The End Times

            Joyous Kwanzaa to all of you celebrating it.  If you’re more the Christmas type, I hope the day was happy and peaceful and Santa got you that one thing that’s been on your mind.  And I hope all of you are looking forward to the upcoming New Year.

            Speaking of which... as this year’s winding down I thought it’d be worth going over what got done this year.  I’ve mentioned before, I think, that sometimes people get a really disheartening idea of how much some authors produce on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis because they’ll catch somebody like Chuck Wendig or Victoria Schwab posting about a particularly productive day they had (or Jonathan Maberry posting about, y’know, a day that ends in Y...).  When you’re struggling to squeeze in a few hours a week, it can be kinda soul-crushing to see people who are writing five or six thousand words a day.

            So I thought I’d go over all my writing-related activities for the year.  Break down what got done and how long it took.  Keeping in mind, again, that this is my full-time job, so there’s some stuff I consider part of the writing job that might not actually involve writing a specific book.  As we shall see.

            Anyway...
            I wrote—and rewrote—a good chunk of a book called Dead Moon.  I started it seven years ago and it’s finally coming out in February through Audible.  I think it’s a much better, stronger book than it would’ve been if I’d written it back in 2011.  Partly because I’m a better writer (I like to think so, anyway), partly because I’m gotten to work with a lot of good editors over those seven years and they each pushed me to be a little sharper, a little better.

            As you’re reading this, I’m a little over 45,000 words into another book, one that ties together two previous ones I wrote.  Overall, it’s going smoothly so far, although I’ve lost about a week to the flu which led right into the holidays, and also a pulled back early this fall.  I’d wanted to be another 20-25,000 words along at this point, but I’m still happy where things are at.  I’m probably going to do a whole post on this one sometime in the spring, because it’s the first time I’ve really done a book start to finish from a full outline.

            Plus I’ve been working on an outline for my next book, too.  Still in the early days, fleshing out a few things, but I’m very excited about it.
            I wrote about fifty-five posts here at the ranty blog.  Yeah, the number down on the side bar is a little higher, but a couple of those posts were cartoons or memes or different con schedules.  I’m not sure how many, but enough that I should probably knock at least a dozen off that final number.

            Probably worth mentioning that this year I shut down another blog I'd had for a few years. It was mostly about my geeky toy soldier hobby and ways to save money with it.  Truth is, though, I just haven’t had time to put into those paperhammer projects that I used to.  Closing it down took a lot of stress and guilt off my shoulders for... well, not coming up with content for that blog.  So that’s probably something to remember, too.  There are times it’s worth it to stop writing.

            Also worth mentioning that this was a pretty appearance-heavy year for me.  I appeared at five different cons, if memory serves, plus a few speaking engagements.  Plus the Writers Coffeehouse, and now the Dystopian/Apocalyptic bookclub at The Last Bookstore.
            Finally, a ton of reading.  I didn’t get to read as much as I would’ve liked these past few years, so in 2018 I made it a point that I wanted to read a lot of novels from a variety of authors, and try to read at least one a week.  It was energizing and enlightening and I can’t recommend it enough.  Expand your horizons.  I’m currently in the middle of book 51 for the year, and might even get into 52 this weekend.

            (there was a pile of comics in there, too)

            And there’s that.  How this professional writer spent his time this year.  And keep in mind I still had time to binge Lost in Space, Sabrina, and 3Below while also keeping up with my CW shows and The Good Place.

            Oh, and move to another city.

            Almost forgot that part.

            What have you gotten done this year, writing-wise?  Did you hit your goals?  Get close?  Hopefully, if nothing else, it gave you a good sense of where your goals should be.  Did you push yourself too hard, or not hard enough?
            There is no right or wrong answer here.  The right speed for you is going to depend on what you want to get out of this and where you're hoping to go with it.  There's no reason for me--or for you-- to compare myself to anyone else. It just matters that I'm getting something done.

            Maybe think about that a bit as 2019 rolls closer.

            On which note, I’m going to try to get some work done before we lunge into 2019.  Hope the holiday shave been good to you and continue to be so.

            Next time, I’ll probably be giving my start of the year spiel.

            Until then... go write.    

Christmas Time

            Two semi-holiday related posts?  In the same month?  I’ve just totally sold out to the whole capitalist Christmas experience, haven’t I?

            Honestly, I’ve been sick in bed most of the week, so there won’t be much to this.  Lost a lot of time.  I still have a ton of presents to wrap.  And mail...

            Speaking of time, something bounced across my mind a week or three back, and it’s been fermenting over there in the corner for a bit...

            As a little kid, once we hit December, I could tell you almost exactly how long it was until Christmas.  As we got closer, my brother and I would start planning it down to the hour. Sometimes down to the minute.  What time we could wake up.  What time we could expect to wake my parents up (without fear of reprisals).  What time they’d let us come downstairs.  Christmas wasn’t in “a couple of days”—we were two days, fourteen hours, and six minutes away from opening presents.

            (that’s the present Mom let us take to bed with us on Christmas Eve—the bribe to keep us quiet and in our rooms for an hour or so after we woke up)
           Of course, after I got older it did just become “a couple of days” until Christmas.  I met people who didn’t celebrate Christmas and kept an even looser sense of when it was than me.  I even tried to actively avoid it for a while.

            What random point am I trying to make this week?

            How characters think about time says something about them.  It lets me know if they’re precise people or if they tend to speak in generalities.  It even gives me an idea how important events are to them.

            I mean, how long is twenty-four days?  Is it just 24 days?  Or is it  a few weeks?  Maybe three weeks?  Almost four weeks? Practically a month?

            If I told you something happened a couple of weeks, ago does it seem as important as that happened sixteen days, eight hours ago?  Am I looking forward to a party that’s still more than a week away?  Or that dinner that’s in less than four days?
            Y’see, Timmy, people are unique, and we all think about time in different ways.  Sometimes we generalize and estimate.  We round up and down.  We abbreviate one way or another.  And other times we’re very precise.  Maybe we won’t even give an answer until we can give the exact, confirmed answer. 

            And this can all change depending on context.  I might be vague about when I’m meeting friends for drinks, but very specific about when that date with Phoebe is.  I can tell you exactly how long I’ll be at the office, but I might be up playing Fallout until, y’know, later.  Don’t wait up for me.

            So when I’m writing characters, and they’re dealing with time, keep that in mind.

            And speaking of time, I hope you’re looking at a comfortable, stress-free couple of days.  If you’re in LA and happen to still need a last-minute gift or two, Dark Delicacies has some autographed books of mine, if that interests you.  And if not, there are a ton of awesome books at your favorite local bookstore.

            I hope all of you reading this have a fantastic holiday season.  Maybe I’ll see you all one last time before the new year rolls in.

            Have fun.  Try to enjoy a few peaceful days.  And maybe, if you have some time...

            Go write.

Holiday Triangles

            Well, it’s that time of year again.  Time to cue up that playlist of holiday music and pick out your stack of favorite movies.  Maybe you go a little more unconventional with your choices, maybe you stick to the classics, but whatever your flavor is, I’m sure there’s a lot of them.

            Hell, holiday movies are pretty much a solid, dependable genre at this point.  Just between Hallmark and Netflix, I think there’s forty or fifty new ones just for this year alone.  I worked on one ten years ago and it still gets heavy circulation.  People go nuts about the “plague” of superhero movies, but seriously—Christmas movies are the real machine.
            Anyway...

            We laugh at a lot of these and roll our eyes because they often feature some kind of painful romance.  And that’s what I wanted to talk about.  Where that awkwardness comes from and why these stories kinda keeps us at arms length rather than pulling us in.
            The standard Christmas movie goes something like this.  A young woman (it’s almost always a woman) falls for a guy who’s a few weeks away from getting engaged, married, etc.  The two of them have chemistry, while his girlfriend/ fiancé rages away at her job or as a larval Bridezilla or maybe just as a generally awful, awful person.  Eventually the guy comes to see the error of his ways and our two impossibly good-looking people end up together just in time to kiss on Christmas Eve.

            I’ve talked about this general type of romantic triangle once or thrice before, and before we dive in at might be worth going back and glancing over that real quick—it sums up the ground rules of how and why these triangles work.

            Y’see, there’s a really basic flaw in how a lot of these holiday movies set up that triangle.  It’s why they always come across as a bit weird and the protagonists always seem a bit... well, wrong.  And I think it’s one of those things that’s really easy for me to avoid once I see it all laid out

            Let’s use that basic structure up above for our example.  Our test story, so to speak.  Amy (A) has a meet-cute with Bob (B), who is in a relationship with Kat (C, just to keep you on your toes).  Amy and Bob have chemistry, Kat is bordering on (if not openly) awful and clearly wrong for Bob.  And it’s Christmas because... y’know, that’s when this always seems to happen.

            Now, normally in a romantic triangle situation like this, our protagonist would be Bob.  Bob, after all, is the one who needs to make a choice here, right?  He needs to be active and decide if he wants to be with Amy or Kat.
            But...

            Our protagonist is Amy.  And the only way I can make Amy active in this situation is to make her... well, kinda unlikable.  If she does anything to improve things with Bob—all those standard romance bonding moments like long talks and quiet dinners and heartfelt discussions about shared passions—it kinda means she’s undercutting Bob’s relationship with Kat.  Which is a little rough, morally, no matter what we think of Kat.
            And geeeeez, if things get physical to almost any level, well, now they both look bad.  Amy’s making moves on somebody in a relationship.  Bob’s in a relationship and hooking up with someone else.  I mean, how bad does Kat have to be for us to be cool with Bob cheating on her?  And if she’s not that bad, then... well, yeah, he’s a jerk.

            And, yes—sometimes odd things happen between people in really specific situations.  Everybody reacts differently to stress and fear and all that.  Firm embraces may happen.  Maybe even a kiss or odd proclamation.  But that’s a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally fine line.  Scary fine.  It’s so easy for that situation to go from understandable and excusable to what-the-hell inappropriate.

            Y’see, Timmy, when Amy’s this point in the triangle, she isn’t the one with a choice to make. Not a real one, anyway. She has two options. She can do nothing (which ends the story pretty quick) or she can try to disrupt Bob and Kat’s relationship. Those are her only paths, as far as our plot goes, and neither of them is a great one from a storytelling point of view.

            I think when writers do this, they’re confusing the outcome with the choices that lead to it. We’ve all heard “the ends justify the means,” but this tends to ignore the fact that the means I use also determine what kind of end I get. There are tons of ways Amy and Bob can end up together, but a lot of them can be paths that make one of them—or both of them—characters we don’t really like or care about. In some cases, we may even be actively rooting against them. Cause they’re horrible people.
           Don’t worry about outcomes. Outcomes are the conclusion of a story.  Think about the path to that outcome. The choices my character has to make in order to get there. 

            Because those choices are my story. They’re my plot.  And if there aren’t any real choices, or they’re all being made by supporting characters, or they’re the wrong kind of choices, or they’re just all bad ones... well...

            I shouldn’t be too shocked if people think it’s a bad story.

            Speaking of stories, here’ s one last reminder that books make fantastic holiday gifts, and to maybe check this out if you're having trouble affording things this year.

            Next time, I wanted to talk a little bit about time.

            Until then, go write.