Writing

Okay, since that last entry I’ve a) had about six gallons of coffee and b) had a shower so hot things melted. As a result, I’m feeling somewhat better. I’m not a very good traveler, as anyone who’s read The inner Swine can tell you; I’m a whiny and unappreciative tourist. Here’s a sample of what it’s like to travel with me:

YOU: Look, Jeff, the Sistine Chapel!

ME: Bugger.

See? Not fun. I freely admit to being a terrible traveler. Add in traveling for the holidays, and damn, my ass, it is kicked. Because after hours on planes, trains, and automobiles, I then stand around for sixteen hours or so eating heavy food and drinking whiskey in random bursts. I know, I know – good food and booze, friends and family, poor Jeff. I get that kind of sarcastic response a lot.

Trying to write on the road is weird. On the one hand you’ve got lots of time constraints – right now I’ve got about half an hour before The Duchess gets back from her run and Round Two of Extended Family Holiday Extravaganza begins. On the other hand, I work well with time constraints. The less time I have the more I produced, and vice versa. On the one hand, I also don’t get a lot of time to just sit and ponder plot points et al, but on the other hand there’s a wealth of observable material that differs tremendously from what you’re used to seeing.

And then, there’s hotels.

I love hotels. Which is weird, since I just went out of my way to complain about traveling, of which hotels are often a necessary part. But hotels are great for writing, especially old hotels with lots of history and architectural detail. The older the better, in fact, for writing science fiction, I think, because they’re like time machines, giving you a glimpse into the past and also standing as testament that just because you’re writing a story set in the future, you don’t need to assume everything’s been destroyed and replaced, which some writers do. You see a lot of future fiction where the world has apparently been scrubbed clean and everything replaced with shiny new versions, when in reality it’s probably the opposite: A lot of very old things, like ancient hotels, just retrofitted, applied to new uses, and lingering there with their aura of old, old charm, the ghosts of the past howling about silently.

That, and the fact that I can get anything delivered to my room with a phone call. Hotels rock. I tried that back at home and got a sneer from The Duchess for my troubles.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and if these ain’t your holidays, happy Friday.

Last night I was examining the sadly shrinking wet bar here at the Somers Compound, and pondering the ravages of time. This time of year I’m always faced with this dilemma: Everyone I know is well aware of my love for whiskey, so every holiday I am bound to receive several really nice bottles of the Good Stuff. So every year begins with Jeff rolling around on the floor clutching bottles to his chest, laughing in joy.

But by the end of the year I’m low and hesitate to buy my own, because I don’t know what I’ll be getting from well-meaning loved ones. So I hem and haw and wait to see. And ponder how in the world I drank all that whiskey during the year (well, of course we know how, the question is, how did I survive? That’s a lot of whiskey).

Anyway, this somehow has driven me to try and write a novel in the next few weeks. All that thinking about time made me realize that I have a very thin period of downtime over the coming weeks, and I decided that hell or high water I was going to accomplish something. So, 1000+ words a day it is, and we’ll just see how it goes.

I’ve never done something like this before – never tried NaNoWriMo or anything. I’ve never had any trouble putting words on paper, and generally prefer a more hippie-ish we get there when we get there kind of attitude when it comes to writing. But I do like to shake things up every now and then, changing my mechanics a little. I get into ruts where writing books becomes a fixed process, and that erodes inspiration, so every few years it’s good to try something different – a different schedule, different approach, whatever. So, something new: I’m going to write 1000 words or more in a novel, every day (though I should note: not an Avery Cates novel, a separate wholly personal project). Why not? It should be fun. Or soul-crushing. We’ll see.

If it gets soul-crushing, at least the posts on this blog will be interesting. Especially after the holidays, when delivery of gifts of spirits will make my endrunkening easier.

J

SO, the book’s done.

INTERIOR: Jeff’s office. A simple wooden desk laden with pornographic magazines and old copies of Who’s Who in Baseball, some filing cabinets, a futon, a hollow-body electric guitar, four cats, and a computer.

Enter JEFF. He is wearing a soiled-looking bathrobe. His hair stands up as if superglued. He is carrying an unlabeled bottle of brown liquid. He sits down at his desk and stares blearily at the computer screen. Slowly he nods off, chin sinking to his chest. Just as the bottle slips from his slackened fingers, three uniformed Helper Monkeys appear, gather up the bottle, make sure Jeff is still breathing, and scamper off, chattering.

In other words, I always find the transition from working like mad on a novel to being done with the novel to be a tough one.  I go from constantly working on a familiar and well-known piece, something I know so well I can jump to tiny details in the manuscript automatically without having to search for them, to having no big project at all.

For a few days I’ll contemplate my next step: Hire mercenaries and try to take over a small, unstable South-American country? See if I can finally gain that 150 lbs I’ve been dreaming of? Start writing that vampire-romance where pure, agape-type love cures vampirism? Begin my campaign to make public pantslessness acceptable to society?

Or, most likely: Sit around getting drunk and hate myself for wasting time? Yup. Let’s go with that.

I hate wasting time, but after a major project it takes me a few days to retread the tires and get started on something else, so for a few days all I do is waste time. So I sit around drinking cocktails and thinking, damn, I ought to be writing something. This way lies madness, of course. And cocktails.

In the mean time, in an attempt to make this dull period not completely useless, I am trying to learn the guitar solo from AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. ANGUS YOUNG WHY DO YOU MOCK ME SO! The man must have freakish hands. Freakish.

A quick update for all your weirdos who care what I’m up to:

• Finished my monthly short story on Sunday. For those who may not know, I write a short story a month, rain or shine, inspiration or no. This is mainly an exercise to force myself to finish at least one project a month, and also a way to keep a steady flow of ideas hitting paper. This is especially important when working on a book project like The Eternal Prison, because otherwise some good ideas might wither away as I kill brain cells with reckless alcohol consumption triggered by a phone call from my agent wherein she advises me to add More Unicorn. Writing a story a month has the expected result: 99.9% of my stories are Teh Suck. But a few every year can be earmarked for future rewriting and expansion, and the one I just finished is one of them. It’s got potential.
• Finished my latest revision of The Eternal Prison, too. The new draft is much better than the previous draft, which I’d labeled FINAL. Just goes to show, you think a book is done, you show it to your editor and she kicks it back to you, you spend a few hours in the bathroom with a gun in your mouth, weeping, and then suddenly you realize she just made your final draft look like clown shoes. And BAM! A better draft is born.
• The new issue of The Inner Swine, my little zine, is being proofread. Whether it will actually mail in the month of September remains to be seen. You can check out the editorial from it at the web site, and then send me two bucks for a sample issue, you cheap bastards.
• I am surrounded by cats. And I have no pants on.

Not too shabby. Between all that, baseball, and avoiding the various political conventions like plague-infested blankets, I’m a busy, busy man.