A bunch of stuff, including The Force

Some of this might be a bit spoilerish for the new Star Wars movie. I'll try to be good, but you've been warned.

We've been slugs after all our Christmas merriment. My wife insisted upon the Harry Potter movie marathon yesterday. This completely shuts down any progress I might make.

She can watch television and read a book at the same time. I cannot. When I read or write, I need to isolate myself from other distractions.

I managed a simple transition in my new book, and did a tiny bit of editing. Sometimes, I'll dabble with a short story even with distractions. This usually requires a complete rewrite later, but with short fiction it's not unrealistic.

The short piece isn't quite going the way I want it to. It involves a main character forgetting a bunch of stuff, then trying again. He gathers a sliver more of data every time. It's harder to write than it sounds. It's also a good exercise for me. I'll dabble with it here and there until I am satisfied, or disgusted.

We went to the new Star Wars movie today, and both of us enjoyed it. There is a bit of repetitiveness from the earlier movies, but it's not nearly as bad as Jurassic World in that respect.

Star Wars is trapped by it's own culture, so viewers expect certain things, and deserve to get a taste of those things. Where to divide the new from the old is challenging.

I learned somewhere that a writer should discard the first few ideas. These can be a story concept, but are more likely events and solutions within the story. The reason is to avoid the low hanging fruit.

Star Wars needs The Force, droids, roguish heroes, aliens, and spaceships. I don't know that it needs to destroy a death star for the third time.

Aside from all that, it was a good movie.

I'm looking forward to doing a bit of writing this next weekend. I may work up a look back at 2015, then a business plan for 2016 on the blog.

That's about it. Not productive at all, and I need to be. I feel like I'm wasting time here, and I'm primed to write something.

Baby steps are still progress

We went to Jurassic World last night. I really enjoyed it, but more as a memory lane experience. There was an awful lot of stuff I've seen before. These include a thin layer of plexiglass between some children and a pair of hungry jaws, flares & Tyranosaurus Rex, surrounded by velociraptors when something worse shows up. There was even some creative driving right out of Indiana Jones' playbook, that scene included several rear view mirror shots that mirrored Jurassic Park. For a long time I feared they were going to use an exploding compressed air tank, right out of Jaws, to solve the big problem. They resisted. It was a great film, but with 20 years to work on it, it could have been more creative.

We had the grandkids last night after the movie. My daughter-in-law entered some kind of Spartan thingie that involves mud, sweat, and entirely too much work. We took the kids to the flag football game. Our grandson pulled four flags today, one of which turned out to be an actual tackle. He even completed two touchdown passes. Before you get too excited, he passed the ball about five feet and the other kid ran to the end zone. They're five and six year olds. I think that's wonderful for that age.

Grandma took them to town when she went. That gave me some quality time with my iPad. I worked through two chapters of an old story. I decided not to do a complete rewrite of this one, but I'm going to fix a few easy things.

I also added about five index cards to my various outlines. I need to put a bigger effort into one of them, but all of them need a bit more plot. That's what happens when the Muse sends me characters and scenes first.

In a way, I completed a couple of extremely short passes myself today. It isn't much, but it is forward progress. I'll finish my clean up project, one chapte at a time. I'll finish my outlines, one index card at a time too.

Eventually, I need to start the editing passes on The Playground. I'm in no rush and intend to enjoy some things this summer. If I don't start a new novel until winter, that's fine by me.

Tonight, I'm going to check out something new on BBC called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Is anyone else going to check this one out?

Lazy day off

I’ve done a couple of minor book promotions in the past weeks. I don’t think I’m ready to let go of Will O’ the Wisp yet. I’m very pleased with it, and believe others would like it too – if they could only find it. (Look! On the right, there it is.)

None of my promos are really doing anything. I’ve had over ten thousand people see my Amazon campaign, four of them actually clicked the link. None of them bought it. I set this up to target products instead of other books. It hasn’t cost me an entire dollar yet. I’m pretty sure Amazon will cancel it soon, but 10,000 people know it exists.

I’m going to do some more, but it’s becoming $20 here and $20 there for zero return. I don’t mind, up to a point. Maybe I still have dues to pay in the promotion part of being a writer. I have other schemes in the works too.

I actually pandered myself out on Twitter this week. I wanted my post about The Research Phase to get into the top ten on my sidebar. These posts get a lot of action from new readers, and I thought it was fun. There were a lot of retweets, but the reports indicated they were just looking at, or saving, safari Lisa. Nobody clicked on my cool book pile (There are some cool books in that pile). A few Twitter people read the post, but I never got enough likes to put it on the board. Oh well, that’s blogging.

My participation in the quote challenge did just as well, and it wasn’t even my quote. Blogging has always been that way, and it no longer baffles me.

I haven’t started that research reading yet, which will mostly be skimming. There are a ton of small history items and lingo in the African books. Terms like Ingwe (leopard), Rinderpest, and things like sausage trees can add some flavor, but I need to make sure they’re right for the area.

I need to do some online research into propaganda. The minimal amount I’ve done looks mostly like logical fallacies pushed to the extreme. The problem is my “hero” in this outline has to start a war. That’s an awful thing to do, and it’s tough to get readers cheering for him. It lends itself to a save the princess scenario, and as long as there is a huge double cross to foil the bad guy – who actually wants the war – it might work. I don’t know if I’m smart enough to pull off a huge double cross. (Maybe I should re-watch The Sting and Maverik.)

I added some index cards to two of my outlines, but this time they are in some kind of order. Neither one has a complete Act One. I need to turn my attention to the remaining two outlines next.

One of my short stories has languished for weeks. I have a hard time moving to the next one until I finish this one. (Have I mentioned that I’m a very lineal writer?) I found out that Neil Gaiman wrote something similar, that I’ve never read, and I let it stymie me. No longer! I finished that bugger today.

I want to put out a book of short stories and micro fiction. My intent is to ask 99¢ for it, but I want to deliver some value for what I ask. Right now I have 19,298 words comprising multiple stories. I’m guessing I need double that word count.

I may have to inquire what the word count was on The Black Bag and Ichabod Brooks.

I’m about to give up for today. We have tickets to Jurassic World tonight and I’m hoping it’s fun. I have a problem with them creating a whole new dinosaur, but I’m willing to spot them one. Crichton didn’t write this one, and I’m dubious. Still dinos on screen once more is worth the admission price.