Category: Paradox Bound

            So, between the Writers Coffeehouse, a doctor’s appointment, the event at Mysterious Galaxy last night with Daniel Price… this week’s been kind of a blur.  I don’t have an actual post for you.  There is nothing to learn about writing this week.

            However…

            I did want to mention my San Diego Comic Con schedule.  This kinda snuck up on me in a couple ways.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be going, and my big plans for the weekend really involved putting together my Lizardman/Seraphon army for Age of Sigmar.  Geek thing, don’t worry if that last sentence made no sense to you.

            Anyway, turns out the folks at Random House had some clever ideas for early Paradox Bound stuff and they asked if I wanted to be part of them, sooooo… the Lizardmen will have to wait.

            Here’s what I’ve got for you…

Thurs 7/20, 1:00-2:00 – I’m doing a signing at the Crown Booth (1515).  It’s going to be cool. If you’re a fan you really don’t want to miss this, okay?  Seriously.  Please be there and hop in line.  It’ll be worth it, honest.

            And that’s all we’re saying about that…

Friday 7/21, 3:00-4:00 – Some random giveaways at the Crown Booth (1515). Odds of being given something increase if you tell them– “The road beckons.”  I’m not officially there, but I’ll probably be informally hanging out/lurking a bit if you had something you wanted me to scribble on. 

            Or if the booth folks handed you something you wanted scribbled in.

Saturday 7/22,  1:00-2:00– There’s a cross-genre panel in room 28DE. I’m up there on stage, but so are a lot of better, classier authors like Sarah Kuhn, Charlie Jane Anders, Vic James, Daryl Gregory, and Pierce Brown.  It’ll definitely be worth it to see all of them.  And one of us may something wise and clever about genre writing.  Or at least funny.

Saturday 7/22, 2:15-3:15—All the folks from that panel are going to be under the sail for a signing (area AA09).  And Mysterious Galaxy will be there with piles of books from all of us, so it’s a great chance to get something scribbled in without having to lug it around for half the day (and to fill in those holes in your collection).

            I don’t have anything official scheduled for Sunday, so—to be horribly honest—I’m not sure I’ll be there or not.  I may try to sneak off with that life sized Spider-Man LEGO sculpture.  We’ll see how that goes…

            Hope to see some of you there.

            I don’t know about you, but this year has been kind of brutal on me.  We don’t even need to bring up politics or innumerable dead entertainment icons.  It’s sucked.  I lost my grandma.  Two friends.  One of my cats.  Hell, even the car I’ve had since I was twenty-seven and working on Silk Stalkings.  

           All dead.

           Screw this year.  Screw 2016.  And I’m only saying “screw” so this page doesn’t get banned from your work server.  I’ve been a lot more emphatic in real life.

            But, anyway… let’s talk about writing.

            At the beginning of every year I toss out some encouragement and ideas about writing. And throughout the year, I jab you pretty much every post with a gentle reminder to go write.  Because that’s the only way this happens. We sit down and we write.

            So… what did you write this year?

            I’ll go first.

            Well, let’s be honest.  The vast majority of this year was spent on Paradox Bound (which most of you will get to read in about… seven months?). I turned in a really wild, scattered draft to my editor (I can admit it), and he politely handed it back and said “try harder.”  Which made me take a long, hard look at a lot of it, rip out a large part of the ending and restructure it, which also meant going back and reworking a fair amount of the beginning.

            But in the end… I’m really proud of how this has turned out. I think you’re going to like it a lot.

            Between drafts, I also finally finished (and submitted) a little story called “Projekt: Maria” for an anthology titled Mech.  That should be out early next year, I believe.  If you read Kaiju Rising a while back, this story is another World War II adventure with Kraft and Carter trying to counter the latest weird and unusual Nazi plot.

            Plus, I’ve done a bunch of work on my next big project (no real title yet—well, not one I’m up for sharing).  And a lot of notes and bits on the next Ex-Heroes book (currently called Ex-Tension).  And I scribbled some notes and pitches for some things… well, that I can’t really talk about quite yet.

            And, hey, this is the 46th ranty blog post this year.  Granted, a handful of those were photo tips, but still… that’s a fairly regular output there. I mean, I’m no Chuck Wendig or Scalzi, but I think that’s a respectable number.  I even managed a couple over on my geeky blog, too… although nowhere near as many as I’d wanted to.

            What else did I do with my time?

            Well, if I’m counting right, I read about thirty-eight new books this year. By which I mean, books I’d never read before.  About half a dozen of them non-fiction. 

            There were also another twenty or so books I re-read, either for reference or enjoyment.  Plus a big pile of comic books and graphic novels—the IDW Revolution event (featuring GI Joe, Rom, Transformers, and Micronauts) was magnificent, as was the conclusion to The Sixth Gun. If you added all of those, I’m probably somewhere in the low sixties.

            Not an ugly score.  Essentially a book a week. I’m huge believer that reading is essential if I want to be a decent writer.  I have to take in material if I want to create material.  I can’t be a filmmaker without watching lots of films. I can’t be a bodybuilder without taking in food.  I can’t be a teacher without learning.  And I sure as hell can’t be a writer if I never read.

            So that’s what I accomplished.  How about you?

            Granted, I’m in the fortunate position where I get to do this full time.  On average, I’m probably going to write more, revise more, and read more than most of you reading this.  It’s not a slam, that’s just basic scheduling.  There’s only so many hours in the day, and I get to spend most of them in this area.  We all have different amounts of time we can put toward these things.  People have kids, jobs, other priorities.

            This also isn’t a contest.  I’m not going to berate you because you only read twenty books this year. I wouldn’t feel extra-special if I read a hundred.  We all read and absorb and work at our own rates. 

           The key thing is that I can see honest, real forward motion.  I started here and I ended with all of thisdone.  I can’t be telling myself “well, this counts as getting stuff done” or “I meant to do that.”  I should be able to point at things I wrote.

            I mean, that’s what we’re all trying to do, yes?

            I’d like to thank you all for reading this collection of random thoughts and lessons as we head into (holy crap) the ranty blog’s tenth year.  I’ll try my very best to stay entertaining, educational, and semi-relevant.

            Next time, as I usually do, I’d like to start the year by setting down a couple ground rules—for myself and the ranty blog and the rest of you.

            Until then… go write.

            Have a fantastic New Year’s.  May 2017 be better for all of us.

            Hey, everybody. Many thanks for your patience while I sorted out family crisis stuff.

            And, jeeez… now it’s three weeks until Christmas.  What the hell…?

            Anyway, I wanted to take a quick minute to talk about something I used to screw up a lot—word choice.

            I know I go on and on about spelling and vocabulary a lot.  To be honest, I make a point of working it into the schedule every four or five months.  I’ve mentioned before how many editors, script readers, and contest directors mention spelling as one of the main problems in a manuscript.

            Thing is, if I want to be taken seriously as a writer, I need to know my vocabulary.  Not guess or generally understand or depend on my spellchecker—know.  Because there are lots of subtleties to any language –especially a crazy, messed up one like English.  One word can have a slightly different meaning than another, and that difference can have a huge impact on how that sentence or paragraph is understood by the reader.

            In my current project, there’s a big gun fight in a barn.  Between three different groups.  And did I mention that the barn’s on fire?  There’s a lot of stuff going on, and it’s a big, loud moment.

            And it made me look at my “loud” dialogue descriptors, because I realized the tone of the fight didn’t feel consistent.  Some people sounded angry, others scared, and a few almost seemed… well, bored.

            Check it out.  Here’s the same line of dialogue a few times with a different “loud” descriptor on it.  Take your time, pause between each one, and read through them…

            “Dot,” he shouted, “look behind you.”

            “Dot,” he screamed, “look behind you.”

            “Dot,” he called out, “look behind you.”

            “Dot,” he shrieked, “look behind you.”

            “Dot,” he yelled, “look behind you.”

            “Dot,” he bellowed, “look behind you.”

            D’you notice how they all have a slightly different feel?  Shouted and called out feel kind of low-energy with screamed between them.  It just seems a bit more urgent.  Shrieked gives the line a bit of desperation, whereas bellowed makes it sound kind of like a demand or order.

            Y’see, Timmy, this is that subtlety I was just talking about.  I’ve seen these words used lots of different places, lots of different times, so I’ve picked up on the distinct use.  And I’ve taken the extra step of looking them up—I want to knowwhat the words mean, not just have some vague idea.

            Because if I only have a vague idea what words mean, I’m only going to be able to create vague scenes with vague emotions.

            And nobody’s going to connect to that.

            Next time, I’d like to reminisce about a wonderful talk I once had with one of my favorite screenwriters.

            Until then, go write.

            Pop culture reference!  Hasn’t been one in ages.  This one’ll make sense in a few minutes.

            I wanted to take a moment to rant about one of my favorite topics—spelling.  Any of you longtime readers know how I feel about misspelled and misused words.  But this week I’d like to approach a specific facet of that problem.

            One thing I see a lot is folks who misuse compound words.  If, for some awful reason you don’t know, a compound word is when you mash two words together and create a new word. And much like the lions that merge into Voltron or the Combaticons combining into Bruticus, sometimes that word is greater than the sum of its parts.

            In fact… sometimes the word is very different from the sum of its parts.  For example, a kneecap is a floating bone in your leg that protects the hinge joint.  But a knee cap is a little hat you wear above your calf.  By extention, kneecapping is the brutal practice of breaking that bone, usually with a bullet, while knee capping is the weird and somewhat creepy habit of putting tiny headgear on other people’s joints.

            Or your own joints, I guess.

            But that almost makes it weirder.

            Want another one?  Whiplash is a condition caused by a sudden thrashing of the neck.  A whip lash can refer to either the leather straps of the whip or the whip’s actual strike.  Like in Pirates of the Carribean,when Davy Jones threatens Will Turner with five whip lashes.

            See the problem here?  The compound word and the phrase refer to two different things. And if my reader has even a faint grasp of vocabulary, they’re going to stumble over my un-compounded word and go back to read it again.  I might know what pissantmeans, but if I come across piss ant… well, is that one of the creepy crawlies from Chuck Wendig’s new book?

            Take a look at a few more of these and see if you stumble on any of them…

straitjacket vs. straight jacket

something vs. some thing

hardcore vs. hard core

breakneck vs. break neck

kingpin vs king pin

connectability vs connect ability

maybe vs. may be

lovesick vs. love sick

sometime vs. some time

            Did you feel it?  That little pause when you were reading?          How many of these did that to you? A few?  Some? If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’ve got a thing for writing, so maybe a lot of them.

            Y’see, Timmy, once I break the compound word apart, it’s… well, two words. And as long as those two words are spelled correctly… well, that’s all that matters, right?  Most people will get the general meaning from context.

           I think folks do this because they don’t know how to spell the compound word correctly and break it apart to “fix” it.  Maybe my spellchecker kept rejecting straightjacket but once I broke it into two words… oh, well that must be right now.  It’s one of those cases where I’ve assumed the machine is much smarter than I am.

            But that flow-break becomes even worse when people aren’t even using the right words.  I’ve seen people talk about mere cats in Africa and the turn styles in the New York subways.  My spellchecker will accept those, too, just like it will any other misused word.

            Hyphens don’t help the situation.  Most spellcheckers will accept a hyphenated word as correct if the two individual words are correct.  For example, mistake, missed-take, miss-steak, and mist-ache are all spelled correctly.

            The real problem here is that—like any spelling mistake—these sort of mess-ups will break the flow of my story.  If my reader spends just two seconds trying to figure out what liberated bricklayers have to do with an urban fantasy story, they’ve stopped reading in order to analyze.  And once they start analyzing… it’s hard to get them to stop.

            And yeah, a lot of folks will almost immediately figure out that when I said free masons I actually meant the Freemasons—that semi-secretive service organization that so many hack writers use as a fallback source for historical mystery (check out my new book, Paradox Bound, coming out next September). 

            But…

            That pause is still going to happen.  After three or four instances of breaking the flow like that, the reader’s going to set my book aside for something easier to understand.  Like an Overwatch hint guide. Or a rewatch of Stranger Things.

            I need to know how words work. Including compound words. Knowing the two halves doesn’t mean I know the whole, and vice-versa.  I have to know how words work. And what they mean.  And how to spell them.

            In closing, being able to proofread something is a skill every writer needs to develop.  But anyone can proof read… provided the proof is in a language they understand.

            Next time, I want to talk about that guy.  No, no,not him. The other guy.

            And I’ll probably have an update on the whole Amazon review thing, too.

            Until then, go write.