue #3: Changes in world-building material.  I’ve rehashed my magical system and some of the geopolitics.  That will change some of the beginning chapters.

I’m tempted to start from scratch and write up to the point where the book clicks.  I don’t know.  It’s a hell of a lot of work.

I’m nearly “caught up” with rewriting a middle section that will lead us to the butt-end of the book, so I’m finishing that up for the writing group and will then press on toward the end.

I guess that’s my pre-annual check-in.

That’s right, folks.  I AM the dragon warrior.  Maybe I’m not as cool as Po, but I’m getting there.

I’ve had a hell of a few months.  Sick as sick can be.  They were testing me for MS.  Yeah.  Pretty scary stuff.  I was exhausted, dizzy, couldn’t think in full sentences, had tremors in my left hand/leg.  Fever of 101+.  Whaaaaat?  Doesn’t that sound like fun?

The MRI showed I did not have MS, but in fact, had a super-nasty sinus infection on the right side that was probably causing all the fuss.  So, the doc put me on antibiotics.  Then I got the flu–like the Spanish flu you saw on Downton Abbey if you were watching that.  Yes, it was that bad.  A week of my life gone.

Then, the doc gave me MEGA antibiotics because the first set wasn’t doing the trick.  Aaaaand, here I am!

I’m feeling hella better.  Off the meds.  Infection is gone.  I’m a normal person now.

It’s amazing what being knocked out will do to your writing.  I managed to get bits and pieces in, but lost my daily grind mojo for a while.  I’ve since eased back into it.  I realized a long time ago that “all or nothing” will get me, well, nothing.  If I tell myself, “I’m going to sit down and write 2000 words today,” then fail and get all pissy, what in the hell does that do for me?

So, I got in a few hundred words here, another hundred words there and the next thing I knew, I had 24 pages rewritten for the next writing group.  See how it all adds up?

Anyway, just checking in.  Hope to get my bum here more regularly again.  Be well all.

My health took a weird nosedive.  Scary speculation on part of my doctor.  I got the M.R.I. and yeah.  Nasty sinus infection.  Who would have thought I had a bacterial party going on in my head?  Say hello to Amoxicillin!

So, it’s a bland, yogurt diet for me.  For a month.  Yeah, you heard me.  A month’s worth of antibiotics.  My taste buds will be fried and I’ll be so sick of yogurt that every time I see Jamie Lee Curtis, I’ll want to puke up a curd.  But, it’ll get me better.

Okay, not really.  I like prologues.  I just wanted to use this picture of a monkey wearing a demonic baby-mask on my blog, and, people see “DEVIL” and think, “yeah, I gotta go read that.”

I heard a strange thing the other day.  Some people skip prologues (and epilogues).  This is a world driven by “instant gratification.” Of course people are going to skip prologues.

But, I don’t read just to “get to the finish line as fast as I can.” If I like an author, I want to stop and smell the roses, enjoy the prose, see how they are building character and theme. A prologue may not be 100% necessary, but is every scene or chapter 100% necessary? Is every sentence necessary? No, we’re artists who do things like setting the mood, establishing theme, setting rules of our world(s). Showing our style, establishing voice. I don’t consider these bad things.

I’m of the Neverending Story mind. As much as I am judging a book, the book is also judging me. I like reading it all. Bad and good. Why not? But, why in the world would I try to browbeat a prologue-o-phile into my system? Highly uncool.

You can’t tell people how to read something, just like you can’t tell them how to watch a movie or how to enjoy their music. If reading a prologue would wholly diminish their experience to the point of ruining the book entirely, then should anyone care? If they do it because they assume it will be bad. Why should anyone care? If they do it because they ran out of newspaper and needed something to start a fire in the fireplace? Don’t care.

As an author who writes prologues, hey, if someone wants to skip stuff, I certainly won’t lose sleep over it.

Write what works for the story. People have passionate feelings about prologues, and epilogues, and thong panties. Make it count. Use your page space wisely. Leave the “reader habits” to the readers. You won’t please everyone. The sooner you stop trying to cater to the minority, the better off you’ll be.

Remember Captain Kirk. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The few might be very vocal and a bit “in your face” about their prologue hating. Still doesn’t matter. It’s their choice. Nothing you do or say OR write will ever change that. You could probably fill your prologue with a garden gnome orgy and they’d roll their eyes and move to chapter one. (ha HA! The things they missed!)

Nobody likes a crappy prologue. Nobody likes infodumps. Nobody likes an “intro” where a knife-wielding, serial killer chimp wreaks havoc on a quiet Hampton locale only to have chapter one show us the main characters getting on a spaceship to go fight aliens. But, nobody likes reading shoddy dialogue, bad pacing or super-purple prosey muck that makes you poop emo children with bad Steampunk outfits out of your no-no hole.

Do it well. All of it.

My pal, Greg Leunig published his first sci-fi poem, Love in the Quantum Era, on Strange Horizons.

Kudos to him!  Sci-Fi Poetry, eh?  I was a bit turned off by the concept until I read his poem.  Nicely done!  We fought the good fight in undergrad, my friend.  Now, we are writing genre.

Winning!

2nd Person POV.  Why all the hate, folks?  It amazes me whenever I visit a writing message board/internet forum and read a bunch of weirdos flap their arms and start pissing themselves about the 2nd person.

Don’t y0u DARE TRY IT.

I can’t read it so YOU SHOULD NOT READ IT.

It is a sign of the apocalypse.  Behold there was a story written in 2nd person and from the sky rained frogs and locusts.

Get over it.

Seriously.

I’ve come to realize that people who bitch about 2nd person can’t write it.  Can’t read it and by poo-poo’ing it, they inevitably feel better about their lack of writerly mojo.  It’s the only explanation I can think of.

If you can’t shut your trap about how it’s “not okay to write in 2nd person,” do me a favor and stop writing . Stop reading.  Just watch Survival or Grey’s Anatomy or whatever it is that 2nd person POV haters watch, because it’s not the cool shows I dig.  Only cool people watch those.

Anyway, rant over.

I gots myself a new gig.  It has nothing to do with writing.  Okay, there will be writing, a little bit of writing, but not the fiction kind.

No, not poetry either.  Sonnets make me pee myself in fear that Shakespeare will rise from the cold earth and exact zombie vengeance upon me.

See, here’s the deal.  I’m a research assistant now. There’s more, but in the tradition of story-telling, I’ll get to all of that in a minute.

The research project is funded by IARPA.  Wow, here’s what I found when I went I google-image’d IARPA:

Naked WoW  gnomes aside, the project is badass.  We’re working on a video game that will teach government agents about certain cognitive biases.  Cool, right?

(Cues Sydney Bristow/Paul Oakenfold techno music)

I can’t go into too much depth, but I will say this, the position offers me free tuition and a monthly stipend (and health insurance).  So, what does that mean?

Wait for it . . .

It means I’m applying to the doctorate program at the university (where the research is being conducted).  In what, you might ask?  How can that MFA in fiction NOT have gotten you a brilliant job?

Gaming Scholarship

Yeah, you heard me.  I may very well earn a doctorate.  You may call me Dr. Train, gaming scholar.

Dr. Train.

I like that.  I have to get into the program first (and earn the sucker), but the possibility is pretty damn cool.

And, I’ll keep writing (as I am now).

Here’s what I found when google-imaging “Dr Train.”

Some doctors checking out a guy’s butt.

I’m not sure what kind of omen this is, but I’ll take it as a good one.

What I’m talking about is repetition at the sentence level.  For me, I’ve been noticing a lot of Noun (or pronoun) + verb repetition.  Lots of it.  She walked.  He walked.  She touched herself.  He watched.  She screamed.  He ran away.  She laughed.  She called the police.

See where I’m going?  I don’t do it all the time, but enough to annoy myself.  Greatly.

So, that is my homework during revision this weekend.  I have a girl boner for N+V and I must quell it.  I must purge it from my soul.  You know how they have camps where gay Christians go to become straight?  Maybe they have camps for people who abuse the N+V thing.

The future is uncertain, but at least I’m aware now.

One of my favorite haunts, Absolute Writer Water Cooler, is a great place for writers to hang and chat.  But, it’s much more than that.  It’s a tool for vengeance when people do something naughty in the literary world.

One of the board’s members made this post: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234452

Apparently, someone chick found the poster’s story on another message board and started selling it on Amazon as her own.

LINK

Once the folks at Absolute Writer got wind, a wave of action washed over the internet.  Author, Stacia Kane, started a Twitter campaign.  Others went to the Amazon site and asked to have the title removed. Some posted “reviews” about the story stating that the work was plagiarized.

This “Robin Scott” had apparently plagiarized before.  M.E. Hydra had similar experiences herself as stated on her BLOG.

This is something I’ve wondered about with self-publishing online. How easy is it for someone to take another’s work and pass it off as their own?  Thankfully, Amazon no longer lists the title as “available” but after Robin Scott was nailed for plagiarizing another piece, Amazon ups and lets her do it again?  No reprimand?  No ban of the account?

How much money did this “author” make before the title was removed?  It’s hard to say.

I mean let’s face it.  I have a hard time believing that this is some perky little chick in a superhero costume (as her Amazon profile suggests).  Probably some hairy, skeevy dude in a wifebeater sitting his mother’s basement fwapping off to his own cleverness.

Either way, I’m grateful for the internet today, and I’ll bet the author above (victim) is even more grateful.

I rewrote 4 chapters in the last few days.  Rewrote the hell out of them.

Had a great writing group a few days ago.

I want a Kindle Fire.

I have a dentist appointment today.

I’m just randomly throwing out things you probably don’t need to know.

That’s how Rambo w/a keyboard rolls, yo.