Bhagwan @ Large

Showtime

In 6 hours, my feet will no longer hug the earth as I wend my way east to destiny.

Or Columbus, Ohio. The two are often confused, though I must confess that this trip will be somewhat interesting for me. I’ve been attending industry conventions in that city for well over a decade, but this will be the first one I attend purely as a visiting Author.

More to the point, this will also be the first convention I attend in Columbus where I’m not winning, sponsoring, or accepting any awards. This is a new thing for me, and a situation I hope will not continue.

I take with me a newly revised novel, once again ready to shop around and be nearly as impressive as my manly locks and bushy beard. Perhaps the book has more legs than that, though I’ve managed to cut out a good 9% of it on this pass, including an opening section consisting of the first words ever written on this project, more years ago than I care to count.

Why do I mention this? Because some of you were kind enough to read it and give much needed, and in some cases, very usefully brutal feedback. I’m also a far better writer than I was two years ago, (or ten, for that matter), and some things about the book no longer made me happy. There was too much stuff going on “then,” and not enough “Now.” Both have their place, even within this particular genre. But one simple exercise (just done oh-so-scientifically on my machine) showed me how well I was able to turn off my editor while writing, and how much the book suffered for it.

And I am a very good editor.

I did a search for the words “had” and “been” in the text. Those of you struggling to find a voice for your piece may recognize these words. I, for one, had been very happy with the previous draft, and somewhat disappointed the editor who had been interested in it never responded, though it had only been a year gone when I realized the horrible mistake of

Passive Voice and Past Perfect Participles.

Seriously, Don’t do it. You especially should not discover that in revising the text, instances of Had and Been drop from 1448 and 271 to 507 and 164 respectively.

In a 108K manuscript, that’s death. I’m somewhat upset it didn’t drop further, but there are specific instances where the words are necessary to maintain the feel I want.

Bummer.

This streamlined, 100K masterpiece for the ages should do the trick. I hope so anyway, since I’ve already written its sequels.

Poorly, no doubt. But that’s the fun of being a writer, yah?

Monday, Monkey Monday

Perhaps not as much monkey as we were led to beleive. So much the better.

Today is the first day in a very long time that I actually have something to do that is not sit/lie on the couch watching television before playing video games. Correspondingly, here I am awake at 3 AM, and then writing on this newly redesigned and resurrected web page.

On my couch, of course. iPod ownership continues to pay fantastic dividends.

I was “this close” to being tired enough to sleep. Then my stomach started growling a fair pace, which actually bodes well for the rest of the day. If I can maintain that “lean edge,” that old creative fervor may kick in.

It was going in spades yesterday, as I migrated the main site over to a new, more 21st century format. Oddly enough, it’s very much like what I wanted to do back in 2002 when I first started working on bhagwanx.com. Just better, and not designed by me.

I do take no small amount of pride in saying that my original ’02 pages still hold up well. Almost all of the 04/05 non-blog content will need editing and revision, but the foundation on which my online empire is made is still strong.

So much so that those pages and their solid internal structure are proving remarkably stubborn to update to the spiffy new, looser and enhanced format. I may just cobble together a new style sheet for the legacy stuff with a nav bar similar to the site’s theme, and be done with it.

But that’s a project for much later. Before the digression into me, I was going to write about my characters, and their inability to let me be. Thinking about the new novel and the transitons taking place in the next 5k words or so is not very sleep friendly.

I blame my success for my failure. During November’s writing spree, I was writing sequentially through some pretty tight action when I realized that something was about to happen to one of the cast.

Something important. Something so big, in fact, that it ties together all the other stories into one blanketing whole. A completely unexpected plot element which not only gives me a good hook into the next book (this one is set in a science fiction universe in which I have written another treatment), but redefines and enhances all I’ve written in this one.

So I had to jump ahead. I needed to write the revelation, and in doing so, lost my focus on the action. Now knowing in more concrete terms–rather than my nebulous story point outline–where things are heading, I found it difficult to fill in the lines.

So much so that I in fact wrote the first chapters of an entirely different universe and book instead.

Four times. Each time I did so, the characters told me more and more about themselves, until I was left with something very much like my original story nugget, but far more compelling and publishable. Taking ten days off from one book to write another does not help the first one along.

Especially when the story for that one has been percolating since the final edit of the book currently out for consideration. The very same story that kept me from substantive progress on the sequel/second book/continuation of that soon to be rejected masterpiece this last summer.

I managed to come back to it while traveling in December, but it’s slow going at present. And the reason is very apparent to me.

Shiny things are shiny. Like rice in a gourd, they can trap a poor monkey writer unwilling to let the grains out of his grasp.

Time to shake things up a little. Perhaps the morsels will fall free from the wrist-sized hole, once my authorial fist no longer blocks it.

Plus, it’s 5 AM. Time for bed.