aroslav: Blog

It's October 31-Samhain. Or perhaps you call it Halloween. Fifteen years ago, I coined the term HalloNaNoWeen. Yes, it's the day before National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) begins. And I am waiting for midnight!

That's the tough part. Waiting. Over the past week, since finishing the first draft of Team Manager COACH!, I've been trying not to sit down and start writing my new novel. Instead, I've written some 8,783 words of "notes", including a timeline and event history, sample voice scenes, historical events and personages, what gods and goddesses Bob will interact with, and what it means to be a demon.

All in preparation to begin writing Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon.

And that isn't all the preparation. With the help of a different Bob (a fan here on SOL), I now have a Discord server with channels open for discussion and author interaction. You can join other fans and me there. I'll post the link in my next blog post, so scroll up to see it. Blog posts don't appear in the regular news feed if they include a link.

I'm hoping my Sausage Grinder patrons are preparing, as well. They get to see everything I write as soon as I can get it to them-at least weekly. In the case of Bob's Memoir, they'll get a daily link to what I've written on this story each day in November. It's raw, messy, unedited, and sometimes surprisingly fun! The first post will come out sometime tomorrow evening, Pacific Time.

The NaNoWriMo site says that during my past seventeen years of writing a novel or two every November, I've accumulated 1,922,298 words. I plan to tip the wordometer over the 2 million mark this month. If I can only wait long enough start writing.

Maybe I'll put on my top hat and go stroll through the Fremont Experience this evening to walk between the worlds and look at the costumes! Or I might even do laundry. Waiting is really hard!

Reader Bob-a different person entirely from Bob the Demon I'll be writing about in November (I think)-is helping me set up a Discord server so I'll be able to chat in a forum regarding stories, writing, or my current travels. (Today, that puts me in Winnemucca, Nevada where I've spent the weekend overeating Basque food.)

I don't yet know or understand how it all works, but Bob is helping me with things like categories, channels, roles, and levels. I have no idea yet what any of those terms mean, but I'm determined to find out. This is the twenty-first century, after all. I know several other writers on SOL have Discord servers and carry on discussions with fans and patrons. I should be there!

I expect to get to Las Vegas on Friday sometime and hope my site is better than what I ended up at in Winnemucca. My reservation, filled out for one RV park, was hijacked by another. There was no way to get it changed that I was willing to put up with. I just wanted someplace to sit and write for a couple of days while I ran to various Basque restaurants to eat my fill. Delicious!

I've been busy writing the concluding chapters of Team Manager COACH! (I think I have two to go) and making notes for the 30-day blitz writing of Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon in November. I'm having a "good time" figuring out how long a trip it is from Girsu to Babylon and whether Cyprus is on the way to Athens. Coordinating a historical timeline in twenty or thirty different parts of the world with a fantasy character's timeline and the map of his travels is proving complex and confusing. (Wait! How did he get to India?) Especially since Bob doesn't always remember what location came first, second, and third, or which country had the best wine. That is usually the country he forgot because he was drunk most of the time.

I'm coupling that with a few features that I'm blatantly borrowing from famous writers-usually with my own twist added to it. Take for instance, the infinity room. I'm pretty sure I remember a similar pocket of some sort from a Heinlein story, and I know Harry Potter's Hermione had a bag she kept more in than the bag could possibly hold. And of course, there are the bottles that genies supposedly live in. My twist is that Bob creates the room for all the books he collects. But having books, he also needs to build a library in the infinity room so all the books are neatly stored. A library needs librarians, so he has to convince some librarians to live in his infinity room. If they are going to live there, they need houses, stores, food, restaurants, crops, animals, and wives. And those all need other people to tend to the work. And it all needs to fit in a neat little satchel that Bob can close the flap of and carry as he flees town ahead of a jealous husband determined to get his wife back. And don't rattle the bottles in the wine cellar!

Welcome to the wonderful world of a happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon named Bob!

My writing project for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. (Sausage Grinder tier patrons will see the story unfold daily in November as I post the raw, unedited words pouring forth from my head.)

Let's all hope it's going as smoothly as possible. I'm actually writing this post on Friday, 10/15. My schedule at the moment is to get essential groceries today and get packed. All my clothes are in the dryer. Dinner with the family late tonight. Saturday bright and early I'm headed back to camp in Idaho.

But I won't be alone! My daughter has decided she wants to "see where Dad lives." She traveled across the state with me, followed by her mother, who are both here at Sun Meadow and about ready for breakfast. In a little bit, they'll take off for home and I'll hitch up the new trailer and head south for the winter.

It's a light travel day compared to what many people do when they travel with a trailer. A lot of RVers drive 500 miles in a day. Not this old man! It's about 190 miles from Sun Meadow to Wildhorse Casino & RV Resort near Pendleton, OR.

I'll spend Monday writing and tinkering in the trailer to make sure everything is riding smoothly and securely. Then Tuesday, I'll continue south to Homedale, Idaho. I'll spend two nights there, camped by the Snake River. That's 195 miles.

You see, when I pull out with the trailer, I've always followed the 2-2-2 rule. Never travel more than 200 miles in a day. Always arrive by 2:00 in the afternoon. Always spend at least 2 nights at the new location. I have no pressure that requires me to make the trip to Las Vegas in two days. (1100 miles) In fact, it will take me the better part of two weeks with stops in Winnemucca, Austin, and Beatty, Nevada along the way.

I completely tore apart the draft of Team Manager COACH! In the past two weeks. It went from 41 chapters and 143,000 words to 37 chapters and 126,500 words as I culled the filler I wrote. Then I started adding material to set up action I wanted in the last of the book and continue the story. It's now 39 chapters and 135,000 words, and I'm now able to continue writing the last five chapters or so that will finish this book. It moves along just like I wanted it to now. I should be able to finish it before I get to Las Vegas.

I hope so, since I'll get to Vegas just a day or two before the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I plan to write full-time in November on Bob's Memoir: 4000 years as a free demon. Hoping that I'll hear him talking to me on the drive so I have lots of adventures to play with. I'll be going for my 18th consecutive "win" in the annual writing celebration. A win means you've written 50,000 words on a new story. Piece of cake, no?

The stat history on the site says that I've written a total of 1,922,500 words over the previous seventeen NaNos. I plan to push that wordometer up over the 2,000,000 mark this year. Wish me luck.

I love stats. I keep an elaborate set of spreadsheets with my stats on it and update it daily. My personal writing stats for this year show that I've written 855,875 words so far this year. Don't know that I'll make another million-word year. It's not impossible, but I'm not holding my breath. Who knows? Right now, that's an average of 2,982 words a day. Of course, I deducted the 20,000 I cut from COACH!.

That's the news from the road between Worley, Idaho and Pendleton, Oregon. Enjoy today's reading material!

I'm 41 chapters into writing the third Team Manager book, which should start posting around the first of February. I'm happy with about 80% of it. In fact, the first 40 chapters have been through the editing cycle and Old Rotorhead, Pixel the Cat, and Cie Mel have all had encouraging things to say. It just isn't what I want!

It took me three-quarters of the book to discover what the book was really about and retitle it accordingly. But then, I realized the first half of the book didn't really support the dominant theme. So, I've stopped writing new chapters until I go back and rewrite the first forty. And it's going well.

One problem was that there was a lot of filler that was completely unnecessary. Detail that no one cares about. Who needs the time of the top seven runners in the cross country meet? Who needs to know who the high scorer in every basketball game was and who had the most rebounds? How much detail about the libero in volleyball needs to be written in order to understand the importance of a player? And how many times do I need to describe the same couple having sex?

I've edited and rewritten the first seventeen chapters so far and have cut the equivalent of two chapters (over 7,000 words) of stuff that just caused the story to get bogged down. I'm planting more suggestions of the theme and things that will develop in importance earlier in the story. I'm focusing the action on action and not on description. In all, it's the messy part of writing. I describe it to my patrons as the sausage grinder. This is where the raw ideas get ground into recognizable sentences and get packed into a story skin. It's not pretty.

Some years ago, I taught a class on writing and referred to the practice of 'killing your baby.' As writers we sometimes become attached to a precious little detail--a sentence that is exceptionally well written, a punchline we worked through seven pages to set up, a particular love scene--and the hardest thing we have to do is cut it because it doesn't really fit with the story. I guess this week, I've been playing Darth Vader and slaughtering a bunch of stuff I liked but wasn't needed.

Well, this is just me pissing and moaning. I'm 41 chapters into volume three and you all are just getting chapter three of volume 2. It doesn't make that much difference.

I'm also happy to be posting some of the short stories that I've uncovered under Wayzgoose's name in the volume called To Make a Long Story Short. The second story, posted today, reminds me of my college days back in the late 60s and early 70s. Today, it's easy to get up in arms over any drive to defund the police, because what would we do without them. But as boomers in our teens we happily declared "Peace, Love, and Cops are Pigs." How selective our memory is.

Well, next time you need help, call a hippie.

And Team Manager is off on the second book, SPRINT! I'm happy to start this book as if it is simply the next chapter in the story, three days after SWISH! concluded. It's off to a strong start with Dennis and Natalie walking to school "the morning after" and facing all the embarrassing questions from their girlfriends. Then it's off to the gym to find out how many new girls there will be in the locker room this spring. Dennis gets some new responsibility. It's a SPRINT! to the finish!

Enjoy!