There's something supremely magical about that single clock tick with the ability to wipe clean the slate and give us our annual opportunity to at last Do Things Right.

My last post happened four months ago when I was (hoping to) kick off a writing binge and finally have something to show for it. It failed miserably.

But then the clock ticked over from 2011-12-31 23:59:59 to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 and I realized, with great hope (and a slight measure of anxiety) that I had just 355 days left to: write my book, get it published, and make an appearance on Ellen before the world ends.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's begin by dusting off the last two or three manuscripts and see if there's anything worth salvaging. I'll call Ellen tomorrow.

As a science fiction movie, Back to the Future should be terrible. It takes tremendous liberties with its "science" and its plot has more holes than a box of donuts. Here are just a few problems I have with the story:

• The very first time you try out your time machine, you don't stand directly in front of a car going eighty-eight miles per hour and say, "If my calculations are correct..."
• All they know is that lightning struck during the 10:04 minute: there would be no way to know the exact split-second when lightning hit. The odds of their plan working could be as bad as one in three hundred. To guarantee they get their 1.21 gigawatts they would have to build a rail about 1.5 miles long and hook the DeLorean up to it like a streetcar. Then as long as the DeLorean is going 88 mph that entire minute, no matter when the lightning strikes, they'll get their electric jolt. Doc really should have seen that coming.
• If you prevented your parents from meeting, there is no reasonable explanation for a photograph of you, your sister, and half your brother. On the one hand, if anyone would disappear, it would be Marty first (as he's the youngest child and thus the furthest down the timeline from his parents' meeting). On the other hand, people don't partially disappear. At no point would you find his brother walking around with half his body missing and posing for a photograph.
• And let's face it, Marty should have been killed when he struck that opening guitar chord.

I could go on but you get the point. Actually, no, you don't get the point because I haven't actually made my point yet. My point is: in spite of all that, it's a really good story and very well-executed movie (currently #70 on IMDb's Top 250). Who cares if the science doesn't make any sense? That's not the purpose of the film. The purpose of the film is to entertain, and on that level, Back to the Future hits one out of the park.

Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis knew that the story was paramount. I, on the other hand, can't seem to grasp that. I'm the type that would spend weeks working out the exact science. My version wouldn't have a single plot hole and consequently my version wouldn't find a soul on earth who would care to read it.

I'd invest all my energy into the back story and completely forget that I was supposed to be telling a front story. Who cares if Marty's hand becomes semi-transparent while playing the guitar? The audience is enjoying the story. And they're extremely adept at suspending disbelief if the disbelief is dispensed the right way.

The wrong way is forcing them through forty pages of (what amounts to) science lessons just to ensure everyone "gets it" before you tackle the pesky task of writing an engrossing story.

On the upside, I've heard that recognizing you have a problem is the first step to curing it. So at least I've got that going for me.

I tried to work more on my new outline last night and got nowhere. My plan was to flesh out some of the bullet points I added last week and make sure the story was flowing correctly. But then I got hung up on the first five "finished" chapters and worried (once again) that they weren't drawing the reader in quickly enough. Although I'd greatly picked up the pace from earlier drafts, they were still missing that spark. I've got to plop my protagonist directly into the middle of something.

And not just any "something" which is what I have now. Something unusual and curious: thirteen dwarves showing up unexpectedly for tea, four Preferiti missing in a race against time, fairy-tale creatures relocated to an ogre's swamp. The story has to begin immediately. There can be no long, drawn-out set up.

In my favor, I finally have a good solid backstory. At last, I possess greatly matured motivations for each character. And to top it all off, I have the build-up and ending that I envisioned from the beginning (not the ugly, tight corner I painted myself into during the first draft). So now I just need to pull it all together. I have to tell a story, and that is, as I've now proven repeatedly, something I can't do.

But I'm not going to let that stop me. That's what we're going to fix. I've slowly realized over the last two and a half years that my problem is, in a word, realism. My stories are just like real life, and real life is boring. Events unfold logically and methodically. That doesn't make for interesting reading. Take this current book for example. My protagonist makes an appearance in the Special World. Then another. Then several more. Each time a small, measured amount of story is doled out, but nothing is happening. My story is like a carefully designed PowerPoint presentation: each slide dispensing the required amount of information, and no more. I might as well write a history textbook.

So that's what I need to change. And fast.

Wish me luck.

I think of myself as a halfway intelligent, reasonable, and level-headed person. I respect other people, strive to be polite, and only very rarely throw up at fancy dinner parties. So I'm often befuddled and flummoxed by the behavior of some people. This involves observing said person's behavior, shaking my level-headed head, and saying, "What were they thinking?"

I bring this up now for one single reason: the latest (as of today) entry on Slush Pile Hell:

I received your rejection notice, and I want to let you know that even if you would have offered representation, I would have turned it down. You obviously have no taste in literature and are a hack. I look forward to your failure as the publishing industry goes down in flames.

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start. What makes people behave like this? First of all, I'm positive the person is lying. If this agent had offered to represent the book, I highly doubt the response would be, "You have no taste in literature and are a hack." No, this person somehow would have managed to find it in his heart (and yes, I'm assuming it's a "his") to actually thank the agent and move forward with getting that book deal.

Some people!

You know, the worst part of all this is the realization that my book(s), if I ever finish writing it(them) will never get published. Because of this one guy's rejection, the entire publishing industry is going down in flames. What rotten luck for me. Oh well. At least this happened after the seventh Harry Potter book got published.

Think about your dream job. I mean your all-time, number-one, could-do-absolutely-anything-you-want dream job. If you can't think of one right off the top of your head, don't worry. Here are some ideas I pulled out of my newspaper's classified ads for you:

• WANTED: Man or woman, age 21 to 129, to taste-test new chocolate candy recipes. Twenty hours per week. $120K/year and up.
• GREAT OPPORTUNITY: Are you a real go-getter? Because we need someone to go get our coffee. Up to two hours per week. $1,750/hr.
• NEEDED: Highly-motivated individual to stress test beach chairs in the Bahamas. Travel expenses and per diem included. May be required to test beer and/or margaritas up to 10% of the time. Starting rate: $6,000/month. Winters off.

While your dream job sounds kind of nice, let's face it: sooner or later every job becomes a job. You may find it incredulous that anyone could tire of tasting chocolate or fetching coffee or even sitting around on the beach. But sooner or later it happens.

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I got an idea for a new story. It goes something like this: a young hero, trapped in the ordinary world, longs to get out. He's befriended by a gray-bearded mentor who helps him find adventure. After meeting both friends and enemies along the road, our hero eventually faces the Big Bad Guy in the final showdown. The hero defeats evil and everyone lives happily ever after.

Whatcha think?

About seventeen years ago, when I first got the crazy idea I wanted to write fiction, I immediately began thinking about what I wanted to write. I realize this is backwards: the fact that I desperately wanted to write before actually having something to write . . . a problem that stuck with me for . . . oh, I'd say about seventeen years now. But anyway, as I tried to come up with something new and different and gripping, I simply couldn't help but come back to Hero's Journey-based stories. It's like it was imprinted on my DNA.

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I just finished reading blog post Paying Yourself to Write by Tami Moore where she in turn references blog post Paid Writer by Bria Quinlan. Bria suggests setting up a pay scale (e.g., $10/hr for writing, $5/hr for research, etc.) and keeping track of what you earn. The idea is that putting a dollar value on an effort that (more often than not) results in no income helps keep you in the mindset that writing is still serious business.

I think Tami takes this concept further by saying, in so many words, it's not about the money but about how you treat this gig. Whether you're published or not, paid or not, professional or not: are you acting like you're like a published, paid, professional?

While both Bria and Tami embrace the idea of the pay scale, I feel Tami strikes closer to the heart of the matter: it's less about the money and more about your behavior. In short, are you treating your writing like an actual job?

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Romeo and Juliet had name troubles. One of them a Montague and the other a Capulet (or perhaps a Jet and a Shark, if that's more your thing), their love was forbidden by the very labels given to them by their families (or by their toe-tappin', finger-snappin' gangs, if that's more your thing). But Juliet knew. She got it. Juliet knew that a simple label did not define her Romeo. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Call a rose a pickle, and it would still smell like a rose. The name does not matter.

Or does it?

I've read of several independent experiments that tested whether the name given to an object changes the way we smell the object. Essentially, smelly things (good, neutral, and bad) would be put into bags or otherwise hidden from view and labeled. Test subjects would then read the label, smell the substance, and their reactions were recorded. What happened? If you labeled a bag of cheddar cheese as "cheddar cheese" people reacted favorably. If you labeled the same bag as "body odor" people hated it. Guess old Bill got it wrong.

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If you're a fan of Cosmos or just an astronomy buff in general, then you've surely heard of the Drake Equation. Formulated in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, duly pictured here, it's a mathematical equation designed to predict the number of possible extra-terrestrial civilizations out there. It's fairly straightforward. First, figure out the average rate that stars are born. Next, figure what fraction of those might have planets. Now figure how many of those planets can support life. Next, how many of them do support life, and so on. Follow this pattern far enough and eventually the formula tells us how many Frank Drakes there might be in the universe.

Whatever number is produced by the formula is essentially meaningless, for many of the equation's factors are based on pure conjecture. But the general principle is sound: start with a large pool and whittle it down until you have the finalists.

If you think about it, variations of this formula can be created and applied to almost anything. Take, for example, the one hundred thousand people who audition for American Idol each year. A small fraction of those make it past the scouts. A small fraction of those make it past the producers. A small fraction of those actually make it in front of the judges. Another fraction goes to Hollywood, and so on. Eventually, you get down to the season finale where one person, usually Frank Drake, is declared the winner.

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The current book project is, indeed, intended to be a series of books. When I first re-tooled the idea last summer, it looked like it would span five volumes. While writing the first draft and approaching what would have been the end of the first book, I realized the ending I had originally outlined was fairly lame. Okay, really lame. It would have been as if Tolkien decided to end The Fellowship of the Ring halfway during the Council of Elrond. Had by some miracle it been published, it would have received reviews from some extremely disappointed readers.

So I combined the first two storylines into one, then checked my original outline again. Hmmm... now the third book looked thoroughly pointless. Rejected. So how about the fourth and fifth? Hmmm... yeah, these really should be one book as well. And hey presto! just like that, I had a trilogy. I can live with that.

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