Daryl: About the protests the other day--

Wayne: Assholes with authority are assaulting folks for asinine reasons.

Daryl: But--

Wayne: Beating bystanders with billy clubs and then bleating for bills is bully talk.

Daryl: Can't we just--

Wayne: Cancel the cops.

Daryl: Do you mean...?

Wayne: Defund the detectives. Defang the dildo-wielding degenerates who deal damage and destruction wherever they descend.

Daryl: Even if they--

Wayne: Evict those eager eagles from their erroneously elevated nest.

Daryl: For how long?

Wayne: Until fascist fuck-ups who would fancy frisking a black fish if they found one finally confess.

Daryl: Golly

Wayne: Granted god-like powers to grab goods and grandstand on greatness, they gotta go.

Daryl: Have you thought about--

Wayne: Heave ho to the hot-headed hitmen with hearts of hate and habits of heavy fists.

Daryl: Just--

Wayne: Justice doesn't jump out and jack-boot a juggler in the jiggles just for laughs.

Daryl: 'Kay.

Wayne: Keep the keystone kleptocracy kilometers away from kids, is all I'm saying.

Daryl: Likely.

Wayne: Laying into little Leopolds and Lillys without legal legitimacy is for losers.

Daryl: Maybe they--

Wayne: Mashing moppets every month for making messes is monstrous.

Daryl: Not if they--

Wayne: Noting the narcs neglect of their neighbors in favor of nightly numbers.

Daryl: Ouch.

Wayne: Overlooking obvious offenders in their offbeat overstretch creates opposition.

Daryl: Proof.

Wayne: Punching protestors is poor protection of the public.

Daryl: Quotas.

Wayne: Quenching their quixotic quest for quotidian quiet.

Daryl: Right?

Wayne: Radical rascals who reject right-thinking and responsibility.

Daryl: Sounds like--

Wayne: Shifty seneschals who shit on any semblance of sanity.

Daryl: Talking about--

Wayne: Tiny totalitarians who top out thinking tanks make them trustworthy.

Daryl: Unbelievable.

Wayne: Utterly unsatisfactory and unscrupulous usage of ubiquitous umbrellas of immunity.

Daryl: Verily.

Wayne: Vanquish the vicars of vicious vicissitude and vampires of verification.

Daryl: What you mean is--

Wayne: Walk over to those wankers with their whale-like wads of cash, wax their ears, and wash 'em off our way-fares.

Daryl: Extreme.

Wayne: Exactly.

Daryl: You really think--

Wayne: Yes.

Daryl: Zounds.

Wayne: Zip 'em up, and zero out their budgets.

Daryl: All righty then.

Wayne: Black Lives Matter, bud.

Growing up in Texas, we didn't talk about Juneteenth in school.

We talked about the Civil War, of course. Of the "brave" and "fearsome" soldiers that Texas sent to fight for the Confederacy. But not about slavery, other than it being a "bad thing" that "was over now."

We talked about Texas' War of Independence from Mexico. That war was also motivated by slavery, by the desire for white Texans to have and import slaves. But we didn't talk about that either. Only the Alamo, and Santa Anna, and again, the "brave" soldiers who fell.

But we never mentioned the brave slaves who ran away from home, in a desperate flight to freedom. Knowing they would be beaten if caught, and possibly killed.

We never talked about the black soldiers that served in the Union army, knowing the whites in that army still thought of them as "lesser men," and that if captured by the Confederates they'd be made into slaves, even if they'd been raised free.

We didn't talk about that kind of bravery.

So we didn't talk about Juneteenth, and how its origins were Texan. How white Texans were so desperate to hold onto their human property that it took a Union Army arriving on the Gulf shore to force them to give them up.

Because our history was written and taught by white Southerners, who, being racist themselves, can't see anything but shame in such a holiday. They identify too strongly with the losing side.

But having learned about the holiday as an adult -- too late, true, but better than never -- I can see pride in it, mixed in with the shame.

Not white pride, mind you, but American pride. Pride that the Civil War was fought and won by the side of justice. Pride that the slaves were freed, that we set off on a path to give all Americans the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The path is long and stony, and we've still a long way to go. But we can celebrate the progress we've made, even while pushing forward into the future.

I'm spending this Juneteenth catching up on more of the history that I missed in school. And thinking on how I can do my part to move us further down the path to becoming a truly free country.

Justice for Breonna's killers.

Defund the Police.

Black Lives Matter.

This week, I've been chasing the dragon of a finished draft.

I'm so close to being done with the short story revisions that I've been working on them every day, instead of alternating with the novel. It's like at a certain point, I can only hold one or the other in my head, and I've been holding the short story.

I'm still following the one-inch-frame method, jumping from scene to scene and writing a few paragraphs here, a page there, then coming back and joining them up later.

It feels like a cheat, sometimes, like I'm putting off doing my homework and playing video games instead. And I suppose I am, in a way, holding off from writing the parts that feel difficult in the moment and writing the ones that come easily.

But so far, I always end up coming back to the hard stuff, and finding that either a) It doesn't seem hard anymore, or b) It's not even needed.

The latter still worries me. How could this piece that I thought was essential not even need to be written? Am I not just procrastinating on my homework, but refusing to do it altogether?

I try to reassure myself with the knowledge that this is just a draft, one of many, and everything can be revised later. Nothing is permanent.

So here's hoping I can wrap up this draft over the weekend, and then push through the last scenes of the novel! Would be nice to end June with two projects completely drafted, ready to sit on the back-burner for a bit so I can come back and revise them properly.

How about you? When you're closing in on a finished draft, do you find you have little room in your head for anything else?

How does one write, in times like these?

I feel guilty for not being at the protests (my wife and I are both at high-risk for covid-19). For not being and doing more, both now and in the past.

I can make changes going forward. Donate to Black Lives Matter and to Bailout Funds. Push locally for police reform. Vote for candidates that will hold our police accountable.

But where does writing fit into that? How can I justify spending time...just, writing stories?

Because I have kept writing, even as the police have tear-gassed my old neighborhood. As helicopters fly overhead, towards the next showdown between the people and the "heroes" that are supposed to keep them safe.

On the one hand, I write because writing is my escape. A way for me to tune out the world for a bit, and come back to it ready to rejoin the struggle.

On the other hand, I write because writing is a form of activism.

When we read, we can enter the mind of a character completely. See the world entirely through their lives. Cry with them, when the world throws them down. Shout with joy when they triumph over those who would hold them back.

We can build empathy with people and situations we never thought we could. We can also see the dark sides of our own selves, when thoughts and habits of our own are cast in a different light, or shown to us from someone else's perspective.

So I write to escape, yes. But also to create something that can change someone's mind.

It's not as fast as signing a petition, true. Or joining a protest. Or calling a government official pressuring them to be better. Which is why I will continue to do all those other things.

But I will also write.

George Floyd

Breeona Taylor

Sean Reed

Ahmaud Aurbery

Eric Garner

Michael Brown

Dontre Hamilton

John Crawford III

Ezell Ford

Tamir Rice

Sandra Bland

Freddie Gray

Trayvon Martin

Rodney King

Malcom X

Martin Luther King, Jr

Donate to Black Lives Matter

Donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund

The Washington Post is tracking all the people killed by US police

Earlier this week, I was on a Zoom call with some fellow writers. We were discussing how our writing output was doing during the pandemic: whether it was fine or (for most of us) had gone down.

And I realized: I've basically retooled my entire process during these last few months.

I used to write mostly on evenings and weekends, but now I do it in the morning, before the day even starts.

I used to write in blocks of a few hours at a time.

Now I do it in short thirty-minute bites.

I used to write a scene or a story straight through, from start to finish.

Now I jump around, filling in sections a little bit at a time, and then join them up later.

And the biggest change of all: I used to mostly pants my stories, but now I'm doing a lot of plotting and outlining before I set anything down.

Will it last once we're able to leave our homes safely? Who knows?

I might go back to the old way of writing. I might never be able to write that way again.

But it amazes me all the same, that little by little, my process has changed so much, in so short a time.

What about you? Has your process stayed the same through the pandemic? Or have you had to re-learn how to make your art, in order to keep working?

Memorial Day is meant to honor those who fell in the service of their country.

So today, I'd like to give my thanks to the grocery workers who contracted Covid-19 while making sure we could feed our families.

To the doctors and nurses who caught Covid-19 while fighting this new disease.

To the truckers, keeping goods and commerce flowing, who risk infection every time they step out of their vehicles for gas or a bathroom break.

To the warehouse employees -- for Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, and others -- who died needlessly, because their wealthy bosses couldn't bear to lose a single cent to sick leave.

In this pandemic, we've discovered who the essential workers really are. And it's not the CEOs of the world.

It's those keeping us fed, keeping us safe, and keeping us alive.

I thank you, all of you, for your service.

After two good weeks in a row, it was time for a rough one.

Had to shift my schedule up by three hours this week, for work. Well, I say shift my schedule, but...there's no way I'm going through my normal morning routine (writing, walking) at 4:30 in the morning.

So it's more like I abandoned my schedule, and then jet-lagged myself (while staying at home!).

As you can imagine, my writing output has suffered.

But it hasn't ground to a halt! I've managed to keep the writing streak alive, carving out time after work (thank the gods for afternoon naps) to make progress on both the novel and the short story, again on altering days.

Not always much progress, mind you. Several days "just get one sentence down" wasn't just a trick to get me to write, it was all I could get down.

But I did it, and I'm through to the other side, and can catch-up on sleep and (writing) work this weekend.

And reading. Surprisingly hard to read when your body is in the wrong timezone.

What about you? Have you settled into a new routine, and managed to keep with it? Or have the re-openings, patchwork as they are, disrupted the schedule you built during lockdown?

Disappointingly, this is not the full original text. It's been trimmed down by almost half, and then padded out with other articles Houdini wrote.

Still, what's left behind is fascinating. Lots of great stories of scams and burglary, from using chewing gum to steal jewels to having a confederate hide in a checked trunk in order to steal from a "locked" luggage compartment. Many good story ideas buried in here.

You can see why Houdini was so fascinated by the techniques of thieves and con-men. So much of their work involved mis-direction and slight of hand, the same techniques he used as a magician.

You can also understand why he went after mediums and psychics so hard: They were using those same techniques of magic, but not presenting themselves as magicians.

Thus they were not only defrauding the public, but casting legitimate magicians like himself in a bad light. Because they were frauds, and so when they were discovered -- which they almost inevitably were -- they made reputable magicians like himself look like frauds, too. Better that he unmask them, to make the difference more distinct.

So, a good book, still, though far too short. I'll have to track down a complete version at some point.

Current writing streak: 64 days.

Finally reached the part of the novel where I'm back to editing, instead of writing new chapters. It's made things easier going, on that front. Less intimidating to sit down with words already on the page, and know I've just got to make them consistent with everything else.

There's a few chapters at the very end where I'll need to be drafting from scratch again, but for now, at least, it's smoother sailing.

Of course, this won't be the end of my editing passes. I'll need to do at least one more of what I'm thinking of as "consistency passes" to check all the new material against what's already there. Then I'm planning on doing a dialog pass for each main character, to ensure they speak consistently throughout. Finally I'll do a phrase and copy-editing pass, looking for awkward wording or cliché description.

So still plenty to do.

I've also continued to work on the short story on alternate days this week. I wasn't sure I was ready to start writing the new section of that work, to be honest, but by focusing on just one little detail at a time -- Anne Lamott's one-inch frame technique -- I've managed to add ~1,000 words to the draft. If I keep this up, I might actually have the draft done (and ready to set aside, for later editing) next week.

Which would be...amazing. I wasn't sure I could ever get back to some sort of functioning writing schedule during the pandemic. Or get back to writing more than just a sentence or two a day. But something's happened recently, like a mental fog has lifted. I'm able to brainstorm again, and hold both of these storylines (the story and the novel) in my head again, and write a page a day again.

It may not last. I'm going to appreciate it while it does, though. I know not everyone has been as relatively fortunate as I have through this pandemic.

So I'm grateful, for the work I can do, while I can do it.

How about you? Have you felt like you've turned a corner lately? Or are things still too much in the air for your writing brain to settle into some kind of routine?

This is the kind of American history I wish they'd taught me in school.

It's a story of intrigue, of diplomatic maneuvering between dozens of nations. Of military campaigns won and lost. Of peace betrayed and hope rekindled.

I would have eaten this stuff up. Did eat it up, when presented with the history of Europe in the Middle Ages or Japan's Edo Period or China's Warring States.

(Okay, so the latter two I only got exposed to via video games, not school, but still)

But teaching me this version of American history would have forced adults around me to acknowledge our part in this struggle. And most of the time, we were the villains.

We made treaties with Native American tribes, swearing to abide by some border line, and then promptly set about settling past that line. We struck deals with the leaders of individual villages and then insisted whole tribes adhere to them. And when those tribes refused to sign new treaties with us, establishing new boundary lines, we invaded, burned their villages to the ground, and slaughtered their people.

And Washington was at the heart of all of this.

As First President, he established the policy of buying Native American land when we could, and killing them all if they wouldn't sell. He also pushed them to become "civilized," which in his mind meant dropping their own culture -- including their sustainable agriculture, their religion, and their gender roles -- and adopting settler culture wholesale.

Why would he do this? Because he speculated in Native American land, buying up the "rights" to tracts that hadn't been formerly ceded by any tribe. He needed those boundary lines pushed back, that land cleared of Native Americans, and then settled by Europeans, if he was to recoup any profits.

This is the part of American history that has white squatters fighting both Native Americans and elites back east for their "right" to seize land.

The part that has our very first treaty under the Constitution negotiated with a Native American tribe.

The part that has Washington taking time out of the Revolutionary War to have three armies loot and pillage their way through Iroquios territory, destroying crops and peaceful towns as they went.

And its the part that shows the Native Americans as what they were: A free people, with their own politics and divisions, struggling to deal with the invasion of their lands. Some sought peace, some wanted to fight, and some moved rather than deal with the Europeans. But all of them thought of themselves as their own nations, with control over their own territory, and their own sovereign rights.

Something Washington never conceded to them, and he embedded that denial in our relationships with the tribes from the start.

This sort of history is complicated, and Calloway does an fantastic job sorting through it. Amazingly, he condemns Washington's mistakes without finger-wagging.

It's enough to relate them truthfully. The First President condemns himself.

The streak's alive! I've managed at least 30 minutes of writing for 57 days straight now.

Alternating the days I work on the novel with the days I work on the short story seems to help, too.

I've even started tracking my daily word count again, when working on the novel. I don't let myself stop writing until I hit 250 words.

As a result, I've made notable progress on it. Finished three new chapters, and I'm ready to start editing down the next few.

And for the short story, I'm gathering notes on my research and getting plot points nailed down. This weekend (or early next week) I think I'll be ready to start writing some dialog, and then gradually fill in the rest.

Oh, and I have three other pieces submitted to paying markets. Keeping in the habit of sending them right back out a few days after a rejection comes in.

So this week has been good, relatively speaking. Still not operating at 100%, creatively, but I'm finding a new normal, a new pace of working to make a habit.

What about you?

Over in The Atlantic, David Litt argues that Congress should be much larger than it currently is:

In the 90 years since the cap [on the number of reps in Congress] was put in place, the number of House seats has stayed flat while the population has boomed. To put it slightly differently, each member of Congress has become responsible for several times more constituents. District populations have doubled since my parents were born, in the late 1950s. In my own 33-year lifetime, the number of Americans per lawmaker has increased by about 200,000—the equivalent of adding a Salt Lake City to every district in the United States.

Believe it or not, I've been working on a similar post, coming at the argument through looking at the ratio of people-to-reps in other countries.

Litt makes the case much better than I ever could (for example, I didn't know that the number of House Reps was commonly increased after every census until 1919!), but here's a plot of person-per-rep vs population for about two dozen democracies, from Mexico to South Korea to Nigeria to Norway:

You'll notice most countries are clustered together in the lower-left-hand corner.

See that outlier, waaaay up in the corner, far away from everyone else? That's the United States.

It's here! The new issue of Galaxy's Edge is out, and along with stories by Joe Halderman and Robert J Sawyer, it has my very first short story sale: "Wishr"!

It's been a long road for this story. I wrote the first draft in September of 2016 (!). Since then it's been through five major revisions, and multiple edits on top of that.

Several of those were prompted by early rejections. I'd submit it, get a rejection, revise the story, get beta reader feedback, and send it back out. Over and over and over again.

A slow process, but a necessary one. I'm proud of the story that's resulted, and very proud to be a part of Galaxy's Edge magazine, which was edited by Mike Resnick until his passing early this year.

Many thanks and congratulations to both the editor, Lezli Robyn, and the publisher, Shahid Mahmud, for keeping the magazine going, and his legacy alive.

So check out the new issue, and let me know what you think of the story!

Current writing streak: 50 days.

50 days! That's 50 consecutive days of working, bit by bit, on the novel, several short stories, and essays for the blog.

50 days of laying bricks, one at a time. Of sending out stories and getting rejections. Of wrestling with file formats, and Scrivener settings, all to conform to the particular submission guidelines of each market (sometimes "always follow the directions" is hard advice to hold to).

50 days of shoving the pandemic out of my mind for at least thirty minutes, each day, to go visit somewhere else in my imagination. A dearly needed mental vacation.

So, what's new this week?

I've taken up the habit of alternating days in which I'm working on the novel with days where I work on something else. It's a way of giving me a break from the general slog of the book without going too long without thinking about it. And it lets me make progress on some other projects.

Like the short story I started submitting to markets...two weeks ago? One of the rejections I got resonated with me. It took a while, but eventually that resonation joined up with some things my beta readers said, and crystallized this week into me thinking up a different ending for it.

The new ending changes the meaning of the piece. Shifts its emphasis. But I think it's stronger, and more cohesive with the rest of the story. And it adds a little bit of just desserts for one of the characters.

So I'm going to give it a shot.

I say "give it a shot" quite deliberately. It might flop. It might make the story worse, not better. I might fail to execute properly. Any of which would mean I'd go back to sending it out with the original ending.

But I'd like to try, so I've been using my alternate days this week to brainstorm and outline the new ending. Sketch out scenes, decide sticky plot points, nail down questions that arise as I think it through.

It's a different way of working for me -- usually I just throw down the short story, outline be damned -- and it's slower, but I'd like to be more deliberate in the way I craft things. I feel like the more plot holes I can fill during the outlining, the smoother the actual writing process will go. It should let me focus on the writing itself, because I've thought through the action and character beats already.

We'll see. Wish me luck.

I'm having trouble sleeping.

I wake up multiple times in the night, thinking I've heard our dog bark or someone move in the house beneath our bedroom.

Sometimes I fall right back to sleep, but often I'll just lay there, my brain chewing over some problem from the day, unable to rest.

When I do sleep, I dream. But nothing comforting: I dream of the world we've lost.

I dream of going to a pub for dinner. Of going on a trip at the airport. Seeing a movie.

Mundane things. Well, mundane before.

Even there, the pandemic intrudes. I go to a pub, intending to meet friends like normal, but my wife and I take masks with us, and sit 6 feet apart. The airport we go to is mostly deserted, and the planes never arrive. On our way to the movie theatre, someone yells at us for being outside.

So my dreams bring no comfort. No escape from reality.

In truth, I know I'm lucky. Both my wife and I have been healthy so far. We've had enough food and toilet paper (though it was touch and go the first two weeks). And our current house is new enough that nothing major has broken on us (yet).

I just...I wish I could relax enough to rest, and sleep, again. And dream of something else.

Intro

Henry Herz intimidates me.

He's written and sold ten children's books, along with numerous short stories, and he's one of the few writers Jonathan Maberry trusts to run the Writers Coffeehouse when he can't host it himself.

Did I mention he frequently runs panels for Comic-Con and WonderCon? And that he edited an anthology that includes stories from Peter S Beagle, Jane Yolen, and Jim Butcher?

Thankfully, he's as friendly and approachable as he is super-organized (more on that later). He recently spent some time with me over Zoom to talk about his writing process, children's book publishing, and his dive into the world of middle-grade novels.

Writing Process

What is your writing process like for a picture book? With something that short, does pantsing vs plotting come into play?

I'm a plotter by nature, and because of my background in industrial engineering, I don't like wasting time. For me, being a plotter is more efficient than being a pantser because I don't write myself into corners.

But it's an artistic endeavor, and it may be that someone who loves to be a pantser can't plot. They would actually be slower, so every writer must discover what works best for them.

For a picture book, there's usually 13 to 14 two-page spreads, so I'll just do an outline to show what I want to have on each of these spreads. Then I can look at everything and go, "Okay, do I have rising tension? Do I establish the problem in the first one or two spreads? Do I have a resolution about three-quarters of the way through?" And that's easy to check. Then I can draft each of the pages and go from there.

With a picture book, you could easily get away with pantsing, because the word count is so low. And picture books typically go through a lot more revisions than a novel.

Really?

Well, how many passes are you going to make through a novel, realistically?

Three or four. Maybe.

Yeah, exactly. I have picture books that have gone through 25 revisions, but that just means me making a pass and making changes and tightening things up, or me soliciting feedback from critique group members and integrating the feedback that I think is constructive.

How does your writing process change for a short story or novel vs a picture book?

So I'm organized in both cases, but I'm a lot more organized for the novel or the short story, because it's a bigger word count. I just feel like I'd be flailing if I pantsed a novel. I would be very likely to write myself into corners or spend too much time in one area.

I found a resource that I really like. It's called Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jess Brody. There was originally a book by Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!, which analyzed how movies are structured, and Jessica Brody took the same idea and applied it to novels.

So her book gives you a template, a starting point, which was invaluable to me, since I've only written one novel. I used her structure for that novel and about half-a-dozen short stories in the 3,000 to 6,000 word range.

It guarantees you have the arc that you want. The character development is still obviously up to you, but it helps with the pacing and the arcs.

There's also a great resource for character development, the book that Jonathan Maberry always touts, which is the Writing the Breakout Novel Handbook, by Donald Maass. There's a bunch of questions in there that help you understand your own characters.

In my idealized process for writing a novel, I start with a rough idea of the story just in my head through inspiration, but then I flesh out the characters using the Donald Maass workbook, and then I come up with an overview and story beats from Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.

And that helps chunk it down, because I'm a picture book writer used to writing 500-word books. The first novel, the first and only novel I've written, is a 30,000-word middle-grade novel. 30,000 words is intimidating to somebody who's only written 500. If you're an adult novelist, you're like, "Pfft. I do 100,000 words all the time. It's no big deal." But for me, it was a lot.

So staring at a blank document that I know will have to contain 30,000 words is pretty intimidating. But if I use the Save the Cat template, then the writing is broken down into anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand word chunks, and that makes it much easier. "Okay, I know how to write that. I don't know how to write the whole thing, but I know how to write this little piece."

Like the parable about how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

What does your novel outline look like?

Jess Brody breaks the novel up into about 15 beats.

Beats like "The Opening Image", "The Theme Stated", "The Set Up", and then there's "The Catalyst". Then you break into Act II.

So having a couple of sentences about each of these beats, it gets me far enough to start writing.

So you had all the beats mapped out first? Or did you map out a beat, write it up, then map out the next beat, etc?

I map out all the beats up front, before I start writing.

Only somebody as ridiculously organized as me would pay attention to this, but Save the Cat Writes a Novel suggests roughly what percentage of the word count should be in each beat. Obviously, you fiddle with it. But that really helps me.

For example, The Opening Image, I think, is 1%. It's just an opening image, right? So if I have a 30,000-word novel, then I know, "Okay, I have about 300 words to play with." Now, they're not strict limits, but it tells me what I'm aiming at. There is a big difference between writing 300 and 3,000 words.

I find it helps with the pacing, to make sure that things are happening at the right times, and that there are head-fakes, that you're moving in a direction and something shifts. You're building tension, and then you ramp it up even more. It's just helpful. I know Jonathan [Maberry] has done this so many times that it's instinct for him, but since this is my first novel, it was really helpful to have a tool.

How do you go about building a scene in your head? Do you think cinematically, or...?

Let's take Stephen King's novel, Carrie.

So if I was writing Carrie, and I'm doing the opening scene, how do I want to set the stage? Would I want to have Carrie in her room levitating something, or would I want to have Carrie in the high school locker room getting picked on by the other girls?

But once I made that decision, then I would envision the scene in my head. "Okay, what's going on? Who's going to say what?" Make sure that the dialogue and the action is consistent with what the characters want.

In the end, these are stories about characters, so you always have to make sure that you're being true to those characters.

I probably pants that more in that I have a general idea of what the character's like, but I let the character's voice emerge as I'm writing as opposed to having it all worked out ahead of time.

I can think, "Okay, this character is smart but a little self-centered, has a good sense of humor, mouths off in class when they shouldn't." And then having those rough guidelines, then I can let the character's personality take shape, let it flesh out as I'm writing.

Do you use beta readers? Or maybe a critique group?

I'm a member of a group here locally that I like. It's some experienced writers, and we do 3,500 words a week that we share and critique. I got through my novel in nine sessions, nine weeks, which feels slow to me as a picture book writer, but I know as a novelist that's pretty fast to get detailed feedback from multiple people on your novel.

Do you all email out your selection to each other?

So this group uses Dropbox to pass out the pieces and then to give feedback. But then we were meeting face-to-face on a weekly basis until coronavirus, and now we're doing it all through Dropbox. Just sharing marked up versions of the manuscripts.

No Zoom meetings where you read aloud something and critique it?

No, that would take too long also to read aloud. 3,500 words times five people, that'd be a long meeting.

Oh, it's 3,500 each for each person, so each week you're reading 15,000 words or more?

Yeah, but it's a lot easier to read and critique somebody else's stuff than to write 15,000 words.

Fair enough. To get back to the critiquing real quick, how hard is it for you to switch between the draft brain and the editing brain?

Oh, for my own stuff? Very easy, very easy, because I draft until I have a complete draft, so I'm not context-switching on a daily basis. I'm drafting, drafting, drafting, drafting until I have a draft completed, and then I switch to revision mode.

Some people edit as they draft. I'm guilty of that too. But I try to discourage myself because it is important to get that first draft out.

But with short stories, I allow myself to edit as I go. That also means that when I'm done, the first draft is tight.

The last three I short stories I wrote, I was ready to submit after version two. One revision pass, and I was ready to go, because I had been editing them as I typed them in. So they were close to finished in the first draft. Then it's just a matter of polishing.

When you get feedback from your critique group, do you always make the changes they suggest?

It's a good question, and the answer depends on context. Sometimes I just get, "Hey, this isn't working," and sometimes I get, "Hey, this isn't working. Have you thought about this?"

And I will consider what they say, but I'm not feeling bound to do it. My choices are reject it completely, do nothing, accept it as is, or accept that there's a problem, but fix it a different way. Any of those are possible. It just depends on the situation.

I don't feel constrained by a critiquer's proposed solution, but I'm happy to hear it. The suggestion might be really good, or it might prompt me to go, "That's a good point, although that won't work because of something the reader isn't aware of," but it gets my brain spinning. "Okay, yeah. I do need to address that, and I know how to do that. I've got to go back a couple of chapters and plant something so that I foreshadow that."

Publishing

Have all your picture books earned out?

No. Some of them have, some of them haven't.

Oh. Is that hard to do for a picture book? I guess it depends on the level of advance.

Yes, it depends on the level of advance, and it also depends on how much effort the publisher puts in.

Because there's an 80/20 rule that applies to a lot of things, and I think it also applies to how publishers market their books. I think 80% of their marketing budget gets focused on 20% of their books that they have a really good feeling about. These are their top authors, proven authors with good track records, who get the lion's share of the marketing budget.

I've sold 10 picture books, but I am nowhere near the top of the field, not even close. I get a modest amount of help marketing-wise. They solicit professional reviews, and they put it on their website, and they do the things they do for everybody, but it's not like they're paying for me to go on a tour around the country.

I'd say the most critical thing is can they get your book in Barnes & Noble, because that's the biggest chain.

And they can't always do that. Just because a traditional publisher produces a book, it doesn't mean Barnes & Noble will take it. They have finite space, and they're going to pick the books they think will sell the best. It's perfectly logical from a business perspective, but it sucks if you're not a well-known author.

Do you have an agent?

I don't have an agent currently, and I think the novel is a good opportunity for me to approach agents, because there's a lot more picture book manuscripts floating around than novel manuscripts floating around in children's literature, I think.

And if an agent likes my middle grade novel, then I can say, "By the way, I also have a number of picture book manuscripts."

Some agents specialize in picture books. A lot of them skip them, because unless you're at the top of the field, the advances for picture books are small, and the agency gets 15%. The agent gets less than that if they're not the owner of the agency.

So imagine seven-and-a-half percent of a $4,000 dollar advance. That's not a lot of money for a picture book agent. $300 isn't going to pay the rent.

I'm hoping that this will increase my appeal because now I'm a dual threat, I can write picture books and I can write novels.

Do you have a list of agents already in mind for the middle-grade?

I have a list of agents who I like for picture books, and what I'll probably do is go through that, because I want somebody who works for a reputable agency and somebody who's interested in the same genres.

You have to align with what the agent is interested in reading, and I tend to write a lot of science fiction and fantasy.

So I will start with my list of picture book agents and go through them again, and go, "Okay, does this agent also represent middle-grade," and if they do, then "do they like fantasy and sci-fi?"

How do you feel your background in process improvement engineering helps you with your writing?

It doesn't help me with writing, but it helps me with my career in terms of being organized and being efficient about all the non-writing things that I have to do: submitting, soliciting an agent, and tracking when markets are open that you can submit to. And what you sent and whether you've heard back or not.

If you're being active, you could easily just drown in all the data. If you don't use a spreadsheet or something to manage it, you'll just completely lose track of what you're doing. I'm a pretty prolific writer, so I have to do that.

How do you keep track of it all?

For my picture books I have a spreadsheet. The columns represent the different manuscripts, and the rows are for the different publishers.

For each cell, there's really two dates, when I submitted it and when I heard back, either a rejection or an acceptance.

So that's a helpful thing to have, because then you know who've you sent to. I can put notes in there too, like if they rejected but they gave me some feedback, then I can stuff that in there as well.

And then I do something similar for my short stories, which are submitted to online magazines, print magazines, and anthologies.

Has your system evolved over time?

I didn't used to have that spreadsheet. I used to just have the Evernote list, organized by market.

For example, I scroll down past Amazing Stories, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies to Clarkesworld. I can see that I submitted ABC to Clarkesworld on this date. It was declined or accepted on that date. So under each market, I list every one of the stories I've submitted. I may also list stories I'm planning to submit.

But many of these markets don't accept multiple or simultaneous submissions. That makes it really hard to know at a glance "Can I submit there? Where else have I submitted that story?"

That's when I built a short story spreadsheet, where each row is a story and each column is a market. That format makes it easy to see at a glance where I've submitted it, and where I might submit it. You can use color-coding to show which markets allow simultaneous submissions and which ones don't.

I want to push my writing out into the world. There are some markets that will give you a fast response, within a few days. But most of them, it's weeks or months. I think, "Okay, which one do I want to send to in what order, and if I send there, that means I can't send it over to these other markets until I hear back."

So it's like a three-dimensional chess match. I've found that I needed the spreadsheet just to retain my sanity and get these stories out in as expeditious a manner as possible, get responses, and then if it's a no, move on to the next market.

Field Trip to Earth

Why go for a middle-grade novel after having written and successfully published so many picture books?

I've been published more than once in the picture book market, but writing a middle-grade novel makes sense for a couple of reasons. First is career-wise, it's better to be able to write in more than one market. But also, when you're writing picture books, your vocabulary is tied behind your back. You're writing for young readers, and are constrained by what words you can use and what concepts you can cover.

You also have to very carefully leave room for the illustrator, because picture books, at roughly 500 words, don't give you word count to describe the scenes. You have to leave room for the illustrator to do a lot of the scene description.

Writing middle grade lets me use my full vocabulary and describe scenes and incorporate motivations that are too mature for a picture book. So writing for older markets supports both self-expression and career growth.

I chose middle-grade as opposed to young adult or adult, because I'm also being practical. I've written a number of picture books of anywhere from 500 to 1,000 words. I sold an early chapter book, which was 6,500 words, so that was a step up. But nothing longer than that.

I thought, "I don't want to jump to a 100,000-word epic fantasy. That's just a bridge too far. Middle-grade novels can be as short as 30,000 words.

I figured I would hone my novel writing chops by writing a shorter novel.

It's also closer in tone to picture books than an adult novel would be.

So, what's the novel about? What genre is it in?

The middle-grade novel is science fiction with a good dose of humor.

It's called Field Trip to Earth, and it's basically an alien middle school student finds herself in academic trouble, and she needs to take an unauthorized field trip to Earth to collect data for her school report.

Some of her friends go with her, and hijinks ensue.

That sounds great.

It's been fun to write. Soon I expect to be done with my second full pass, and then at that point, I'm going to throw it out there and see if an agent wants it.

Have you gotten any feedback that made you completely rewrite part of it?

Partially. So in my sci-fi novel, the main character is a middle-school kid from Proxima Centauri.

And she realizes she needs to go to Earth. Now, she has attended driver's ed, so she knows how to fly a spaceship, but she doesn't own one.

In my original version, after school ends, she basically hijacks a school vehicle and flies it to Earth.

I got feedback from more than one person saying, "That's a little too dark. It offers a behavior that's not one parents would want to encourage in their kids." I can't pull off what Eoin Colfer did with Artemis Fowl.

So instead, she has a nemesis at school. Now, the nemesis is wealthy and has his own ship, so she enlists his cooperation into doing the trip.

Oh, that's a neat solution

Another piece of feedback: In my early version, the two of them would have verbal sparring, and the nemesis was a different species and chubby.

I had my protagonist teasing him about his size and his eating habits. The feedback I got was, "Your protagonist is being kind of a bully there."

Even though it was in reaction to the nemesis' actions, my protagonist's responses felt too mean and bullying. So I toned that down.

Those weren't complete rewrites, but they definitely were significant changes to the character and for one plot element. But that's the idea, right? I'm making it better.

Definitely. When making those changes, did you revise the outline first, and then the text?

No, because the structure is still solid. I don't need to change the structure. The beats are the beats.

In the way that I am operating, following the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel structure, the beats come in a specific order, and the relative size of those beats is unchanged. I just go into the individual chapters and tweak what I need to tweak to make the desired changes.

I don't have to rewrite the whole thing. I may have to insert pieces that I needed to set the stage in an earlier scene, but that's it.

This week has been...strange.

I received the contract (and check!) in the mail for my first short story sale, which is getting published soon in Galaxy's Edge magazine after being accepted last August. That's been an emotional roller-coaster ride all its own, but it's going to work out in the end.

The same day, riding high on waves of optimism, of the proof that I can write something someone will pay for, I received the latest rejections for two of my short stories that are out circulating.

I know I can't take any of it personally, but it truly felt like one step forward, two steps back, that day. Made me wonder if perhaps the one sale is all I've got in me. It's nonsense, of course -- I've got twenty or thirty years of writing left (with luck), and surely can improve a little in all that time -- but it's hard to stare self-doubt in the face and insist you know the future when everything is so uncertain, for everyone.

So, I'm going to do the only thing I can do: Write more, and revise it, and send it out. The only thing I have control over.

How about you? What do you do, when you feel like you're getting conflicting signals from the outside world about your writing?

I haven't truly binged-watched a show in a long time. Yes, even with the epidemic, I'm more often working or doing chores than watching something on streaming.

But The Boys is so irreverently good, so twistedly watchable, that I started it on Friday and spend Saturday finishing it off.

There's currently only one season, and when the last episode was over, I thought: Well, they just blew everything we knew up. Where could they go from here? Could a Season Two be even close to as good as this?

Dear Reader, I think it can.

Below is my outline for a Season Two.

Major Spoilers for the The Boys Season One follows

Butcher

Butcher starts Season Two with everything he's built his life on for eight years suddenly knocked out from under him. His wife's alive, she's been raising the kid she had with Homelander, and she's never, not once, tried to contact him about it or tell him the truth.

He's going to struggle to come to grips with that. He'll be in denial at first, and then angry when his ex-wife (and is she even his ex?) lays it all out for him. There'll be fights. He might try to move in with them -- insisting on a husband's prerogative -- he might try to "rescue" Becca (which she'll resist, confusing him more).

He might even try another attempt on Homelander's life, using his new family as bait.

All of these efforts, this raging at the new reality, will fail.

Finally, at the end of the last fight with his ex-wife, when the bleak truth has settled in, he'll remember something Homelander dropped at the end of Season One, when he was talking to Stillwell (who was all tied up with explosives at the time): The name of the scientist who created Homelander.

Butcher will shift gears at that point, away from Becca, and towards a new goal: To track down this scientist, and guilt him into making a formula to undo his greatest mistake. Something that neutralizes the effects of Compound V, making Supes normal again.

Homelander and Becca and the Kid

Meanwhile, Homelander has been trying to play house with Becca and his son.

But he's bad at it. Incredibly bad at it. Becca doesn't really want him there, the kid wants a dad but can't relate to someone raised in a lab, and Homelander himself has no role models to imitate.

Butcher himself might help here, in a scene where he's feeling low and takes pity on Homelander for once. Gives Homelander an in, something he can do to bond with his son.

But it's too little, too late. In an attempt to show "tough love", Homelander ends up killing the kid's favorite pet. Becca drives him out of the house, tells him not come back.

The Seven (as was)

With Homelander distracted, Maeve steps in to lead The Seven.

It's a literally thankless job. Their new manager at Vought feels nothing but contempt for Supes, seeing them as just more dangerous versions of spoiled celebrities. And every interview Maeve gives, someone asks her about Homelander. Even when he's gone, he overshadows her.

So she begins making some changes, to get some attention. She brings back a disgraced Supe, makes them part of the Seven. She gets back with her ex, and comes out of the closet.

It all unravels, though, when she finds out how Starlight has betrayed them all (in working with Hughie to take down Vought from the inside, tracing the route of Compound V to supervillains) and Homelander returns, all in a rage from his failed family experiment.

Hughie and Starlight and the Gang

Finally, "The Boys" has stopped being an all-boys' club. Kimiko and Frenchie are an item, and more and more Kimiko is willing to help them in their crusade against Vought (though reluctantly at first).

Hughie and Starlight's relationship remains fragile. They're friends and allies, but arguing constantly about the best way to go about things. Each time of them reaches out to rekindle their romance, the other pulls back, wounded and mistrustful from their last fight.

Because of all this back-and-forth, Starlight doesn't realize how deep she's gone to the other side until Maeve confronts her about it towards the end of the season, framing everything as Starlight's attempt to undermine her and take over leadership of the Seven.

The Climax

Everything comes to a head all at once.

Homelander returns in the middle of Maeve and Starlight's fight, pissed at everyone and everything.

Starlight's fight delays her helping Hughie and the gang getting into Vought's headquarters for the final piece of the evidence, making them think Starlight's betrayed them.

They break into the lab themselves, where they find Butcher, happily switching everything over to churn out the Compound-V antidote. He's carrying a rifle that's been modified to fire doses of the antidote, so he can make Homelander mortal.

And everything goes to shit when the world's first supervillain team chooses that moment to assault The Seven in their Vought HQ.

Another week. I've kept the writing streak going; currently at 36 straight days.

Managed to pick up work on the novel again. I worried I might not be able to get back in the headspace that easily. But it turns out if you've worked on something for two years, you can dive back into it without too many issues :)

Had to think back through the chapter I was working on, though. The plot I'd had when I last put it down didn't fit with the setting I'd established, and -- to be perfectly honest -- wasn't that interesting.

This new version I'm writing is harder, emotionally, but it's better.

Which seems to be true about a lot of the rewrites I do. The ones that are harder for me to write, to push my characters through, are the ones that make the story shine.

I'm keeping my daily goals modest, though. Sketch out a conversation here, set down a turning point over there, and that's it. Slowly stitch it all together over the course of the week. Review it -- but don't edit it yet! -- and mark the progress made.

It's these little steps, little victories, that keep me going.

What about you?

I've tried both Logitech and Zagg's versions of the iPad keyboard/case combo before, and neither of them worked out for me. The Logitech version was rugged and had a good keyboard, but it was too hard to get the iPad out of the case when I wanted to use it as a tablet. The Zagg folio felt cheap, and wasn't comfortable to type on.

I'm currently using the Apple Smart Keyboard Folio, and it's...fine. The angle that it sets the screen at is too steep to be comfortable, and it doesn't sit very stably on my lap, but it works, and I can type on it fast enough.

But I've heard a lot of good things about the Brydge keyboards, especially the "it makes it work just like a laptop" line. Comfortable to type on. Holds the screen at any angle you want. Easy to pull it out to become a tablet again.

So when they recently went on sale -- because the new version, with a built-in trackpad, is coming -- I snapped one up.

First Impressions

First off, this thing is absolutely gorgeous in the box. Like, I didn't want to take it out, it was so pretty.

And the box itself is pretty impressive; it's got a cheatsheet of what all the different function keys do printed right on the inside cover. There's almost no need to refer to the included QuickStart instructions.

Getting the iPad in the clips isn't too bad. They're stiff, but moveable. Ditto taking it out again. You need a firm grip, and a willingness to pull hard on something you might have paid $1,000 for, but it can be done.

Typing

The typing experience on this keyboard is, in a word, miserable.

My accuracy immediately plunged when I tried typing anything at all on it. The keys are both small and very close together, making the whole thing feel cramped. I felt like I was typing with my hands basically overlapping, it's that small.

On top of that, the keys sometimes stutter, or miss keystrokes. I had to strike each one much harder than I'm used to, which makes their small size and tight spacing even worse.

And the keyboard itself has a noticeable lag between when you open it to use it, and when it manages to pair with the iPad. It's a small thing, to be sure, but when you're used to the instantly-on nature of everything else on the iPad, it's a drag to have to wait on your keyboard to catch up.

Oh, and did I mention the whole thing -- keyboard, screen hinge, everything -- lifts off the table as you tilt the screen back? So the further back the screen goes, the more the keys tilt away from the plane of the desk. Yes, that means you have to adjust your typing to the angle of the screen, which is...not normal?

Still, a proper Inverted-T for the arrow keys is nice to have back.

And controlling screen brightness from the keyboard is cool. Not worth losing all that space that could have been put into larger keys or better key gaps (or just better keys, period), but here we are.

Portability

Jesus, this thing is heavy. I mean, it feels as heavy as my 16" work laptop. Definitely not feeling footloose and fancy-free while the iPad is locked into it.

As a bonus, it's really slippery when closed, making it both heavy and hard to hold onto. Just an accidental drop waiting to happen.

And I don't see how the tiny rubber things sticking up from the case are going to protect my screen when it's closed, especially as the thing ages and those rubber nubs become...nubbier.

Using it as a Laptop

The clips holding the iPad in place are really stiff, except when they're not. That is, anytime you forget it's not a real laptop and pick it up by the ipad.

There's also no way to open it when closed without knocking any Apple Pencil you have attached out of place.

It's fairly stable on my lap, so long as I don't tilt the screen back too far. There's a point where the whole thing just starts to wobble.

While the iPad's in it, it's kind of hard to hit the bottom of the screen to dismiss the current application and get the home screen back. Thankfully, they included a dedicated Home button on the keyboard, a nice touch.

However, the "On-Screen Keyboard" key doesn't work. At all.

Comparison with the Apple Smart Keyboard Folio

Using this made me realize things I want in an iPad keyboard that I never noticed before:

• I don't want to have to worry about plugging my keyboard in.
• I don't want to worry about having it come on and re-pair it with my iPad every time.
• I don't want to have to jerk on my iPad every time I want to convert it back to a tablet.

And the Apple Smart Keyboard Folio checks all of those boxes.

It's also lighter, and the keys are spaced further apart, making it less cramped. They also don't need as much pressure to activate.

Final Thoughts

So, yeah...I've returned the Brydge, and gone back to using the Smart Keyboard Folio.

I always thought of Apple's version as the "default," and that third-party keyboards would naturally be better. But it turns out weight, portability, and ease-of-use (no charging, always on) matters a lot more to me than I thought.

Current writing streak: 29 days.

Another week of forcing myself into the chair, every morning, for at least 30 minutes. Am I writing new words all 30 minutes? No. But I'm working all the same: planning, outlining, brainstorming, and finally putting fingers to keyboard.

When I feel the usual terror setting in, I tell myself: Write one sentence. Just one. One sentence is a victory. One sentence is enough.

It turns out that once I have one sentence down, I can usually write another. And another. And before I know it, I've written a few hundred words.

Sometimes. Sometimes it really is just one sentence. And I have to treat that like the achievement it is; because that sentence didn't exist before, and now it does. It might be terrible, it might be great, but I can edit it later. It exists to be edited later, only because I've written it.

So while forcing myself into the chair, I've finished a few projects:

• Finished editing the short story I worked on last week
• Sent that story out to beta readers for feedback
• Submitted two more short stories to markets, one for the very first time

Next up: Back to the novel. I really, really, really want to finish the current draft; I feel like I've been working on it forever. It'd feel so good to have it done to the point where I could send it to beta readers, or at least have enough raw draft material down that I can whip it into shape via another editing pass.

Weird to have a birthday during a pandemic. To have a day when I'm supposed to gather my friends together and celebrate. Now there can be no gathering, and any celebration feels macabre.

People have been asking me, what are you doing for your birthday? And the honest answer is the worst one:

• First thing in the morning, I'm going to check the LA Times page for updates on the spread of Covid-19 in California, paying particular attention to the shape of the curve for San Diego. Today: it's bending down, and has moved to doubling only every 3 days (last week it was doubling every two).
• Next I'm going to check the latest news from The Economist and The Atlantic. The Economist because they're going to put things in a global perspective. The Atlantic because they employ Ed Yong.
• After dumping all that in my brain, I'm going to try to write. I may fail.
• Later I'll go to work, where everything is normal since we were all working remotely before the virus. Except we all know it isn't, and it can't be.
• At some point I will probably take thirty minutes -- alone, in my office, where no one, including my wife, can see -- and just grieve. For what's been lost, and how much more we will probably lose before this is over.

None of which is really something you can confess to someone who just casually asks that question.

So instead I try to smile, and just say "We'll think of something."

And who knows? Maybe we will.

Current writing streak: 22 days.

Switching from tracking words written to time spent writing seems to be working. So far this week I've:

• Finished the script for an 8-page comic as part of Gail Simone's Comics School
• Finished writing up an interview with a local author
• Finished revising 3 of 5 scenes in a short story
• Submitted a flash fiction piece to a new market

I'm trying to use one of the tools Gail Simone said we need in our toolbox to make it as professional writers: Focus.

For Comics School, it meant keeping the overall goal modest (an 8-pg story) and working each day on just one piece of it, till it was done.

For me, I'm thinking of it in terms of goals per piece. This week, my goal is to finish editing the short story I mentioned above. Then I can submit it to beta readers, and move onto the next thing while I wait for their feedback.

Next week, I think I'll finally return to working on the novel. I'd like to take it chapter by chapter, with the goal of finishing one per week. We'll see how it goes.

How about you? How are you measuring success, during the pandemic?

We're halfway through the third week of shelter-in-place here in California.

It's starting to feel almost normal, this staying home and avoiding other people thing. Natural to move aside when walking on the sidewalk to avoid passing within six feet of someone else. Odd to think about leaving the house.

But then I think about going out for coffee and donuts, or driving out to the bookstore, and I remember. What we're doing, and why. And what we're trying to prevent.

I hope you're own stay-at-home is going as well as it can. That you're safe, have enough food, and don't have to worry about being kicked out by your landlord.

Here's a couple more shows to keep your mind occupied while we wait for the viral storm to pass:

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

I didn't want to like this show. True, it's about a programmer, which should immediately draw me in, but it gets everything about being a programmer at a startup wrong, right from the very first episode. It's the equivalent of the lazy "enhance" trick we've seen on too many shows, drawn out into an entire plot point. It rankles me, every time.

And the lead is....let's say bland, shall we? The main character is the least interesting part of the show.

But the rest of the cast is phenomenal, the musical numbers are both weird and fun, and it nails the mix of guilt, hope, and love that comes with caring for a terminally ill family member.

So I've been gritting my teeth through the software-world bits, and enjoying everything else.

Source: Hulu

Birds of Prey

Ok, not a TV show, but have you seen this movie? It's currently battling it out with Thor: Ragnarok in my head for the best superhero movie of the last ten years, and I thought nothing would ever get close to Thor.

It's got goofy comics action -- one scene has Harley shooting people with glitter bombs -- fantastic fight scenes, a crazy sense of humor (wait till you see what Harley will do for a breakfast sandwich), and incredible sets (one scene takes place inside multiple rooms in a fun house).

The cast is phenomenal, with the exception of the kid playing Cassandra Cain (but she's young, so can be forgiven).

My wife and I found ourselves watching it twice in a row one night (the second time with the director's commentary on) and I didn't even mind. It's that good.

Source: Online Rental