So I guess I am handing out literary pink slips. It’s a tough job to make these cuts but ultimately an important one. As good and fun as it seemed when I wrote it, when I was having my mental vomit through my ticky-tappy fingertips, some things had to go.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful, which is often a good thing when it comes to air travel. Boring is good, if annoying. The types of things that make air travel exciting and riveting are the types of things best left handled by professionals and not even thought about – things like safety issues or equipment maintenance concerns. Thank goodness the airlines employ people to keep not only terrorists but also things like snakes and panhandlers away from the friendly skies.

Yeah, editing really is an important step.

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However, I never abandoned this book and have been making slow progress on it for a while. Not long ago I printed out the first two chapters so I could work on editing them in hard copy form and have been slowly chipping away at that rough ashlar and have come a long way. The first chapter is nearly complete, at least as a stand-alone product. Eventually, I will have to see how it fits into the whole and helps to make a unified product, but for now I will consider it done.

This is pretty cool to see – the first part done. Looking at the printout, although I still have a long way to go, it really does look like a book is evolving from all this. Time to get back to the grindstone with this. Time to find a publisher too, now that it is really shaping up well.

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“Like you have to recharge your batteries,” I said.

“Yes, like recharge battery. I think you understand.”

This is just what I have needed to do myself after a long time working in a day job and teaching at night, with very little time to work on this book. What I have rediscovered in the meantime is a writer I have enjoyed on and off for a year or so. In her blog Nothing But Bonfires Holly Burns writes in the most incredible way – amusing, humorous, deep, philosophical and is able to turn a story from a yarn a person might tell into a string that artfully leads back to itself the best self-referential way.

Burns is not just a great writer but a refreshing one. Reading her work helps me recharge a bit. I can’t put my finger on why or what it is but it feels nourishing, like a salve I didn’t know I needed. Maybe it’s just perspective – seeing things through another set of eyes, both familiar and foreign. I can feel myself regaining the hold I had on my writing and am excited to continue.

But the best part about Holly, and likely what makes her just a bit alluring is that she is a language geek like me and even has a favorite punctuation mark. Not many of us admit that. For me, it’s hard to say. I love em dashes; I am not as big a fan of semicolons (or of parentheses), as Holly is. I suppose it takes all types. Not everyone will agree on something as controversial as punctuation.

Thanks, Holly, for providing whatever it is I get from your blog that seems so refreshing and inspires me to continue forward.

If you have not seen Holly’s blog, please go check it out. Her careful dedication to the craft of writing is clear and I am sure you will find her style as interesting and intelligent, yet down-to-earth as I have.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, writer, Nothing But Bonfires, Holly Burns, writing, punctuation

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That’s the real question I have been asking myself as I slog through the manuscript. Does this part add to the story somehow, does it take away from the story or is it like a neutral element, doing neither of those things? If something does not add to the story it gets cut. The decision role is the hard part of editing, especially with a narrative story, such as this.

If I were to hire an editor, which is not a simple thing to do on a photographer or teacher‘s salary, the editor would have to read the whole manuscript before being able to judge each individual element. Basically, you have to know the beginning and the narrative path and see what end it comes to before being able to judge what should stay and what should get cut.

Eventually I will have to hire an editor, I think, or get one through whatever publishing house buys the book. The emotional involvement I have with this project is pretty serious and I am sure I am not always making the best decisions when choosing what to keep. I will have to examine this within myself and find a good editor in the next few months.

The timeline has been pushed back a bit, and right now I am looking at being done hopefully by the start of spring. What a great way to start a time of symbolic cleansing and rebirth. I would love to see this become a reality.

Up to now my time has been taken up by my job during the day, teaching at night and trying to find the occasional bit of extra work. Now that things have slowed down, I plan not to take many more new students and spend that time instead on writing.

The new word count: Just shy of 53,000.

Technorati Tags: writing, story, narrative, photographer, teacher, manuscript, editor

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What this means is that the completion of my book will likely not be at the end of the year. I have not had time to work on it much in the last several weeks, as I work during the day and at night and on weekends, and when I do have time to write I am mostly too tired to do much more than sit around.

My old pal and teacher Tim McLaurin used to talk about his days of writing his first novel. He was working construction, an early-riser’s gig, and had to be at work by 7 a.m. He would start writing at 4 a.m. and get done what he could before he had to leave home. Every day was like this until he finished the manuscript and got the book published.

I think I could take a page from his book, so to speak, in more than just this example. Tim’s life was intense in many ways. He was a dedicated writer and teacher and did not do much halfway. He was straightforward when he spoke and honest as well, an honorable man who nonetheless had faults, many of which he wrote about in an effort to show his children and the rest of the world that the past we have is not something to hide from or be ashamed about. The past has brought us to where we are and where we are now is a gift. We may not like where we are but the gift inside the present moment is opportunity.

Tim was like a non-celibate monk who sometimes liked to drink to excess. He understood that the past was gone and that the future had not yet arisen, and that all we had was the present moment.

As I think about this, I am reminded that I have the opportunity to be more stringent with my writing schedule, to mark times to do the important work I have in front of me and not defer my dreams due to a simple lack of time.

Langston Hughes Wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Technorati Tags: working, book, Tim McLaurin, writing, monk, Langston Hughes

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It was familiar but it wasn’t so comfortable. I wanted something else – something different – but I didn’t know what. I never really felt accepted in Thailand, mostly because I was very obviously a foreigner, and while most people there were friendly and welcoming, nobody wants to invest too much emotionally into someone they know will soon leave their life.

When I got home, I knew I did not really fit there either. The thing about travel is that it changes you. Your experiences and insights alter your very being, almost like a chemical reaction. You can’t undo that change. Maybe you can learn a new or different way of being so you can better adapt to your circumstance, but that experience will always be with you.

For a long time I lived like this, remembering Ajahn Kamtan‘s words on meditation. “Breathe in, think, ‘Bud.’ Breathe out, think, ‘dho.’ In-out, you think, ‘Bud-dho.’ You do that. You meditate on Buddho.”

Meditation helped. It calmed my mind, put out the fires of my passions and let me see the world as part of a cycle, both on the macro and micro scale. Just as the world is impermanent and in a grand cycle, I am the same way, as are my thoughts and emotions. Everything arises, exists and passes away. This feeling of confusion and culture shock will also pass. This, too, is impermanent.

The confusion has faded over the years but still sometimes rears its head, especially since I am writing about my experiences and reliving memories on a daily basis. One moment I am in a remote jungle monastery, surrounded by the sounds of animals – monkeys, insects, birds – and the next moment I am jarred out of it by a cell phone’s ring in the coffee shop where I do much of my writing.

Sometimes it is hard to make the distinction between here and there, especially as I dive deeper into the stories, fleshing out dialogues and storylines with memories of travel and excitement. At times it seems so far away, so long ago, but I need only make an attempt to recall a precious interaction, a meal, a shared laugh, a gift. Those things are always in my heart and mind and will not change, even if the moments in which they occurred have long passed.

To recall the present moment – that most important of all moments – I need only recite what Ajahn Kamtan told me. Buddho. It brings me to that still point in my mind, the warm place in my heart, the deepness of the connection I share with all people regardless of culture. It brings to the place I call home.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, culture shock, travel, Ajahn Kamtan, Buddho, Meditation, writing, present moment

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When you tell someone you are almost done with something, that person expects to see the finished product in rather short order. Well, don’t hold your breath. I am working on it but it takes quite a while to write and edit this much content.

Currently I am in the editing phase, having created probably about 90% of the content that will be in the book. That’s a lot. Now I am editing, which is a process of tweaking, rewriting, fact-checking, deleting, adding, expanding, contracting, massaging and watching my hair get more and more gray every morning.

Editing is an important process but one that is a little too revealing sometimes, showing where I have lost sight of the ultimate story, where I strayed from my path of storytelling and trod along wandering roads, abandoning the straight and narrow razor’s edge for the meandering stream. It is important to follow the stream from time to time. I suppose that is why writers have to go through an editing phase with any project.

My goal is to be absolutely done and have the manuscript handed off to an agent or publisher by the end of the year. At very least the book will be in final form and will have been submitted to a number of folks. That I can guarantee.

So am I nearing completion? Of the writing, yes. Of the editing, maybe. Of the process? Not by a long shot. The next step is to start researching literary agents and publishers. Know one? Hook me up.

The journey is long but I think I am almost there. I can just about taste completion from where I sit. Or maybe that’s the coffee I just had.

Technorati Tags: editing, writing, writer, manuscript, publisher, literary agent

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I am thinking of some sort of equation like this:

The ideal is not to simply churn out more words. That’s easy. I could hire a well-trained chicken to push keys on the laptop all day. The key is to have lots of words with a high quality density when strung together.

But then there’s the problem of how to measure quality, since it is really a subjective judgment. Different styles appeal to different people and even calculating grade levels or using “ease of reading” scales does not give a lot of information. Something that is easy to read, like Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, is not necessarily worse or better than something written on a very high level, such as the various writings of Umberto Eco.

Does anyone have an idea how to do something like this?

I don’t suppose I would adopt such a measure right off but I would love to see how someone else calculates it.

Until then, I will be going by quantity to measure my progress, knowing that I write at a certain level of quality on first pass. By the way, I recently passed 42,000 words, for what that means.

Technorati Tags: work, metric, formula, quality, writing, equation, well-trained chicken, judgment, Ernest Hemingway, Umberto Eco, quantity

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My friend Steve Grant once gave me some advice on writing. At the time, he was working on a screenplay to follow his award-winning Delicate Art of the Rifle. There are several layers of irony related to that film, most of it clouded by a mixture of sadness and good fortune.

Steve had left his full-time job to write the next screenplay and was living off savings and his girlfriend’s income. I spoke to him once about the level of dedication and discipline it takes to be a writer. “You have to write every day,” he said, “but you don’t always feel like it, just like you don’t always feel like going to a normal job or school or whatever you are doing at some point in your life.

“You have to continue. You push onward. The guy who waits for the muse to alight on the tip of his pen is a fool and will never finish. It’s hard work. No two ways about it.”

Sir Philip Sidney said something similar in “Astrophil and Stella“:

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain:
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn’d brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay,
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows,
And others’ feet still seem’d but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite–
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”

In fact, this is the only stanza worth reading in the entire poem. This is fortunate because it is the first stanza, and thus you don’t have to go looking very far to find the little nugget of truth you always hope to find in literature. I found the rest of the poem to be almost unreadable drivel. I would give him a “C” for effort. In fact, I might suggest that the last line of this stanza is the only important line in the whole poem.

Steve was right. So was Sidney, despite writing a poem that was way too long. I had already learned this lesson, as my degree was in writing and editing. I learned early on that writing can be a hateful task and full of sweat. It’s the mental equivalent of stacking car batteries all day, which I have also done. When I think about throwing all this away and going back to manual labor and honest work, I think back on those days and say to myself (sometimes even aloud), “No darned way.”

I better get back to writing. This book isn’t going to write itself.

Technorati Tags: writing, Steve Grant, Delicate Art of the Rifle, Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, poem, book

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Folks often ask how long it will be by the end. I don’t know. It will be precisely long enough to tell the story. I figure it should be at least 50,000 words. At this point that looks about right but we will see how it fleshes out. Right now I am on the second round of content creation, having finished the first round of the same and done a round of editing. At 50,000 words I will stop and edit again, then likely pick up the content creation once again.

Writers are never happy. We are editing creatures, like knife sharpeners who insist that they can get a blade just a tiny bit sharper with one more pass along the grindstone.

Here is my visual tracking I do in my office on the white board:

The dates are on the left and the corresponding number of words on the right. As you can tell, I had quite a bit of time to work on the project in late February and early March. That was a mixed blessing, as my main market was in its seasonal slump. Now I have less time but more work. It’s like my father used to say – you either have time or money; you rarely have both at once.

So the book continues. When I have time I can often sit down for a few hours and be super concentrated and hammer out 750 words in an hour or so but those times are not common nowadays.

Technorati Tags: manuscript, book, content creation, Writers

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