Struggling with it.

I really struggled with writing yesterday -- the way it's supposed to be, eh?  I made my quota of words, but I wasn't satisfied with them.  This book is going to require a lot of rewriting to make it good.

It can be hard to get my head in the story after a few days away working at the store.  But I know the break is probably good for me.

As I mentioned on my blog, it goes to show how socialized I've become that I even notice how lonely writing is. 

It also probably shows that my expectations have been raised that I even consider the possibility of people actually reading me.  I think I used to daydream a lot about being published, but also figured it wouldn't happen.  Now I think I daydream a little less, but know that this writing will be put out there, one way or another.

Not sure which is better.

I can't help but talk about writing at the store and I'm afraid I'm becoming obnoxious about it.  Or talk too much about it here.  But whenever I think maybe I shouldn't talk about it so much, I realize that the feedback I'm getting this way may be the only feedback I'll ever get.  And little pats on the back can carry me a long ways.


Anyway -- I always have trouble when I try to overlay or integrate new material with old material.  I think I might be better off just starting from scratch, but it's hard when some of the old material is good.

The solution -- counter-intuitively -- isn't to integrate the new material into the old, but to write the new material as if the old material doesn't exist and then try to incorporate the old material into the framework.  

I'm recognizing that this is a book that will require a lot of rewriting.  As I've mentioned before, I write two kinds of books: ones that come easy and ones that come hard.  This is one that will come hard, I can already see.

I'd kind of sworn that I wouldn't do the latter type anymore, but I like this idea so much that I'm going to finish it. 

Probably won't hurt me to slow down and fight with a book for awhile.

The stock market, because what else can I do?

First let me say -- We're a nation of ninnies.

Most of what I hear of politics these days seems like inane nattering.  We have real problems we're not even addressing, and we're wasting out time on stupid stuff.

We've obviously gone off the rails.  It ain't the liberals -- it's the conservatives who have brought this about. 

They're delusional.


Anyway, I wanted to talk about the stock market.  So ... the last two booms, I wasn't there.  No money at all.  I put what little I had in an IRA in the stock market at its lowest month of the crash -- so I'll always sort of pat myself on the back about that.  But it was probably just coincidence.

Anyway,  I've been trying to keep up with economic news reports for a long time now, and I've decided that I can always find very bearish reports, and sometimes find some bullish reports, and everything between.

So, taking that all into account -- by tossing them in the rubbish bin -- I'm trying to look at the bigger picture.

What I remember about the last two bubbles was being completely aware at the time that they were bubbles.  Long before they burst.  I couldn't understand, for instance, how a company selling widgets on NASDAQ could be worth five times more by making the same widgets.

Every time I've ever had the reaction of:  That makes no sense!  ----  It has turned out to make no sense.

I'm on record on this blog for fearing a housing bubble -- it's the reason I started this blog in late 2006 in the first place, after participating in discussions on other local blogs for months before that, and being concerned for several years before that.

As I always say, I've seen bubbles -- pogs, beanie babies, sports cards, Pokemon.  They have certain indicators.

I see nothing like those two situations in the current market.  I see tons of dangers and negative signs, but they are the usual bearish things that one can always find.

So while there are plenty of negative things to look for, overall I don't see the massive destructive bubble that I saw the last two times.

We've kept our money in the stock market this whole time, and it seems to have worked pretty well.  Even a massive correction would only take us back where we started. 

Besides, what else am I going to do?

The structure of a novel can be the hardest thing to figure out.

I wanted to get to the "meat" of the story as quickly as possible.

Problem is, most of what made the Donner Party the Donner Party was the Hasting Cutoff, which was a "shortcut" through Utah and Nevada, going over the Wasatch Mountains and then down into the Great Salt Lake.

It was a disaster.  They fell far behind, lost much of their cattle and supplies.  By the time they reached the Sierra Nevada's they were already in trouble.

So I do want to detail some of the ordeal they went through.  It's also my chance to develop some of the characters before the desperation sets in.

So, I'm thinking I'll need to spend about the first third of the book developing this.

The solution, to some extent, is to have some action backed flashforward chapters, which I do in the first chapter.

This becomes a problem because the flashforward viewpoint character of that first chapter is out of danger after that some time.

I have another flashforward character I can use, but I'm afraid it might be confusing.

The structure of a novel can be about the hardest thing to figure out.

The loneliest thing.

Writing is the loneliest thing there is, I think.

No one's making me do it.  No one is insisting.  No one is even requesting.

I spend hours alone in a room, making stuff up that no one will read.

It is completely self-directed; I write as few or as many words as I want.  As I struggle with a book, I realize if I abandoned it no one would know or care.  It would remain forever orphaned forever unfinished.  A still birth. 

Unlike other activities, say like music or art or gardening or....any number of activities, writing takes the active participation of another.  Art and music, for instance, can be taken passively by the recipient.  I mean, all artistic activities are lonely, I suppose.  But you can get a sense of a painting or a piece of music in a few moments, but to get a full novel you have to read a full novel.

Quality control is up to me -- to some extent, beyond natural ability.  How much work and effort and time is up to me.  But mostly, and this sounds harsh -- no one really cares.  In the end I do it because I want to do it. 

But sitting there at the keyboard, it's all me, all the time.




Rereading the above.  Poor boy....

Getting to the "meat" of the story, yuck, yuck.

I already had most of the contents of the fifth and sixth chapters written.  Originally, they were to be the 'flashback' chapters in Wolflander, but I loved the idea so much that I extracted them and encased them in a whole new story.

I'm about 12,000 words in, and getting very close to the desperate times.  It will be cold and hunger -- and werewolves -- from here on.

I'll have a few chapters with James Reed in California trying to raise support for a rescue mission.  Appealing to John C. Fremont, taking part in the Battle of Santa Clara (all true.)

Also have a viewpoint character in Charles Stanton, who also made it over the mountains but bravely went back.

But mostly:  Cold.  Hunger.  Werewolves.

Rolling right along.

Looks like a disrupted day.

Going to an appointment in the morning, then maybe to a movie.

So I'm going to find out if I can write at the end of a busy day or not.

*****

Got a little writing in before we left.

I'm not going to be able to stick to the historical facts and timeline completely.  Even in the first chapter, I have James Reed's escape over the mountain happening after the werewolves have already started feeding, whereas in real life it would have had to happen before.

I'll try to stick to the timeline as often as possible, but I think the story comes first.

Fortunately, I'm getting many of my ideas for the plot from the original events -- so much of it will parallel what really happened.  It's just the the arc of events was very drawn out and confusing and duplicating and anti-climactic, that I've got to impose more of a story over that.

*****

Went to see Iron Man.  Fun movie, but I keep thinking these movies would be better with less.  They are so overthetop action that it's hard to enjoy them completely.

*****

Came home and wrote the rest of the fourth chapter, so that was something to learn -- that I can have a semi-busy day and still get my chapter done.  Next experiment, to see if I can do some writing tomorrow night after working at the store.  I haven't really tried that since I came back to writing, but I've got a good head of steam worked up and I'd like to see if anything comes.

*****

One of my three viewpoint characters (not counting the werewolves) is a 13 year old girl and I'm wondering how I dare to try write that.  But...it doesn't seem that hard.  I remember being a naive 13 year old boy and it seems like if I reverse that, and use a little imagination, it can get done.

It's almost harder to write the father, James Reed, who is what I call an "adult".  Serious and authoritative and domineering.  Never been that.

The third character, Stanton, is more of a stand-in for me, I think.  A businessman and outsider.

Another couple of chapters of foreboding and impending disaster, and then the rest of the book should be mostly action, which always seems easier to write.  I do want to create an icky atmosphere of dread and doom, much like the feeling I got reading ALIVE or other books about cannibalism.  So there may be a bit more narrative of them getting hungrier and more irrational and frightened.

But I want to set the werewolves into action as soon as possible.

The whole idea is to make this straightforward and fast and hopefully not boring at any point.  These lead up chapters I'm writing now are the most in danger of not being sufficiently engaging, but I'm hoping I can create a sense of suspense because the reader knows what's coming.

As it happened, with a twist.

Finished the third chapter of Led to the Slaughter:  The Donner Party Werewolves.

I'm restricting myself to one chapter per day -- trying hard to keep the whole process fresh.  Interestingly, the chapters are coming in at 2000 words each, which is at least 25% larger than most of my chapters in my other books.  So apparently, my subconscious refuses to write less than that.

I'm trying to be historically accurate in the large, but making it up in the small.  Making up many of the names of secondary characters, and descriptions of known characters and so on.  I may go back later and try to give my characters real names, but for me it's story first, accuracy later.

My compromise is that I'm trying not to contradict any of the known facts.  I don't think I'll be able to get through the whole story that way, but as much as possible, I want to stick to what is known, embellished by fiction.

I have as my main two protagonist, the father and daughter of James and Virginia Reed, who are to me the most interesting characters in the real story.

But these two characters aren't going to be enough to carry all the viewpoints of the story.  The Donner Party disaster was very chaotic -- just like in any good horror film, they kept splitting up and feuding with each other.

There was a gentleman in the real party named Stanton that seemed to be in the middle of many of the events that the Reeds weren't, so I think I'm going to bring him in as a viewpoint character.  I'm not sure whether he'll end up being a major villain or a major good guy.  Maybe won't know until he reveals himself.  I think, though, he's going to have to be a good guy.

My goal is to weave a believable story with the available facts, without warping those facts too much.

For instance, if Stanton and Pike get lost, and Stanton wakes up to realize that Pike has changed somehow, and they barely survive to rejoin the main group.  Later Pike is shot, supposedly by accident.

Well then, in my story, Pike has been bitten and when he turns, someone shoots him.

That kind of thing, all through the story.

For maybe the first time, I'm feeling like plotting and outlining isn't a choice.  This story is so complicated and there are so many things going on and so many characters to keep track of, that even simplifying it I'm confused.

I'm going to have to try to be very clever.

As much as possible I'd like to stick to the known facts, and give them a little twist.