Category: bradbury

April 21, 2016

The Stakes

            Hello, all. Sorry again for the delay.  I’ve been beating myself near-senseless against this new draft, and tax stuff, and prepping for a con (Texas Frightmare in Dallas/Fort Worth—one week from now!).  Plus I got selfish and decided to sleep for three hours one night…  I think we’re going to be back for the next several weeks with no problem, though.  I just focused a lot on the new book because I feel like there’s a lot riding on it.
            Speaking of which…
            If you listen to writer-types a lot, one term you’ve probably heard a few times is the stakes.  What are the stakes? What’s at stake? Something like that.
            Every story needs stakes.  Simply put, the stakes are the possible repercussions of failure or inaction.  It’s what’s going to happen if my characters don’t succeed in their various challenges.
            This may seem a little silly to say, but generally those repercussions are bad.  A common thing we see at stake is someone’s life—or maybe many people’s lives.  Maybe it’s the protagonists, maybe it’s the life of someone else.  For a lot of summer movies it can mean the fate of the whole world.  The old school/orphanage/watering hole is another common stake.  Freedom’s one, too.  Secretes being revealed.  And there’s always money (billions of dollars at stake!).  These are all great stakes to have in a story.  It’s also not uncommon for a story to lead us in by claiming X is at stake, only to twist things a bit and let us see we’re trying to prevent a much bigger Y from happening.
            Stakes can also be internal, more about my story than my plot.  Maybe Wakko’s sense of self-worth is at stake.  Or maybe his dream of being an astronaut.  Or of getting the girl.
            (…although let’s face it. If Beth is only interested in you because you can ski the K-12, maybe she’s not really worth it.  Have you noticed that cute foreign exchange student across the street?  She seems like a much better person overall…)
            Now, this brings up a key point.  You may notice a lot of the stakes in that last paragraph are kind of small.  Minor, you might even say.  And it’s true, these are small-scale stakes—for you and me.  For Wakko, though, these stakes are huge!  And in a small, personal story that’s fine.
            See, the thing about stakes is they have to be high for my character. That’s what matters.  Yes, it’s horrible if a husband/father might die in a taxi crash in New York, but stopping it from happening is going to mean a lot more to his wife and kids than it does to me.  If we were in the position, any of us would try to stop it—we’re all decent people—but none of us is going to have that sheer needto stop it that his wife and kids would.  For them, those stakes are much bigger.
            So, hey, let’s talk about this with a shameless Marvel movie reference…
            In Ant-Man, Hank Pym has a long talk with Scott Lang where he explains the whole situation with his shrinking technology, the balance of power, and his old assistant Darren Cross.  Scott listens, then very calmly says “I think our first move should be… calling the Avengers.”  And we all laugh, because this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when someone has what feels like a big problem.
            The ugly truth is, though, in a world where AI robots drop cities out of the sky and fish oil pills can bring destructive superpowers or death… Hank’s problems are kind of small scale.  No pun intended.  And when he busts Scott out of jail and gets him involved so Scott will have a chance to repair things with his ex-wife and daughter, well… it’s still pretty small.  Keeping technology from falling into the wrong hands, a jailbreak, stopping the crazy apprentice, fixing my life so I can be with my daughter… these are all small stakes, in the big scheme of things.
            Thing is, that’s exactly why they work.  It’s completely believable that Hank will be obsessed with how the technology he invented is used.  With all the problems in the world, we wouldn’t buy it if the Black Widow or Thor showed up just to save this one guy’s daughter—but it’s very believable that Scott would do anything he could for his daughter.
            Another point, kind of related to the personal aspect.  Stakes need to be believable.  As I’ve said many, many times, storytelling all comes down to characters.  If I can’t believe in what my characters are experiencing or encountering, in their motives or goals, it’s going to be really hard for me to believe in the story as a whole.  I believe in the Infinity Gem creating some very high stakes in Guardians of the Galaxy—an entire story set against a cosmic, futuristic backdrop—but that kind of nigh-omnipotent power just wouldn’t fit in Ant-Man.  The tone needs to be believable, too.  Again, cosmic vs. small and personal, epic vs. intimate.  There’ve been numerous Muppet movies with high stakes, but none where the goal is to stop a serial killer or prevent a bioterror attack.  These stakes are high, no question, but they’re just not the right tone for a story starring the Muppets.
            There’s also a time factor with stakes—there shouldn’t be enough of it.  If Yakko has a deadly disease that kills people in thirty years, bare minimum… well, that doesn’t seem that urgent.  If Wakko’s daughter is kidnapped and they say they’re not going to think of harming her for six months… well, this is bad, but we’ve got time.
            If my stories have a threat, that threat has to happen now.  Not in a year, not in a month—now.  The window of opportunity for my characters should be closing fast, because if it isn’t… well, human nature, right?  Why put it off until tomorrow when I really don’t need to worry about it until August.
            August of 2068, just to be clear.
            This brings me to another small point (again, no pun intended).  The butterfly effect doesn’t really work when it comes to stakes.  If you’re not familiar, the butterfly effect is when very small actions lead to very large repercussions.  In the classic Ray Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder,” killing a butterfly millions of years in the past changes a time traveler’s present from a progressive, Federation-esque world to a harsh, neo-fascist one.  It’s a common idea.  Changing A will result in B, which will give us C, only one short step from D, and after D then E is inevitable.  And nobody wants E to happen.
            Nobody.
            The catch is that it can be very tough to convey that.  Stakes need to be a little more immediate and personal and not quite so “long chain of events.”  I’ve talked before about keeping things close and personal for my characters—this is that kind of thing.
            Let’s look at Ant-Man again.  One of the plot points is how much damage Hank’s technology could cause if everyone had it.  If Hydra or the Ten Rings got hold of that tech, they could kill anyone with impunity.  Armies of 1/16” assassins.  Terrifying, right?
            And yet… the story kinda brushes over this.  It’s addressed, but after that it just becomes about stopping Cross from selling the tech.  We don’t need to deal with those further-down-the-road repercussions, we just need to stop him right now.  We put a face on it, because these are the stakes that are big to Scott, Hope, and Hank.
            So, my stakes need to be big.  More importantly, big for my characters.  They need to be believable.  They also  need to be imminent.  And they need to be very direct—the more separated they are from the characters and their actions, the less impressive they’re going to be.
            Easy, right?
            Actually let me toss out one last thought on this…
            Hollywood’s convinced a lot of people that everything needs to be huge. Epic-huge!  WORLD-SHATTERING HUGE!  If the stakes don’t involve at least five billion deaths and/or seventy billion dollars, they’re not high enough.  Producers push for this all the time, so these days a lot of screenwriters (and novelists) tend to lean this way automatically…
            Thing is though, those kind of stakes can be exhausting for everyone.  The readers, the characters… even the writer.  That’s one of the other reasons Ant-Man went over well with so many folks. After all the previous Marvel movies had saved the United States from being overthrown (three times), saved mankind from extinction (twice), and even saved the whole galaxy from a would-be god… yeah, it was nice to deal with a story where the stakes were a bit smaller and more personal.  Hell, figure one of the best- selling books of the past decade—Andy Weir’s The Martian—is about saving one guy’s life. One. That’s it.
            So make sure you’ve got your stakes set.
            Next time… we’re going to talk about something we haven’t discussed in a while. Using the rite words.
            Until then… go write.
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March 30, 2012 / 3 Comments

Hunger Games

            Sorry I’m running a bit late.  I’m weak from starvation.

            Did I mention I was on a diet?  I can’t complain too much, because I’ve lost seven pounds in two weeks, and it’s actually starting to show in the waist.  Still…  I wouldn’t complain if one of you slipped me some Doritos.
            Anyway…
            I’ve used food and cooking before as a metaphor for writing, and I think it’s one that works well.  What counts as good food is largely a matter of individual taste, although most of us can agree on a few key things that make food bad.   There’s also some good parallels between being a chef and being a writer.  Almost all of us can cook, but we recognize that being able to microwave hot dogs doesn’t make me a chef, just like being able to send a text message doesn’t make me a writer.  There’s also books and classes for both, but the only way to improve is to just get in there and do it—again and again and again. 
            Also dieting, like writing, is going to work different ways for different people.  I need to make a set diet and follow the rules strictly, but you might be one of those god-awful people who can eat anything you like.  Sticking to it is agony for me, but maybe you barely notice you’ve changed what you eat.
            This doesn’t mean I can alter my diet to match yours, though.  My girlfriend’s also dieting, so we’re shooting for the same basic goal, but we’re not following exactly the same path to get there.  This is the Golden Rule I mention here now and then, my one bit of guru-istic advice.  What works for me might not work for you, and it definitely won’t work for that other guy.  We all need to find what methods and habits work best for us when it comes to getting to that basic goal
            So, since starting this diet—I mentioned I was on a diet, yes?  And that I would probably be willing to harm two or three of you for some garlic bread?—it’s struck me that there’s another way food and writing are similar, and that’s in how we portion things out.
            All of us develop habits in our writing, and they tend to stick with us until we make a serious attempt to change them.  And just like eating, most of our initial habits are bad ones.  We go for the fun stuff without realizing how bad it is in large quantities.  Action.  Gore.  One-liners.  Sex.  Melodrama.
            The next step, though, is when people now take their writing (or eating) to the other extreme.  I think all of us know someone who’s borderline insane about what they eat.  They have to know every ingredient in something, the precise number of calories, the recommended daily allowance of saturated fats, the grams of protein.  Heck, some of them don’t just want to know what’s in their food, they want to know each ingredient’s pedigree.  Was the low-fat cheese made from the milk of grass-fed cows?  Was the grain in this bread mechanically threshed or hand-sifted?  And it is organic grain grown in non-chemically fertilized soils?
            Once I started getting a lot more serious about writing, I tried doing all the outlines and character sketches and charts and index cards.  I made sure every character had an extensive backstory (all of which ended up on the page), every object had an elaborate description (all of which ended up on the page), and every location had an array of smells and sounds and sights that could only come from experience and practiced observation (and they all ended up on the page).  Because I was a serious writer now.  And serious writers take writing seriously.
            Just like this diet—I mentioned I was on a diet, yes?  And that I would gleefully kill half of you for a chocolate chip cookie?—when I started writing I needed to learn what habits were good and which were bad.  What were the things I was doing all the time that were hurting more than helping?  I had to figure out what things are good, which were good in moderation, and which were just plain bad.
            I mentioned a while back that I worked with a personal trainer for a few years.  In his heyday, Jerzy was an Olympic-class weightlifter and went on to  set a world record and even win several awards for bodybuilding.  One of the keys to his success was a ruthless diet that let him get his fat levels down to minimal levels.  To be honest, dangerous levels.  Just before a tournament, Jerzy would often get his body fat below two percent.  He looked phenomenal, but it actually left him very weak because his body had no reserves whatsoever.  It had access to what was in his system right at that moment and not a scrap more.
            So the moment the tournament was over, he’d go out and get the biggest, greasiest cheeseburger he could and eat the whole thing.  Sometimes two of them.  That’s not what you’d normally consider former Olympian-weightlifter food, but Jerzy knew that once he’d reached that heights of success it was imperative that he replenished those fat levels as quickly as possible.  His health depended on it.
            Y’see, Timmy, sometimes the stuff we think of as bad isn’t just good, sometimes we needit.  Because the big secret to eating well—and writing well—isn’t extremes, it’s moderation.  Drama needs to be moderated with comedy.  Comedy needs a bit of seriousness.  Horror needs calm.  Chaos needs structure.  The great stories, the ones we really remember forever, are never all one thing. 
            Harper Lee’sTo Kill A Mockingbird is considered one of the greatest pieces of writing in American literature, an unparalleled drama.  Yet the book has a lot of humor in it as we see events interpreted through the eyes of young Scout, a girl who’s a few years from even touching puberty.  Christopher Moore’s Lambis a comedy about Jesus’ older brother, Biff, which gets very grim and serious at points.  Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life are both coming of age stories with a strong horror element.  For every skin-crawling moment in Stephen King’s IT, there’s a moment of complete twelve year old goofiness.
            Did I mention one of the standard things on this diet is a cheat day?  A lot of the best diets have them, because it’s easier to stomach all the food restrictions if you get a break from them every now and then.  One day a week I’m supposed to indulge.  I get to have Doritos and garlic bread and chocolate chip cookies.  And my body will forgive me for it because I’ve established this isn’t the norm. 
            So nobody has to die for me to get a cookie.
            Not this week, anyway.
            Next week I might be a bit short on time, but I had a capital idea I wanted to share with you.
            Until then, go write.
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March 25, 2011

All Good Things…

I just finished reading a trilogy co-written by a legendary sci-fi author. I’m betting it was more like “casually glanced at by,” but I guess we’ll never know. The series started out amazing, but got weaker and weaker as it went on. The final chapter randomly introduced a character who’d been mentioned once or twice and never seen. To be honest, it introduced the future/ adult version of this character. It also introduced a new setting, a new terminology, and an entire war that kind of came out of nowhere.

Cymbal crash.
Confused? Yeah, so was I. That was the end of the last book. The final line was “Cymbal crash.” I think it might be a reference to Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but I’m not 100% sure on that. Needless to say, it didn’t leave me with a good feeling about the series.
Likewise, a few weeks back I saw a low-budget film loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories. It had some real structure problems and the tone was all over the place. But it had a solid ending and the final scene knocked it out of the park, so I’ve recommended it to a few people.
An ending can make or break a story. They are the dessert after a feast of words. You can have the best filet mignon in the world with an exquisite wine, but if the cheesecake is slimy and bitter… well, you’re going to be walking out with a bad taste in your mouth. A so-so film with a phenomenal ending will usually get favorable reviews. A strong manuscript that spirals downward at the end will, more often than not, be tossed in the large pile on the left.
Now, while some folks are content to say “well, that sucked” and leave it at that, a storyteller has to know why something doesn’t work. Bad endings don’t all have the same root problem. Sometimes the writer had a phenomenal way to start a character arc, but wasn’t sure how to wrap it up. Or it can happen when people have a really cool idea for a story, but don’t know where to go with it past that initial idea. Sometimes an ending just doesn’t work with the rest of the story. Some endings almost never work, no matter what the rest of the story is.
Note that I said almost never. As I go over this list of failed endings, you’ll probably be able to name some books or films that use them very successfully. These endings are exceptionally difficult to pull off, though, and should be approached with extreme caution…

Nothing Changes—Let’s start with the basics. If the first fifteen pages and the last fifteen pages of a manuscript show characters in the same place, doing the same things, with the same people, and they’re not any wiser for the experience… Well, that wasn’t much of an experience, was it? For them and probably not for the readers. I’m not saying characters need to have some big emotional breakthrough or spiritual growth. There has to be something notably different, though, or this was just more wasted time.
One type of story that does this a lot is the “slice of life” tale. Just two or three average days in the life of two or three average people. Now, yes, most of our lives don’t change radically in any given moment. I’ve spent most of today here at my desk writing, just like I did yesterday and probably like I’ll be doing tomorrow. So it would be a truthful ending if a slice of life story about me had me back here at my desk.
The question you need to ask yourself is… why would anyone want to read about that? I know I sure wouldn’t. I go through a slice of life every day where nothing changes. I want to be entertained!

…And They Write a Book/ Screenplay About the Experience—I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that this is pretty much the worst ending you can have for a screenplay. It isn’t much better in a book. This is almost always a tacked on ending to assure the reader that the protagonist didn’t just survive this story—they benefited from it. Immensely. Yeah, you would think kicking drugs, reconnecting with the family, and getting the girl/boy would be enough for most folks to consider it a good week, but noooooooo… according to some writers they need acclaim and wealth and celebrity, too.
In my experience, writers tend to fall back on this ending for one of three reasons (sometimes more than one of them). One is that it falls into that silly “write what you know” tip we’ve all heard for years and years. Two is a desire to add that patina of reality to the story, thus making it more valid… somehow. Three is that it’s sort of a wish-fulfillment validation. My character writes a book about how she used to be a crack whore and it becomes an acclaimed bestseller. So, logically, my story about a character writing a story about how she used to be a crack whore should also become an acclaimed bestseller.
That there’s crazy-person logic is what that is…

Everybody Dies and the Antagonist Wins—One of the biggest problems with wrapping things up this way is it gives the reader a sense that the story was pointless. They’ve just invested a few hours (or perhaps days) of their time into this tale only to see it come to an unpleasant ending. This can be especially frustrating if the reader comes to realize the character never had a chance at accomplishing their goals. It’s even more frustrating if the characters made some foolish decisions somewhere along the way. After all, it’s bad enough when you have to watch the fifth person in a row walk through the archway marked Painful Death, but when that’s the point the writer chooses to end the story on…?
I know. It’s hard to believe that after centuries of storytelling this is still considered an unsatisfying ending.
Your protagonist doesn’t need to come through unscarred, mind you. Heck, you can even get away with killing your lead. But they need to win on some level.

The Left Fielder—Called such because it’s the ending that comes out of nowhere. The business-obsessed dad gives up his career to care for his senile mother, but then she falls in the pool and drowns. The wallflower finally gets her act together, aces her exams, gets the quarterback, is voted prom queen, and then gets hit by a bus on the last day of school. Or, as I once experienced, a ninety minute sketch comedy show which climaxes with a bleak monologue about racial inequality and prejudice.
No, seriously. I worked on a play like that once. The director rewrote the end and honestly couldn’t figure out why no one liked it.
In my experience, the vast majority of writers who use this kind of ending are trying to achieve ART. It’s an attempt to show how perfectly this story mimics a random and sometimes meaningless real world by having a random and meaningless ending. It doesn’t relate to anything that happened because it’s too real. And tragic. And artistic.
Besides suffering from all the same frustration issues as the previous ending, the left fielder just isn’t that special anymore. It’s become one of the most common conclusions in indie films and “literature.” So besides exasperating an audience, it’s an ending they’re probably going to see coming for the simple reason it wouldn’t be what they’d expect.
There is nothing wrong or pedestrian about putting the right ending on a story. As I’ve mentioned before, nobody got hit by a train at the end of Slumdog Millionaire and it was still a good film.

The Y’see Timmy—I use this phrase here a lot, and it’s a bit of an homage to the film that I got the term from. This ending gets its name from the old Lassie television show. Little Timmy would encounter some problems, work his way out of them, and at the end Mom would sit him down and explain what happened and why. “Y’see, Timmy, sometimes people get hurt inside and it never heals…” Timmy and the audience learn a little something about life and we all go home as better, happy people.
Alas, in inexperienced hands the Y’see Timmy quickly becomes “beating your audience over the head.” If you’ve ever made your way through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, you probably remember the 98 page monologue at the end which recaps every one of the subtle lessons that were shown in the first 800 pages of the book. You also probably ended up skimming the monologue, just like everyone else did.
If the moral of the story is clear, do you need to explain it to your audience again? If it isn’t that clear, then the problem isn’t your ending, is it?
If you’ve never seen it, go watch Speechless (written by Robert King) and you’ll see Michael Keaton do a fantastic job explaining this idea to Geena Davis. It’s how I found the term. Plus it’s just a fun movie.

The Wedding—There are a few reasons weddings can make folks yawn at the end of a story. First, it’s ridiculously common. Much like the artsy Left Fielder, so many writers end their romances or rom-coms with a wedding it’s become the default, which means it’s far too common to use in any other genre. A wedding also draws attention to the timeline in a story, which is not always a good thing. It can either emphasize that these folks are getting married less than a month after meeting each other, or it can point out that the narrative just skipped seven or eight months between pages, which means it’s just tacked-on to give the ending a bit more uumphh (as they say).

It Was All a Dream—Probably the worst offender here. All too often the amazing tale of adventure ends with one of the heroes waking up on the couch or in a hospital bed. No, none of the story the audience has just invested their time and attention in really happened, not even in the world of the story. We all just put ourselves into a story about a person who was putting themselves into a story.
Now, there was a time when this ending was fresh and bold and caught people off guard. That time was 1890 when Ambrose Bierce first sold his short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
In the 121 years since then, this ending’s been used once or thrice in literature and about a billion times since the creation of the sitcom. Heck, there are old Shadow radio plays that use this device. As I mentioned above with Everyone Dies, this just tells the reader they made an investment for no reason. Was there anyone who went to see Click who didn’t immediately say “it’s all going to be a dream!!” the moment Adam Sandler stretched out on that Bed Bath & Beyond display? Think about it—this is such a common ending it’s easy to spot the moment the dream begins.
So, there they are, a few endings that were overused years before Edgar Rice Burroughs or Ray Bradbury decided there might be something really cool up on Mars. Like many of the tips I toss out, I’m not saying it’s impossible to do one of these. It is very, very difficult, though, and you may want to think twice before tackling one of them.
Next time may be a bit late because I’ve got a deadline I need to hit. But when we do get together next, we’re going to go for a little drive.
Until then, go write.
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December 31, 2009 / 4 Comments

Looking Back Over the Year

A solid year of this stuff. Who would’ve guessed any of us would be so interested in my blatherings for so long? I sure didn’t.

So, the whole point of this blog (besides lowering my blood pressure) is to hopefully give a helpful hint or two. The best way to utilize those tips, silly as it sounds, is to write. That’s why we’re all here, yes?

That being said… what did you write this year?

As I said last year, I’m not interested in the cool ideas you’re going to do something with eventually. I don’t want you to talk about what you’ve planned to do. I also don’t care what clever software you bought, or what fascinating research you’ve done, or who you had an extended online chat with during lunch one day.

The question, my eleven faithful followers, is what have you written?

Y’see, Timmy, if you’re not writing, that’s kind of the end of the discussion right there. We can’t talk about editing, improving, or polishing our work until we’ve actually got some work, right?

We have to write. Until you’re writing on at least a semi-regular basis

So, what did I do over these past twelve months?

I wrote thirty-eight articles for Creative Screenwriting magazine. Granted, because of lead times some of this won’t see print until next year, but by the same token some of the stuff that did come out this year were things I actually wrote last year. I got to sit down and talk with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, Nora Ephron, Mike Judge, Nancy Meyers, Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith, and even Frank Darabont at one point. Plus a bunch of screenwriters you’ve probably never heard of but loved their work (like David Self, Kundo Koyama,Tony Gilroy, Simon Kinberg, David Hayter, and Bruce Joel Rubin). If you haven’t seen (500) Days of Summer yet, by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, you’re missing out. Also add in another thirty-four reviews and interviews for the CS Weekly online newsletter (sign up over there on the right if you haven’t already). That let me see a bunch of movies for free and also interview another pile of screenwriters like Stephan Elliot and Shane Black. There were also a few scattered reviews in there for both CinemaBlend and Coming Attractions. I think the final total for non-fiction pieces comes in at seventy-five.

It’s also fair to mention that I got to work with two really great editors for a lot of this, David and Jeff. They’ve each got their own style, they each have their own preferences, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a headbutt or three in there throughout the year. They both kept me on my toes, though, and made sure I was putting out the best work I could. Half the reason I can write fast and tight is because of these two guys.

I scribbled down a quick short story/ article for the upcoming Moron’s Guide to the Inevitable Zombocalypse which will see print in 2010. There’s also a story going out to a time-travel anthology pretty much right alongside this post. I’m kind of proud of these two on a couple of levels. One is that they’re two pretty solid stories that I managed to get out really quick. As soon as I had the idea, I had the whole story. The other thing was that it had a very Bradbury feel. In many of his autobiographical tales he talks about when he would rush out stories so he could pay the rent, and there is a very nice feel to ever-so-briefly living in that world of “I need money–I better write something quick and sell it.”

I wrote one of those mash-up books that’s so popular right now, blending modern horror tropes into classic literature. Although, in all fairness, about 60% of the finished book was written by someone else two hundred years ago, which is some serious lead time. Hopefully I’ll get to say a bit more about that sometime soon. It’s making the rounds right now, as they say.

To be honest, I don’t know what they say. I just wanted to sound like I was in the loop, as they say.

I’m currently about 30,000 words into a sci-fi/horror novel set 200 years in the future. It’s on the Moon, so it’s beyond everything. Alas, it got set aside for the above-mentioned mash-up project, and it may take a bit of work to get back into it. There are a few moments in it that are just wonderful, though, so I’m sure it will see the light of day sometime or another.

There are also twenty-five pages of notes for an Ex-Heroes sequel. The publisher has been asking me about it since the day he bought the first book. However, while I was doing the Orci and Kurtzman interview mentioned above, Roberto Orci made an offhand comment about sequels while looking me right in the eyes and… well, he’s been haunting me ever since. So expect me to dive into that in March, after there’s been some response to the February release of Ex-Heroes.

Oh, and I managed to post here on a fairly regular basis. Better than last year, even. For a free blog that’s supposed to go up once a week, 49 posts in a year is pretty impressive. At least from where I’m sitting. I also threw up a counter back in late June (starting it at 500), so using my impressive math skills it would seem I’m getting around 100 peeks a week here. So someone’s looking at it besides me. Maybe all eleven of you keep coming back every day.

That’s what I wrote this year. How about you?

Make the same New Year’s resolution as last year. A page a day. That’s it. It usually works out to under 300 words if you’ve got the formatting right. If you write one page a day, you can have a short story by the end of January. You could have a solid screenplay by the time May rolls around. This time next year, you could have a novel. All that, out of a mere page a day. If you’re actually serious about being a writer, this should be the equaivalent of making a resolution to breathe in the months to come.

Happy New Year to all eleven of you reading this. Next time, will be the first post of 2010, so I thought I’d do something that dealt with the first.

Until then, go drink some champagne and toast the new year.

Then go write. Just write one page.

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