Thought-Drive

I don't think collaboration is a skill that automatically comes with the writer tool set. A lot of the quotes about writing and being a writer mostly involve ideas like stillness and solitude. But no matter how good the words in the book ultimately are, the initial cover presentation accounts for a lot. I guess it's very similar to attracting a desired mate. In most cases, they see us first. Before they know anything about us, they interpret how we choose to express ourselves outwardly. I can't speak for other writers, but I don't draw all that well. Certainly not well enough to produce a cover. Nor do I have any talent at all at photography or graphic design or painting. I tell people, in fact, that it's because I can't express my ideas in a representative fashion that forces my words to come out the way that they do. So, all of that is to say I had to tell someone else about what I wanted my cover to look like. This was the initial sketch the artist produced ...

I saw my first author information sheet more than a few years ago. It asked questions about the main characters, what they looked like, the setting of the story, and what I wanted my cover to look like. To say I didn't know about any of that would be an understatement. I knew who the characters were, what they looked like, but I knew so little then about covers that it may as well have been nothing. When I finally got into rounds of revision with the cover artist I began to understand the difficulty of two people trying to share the same vision. I understood what my theatre friends told me about artistic collaboration, and why it was it important, and how it could be so difficult. And that was way, way before anyone broke down for me why some covers sell, why some don't, and what a reader is actually shopping for when they're scrolling through images that represent books they might buy and read. Today, after days of scouring portfolios and reading reviews and re-reading ...

On Friday I had another opportunity to talk to creative writing class at a local high school. The teacher expressed the writers taking the course having some issues with their worlds being believable, and being unable to tell what changes are needed to create immersive settings. So, I went in and talked to them about suspension of disbelief and immersion and internal logic. I had them do a writing exercise about a character's day in the life in a world just like ours except for one specific change (one group opted for everyone being born with a third arm, and the second group voted for dinosaurs never dying out), after which we discussed things they learned when it came time to start putting words on paper. It was my contention then, and continues to be, that actually putting lessons into use is where the learning lives. I was happy that they had questions after the fact, that they realized some things about the difficulty of what they were attempting (turns out a slightly differe...

The new novel is underway, has been for a couple weeks now. After taking down notes regarding who the characters were, what they wanted, and how they might achieve those goals, I tinkered with the setting. Questions came up, about timing and motivations and pacing and other narrative elements. I answered some, and others arose out of those efforts. After the notes I constructed the beginning of an outline. I can never build the entire thing, because I always learn new things within the writing, about the characters and sometimes about the setting. After the outline, I got to work. I've since written to the end of that outline, and I wish I had something to compare it to. I always struggle with the beginning and the end. I suppose it must be a lot like flying a plane. There's a lot of convenient instrumentation to keep the craft aloft once it's there; once I know where the story wants to go and what it's about, I can guide it just fine. The taking off and the landing ...

Part V David had his worst week of work since getting the job. He told his co workers it was the last remnants of the bug. By the middle of the week, he recognized that something had changed, and by the end he realized that he needed to make a decision. On Sunday, he thought about church for the first time in years. It would’ve been nice, he thought, to have some place to go to get the answers to his questions. Instead, David went back into the ghetto. He brought along a bag that had his wallet and a change of clothes, but he also kept his teeth hidden behind the top of his zippered jacket, and his hands in his pockets, except for when he knocked. The place wasn’t difficult to locate. He had the scent, and when it came down to locating which specific house, the area of dead grass and weeds, the rot in the wood and foundation, gave the place away. Jarvis opened the door and did not look surprised. David wondered if they tracked by scent also. “What is it that you want?” Da...

Part IV His hearing came back first. There was a booming, a thump, distant vibration, then noise charging in his direction, ricocheting off of objects. It was more rhythmic than chaotic though, almost like music. Breathing in, David caught the stench that triggered memory. He jerked away from the contemplations, feeling sore muscles beneath naked flesh. Wood pricked his skin, and glass, and cold. He creaked his eyes open to see a blurry room with skeletal walls and unevenly spaced floorboards. A gaping hole in the structure cast blinding brightness on his prone form. David tried to move again and recoiled from the pain. He remembered what would usually follow the disorientation and mystery. People with their hands on him, grabbing and pulling, faceless assailants that always ushered him back to the cage. The pain was much greater this time, and the soreness, to the point that this time, even though he knew they were on their way, he would not try and hide. He had killed again. Da...

Part III             Another night, another run. The sameness was broken by a splash of white on an otherwise black clad man, on either side of a dark tie, between two breasts of a matching suit jacket. The sight made David remember the guards in his mother’s kitchen in a way that made him realize that slowly, slowly he had been forgetting those memories all along. He changed direction after another two strides and pushed himself against an alley wall. He glanced in both directions, then peeked around the corner but the man was gone. Everything clung to the baseline of his beating heart, and David found himself stalking to hide away in the parking structure of a nearby office park, cowering. He waited, and then he waited some more. He waited until long after it should’ve been safe, then he climbed stairs to look down on the area around him, crouched down in the shadows, peering into the open darkness.         ...