That Was Fun

Wow! That was exciting!

When you start writing an action scene, you have a general idea of what's going to happen and how it's going to end – you certainly don't expect your main character to die, right? – but you don't really know how it's going to play out exactly.

And when it's multiple characters it's even harder to foresee because it's not always clear to you beforehand who is going to do what, or how these characters you've created will react in a life or death situation.

So I felt like I had a front row seat as the four kids – Jamie, Spider, Johnnie and Maggie – and the grandfather, Buck faced off against the pirates.

It played out great. Each character got to show of his or her grit, personality. It was, I hope, fairly dramatic, but not without some humor. While I have completely reworked the story, I made sure I kept one of the things that got the biggest reaction from the first test audience, Tori's students. The first time it showed up in the story it got a big laugh, the students loved what Johnnie, the 8-year-old girl, had done. They actually cheered her. And when I referenced it later, they always laughed. So that stayed, and I gave it a much bigger payoff this time around. Any of those kids who eventually see the final version will be surprised how different the story is, but they'll sure laugh at what Johnnie does.

So that was 1,379 very satisfying words, bringing the story to 56,161. I have to go back and put two little things in there, then it's off to dealing with the treacherous Mr. Lowell.

Three days to go before my deadline.

Can't Wait to See What Happens

Note to myself – Keep going!

Put down 1,548 words yesterday, for a total of 54,000+, then got buried in errands and stuff for Talk Like a Pirate Day, which of course comes every Sept. 19. The online store (Get your TLAPDay T-shirts and coffee mugs here!) was a mess, and it needed a couple of hours of work to straighten out. And probably an hour a night for the next week or so. The holiday's almost here, it just can't wait for me.

But I've got four days to finish and I'll make it. Have a very exciting chapter to write today, the final showdown between the kids and the pirates that will be completely different than originally written, but have at least one thing will be the same – Someone bonks Itchy John on the head with a shovel. Saturday (In between shooting a TLAPDay video and working for the Source) I'll deal with the treacherous Mr. Lowell.

That leaves me two days for wrapping it up. Will they find the treasure? I really haven't decided yet. Seriously. There's arguments to make either way. I can't wait to see.

Facing an Unpleasant Memory and Using It

Tough day of writing Wednesday. Managed to pound out 1,003 words, so I hit my mark, but after days of doubling that it felt like running through molasses.

If I had to guess, it would be the subject matter. They're trapped in a cave, trying to find their way out. I kept flashing to my Boy Scout Days, when our troop took the guided wild tour of Cumberland Caverns in Tennessee and slept in the cave. There's nothing darker than cave dark, let me tell you. The wild tour took about an hour through narrow tunnels, or through slits in the rock where you had to brace arms and feet against opposite sides of a narrow passage and cross through a crevice that narrowed down to nothing below you. You had no light except your flashlight, which suddenly looked pretty feeble, I'll tell you. There were probably 100 kids on the tour, and at one point while I was crawling through an opening maybe three feet high, the line stopped. Just stopped. I couldn't go forward, couldn't go back. It was scary for a minute until we started moving again.

I won't say I'm claustrophobic, but I don't think anyone likes to be confined, in a tight place. Trapped, even if not really, and only for moment. And I had to write through that memory of panic and use a little of it.

But it sure slowed me down. Also the various work and family chores that always come up through the course of the day. But I'm not blaming that, that's just a thing called life. I'm putting the blame on some uncomfortable memories that I hope help the story.

Having that target – 1,000 words every day – and deadline also helped. Can't afford to slow down now. I couldn't let myself quit until I hit the target.

Today should be easier. They just got out of the cave. It feels lighter, freer, just writing those words. Now all they have to do is defeat the pirates, evade the Spanish Garda Costa, find the treasure and get off the island. Piece of cake.

Value Given, Value Received

I went to my first critiques meeting of the library fiction writing group Monday, and I was nervous.

Not about my work. I had submitted the first chapter of Scurvy Dogs! and I was confident in it. I'm just finishing up my third revision, pretty much a total rewrite, but the first chapter has hardly changed at all since I first scribbled down the idea in my notebook. I've tweaked a word here and there, but mostly it's exactly as I read it to the kids in Tori's class two years ago.

What I was nervous about was critiquing other's work. First and formost, I didn't want to come off as a know-it-all or an arrogant jerk. I can talk a great deal, I know that, and not everything that was submitted was, shall we say, particularly great. And I'm one of the new guys – They don't know me, and I don't know them. I haven't been there in the past and don't know the drill.

In the end, I decided not to worry about sharpshooting the grammar or spelling. I would focus on the shape of the story, whether it worked for me as a reader and what I thought the author could do to sharpen it.

That's the key, something I learned years ago when I was directing at Albany Civic Theater. It's one thing to say, "That's not good." But that's no help. What's helpful is finding a way to tell them why something doesn't work as well as it should and what they could do to solve the problem. Criticism that doesn't give the recipient something he can act on is just being an asshole.

The other thing I kept in mind was the old maxim that if you're going to say something negative, you have to find five positives to go along with it. Everytime I offered a comment, I made a point of starting with, "I really liked – " that character, or the idea of a story on choices and consequences, or the tone or a particular phrase.

Anyway, it seemed to go pretty well, even though I talked too much. The group moderator would announce the next piece to critique and say, "Anyone have any comments?" And there'd be this silence, and then me or another new guy, also named John, would start. And the discussions were good and people really seemed pleased with the attention we as a group were giving their work. One woman said, "Gosh, you guys are nice. I expected to get ripped up." Apparently some groups are all about ego. This really was about seeing the work with fresh eyes and trying to help.

My chapter was well received, and there were a few helpful suggestions, tweaks, that will make it stronger. Of course no one is obligated to take a piece of advice, but why would you not consider it? If a reader doesn't get what you're doing, no matter how much you like a phrase or thought, obviously that reader wasn't with you. Look at it more closely.

I was particularly pleased when the other John mentioned my use of strong verbs, and likened the two young characters to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn! The verbs were thanks to Steve Swinburne, and the Tom and Huck – I always try to come up with a five-word pitch for my stories, and my pitch for Scurvy Dogs! is, "Tom and Huck Fight Pirates." So apparently I hit that dead on!

Afterwards, the other John and I happened to go out the door at the same time as two other longtime members of the group. One of them commented, "Wow. You guys give really good critiques." The next day I got an email from the coordinator who said he had almost disbanded the group because no one ever talked during critiques, but that was one of the better discussions he could recall.

So it felt like there was some value given and value returned. I'll definitely comb through that first chapter one more time.

Scurvy Dogs! Update – Monday went well, almost too well. 2,836 words. Unfortunately, that was all one chapter, and I get nervous when my chapters approach 2,000. So the first thing Tuesday, I knocked out 258 – why have them discuss the escape plan if they never actually try to escape? – and, after jiggling to make it all fit, had a more readable 2,597 for Monday's work.

Tuesday I was exhausted, slept until almost noon. Then banged out 1,887 words. Didn't quite finish the chapter because work intervened late in the day. But it's right there.

Then I wrote a thousand word story for the Source and a half dozen crime briefs and called it a night.

I've got the Scurvy Dogs within 200 words of the chapter end, when they find their way out of the tunnel. Then the showdown, the second showdown and the last showdown – you might call it a series of running showdowns. Then wrap it up with the truth about the squire.The story stands at 52,228 words, and I'm right on track.

A Good Weekend in a Day

I had a good weekend Sunday.

I was not propductive Friday or Saturday for all the usual reasons. Blah blah blah who cares about your excuses John?

So two days with no work on the book, and only a week to go until my deadline. I guess I like to make myself sweat.

Sunday morning I sent out the call for news budgets (part of my copy editing shift, it just means sending out an email asking everyone what they've got coming for the day,) edited and posted a couple of stories, then got to work on Scurvy Dogs!

First time I looked up, I was a little surprised to see I'd knocked out more than 500 words. Then 1,000. Kept going. 2,000. Kept going. It was easy. The words were flying.

Finished the day with 2,723 words, and some really good stuff. "There's a dead guy down here!" Good action. Ended in a great place.

So for the three days of the weekend I averaged more than 900 words a day, although all of it was written Sunday from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Then we were off to the library.

The book is now at 47,650 words. The remaining unedited/revised bit is a little over 16,000 words. Most of that has to be completely rewritten, involving stuff that no longer makes sense with the story as it now stands. I believe it'll end up shorter than that, because the path is now much simpler and more straightforward. Probably not more than about 10,000 words.

And the story will be done. Deadline is next Monday. No more days off.

The Seat of the Problem

My butt hurt Thursday.

That simple. I'd spent so much time Wednesday glued to the kitchen chair covering on the web that Senate meeting from hell that when I tried to get to work Thursday it was just too uncomfortable. Could not sit still. Back on the island I had a nice desk chair, which got left behind and my behind regrets it. We recently got some new kitchen chairs around the table, and they're better than the old ones they replaced. But they're still not ergonomic desk chairs, and my rapidly aging body resents it.

So I took the day off. Dangerous, I know, with the deadline looming. But with so much of writing is keeping the butt to the chair until the day's quota is met, it really wasn't an option. Tori told me to take the day off, and I did.

But the day wasn't a waste.

I had a phone conversation in the afternoon with Eddie the Agent about Chance. He was encouraging, but realistic. And he had advice that made sense.

When the old agent had it out at a handful of publishers, the one common critique I heard was "it starts slow. Get to the pirates faster." I understand, and I sure tried, taking repeated hacks at the first third of the book until it was about the first 20 percent. But they still passed.

Eddie saw it completely different, and his advice makes total sense. The problem, he said, wasn't that the pirate didn't show up soon enough or that the action dragged, the problem was that the title character, 14-year-old Chance, was the only young character in the whole first half, and one of only two in the whole book. It kind of made it an adult story observed by a kid – a bright kid, but the only kid. Young people like reading about the adventures of people their age, they like books where they can imagine themselves in the action, or their peers. Good food for thought.

So, while there needs to be interesting action and rising stakes, it's not about "getting to the pirates faster." Eddie was able to point me to the real issue, and we discussed ways of addressing it.

We tossed around a couple of other ideas, and I asked some questions about a couple of other things I'd thought about. He's going to send me some notes, but I probably won't get them until September.

We also talked about Scurvy Dogs! and he sounded really excited. I've been promising it to him for months and months, but explained that these new ideas keep occurring to me, I've been seeing ways to ratchet the tension and raise the stakes and make the backstory more effective.

And the best thing, in terms of our earlier discussion, the main characters are two 13-year-old boys, a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old girl. There's also a drunken bastard grandfather, and a vicious pirate and a snooty tutor and a dog – but the story is about the kids. Totally about the kids.

And I told him something I’d just written the day before, which had surprised me, didn't see it coming, and it illustrated just how really bad the bad guys are. And Eddie said, "Oooooh!"

So that was good.

I also finished reading a really excellent YA novel called Paper Towns, by John Green. Max is into his work, and Max is right. Green is terrific. I had read his earlier An Abundance of Katherines, and my god, the guy can write! He's writing about contemporary teens, and any teen would want to be in that car, be at that party, know that girl or that guy. I hope I can make my characters from 300 years ago as interesting as Green's. Anyone trying to write YA needs to read him. Anyone who likes a good book needs to read him.

I also did an interview with a reporter from a London magazine. It's approaching that time, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, when we got inundated by requests for interviews. We enjoy doing them, and more importantly, you've gotta feed the franchise, gotta build the platform. I know I'm mainly considered "somebody" because I have that on my resume, one of the two guys who created Talk Like a Pirate Day. We've got the website, we've got the Facebook page, we keep spreading the word. Millions of people around the world know of us. We are constantly amazed that people think we're interesting, and want to talk to us. But talking is something both I and my friend Mark do very, very well.

People often ask how long we're going to keep it up. We always say, "As long as it's fun."

A Day Lost in the Trenches of Journalism

Wow, that was as bad as I was afraid it would be.

I was stuck in the chair Wednesday, listening to the V.I. Senate on the web, from 10 a.m. to about 7:30 p.m. Then I had to convert the 6,300 words of notes into a story. I think I was finished with everything around 11 p.m. I apologized to the editor by paraphrasing Clemens – I'm sorry I wrote such a long story, but I didn't have time to write a short one. The story is here but you don't want to read it, trust me. Although the part where the senator started singing "I Will Survive" was kinda funny.

I did get a little Scurvy Dogs! work done. At one point the political jpalaver was driving me crazy so I finished up the chapter I was working on. Didn't miss a thing.

Today will be better. I've got some interruptions coming during the day, but I expect I'll be able to get some work done on the book.

I've got a reporter from some magazine in the UK calling at 11 for a Talk Like a Pirate Day story. It's that time of year again, when they start calling. It begins with the print media, which have longer deadlines, then switches to radio in early Sepatmber. Two years in a row, Cap'n Slappy and I did 80 radio interviews in a 30-hour stretch.

And Eddie the Agent is probably calling sometime today (he didn't specify a time) to talk about Chance. His email said it needs a little editorial work, but he sounded nervous about my willingness. I blame myself. I told him when I sent it that had been stripped of a lot of the changes I had done for the old agent and a couple of publishers who ended up not buying it. I wanted it to be judged on the story I thought it was, not the story other people had. But I have no problems with reworking it. I know there's a good story in there, and I already know some of what he's gonna say.

I'm not a prima donna, or even a secondary donna. (Is that a thing? It should be a thing.)

But in the meantime I'll get to work on Scirvy Dogs. Have 11 days to finish.

I'm also thinking about taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. Have an idea in mind for that that might work, but the timing has to be right. Finishing Scurvy Dogs!, then probably reworking Chance. If I have that done by the end of October – and have any brains left – we'll see.