Tag: WIP

Never

Wednesday. I am working only a half-day today, and then I am taking a short vacation. I don’t have to be back at the office until Tuesday of next week, so I am going to try to relax, get caught up on some things–without any pressure to do any of those things–and recalibrate my head, my heart and my soul.

And do something about how disgusting I’ve allowed my apartment to get in the meantime. I do think a thorough clean will help purge my soul; when my apartment isn’t clean and organized, it weighs on me.

I worked a little on the WIP and the Scotty yesterday, and primarily worked on another short story, “Never Kiss a Stranger.” One of the funny things about me, and my stubbornness, and my tendency to get caught up in tunnel vision, is my regular insistence that I am writing everything in the present day. Part of my struggle with “Never Kiss a Stranger” in the past was trying to make it work in the present; yesterday it occurred to me you can set this in the past, you know, and presto! By moving the story from 2018 to 1994, it clicked into place and started working. My main character is a gay man with twenty years in the military; at age thirty-eight, in those days before “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” being gay was grounds for a dishonorable discharge; after the Gulf War he finds out he is on a ‘to-be-investigated’ list and so puts in his retirement papers. His parents dead and not having a relationship with anyone else in his family, he comes out into the general world and decides to move to New Orleans to start his life anew; it’s also his first opportunity as an adult to live openly as a gay man. As I revised what had already been written, the character’s voice clicked in my head and I was able to remember New Orleans in that time period; when I was visiting and falling in love with the city, as well as remembering what a different time period it was, even though it was only slightly more than twenty years ago. No cell phones or Internet, HIV/AIDS was still pretty much a death sentence (or rather, just a matter of time once infected), and New Orleans was riddled with crime everywhere and inexpensive to live; a beautiful old city decaying in her splendid, rotting beauty in the sun.

And it’s kind of fun writing about the past sometimes, being able to  use my own memories (and my journals) to remember things. And at the same time, incredibly freeing to finally realize something so obvious; that everything needn’t be in the present.

We finished watching both The Terror and Thirteen Reasons Why last night; The Terror, while unsettling, ended inevitably in the only way that it could; I am sorry to be finished with it, and will, when it’s free for streaming, probably watch it again to understand it better. It should be a leading contender for all the Emmys; the question only being which stellar member of the cast should take the trophy home. Thirteen Reasons Why’s second season was…interesting, yet incredibly disappointing in its third season. The resolution of some story lines, which had long since been played out, ended in unsatisfying ways that were, while bitter, realistic and honest and true to life. Rapists get away with slaps on the wrists far too often and our judiciary often lets female victims know that their lives really have no value and there is no justice for them. The final episode, with its bittersweet closure, worked in that respect while at the same time set the stage for a third season with horrifyingly depicted brutality, showing that the damage that was caused by the incidents that triggered the first two seasons have deeper and far more lasting consequences; when damage isn’t repaired and the systems that allowed that damage to occur aren’t corrected, far worse damage can occur. The close of the episode, I felt, was a bit of a cop-out; but I understand why they didn’t see that story through, and it did leave me curious to see where it can go next. There hasn’t been an announcement, as far as I know, that there will be a third season; I’d like to see it, if for no other reason than curiosity to see how these newly planted seeds will grow.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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There’ll Be Sad Songs To Make You Cry

Another Monday morning here at my desk in the Lost Apartment. I submitted a short story to a market yesterday, and today I am submitting my short story collection.

PROGRESS.

Last night, as I watched Thirteen Reasons Why (only three episodes left; it definitely has picked up since those slow initial episodes), I thought about and made notes on not only the WIP but some other short stories I am working on. It would be lovely to make notes on the Scotty book, but you know what? I am trying not to force creativity–which is why I’ve no contracts and no deadlines–and making notes on what pops into my head at the time. The changes I’ve decided to make to the WIP aren’t as simple as one might think–a lesson I am definitely learning; no changes to a manuscript, no matter how small they may seem, are ever simple–but it’s going to make the book/manuscript much stronger, and that’s always a good thing. I am also trying to strip the book of as much cliche as I can; which is not that easy when you’re writing about a high school. As I said before, the second chapter needs some serious restructuring as well as revision, but I am feeling a lot more confident about that now.

The Scotty book? Yes, I need to get back to that and the sooner the better. I have already decided that in order to move forward, I need to go back and revise the last chapter I wrote, which not only isn’t any good but is fucking terrible, even more terrible than my usual first draft of a chapter. It totally derails, and characters behave in ways they ordinarily wouldn’t; plus having them behave that way was completely lazy on my part because I didn’t want to deal with it. Which is beyond lazy on my part; it’s borderline shameful laziness. But at least I know it already–I knew it when I was writing it, and it shouldn’t be hard to go back and fix before I move forward onto Chapter 15. I still want to get this done before July 1; I think I can manage it.

I am also trying to take a long weekend this weekend; a couple of vacation days in addition to the Memorial Day holiday, with big plans to get a lot accomplished. I always have big plans, but even if I only manage some of it, that will be a huge step in the right direction. And huzzah for huge steps in the right direction!

I also took notes on some short stories that are in process, and I think one of them is particularly going to turn out to be really amazing.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

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Friends and Lovers

Well, I wrote practically nothing yesterday; maybe a couple of hundred words on “This Thing of Darkness.” I did reread Chapter 2 of the WIP, and realized it needs a complete overhauling, but that’s fine. There’s an endgame in sight, and now I kind of know how to get there, so I don’t mind the massive work that will be required to get me there. Huzzah! And I know that, when it is completed, I will be enormously happy with it.

It’s weird because this story; these characters, have been brewing inside my brain for a very long time; I’ve used this fictional town in Kansas for aborted novels and short stories before. I’ve always wanted to write about this town–I cannot deny that it is based on/inspired by Emporia, Kansas, the seat of the county where I spent five years of my life. When you said you were going to town you meant Emporia, even if you lived in a one of the small hamlets scattered throughout the county. My particular hamlet, Americus, was one of the larger ones; I believe with a population of approximately 932. I do know it was more than nine hundred and less than a thousand. I know that the main crossroads of the town had a flashing red light suspended on wires over it’s center, the town park was right on one corner and the bank was on another. I’ve gone back to the well with Kansas and that area several times in my writing career, but it never really ever seems to get anywhere. Sara was set in Kansas, in a county based on the real one,  in a high school based on the one I attended, but very loosely.

I’ve always wondered if it’s because I’ve not been back there since leaving in 1981 that the stories are so hard, so difficult, to write; the place so hard to envision. And then again, of course it’s ridiculous because any inconsistencies, or changes in my fictional town, might not matter simply because I am writing about a fictional place.

But this manuscript, which I’ve really been working on, in one shape or another, since about 1982 (!), is hard for me because I’ve been trying to write this book for over thirty years. The story and plot has changed dramatically over those years, the names of the characters have been changed, and I’ve blatantly stolen or adapted plots that were originally thought up for this book for others (Murder in the Garden District being one of them; the murder in the back was originally set in my fictional city in Kansas in its original version; for a Chanse novel I had to pare back the literal dozens of suspects and adapt it into New Orleans). For years in the aughts I called this “the Kansas book” as it went through different iterations and ideas and how the story worked; it was originally intended to be a two different time line novel, with a crime that was committed back in the 1970’s with the wrong person convicted and going to prison and dying there; a chance encounter between two people who knew each other back there and then in New York City–one now a successful realtor, the other a successful journalist–and a casual conversation in which the realtor reveals to the journalist that the wrong person was convicted and the murder was a lot more complicated than anyone knew, gets her to thinking. Then she finds out the realtor went back there and also turns up dead; this brings her back as well, as she investigates the current murder and the old one at the same time. I thought it was a very clever idea, but I could never get the story to work for me properly; and I still like the idea; I may write it someday. But I’ve taken the characters and the town from that idea and used it for this one. I also then tried another version, where it was the same town and the same characters and the same set up from the past, only with a dramatically different storyline for the present.

And now, I am using the town and the characters for something completely different.

As I have said numerous times, I am nothing if not stubborn, and apparently I am determined to someday publish a novel about this fucking town and these fucking characters.

“This Thing of Darkness”, the short story I am currently working on, while set in New Orleans, also harkens back to Kansas in some ways. I like this short story, I like the idea behind it, and now it’s really just a matter of seeing whether or not I can pull it off the way I want to. I’ve also realized that my own satisfaction with my short stories is the most important thing, not whether they get published by a magazine or not. I also need to expand my scope of where I submit short stories to; not everything works for the major crime magazines, and who knows? Maybe some of these stories are more  correct for other markets. I’d love to have something in some of the Southern magazines, for example.

Anyway. I am looking forward to this weekend, and hope you all have a lovely, pleasant one as well.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Addicted to Love

I solved an enormous problem with the WIP yesterday. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I diagnosed precisely what was wrong with it and why it wasn’t working on Sunday night; making the executive decision to start spending more time with the characters yesterday morning–I had a terrible sinus headache, went to the office, and wound up coming back home–and after I took a second Claritin (don’t tell anyone) and some antibiotics, I started brainstorming with the characters in my journal and suddenly everything made sense to me. I knew not only what was wrong with it, but also realized my own stubborn clinging to the original idea and form and style and voice that I’d envisioned was, yet again with yet another manuscript, the primary problem. Once I took what was, sadly, cliched about the manuscript out of it, changed some things, and came up with another concept for how to explore the chilling theme I’d originally wanted to explore–again, the only person tying me to that original concept was ME–then I was able to open up my mind to the possibilities. Why did it have to be late in the season? Why not the beginning of the season? Something happens during the summer that drives the narrative of the story, but by pushing it back to Halloween, I’d weakened the story. If the summer incident happens after school starts but before football season starts, and then the night of the first football game, having the second tragedy start makes the stakes higher and puts my main character into more of a difficult place. Plus, it gives me the chance to cut even more out and add even more in.

GOD I AM SO THRILLED CONSTANT READER YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Now, if I were only to have such a breakthrough on the Scotty book, my month would be made.

Anything can happen, right, peeps?

But this is, quite frankly, an excellent example of two things: one, how reading a great writer can help you with your own work (in this case, Lori Roy’s The Disappearing) and how going back to your old habits–despite the risk of appearing like a Luddite–can bring back creativity. I know it’s lame, and old-school, and all that, but in the early days of my writing career I did everything by hand. Even with the advent of computers, when I started writing on screen rather than in a notebook, I always brainstormed on paper, and that always worked for me. Keeping a journal–and finding a new brand of pen I absolutely love–has made such an enormous difference, Constant Reader. I was sitting at my desk yesterday afternoon, the antibiotics racing through my body to clear up the sinus infection, making color-coded index cards about the characters and the plots, and it all just felt so good and organic; like I was really onto something with the manuscript.

I also realized (thank you, Lori Roy) precisely how the story needed to be told; the voice and point of view and tense was all wrong. So, sure enough, as I revised the first chapter to change the voice and so forth, it started working beautifully.

So, so happy.

And now,  back to the spice mines.

d j cotrona

 

Self Control

Monday morning, and heading into day two of my Facebook imprisonment. Interestingly enough, I find that I’m not really missing it all that much; I suspect I’m not the first person to suffer a Facebook ban who’s found it surprisingly liberating, and I’m equally certain that is hardly the intent behind the banning. If you think about it, truly, punishing members by banning them is actually kind of arrogant on Facebook’s part, you know? “Oh, you’ve been bad, so you can’t post or interact with anyone on here for a week!” Does it not occur to them that not being able to use Facebook could, in fact, be like going cold turkey on smoking and actually cure one of wasting time on their actual site?

I also find it fascinating that hate speech–rape threats, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia–doesn’t violate their community standards, but guys wearing speedos or skimpy underwear do. Which has everything to do with the moral rot at the core of our society, frankly; the pearl-clutching mentality that the human body and sexuality is distasteful and not something people should ever talk about. Dorothy Allison wrote a brilliant essay decades ago about how if Americans could ever get over their unnecessary societal prudishness and learn how to talk honestly and openly about sex and sexuality, many of our societal problems would go away.

Thanks, Puritans.

I’m very glad I grew up in a time when there was no social media; and while I certainly don’t ever want to go back to having to write on a typewriter and mail submissions in, I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a teen today and have to deal with social media. One of the things that makes writing y/a hard for me is my lack of understanding about social media and how it really works; plus not understanding how much teens and young people are addicted to their phones. (I am one to talk; but when I think about being a teen, I can’t comprehend how different my life would have been with a smart phone; and how different that would have made high school in general. One of the issues I have with the WIP–which is a y/a–is precisely that; even when I started writing and publishing y/a back in the day the smart phone wasn’t as prevalent and all-pervasive as it is today.) I remember Lois Duncan talking, at her Grand Master interview for MWA’s Edgar Symposium a few years ago, about updating her y/anovels and having to constantly call her grandchildren because she needed a way to get rid of cell phones in order for the plot to work. I even had to deal with that some in my own books–Lake Thirteen and Sleeping Angel both required isolation; so those parts that required such isolation took place in the back country, in cellular dead spots.

I also sometimes wonder how much social media–and my smart phone–has impacted my ability to focus–and not just while writing or editing, but in general. I can’t think of a single time recently when I’ve watched a television show where I’ve not turned to my phone or my iPad “just to check social media.” This is not a good thing; and perhaps this Facebook-imposed exile is just the thing I needed to get my focus back.

Hmmmm.

And since I do have a lot to do, I should most likely be grateful to Facebook’s ridiculously random enforcement of ‘community standards.’ It’s kind of nice to have the habit broken, in a way. Maybe going forward I should use it merely as a way to promote my books.

Hmmmm.

And on that note, this short story ain’t going to write itself.

So for Monday, here’s a hot guy in his underwear.

 

marcus