I like to record things. I keep track of time, I fill journals, and I log spreadsheets. It's quite likely I have millions of words scattered about, chronicling everything I've done, for over thirty years. If I ever make something of myself and some future biographer needs some raw material, there will be no shortage of it.

Which is why I know that twenty years ago today, I wrote this:

Today the itch got to me. I've been feeling like writing a book for some reason, and today I took my first steps towards realizing it. Now I didn't actually write anything today, because, heck, I don't even have a story yet. But I did some housekeeping, and, using MicroSoft Word on my PC, I came up with document templates to use. So now, if an idea hits me, I'll be ready.

I think part of what's making me feel this way is the TBX documentation that I'm just now finishing. It came out to over 400 pages, and it made me realize that I'd like to write something real rather than technical documentation.

If I were the protagonist in some other author's work, he couldn't have created a passage containing any more gems than that one. Just look at it! I say I want to write a book but instead of writing, I just set up templates. (I still get a kick out of the way I wrote "MicroSoft".) I mention not wanting to write technical documentation. Yet between 1996 and 2007, that's about all I did with my Getting Results video editing how-to series. And the most tragic part: I still have this burning desire to write novels and yet I obviously lack the capacity.

Exhibit A

To discuss this in more depth, I give you Exhibit A: Life is Like a MasterCard.

The white box represents all of humanity, plus dolphins and mice. Any being in the white area has no ability to do X and no desire to do so either. Any being in the white area is perfectly content. Using me as an example: I have absolutely no ability to understand quantum physics and no desire to do so. I am content. I do not think about quantum physics in the car on the way to work. I don't worry that I'm making no progress in the field. I never fret that I will not be remembered for my achievements in quantum physics. I am content.

The blue area contains the subset of people who have the ability to do something, but no desire. The beings in this box are also perfectly content. If I may offer myself up as a guinea pig a second time: I have the ability to write a word processor. I am a software developer by profession and were I to put my mind to it, I could come up with something more than useable. But I have no desire to do so. The world is pretty well set on word processors. I am content.

The purple area is the subset of people who have the ability to do something as well as the desire. The beings in this box are also content. I myself have the ability and desire to make toast and put peanut butter on it. I do this often. I am content.

Now at this point, you, the dolphins, and all the mice see where this is heading. You can see where the pain lies. It's in that red area. This is where you find the unhappy, the restless, the cursed. I sure would like to write a novel. But I can't. I just can't.

Exhibit B

"Well, not with that attitude!" the ever-helpful optimist points out. "Think positive! You can do anything!" Well, I simply don't believe that. And that's not being a pessimist, that's just being a realist.

My favorite Pixar film is Ratatouille. The food critic Ego constantly demonstrates his disdain for Gusteau's motto, "Anyone Can Cook!" Because, at face value, this appears to be just another twist on the syrupy "Think positive! You can do anything!" mantra. What Ego finally realizes at the end of the film is the truth in what Gusteau meant: "Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." I love that. It sounds positive but at its heart lies realism. That's me in a nutshell.

My Problem

In the last month or so, it finally struck me what my problem is. I have something I call "I Can Do That! Syndrome." I possess a modicum of talent in the fields of writing, art, and music — but only just enough to be a danger to myself.

If I read a book, or see a movie, or look at a painting, or hear a song that I like, my immediate reaction is, "I Can Do That!" Because I know how to write, draw, and play a couple musical instruments. I've done enough of these things. I understand the fundamentals, theory, and have enough practical knowledge that my reaction is always the same: I Can Do That!

For example, I'll look at a pencil drawing like this:

I then set my own pencil to paper and get this:

It's all just a bit frustrating. And even more so now, looking back on a journal entry written twenty years ago by a person who thought he just might take the literary world by storm.

Still, I haven't given up yet. If there's one thing about "desire without ability" it's this: it is, first and foremost, "desire." And I'll keep working on this, if it's the next thing I do. Which it will be if I just click that Publish button and at last get back to work.

Check back on April 20, 2033 for Part Two of this post.

• Author spends an entire day forging breathtaking prose out of white-hot metaphors.
• Tired, yet satisfied over an honest day's toil, Author decides to take a trip to the bookstore for a hot cup of coffee and a peek at the latest Garfield calendar.
• A wall in the color of, oh, let's just call it "more than four dozen shades of a color not quite black nor white" smacks Author in the face.
• Not without a wince, Author picks up one copy, slowly peels it to a random page and reads, "The muscles inside the deepest, darkest part of me clench in the most delicious fashion."
• In utter despair, Author returns home and burns manuscript-in-progress.

It makes sense, of course. After all, if badly written books can not only get published but become — gasp — popular, what hope does someone like Author have?

This sense of frustration is normal. For in spite of piles and piles of evidence to the contrary, we all still believe life is supposed to be "fair." And it's patently NOT fair that someone who only but recently learned how to hold a pen now receives daily FedEx trucks full of money while we — we who type until our fingers bleed, perfecting each loving sentence whilst passion for the written word visibly drips from our under-appreciated pores — can't get the time of day from even the most hard up, entry-level employee in Acquisitions.

What we seemingly forget, in spite of piles and piles of evidence to the contrary, is that there is absolutely no correlation between "level of artistic merit" and "commercial success." None whatsoever. I'm sorry about that, but it's true. Highly related: we also forget that the publishing industry does not solely exist to ensure that only the finest quality writing ever reaches the hallowed shelves of Barnes & Noble. No, the publishing industry is a business, and that isn't a bad thing. It is not run by ignorant, malevolent, money-grubbing primates with nothing but disdain for the fine arts. It is run by people who are responsible for running a responsible business. This means creating products, shipping products, marketing products, and selling products. If they accomplish this monumental task successfully, then they get to pay the tens of thousands of people who make up this supply chain. Plus, as an added bonus, they're allowed to remain in business one more year.

Deep down Author knows this. Yet she remains despondent that crappy books contribute to this business model and can't understand why fine work (such as her own) never sees the light of day. It's easy to forget that fine work does get published. And, yes, it's very easy to forget that for every unexpected hit like Twilight, one hundred thousand equally crappy manuscripts are turned away. It's not as if only crappy books are published.

Author also forgets that "it takes all kinds." These books sell for one and only one reason: because a market exists for them. And it honestly doesn't matter if you personally disagree with the tastes of this market. I'm sure there are aficionados of classical music who simply cannot figure out why anyone would listen to jazz. The jazz devotees cannot figure out why anyone would listen to pop music. The Top Forty fans don't appreciate country music. Country music fans will never, ever figure out heavy metal. And the headbangers can't for the life of them understand why anybody would listen to anything as mind-numbingly boring as classical music.

So what's Author supposed to do? Quit writing? Give up? Chuck her manuscript into the river and never write again? To that I respond with a most emphatic yes. Because that just means MY crappy manuscript has one fewer author to compete against.

• October: complete research and planning for "Tuesday Night".
• November: write the next draft of the novel, in conjunction with NaNoWriMo.
• December: edit, edit, edit.

The reality:

• October: did nothing until 10pm on October 31.
• November: decided at the last minute to work on "Elsewhither" instead.
• December: made Chex Mix.

All in all, not the disaster it was last year. I only ended up with about eleven thousand words total, but that's eleven thousand more than I had before. Plus, some of them weren't half bad.

Here's to more and better progress in 2013. I can feel it. I was just kidding the previous twenty years. This year will be the one. Really.

While I like the idea of a three month project [one month of planning, one month of writing (fortunately coinciding with NaNoWriMo) and one month of revision (unfortunately coinciding with Christmas)] the hard truth is: you can't plan creativity.

Well, maybe you can, but I can't.

That isn't to say I didn't have high hopes for 2012. For whatever reason, in spite of the lack of progress on this front for decades, I thought fer sure this would be the year. But then two things happened. 1) I got sick; and 2) I got stuck. And the latter was far worse than the former, believe me.

Still, I managed to make some progress on the backstory. And I made great progress on the high level story. But when I got down into the details (you know, all those pesky little words that people seem to care about when they read a book) it just got boring and pointless again. I couldn't seem to connect a good high level idea with a low level implementation. (And I'm certainly not alone in that regard. I'm sure this is exactly what plagues millions upon millions of wannabe writers.)

So I decided to follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter for a couple months. That didn't work.

So then I tried focusing on other projects for a while. But I couldn't come up with any.

So as I looked bleakly at the last quarter of 2012 and thought about doing nothing until next year (or even later) it occurred to me: I just need to give this one more good shot. The fact that this thought happened on Day One of Quarter Four is just all the better.

So here I am. This may work or it may fizzle out just as quickly as it did last year. Either way, I'll let you know on December 22, 2012.

If we're all still here then.

Well, "this" is the model which describes the mechanics of the science upon which the entire story is based. And if I haven't mentioned that before, it's obvious now: my current Work in Progress will be categorized as science fiction.

I won't go into the details here. In fact, I won't even go into the details in the book. Because the details of the model are irrelevant to the story itself. The real purpose is to have a consistent, solid base upon which to build the story, and if I really do my job right, you won't even notice the consistent, solid base. The story will just feel right.

But someday that one over-eager fan will raise his hand at the book talk and ask, "So how did that actually work?" And that's when I whip out my eighty-seven slide PowerPoint presentation and reply, "I'm glad you asked."

Enter chemotherapy. Six hours in a chair getting strange fluids pumped into my body? What a perfect time to print out all those notes, pour through them, and see if there's anything salvageable. Unfortunately (?) chemo only comes once every three weeks.

Catching Up

I've spent most of this year in reboot mode on the novel with the working title of Winter's Gate. Stuck on the fifth draft, I'm still severely unhappy with the pace and depth of the book. The former needs to pick up greatly and the latter needs to go way deeper. Otherwise, no one but the people I force to read it will read it. Even I can't read it.

Part of the fix has been the aforementioned note re-reading exercise. I had to make sure I didn't come up with something Brilliant back in, say, September 2010 (spoiler alert: I didn't.) The rest has been rewriting the book at the synopsis level. As I'm fond of saying: if you can't write a good story in 500 words, you can't do it in 90,000 either. And it doesn't seem to matter how fond I am of saying that, I still tend to write 90,000 words before I know what I'm actually trying to accomplish.

So that's really all I have at this point. Still hoping to get a good, solid, real draft done by 12/21/2012. After that, I'm just playing it by ear.

I know it's temporary. I also know it's normal. I've been through these ups and downs enough times now to get that. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating when it happens.

I made vast strides in January and the first part of February this year. Things were really looking up. I had better-developed characters, stronger backstory, powerful character motivation (where before I had next to none), everything really felt like it was at last falling together.

Then I tried to apply this to the outlines of Part I of the book: the first five chapters. It went well until I got to Chapter 3 and I found myself (once again) stuck. Stuck by the process of turning all of these new plans and ideas into a gripping story. I just can't seem to make that leap from a solid outline to a readable novel.

And that's when my motivation drops back to zero. I want to do this but then I get overwhelmed at the thought of the amount of work still ahead of me. And if that weren't enough to hold me down in the mud, that OTHER thought hits me. You know, the hard, cold fact that even if I do finish this, the odds of it ever reaching a single bookshelf are in the struck-by-lightning range.

So that's today's pep talk! Be sure to tune in again next week for another exciting installment in my highly-acclaimed motivational series: Why Do You Even Try?!

A map gives you a solid idea of what's going on that no amount of prose can equal. Which begs the question: is the map a crutch? Certainly a really good book wouldn't need one. After all, isn't it considered literary cheating if you have to literally draw a picture for your readers to help understand your story?

I don't think so. The lack of a map takes away nothing from the story. The addition of the map only adds to the enjoyment of the reader, offering an extra dimension of exploration for those so inclined.

The Map as a Tool

What's easy to forget though, is that the map isn't so much there for the reader's benefit as it is for the author's. When writing a story, a clear view of what's really going on (and where!) is essential for the author. Without that solid image the story might wander or become inconsistent. And what better way to create a solid image than by drawing a map.

As I slogged through the latest draft of Winter's Gate, I began to realize that a particular vagueness to my surroundings was beginning to hurt me. I decided I needed to nail down the layout once and for all.

Maps aren't just for large, sprawling continents like Middle-earth. A large percentage of Winter's Gate takes place in a single building and I simply couldn't go on without a clear vision of this building. So last week, after exploring various tools, I settled on PowerPoint (for 2D) and Google Sketchup (for 3D). I then set about realizing my world. Here are the results.

First, the building exterior:

After kicking around some ideas, it felt like a three story building with a lower level (shown here below the ground line) made sense. Prior to this exercise, I really had no idea how many levels it had. And though I'm showing you the exterior first, this didn't come about until after I'd done extensive work on the 2D floor plans:

Lower Level: where the Generator resides.

Ground Floor: clearly still a work in progress.

First Floor: not much happens here, but I designed it anyway.

Second Floor: a lot happens here (ironically I designed this last).

And the Results?

My single greatest surprise is that many story elements and scenes which I had already worked out no longer fit the new landscape. This is odd, of course. I mean, this is a novel. By definition, it's fiction. I can make whatever kind of building I want and force it to fit the story.

But as it turns out, good fiction really CAN'T be whatever I want. The reader still requires plausibility and consistency. And drawing a clear map of one of my most important settings suddenly pointed out that I had plausibility and consistency issues. It didn't matter how much I liked some of the earlier scenes. It was clear I had darlings to kill.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Rewrite

As I left the wake for my recently killed darlings, something hit me. The story was about to get better. I re-opened chapter one, with my protagonist Quin's first encounter with that orange ball you see pictured above. I began rewriting the entire scene with this new, clear picture in mind, and wow. Everything got better.

My renewed excitement from a few weeks ago was renewed once again. The story that felt dead in the water last August has had new life breathed into it twice now.

Let's just hope it isn't all for naught.

And that's been my struggle over:

• The last year
• The last three years
• The last twenty years

Lots of ideas. No idea how to present them. My drafts are nothing more than plot tent poles but without the tent. What this means to the layman is: they're boring, they're wordy, and they're nothing no reasonable reader would want to spend five minutes on.

Not exactly the recipe for success, no?

So last week I picked one manuscript, Winter's Gate, and decided it needed a reboot. I hadn't touched it for five months and of all the works in progress, this still seemed like it had the most potential.

So I spent some time this weekend trying to pick it apart, save the good stuff, throw out the bad, and figure out how to best get from Point A to Point B. But after two days, I once again was left with nothing. This is the kind of thing that will drive me back to Cheez-Its.

But then, about two hours ago, something happened. Have you ever spent days and days and days working on a puzzle but simply cannot see the solution even though you know it's right under your nose? Miraculously, that's exactly where I was. And then it hit me. Why is it the hardest puzzles can suddenly look so mind-numbingly stupid once you have the answer?

So I'm fairly fired up about this. If I don't screw this up again, I may have a shot at a decent plot. This reboot is now officially underway.

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.