WHINE ALERT: This opening segment lists my excuses for not (re)starting the series yet. If you’d like to skip it, drop down to the line break below; that’s where the “positivity” in the title begins. Just because I like to suffer doesn’t mean everybody has to.
So here we are. A little over two weeks into the challenge and I’ve barely done a thing on Book #1. I’ve been reading over what I typed—at least a year ago, if not longer—and I’ve done some editing and gotten some new ideas. Mostly, however, I sit down at the laptop and either watch videos or play games. I tried unplugging the WiFi only to discover that didn’t work. The urge to log on was too strong. I tried logging on and getting my Internet business out of the way first, then getting to work. Those were the days I never got to work. What did work was going onto a music site and running background music while I worked. That did the trick. I’ve got a chase scene coming up with my heroes being attacked by vampires, and I know just the cut from the Aliens soundtrack I’m going to run in the background. Assuming I ever get there. I’ve got over a decade of bad habits that have become firmly entrenched, and when I try to fight or replace them they just dig in and get worse. I’ll keep experimenting and let you know how it turns out.
On the upside, the side project is still going great guns. But then, that’s longhand. No Internet distractions. Once I go to type the second draft into the system, bet these problems will pop up again. Unless I figure out a way to defeat or at least deflect them. The series and I are both works in progress, and it’s far too early to give up on either. Next week I’m getting a new paid assignment, so the pressure will be on for that as well. Stay tuned.
****
Now for the positive stuff. Since the side project’s doing well, I’m going to talk about that. Today’s topic will be the lesson: “No writing ever goes to waste.”
I try to write something every day. I haven’t missed a day in fifteen years, not even when I was in the hospital for the hernia operation. It’s not always much, and it’s not always part of a work in progress. Even a sentence is better than nothing. Don’t let the blank page win!
On the days when I don’t have a WIP, or I didn’t work on the WIP (see whines, above), I write flash scenes. Dialogue mostly, but sometimes a vignette or a snippet or random words of something that may or may not ever develop into a story or book. I’ve had tossed-off flash scenes mutate into stories and sometimes into entire novels. Case in point: my current side project. Here’s its origin story.
This first scene was written in July of 2021. It was inspired by the news Gold Eagle Books was closing up shop. They published pulp stuff, men’s adventure, in spite of being a subsidiary of Harlequin, the romance publisher, of all people. Remember The Executioner, or those Death Lands books on the shelves at Kmart? That was them. I needed to write something and I needed a topic, so this is what came out:
$$$
So…it’s gone. A&A Books. That’s Action and Adventure, to those not in the know. It wasn’t a biggie, like Random House or whoever’s publishing Stephen King these days. It was just some little mom and pop publisher that put out cheap paperbacks, like the kind you can sometimes find on racks in a drug store or at a truck stop. They handled all the pulpy tropes: jungle heroes, cowboys, one man armies against the mob, plucky survivors wandering post-apocalyptic landscapes. It was all in good fun, and you could while away a rainy afternoon with an easy read about macho heroes, evil villains, and half-naked women in chainmail bikinis. You didn’t even need to worry about grammar, or proper punctuation. They were the kind of books where more thought went into the weapons and landscape descriptions than the characters or the plot.
But all good things do come to an end. So do bad and indifferent things. Readers had gotten pretty indifferent to A&A Publishing, especially with the rise of video games. If you had an XBox, you could be a barbarian or a zombie fighter or a lone ex-Marine mowing down Mafia baddies. In full color, with realistic graphics. No more struggling with syntax and picturing the action in your head. Xbox must have been a godsend to dyslexic kids.
So A&A rode off into the sunset, sailed off the edge of the world, packed up the assault rifle, found the radiation-free Eden, etc., etc. I reread my collection for a time, until I realized how repetitive the plots were, and the fact the heroes remained unchanged for over twenty years. Physically and psychologically. The characters couldn’t grow or change; it would screw with the formula. Then there was Elder Breen, the zombie hunter, still out there a-shootin’ and a-knifin’ away, with kids nearing 40 and him still 52. Yeah, time to pack it in.
Eventually I loaded my collection of A&A books into a box and dropped them off at the library’s donation bin. Maybe some kid would find them, and enjoy them as much as I used to before puberty set in. I didn’t even shed a tear as I walked away. I was done with those characters, those worlds.
What I didn’t realize at the time was, they weren’t done with me. Or with any of us.
$$$
Exactly one week later, I wrote this scene:
$$$
“So…are you human or aren’t you?”
“Uhhh…it’s complicated.”
“In simple terms, please.”
“My mother was a character in a Bigfoot porn novel.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted simple terms. That’s a simple as I can make it.”
“How can your mother be a character in a book? How could she have—” The Inquisitor poked him in the arm. “Produced solid, living offspring?”
“Beats me. You’ll have to ask her that. I was just a kid.”
“Where is she now?”
“She went into hiding when you Puritan pussies came to power. Try the Nancy Drew series. Or Lord of the Rings. She always had a weakness for elves.”
The Inquisitor hissed. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“You betcha. Also a dick, a douche, a motherfucking tinpot dictator, and a—”
“Do you honestly think I’d be foolish enough to believe your mother was an actual fictional character?”
“Don’t take my word for it. Check with the author.”
“This ‘author’s’ name?”
“M. T. Condom. I think it’s a pseudonym.”
“I’m sure. Where were you born?”
“In book six of the Babs and Bigfoot Chronicles, Sequoia Fever. Page 27. Only two paragraphs. It was a difficult pregnancy, so M. T. had to summarize. The good news is, I was 10 years old by the end of the chapter. Transitions are the greatest thing ever.”
“Such nonsense. I’ll not stand for—”
“You know what sucks? Retcons. Or when the writer gets ‘inspired’ and starts adding background. I’ll be at work, or on the can, or with a chick, and all of a sudden I get hit with memories I never had before because my ‘creator’ decided to give me a childhood. Or a broken heart. Or siblings. I had a sister who was born and killed off in the space of a page and then I had to deal with it. Really, what the hell? What’s even the point?”
“That’s enough,” the Inquisitor said. “Enough of this farce. You will tell me the truth. Who are you?”
“My name is Itrigo. My father was Bigfoot and my mother was a grad student named Babs Moorecock. I was born in an erotic romance novel. My parents were fictional characters.”
The Inquisitor slapped him across the face, drawing blood from his lip. “My time is not unlimited, and I don’t appreciate wasting it. You will—” He stared at his fingers, and the dark, sticky liquid smeared on them. “What is this?”
Itrigo chuckled. Darkness seeped from his lip. “It’s ink. What else did you expect?”
$$$
And there you go. Two unrelated flash scenes written a week apart. Yes, Bigfoot porn is a thing. You can find it on Amazon, but only if you’re 18 or older. Amazon’s got all kinds of fun stuff, but only if you know which keywords to type into Search. Happy hunting, fetish freaks.
Anyway. Like I said, two unrelated flash scenes. Unless, of course, you’re a writer. Writers’ brains like to play mashup, which is what mine did. I wasn’t writing anything in particular at the time, so Brain chose to toss me a bone. One night I sat down to write flash, and what poured out of my pen was the tale of a private investigator who’s hired by a cavemannish person to find his “creator.” The caveman (not Bigfoot; I wanted to keep this story clean) claimed to be a fictional character created for a publisher’s book series, and he wanted to find his author. Trouble is, the books were written under a house name, so the author could have been one person or several, with a name different from the title on the cover. Hence the need for professional aid. To prove his story, the caveman uses the PI’s letter opener and cuts into his arm. Black ink wells to the surface. See how it all ties together?
I didn’t have a plot at that point, but that wasn’t an issue. I’m a pantser; lack of a plot doesn’t stop us. You just forge ahead and see what happens. Plus the name “Elder Breen,” tossed off in the flash scene, intrigued me. He became one of the story’s bad guys. Heroes, bad guys, mystery. I was off and running.
This is why writers are always taking notes and jotting everything down. A lot of it ends up being trash, but sometimes you strike gold. Plus it makes an easily-justifiable excuse not to work on your stated project while still legitimately claiming you did write today. We artsy types are such weasels. Enjoy your day!
No comments:
Post a Comment