Category: My Writing

I’ve decided to take the NaNoWriMo challenge and write the first draft of a novel in one month – November.

I am going to try to write it in order and post the pages as I write them. To reach the 50,000 word challenge I will need to be writing about three pages a day.

So check back ever day to see how I’m doing.

Please note that the object of this exercise is to create quantity , by not working too much about grammar and such. I guess that’s what December is for.

Now for something completely different.
This months newsletters looks at my detour into writing a daily devotional.
Take a look and if you want to be one of the test group let me know.

I reached another milestone last night – I finished my first pass through the novel doing a grammar check and read through. I had started trying to do several checks at once, but decided that it might be better to do several run throughs rather than getting bogged down trying to do it all in one pass.

I’m going to start my next pass and see how quickly I can get it done. In this pass I’m just going to be reading the dialog and working on the different characters’ voices.

I sent the first two chapters of my novel to www.floggingthequill.com to get flogged. I wonder how many days it will be till it is posted?

I’ve read and tweaked the first 16 lines several time. I like it, but I don’t know if it is page turn worthy. The first page is a journal entry, so it will have to be really strong to get Ray to turn the page. It is not a flashy action scene, but it does set the scene and foreshadows some of the problems that are coming.

The waiting is going to be tough.

In loss …

My heart ached with the memory
My thoughts lingered on his history
My soul cried in its misery
My body quaked with the finality

In writing…

My heart found expression
My thoughts posed its question
My soul sought compassion
My body gave up its aggression

In remembering ….

My heart is filled again
My thoughts of him remain
My soul struggles to retain
My body cries in vain

In sharing …

My heart found compassion
My thoughts found solace
My soul found hope
My body found peace

In losing my son at age fifteen
My life was turned upside down

In writing I found a connection
Ways to express the inexpressible

Through blog and verse and prose
I shared my painful journey

And even if my mother was the only one to ever read them
Our tighter bond is reward enough

First of all my goal for 2009 was to finish the first draft of my WIP. I finished the first draft at 9:00 PM on New Years eve. Three hours early, that’s good for me.

2010 goals:
I started doing a monthly newsletter in September and did one for each following month of 2009. For 2010 I want to send out a newsletter each month.

In June of 2009 I created Blog sites for the four main characters of my book. In the last 7 months of 2008 I posted 18 blogs entries, or about 2 per month. In 2010 I want to post at least on entry per week.

I was inspired my Christine’s flogging. By March I want to have submitted my first 16 lines for a flogging. I’m not sure I can do any better than most of the people who get flogged there, and I have to admit I’m a little fearful to try, but it seems like a first good step to get ready to send my WIP to an editor, where I’m sure they’ll flog the whole thing.

My WIP has very short chapters. 108 chapters of about 1050 words each (133,00 words total). I’ve created a check list from the things I learned from The Fire In Fiction. I want to do a revision of four chapters a week, or all of them by the end of June.
What’s the point, Outer turn, Inner turn, Concise dialog, First Line, Last line, Micro tension, Building storm.

Read the two books I received for my birthday on revisions and getting published by June so I will know how to do the second revision and start on the road to getting published.

I’ve been posting my second line-a-day story now for 75 days. Chapter one is 28 lines, chapter two is 9 lines, and as of today, chapter three is 38 lines.

I’ve been writing the story in bursts of between 10 and 20 lines at a time, and then posting them one line a day. This evening I wrote the last 20 lines of chapter three. The story is the story of a Father’s struggle to not hold on too tight to his daughter so he can still be in her life, and a daughter who is trying to prove she can make it on her own.

I don’t know where this story came from, or why I’m writing it. But as I write it I feel it deeply. For some reason I care about these characters even more than the ones in my novel. Annay has gone through some pretty tough struggles so far in the 85,000 words of the book, but so has Jill in the 75 lines of this story.

After finishing the twenty lines that I wrote this evening, which took about an hour to write, I feel drained and sad. Perhaps depressed would be a better word. As it turns out I’m was writing a very intense part of my book this weekend, and I think they may have added together. Well, I’ve got almost three weeks before I have to visit Jill and Bob again.

The other connection to make between these two books and my life comes from last Sunday evening. Most Sundays I meet with a friend and talk about how I’m doing with the lost of my son. We talk about all sorts of stuff: memories, lost dreams, struggling to keep going, finding motivation to keep going to work, how my other kids are doing, how my wife is doing.

This last week we talked about what were some of the other things we needed to talk about. One of the things I brought up was that I thought I wasn’t dealing with my emotions enough. In the first few months after his death, I cried a lot and I missed him a lot. Now its been a year and a half. I still miss him, and I still get angry sometimes, but I don’t really feel anything. I think that it is not so much that I don’t feel anything, but that I won’t allow myself to feel it.

And that’s were the tie-in comes. I think that in someway I am feeling through the characters in my stories. I’m not going through the same things that they are, but I am feeling the same kinds of things. And as I write, I let it out through my characters. I am making them hurt so I will feel their pain, which is the pain I think I should be feeling myself.

Is this a healthy way to deal with my own emotions. I’ll let you know, but for now, after I force myself through the low, I do feel better. I just wonder if it is making my stories better or just darker.

Her heart’s beating stops. The air in her lungs forces its way out. Senses fade. Thoughts race, then nothing. Only her spirit is left.

Black, then white, fading to blue. A forest comes into focus. Whole, unbroken, no longer victim of an accident. People walking towards her.

“Mother!” Running into her arms. Long hugs, tears of joy. “I’ve been waiting for you Julie.” Joy pauses. “Who will raise my son?”

A handsome man approaches. Julie smiles at him and immediately likes him. He comes to her and hugs her. She lets this man hold her.

“Mother, I love you,” the handsome man says. Julie steps back, “What?”. “It’s me, John”, he says. “What?” she repeats. He holds her again.

“How? you’re only ten,” Julie says in a whisper. “I was only ten on the day that you died,” John whispers back. “I missed you so much.”

“But?” she asks. “I survived. I grew. I never forgot. The pain faded, but I always missed you,” he says. “I got married; you’re a grandma.”

“Heart attack in my sleep,” he explains, “It took a long time to die. There were tubes in my body and needles in my veins. But I died.”

“And you were here waiting for me,” John says. “After all the years of missing you, you were here to greet me and hug me. Thank you”

Julie sits down, John sits next to her holding her hand. “Look, here comes Amy! You’ll just love Amy.” A beautiful young girl comes running.

The girl throws herself at Julie and wraps her arms around Julie’s neck. Julie’s heart sings within her; she loves this young girl.

“Hi, Grandma. You look just like your pictures.” Julie looks at John and then back to the young girl.

“This is your granddaughter, Amy,” John says, “You two are inseparable.” Julie doesn’t know why, but she knows it’s true. “I love you, too.”

“I don’t understand,” Julie says. “You will,” John replies. “It takes a while,” and John laughs at himself. “I made a joke.”

“There is no time here, just events. You can relive them as often as you desire. You’ve just gotten here, but you’ve been here forever.”

“You were here to greet me when I first came, and you were here for Amy. In fact you were the first to meet Amy; it made it easier for her.”

“And now you’re here to meet me?” Julie asked. “Yes, because we love each other. That’s what Heaven is all about,” John said as he smiled.

“We have forever to experience God and to share experiences with each other. If your up to it, let’s go met Dad, you’re important to him.”