Earlier this week I turned in my novel.

Not just an electronic copy, but a printed one as well. 261 pages. It felt weird to print something that large and think, “I wrote all of those words.” I don’t think I ever printed out either of my first two books. Even though 52,500 words puts this book closer to a novella in size than a true novel, I’m still pretty happy with the length. It took me two years to write Commodork, which has 59,000 words, and another two years to write Invading Spaces, which has just over 63,000 words. 52,500 in roughly three months isn’t bad.

I’ve been working on this post off and on for two three days now because I’m having a hard time summarizing everything I’m feeling. As far as my school is concerned, the novel is done. In a week or two I will get my grade back, but the work has been done. I don’t know if I will do more work on it or not in the future. I don’t feel like this is “the” novel for me. It started off as an idea that I plugged a couple of characters into to make it work. I didn’t love the characters, and I think the final product shows. I’ve learned a lot over the past four months while working on this project, and I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is, it’s important to create characters that the reader cares about.

After kicking things around for a couple of days, I think I’ll be closing down this mini-blog after I get my final grade. If the novel’s done, I should stop talking about it. Right now I kind of don’t want to stop talking about it. I suspect this is what empty nest syndrome feels like. I’ll export all of these posts and import them over on my main blog, RobOHara.com.

I’m supposed to get my grade back next Thursday, so I’ll probably do one final post after that and then close things down over here. Thank you to everybody who joined me on this journey and gave feedback along the way. For everyone who subscribed to the mailing list, I’ll be sending out copies of the draft later this afternoon.

On Sunday, thousands of people gathered in the streets of Oklahoma City to run in the annual Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon, marking the twenty-first anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. The marathon has multiple categories including a 5k, half-marathon, and full marathon.

The marathon is televised locally, and on Sunday I sat at my writing desk in my living room eating some scrambled eggs and a cinnamon roll as thousands of people pushed their bodies to the limit. Some might say I am pushing my body to the limit in the wrong direction, but that’s another story.

The point is, as those people were running the marathon, I was running one, too — or at least typing one. Roughly fourteen weeks ago I began working on my novel, and right around the time runners began crossing the finish line of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon, I crossed my own finish line and reached my goal of 50,000 words. I’m done!

And by “done” I mean “I’m just starting!” Saying “I’m done” now is a lot like a boxer celebrating the end of the first round.

I have this week and next week to put some shine on it and get any editing done before I turn it in next Thursday, but the first goal of writing the rough draft of a novel is done.

Along the way I made some pretty significant changes. For example, when I started the book I decided that the protagonist’s wife and child had died in a fire. As time went on, it became more and more kludgy to keep mentioning both of their names every time he lamented his past. I really wanted the baby to die because I thought that symbolized the death of his hopes and future, but a couple of days ago I decided that if his wife died and she was pregnant it would accomplish the same thing — plus I could quit mentioning both of their names. So, baby got deleted (sorry, baby) and the protagonist’s wife is now pregnant. That was easy to adopt toward the end of the book, but now I need to go back and change all the references of “they” to “her,” and so on.

There were also at least half a dozen places in the manuscript where I wrote myself notes like “more detail here” or “explain this better.” I have really come to appreciate the “notes” feature of Google Docs. Think of them as little virtual sticky notes that you can leave wherever you want. If you have a friend help you edit online, they can leave notes, too. As I go back through my work I am tightening things up, clarifying things, adding emotion and, occasionally, deleting babies.

So while there was no paper banner for me to run through, my brain and my fingers have been running their own marathon for the past three and a half months. It felt good to cross the finish line, even though I am already running the next race.

Many fiction writers comment that one or more of their characters “have a mind of their own.” Some go as far as to say that they don’t know what their characters will do or how their books will end until they get there. I never truly understood this phenomenon… until it happened to me. Continue reading When Characters Take Off On Their Own →

Those of you who know me outside this blog may know that I’ve had a long-standing battle with “stuff.” I’m not a hoarder, or at least not the bad kind that collects garbage and jars of pee pee. No, I’m just a guy who likes collecting things (to the extreme at times). My wife once dubbed me “The Collector of Collections,” which unsurprisingly is the title of a book I’m also working on. But I digress.

Because of my collecting tendencies, I’ve read lots of books on organizing and decluttering. One repeating piece of advice you see in those books is that everything that doesn’t have a place is clutter. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” As I continue to work on my novel, I realize this advice applies to books as well. Continue reading A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place →

Approximately two weeks ago, I, along with my classmates, turned in the first 25,000 words of our novels. Thursday, we received grades and critiques. Convinced I had written an almost perfect blend of action, romance, and comedy, I excitedly began to read my professor’s comments. I did find it odd that her comments consisted of two typed pages stapled together — how could it take someone two pages to say, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read!”

One of the first comments that jumped out at me read, “You might consider deleting chapter two.” Continue reading A Crushing Blow for the Protagonist (Me) →

Failure in real life can be bad. Sure, there are sayings like “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!” and “People who don’t fail never tried,” but the only thing losing ever taught me was that I didn’t like losing much.

Novels are different though, and one thing I’ve learned this semester is that your protagonist should repeatedly fail — not in a “bungling buffoon” manner, but in a way that keeps them moving forward. For example… Continue reading Failure after Failure →

I spent an hour or two yesterday writing a motorcycle chase. Our hero — Skip — has just been lured into a seedy part of town in hopes of hiring a coyote (or “Coyotaje”) to help sneak him and his cohort Monica back across the border into the United States. The meeting was a setup. Trapped between the drug runners (who want to kill him) and the Coyotajes (who want to kill him), Skip hops on one of the coyote’s motorcycles, hotwires it, and makes a break for it.

When I’m writing an action scene, the action unfolds in my imagination in real time. It’s almost like watching a movie, and trying to type everything as it happens. The motorcycles zoom one way. Skip does a wheelie. One motorcycle spins out on the dirt and crashes. Another jumps a ditch and takes a shortcut. Look out, Skip!

Continue reading The Chase →

Last night my family and I spent the night in a cabin in the woods. I wrote a little bit about the cabin on my website. This entry isn’t about the cabin. Not exactly, anyway. It’s about one of the most misunderstood pieces of writing advice: “Write what you know.”

This sage piece of writing advice has been attributed to Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, and several other classic authors. Taken at face value, it’s not very helpful. I suspect Tolkien never met a Hobbit, nor has Stephen King ever encountered a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury. If authors literally only wrote about things they knew about, there would be very few novels featuring space travel and supernatural encounters.

The true intent behind the advice is that authors should write about emotions they know. Then again, I think that’s what it means. If you Google what does ‘write what you know’ really mean? you’ll get 369,000 results. Take your pick.

One of the things “Write what you mean” means to me is that the people, places, and things in your stories should seem real. Whether you’re writing about a can opener or a time machine, your reader should believe that in the universe your story takes place in, that items exists. Obviously an author has to put a lot more work into describing a time machine to his readers than a can opener, but both are equally important when selling the reality an author builds to his or her readers.

For the past two days I spent a lot of time investigating our cabin, just looking at things. I looked at the layout of the cabin, its decor, and the decorations. At some point, I’m sure I’ll need a cabin in one of my stories. This one might just fit the bill.

Over the weekend, I reached my first major goal: 25,000 words. The novel I have to turn in this May must be 50,000 words in length, so at least in regards to my word count, I’m halfway there. I’m not halfway done with the work that must be completed, of course. I spent roughly four hours today editing and re-editing previous scenes and chapters. A lot of that work remains to be completed. I have to turn in the first half of the book by the end of March 22. The week of March 14-18 is spring break and we have plans that week, so I need to have everything ready to go before that weekend.

One problem I’ve run into is that my overall plot is too short to fill 50,000 words. I originally planned a long act one, a short act two and a short act three. I’m already dipping into act two near the end of my 25,000 words. I’m going to have to expand one, two, or all three of the acts to meet my final word goal. It makes me think about how I would write a longer work, one of 80,000 or more words. I guess you either need longer scenes or more of them.