05.31.06
Posted in Writing, Photography, Acheivments, Angel in Disguise, Current Projects at 12:00 pm by Bryan
Today is a photography day. I picked up the prints from a wedding I’d done a couple weeks ago. As usual, I have panic periods where I worry about camera settings, did I remember to change them when I moved from outside to inside and back again, etc. This time I had a roll of black and white film that was far too slow for use inside without a flash and I couldn’t get faster speed film in time for the wedding. So I winged it, measuring the light meticulously, memorizing the settings I’d need for indoor vs. outdoor, then trusting to the range of the film to compensate for what I couldn’t help.
The panic set in even during the shooting process, those needling doubts, did you remember to change the settings the last time you switched? To make matters worse, I was shooting two different speeds of film, the color being faster and I did the black and white in between color rolls. Just asking for trouble.
Anyway, I picked up the proofs today, and as usual my fears were unfounded.
The idea with the black and white was to lend a documentary feel to it all, and I took a few risks with what I was shooting… not your typical wedding list of must have shots. It was fun when I wasn’t panicked and I’m really pleased with the results. I’ll post a couple images up here in a few weeks, after the bride has had a chance to look them over.
Normally, I’d do a word count today, but I’ve still got a lot of typing to do from what’s already written and I’m actually falling behind (writing more than typing). We’ll skip this week and try to get caught up by next week. I’m pretty sure I’m in the 15,000 word range for AiD, but we’ll see. It definitely needs work, though. I’m just not used to writing without going back to clean it up. Like I say, the story is there, but at this point it’s a tough read… not well written at all.
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05.30.06
Posted in Writing, Method, Acheivments, Angel in Disguise, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
So anyway, it’s back to real life.
The weekend was pretty productive. I wrote around 21 pages longhand so I’m guessing that’s about 6,300 words or so (we’ll see after it’s typed). Which raises an interesting thing about my writing method. I have a lot of trouble sitting at the computer and just writing so what I tend to do is grab a notebook and run off to Starbuck’s for a few hours, then if I start to get restless there I can go home and sit on the couch and still be able to work. When I sit down at the computer to type it all in, I do my first phase of polishing. Then next time, I take the printed manuscript and my notebook to Starbuck’s and start again.
It’s probably not the most efficient method, but unless and until I can learn to leave my day job out of mind, and unless and until I can sit at the computer for ten minutes without being able to write a word and still be able to remain in write-mode, I think this method will have to do. You see, if I’m sitting at Starbuck’s and I’m stuck, I can just watch people, think, and drink coffee until I’m unstuck. At home, I tend to play Rome: Total War for six hours until I’m unstuck.
This weekend’s writing oddly enough was done in LM’s style of just get it down with very little polishing. Reading over it, I will have to make changes in sentence structure, word choices, etc. as I am seeing a lot of sentences that follow the pronoun-verb word order. Also, there were things I was seeing in my head at the time that never made it to the page.
And finally (well maybe finally since I don’t really know if this is the last thing I have to say), I’ve decided to buy a couple romances to research levels of… well, you know ::wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more:: Forever Again and Twice Upon a Roadtrip by Shannon Stacey are on the list because from what I’ve heard they are at very different levels as far as the intimate details are concerned. If you can offer suggestions, even if it is something you’ve written, let me know. I’ve read one Silhouette Love Inspired book, one by Dara Joy, one by Diana Gabaldon, and one romantic western by an author I can’t remember even though I really enjoyed the book. My romance reading is really quite limited and since what I tend to write has romantic elements as a key part, I’d like to have a broad idea where my style fits within the broader range of possibilities.
And speaking of reading (so no, the last comment wasn’t worthy of finally) I’m currently reading Post Captain, the second of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. Despite writing until my hand cramped, I still got quite a bit of reading done over the weekend.
UPDATE
Well, that didn’t take long. My sister just dropped off four books from Harlequin’s NEXT series. The authors are Sandra Steffen, Kate Austin, Lynne Hugo, and Jennifer Greene.
Anybody else with recommendations, especially if it’s got scenes you’re especially pleased with or proud of, by all means let me know.
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05.27.06
Posted in Writing, Acheivments, Angel in Disguise, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
I had a good day yesterday. I wrote 14 pages longhand. I don’t have a good wordcount yet but I would guess it’s in the neighborhood of 4,200 words. This takes AiD to 5,700 total and gets the story up to the point where my dreams begin. With the long weekend ahead, I hope to make some serious progress. I probably won’t be posting again until Tuesday.
UPDATE
Just finished typing and the word count is 5,731. How is that for a guess?
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05.26.06
Posted in Writing, Method, Sea of Dreams, The Dragon's Dream, Angel in Disguise, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
Well, well. I’ve got an interesting conundrum now. As you know, book #1 is Sea of Dreams, which I hope to complete by August 15th. Book #2 is The Dragon’s Dream, which I’ve been meticulously avoiding so that I can concentrate on book #1. So what have I been dreaming about the last two nights? Of course, book #3 Angel in Disguise.
I started this book a few years ago with my ex-, LM. We didn’t get very far before we abandoned the project over something as stupid as “working style”. Not writing style, not creative differences, not even differences of opinion in where the story should go. We differed in technique. You see, I’m a “polish as you go” kind of person. As I rework things I’ve already done, it helps me think about where things need to go. LM is a “write it down and get on with it” kind of person. With us living together at the time, this “together project” quickly started to add more friction to a relationship that already had its fair share of anti-skid tape.
So the story was set aside, with LM telling me I could finish it if I wanted to. Well, of course I didn’t want to (especially after she moved out a year later) because the story was ours and not mine.
Why am I dreaming about it now? Because a couple days ago, LM calls (I haven’t talked to her since before Christmas and the previous time was probably six months before that) and at one point she asks how our story is coming along. I was honest, and explained that I hadn’t even looked at it in months. The disappointment was evident, though she didn’t mention it again.
And now I’m dreaming about the story line. I need to be dreaming about Sea of Dreams, or even The Dragon’s Dream, but instead I’m dreaming about a story that until a couple days ago I had never intended to finish in the first place. What’s worse, it’s actually good. I will probably have to market it as erotic fiction (they were really good dreams) but the story is there. I could probably put down 10,000 words in a few days, easy. So guess what. That’s what I’ve got to do. I actually have the plot worked out better than my #1 project.
I’ve fought the temptation of working on other things for quite a while now, but I think I have to go with this one while it’s fresh. If it bogs down after the rush, I just switch back to SoD and try to catch up ground. I only need 1,000 words a day to finish by my own deadline. Three days can be made up, right?
We’ll see.
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05.25.06
Posted in Writing at 8:00 am by Bryan
I’ve finally settled upon a title for my blog (after many false starts). I’ve chosen “Dark and Stormy Nights” for a number of reasons, but top on the list would probably be the commiseration I feel with Snoopy of Charles M Schulz fame as he struggled with his Great American Novel. Plus, if you know anything of the history of that phrase, it’s just a hoot.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
So anyway, there is an annual contest, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which authors attempt to mangle a sentence in the same tried and true fashion. The winner for 2005 has been announced and his entry can be found below. Unfortunately, the deadline for 2006 (April 15th) has passed (maybe; they sometimes extend it to June 30th) but this is a contest where even the losers’ entries are usually worth reading. Check it out if you have a chance.
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Dan McKay
Fargo, ND
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05.24.06
Posted in Writing, Acheivments, Sea of Dreams, The Dragon's Dream, Angel in Disguise, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
Well, here it is, time to check on the old progress bar. But before we get to that, I also started tracking my progress/goals in a spreadsheet… that could actually wind up depressing me. I’ve got to write nearly 1,000 words a day to meet my target for August 15th which during the week, especially Wednesdays and Thursdays, will be nearly impossible so I will have to catch up on my days off. A thousand words doesn’t seem like a lot until I start thinking about having to do it every day. I mean, I go through days at a time where I just don’t know what to write next. Pre-planning! Maybe next time.
And now, without further ado, I give you The Word Count:
Sea of Dreams
Oh, yeah, and just since we’re being honest here, I’ll post the word count on the two other stories that are in progress.
Angel in Disguise
The Dragon’s Dream
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05.23.06
Posted in Writing, Method, Sea of Dreams, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
Okay, I’ve done it to myself, I know I’ve done it to myself, but I’m blaming my characters, especially the one I’ve got to kill off. Here’s the scoop: Sea of Dreams has got a love triangle thing going. Steve and Ian are best friends, Gabby is Steve’s wife. Somehow, we need to hook Gabby up with Ian. What’s the best way to do that? Why, kill Steve of course.
But I don’t wanna get killed.
Shut up, Steve.
So here we go, Chapter 1, Gabby meets Ian for the first time, doesn’t care for him much, but he starts to grow on her. Chapter 2, they do stuff as couples, you know, Gabby & Steve and Ian & … well whoever that bimbo is that he’s with at the moment. Chapter 3, Ian gets shot, comes to stay with Gabby and Steve for a while and Gabby takes care of him. Chapter 4, Ian goes through a midlife crisis (in his early thirties), quits his job, leaves town, and assesses his life.
Chapter 5, I kill off Steve to bring Gabby and Ian together.
So here’s my dilema. I like Steve. I think the reader will too. Dear Reader is going to be royally pissed at me when I kill him. Gabby’s devastated. Ian’s devastated. Cricket (the four year-old girl) doesn’t have a Daddy anymore. It’s going to hurt and we’re only in Chapter 5.
So I start making some changes. Steve’s not really such a nice guy. He’s always working. Never home. He’s even started getting jealous for stupid things. I even started throwing in hints that he might not be entirely faithful. So now that nobody really likes him, I’m asking myself how could Gabby and Ian have made such bad judgements about Steve. I mean this guy’s a jerk.
But I don’t wanna be a jerk.
Shut up, Steve. I’m going to make you nice again, then I’m going to kill you.
Thanks.
So there you have it. He has to be a nice guy when I kill him. I should have plotted this thing out before I started writing. Now I have to put things back the way they were.
Oh and that’s not all… I’ve got two completely different scenes written for when Gabby and Ian… well… you know… the first time. You can only have ONE FIRST TIME!
Hey, I’ll do it again.
Shut up, Ian.
You see what I have to work with here?
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05.22.06
Posted in Writing at 8:00 am by Bryan
Horrible weekend. I started feeling like crap early Friday, and tried to convince myself that coffee was all I needed. I wrote five pages longhand, but I still felt like crap (warmed over). Saturday was bad. I didn’t do anything Saturday except call in sick. Sunday was worse. I could barely read.
So, here it is, Monday. I feel better (and no not in that Monty Python “Bring out your dead” way, either) but now I have to go into work and do two days worth of stuff in one day when I would rather be writing all the stuff I didn’t write when I should have been writing stuff. Argh (and no not in the pirate way, either).
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05.20.06
Posted in Writing, Method at 8:00 am by Bryan
I’ve been wandering around unfamiliar territory lately (basically, the blogs about writing and stuff), and came across an entry by Sarah Monette (who happens to be the daughter-in-law of one of my co-workers). So anyway, she was discussing anachronisms on a grander scale… the kind that occur when you’ve created your own world, and comfortable metaphors and analogies are suddenly out of bounds. For instance:
“The sea-serpent’s eyes are the color of NyQuil.”
You can’t say that (or many things) in your world unless your world has NyQuil. To be true to your world you wind up with something like:
“The sea serpent’s eyes are the color of moss-troll ichor.”
Also, as Sarah points out, you can’t really have sex in the missionary position if you don’t have any missionaries in your world or, at the very least, you can’t call it that. She points out that fantasy fiction writing is perhaps the only genre that inherently handicaps itself in such a way:
“So there’s a way in which secondary-world fiction (I’m not saying “fantasy” because science fiction set far enough in the future has the same issue, though the terms of the equation are a little different) has taken self-referentiality and made it into a koan, a pondering point. A hallmark of its art. And it’s the only genre I can think of that does this, that denies a frame of reference between reader and narrrative.”
Sarah is far more educated in literature than I am, and she kept worrying throughout her post that she wasn’t properly expressing her ideas, but I found them absolutely fascinating. Stop by her site and read some of her posts. Admittedly, in Sea of Dreams, I won’t have to worry about things like this. I just have to keep in mind when I’m writing The Dragon’s Dream that the Picts in Ancient Scotland didn’t have NyQuil.
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05.19.06
Posted in Writing at 8:00 am by Bryan
Okay, I’m not very motivated today, so I started thinking about “intimate” scenes that really just put a smile on my face. Not just the ones that I’ve written, but the ones I’ve seen in the movies or read by other authors. Two come to mind immediately as scenes that make my heart go pitty-patter (as opposed to the thump-thump-thump of the really hot ones).
The first scene is from Jerry Maguire. Wait, wait, come back. Look, I know Tom is whacked out right now and really not living on the same plane as the rest of us, but the boy can act. Have you seen him in The Last Samurai? Or Born on the Fourth of July? The kid’s got talent. He could go places. But put his Scientology and couch jumping aside for a minute and watch that scene in Jerry Maguire where he is standing on Renée Zellweger’s porch playing with the strap of her dress. Damn! I wish I’d written that scene. Of course Renée makes it believable as this “ordinary” hot as hell girl who totally underestimates herself.
And speaking of hot, underestimated actresses, what about Ellen Barkin in The Big Easy? During that initial seduction scene… she said she wasn’t very good at it? Oh. My. God. And again, she’s got that “ordinary hottie” appeal. And of course Dennis Quaid is such a bad boy that she couldn’t help but be seduced by him.
Okay, I’m refreshed now. Back to writing. Today and Sunday are going to be Starbuck’s days so it’s time for me to get out of the house and find some caffeine!
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05.18.06
Posted in Writing at 8:00 am by Bryan
I know since this is a new site I have very little traffic as yet, but I have a serious concern about my chosen path. How tough is it going to be on a guy trying to break into the Romance genre? I suspect that I am feeling something akin to what the female sports reporters must feel the first time they are assigned locker room interviews.
I mean, let’s assume that my finished product will be well written, interesting, and believable (especially to the female reader). I know those are some big assumptions, but those are the ones in which I have confidence. What I’m not sure about is whether “by Bryan J Weitzel” is going to get the thing put back on the shelf.
As readers and writers of the Romance genre, does that play at all into your decision to “give it look”?
I’m sure that by the time I’m ready to sell the thing I will have to have this discussion with my agent/publisher, but it’s been in the back of my mind ever since I “converted” this story into a Romance. It’s always had a romantic element to it, but now I’m conciously trying to write it as something that would appeal to that market. A nom de plum isn’t really an objectionable prospect for me, but if I ever get interviewed by Oprah it’s going to be hard to keep a secret, eh?
So you ladies are the experts… I mean, I’ve only just begun to take it seriously (and judging by my dreams of Oprah, maybe not that seriously). Do you know of other male authors in the Romance genre? Tell me your thoughts.
Or should I quit worrying about it and just finish the damn book? I knew it! You’re so smart.
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05.17.06
Posted in Writing, Method, Acheivments, Sea of Dreams, The Dragon's Dream, Current Projects at 8:00 am by Bryan
I’ve been wondering a lot lately about why I get “stuck” so often with my writing. I think it’s because I rarely know where the story is going before I start writing. As an example, with my current novel, Sea of Dreams, the first thing I wrote is now on pages 65-68. This is probably the one portion of the book that has undergone absolutely no revision whatsoever. The entire story revolves around this scene… I wouldn’t even have written this story at all if I hadn’t written this scene.
Why do I write like this?
Here’s what happens… I hear someone mention something that gets my imagination going. I obsess with it to the point I start dreaming about it, and then I finally can’t stand it any longer and I write it down. Then I set it aside. The problem is that even though I’ve set it aside, my brain won’t let it go. And then I start dreaming about it and obsessing over it until I can’t sleep any more and I have to write down the new scenes.
Those of you who dream, know that dreams don’t always make sense to the waking mind.
So here I am with scattered scenes that sort of make sense in a story line, but I haven’t thought things through. What do I do with 35 pages of potential? Well, I start trying to turn it into a book, of course. But things haven’t been planned… they’re just going. People will ask “How far along are you?” and I honestly don’t know. I have no idea if the end product is going to be 75,000 words or 175,000 words. I vaguely know what the conclusion will be. The only thing I know for sure is that I have four or five scenes that are so well done that they could be a movie in my brain, and the rest is an attempt to bring those scenes together in a way that the reader will want to keep on reading.
I know this for sure: book #2, The Dragon’s Dream, has two-pages written out longhand (the first two pages of the book this time) and nothing else will be written until I have a better plan for the book as a whole.
So, assuming 100,000 words in the final manuscript, here is my progress so far:
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05.16.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:00 am by Bryan
Or should I say, “Hello, again!”
This is my second blog… shall we say for my creative outlet. If you are interested in politics, history, economics, and current events, this isn’t the place for you. Visit my blog at Off The Wall instead. Here, we’re going to limit discussions to writing, photography, fashion and other things that won’t get people upset (including me).
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while… and Off The Wall just didn’t seem like the place.
So here it is. I hope you enjoy.
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