The Doubt Part

So, I’m reliably told that there comes a time when you look at what you have in your manuscript and mull it over. And the only conclusion you can come to is this:

I have written a book. And it is shit.

I think I got to that phase tonight.

There’s a core group of four guys I go to lunch with at least three times a week. We talk about damn near everything. Sports are a big one (which I am typically ill prepared to discuss unless it’s baseball – and even then they know WAY more) but we spend a lot of time talking about film, television and books. One of the guys is a fellow writer (he beat me to the punch completing his first manuscript) and as such we talk about writing. All of the guys save one has a copy of my manuscript in hand. Three of them read the whole damn thing. And, per my request they took notes.

Holy shit did they take notes.

The notes have been sitting for a bit. Quite a bit. On one hand I really have been busy. On another hand, a very honest hand… I’ve been kind of afraid to go to deep into them given that the reviews were really critical – as they should be. As requested they did not pull punches. I have to say…

Ouch.

The good news is that they found a lot of stuff I knew about and have already started working toward fixing. the bad news is there’s a lot of stuff I just… Didn’t think about.

And now, I stand at the precipice of ‘have I written a shit novel?’

Well I think it’s a little of yes and no.

The Liars (an honorific believe it or not) who run the Novel In Nine Months course have told us (us being the students) that your first draft is, in all likelihood, crap. It is riddled with inconsistencies, typos and holes in the plot one could drive a truck through.

It’s supposed to be that way. I get it. But is it crap?

My test readers seem to think not. The idea is sound, but the execution needs tightening. They’ve all agreed on that. It just needs… lots of tightening.

But, do I think that? I dunno yet.

Tomorrow, I begin the revision procession in earnest. I promised myself a month off. I’ve had that month. Now, I fearfully look over the shitty novel precipice and decide if it’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum.

I am hoping that I am all out of gum.

Beware the Tides of May

Huh?

No, that’s not a mangling of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.’ That’s just what May looks like for me.

While enjoyable, May is a roiling storm of activity for me every year. There’s a lot of vacation prep, a lot of birthdays and a lot of getting out into the world after being pent up all goddamned winter.  Hopefully it will also see the completion of my novel’s first draft this year. It’s a distinct possibility with only 28K words remaining to target. I haven’t put up an excerpt from my novel in progress lately, but should have something copy-pasted into that section soon. Jah’bran however has taken up residence in my mind, as has the land of Ossua, for which this site is named. While I’d love to get back to my gritty, paranormal story of magical life on the streets of Philadelphia (the one put on hiatus by my present efforts), there’s something about the shadows of Jah’bran which seems like it has potential.

The problem I suspect I’ll get into with Jah’bran is making the people and stories in it. Environments just come to me seemingly from nowhere. They develop intricacies like factionalism, organized crime, secret societies and political movements. People often don’t coalesce as well. They get there, but they grow more slowly. Cities and places just set down roots and almost grow of their own accord.

Writing A Different Kind of Story

When I’m not writing short stories, reviews or my first novel, I’m writing about something else. Unlike other kinds of writing, I find that this kind is not really a solitary practice. In fact, I pretty much write the setting out, pop in some bad guys and outline a goal. I then find other people to be heroes and they make up the dialog and decide how the plot is best advanced.

Sounds like a fantasy project doesn’t it? Well, you could call it that. It’s called module writing, and it ties into RPG events. It’s fun, though it has its difficulties.

It’s sometimes difficult to do this when I have other projects going in addition to the other interests and/or addictions I have. But, it’s almost always rewarding. I take no small amount of pride when I put together a supplement of my own for the game, though I imagine those who write modules professionally have a better organizational system than I do. I can set to task with Keynote on my iPad or use the Dungeonmaster’s Toolkit app to keep things straight (provided the app has the right plugins for the proper systems). More often than not though, I imagine my personal game notes might drive another GM mad. I have no coherent record for ‘The Box Boy’s Ghost’ campaign, which was written around a real, unsolved crime right in Fairmount Park. Or the Whatley House encounter, deep within the mountain ranges of Colorado. Or the Scion campaign in which I pitted my players against the nightmares of the Egyptian Titans. Sure, I have my feverish notes. But, I sometimes wonder if I collated them if there’d be any gain beyond that of my own satisfaction – and the satisfaction of my players of course.

The toughest part though is that the narrative is largely written by the characters. What they do and how they react, determines much about any scenario I give them. And more often than not, just like a good battle plan, it does not survive the initial encounter. It’s like ad-libing and free association had some malign lovechild, intent on making things turn out WAY different than expected.

Though, admittedly, that’s part of the thrill. Tomorrow, I shall see how it all turns out for the test-run demo I’ll be running for Gamma World at Days of Knights, date soon to be determined for the actual event. If you’re interested in playing sometime in February and are in the Delaware area, pop by DoK’s and ask tell John you’re interested.

New Wave Requiem

Wow. Never thought I’d see the day when White Wolf released a splat book about a historical era I could relate to. New Wave Requiem covers running Vampire: the Requiem campaigns in the 1980’s.

Holy. Crap. I’m. Old.

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