Was going to post a review of the latest issue of American Affairs, but I spent all weekend unpacking and running errands, so here's a shot of the view from my completely disorganized and box-filled office this morning:

So the move was...rougher than I expected.

As you can see above, I sliced my head open while unloading stuff into our new garage. It's better now, but at the time we thought I'd need stitches, because it just wouldn't stop bleeding.

(And yes, I went to Urgent Care, but they couldn't see me, because -- and I'm not making this up -- they were overwhelmed with patients coming in prior to the Super Bowl).

We had help moving, but even so it took us all weekend, plus Monday and Tuesday evening, to get everything out of the old place and into the new one. I swear I had no idea how much stuff was crammed into that townhouse.

And now we're unpacking. Or, as I've come to think of it, the "Where the hell are my socks?" phase. Every day is a new hunt for things I used to be able to pinpoint without thinking about.

Oh, and I didn't take any time off after the move. Which in hindsight was maybe a mistake? Given how much we've had to do every night, after work.

As a result of all that, I'm tired, I'm frazzled, and I only got 250 words written this week.

But there's a weekend coming up, and while it'll be full-on unpacking and organizing, all day each day, it'll bring some sense of order to this place. Reduce my cognitive load enough to where I can get back to (writing) work.

I hope.

In fact, the iPad Pro hardware, engineering, and silicon teams are probably the most impressive units at Apple of recent years. The problem is, almost none of the usability or productivity issues with iPads are hardware issues.

It reminded me why I bought an iPad Pro to begin with: The sheer possibilities inherent in such an ultra-portable, powerful device.

But he also hits on everything that makes the iPad so frustrating to actually use. The way it wants to keep everything sequestered and hidden, when to really get some work done on it I need to have access to everything, instantly, and sometimes all at once.

I can get that on a Mac. I can’t on an iPad.

Which is why I disagree with him that the iPad is good for writing. So much of my writing time is actually spent editing, not drafting, and editing is exactly the kind of thing – lots of context switching, needing to see multiple views of the same document at once – iPad’s are terrible at.

I sincerely hope that renaming the operating system “iPadOS” means Apple will start fixing some of these glaring problems with the iPad’s software. It’s just so tragic that the hardware is being held back from its full potential by the OS.

Looking Back

The iPad's 10 years old this month, and so there's a lot of retrospectives going around.

Most of them express a disappointment with it, a sense that an opportunity has been missed.

And they're right. From UI design flaws to bad pricing, the story of the iPad is one of exciting possibilities constantly frustrated.

For my part, I've owned three different iPads over the past few years. I've ended up returning or selling them all, and going back to the Mac.

My current iPad Pro is the one I've had the longest. It's made it a full year as my primary computing device, for writing, reading, and gaming.

But here I am, back typing on my 2014 Mac Mini instead of writing this on the iPad.

So what's making me switch back?

It's All About the Text

For a machine that should be awesome to use as a writer -- it's super-portable, it's always connected to the internet via cell service, it lets me actually touch the words on the screen -- the iPad is very, very frustrating in practice.

Most of that is due to the sheer incompetence of the UI when it comes to manipulating text.

Want to move a paragraph around? Good luck:

• You'll need to tap the screen once, to activate "entering text" mode on whatever application you're in.
• Then you'll need to double-tap, to indicate you want to select some text.
• Then you'll need to move two tiny targets around to select the text you want. Tap anywhere else than exactly on those targets, and you'll leave select-text mode entirely, and have to start over.
• If you should accidentally need to select text that's slightly off-screen, more fool you: once your dragging finger hits the screen edge, it'll start scrolling like crazy, selecting all the text you find. And getting back to the start means lifting your finger off the select area and scrolling, which will kick you out of select-text mode. You've got to start over now.
• Even if all your desired text is on one screen, those tiny endpoints you’re moving can start to stutter and skip around at the end of a paragraph or section of text. You know, exactly where you’d probably want to place them.
• If you should somehow succeed in getting just the text you want selected, you need to move it. Press on the text, but not too firmly, to watch it lift off the screen. Then drag it to where you need it. Try not to need to drag it off the edge of the screen, or you'll get the same coked-out scrolling from before. And don't bother looking for a prompt or anything to indicate where this text is going to end up. Apple expects you to use the Force, young padawan.

That's right. A process that is click-drag-Cmd-c-Cmd-v on a Mac is a multi-step game of Operation that you'll always lose on an iPad.

So I’ve gotten in the habit of writing first drafts on the iPad, and editing them on the Mac.

But that assumes iCloud is working.

iCloud: Still Crazy After All These Years

Most of the writing apps on the iPad have switched to using iCloud to sync preferences, folder structure, tags, and the documents themselves.

Makes sense, right? Use the syncing service underlying the OS.

Except it doesn't always work.

I've had docs vanish. I've popped into my iPhone to type a few notes in an existing doc, then waited days for those same notes to show up in the document on my iPad.

iOS 13 made all this worse, by crippling background refresh. So instead of being able to look down and see how many Todos I have left to do, or Slack messages waiting for me, I have to open all these applications, one by one, to get them to refresh. It's like the smartphone dark ages.

Since my calendars, email, etc aren't getting refreshed correctly, my writing doesn't either. I tell you, nothing makes me want to throw my iPad across the room more than knowing a freaking block of text is there in a doc because I can see it on my iPhone but it hasn't shown up in the iPad yet. Because not only do I not have those words there to work with, but if I make the assumption that I can continue editing the thing before sync completes, I'm going to lose the other words entirely.

But there's Dropbox, you say. Yes, Dropbox works. But Dropbox is slow, the interface is clunky, and their stance on privacy is...not great.

You Still Can't Code On It

I'm a multi-class programmer/writer. I write words and code. I need a machine that does both.

The iPad has been deliberately crippled, though, so no matter how fast they make the chip inside, it'll never be able to do the most basic task of computing: Allow the user to customize it.

You can't write iOS software on an iPad. You can't write a little python script and watch it execute. You can't learn a new programming language on an iPad by writing code and seeing what it does to the machine.

You can't even get a proper terminal on it.

You're locked out of it, forever.

And that's the ultimate tragedy of the iPad. Not that the UI was broken, or the original Apple pricing for its software was wrong.

It's that its users aren't allowed to take it to its full potential.

Because that's what it needs. Users have to be able to fix the things that are broken, in whatever creative way they see fit, for a piece of technology to become revolutionary.

And they have to be able to do it right there, on the device, without having to invest thousands of dollars in a different machine that can run the bloated thing XCode has become.

It's that barrier, that huge NO painted across the operating system, that ultimately frustrates me about the iPad. Because it doesn't have to be there. It was designed and built deliberately, to keep us out.

As I'd hoped, I was able to write some more over the weekend last week, and boost my total word count to 1,724.

So the fact that I've only got 1,121 words written so far this week is ok.

Especially now that I'm at the point where I'm mostly editing chapters again, instead of drafting new ones to fill in gaps. Easier to comb through a chapter for continuity errors than write the first draft containing said errors.

So I'm 13 chapters from being done! And 10 of those are already first drafts, so they just need editing passes to bring them in line with the rest of the book: a continuity pass, a blocking pass (to check that the setting, and the characters' movements within it, is consistent), and a dialog pass (to make sure each character speaks like themselves).

Let's say I'm able to finish 3 chapters a week. That might be ambitious given my schedule, but it means I could be basically done by March.

Done. As in, "let's send this out to beta readers" done. As in, "you can work on something else now," done.

That would feel...fantastic. I hope I can pull it off.

What about you? How far along are you in your current work? Can you see the light at the end, or are you still in the long dark of the tunnel? And how do you persuade yourself to keep going, when in that dark?

We don't really talk about the dangers of monopoly in the United States anymore.

We praise it, if we're VCs investing in start-ups.

We acknowledge a history of it, safely confined to a long-gone Gilded Age.

But we don't discuss how much it dominates our current economy, or how much damage it does.

Which is strange, because fighting monopoly should be one thing the Right and the Left can agree on.

The Right should fight monopoly because it leads to giant corporations that centralize control of the economy. And centralized control -- whether in the form of an unelected Politburo, or an unelected Board of Directors -- should be one of the Right's worst fears.

The Left should fight monopoly because it concentrates power in the hands of owners and financial gamblers at the expense of workers. When the company you're trying to unionize against doesn't have any competitors, and controls billions of dollars of assets, it can afford to wait out any strike, or hire enough scabs to stay in business. And it's harder to organize across not just multiple states, but multiple countries, to ensure a strike even gets off the ground.

Notice I didn't say anything about consumers. It turns out our obsession with consumer rights (and low prices) has crippled our ability to talk about the rights of producers, of the workers and small-businesspeople that should rightfully be the backbone of our economy. It's left us defenseless against the new monopolies in our midst, that charge less not because of some "economy of scale" but because they have access to enough capital to underbid everyone else.

Think of Amazon, and how it spent decades without turning any kind of profit, all while its stock rose and rose. Would any normal business have been allowed to do that? Any sane business? No. Amazon was allowed to pursue its monopoly, and won it.

But I didn't see any of this until after reading Matt Stoller's book.

I felt some of it, sure. In the way Silicon Valley companies chased advertising dollars instead of solving real problems. In how Uber and Amazon set their prices artificially low, specifically to drive their competitors out of the market, and got praised for it.

And in the way I've come to look at running my own business as some kind of crazy dream, instead of the normal out-growth of a career spent in engineering.

Stoller's given me a framework, and a history, to understand all of this. How we used to enforce anti-trust laws that would have stopped Facebook from buying out all of its competition, or Amazon from driving local bookstores out of business. How the financial markets used to exist to enable small businesses to get off the ground, not pour money into multinational behemoths that crushed them.

And how it all funnels money and power up the food chain, leading to today's rampant inequality and distorted economy.

If you have any interest in economic justice, whether as a devoted capitalist or a socialist or just a plain liberal, I'd recommend reading Goliath. Stoller's book restores the lost history of American anti-trust, placing us back in a historical context of the long fight between centralized control and distributed power.

It's the one book I've read about recent events that's given me hope.

Because we cut down the Goliaths once. We can do so again.

Only 947 words written so far this week.

I'm not worried though; first because I've got the weekend coming, and I should be able to crank out another 600 words, either tonight or tomorrow.

But also because I've been working every day, even if that hasn't produced any words. I've been outlining, and drawing up maps, and planning out blocking for scenes that need it.

So I've been making progress every day, at least. Keeping the story fresh in my mind, so when it is time to spin out the words, it's not so intimidating.

What about you? Do you give yourself credit for all the work that happens around the writing, and if so, how?

I was raised by racists.

Not cross-burners and Klan members, but racists all the same.

My mother sat my sister and I down when we were in middle-school, telling us not to date anyone outside our race. She posed it as a problem of us being "accepted as a couple," but the message was clear.

My older cousins would crack one-liners about the noise a chainsaw makes when you start it up being "Run n-----, n-----, run." They thought it was hilarious.

The joke books my parents bought me when I showed an interest in comedy never mentioned Latinos, only "Mexicans," and only when they were the butt of the joke, sometimes being thrown from airplanes by virtuous (read "white") Texans.

When I grew older, I rejected this casual racism, just as I rejected my family's religion and their politics. I thought I was free of prejudice. I thought my generation would grow up and replace the older racists in charge. That it was only a matter of time before racism was over.

Then Barack Obama was elected President. My wife and I watched the returns come in together, excited to see it happen. A Democrat back in office. And a black man. We'd done it!

Only we hadn't. My family's racism went from casual to angry. Their party turned, too, going from dog-whistling Dixie to embracing white nationalists.

Taking a knee at a ball game became an act of utmost disrespect, because a black man did it. A Republican Governor's plan for decreasing health care costs became "death panels," because a black man embraced it.

It blindsided me, this vitriol. I wasn't prepared for it, didn't know how to handle it.

Of course, minorities had always known it was there. They'd been living it, their whole lives.

So I've been trying to listen more. Both in person, and by seeking out books that will teach me.

Here's three I've read recently that have shaken me out of my complacency, and showed me some of the structure of American racism. A structure I hadn't been able to see before, because it was never meant to hold me in.

Just millions of my fellow citizens.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The book that first opened my eyes to the constraints and the artificiality of "white" and "black." Powerfully, movingly written, it showed me how the American conception of race has been used to divide and oppress.

It also pushed me to question my own whiteness, and to look back to a time when I would not have been considered "white." My family's Irish and Blackfoot; for most of American history I would have been excluded from "white" society.

That doesn't mean I have any special insight into what African-Americans have been through and continue to experience. Rather, it taught me that whiteness or blackness has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with power and hierarchy. It is, fundamentally, about perpetuating injustice.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

I've written about this one before, and the effect it had on me.

Before reading it, I had no idea just how lucky I was to have gone through life without ending up in jail. That I didn't, even though I was raised poor, is not a testament to my behavior, but an indicator of my acceptance as "white" by American society.

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo

A hard book to read, but a necessary one. Breaks down the reasons why even well-meaning "white" people like me get defensive and lash out if their racism is called out.

It's hard to write that sentence, to own the fact that though I consider all people to be equal, and don't consiously hold any prejudice, there are things I will do and say that will hurt and offend people. And that while I cannot prevent the fact that I will make mistakes, I must be open to having those mistakes called out, and be willing to be better.

It's the hardest lesson for me to learn. Because it's one thing to have your eyes opened to the bad behavior of others. Another to realize that you're part of the problem, and if you don't become more aware, and less defensive, it's not going to get better.

Only 500 words written this week.

The impending move (and sale + purchase) has absorbed most of my available head space. Every day there's been more paperwork to fill out, more historical information I need to sift through, more obstacles to clear.

I've been able to work on a new short story, outlining and sketching out dialog, but that's all. No progress on the novel, no revisions to other short stories...Nothing.

But today I should, finally, knock out the last few forms until closing day. And for closing, all I have to do is show up :)

So I'm hoping to do some catch-up writing this weekend, and have a head clear enough to get back on my regular schedule next week.

What about you? How do you manage to keep your writing going in the middle of a stressful event like a move?

A frustrating and ultimately disappointing book, with some flashes of insight.

Let's start with the good things.

Chua's argument that US foreign policy often operates blind to ethnic tensions in other countries, which leads to horrible mistakes, is spot-on. The chapters looking back at past conflicts through that lens are informative; I never realized there was a racial element in the Vietnam war, for example (most of the wealth of the country was controlled by an ethnic-Chinese minority, before the war). And I didn't realize how much the Taliban are an ethnic group (majority come from one tribe) rather than purely a religious movement.

She also has some good points to make about how tribalism operates in the US, with each group feeling attacked on a daily basis.

But her prescription for fixing things boils down to "talk to each other," because she's also missed some fundamental things in her analysis.

Over and over again, she talks about the "historically homogeneous" countries of Europe and East Asia, contrasting them with the "unique" experience of the United States as "the world's only supergroup."

Never mind that no country is, or has ever been, ethnically homogeneous. Never mind that ethnicity itself is, like race, an invented concept, something we pulled out of a hat and pretended was real.

And never mind that the US is not unique in being a society made up of immigrants plus an oppressed aboriginal population.

So she can't say more than "we should talk to each other," because she has no sense of how every "ethnic state" was created by violence and death. That Germany (!) was not ripe for post-war democracy through some accident of ethnic purity, but was purged of other groups deliberately by the country's government and people. That even the concept of being "German" or "French" or "Chinese" is an invented thing, something hammered into people by a government that wanted them to stop being Provençal or Bavarians or Hmong.

And that the United States has never been a peaceful supergroup, but a vehicle for a group of people that call themselves "white" to ethnically cleanse and oppress all others. The "good old days" of "group blindness" she pines for in the final chapters never existed.

So she can't see ethnicity itself as the problem, because she takes it as a given, a fixed construct. A solution where we break down the concepts of "white" and "black" into their components, or ditch them altogether to adopt identities built around our cities and states, can't even be conceived in her framework.

Which is too bad, because her book is otherwise well-argued. We need her type of analysis, to be sure, but we also need more awareness of history, of how the divisions we take to be absolute today were invented, and can be remade.

As we roll into the second week of 2020, I'm taking some time to look at where I am, writing-career-wise, and where I want to be at the end of this year.

2019 in the Rear View

In 2019, I did finally achieve one goal of mine: I got a short story accepted for publication.

Not published, yet, but accepted, at least. And that's something I couldn't say before.

I didn't finish the edits to the current novel, though, like I wanted. My internal deadline slipped from October 31st, to November 31st, to Dec 31st, and still I didn't make it.

So one win and one miss? Or one win and one delayed victory?

I'm going to work to make it the latter.

To that end, I'm adopting the following three writing goals for this year:

Four Short Stories

Maberry proposed this one at the last Writers Coffeehouse, and I think I'm going to adopt it.

It means one short story every three months, which seems doable. One month to draft, one month to solicit feedback, another to edit it into shape.

To that end, I've already started noodling on a new story. It's an idea I've been chewing on for a few months, looking for the right angle. I've decided to just go ahead and write it, dammit, because sometimes the best way to know what a story's about is to write it down.

Finish the Current Novel

And when I say finish, I mean finish. Edited, reviewed by beta readers, edited again, and polished as much as possible.

I want to be realistic, and not pick a date mid-year for finishing, this time. Progress on the book has been slow, so far. I'd rather be finished early, and not have stressed about it, then worry myself about a deadline that's only in my head.

So I'll aim to be done by December 1st. I'm again stealing the date from Maberry, whose reasoning is that if you finish by December 1st, you can spend all of December partying (instead of working your way through the holidays). Sounds like a good plan to me :)

Post More

Beyond writing fiction, I'd like to post more on this blog and on Twitter. Both to interact more with you, dear readers, and also to work on my essay skills.

Looking ahead a year or two, I'd like to be writing essays at a level I could sell. To get there, I'll need to practice.

So, more blog posts: movie reviews, book reviews, and the occasional counter-point to articles I come across.

1,774 words written this week. Managed to hit my writing goal most days, and surpass it once or twice.

I'm trying out a new schedule, where I sit down to write for 30 minutes each day, between walking the pups and doing my morning jog. It's earlier than before, and pre-shower (thinking in the shower being my traditional way of resolving tricky plot problems).

But somehow, doing it before anything else is helping me. Like I can go on my jog and let my mind wander again, instead of trying to force it to think about the novel.

The words come a bit easier too, because I know I'm going to sit for a given block of time, and there's not going to be any interruptions.

Granted, I'm still using tricks to get things done, like focusing on just one tiny part of the story at a time, or doing scenes piecemeal (first dialog, then blocking and description, then thoughts/reactions). But it seems to be working, for now, at least.

What about you? Have you tried changing when you set aside time to write, to see if different times of the day (or night) make it easier to put words to page?

I read a lot of writing advice. Books, blog posts, twitter feeds, you name it.

I know it won't all work for me. But how else can I improve my craft, other than trying new things, and seeing how it comes out?

So here's four techniques I tried out last year (or carried over from 2018) that have stuck with me, and that I'll be using a lot in 2020.

One-Inch Picture Frame

Source: Anne Lamott

My current go-to technique. When I'm sitting at the keyboard and the words won't come, and I think this is it, my imagination's run dry and I'll never finish another story, I reach for this.

The idea is simple, and powerful in the way few simple ideas are: Instead of worrying about writing the chapter, or writing the scene, I focus on writing only one little piece of the scene. Just describe how she feels after getting caught in a lie. Describe how he looks at his old room differently, now that he's been away from home for ten years.

Drill down into something very specific, and write just that. Nothing more.

The narrowed focus lets me relax a little. Because I can't write a chapter anymore, oh no, and I can't write a scene, that's for sure, but I can write how it feels to see someone you love after thinking they were dead. I can do that

And once that's done, once I've really described everything in my one-inch picture frame properly, I look up and I've already hit my daily word count goal.

Tracking Word Count Score

Source: Scott Sigler

This one's a carry-over. Sigler first laid out his points system for tracking word counts at a Writers Coffeehouse in 2018. I tried it out then, and it got me back on track to finish the first draft of my current novel.

Since then, I've kept using it: 1 point for each first draft word, 1/2 point for each word gone over in the first editing pass, 1/3 for the third, etc.

It's helped me feel productive in cases where I wouldn't, like revising a short story I finished months ago, to get it to the point where I can submit it to magazines. And it's pushed me to keep writing until I hit that daily word count, and relax when I do so, because I know by hitting it, I'm working steadily towards my larger goals.

Showing Emotion and Thoughts Instead of Telling

Source: Chuck Palahniuk

I was really skeptical of this one. He wrote it up in a post for LitReactor, and it's couched in language that's self-confident to the point of being arrogant.

But he's right. Switching from using language like "she was nervous" to "She looked away, and bit her lip. The fingers of her right hand started drumming a quick beat on her thigh, tap-tap-tap," is a huge improvement. It's pushed me to think more about how each of my characters expresses themselves in unique ways, and given me the tools to show that uniqueness to the reader.

Scatter and Fill

Source: V.E. Schwab

Schwab's twitter feed is a fantastic one to follow for writing advice. She's very honest about the struggles she faces, and how much guilt she feels over being such a slow writer.

But the brilliant results (in her books) speak for themselves!

In one of her posts, she talked about how when writing a novel, she doesn't write it in any sort of order. She'll fill in some dialog in one scene, then a set description in another, and then action in a third. She gradually fills in the work, like painting a canvas, where every brush stroke counts and adds up to the final product.

I've always felt compelled to write in strict order, start to finish. So reading this technique works for her was very liberating for me. I still usually write in order, but now if I'm finding it hard to get motivated, I'll skip around. Write down some dialog that comes to me, or an action or two. Sometimes I can hit my daily word goal this way, and sometimes it just primes the pump so I can fill in the rest. Either way, it gets me around my mental block, and lets me make progress.

First Coffeehouse for the new year! And the last one in Mysterious Galaxy's current space. They're moving towards the end of this month, to a rental with (I hear) even more meeting room space.

My notes are below. Thanks again to Jonathan Maberry and Henry Herz for hosting!

Marketing Yourself

• put your credentials — certified electrician, lawyer, martial arts expert — out there for people to find when doing research or organizing panels at cons; you’d be surprised at what other writers want to know about

Upcoming Events

• comicfest in march, smaller comic con
• wondercon in april

Getting Better at Writing Comics

• read lots of comics, pay attention to the storytelling, read comic scripts (find online, including on maberry’s website
• booths are comic-con are staffed almost entirely by editors and editorial assistants; talk to them, trade business cards, but don’t bring a script, they don’t want it

Pitching

• when pitching, and wanting to tell the target audience, don’t say “adults from 35-45”, say “fans of stephen king’s salem’s lot”

State of the Weird West Genre

• with short stories, you’ve got a shot. novels, you’re almost definitely going small press, and you’re probably going to struggle to earn out

Coming Soon: Writing Workshops

• once mysterious galaxy moves, will be doing workshops at the new location: fight and action scenes, children’s books, comic books

Character Description Tips

• old action movie trick: give a bad-ass character something to hold in their hands, like a cup of coffee, so they don’t look dangerous (until they punch someone in the face), the contrast works
• can get more mileage out of describing what a character wears rather than their specific physical appearance (because the clothes show character, but the hair color, eye color, etc, does not)

Setting Writing Goals for the Year

• likes 90 days, 6 months, the year, but also 5 and 10 year plans
• Maberry sets daily writing goal based on a week’s worth of actual writing; finds the average and halves it, then uses that as the daily goal, everything past that is bonus; pays himself for every day he hits his goal, can only use that money for fun
• allows himself business days off when knows in advance (ex: knee surgery, spending all day in business meetings in LA)
• build your schedule for mental health and comfort, not pushing yourself to the limit all the time
• good to have a few projects at once, because writer’s burnout is real; can feel like writer’s block but happens if you’ve been working on the same novel/project for too long (for example, when you don’t bang out a novel in 3-5 months, but years)
• after daily goals, have project goals, and make them realistic too; maberry’s first novel took him 3.5 years to write and revise
• first draft and the revision process should not be part of the same plan, because they’re different sides of being a writer; the first draft just needs to get the story out, and be mildly entertaining and coherent, it really only needs to done
• stephen king’s carrie was a terrible first draft, that he almost threw out, but his wife saved it and made him revise it (6 times) until it was ready to go out
• the person who revises the book needs to be unemotional about the book; because we can see so much that needs fixing that we come to hate the book or lose faith in the book
• trick: when writing a book in a year, break up the project into 11 parts (not 12!) and set the goal of having that first draft done by december 1st (so you can spend december partying)
• careful with the rolling draft (write some and then revise some), because the storytelling mind and the editing mind are not friends! they can barely talk to each other. going back and forth for the same project is hard
• writing down the bones: good book on writing craft
• revising requires more writing craft chops than writing; should do some research first, learn how to revise from others then go about revising
• revision strategy: unique character identities, making sure each character sounds different, moves and acts differently
• one pass character identity, one pass character voice, one pass character arcs, one pass making sure protagonist is interesting, one pass for story chronology, pass on figurative and descriptive language (reads poetry now before writing any prose, to help his linguistic imagination), one pass on the logic of the story (which can mean checking or redoing his research), optional pass on POV consistency, very last pass is how much he can cut out of it
• short story goals: write four new stories, revise them, send them out by the end of the year (that’s one drafted and done every three months)
• if revising a novel this year, decide in advance when you’re going to submit it; don’t plan on sending it from mid-november to early january, because no one is going to read it, they’re all on vacation or at office parties or with family
• other goals: 3 years from now? want to be published! your novel (maybe not the one you’re working on now) sold to a publishing house
• 10 year goal: put things on there that are beyond your ken and your skill, then start looking for and doing the things that could get you there

Social Media Tips

• for social media, two guidelines: don’t be a negative jerk, and post consistently (even if it’s just once a day)
• the three platforms to be on: facebook, instagram, twitter; set it up so you can cross-post from one to the other
• will save up links and quotes and youtube videos in a list and post them when he has nothing to say for that day
• interactive posts: what are you working on? what do you think of this new show? i need a playlist for this book, here are the elements of the plot, what would you suggest?

Happy New Year! I hope you achieved your writing goals in 2019, and work your way to new heights of craft in 2020.

For myself, I feel like there were several highs: getting my first short story accepted for publication, attending my first writers conference, and discovering the score-keeping method I've been using to push my writing forward.

But also several lows. In fact, 2019 ended on a low for me, with me dreading each writing session, and my 300-word daily goal frequently out of reach. Writing has felt more like drawing blood, recently, than making art or even normal work. I've not been blocked, so much as completely demotivated.

I'm trying to push through, though. Forcing myself to write the 300 words, each day. Even when they feel pointless, when it seems I'll never finish this novel. I fear I'll still be working on it next year, grinding away at something that I might not be able to sell, in the end.

Not a heartening way to start the year, maybe. But I wrote 2,148 words this week, step by step. I'm using Anne Lamott's one-inch-frame technique, to narrow my focus down to the point where I can write something. It's working, so far. I am, slowly, making progress.

What about you? What are your writing goals for 2020? And when your inspiration is running low, what do you do to fill it back up?

Only a measly 300 words written this week.

I can blame the time change (from East Coast back to West Coast hours). I can blame the stress of getting back into the day job after a week off.

But really, it's just been hard pushing the words out this week.

Hard even to carve out time in the day to do it. I know, I know, that's a perennial excuse, but it's true: some days, it's damn hard to find even thirty minutes where my brain isn't mush and I'm not rushing off to do something else.

So I'm hoping to find some time today, and each day this weekend, so I can at least finish out the week with 1,500 words done.

I feel like I'm going to have to reconsider my schedule soon, though, and drop something from it to make room for writing. Only, I don't what I could possibly let go of.

How about you? What do you do, when you feel your writing time slipping away? How do you claw it back?

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're on the East Coast this year, doing what's become a bit of a tradition for us: Crashing someone else's Thanksgiving :)

We stay with friends of ours in Maryland that we've known for the better part of two decades, and spend the week hanging out with them. I usually make a detour up to Boston to see some other good friends of mine, but I make sure I'm back time for turkey.

Thankfully, travel this time doesn't mean a loss of writing time. Though I've fallen off the wagon a bit these past few weeks, this week, at least, I've managed to keep up. So: 2,112 words written towards the new novel.

...which is a little less than I'd like, given how much time I've spent on trains these past few days, with nothing else to do but type. But I'm finding this last third of the book tricky to navigate. I'm having to pause more and think things through, making notes on different possibilities before picking one and writing it out.

It's not a bad thing, per se, but it does mean progress feels slow. I'm telling myself that I'll make up for it later, when I'm able to drop in whole chapters from the first draft, instead of rewriting them from scratch.

If you did NaNoWriMo this month, I hope you're close to the finish line. If you didn't, I hope your current work-in-progress is going well.

For everyone, I hope you're going into the final month of 2019 doing the one thing that is necessary for progress in this craft: writing!

3,026 words written this week.

Most of those are on the novel, but about a third are edits on the short story I wrote back at the SoCal Writers Conference in September.

Reading the story now, I think I like it more than I did before. Not necessarily the language the story's told in; I can see plot holes and awkward phrasing. But the story itself: The characters and the setting, how the protagonist's heart gets broken, and how she pieces herself back together. That's what I'm in love with.

A good sign, maybe? Certainly it motivates me to finish, to edit and polish the story until it's the best version I can produce.

But it also means I might miss flaws in the telling. I have to beware of liking my own voice too much, instead of the voices of the characters.

How do you balance being critical of the work versus liking it enough to keep going? Do you tend to err on the side of hatred, or do you fall too much in love with your work?

Is there anything better than opening a book to find the author is speaking directly to you? It's like discovering an old friend you've never met before. Someone you just click with, who warms every cockle of your old heart.

That's what I felt, reading Bird by Bird.

Lamott's willing to be vulnerable, to show not only her worries and her fears, but also her jealousies and her anger, her depression and her rage. It makes the book feel more human, to me, than other writing advice books. More humble.

And more realistic. Lamott insists over and over again that writing is wonderful, that when the words come together it's one of the greatest joys she's ever known, but that doing the work needs to be enough on its own, because publishing -- whether getting rejected repeatedly, or getting accepted and dealing with the disappointment that comes when your work doesn't get the attention you crave -- is not the path to happiness for a writer.

So for her, it's the triumph of getting in the day's word count that matters. Or the knowledge that the book you wrote for your dying father was done before they passed, so they got to read it. Or the thought that writing about your own struggles, your own pain, can help someone else who's going through the same thing.

For me, her book has been like a stay in a remote cabin with a good friend. Relaxing, conversational, but also deep and moving. I've already incorporated a lot of the techniques she advocates, from focusing on getting one single thing down to staying in the chair until the words come.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

I think I've written myself into a corner this week.

I'm working on a scene where I want to have one character drop a particularly important piece of information. It's something that changes the dynamic of the scene -- from fight to negotiation -- and sets the stage for a partnership that runs through the rest of the novel.

The trouble is, I've gone out of my way earlier in the book to insist she doesn't remember anything related to this dramatic, juicy, bit of info.

So I'm in a bit of a bind. Do I try to find some awkward way to shoehorn in why she might remember this bit but not anything else?

Or should I go back and rewrite the parts where she doesn't remember, and change it so that she does? And deal with the ripple effects that'll cause?

I'm hoping my subconscious is working on the problem, and will present me with a solution soon. I really don't want to have to rewrite those other scenes, here when I'm so close to finishing this draft.

What do you do, when you realize the needs of the story -- the drama, or the tension -- are pushing you to change parts of the plot?

2,477 words written this week.

I'm going full-steam-ahead on the novel, closing in on the last dozen scenes or so I need to write to finish it out.

Each new scene, I still think to myself "I don't know if I can do this." But if I just sit there long enough, staring at the screen, and refuse to budge, or to look away, the words will come.

They may not be the right words, or good ones. But they're progress, the raw material I can use later to shape the story.

Pushing ahead on the novel means I'm not going back and revising the short stories I wrote over the Writers Conference weekend. That bothers me, but I'm honestly not sure how to do both. Perhaps once I finish this novel draft, I can pause and revise the short stories before plunging back into the book for another editing pass?

What about you? How do you balance multiple projects? Or, like me, do you find it hard to switch between different works?

Thank goodness for the Writers Coffeehouse.

Went this Sunday, after skipping for a few months. Jonathan Maberry again led a fantastic discussion, plus Q&A. He gave us a rundown on options vs production deals, persistence in the face of discouragement, and told us some new markets opening up that we might not have considered before.

And he also gave me great advice about my nervousness with the magazine that I hadn't heard from since acceptance: Send them an email.

Yeah, it seems simple in hindsight. But what would I say? How would I ask the question on my mind?

He gave me a few examples of things to say, and insisted it was not too early (or too late!) to want to hear from them.

So I followed his advice. Sent the email, after rewriting it three different times, trying to avoid coming off too flippant or too formal or too needy.

And I got a response within an hour that cleared everything up.

I feel silly for not writing earlier. It was such a non-deal, and I felt so much better afterwards.

So much so, that I've already written 2,208 words this week, and I've still got the weekend :)

What about you? Has there been something you've been nervous about doing as part of your writing -- whether sending it off for review, or reading it to a critique group, or emailing an agent -- that turned out to be nowhere near as big a deal as you thought it'd be?

It's difficult to think of myself as privileged.

Growing up, our family car was one donated to us by the local church, because we couldn't afford one.

The only house we could afford was one at the very end of a dirt road so badly cut out of the weeds that the school bus wouldn't go down it, so I had to walk a mile or so to where the dirt track met a farm road.

I always started the school year with sore feet, because we couldn't buy new clothes for me, and last year's sneakers, once so roomy, were now so tight that I couldn't run in them, lest my arches feel like they were breaking.

But I was privileged, even though I didn't know it at the time.

When I was 16, and walking home from work after midnight, the cops didn't stop and frisk me. They didn't arrest me for breaking curfew. They didn't demand proof of the job that kept me out, proof I could not have provided right then, in the dark, on the street.

Instead, they drove me home.

When I was in college, smoking weed in a parked car, the police didn't come up on me in the night, rip me from the vehicle, and put me away for possession and intention to distribute.

And as an adult now, if I change lanes without signaling, or do a California Roll through a stop sign, I don't have to worry about the police doing anything more than giving me a ticket, if they even decide to pull me over.

If any of these things had happened to me, my life would have been derailed. My job working for the federal government could not have happened. I would not have been able to finish college. I would have been branded a criminal, and locked out of the upward mobility I've experienced.

I have been privileged, then, because I have been allowed to succeed.

But millions of Americans with a skin color different from mine are not allowed. And it's something that was invisible to me, until very recently.

I didn't know that the police have the power to stop and frisk anyone they even suspect of being engaged in illegal drug activity. That they can give the most implausible of reasons to search someone, or their car, or their luggage, without a warrant. And that given this immense power, they choose to use it not on the majority of criminals who are of European descent, but on African- and Hispanic-Americans.

It frightens me, to think of how lucky I was not to be caught up in the Drug War. And it worries me, to see the same excuses that have been used for thirty years to lock up millions of African-Americans now turned onto those trying to enter this country in search of a better life for their families: They're branded criminals, stripped of rights because they supposedly came in "the wrong way," told they're "jumping the line" and have only themselves to blame for the hardships they face once they're here.

It's lies, all of it, and it breaks my heart that my own family, who in a different century would have been the subject of the same lies, swallows them whole.

If this conception of privilege surprises you, if you know that most criminals are dark-skinned but think poverty is to blame, or if you think justice in the United States is in any way color-blind, then I urge you to read this book.

The New Jim Crow is not a polemic. It is not a screed. It is a well-research, well-written account of how we've given the police enormous powers in the name of winning the Drug War, and they've turned them on the most vulnerable and most oppressed segment of our society. It's essential reading, especially as we enter a new election cycle and debate what sort of government we want.

I’d heard that the bubble of elation you feel when you first have something accepted for publication doesn’t last long.

I only half-believed it, of course. Surely I would be different, my expectations set better, my heart both more and less trusting.

Because if one acceptance happened, couldn’t another? And another? And even if rejection came, wouldn’t that one acceptance be enough to keep me going?

Turns out the answer is no, no, and nope.

I’d had a story out to one magazine for a good while – close to three months – and as the time stretched out without getting a rejection notice, I began to hope. The acceptance of another story just made that hope bigger, and my dreams with it: What if all the stories I had out currently got accepted? What if I was able to join SFWA this year, all in a rush, with three stories that I’ve spent years working on all getting accepted in a short window of time?

But the rejection came yesterday, and my little bubble of hope popped with it.

Now I feel like half a success, half a failure. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard nothing from the magazine that’s accepted a story since that acceptance; no signed contract, no payment, nothing. So even that success feels ghostly, as if one strong wind could blow it away, and I’d be back where I started. Unpublished. Always-rejected.

I’m telling myself to be patient. That the only thing I can control is the writing, so I’d better damn well do that part.

And it does comfort me, a little, that I wrote 2,223 words this week. I’m back to making good progress on the novel, and I’ve got two stories to edit into shape before sending them out into the world.

Chances are they’ll probably be rejected, too. But I can’t control that. What I can do is write another story, then another, and keep writing. Keep improving. And keep submitting.

One story got through. I can keep writing until another one does, too.

Wrote 2,559 words this week!

I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing daily, or nearly-daily, and it’s paying off. Even though I only wrote 1,400 words at the Tuesday write-in, I put in some time after work Monday and Thursday to push over the 2,500 mark.

Most of that work’s been on the short story I started last Friday, at the Writers Conference. It was supposed to be a flash piece, in and out quick, but it’s turned into a full 3,000-word story.

And it might get longer. I compressed a lot of time towards the end, fitting years of change into a few paragraphs. Those might have to be uncompressed in order to feel like a more natural ending. So it might grow another one- to two-thousand words.

But that’s a problem for later, after I’ve let the story sit for a week or two. Then I can be a bit more objective.

For now, it’s back to the novel. I’m in the middle third of the book, when characters start colliding against each other on their way to the blowout before the third act.

And I’m still getting ideas for things that might need to change. Not minor things, like how a character speaks. Major things, like entire plot points and character motivations.

I’m unsure whether they’re good ideas, though, so I’m just taking notes on them for now. Once this draft is done, I’ll have another look at them and pick and choose which changes to make.

Until then, it’s forward. Ever forward.