The Online Photographer

Happy Independence Day for all you 'Murricans.

Little announcement: I'll be taking a something-cation for a few days. Traffic here is way down anyway during these few days around the midsummer holiday. People in the USA are off doing their own thing.

You've heard of a staycation? A vacation where you don't go anywhere? Then there's a workation, which means you travel somewhere but keep working. Well, I'm taking a few days off for a "stay-home-but-work-on-something-else"...er, -cation. 

I'm so underwater it's not even funny. I've spent the last four days working on my book and my photography. Which have both been going great. But I haven't done anything else. Every other aspect of my life I'm way behind on. I need to saddle up the lawnmower in a very bad way, for instance.

I've decided to give in and continue working on the book for three more days. So I'll be taking the next three days off to write. (Well, and mow.) Back on—let's see—Friday morning? We'll see if I can stay away that long.

I love writing
I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the book. Tough to say how much is actually done...I've got about 60 pages or 20k words, another 10k words of first draft, and the rest of the book is all blocked out. I've made many, many false starts, but now I've finally got a good beginning. Each time I venture into further first draft, I find I have to first explain to myself in detail everything that happens, then throw out everything I've just written and remake it into scenes with forward-moving action. It's funny, because I've studied fiction and read lots of fiction in my life, but I don't consider myself a fiction reader and I don't read contemporary genre fiction. So along the way I'm doing a lot of research into authors, approaches, and simply familiarizing myself with the proper "tone."

At the same time, I have to be myself. Have you ever heard that old adage that you have to be your authentic self or else you won't know who your real friends are? If you present a false front, you'll just attract the wrong friends. It's the same with writing, I think. You have to be yourself in order to attract your real audience. So I can't just mimic other writers in the genre. I would attract the wrong readers.

I'm slowly learning the way I have to work, working out my own idiosyncrasies and deficiencies. For example, I hate writing first draft. I'm mentally disorganized, for one thing, and get lost easily. Also, first draft is generally bad writing, and I'm insecure enough that "writing bad" makes me feel defeated and pessimistic. I'm odd in that I much prefer to rewrite and polish; it's what I'm best at. (A lot of writers are the opposite.) I'm slowly coming around to the idea that my best bet in book-writing would be to start by writing a 5k-word summary, then make a complete draft, front to back, soup to nuts, in the range of 35–40k words. Then the fun part could begin. In successive rewritings the 40k-word draft would naturally swell to 60k, then 80k, then 100k words without much effort. I'd have fun at that stage. It's just how I am, how I work.

The best thing for me (this just occurred to me) would be to have somebody else write that first 35k-word draft—somebody who's good at plotting and organizing the action into chapters and who likes blocking out first draft. Then I could take over from there in my wordsmith shop, with the fire and the anvil and the hammers and tongs. We'd make a good team, me and that other imaginary writer who's good at everything I'm bad at. But dream on, old boy.

Back soon! If you're on vacation, hope you're having a good one.

Mike

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