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This blog keeps me in touch with WDC. Jamesdillingham.com keeps me in touch elsewhere. |
| I like to stay in touch with WDC, even when I'm not contributing on a daily basis. My main blog is at jamesdillingham.blogspot.com |
| My novel The Messenger is entering the editing phase. I am doing final revisions and pass along the chapters to my editor as I do. I also am posting the chapters in my portfolio. Arakun is doing the editing for me. |
| I'm posting chapters to my book as they exit final revision, about 3 to 4 a week. This was previously posted as Artifact Man. This version is fairly different, more refined and is actually completed. Once they are all posted (55 or so in all), I will look for an editor. |
| Thanks to those of you that offered encouragement after my last blog post from a couple of days ago. As we all know, this support helps us all; and yours helps me. I did go to a writing "meetup". We spend about 5 minutes saying hello followed by 2 hours of pure silence. I can't believe how much writing I got done. I'm looking forward to the next one in a few days. Jim |
| Getting back into that writing groove...hopefully. I have a writing meetup tomorrow. I've never been to one. They say not to expect much conversation. This group meets at a coffee shop and sits quietly and writes for two hours. I need this to put the finishing touches on my book. I also have a publishing seminar at the end of March so I am hoping to have the book done by then. |
| I want to write but life keeps getting in the way. I want to escape into the world that exists only at that very moment when it pops out of my head and onto the screen. I want to feel the surprise as I wonder "Where the heck did that come from?" But alas...as is nearly always the case with me, life insists that I participate beyond the reach of my imagination. So, I climb on a plane, I make a presentation. I drive around in rented cars and forage for local Taco Bell fare. I sleep in sanitized rooms and scarf down coffee, donuts and various fruit bites at the breakfast bar next to the hotel lobby. I hurry up and wait for planes that keep their own secret schedules. I search for local news on long drives and settle on gospel music or the local report on bean prices. In short...I have been traveling for work nearly non-stop. It pays the bills but leaves little time for my mind to roam. By mid-December, I should have a break. Hopefully, it will last long enough for me to finish my final edit of my book. For now, I have to go. There's a meeting room full of people that, for some strange reason, want to know what I think about something. Who'd-a thought... j |
| Checking in. I've been away but my writing has been going on and on. I just entered a Flash Fiction contest. I have been away soooo long that everything is changed. Can't let that happen again. jim |
| My book is done. I finished last week. What a relief. Now I spend time every day editing. Surprisingly, I like the editing part quite a bit. I had a story that needed to get out and now that its out, I can go back and add a little "cleverness" to the wording. I can spruce it up where it drags. Most importantly, I need to make sure my characters start out as the same people they developed into through the course of the story. |
| My never ending story has to end sometime soon. The closer I get to the end, the more exciting it gets and the more detail I need to add for every moment. Right now there can't be more than an hour left "story time" but it will take me another 2-3 chapters to get it all in there. This is how I write. I don't think about the book at all. Then, around 9:00 am I go to the coffee shop and sit. I don't get up until I hit 1,000 or so words. I don't know what I will write when I sit down. The story just seems to know that I'm ready to go and the words just flow out. 1,000 words takes about 45 minutes to an hour. As I'm writing, I'm thinking things like "Why is she still here?" or "Holy shit! I can't believe that just happened." The most interesting thing is when something that I didn't understand "why" from earlier in the story comes back and makes perfect sense later on...weeks after I had forgotten all about it. My mom calls this "automatic writing." I call it...imagination. I'm at 115,000 words and county. My target was 100K but now it looks like 120K will be closer to the pre-edit count. j |
| Holy Cow, Time sure flies when your having fun. WDC has been my favorite site since the day I first signed up. I have been absent a lot lately as my book is nearing the last chapter or two. Once I get that off my plate, then I intend to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes...short story competition. |
| Well, I finally got to the 100,000 word mark that was the target for my book. The problem is that the end is running away as fast as I am chasing it. Here's the deal...I have never written a book before. My thinking was "I need 100K words so I must start wrapping up the story at around 80-85K words." Turns out I was wrong. I'm taking bigger and bigger chances and the story is getting more and more exciting. I know I am getting to the end but for every 1,000 words I write, the end moves about 500 more words away. So this puts the end of the story at around 105K words. I say all of this as if words are important - and while the quality certainly is, the quantity is rather arbitrary. Yesterday I took the "beat" tour in San Francisco. I stood in the alley named for Jack Karouac (On the Road). On one side is a bookstore called City Light (legendary) and on the other is a bar called Vesuvio's. I could see someone like Heminway sitting upstairs there as he both pounded the typewriter and the bottle. All very inspirational. So now I continue my 1,000 words per day. Interestingly, now that I'm writing without fear, the limit keeps me from going all day rather that a distant limit I established to make myself write. I love to write. j |
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