Writer's Life is ALWAYS Intense

It's been a busy, busy week. At the day job we had a new version of a web application to be installed Tuesday, then Wednesday a small problem that slipped through testing showed up and had to be fixed pronto. Then I was taken off one project that I'd been working on part-time, and given a new project to take up the slack for a colleague who decided to move on to another job. That work's been taking up most of my time. Things were actually going pretty well until yesterday morning, when an SSL certificate on one of the production servers expired—not usually too much of a problem to fix, but (being a Friday, I suppose) I managed to miss a step and ended up having to do the job twice.

At the same time on the writing front I've been working up a timeline for the scenes in Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia in preparation for a major round of editing. And to be honest it's painful work because I have to switch between the timeline, the chapter outline and the chapter text for each and every scene, and after a while of doing that I have to take a break to rest the eyes. Thanks to the day-job work I wasn't even able to start on the timeline until Thursday, and up until last night I'd only covered two chapters.

Today I've been back on the timeline, and made good progress. Six hours of work, and six more chapters covered. Four more to go (and the last one is less than half the length of the others so it's not quite even that). I was thinking about doing one more today but, quite frankly, I'm sick of the sight of it. It can wait until tomorrow.

I'm really hoping that this will be the last of the prep work, though. I haven't actually written anything for what seems like weeks and I'm itching to get back to it. I want to get this major edit done, because I'm looking forward to seeing how the 'script reads with all the improvements in place. And of course I still have the first draft of Smoke & Mirrors waiting patiently for me to get back and finish it. It's intense.

The life of a writer is always intense.*

It's 5pm Saturday and time to unwind, I think. I've got Castle season 4 in the DVD player, so I'm off to grab a coffee, stretch out and forget about writing for a bit. (Oh... by watching Mr. Fillion playing the part of a writer. That's really going to work. I love the show too much to let that stop me, though.)

* If you haven't seen Repo Man, you probably don't get this.

How To Write In The Midst Of Other Things

I'm working on preparation for editing Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, and I have a list of places that need various changes—essentially a list of questions for myself in the general form, "This scene needs to achieve X; how can I shape the scene to do that?" Most of these questions have been answered. I'm down to the last two or three.

Problem: How to make useful progress in a day filled with other (family-related) things.

Answer: Pick one of those last questions. Roll it around in head. Get a feel for it. Let it ferment while family things are going on.

So far this works. I can still focus on family things but the question pops its head above the trench whenever I have a few minutes, and often I've had an insight that's given me a part of the answer.

Essential equipment: notepad and pencil is vital. I'd hate to have the perfect answer pop into my head only to lose it because I didn't scribble down so much as a single keyword to remind me later.

Enough said for today. Back to family affairs.

(postscript: it worked again. The answer to the problem I was thinking about came to me while I was in Walmart looking for a birthday card.)

Do not disturb unless the Earth catches fire

I've been bad about keeping this blog up for the last few weeks, in part because I've been very busy at the day job; I usually have a few minutes here and there during the day to write a few words or a couple of sentences, but that hasn't been so for the last few weeks.

Also I've been working on the non-day job—writing—and on that front I've been on two works-in-progress. Some of the time I've been writing the first draft of Smoke & Mirrors (that's the working title, anyway), the steampunk-themed sci-fi novel that I've been pounding at for the last three or four months. That one's gone on the back burner for the time being, though, as I'm working on editing Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, a steampunk action/adventure tale that's set to be published by Xchyler Publishing later this year.

As part of the editing I've been thinking about how to beef up some of the characters. I've pretty much got that wrapped up for the major characters but there are a couple of secondary characters who need a touch of the same treatment. Today I've been concentrating on one specific character, who's the editor-in-chief of a London newspaper. In the first draft there were two words that described this man perfectly: "wishy", and "washy". (It was intentional at the time, but reading it back it didn't come across as very realistic for a person in that position.)

So here I have a character who has no force to him, no real presence, and I've been bouncing ideas around about how to make him more believable. Then it occurred to me that I need a model. And the instant I thought that, I knew precisely who that model would be. In fact there was only one possible choice.

One of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time is The Day The Earth Caught Fire, which was made in 1961 in techni-black-and-white and stars Edward Judd, Leo McKern and Janet Munro. If you get a chance to watch this movie, do, and don't worry about the cack science. Instead watch the characters work—Judd's hard-drinking journalist is just plain marvellous, and McKern is as great as he ever was. This movie should be on every aspiring fiction writer's must-watch list; it's an object lesson in character. Despite its age it's available on DVD (or at least, I had no problem finding it and the last time I looked it was still for sale).

But back to my point, and here's another character to watch: Jeff Jefferson, editor of the Daily Express, played by Arthur Christiansen. He's brilliant, and here's why: Christiansen wasn't really acting. He really was the editor of the Daily Express up until a couple of years before this movie was made. Who better to model a newspaper editor on than someone who did the job for real and showcased how it's done in a movie?

I just dug my copy of the movie out and I'm about to put in my portable DVD player. I'll be watching Christiansen carefully, and taking notes. Don't disturb me for anything less than the Earth catching fire.

(p.s. If you do get a chance to see the movie, watch for Michael Caine in an uncredited bit part as a London bobby.)