The deed is done.

I only managed to get 43 pages into my editing. Still have 80 left. I could probably get through another 20 or 30 before the contest ends, but it's late, I'm tired, and I have to work tomorrow.

I don't have anything more to say at this point. I'm tapped out. Still need to print my MS and mail it out. I'll do some kind of a postmort later this week.

Good night and good luck.

Loneliness of the Artist('s wife)

Page 119

END

Hurray! That gives me just 5 hours to edit this monstrosity.

I think Carrie may be cracking under the strain. I haven't been easy to live with, I realize.

That gives me just 0.5 hours to repair relationship and 4.5 hours to edit novel. I can do this, I can do this.

Everything is by the clock now.

Page 99

Dear Future Jeff:

Please keep the following points in mind as you continue writing in the future.

1. Alcohol does not in any way help writing.
   
   
2. Sweets do not in any way help writing.
   
   
3. Rest is very important.
   
   
4. Food is very important.
   
   
5. It's ok to write florid prose in a first draft. It helps get all the junk out of your head and onto the paper. After that, be ruthless cutting out the fluff.
   
   
6. Master outlines are not helpful.
   
   
7. Outlines brainstormed on the fly in positions of stuckness are very helpful.
   
   
8. It's actually much harder to throw in obscene, bloodthirsty, salacious stuff when you know you have an audience. This means you're either a coward or deep down just a nice guy. It's something to think about as you pick your themes and topics in the future.
   
   
9. You should probably be a little bit worried by all of the obscene, bloodthirsty, salacious stuff that pops into your head when you're trying to figure out how to get a slow story moving again.
   
   
10. Page counts and wordcounts are useful at the beginning--they give you small goals to aim for along the way.
    
    
11. Formatted manuscripts have a lot of white space.
    
    
12. Page counts are almost useless in the endgame. Don't cheat the ending just because you've achieved your artificial math goal.
    
    
13. The most anxious times are when you're not writing. You probably won't believe this, but try to remember that you actually feel a lot better when you're writing than you do when you're pacing around thinking about writing.
    
    
14. Work on endurance so that you can sit in front of the computer longer. It's easy to quit and hard to start again.
    
    
15. Mornings are just awful. Get your shower, eat something, and get on with it. You'll feel better eventually.
    
    
16. You seem to be inspired by clever ideas more than engaging stories. That might be just the way you are as a writer, or it might be something to work on the next time you take a class.
    
    
17. Even the most basic editing takes more time than you imagine.
    
    
18. There is no such thing as too much editing.
    
    
19. Editing is actually kind of fun! Use it to redeem yourself from the awfulness of your writing, and you may actually walk away feeling good about yourself.

Warmest regards,

Now (AKA "Past") Jeff

Page 98

If I ever have the heart to come back to this thing after the contest is over, I'm going to delete about 75% of its adjectives and adverbs. Why are my first drafts always so baroque?

95

I'm so close, but I'm having a hard time hitting my stride this morning. The ending is still in doubt, I have anxieties about all the length/formatting rumors that seem to be running around among the 3-D writers, and I keep getting distracted with the fantasies about how great it's going to be to be done.

30 minutes ago, I hated my story, which has morphed into an eco-political sci-fi horror romance. I hated it like a thing outside of myself. I should just nuke all of my characters and be done with them and their stupid nonsense lives. I'm sick to death of their saccarine dialogue. What's wrong with these people?

Day 3 - good morning!

Last night was pretty restless. Didn't get to bed until 2 a.m., probably didn't fall asleep for another hour. I feel exhausted, but not quite as bad as I did on day 1.

Sometime in the early morning I woke up (not really woke up, but came into consciousness of some sort. If you're a chronic sleepwalker like me, you understand). Anyway, I sort of woke up on the floor, rooting through my dirty clothes.

As I recall, I was looking for my swimsuit--actually for a speedo, which I don't own at the moment. I was pretty sure I'd left it somewhere and that I urgently needed it before I could go back to bed. I tried to explain this to Carrie, which made me start to wake up a bit and realize that this didn't make a lot of sense. But clearly that was her fault, not mine.

I went back to bed wondering how I was ever going to fall asleep again without my speedo. But if my wife really doesn't want me have my speedo, then fine with me. Whatever!

It can't be a coincidence that the two major themes of my blog and my novel and my current life are consuming and sleeping.

Page 91

That was nice... formatted my document the way a manuscript is supposed to be formatted (apparently... I've never submitted on before) and my page count jumped way up. It feels like cheating, but I double-checked the formatting with multiple sources. Everone seems to agree: chapters titles always start a new page and they start about a third of the way down the page.

So that means I can pretty much relax now as far as the page count is concerned, and focus on doing the story justice. I guess that's the way it should have been to begin with, but the numbers help me keep going.

If anyone's still reading... sorry this is getting so boring. Most of my creativity is going into the story right now, so these blog entries are starting to get a little dry.

I'm boring myself, even, and I can talk a lot about myself before I get bored. I'll try again in the morning.

Page 63

This story is making me queasy. I want to write about pretty things now. Maybe I will come out on the other side of the contest writing nothing but lyrical verse.

Page 50

Halfway there. Onward!

Page 45

> Globs of raw cookie dough fuel my game of make-believe

5 pages in an hour. Not too bad. I've finally resigned myself to a whole pantheon of deus ex machina. (that phrase should be plural, but I don't know how to do that right now).

When I'm writing normally, I actually take time to think about what i want to happen over the course of the novel and spend pages setting it up, so that very little will happen abruptly. It should make sense, be plausible, realistic, or whatever.

That's not really happening now, though, and I think I'm ok with it. It's just a 3-D novel. There was a moment this morning at which I realized that I'm not actually writing a novel. I'm playing make-believe.

You know, when you're playing with your friends, and they're like

"ooh, I know, and then we get attacked by an alien spaceship. No wait, I know, I'm an alien, but I'm really on your side but the others don't know it. No no wait, they already captured us and we're escaping."

"you mean like in star wars when they're in that garbage pit and they get crushed to death?"

"cool, yeah, we could do that. but first lets start with the attack part where I don't know that you're going to be my friend yet. Ok, you're over there, and I'm shooting out at those trees and you have to come up behind me and tap me on the shoulder."

"ok, wait, let me get my lazer."

"yeah, but don't hold it, or I might not know you're my friend and I might shoot you."

"maybe you could wound me?"

"Nah, I think you should get wounded later so we can still run around in the trees."

"Ok, ready?"

"Ready!"

"beoo! beoo! I'm outnumbered, what do I do?"

And so on...

That's really what it's like. The idea that this is just a chance for me, as an adult, to play make-believe, with the excuse that "hey, I was sleep-deprived and under stress and just making stuff up as I went along..." and still go back to my stuffy realistic writing next week... That's pretty liberating.

Page 40

> Carrie, my lifeline to sanity right now, reads a draft and says, "No, Jeff, I love it, it's really good!" She did fall asleep over it even though it's a sci-fi horror mystery thriller, but I'm sure she was just tired.

I made the 40 page mark at 11 p.m. last night.

On sleep
The contest survival guide doesn't say anything about sleep, one way or the other. Maybe it's just implied that you won't sleep at all? Is that the whole point?

Anyway, I felt pretty tired last night, and I think if I'm calculating right I might be ahead of the game. So I turned in for a full eight hours, deciding that hitting my brain's reset button might be more useful than the time I'm giving up.

I had a dream last night that I was writing a term paper for an English class and still had 6 pages to go. I think I was freaking out in my dream.

I woke up and realized, actually, I have about 60 pages to go.

This is the kind of math I do
The guide also suggests that I should be halfway through by 6 p.m. tonight.

They also say that while there's no prescribed length, novels that win are usually around 100 pages. Sometimes 120. But that, nonetheless, you should write as much as the story requires.

So let's say I aim for 100 pages. That means I have 9.5 hours to write 10 pages to hit the halfway mark by this evening. I write at least 2.5 pages an hour. Piece of cake.

It's the variables that kill you
However, I have a few things working against me:

• This blog
• An accumulation of 10 notes that need fact-checking or problem solving in the editing stage
• No chapter breaks (yet)
• A lot of typos and grammatical sloppiness (again, I'm assuming I'll have time for a good editing pass)
• My highly distractable nature (i.e., this blog) and my consequent inability to sit at the computer for more than 2 hours at time.

Time to get strategic
Ok, so the plan is, for the next hour, type as fast as possible. Not stream-of-consciousness exactly, but minimal use of the backspace key. Get a sense of absolute fastest page-per-minute rate.

Take a break, eat breakfast.

Next, do it for two hours before my next break.

Then three, and four, and so on, until it's done.

Tonight will be my brutal all-nighter. By noon on Monday I should be moving into editing.

Page 35

Well that was a good little stint. Thank you Rhodiola! (that's an herb, not a brand name. I am not pimping products).

I feel calmer than I have since I started. The box sez this supplement "is intensively studied for enahcing concentration and endurance, uplifting one's mental state, and supporting opitmal immune, adrenal, and cardiovascular function even under conditions of severest stress."

As for the plot... I couldn't kill off a character yet. They all made it through the first pitched battle. And I'd really planned to off some of them. I just like them too much to do it yet.

I really need to thin them out, though. I have 9 already, with at least 2 more on the way. Some tragic ends would make character devleopment a bit easier for the survivers. Very glad I chose limited omniscient POV, though (or rather, it chose me). At least my main protaganist is clearly defined.

28 pages

Am I writing a zombie novel? Ok, I admit, the kernel of this idea was a challenge I made to myself to create a new vector for the origin of the zombie. (A critter writers first said was created by voodoo, later by radiation and mutation, later as bio buggies--disease, genetic modification, or whatever).

As a thought experiment, I wanted to create a different kind of zombie, using purely psychological and economic origins.

Of course, my zombies die like normal humans and they really prefer to cook their meat first when they have time, but when it comes down to it, they are zombies.

I somehow forgot how zombie-ish my antagonists are, deep down. When I was first thinking about this novel I planned to recuperate them, deepen them, make them more human and less ghouly.

But that intent is slipping, despite my best efforts. And so as a result, I've been cowering in fear next to my characters. Not letting them leave the safety of their ship. 28 pages in and they still haven't even opened the door.

Why? Because I don't want them to die in zombie attacks. But I need conflict and excitement, and that's the natural place to start.

I've never written in this genre before. Why should they suffer for me accidentally falling down in the dark alley of slasher fic?

But there's no going back. I gotta face it along with them. But I don't think I have the guts to pen truly horrifying violence. Do I? Should I try? What does it say about me if I do this thing right?

Can I merely suggest it and still get away with it? Maybe be the first, I dunno, civilized zombie novelist?

How did this happen? HOW DID I END UP WRITING A ZOMBIE NOVEL?!!!

Oh, and by the way, my personal zombie pills are an OTC herbal supplement I've never tried before. I can't do coffee--it makes me way too jittery.

27 pages

I'm in a pretty good writing track now. Don't want to interrupt it by thinking too much more about the blog at the moment. Will try to write more soon.

21 pages

I'm about to hit another wall, I think. Slowing down a bit. Time to throw in some action and get the old blood moving again.

I had a really weird, maudlin moment where I almost got teary-eyed while writing something sad about 30 minutes ago. And that's with only moderate sleep deprivation. I'm going to be a soft-shell wreck by the end of this thing.

Also my tender caretaker abandoned me to go, you know, have a Labor Day weekend kind of thing. She says she'll be back in a couple of hours. Maybe I should call her.

I'm a needy, needy, needy soul.

17 pages in

I have a plot!
Breakfast and sunlight really helped. Finished another grueling slug of explication. Just need to explain what Green is all about now... but i think I have enough groundwork to do that casually through dialogue and character development. Plot is well under way now and I even stopped to sketch up an outline. The ending is still in question, though.




Does speculative fiction always require this much setup? I guess if you're trying to create a new world you have to explain how it works sometime. I need to look around for authors who do this more creatively and less bluntly. It seems so ugly and contrived the way I'm trying to do it.

Page 10

Napping may not have been the best idea timewise, though I do feel refreshed now so it was probably worth it. Ended up sleeping until 7:30. That's a lot of lost writing time, and I think I'm behind now even if my aim is just to get 100 unedited pages. I woke up in that familiar deadline panic I haven't felt since grad school... couldn't possibly sleep but couldn't make myself face the blinking cursor again. So I laid there fantasizing about dropping the whole thing.

Then I got in front my computer again and wasn't so bad. One more grueling bit of explication left, but the plot is well under way.

My wife Carrie has been amazing! Encouraging me, cooking breakfast, waking me up, snapping pictures. Wish she'd been around when I was working on my MA... maybe I could have actually completed my Ph.D.

Page 8

Only on page eight. I'd hoped to be writing at a rate of 5 pages every 2 hours. That's not happening.

I'm at a wall right now, overcome with the feeling that I'm way out of my realm of experience and BSing just based on all the pop culture stereotypes running around in my head. I guess that's to be expected. I am more or less writing a piece of genre fiction.

It's 5 a.m., which is usually the hardest time for me when I'm driving. Maybe I should take a nap? Is this procrastination, or does my brain really need to recuperate a bit before I tackle the initial conflict?

I'm going to lie down with a blanket and a pillow on my office floor and see if I wake up with zest for the next bit.

Show don't tell!

Arg, I'm still telling not showing. Maybe I'm not a creative writer after all. I need to take some workshops or something.

Slooowing down

Ugh. How do I break out of explication and get this plot started? I feel like I'm writing a technical manual.

Six pages in

Monkey on my back

Is it bad that I already want to go back to bed? I probably shouldn't have had so much to drink yesterday, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Anyway, I was able to sleep--from about 10 p.m. until 12:30.

But honestly, more than its dubious benefits as a soporific, I think the alcohol appealed to me because of high nerves and bad habits. The plentiful margaritas and lack of responsibilities on my honeymoon has made it tough to return to my soberer routine. But I know alcohol is a bad muse for me, so I'm not going to touch the stuff now that the contest is underway.

But here I am, 3 a.m. Touch of heartburn. Exhausted. But ok all in all.

Doubting a little bit

The anxiety was definitely there at the beginning. I felt like Eddie the Eagle showing up for the Olympics. I still feel like I'm faking it when I try to be a writer... any claims to the title having to do more with showing up rather than any kind of innate talent.

Grammar?

One touch of oddness when I got started this morning. I wanted to write in the standard narrative past tense, but I kept slipping into simple present, maybe because I just finished reading a novel written in the latter tense. I haven't talked with anyone about this--but I'm curious about the merits of each. I think simple present might feel more immediate and lively for the writer, but could be somewhat disorienting for the reader.

Prelude

The Stranger's Paul Constant triggered my latest fleeting manic obsession yesterday. His suggestion for my Labor Day Weekend? Spend it indoors confronting your demons and writing a crappy novel for the 32nd Annual 3-Day Novel Contest.

I'm sure there are a lot of folks out there who have prepared for the contest—people with long, detailed outlines, lists of character names, settings. They'll write brilliant works of compressed fiction. I won't. Mine will be crap. It's liberating to know that in advance.

Prep
I need to buy groceries. I don't have anything in the house except a dozen eggs.

I did just buy a crapload of office supplies, though. They're more like totemic objects for me than actual writing tools. I have no idea if all these pens and tape and post-it notes are going to get used. But I feel better having them.

The thing is, I just got back from my honeymoon (Mazatlan) Wednesday evening and I had been planning a nice relaxing weekend... do some laundry, get a little bit of writing done, try to loose some of the 10-pounds I put on.

That's not going to happen now, though.

Why do it?
I've been plodding along through my first novel since March. It's going ok, except that I've nearly reached my target length and it's nowhere near complete. Plus it seems too episodic and it's become evident that the central plot will have to be threaded in during the next draft. I have a lot of daunting work ahead of me on that one.

In the middle of this writing, I had an idea for a new story. This new story really captivated my attention, and I started to think maybe it was just a procrastination reflex because I was getting bored with my first project. The trilogy, or whatever.

So the 3D contest is going to give me a chance to exorcise this new idea once and for all so I can return to my trilogy. And it's going to give me the sensation of finishing--something I've never had in the context of creative writing.

And probably it will give me practice overcoming those writing demons I've always blamed for keeping me from even trying to get anything published until this month, when I will turn 34.

The new idea
Dwindling resources and overpopulation on earth have driven the wealthy, the powerful, the useful to a successful colony on a new planet far away from our solar system.

Travel between earth and the new colony cannot be achieved in the lifetime of a single human, and so those who travel raise clones of themselves en route, syncing their minds through electronic implants as they sleep.

Even after the mass exodus, Earth continues to decay. Those who remain on earth have reproduced well past the planet's capacity to sustain them.

Through a period of collective hysteria brought on by deprivation and extreme overcrowding, the social order has more or less collapsed, down to the most basic of taboos. There is no collective entity, no city, no community, no family, no tribe. When there is nothing left to eat, people eat each other.

Two organizations have returned to earth to reverse the decay. Green arrived first. Their solution? Wipe out all humans left on earth. Once purged, allow earth to lie fallow until the global ecosystem gradually heals itself.

Green's agents have been authorized by the colonial government to conduct field trials and executions for any eater who has committed murder. Case law has established a precedent by which any person of a majority age who engages in cannibalism on earth will necessarily be deemed to have taken an active role in murdering their prey.

With little oversight or accountability, Green has almost full legal reign to hunt and kill the eaters on sight.

A second organization, Philo seeks to rehabilitate select eaters and form primitive, sustainable hunter-gatherer communities with the tools, culture, and knowledge necessary to work in harmony with the earth and help it to recover over the long term.

Although Philo and Green agents are infamously antagonistic towards each other, they also receive mutual benefit from collaboration: Green patrols the borders of the wild lands in which the colonial government has authorized Philo to establish their colonies. And Philo's presence helps to legitimize Green's anti-social agenda, helping them to maintain political favor as they pursue their own program of destroying the eaters.

In practice, there is a great deal of tension between Green and Philo, however, since their missions are ultimately at odds. On-the-ground collaboration between the two organizations is typically grudging and unfriendly at best.

The hero, Sean, is an agent of Philo, and an instance of a six-person clone pod that has just arrived on earth to investigate the seeming disappearance of one of Philo's oldest and most successful rehabilitation colonies on what was formerly an island in Washington's Puget Sound.

Why blog?
Admittedly I won't have a lot of time for blogging over the next 72 hours. Unless I get more time in front of the computer before midnight tonight, this will undoubtedly be my longest entry.

However, I'm already overwhelmed by the number of holes I see in the idea I've outlined above, and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to BS my way through it. On top of that, I'm starting to feel like the idea is not that great to begin with. Oh, and there's still my whole incompetence at putting together a coherent plot to begin with.

If I'm not going to get a good manuscript out of this, then I want to at least learn from the experience of writing it. I'm going to use this blog to help me remember what it was like to do this, to see what walls I ran into and how I overcame them.

And if I'm journalling for myself, I may as well make it a spectacle and let you see it too....