Life in General...
Rolled out of bed at 7 AM again but watched no
TV unlike yesterday, which was unusual for my typical morning routine anyway.
Instead, I watched a few videos from Dean Wesley Smith's "Writing into the
Dark" lectures, which I bought earlier this year. In the videos, DWS talks
about writing without an outline. I often waffle between being an outliner or
discovery writer. Yesterday and today,
it is discovery. I think the ideas are coming back, slowly.
I like the thought of writing quickly, without
a net, like writers in the days of the pulps. Robert E. Howard, Conan's
creator, is one of my favorite examples. He was quick and full of thunder and
lightning.
For me, this way of writing offers two attractors.
One, pulp writing is rooted in the early 20th
century, a time that fascinates me. Dad was born in 1929, and he frequently
kept me enthralled as a kid with stories of the Great Depression and his
brothers who had served in WWI.
The other is that I have recently begun to
wonder whether there is some sort of strange new plane of storytelling that
appears only after the writer has torn through his or her earliest, superficial
ideas. Don't get me wrong. I've been writing for a couple of decades but
only recently realized that I am heavy on theory and light on practice. Maybe moving
quickly I can finish before discontent with any one story has a chance to set
in. Maybe I can peel away enough layers of
shopworn stories to find something raw and unexperienced.
And now I return you to my regular,
less-purplely-expressed life....
Before lunch, I sat on the back porch to soak
up some mood-alleviating Vitamin D from the sun. While at it, I read a few
pages in a book about PanGu Shengong. (Eastern religions and philosophies
fascinate me, too.)
In the evening, my family and I ate supper with
my wife's sister and her family. The chili was great and so was the
entertainment. My three-year-old niece informed my wife that she wanted to sell
her at a yard sale for $20.
The Writing and Current Projects...
The fiction word count for Tuesday was
abysmal. But, dagnabbit, I pounded out
some words, and some is better than none.
Although I didn't get started until about 7:30
PM, I wrote some on Chapter 2 of the Alaskan fantasy.
Last week, while outlining my horror novel set
in Missouri, I complimented myself on brainstorming successes. Outlining was surely producing a higher class
of idea. No doubt, probably. Why hadn't I been doing this all along? I even
asked my best friend to remind me of my "brilliant" bullet points and
Roman numerated plot topics should I ever venture back into the crazy talk of
"pantsing."
Well, this evening I reread the Alaskan Chapter
2, which was pantsed.
Um, I'm pretty sure it's better than the
outlined one.
Fiction = 238
Blog = 530
Monthly totals for October 2015...
Fiction = 238
Blog = 1,070
MANUSCRIPT TOTAL COUNTS...
Alaskan
fantasy = 7,214
Missouri horror novel = 3,679
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