Her skin was like the inside of a freshly cut turnip.

Day 89
Today's word count: 1,262
Overall word count: 61,608

Ugh, I feel like crap. I have a horrible summer cold. Sore throat, can barely talk, everything aches. On the bright side, that made for a very productive day today.

My wife, ever-helpful in my quest to write a book that doesn't suck, recently shared with me the following Buzzfeed article:

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If White Characters Were Described Like People Of Color In Literature.

1. He looked at her longingly, as he imagined her exotic, mashed potato skin laying gently against his.

2. She took off his shirt, his skin glistening in the sun like a glazed doughnut. The glaze part, not the doughnut part.

3. His eyes looked like eyes because they were eye-shaped, not almonds.

4. Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall-person, handsome features, and his crust of a Shepherd’s pie complexion.

5. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Mary,” she replied as the strap of her dress slipped off her marzipan shoulder.

6. She didn’t know it yet but the girl of her dreams had just walked in. Her eyes were radiant and her skin glowed with mozzarella undertones.

7. She was beautiful, elegant. Like a tall clear glass filled with raw pasta.

8. His body had the color and shape of raw ground beef.

9. He traced his fingers along her supple, cauliflower skin.

10. She stepped out of the car and and was delighted by the cool summer breeze that brushed against her legs. She had been sitting in the sun earlier and welcomed the relief of this fresh air on her mayonnaise legs.

11. She had brown, wiry hair and skin that can only be described as the color of the inside of an apple. The mushy ones not the cool, crisp ones.

12. She dove into the ocean, the blue waves enveloping her tapioca skin.

13. She was transfixed by the gleam of his uncooked chicken breast skin. So raw, so lumpy.

14. His bones were as brittle as a vanilla wafer.

15. Her beauty was indescribable, which means she’s white.

16. For the first time in his life, he found himself imagining a future together with someone. He was embarrassed to tell her this but he had never really been in love with the women he had dated. “Well who would play me in this rom-com of your life?” she teasingly inquired. “You have such beautiful olive skin,” he crooned, “so you can be a person of color or racially ambiguous in the book but definitely a white woman in the movie.”

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I laughed, then I cringed, then I went scurrying back to my work in progress to make sure I had done nothing so risible as the kind of thing being parodied here. I'm pleased to say, in 230+ pages of copy, that I only had to zap one reference to a character whose skin looked like "coffee with a splash of cream."

Until next time. By the way, if I don't feel better tomorrow, I'm calling in sick to work. I look and sound like shit. And in that case, I shall write a lot of words.

Describing The Known

Day 82
Today's word count: 494
Overall word count: 58,648

500 words today, 1,700 yesterday. A solid weekend.

I've noticed something, a difference between fantasy and non-fantasy novels. Writing a non-fantasy novel allows the writer a bit of shorthand. If a character is stuck in line at the driver's license bureau, I can say, for example:

Brett stood in line at the DMV, clutching his papers, waiting for his number to be called. The air was hot, close, and thick with the flat gray odor of nine dozen sweaty bodies. The fluorescent lighting lent a surreal look to the room. One bulb flickered and guttered, casting the surroundings in a sickly strobe light that was gradually giving Brett a migraine.

...and the reader's imagination will fill in a lot of the rest. Are the walls cinderblock? Are they flat white paint, stained with a million handprints? Are there highway safety ads plastered all over them? Is the floor made of linoleum tiles, or plain concrete? Are the clerks wearing street clothes, or khaki-colored pseudo-cop, pseudo-Boy Scout shirts, armpits darkening with sweat? Those details will vary according to each reader, but each reader is likely to see something in his or her mind's eye upon reading. Most of us have, after all, been in at least one DMV, waiting in line, wishing for death. And with a fixed image in the reader's mind, I can get along with my story. In essence, I'm using images that are already in the reader's mind (and they're vivid, because they're your own memories or imaginings) to make description easier.

In contrast, if I'm introducing you to the lobby of the White Tower of High Sorcery in the Alabaster City of Rel*, I feel pressure to describe it to you in much greater detail. Are the walls covered in scales scavenged from the carcasses of fallen dragons? Is the light in the room emanating from bat-winged imps holding magical glowing stones in their claws? Are the clerks wearing long white robes trimmed in elaborate silver needlework? HOW CAN I MAKE SURE YOU AREN'T PICTURING THE DMV WHEN YOU READ THIS SCENE?!

Luckily, I'm not in that boat, at least not too badly. My characters are real-world people stuck in weird situations, but no Towers of Sorcery. Writing high fantasy would be hard business, I think.

Also, I'm starting to think I need to get focused and finish this bad boy. All the threads are pointing in the same direction. A month. Less than a month, maybe.

Until next time! Random music video! Awesome 80s pop!

* Reference from my hilariously failed first attempt at a novel, fifteen years ago.

The Illusion of Control

Day 77
Today's word count: 668
Overall word count: 55,825

Page 225, by my rough count. All the storylines are now careening towards what I imagine will be the climax, denouement, and aftermath. But as always, I leave myself open to being surprised by what my characters choose to do, and what external events might plausibly happen. In all of this process, I feel like someone riding a never-before-ridden roller coaster. Sure, you assume it will all work out fine. But do you know?

Obligatory vid: 

 Love Graffin's lyrics, and the whole song is amazing. Harmonies = win. Talk to you soon!

1,000

Day 66
Today's word count: 1,000
Overall word count: 52,460

I blog today, not out of any particular sense of achievement, but simply because I logged exactly 1,000 words today. How weird! I typed what I had to say, hit CTRL+SHIFT+C to count my words (hey, working in Google Docs here), and lo and behold!

So, since I had not intended to write a blog today, here is an unintended video to go with:

One great songwriter (Bruce Springsteen) covering another (Jimmy Cliff). Also, Bruce has a battered Telecaster, or perhaps even a Nocaster or Esquire, with Joe Barden Pickups. And a wrist brace. If I could trade my day job for a battered, souped-up Telecaster and a wrist brace, I would in a heartbeat. Duh.

Such tension!

Day 65
Today's word count: 1,538
Overall word count: 51,460

Yeah, I'm back. There was a week and a half, close to two weeks, where I had family in town. My mom, and all my siblings and their kids, all in the same place for the first time in years. Bit of a family reunion. So not only did I not write anything, I didn't re-read anything, either. But I did keep thinking. Can't help but do that. Which is good, because I was coming up on a bit of a roadblock anyway. A spot where I knew what should probably happen, but couldn't visualize the place or the conversation, and I kept refusing to fake it. As it happens, a two-week break was forced upon me right then anyway, and by the time I was ready to write again (i.e. yesterday), the image was in my mind.

Now that things are more or less back to normal, yesterday and today have been pretty productive days. I have a general feel for how things are likely to play out going forward. Not well for my protagonist, to be honest. But I'll follow the story line wherever it goes.

Thanks for reading!

"Ow" is not an acceptable kiai in this dojo, Mr. Larusso.

Day 46
Today's word count: 3,304
Overall word count: 46,299

(WARNING: Hideously gory clip)

So, after two quiet days, I cranked out a large chapter today in its entirety. Good feeling. And most of the chapter is a confrontation, then a fight, between two important characters, both of whom I think are pretty sympathetic. I think it's good stuff.

I also think I may be past halfway done at this point. When I think of what's happening now, and what I think is going to happen, I feel as though I may be on the downslope. Hard to tell, though.

A hobby of mine - my only hobby, really, until I started trying this writing thing - is music. I've been playing the guitar for 25 years, and I've been in bands for all that time. I've recorded five or six full-length albums, a handful of EPs, and a single for an independent film soundtrack. All of that is simply to say that I've spent hundreds of hours of my life in recording studios. And one thing that a musician will often do, when recording, is bring along some albums that he or she really likes the sound of. That way, whether during recording or mixing, there's a standard to check back against. Stuff like: "Does our snare drum sound like John Stanier's? Well, if that isn't possible, does it at least sound close?"

When I finish the first draft of this novel, I intend to do something similar. I plan to read a couple of books that I think are really well-written and paced, so that when I go back for rewrite, I have a good feel for what's exciting or boring, what's overwritten or underwritten, what's plausible or laughable. Kind of like a palate cleansing sorbet for the ol' language centers.

Oh, the pronounity!

Day 44
Today's word count: 1,252
Overall word count: 42,991

Hey! (Click the video. Always click them. They're meant to be background music and images.)

A solid day today, after a few relatively quiet ones. But even the quiet days involve quite a bit of reread and rewrite.

In writing, I have to go back, periodically, to remember what happened, or who said what to whom, so that the current writing agrees with the previous. And in doing so, I try not to perform too much serious rewrite. I leave the plot, setting, and characters alone as much as possible. Those can wait until the second draft. But I do correct small things as I read. I can't stand not to: I'm a proofreader by trade, after all. And they are things that would have to be fixed sooner or later anyway, so all I'm doing is saving myself that much time later on down the line, right?

And many of the little fixes have to do with pronouns and their antecedents. It seems to me, in reading as well as writing, that so much of the rhythm of prose involves the subtle interchange of nouns and pronouns. I'll reread a paragraph, trying to figure out where "she" is adequate and understandable, and where "Emma" is needed to remind the reader who is speaking and who is hearing. As with so many other elements of writing prose, a balance must be struck between boring the reader with unnecessary detail, and leaving him or her in the dark. With pronouns, in particular, I intend to ask my first readers: in the dialogue, can you always tell who is talking, or do you ever have to read back to figure it out?

So, anyway. Writing a lot, reading a lot. This is a killer story, I believe firmly. Also, Schoolhouse Rock is amazing. I belong to that generation of Americans who have those few dozen songs, the Schoolhouse Rock songs, embedded in their heads. For me, I always retained the grammar and math songs and kind of disregarded the history ones. But having said that, the song about the Preamble to the United States Constitution has been stuck in my head for over three decades.

I remember hearing the urban legend that John Sebastian, of The Lovin' Spoonful and Woodstock fame, was the singer on a bunch of these. Not so: it was jazz and session vocalist Bob Dorough. Only difference is I'm raising a toast to you tonight, Bob instead of John. Cheers.

This TV show subliminally taught me English syntax. Thank you, Schoolhouse Rock. To everyone else, good night.