Graham's Words

Recently as a little science experiment, I unplugged. I woke up early and instead of checking the usual sites online – e-mail, college football blogs, ESPN/CNNSI, etc. – I dove into writing. At lunch, I tried the same tactic. By the end of the day just using little spaces in my schedule, I managed almost 3,000 words of writing. None from a new chapter either, it was all beefing up chapters I’d already written.

If you think about it as band-width, not filling up the noggin with sports tidbits from spring practice reports or the latest on Drudge means there is more room for story ideas, plot lines, character development and the like.

I read a story in Atlantic Monthly a couple years ago on how Google, and the Internet in general, is changing the way we read. In effect, it’s shortening our attention span. We want tidbits and 24/7 news, from a wide array of outlets, and we want it now. I hope this doesn’t filter in to the way we read fiction or good non-fiction, but it’s certainly an uphill battle during the daily grind, staying focused instead of succumbing to the all-out blitz of information that’s out there.

One day of unplugging resulted in almost 3,000 words for me. I see the results, just hope I can stay with it.

I like them, and I don’t. For the sequel to Hero’s Tribute, I’m trying to go in-depth on a few, and the themes of the parables in general. I like parables because they are a simple way to get deep messages across, for an audience to take a relevant story and chew on it for a while. I don’t like them, because, well I associate myself with the less desirable characters. The prodigal son? I’d be the self righteous, grumpy older son. The wage earners? You better believe I’d be complaining about my wages if someone came in later in the day on a shift and got the same as me.

And I guess that’s the point. Identifying with those characters is kind of a humbling look at what God’s love is and where I need to be in embracing it.

A great features writer, Rick Bragg, “Laments His Muse” in this article. During a summer internship at the Birmingham Post-Herald, the writing advisor there gave me a handful of Bragg articles to study. I’m still studying them – and reading his books too. One excerpt from this:

I think the muse is not a fairy at all but a sharp, prodding thing, like worry, or need.

It is always among us.

You write because you have to and you do not whine about it, because as hard as writing is it is not real work, like roofing, or toting cement blocks, or wiping tables at a Waffle House. But you treat it like real work. You cannot do it, this work, on an antique; you would beat an antique to scrap. You need electricity to write this way, the same way a guitar man in a busted-up juke joint needs juice running to his strings, to be heard.

So, wired, you write; write until you create some space between your peace of mind and some sharp thing in your head, write until you fulfill the contract you have signed or the deadline you are given or until you have mined just one more ton of coal, till you believe you won’t be too far behind the next day, when you go back down into that hole.

I’m at a different stage of life than I was when I wrote Hero’s Tribute. Then it was for the promise of a contract. Now I have a contract, and am finishing a manuscript. That prodding muse, now I have to chase him/her daily to keep up with deadlines, to keep the story moving. It’s always been there – now I just have to pay attention to it.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2009/aug/26/rick-bragg-laments-his-absent-muse/

Watching my oldest son Nicholas grow up has been both a joy and an exercise in perspective. There’s a quote from Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, that summarizes it best: “It’s great to have a beginner’s mind.” Watching the world develop through Nick’s eyes has been an adventure. Among the latest musings –

Upon hearing his 2-month old brother Nolan begin to cry, Nicholas lifts up his shirt and runs toward him. “Mommy I need to feed Baby Nolan!”

After we explain to Nicholas that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, he hears the dog barking at the window, which usually means a guest is coming to the door (we celebrate a lot of the family birthdays at our house). So he runs toward the window … “Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming!”

We’re out in the yard with Nicholas after it’s snowed. He quickly realizes he can’t form a good snowball but still wants to play. So he hands me a handful of snow – “Daddy make a snowball so I can throw it at you.”

One of the first questions I get asked when people find out I’ve written a book is: When did you find time to write? Well, for starters, I wrote Hero’s Tribute a few years ago. Back when my wife and I were DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids) and my freelance writing was a drip and not a steady stream. That’s all changed, of course. We’ve got an active two-year old, a two-month old who hasn’t quite caught on to the sleeping through the night thing, a beagle who constantly sneaks around the kitchen pawing for an opening into the trash or the cabinet, a full-time job managing three magazines, and two freelance gigs working on B2B magazine that includes editing and writing.

But I still average 1,000 words writing a day.

Word counts and work loads vary, but that’s what I shoot for, and I’m a good 30,000 words into the sequel. As to the when – it’s certainly not when the “muse” hits. I’ve got to be structured. My full-time job comes first. Then my freelance, usually during my lunch break (which is what I’m using now for this post) or after hours. But each morning, I try to make it into work about a half an hour early and type out a chapter. The ideas for upcoming chapters usually come at odd times – in the shower, on the drive home, at work while I’m in the middle of a project. For that aspect of writing I’ve got a notebook and scribble the ideas down with the hopes of getting to them later.

Being in newspapers is what probably helped the most with this workload. My first job out of college, I averaged two fresh stories a day, whether they are features or game stories. And those often involved transcribing recorded interviews and keeping game stats. On top of that, I’d usually be in the office for a couple hours, working on layouts. It was a hectic pace, but helped me develop a decent writing work ethic. If a day goes by and I haven’t written an article or a chapter … it just feels weird.

The key, though, is writing every day – inspired or not. Everyone has epiphanies. Lots of folks try to flesh out a book when they are feeling the muse. Fighting through what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance” that’s what I believe separates us from achieving our goals.

A few weeks ago I got word from Kregel that they were interested in my proposal for a sequel. Obviously I was elated. Then the realization hit that I’d need to churn out tens of thousands of words, fully develop a plot I’d outlined and mesh new characters with old in the storyline, well, that came with a bit of nervous anxiety. Because on top of that, I’ve got a full time job, some freelance work, a family of two kids a wife and a beagle, along with other commitments. So the next few months are going to be busy, but a good busy.
I’ve already made progress on the sequel, and I figured I would share the process (without revealing the plot of course) for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of writing a novel.

After crafting a general synopsis for the proposal (a 3-page story summary) I went to work on the outline. For Hero’s Tribute, I had a Point A and a Point B and just figured the dots would eventually connect. However, I knew I couldn’t do that for the sequel – now I have a deadline. Plus once I finished writing Hero’s Tribute and went through the editing process I gained a greater understanding of how a story develops, and how it can change.

But I needed a framework. A starting point is chapter one. With a framework I’m talking more like the lines and string a construction company uses when they are laying out their housing plans. Then comes the concrete or wood, then the house starts to take shape, etc.

I’ve seen it done a number of different ways. Some folks use index cards for each chapter. Others an Excel file. For me I found that a one- or two-sentence description of each chapter, fitted into a three-column page, was the most helpful. I took each point of my synopsis and typed it into this outline (about 8-pt font size to fit everything). Once the synopsis was in the outline, I began to add more chapters. After the first walk-through, I could immediately see any lulls … that is, where the story slows, where a twist needs to happen, to keep the reader wanting more. Those are almost impossible to spot for me without an outline like this.

Once I was satisfied with the outline, I started chapter one.

That was a little while ago. I’m a good 30,000 words into the first draft. My goal is to have the first draft completed in the spring, revised in the summer and sent to the publisher in the fall.

That’s the plan.

Enjoyed meeting, catching up, etc. If you got bumped in the leg by a sprinting 2-year old, my apologies, that was probably my son. However I did find that me sitting down at a bookstore to sign books is kind of like me trying to get Nicholas to sit and color in the middle of a Toys R Us … too much to browse.

I did an interview with the Johns Creek Herald.

A former colleague of mine and all around great guy, Josh Katzowitz, wrote a great piece on the pressure/euphoria of deadline writing. Every beat reporter has at least one hair-raising story of trying to meet a deadline under some form of duress. For me as a cub sports reporter it involved covering a game in one county and racing back to the sports desk in another county to get in two stories and a sidebar worth of stats. Somehow, someway we still made it to press.

Anyways, a good read for those interested in seeing how a story comes together.

http://joshkatzowitz.com/2010/02/08/the-anatomy-of-a-deadline-story/

One month into 2010 I’ve managed to write most days that I wasn’t traveling or sick, and a few days make a tremendous amount of progress. Basically the more consistently I write, the happier I am, because I get to see progress on the page and get my thoughts out there to edit and revise even more. The challenge is to be focused and prioritize what I’m writing about.

1. A sequel
Fortunately No. 1 on my list if what I’m currently doing, so I have that going for me. It’s weird revisiting characters and continuing their stories but also fulfilling, because in the back of my mind I always wanted to see where the resolution would come.

2. Fatherhood
Not a book on being an expert on fatherhood or “Try These 10 Steps To Being a Perfect Dad.” But I’m in kind of a sweet spot of fatherhood/parenthood, where Katie and I have to be hands on with our kids almost the entire day. There are so many things I want my boys to be able to know about this time, where they are becoming their own little personalities and Katie and I are being shaped by how we parent and the dynamics of our parents. It’s just – where to find the time between diaper changes and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes?

3. Supernatural thriller
I’ve been tinkering with one for a couple years and am about done with the first draft. It’s risky to try something in this genre, and especially in the setting I have it in (the Civil War), but the story has been in my head for a decade and if nothing else it needs to be purged. But if Book One finds a home I’ve sketched out about six in a series and would absolutely have a blast writing them.

4. Wilder’s Brigade
I’ve collected the main books on this Civil War colonel, the Tullahoma campaign in which his brigade played a huge role in the success of the Army of the Cumberland, and journals of soldiers in his brigade. My next step is to interview some experts who could help fill in the blanks with the geography of the battlefields and personalities of the participants. The main reason I’ve been interested in Wilder since a college term paper I did on him is that during the collapse of the Union army at Chickamauga, his brigade could have plunged into the Rebel advance and possibly changed the outcome of the battle, and the war. Or not – it could have been a huge failure. But the decisions that were made, or not made, have always fascinated me, and I enjoy exploring those subjects, and writing about them even more.