Out of the cage

"Like birdsong heard through a closed window, you had to open—just a little—and listen."
-In the Cage with Ghosts.

It's done. I finished the latest draft of In the Cage with Ghosts (formerly In the Cage of Ghosts) yesterday morning. It came in at almost 6000 words. So much for 3000 or even 4000… I dunno, is it possible for me to write something longer than a flash but shorter than 4000 words these days? I fear it's not. But I'm almost happy with how this latest piece turned out. Anyone who knows me will know I am highly self-critical, so when I say that I'm almost happy it is a positive statement, believe me. In the Cage is dark, it's psychological, and its two central character are both outsiders; yes, two for the price of one. I've posted this current draft on the writing workshop Critters Bar and so far it has received very positive feedback. So, fingers crossed, I should have it ready to submit for publication soon.

Next, it's back to the novel, which has been set aside for the last two weeks, and perhaps on to the prep work for my next short story – no idea what that will be yet. Watch this space, as they say. Maybe this one will come in at target length!

The hard-working folks over at GUD Magazine are making their final selections for Issue 4 at the moment. One of my stories, Manny Prior's Halloween, has made the shortlist from over 2500 submissions. It goes without saying it will be fantastic if Manny (one of my favourite character creations to date) makes the final line-up, but I know in this game not to raise my hopes too high. I will let you know the outcome either way.

As always, thanks for dropping by.

Long story short

Some important writing lessons I had to relearn this week while working on the first draft of In the Cage of Ghosts:

1) Too much detail suffocates an otherwise good story.
2) Consider what it is you want to say in the confines of the story’s 3-4k words and factor that into the style in which you choose to write.

Seems obvious now. But maybe it took writing 3.5k words of Cage for me to see its flaws, fundamental though they may seem. It became painfully obvious that in spite of all the planning and notes I had made a fatal error when it came to plot arc and time scale. The story as originally planned took place in one location over a few hours. Characters had to move (emotionally) from point A to point B. The story depended on that shift. But reading it back in first draft I didn’t buy it. And if I didn’t, what hope readers would?

Thankfully, the problem was obvious: overwriting and lack of focus on story and brevity. I simply ran out of room. In order for it to work as is, Cage would need to bloat into something approaching novella length. But the story won’t support that. So, what’s the solution?

Bite-size chunks. Instead of one or two drawn-out scenes, I’m opting for a half-dozen or more ruthlessly short scenes, with the story as a whole taking place over a longer time period of several days.

Long story short, I’m starting over.

week eight (feb 19 - 25)

Applied ass to chair this week and quelle surprise I made some progress!

In the Cage of Ghosts is finally underway. I can see it struggling to come in under the three thousand word mark, but I will allow a little room either way. Very pleased with it so far. Potentially, should this one turn out a winner, it could change my whole approach to writing short fiction…

Chapter Six of The Ballerina, the Boy, and The Thing in the Water continues to move slowly towards completion. It has taken several months—on and off—to write its 2880 words, and I'm not even sure if it will survive the final cut. Why? Because it is author intrusion all the way. Let me explain briefly…

There are two main plot threads in this novel. The first is set in The Eighties and follows the story of a young girl, Ella Bradburn. The second is set in The Noughties and follows the story of the man who is writing Ella's story, one Thomas Crouch. The obvious problem is this: once the reader encounters Mr Crouch, will he or she be able to return to Ella's story "unharmed", i.e., will they be able to continue and still feel as involved in the story? Or will they see it—courtesy of me heavily underlining it—as just that, a story? It's fucking with the whole suspension of disbelief thing, and that's usually a big no-no. But I feel it could work here for reasons I won't go into just yet. Only time will tell if the two can coexist, I suppose. Or if one of them (Mr Crouch) has to go…

STATS:
2 submissions: Bound Off, Underground Voices
1 rejection: Ninth Letter

Currently reading: Duma Key by Stephen King, Dead Sea by Brian Keene
Recently watched: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (**1/2), Sicko (***1/2), Tremors (****1/2)

week seven (feb 12 - 18)

This week wasn't so much an ebb as a continuation of the 2008 drought as I failed to make time for the first draft of In the Cage of Ghosts, which sits ready and waiting for me to begin. On the novel front, I managed 620words of chapter six, the chapter from HELL, but it's not enough and definitely way below target, though it appears I have jumped one whole percentage point toward the project's completion. Great things, huh?

Next week should be about better time management, which will entail watching fewer DVDs (a major weakness of mine, I admit), reading fewer books (I read Steve Martin's Born Standing Up in one sitting on Sunday, which isn't a bad thing except I should have been writing), and perhaps, I dunno, sitting down at a PC and tapping out a few words, maybe even a couple of sentences, who knows? But let's not push it, right?

I hope your week was more productive than mine. Actually, maybe I don't...

STATS:
1 submission: GUD Magazine
2 rejections: Big Ole Face Full of Monster, Not One of Us

Currently reading: Duma Key by Stephen King, Dead Sea by Brian Keene
Recently watched: Superbad (***1/2), King of Queens: Season 6 (****), 1408 (***1/2), Hard Candy (***)
Current iPod favourite: nothing - instead, Mr Brian Keene has been keeping me company on my trips to and from work.

week six (feb 05 - 11)

No novel work this week, but I'm finally ready to start the first draft of In the Cage of Ghosts after five weeks of preparation. Sounds like a lot, right? It's not, believe me, because it took just five sittings to get me to this stage. Had I applied ass to chair on Jan 1st and continued to do so on a daily basis until I was ready to roll on (draft) one then I would've been good to go before the end of the first week of the year. Sometimes, though, ideas take a little time – not to mention coaxing, gentle or otherwise – to untangle themselves into something worthwhile. Sorry I don't have more to report on this at the moment, but I hope to give you more in the coming weeks.

Reading consumed most of my spare time this week. I finished Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues (scroll down the right hand margin to read my short review) and started King's latest, Duma Key. Now, I haven't said this in a long, long time, simply because Mr King has not given me any reason to say it, but… (deep breath) this one is a winner – so far. I'm a little over one hundred pages in and I'm captivated. While Cell was by King standards flat and uninspired and Lisey's Story was overlong and overwritten, Duma Key is…well, it's not. Edgar Freemantle is one of King's most interesting protagonists starring in what is, again so far, one of his finest mysteries. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For some time now I've been wondering, like many of you I'm sure, what happened to the guy who brought us Misery and The Stand and two of my own favourites, The Long Walk (okay, that's a Bachman) and Hearts in Atlantis. Assuming this one doesn't take a nosedive after page 150, I'd say he's finally found the niche it seems he's been so determined to find and occupy in the years since his Accident, that of the writer who can bridge the gulf between genre and literary fiction. My faith is restored. So far.

Finally, I've decided to take a break from submitting for a while. Why? I'm on a bad streak, have been for months, and the pile of rejections has me asking uncomfortable questions of myself. I reckon I need to rebuild my confidence, so I'm knuckling down to work on the projects I've been talking about here until I feel ready to put my neck back on the block or until one of the small number of stories I still have out there finds a good home, whichever comes first...

STATS:
3 submissions: Crazyhorse, Murky Depths, Eclipse Two
6 rejections: Triangulation, HLQ, Vestal Review, Outercast, GUD Magazine, Postcards From Hell

Currently reading: Duma Key by Stephen King
Recently watched: Glory (****), Roxanne (****1/2), Zodiac (****)
Current iPod favourite: n/a

week five (jan 29 - feb 04)

In the Cage of Ghosts: 1500words of notes on some of this short story's finer points. I'm starting to think I'm over-preparing, but I'm going to go along with it for now…

The Ballerina, the Boy, and the Thing in the Water: 400words of what is without a shadow of a doubt the hardest chapter to write so far. Why? I'm way too close to the subject matter.

And on a pessimistic note (though is it pessimism if you're convinced – okay, almost convinced – something will come to pass?):
Do you ever get that dark cloud feeling? You know, a sense of impending bad news rooted so deep in the pit of your stomach it feels more akin to premonition than gut instinct? That's how I've been feeling this week, like I'm standing in line for some metaphorical beheading. I hope I'm wrong. God, I hope I'm wrong. Fuel to the fire - I wrote the following this week:

How quickly everything went topsy-turvy. My face flushed from the absurdity of it all. My fingers curled into tight fists in my pockets, nails pressing half-moons into my palms, and I thought with a dreadful certainty: I have to put a stop to this.
But how?

Hm, spooky. Or not. Time will tell.

STATS:
2 submissions: Postcards From Hell, Ninth Letter
1 rejection: Triangulation

Currently reading: Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry
Recently watched: The Station Agent (***1/2), Million Dollar Baby (***1/2)
Current iPod favourite: audiobook of It by Stephen King

week four (jan 22 - 28)

The story notes for In the Cage of Ghosts are almost done. It remains to be seen if my decision to put in some extra preparation before starting the first draft was wise or over-cautious. Some of my best stories were hardly planned at all, while some of my not-so-good stories were – probably – planned to death. As is usually the case, a happy – and successful – medium ought to be found. I've perhaps got some work to do on the characters before I begin, but the plot is approx. 95% in place.

In the Cage of Ghosts will be to Circling what King's Desperation was to Bachman's The Regulators – only shorter and not as good. What I mean is both stories will share a number of common elements. For example, both deal with the aftermath of a plane crash, both feature a character, Tom Camron, the man responsible for the crash. There will be other connective threads, I'm sure. Now, I should say that I'm not trying to be clever with this. All I'm doing is retracing my steps to early 2006, to when I wrote Circling, in an attempt to write the story as it was originally conceived: two guys, both of whom have been deeply affected by a plane crash – one of them the cause, the other the effect – meet in a motel for the first time to discuss what happened. Not the ghost-trapped-on-the-runway tale Circling turned out to be, which was good but…flew its own course, shall we say?

Monday saw me resume work on The Novel: The Ballerina, the Boy, and the Thing in the Water. It's a working title. Maybe. I haven't really mentioned it on here before, not because I have anything to hide you see, but because I've had my share of false starts with novels and wanted to be sure, or as sure as I can be, that I was truly serious about this one. Which I am. It's not a matter of if but when. At my current rate of production, however, I won't be typing 'THE END' anytime soon. It is my hope that by mentioning or discussing, or perhaps by not mentioning and not discussing it on here I will remain motivated enough to write the bloody thing sometime before my thirty-fifth birthday!

Okay, I've gone on long enough, but I'll leave you with this small teaser: The Ballerina, the Boy, and the Thing in the Water was inspired by a Salvador Dali painting that I happened upon whilst image-Googling the word "Dali". Which work of his provided the spark, you ask. I'll give you a clue: it's not on the first page and it's not after the tenth…

STATS:
3 submissions: Espresso Fiction, Triangulation, Not One of Us
3 rejections: FRiGG (all 3)

Currently reading: Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry
Recently watched: Prison Break Season Two (*****), Before Sunrise (****), The Host (**1/2)
Current iPod favourite: audiobook of It by Stephen King

Finally, here's a short vid of Stephen King talking about the inspiration behind his latest novel, Duma Key.

week one (jan 1 - 7)

Did some work on In the Cage of Ghosts this weekend. As usual, I didn't cover as much ground as I'd hoped – two thousand words or so of assorted notes – but it feels good to be working on something. I'm determined to keep myself from rushing into the first draft because I really want the characters and plot to be as clear as possible in my mind before I start writing. I fear it may be one of the reasons why Hear Not the Murmur on the Wind is being turned down more often than an Ugly Sister on Singles Night at the Palace. I don't want to leave it to the semi-blind gropings of the premature first draft to discover what this one is all about. And those plot twists along the way need to be thought long and hard over if they are going to seem at all spontaneous and surprising...

Other news this week-
4 submissions: 1 short to Big Ole Face Full of Monster, 3 flashes to FRiGG
1 acceptance: Satirica (anthology, non-paying)
2 rejections: Aberrant Dreams and yet another near hit at GUD Magazine
1 rejection 'of sorts': Circling failed to make Spinetinglers' Best Of print anthology (a rejection 'of sorts' since stictly-speaking I didn't submit it for consideration)

Finally, if you haven't seen the movie Pan's Labyrinth yet, please please do so; you will not be disappointed. Easily one of the best foreign language movies (or movies period) of the last ten years.

"Pan's Labyrinth"
Next week, I'm working on In The Cage of Ghosts and the proof of Sunrise in Coat City for TQR's Best Of anthology...