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.… (read more)

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… (read more)

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.

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… (read more)

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.”

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…

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… (read more)

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… (read more)

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… (read more)