I love it when a plan comes together.
I rolled out of bed this morning and threw on a polo and a pair of shorts. I wanted to do some writing before I started my weekend honey-do list. So I bounded down to my office and slid into my chair. Then I turned off my e-mail program and closed my browser—I didn’t want any distractions. I planned to delete the last two scenes I wrote (I didn’t like the direction they were going, since it would take a lot of words to get back to where I needed to be). Then, I had a good idea of how to pick up and move the storyline. I spent 30-45 minutes re-editing to get up to speed, and then…
The phone rang.
Caller ID showed an out-of-state number. Years ago, I put my phone numbers on the Direct Marketing Association’s “do not call” list. (I also put my address on the “do not junk mail” list.) I actually had to send snail-mail letters to do it, too. Those were the days before the government lists, when most reputable mass-marketers used the DMA and their “do not” lists. Consequently, I rarely get junk mail, and I very, very rarely get telemarketer calls. But I digress…
When I saw the caller ID number, I knew it was my father. He doesn’t have a long-distance provider at his beach house, so he uses prepaid calling cards. The caller ID numbers show up as Atlanta, or Nebraska, or California, or… somewhere else. They don’t show up as Florida, that’s for sure. So when I see an out-of-state number, 9 times out of 10, it’s my father. And if my father’s calling on a Sunday morning, 9 times out of 10, he has a computer problem. But I’m going to digress. Again…
My father is a smart guy. He was a Naval Aviator after all, the best of the best (I say with no small amount of pride). And he’s the guy who bought me an IBM PC back in the early, early ’80s. He and I knew that computer inside and out, but I took to it like a 12-year-old who’d just discovered a new toy, while my dad had lots of adult things to deal with, like a job. So I became a computer genius and he became a pretty good hand with a computer.
But then things changed. My dad still knows a lot about computers, but he’s sort of stuck in 1992. Now, he’s pretty fearless about trying things, and he is a smart guy, but he can get himself into the darnedest of jams. So when he calls with computer problems, I might as well dedicate at least an hour to talking him through his 2006 problems with his 1992 skill set. It’s not a chore, but I do chuckle sometimes at what he doesn’t know but I take for granted.
Anyway, this morning was pretty much what I expected. I was itching to write, but I couldn’t tell my father to buzz off and figure it out for himself. I mean, he was a prick when I was growing up, but we get along pretty well these days, and he is my father. So I plug in my phone headset, save my story, and resign myself to an hour-long call where I talk him through God knows what.
Luckily, today’s problem was simple: he needed to uninstall a CD driver and let Windows “rediscover” its brain-damaged self and install a new driver. Simple. It worked. I did have a scary moment when it seemed like he was unplugging and re-inserting drive cables while the computer was powered up, but some part of his 1992 skill set prevailed, and he wasn’t doing that. Crisis averted.
His other problems were simple. He’d installed a new copy of Windows XP on his Franken-computer (remember, he’s 1992-fearless, so he’ll upgrade pieces-parts himself), and he needed to get Outlook to connect to his Yahoo mail account. A quick Google search—which I talked him through on his end, so I didn’t have to read out a cryptic URL—and he was on his way.
But then another problem arose. My father has become chatty in his old age (he’s 60 going on 13-year-old-girl, evidently). He likes talking to me. I don’t think his friends and neighbors really understand him. His wife is nice, but she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So he talks to me. And he talks. And he talks.
Now, don’t get me wrong… I really enjoy talking to my father. He has lots of fun stories to tell, he’s an interesting guy, and we have the same sense of humor (natch). I can ask him about being a Navy pilot (research for Nereids), we can talk about his current project (rebuilding a North American T-28C), or we can chat about dozens of other things. All in all, a really enjoyable way to spend a Sunday morning.
Except… I wanna write!!!
So I spend 1 hour and 12 minutes on the phone with my father, patiently trying to get off the phone without sounding like I’m giving him the brush-off. He makes me promise to plan a trip to the beach with my wife. He wants to see us, and, truth to tell, I kinda want to see the old guy. Like I said, he may have been a prick when I was a kid, but he’s atoned (and apologized) for a lot of his sins, and I enjoy his company.
Anyway, back to my story… I finally hung up with my dad, and I turned back to M$ Word. I’d completely lost my train of thought. I’d had so much promise when I leapt out of bed and flew downstairs. I had things to write, characters to command, scenes to set! And now, it was all gone.
But I had set my Grinch-sized heart to writing, and by damn, I was gonna write! So I re-edited to get back in the right frame of mind. Then I started tapping away at the keyboard. The first scene was tough, because it was a macro scene and I had to move a lot of time in a few short paragraphs. (Side note: I write interpersonal dialog like nobody’s business, but I have a tough time with scene-setting, and scene-moving.)
Well, I survived the first scene and began the second. It flowed from the first, and I moved things along. I came up for air around two o’clock and realized that I was starving—I hadn’t eaten all day. So I made a quick sandwich (turkey with Swiss and a slice of Granger County tomato, which are famous around here). Fortified with my four basic food groups, I headed back downstairs to write.
The scenes began to flow faster. I didn’t feel like I was tearing along, but I was getting somewhere. I tend to write with a scene playing in my head, and I’m just documenting what I “see.” If I get stuck on what happens next, I ponder for a moment, working out the different possibilities. Then I get back to writing, once I have things sorted out.
I did that a lot today, and finally called it quits around five o’clock. I had to shower, since I had my regular Sunday-night RPG with my friends of 17 years. Well, the game was cancelled tonight, since several guys were doing Fourth of July stuff, so I stayed home and watched the first half of Saving Private Ryan. (I’ve been thinking about it since I read that Tom Hanks was inducted into the Army’s Ranger Hall of Fame.) I stopped the movie at the point where they actually found young Private Ryan. Then I came back in here to edit what I wrote today.
I was astounded when I did a word-count and saw that I’d hammered out 3,964 words, after edits. That’s a good eight hours of writing output, including editing time. And unlike the scenes I cut this morning, I feel pretty good about these. They don’t give me that fluttery-stomach “something isn’t quite right” feeling that the deleted scenes did.
To make a short story long, that’s what I did today. And now, it’s 11:26pm, and I’d better bring this epistle to a close. I still have to edit this, and do a spell check (the Google toolbar is fan-fucking-tastic, if only for the spell-checker… it does a lot of other neat things, but the spell-checker is da’bomb).
I have a few other things to do tonight, but not much. My honey-do list is practically untouched, but at least I got a lot of writing done.
So for those of you who are impatient, think about how much time I spent writing today, and exactly what I accomplished. An average chapter of Summer Camp is 15,000 words. The eight hours work I did today would’ve accounted for barely a quarter of a chapter, and I rarely have eight hours to devote to writing. Most of you realize that this shit is a lot of work, but unless you’ve done it, I don’t think you can really understand exactly what that means.
But now I need to quit writing, since I seem to have sprung a leak. 
- Nick
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5 Responses to “I love it when a plan comes together.”
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Nick, thank you for the wonderful insight to your writing. Yes, I agree, it does take quite a bit of time to write, and knowing that one of my favorite authors go through some of the same things that I do, really makes it easier to keep it going.
I *try* to maintain an average of 1,000 words per day.
Try. That’s a good word. I’ve got, what, Twelve and a half thousand words published? Okay, there’s a lot more in the queue, but that’s all subject to revision, still. I’m a neophyte in this game, and yet I can understand just how much work goes into writing. That’s not counting the research, the talking to people, the edits, the re-edits, the decisions you have to make when people advising you disagree… Yes, it’s a whole lot of work.
Create as much as Nick in such a relatively short period, and of such quality? I wish…
Again, thank you for the great insight into your writing process. You definitely write faster than I do. When I was writing I only averaged about 2,000 words per day. And I don’t cut as much as you do.
It’s also good to hear a little more about your personal life. You can share these things with us, yet still maintain your anonymity. Probably helps to keep down on the number of stalkers!
Have a great Holiday!
Whoa, very interesting vision of your creative process. Awesome!!
I still have to edit this, and do a spell check (the Google toolbar is fan-fucking-tastic, if only for the spell-checker… it does a lot of other neat things, but the spell-checker is da’bomb).
In the next version of Firefox (codename Bon Echo) the Mozilla Guys had added a spell-checker built-in on the browser, pretty nice.. I’m pretty much sure that you are going to enyoy it!
Have a nice Holiday!
Greetings lastjuan
I wish I were better at the dialog portion. I am usually very good at scene setting and the likes, but the dialog I write tends to come across wooden (and thats wooden to me after I write it and go back to look at it).
Shame we can’t give each other the skills we are short on and make 2 excellent writers instead of hte one and a half that we have now (you are one and I am a half *smils*).
Keep up the good work, and think about getting some of your stuff published in mainstream fiction!
Rick