There’s this cold wind.
It blows through the trees, stops at an orchard, gives the fruit a kiss and moves across the road.
It stretches down the hill, rolls through the lawn, brushing the dog on the corner’s black coat.
The dog yelps and runs away.
The cold wind doesn’t stop.
Its tendrils push through my coat while I shovel the walk.
It’s blue and grey and floats around me for a minute.
I stop what I’m doing, waiting for it to move on.
The wind stays. My bones are still cold.
A while ago I read that an author has their computer read their novel back to them.
I found the idea interesting and began doing the same thing with my short stories and the novel I finished in November.
What’s happened is nothing short of an epiphany.
Hearing what I’ve written has made a difference in how I approach editing and the next writing project.
I wish I’d had figure this out sooner.
I listen to it and hear it differently than I would read it.
I know I’m supposed to read it out loud, but my voice is my own. It won’t change anything how I see it. A different voice is required.
I’ll never be able to edit another way after this.
Have a good week and I’ll talk to you Wednesday.
There is this thing I have a problem with and it needs to be solved.
It’s editing and planning/plotting.
The first part is the hardest since I actually hate, loath, despise(you know, those feisty words)editing.
But there’s this thing I need to do this year. I have to publish and at this point it’s something I have to do for my sanity.
As to plotting/planning, I’ve learned the hard way that rewriting draft after draft doesn’t work. It just pisses me off.
I know better. Or at least I like to think after 43 years I should.
These two things throw off my progress, traction, and screw up my head.
I will continue to post on here because it’s cathartic. I know you’re all tired of hearing about my editing issues. I’ll put that to bed this year.
Happy writing.
I was talking to my wife about the state of horror novels and there seems to be a bigger trend toward a story being unsettling than scary.
I read quite a few books in the last couple of years and I can pick a handful that truly scared me. Last Days by Adam L.G. Nevill, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas, and The Fisherman by John Langan are exceptions.
But it feels like there’s a move away from scary into the realm of unsettling.
I’d like someone to show me a book that I haven’t read that would change my mind on that.
You can look on my Goodreads profile to see what I’ve read.
I’ve become stuck on my recent project. I don’t know where it broke. What happened or how to fix it.
The one thing that I did different from the previous project is I didn’t think this on through.
I didn’t plan. I didn’t plot. I didn’t create a pathway to get where I need to be; where the story needs to be.
I’ve been writing a dozen short stories over the holiday break, and maybe that’s why I thought I could wing it with a longer form story.
It hasn’t worked and I can’t go back to writing multiple drafts again.
I have the story I finished before Thanksgiving and I’ll work on improving that one.
It’s strange how you write one way for so long, then you start a new way and it’s like finding the holy grail.
I’ve written 10 novels and eight of those were written by pantsing. The other two I either wrote a beat sheet or did an outline and it’s those latter ones that I feel are my best work.
They have a better flow through, a better story, character development, but after using and outline and beat sheet, I’ve gone back to a few of those and discovered what went wrong and fixed it.
I’m querying one of them right now. It’s out with three agents.
This year I want to push what scares me and that leads into a conversation I had with my wife the other day about the current slate of horror. But I’ll talk about that on Wednesday.
Enjoy the first full week of the new year.
Brian B Baker, Writer 