Website: 8th anniversary

I turned sixty-nine today. The website turned eight. The last two years have been much more eventful for me than for the website, and even more so for this blog, which has continued to survive my benign neglect.

I continued writing over these two years. Six months ago, my son-in-law completed building a cabin in Scofield, Utah. I get to write there occasionally. It’s marvelous. Unfortunately, I have not written enough to complete either of the novels I started. The first, Orpheus Insufficient, is grounded science fiction, the story of a three-year-long voyage to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, in the years 2204 to 2207. Unfortunately, Orpheus, still unfinished, is over 130,000 words. So I am thinking I might rewrite it to add 80,000 or so more words and turn it into a trilogy rich in subplots.

The second novel is US 89. I started writing it for a contest, but needed to do more research than there was time for. It tells the story of a newspaper columnist in 2076 who is writing a piece a week about each of America’s fifty-two states. She ends up in Arizona, and it is suggested to her that she drive up US Highway 89, which goes from Arizona all the way to Canada. I wrote the Arizona chapters with little trouble, but everything past Utah stopped me in my tracks. The needed research may require me to actually drive the length of US 89. You would think that, being retired, that would be a simple thing for me, but my wife and I are surprisingly busy.

I have also been editing and rewriting scenes in The Time Well, the first in my time travel saga which could end up being eight to ten books. I have to rewrite because the science just wasn’t grounded enough. If we’re talking time travel, of course, it can’t be completely realistic. But my premise was too far out there. There’s going to be hand waving involved, but I wanted to stretch credulity only enough that suspension of disbelief would still come easily.

I continue to work on the sixth Time Well book, which has bloated to 399,000 words. It needs to be edited down and will still require three volumes. I am wondering how to make them work as stand-alone books, but it may just be impossible.

My second novel, Neyuki, is getting closer to being publishable. I have a cover artist, and a friend is typesetting it for me. I think that will all be done by the end of the month. It has taken me far too long to get this out. I kept thinking maybe I would go with a traditional publishing house. In the end, though, I have decided to self-publish. Marketing will be the hard part, and prepping the novel’s debut will take long enough that it won’t show up before July or August.

I have gotten much more involved with the local writing scene, working with two chapters of the League of Utah Writers. I have also joined Apex Writers, a writing community with international scope. Finally, I am still on the committee that puts on one of Utah’s largest writing symposia, Life, the Universe, and Everything, each year in February..

The idea: August

I had the idea for August quite a long time ago. (My first notes are from 2012.) It was originally going to be a road trip, the protagonist meeting a new someone chapter by chapter, with each person who helps him having their life changed in some way. Some of that road trip is still in the book, but it morphed into a love story along the way. The root of that idea was there from the very start, as the protagonist was to escape his retirement home and go off in search of his old love. I simply shrank the road trip part and expanded the story of what happens when he finds her.

I also needed an inciting incident to start my protagonist on his journey. I focused from the start on a health crisis. I was thinking about cancer, but wasn’t sure what kind. So on a trip to Nashville in May 2022 for my younger daughter’s PhD graduation from Vanderbilt, I conferred with my two daughters. The older one is a physician (MD) and the younger one, the PhD, studied immunology and worked on how breast cancer hides out in bones. I asked them what disease I should give my hero. I wanted something that would leave him seemingly all right for his trip. They suggested amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, so I put some study into the disease. It’s relatively unusual for someone in their eighties, but not so much that it would be unrealistic. What a horrible disease. As the motor neurons slowly die, the disease paralyzes you. Death commonly comes with weakness or paralysis of the diaphragm. It was heart-wrenching to learn about, and even more so to write about. I have not yet talked with patients with ALS or the doctors who treat them. I simply haven’t had the heart to do it. But I should. I am in the process of editing August now. It’s time to finish that research.

The idea: Writers on the Storm

This idea came to me a couple of years ago in Japan. I was quite excited by it and immediately went for a walk with my wife to tell her about it. She thought it was great. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s clear from my early notes on the project, which contain whole scenes written out. In fact, this idea was supposed to wait while I finished The Time Well series, but I couldn’t turn it off, so I opened a Scrivener file and started typing. What came out over the course of a year writing on and off was Writers on the Storm. It’s my first try at making humor a significant aspect of a novel, and I’m not sure I really pulled it off. I think the humor got taken over by the plot somewhere around the middle of the book. But I like it. I may try to amp up the humor in the editing process, if that’s possible. I’m not sure how conducive the editing process will be to that.

The novel tells the story of a successful author who wants to change genres. But he cannot replicate his formulaic romance genre success in fantasy, which is what he most wants to write. To get feedback on his new endeavor, he joined a writing group, never telling them that he was a successful romance author. (He writes romances under a pseudonym.) But his fantasy work is so overblown that the leaders of the writing group eventually hold an intervention and tell him that he needs to stop writing because he has no talent.

So our hero decides to start his own writing group. He looks for writers who are successes in their careers but who have tried and failed at published fiction. He ends up with an eclectic mix who write everything from children’s picture books to erotica. Along the way, his life completely falls apart: career, relationships, everything. Can he stitch it all back together and add a patch here and there?

Website: 6th anniversary

Hello from America! Speaking on behalf of my blog, I must admit to another year of inactivity. Speaking for myself as a writer, though, it has been a marvelous year. I completed second drafts of two new novels, tentatively titled Writers on the Storm and August. The first is an attempt at a humorous take on writing, and the second is a somewhat more serious exploration of love in the twilight of life.

I also continue to work on book six in my science fiction series, The Time Well, which began as as a National Novel Writing Month project in November 2022. This is the first time I have had a novel grow out of control on me. It is currently north of 311,000 words. My tentative plan is to break it into three books, although they will not be self-contained units.

I have found that the writing community in Utah, where I now live, is quite active. I have not settled into a writing group yet, but I have so many more potential groups than I had in Japan. My wife and I are even volunteering for a local writer’s conference.

Perhaps the best news is that I am still writing full bore. Unfortunately, I am also writing just as obsessively as always, which still concerns me. Maybe this year I can find better balance in my life. While I have not lacked for writing projects, I did skip National Novel Writing Month last November. With as many novels as I have unpublished, it didn’t seem wise to use that month to produce yet another first draft.

UCLA course with Steven Wolfson

I continue to prepare for my rapidly approaching move from Japan to America. (Thus, the picture for this post is my empty apartment instead of a picture of Steven.) But I have also just completed a totally energizing six-week writing course offered through UCLA Extension called “Conquering Your Story and its Superstructure.” The teacher was Steven Wolfson, a playwright and screen writer. Two years in close succession (2020 and 2022) at the Japan Writer’s Conference, I found his presentations far and away the most interesting and useful of all those I attended. So I contacted him and found out he regularly teaches courses at UCLA.

Here is Steven’s description of the course I took:

“The first fundamental challenge facing all writers, whether novice or professional, is the process of transforming your premise into a compelling, sustainable story. This intensive workshop focuses solely on the art of the story, with an emphasis on such fundamentals as character development, super-objective, rising conflict, scene work, and the all-important quest to find your story’s superstructure. Through a series of lectures, published examples, and in-class writing exercises, writers learn how to spot critical mistakes often made in the initial development of any narrative. This workshop is designed for writers with a specific story they feel passionate about telling. After the course, you have a greater understanding of what makes a story work, along with your own detailed superstructure outline to use in the development, completion, and revision of your story.” This is a great course for anyone who is looking for more structure in their writing—which, I expect, is most writers.

I presented ideas for three novels in the class, and my classmates voted overwhelmingly for a novel titled August. For class, I worked on fleshing out some key scenes. I am excited to complete the novel. It the story of an eighty-two-year-old man named August Norman who finds out he has ALS. He takes a last desperate shot at making something out of the little bit of life he has left. He breaks out of his nursing home, steals his daughter’s car, and embarks on a cross-country quest to find and win back his college sweetheart, May White. But love in their eighties is no simple affair, as they fight concerted family opposition.

I am now working on August pretty much full time. I love this part of writing, where the details of the story reveal themselves. It’s exciting every day.

Website: 5th anniversary

My blog has fallen by the wayside, but not me. I’ve been distracted by my retirement and the preparations for moving to the US at the end of June, but my days are full of writing. I will have so much to show when publication time finally rolls around.

It’s interesting that writing will no longer be a safe haven from work stresses, because yesterday, I retired from teaching. So if there is any stress now, it will be the writing itself. The bigger change, though, will be sitting and writing in America instead of Japan. I don’t know if I will continue to write books set in Japan. The next two I have on my plate will be set in the US. I expect there will also be a major change in quietude, going from a home with two sixty-five year olds to one with a pair of young kids. I am sure, though, that writing will continue. I enjoy it too much to drop it or even cut back much.

One activity that I enjoyed again this year was writing for National Novel Writing Month last November. I wrote 106,800 words, qualifying me for another yet NaNoWriMo win, but I didn’t finish the novel, the sixth novel in The Time Well series. It has since continued to grow. I fear I have a monster on my hands.

Website: 4th anniversary

It’s this website’s fourth anniversary. That makes me look both back and forward. In the last year I published my first novel, Under Shōko’s Bed. I also wrote four new ones, turning The Time Well into a series. With all that productivity, though, I lost my way with this blog. But that inattention didn’t mean I gave up on it.

Now that the first novel is published, I am working on getting the second, Neyuki, ready to go. I am considering doing the book design myself. I need to become more facile with Adobe InDesign, and working through a novel will be a great way to do that. The path ahead is clear for Neyuki, but I wonder what will follow. I am thinking of writing one or two sequels to my third novel, The Man Terror Club, so that one probably won’t be next in line for publication. I may skip ahead to novel five, Vision More Glorious. I doubt, though, that I can prep two novels for publication in the next year. No matter what I opt for, it’s going to be busy.

One thing that will make this time bittersweet is that, unless something unexpected arises, this will be my last year in Japan. I suspect once I’m gone, my novels won’t end up with as much Japanese content, but that remains to be seen. I still have so many ideas for things I want to write.

Fans

Brandon Sanderson created quite a stir with his recent announcement of extra novels he wrote during the pandemic. He had the extra time because he wasn’t doing his normal speaking engagements and fan meetings. He was able to produce five novels beyond his normal output. So he and his team put together a Kickstarter drive to publish four of them and raised over twenty million dollars in the first three days. Now he’s nearing thirty-five million dollars (with time left to go).

Thirty-five million.

Wow.

I also wrote obsessively during the pandemic. I wrote a time travel novel in March through July of 2020, followed by a pandemic romance in November of that year. I also wrote a sequel to my time travel novel in July and August of 2021, then three more books in the same series from November 2021 through February 2022. Six novels in two years. I have no plans to use Kickstarter to raise money for their editing and publication. You must have fans for that.

Got few fans.

Bummer.

So, since 2021 was the year I finally published something (Under Shōko’s Bed), 2022 is going to be the year I finally get some fans. They’ve got some good stories coming.

Obsession

Writing obsessively over the last few months, things have fallen by the wayside, including this blog. I haven’t had anyone message me and ask, “Hey, what’s up with that blog?” Do people do that? Maybe not.

The writing obsession is something I’ve mentioned before. Stories get ahold of me and it’s hard to do anything else until I’ve got them out of my head. I think the characters get to be friends, although I don’t know that’s entirely healthy. I know it makes them harder to do away with. That turned into a problem with the time travel series, as I ended up with too many characters. It’s one of the problems I have to deal with as I rewrite and edit. But loving the story is a marvelous thing. I don’t know how anyone could write something they didn’t love.

Obsession can be a useful thing. It’s a great way to get a whole lot of work done on a project. It’s when you have more than one project that it’s a problem. If only I had a way to change obsessions. Of course, if you can switch, then we don’t call it obsession anymore. We have nicer words, like attention or concentration or focus. I imagine focus having all the advantages of obsession with none of the disadvantages. Too bad that’s not the way my head seems to work.

National Novel Writing Month 2021 III

I finished NaNoWriMo today with my biggest thirty-day word count ever: 120,000 words. The novel still has some holes in it and it needs plenty of massaging and patching to make all the pieces fit, but for a first draft, it’s in pretty good shape. As I suspected coming in, already having a world created and characters I know and like made this quick and fun. I am sorely tempted to leave it as it is for a few weeks and start on the next one (book four in my time travel series), then come back to this one and see how the whole arc is progressing.