I did it

This is late notice, but yes, I did finish the preliminary draft (I think that’s a better term than “first” or “rough”–both of which would be misnomers in this case) of Until We Meet Again. And I finished on schedule. It ended both like and unlike I had expected. A lot of the elements of the final five-or-so chapters are very different than I initially planned (which is both expected and welcome). The final few paragraphs, though, are almost identical to what I had planned. And that, more than anything else, is the weird part.

Now I’m entering a month of forcing myself to stay away from Until We Meet Again. I need space, time to cool down, before I go back and start the long, arduous, and ultimately, I hope, rewarding process of revising and rewriting. I’m going to enjoy this month. I recent purchased The Orange Box. I’ve already beaten Portal and I’m almost done with Half Life 2. I’m not abandoning all writing for this month. Branden and I are hard at work (or want to be hard at work) on a revised script for Down to Dakota. It keeps getting better and I keep getting more into the project. I’m also using this month to work on some of my own projects. There’s a tv show script of my own entitled, tentatively, The Smashers, and a series of fantasy novels that’s been in my head for years called Inherit the Dawn (Haven’t yet decided if the reference to the film Inherit the Wind is intentional). I’m going to go back and do some revision/polishing on some old short stories and send those off to seek publication. Particularly, I’ll focus on Things Like Soap and Simon Caine, both of which have potential.

And after this month, it’s back to Until We Meet Again. This whole schedule/deadline thing worked out well, so I’ll use it again. Not sure if that will turn me into a recluse or not. Just have to wait and see.

Regards,

Joshua.

Collision

If you created a blog but never told anyone about it, what would you have?

It would be public, wide open for anyone to see. But most likely, no one would look for it, so no one would see it. A private receptacle for all your thoughts and dreams. That’s open to the whole ford.

Public Secrecy.

There would be danger to it. The fear someone would find your blog. But that’d be security too. The knowledge no one knows about it.

So yes. It seems it is indeed possible to be alone on the internet.

Wunderbar.

13 October

Last night I outlined, chapter by chapter, the remainder of Until We Meet Again. I’ve written up a schedule, one chapter a day (two today because I didn’t write yesterday). This means, I will finish the manuscript on Saturday, October 13.

It’s weird. I know this is nowhere close to the end of my work on this book. Rewriting and revision will take a lot of time. Still, this means I am one step closer to the step I’ve always dreaded. Publishing.

When I first started writing, I couldn’t have been more excited about publishing. Of course, I knew nothing about it–or writing–and in my head, publishing would be easy. And bring in lots of money. (No joke, I once thought I would write my way through college–Ha!)

Freshman year, when this book was in its second form (Legacies) I sent the manuscript to a publisher. I was rejected (expectedly and, in retrospect, thankfully). But it took me weeks to muster the courage to put the damn thing in the mail.

Publishing, the process, scares me. Honest. I don’t have much a prior-publishing record (evident below). And that’s the first thing I’ll have to fix.

Still. I have time.

Influences

Earlier today, I drew up a list of good and bad authors in my notes for one of my literature classes (this particular course studied British and American literature 1789-1870; French Revolution to Franco-Prussian war). When I looked over my good list, I realized many of those names are very powerful influences on my own writing. Whenever you go to a band’s MySpace, they often list their influences. Perhaps merely for my own enjoyment, I’d like to do the same.

My Influences: Authors and books
-William Gibson (Neuromancer)
-Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
-T.S. Elliot (The Waste Land, The Hollow Men)
-Ernest Hemingway (Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea)
-Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)
-Frank Herbert (Dune)
-Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
-Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love)
-Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama)
-Isaac Asimov (Foundation, I Robot)

A Musing To Share

First, a quotation.

“We–Mankind–are a conversation.”
Martin Heidegger

Now.

The writing process is a conversation. The world, your world; characters; your mind, your belief;, you hopes, your dreams; your fears–and from this conversation comes a work. And if that work is formed well, refined and sharpened, it becomes something to share.

What makes a writer?

A writer is the one who possesses the dedication to proceed–often suffer–through all of those steps.
A writer is not simply one who writes.