One Blog Closes, Another Opens

After thinking about it long and hard I have decided to close this blog. As those of you who have followed it know I haven't posted much in the last few months. That's because I made this blog too restrictive in what I was blogging about. It's difficult enough to write a novel without also having to find something to blog about that one particular writing project on a regular basis. I was unable to make the format work.

I'm beginning a new blog with a more open focus. Instead of focusing on just one particular type of writing, i.e: a novel, I'm opening up my new blog to the different types of writing I do, both fiction and non-fiction, all formats. I'll also blog about books I read and authors I like. Just tonight I blogged about short story writing and reading Erskine Caldwell. If you're interested check out http://mywriterslife.wordpress.com/. I'm fairly certain I won't run out of topics.

Where Have I Been?

For the past few weeks I have not blogged about my novel. Why, you may ask, was I not blogging? The answer is simple: I wasn't writing. Can't blog about writing if I'm not writing. The obvious next question is, why was I not writing? The answer to that is a bit more complicated. Well nothing is really ever simple, is it?

The immediate answer is that I was busy distracting myself with other things, i.e.: facebooking, Myspacing, worrying about trivial matters (too many in number to list here). Why was I distracting myself with other things? Now that's the real question, leading to the real answer. Fear of success is probably the main reason; there are probably a whole slew of secondary reasons as well but I won't get into that here.

I've developed some pretty good avoidance strategies for not accomplishing the things I want. Keeping myself busy with minor things that I pretend are major is the main way I do it. I've done this so frequently in the past that  I should have seen it sooner. Now that I've realized I'm using this particular strategy again I can stop using it and get back to writing. I'll have to check myself much more frequently to ensure that I don't backslide; this is something like being a recovering alcoholic. I wonder if there's a twelve step program for underachiever's...Underchievers Anonymous? The writer as self-psychoanalyst.

What I'ld like to do, if you'll all allow me, is to ask for a reset of sorts. I want to start this blog over from today. In other words in 365 days from today I will have a finished novel. No avoidance, no stopping, no excuses. I realize this is a lot to ask. I started this blog several months ago with the same premise and the same promise...to have a completed novel in 365 days. I also realize that once you break a contract, a verbal committment or a promise people no longer trust you. This is with good reason; you've let them down. It's an issue of trust. I will probably lose readers. However if you stick with me I will have a finished novel a year from today...promise.

I will have some things to post within the next few days (my plan is to post every two to three days at the longest) about my restarted process.

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Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall, Wednesday, 16 June 2010...365 days and counting.

Deconstruction of a Novel

It's been a few weeks since I've posted. I've been busy working on my novel and deconstructing Robert Crais' novel L.A. Requiem.

I've gotten only a little further with my novel but the process of deconstructing someone else's novel was very interesting and instructive. I was able to gain some insight into how Mr. Crais put together his novel, how he created tension and suspense, basically the whole nine yards of novel construction. I believe that I've gained so much insight into the writing process that I'm now deconstructing James Lee Burke's Black Cherry Blues and will do the same with Robert B. Parker's early Spenser novel Looking for Rachel Wallace after I finish with Mr. Burke's book.

*   *   *   *   *

I've included two links to reviews for Henning Mankell's The Man from Beijing. The New York Times review is lukewarm; the Washington Post review is more positive. I am reading the novel, a mystery in which a mass-murder has occured in the fictional Swedish town of Hesjovallen. The Man from Beijing is not Mankell's best work but I'm enjoying it none the less.

The New York Times Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/Peed-t.html

The Washington Post Review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040904973.html

Below I've also included a review, from the Los Angeles Times, of Robert Crais' The First Rule.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/11/entertainment/la-et-book11-2010jan11

To Blog or Not to Blog...To Write or Not to Write. It's Hard Doing Both!

I haven't been blogging in over a week because I've been using all my spare time to write my novel. Because of this I'm feeling guilty about not blogging regularly. I can certainly find things in my life to feel guilty about but this one is making me feel more guilty than most. So I'm going to try blogging every other night about my novel. I'll see if that works.

I'm progressing into chapter two without having finished chapter one. But chapter one is almost complete and I pretty much know how it ends so I'm not messing anything up by beginning chapter two early. At least I hope I'm not.

Not much else to write about my novel tonight so here are a couple of good links. Are you looking for some good online writing classes? Like anything else check this out to your satisfaction before progressing but I recommend (at least taking a look at) Gotham Writer's Workshop online, http://www.writerclasses.com/. Writer's Digest magazine also presents online writing instruction at http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/retail/ . Again I say check these out thoroughly and to the point that you're comfortable before paying for instruction. In fact that's probably a good rule for anything in life, i.e.: use someone else's recommendation as a starting point and then do your own research. I'm planning on taking classes from both later this year when I have a little more discretionary income.

Book Review Links:

Here's an interesting piece about Mark Twain from the USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-04-20-twain20_CV_N.htm

And here's a link to a review of Jennimae & James: A Memoir in Black and White. It's an interesting story of the relationship between a white mathematician and his uneducated African-American housekeeper.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2010-04-22-newmanrev22_ST_N.htm

Finally, do you like history? Think Teddy Roosevelt played an interesting role in American history? Then read The War Lovers by Evan Thomas...and the New York Times book review I've linked to about Teddy Roosevelt. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/books/review/Steel-t.html?ref=books

Till next time.

Bill Browning. Sunday, 25 April 2010.

Why write? It's better than parking cars...and you get to work inside.

You ever write anything and realize, after spending a fair amount of time on it, that it's total garbage? I did that tonight. I wrote a long blog entry about my motivations for writing. I then read it and realized that if I were reading someone else's blog I would think the writer was a complete jerk. "Pretentious crap" is the name of the discard file I put that particular piece of garbage into.

So what are my motivations for writing? To be able to communicate with others on a level that affects them emotionally is my number one reason. I love to tell stories that cause people to feel something. It usually means you're connecting with them. I also enjoy reading books that cause me to have an emotional response, joy, sadness, etc. I think that all this points to a basic human need, connection to other people.

To create is another. To create a story from nothing is a difficult thing; I know, I'm in the process of doing it. To create a good story from nothing that then gets you all sorts of positive feedback, attaboys and woot woots (where did that expression come from?) is probably close to a miracle. I'm aiming for the miracle. I'm mentioning that in case I haven't been clear on the issue.

Being able to earn my living as a writer would be a pretty good thing also. I have no illusions that a writing life would be any simpler or easier than any other kind of life. Writing is just as difficult a way to earn a living as anything else you choose to do. In my case though I seem to have some talent for it and it's what I want to do so I'm going for it.

So those are some of my reasons for writing. I'm sure if you asked a hundred other writers to explain why they write you'ld get a hundred different answers. In fact there are probably as many reasons for writing as there are writers...that comment was pretty zen wasn't it? Bill, the master of insightful writing.

That's all I've got for tonight. More tomorrow.

Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Tuesday, 13 April 2010.

Can Annie Hall Make Me a Better Writer?

Writing this blog is far harder than writing my novel. On the days I blog I try to think of something interesting to write and have a difficult time doing that. So I plod on. This blog will be as much a learning experience as writing my novel is.

I'm midway through L.A. Requiem. Great book; it's probably one of Crais's best if not the best of his Elvis Cole mystery series. Read it...it's great. I'm also dissecting it, per my last blog, and I'm getting a lot of good info about putting a novel together. I'm hoping that doing this does not put me behind on finishing within the year but we'll see how that turns out.

The novel itself continues, slowly, but it continues to grow and take shape. Sort of like the Frankenstein monster, "It's alive," although it really isn't a monster. It's just a novel that sometimes drives me crazy in the process of writing it.

Thought for the night: does anyone remember Woody Allen's riff on relationships from Annie Hall? You don't? Well you've come to the right place to hear about it. Warning: I've bored many a past girlfriend with quotes from Woody Allen movies. However I love Woody Allen's films and stand unafraid of spreading ennui so here goes. Woody starts by telling a joke at the end of Annie Hall about his uncle who thought he was a chicken. People would continually ask his family why they didn't have the uncle committed. The answer: "Because we need the eggs!" Woody then goes on to draw parallels with relationships, i.e.: in most cases they don't go anywhere, we are mismatched with the person we're with and, in the end, we get nothing but pain and heartache (I'm paraphrasing). So why do we continue having relationships? You guessed it...because we need the eggs. Well damn son, writing is just about the same thing. We agonize for hours over a line or two, we read other authors who make us despair of ever writing anything that's good and we convince ourselves that no one will ever want to read our finished book (or short story, poem, etc). So why do we continue writing...

Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Monday, 13 April 2010.

A Way to Learn Novel Crafting

I was thinking yesterday of books on writing technique. Specifically I was thinking of those I've read in the past and remembered a technique I once read about in Lawrence Block's Spider Spin Me a Web, his book on writing a novel. I recall that he mentioned a technique in which you deconstruct someone else's novel by writing a synopsis of each chapter on index cards. You might also mention the characters introduced in each chapter and then the story points introduced in each chapter (I might have added some of these myself; I can no longer find my copy of the book). In this way you can see how the novel was constructed. Not a bad idea, I think. Time consuming but not a bad idea. So I'm doing it with Robert Crais' L.A. Requiem. I am reading the book at the moment anyway. I'll let you know how it works out.

Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Thursday, 8 April 2010.