Category: Writing

I’m terrible at transitions, you know, moving characters from scene to scene. My wife the editor tells me so all the time. Maybe I’m bad at them because I just plain hate writing them.

You’re a writer, you know how it is. There’s always something your just not good at writing, and typing it out is always a painful chore.

For me, it’s the laborious task of getting characters from here to there so that they can meet up with each other. It takes so long and is so hard to not write a transition scene that is empty-headed and shallow because really it’s not a scene at all. It’s just movement.

I read a piece of e-fiction this week that has a great story. You could tell the author was having a blast.

But to get to the actual story, you had to wade through pages of uninteresting setup, with throw-away characters and dull, half-hearted descriptions. You could so easily tell that the author didn’t enjoy writing that part, but felt it had to be in the book. You can hear him whispering “don’t worry, the good parts are really good!”

You and I are writing in a time much like that of William Shakespeare. In his day, there were no mega-publishers. Just small-time patrons to help you sell your work.

Most of the publishing and the selling was done by you.

And won’t you now take a look at the online marketplace for books? Are you not writing posts on your blog to sell your book?

Is it not the same, Iago?

I mention that because of this e-fiction I read.

This author published his book, hoping you’d see past the heartless parts and enjoy what he really wanted you to read.

Like dancing with a wooden leg, I ask you to watch my arms and my torso and my good leg and enjoy the show. Wooden leg? Oh, just ignore that.

I suck so completely at writing transition scenes that my wife the editor told me to stop trying.

“You’re no good at them, and they ruin the flow of the story.”

So, I quit writing transition scenes, and my story is muuuuuuch better. The new novel, which is waiting to be read by a certain my-wife-the-editor, has none. Zero.

He braved the dark and frightening alleyway, his heart in his throat, finally breathing a sigh of deep relief as he entered the warm, cheerful pub. See? No long description. Just get him in there!

Better yet, ignore the transition altogether and start the scene with the character in the pub. He can explain the transition in dialog: “Oh, I came down the alleyway – a dark and frightening bit of roadwork was that!”

No transition. No hard, stupid scene. Bye bye.

If it’s painful for you to write, you can believe that it’s painful for your reader, too.

I enjoyed the e-fiction, and so entirely hope this author writes another.

And, although I haven’t said it before, I truly do thank you from the very bottom of my heart for following me!

Okay, so The Sequel is gelling right now – pieces are flowing into place while I sit and do other stuff.

You’re a writer – does that happen to you? You have a scene playing out in your head. Eventually, after you’ve played with it for a while, you get around to writing it down.

While that’s going on, the structure of the new story slowly drifts into place, and, son of a biscuit, color-me-surprised if it doesn’t somehow make use of those dopey little scenes you’ve been jotting down.

The mind is a fabulous thing, isn’t it?

In between scenes, I sometimes get a little nervous that I’m going dull. You know, same-o-same-o, so-so writing, using the same, lame words.

To challenge myself, I’ll play dumb word games, like Word Cookies. The words aren’t hard, but there are a lot of them, and it reminds me that, duh, I know a lot of words.

My personal challenge is to give this game three words it doesn’t know in each round. To this game’s credit, it has a huuuuge dictionary, so it recognizes most of my words, even though it doesn’t play them in the game.

And that’s how it goes in the hamster wheel of my mind whilst I wait and wait for my book to be read.

I was thinking about winning the lottery and wondering why, short of my not buying a ticket, I hadn’t done so. That seems a trifle unfair, doesn’t it?

If you’re following the Saga of Me, I apologize for this brief recap: my new book is on the hands of my editor wife, who is studying for a test before she touches it. The test is in mid-June. And so I must wait…

While waiting for a certain someone – at this point, a certain ANYONE, to read my book – I’ve been thinking about things. You know, quests and what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of stuff.

This is what I do before I decide to chuck it all and go become a cowboy in Montana (although now that I no longer agree with Montana politics, I begin to wonder to where a liberal runs when they want to get away from it all and choose to be a cowboy. In truth, at my age, riding a horse doesn’t seem all that pleasant, either. Rats. This isn’t going well.)

Anyway, you’re a writer, right? You know how it goes. Whatever you do in your day job, writing about stuff is always right there, living large in your thoughts. You’re a writer. You have a purpose and a mission. A quest.

Maybe that’s why you don’t play the lotteries, or bet on horses, or wager on sports. You’ve already got your plan.

Someday, you’re going to get your stuff published, sink that day-job of yours like a two-foot putt, and live the life you always dreamed of. Except that we don’t end our sentences in prepositions, so you will live the life of which you’ve always dreamed.

That’s your lotto, your triple crown. Every piece you put out there could be the golden ticket that wins your version of the lottery.

What that means for us, we writers and artists and dreamers, is that the only way out of the dreary black forest of daily toil is to go through it.

No, we keep paying our dues, doing the dirty, as they say, because we can’t run away from our humdrum existence with some get-rich-quick scheme.

That Win the Lottery shortcut? Not for you, mate.

In truth, I DID run away to go be a cowboy. It was a very easy, very stupid decision to make, and even though my soul knew it to be the wrongest thing I could do, I ran away from my art, and made it all the way to Northen California before the money ran out.

It took decades to get back here. Long, disastrous, anguished decades to undo the betrayal I’d done to myself.

Now I’m almost whole again. And waiting, waiting, waiting.

But like you, instead of betting on horses, I’m buying lottery tickets with my words.

And waiting, waiting, waiting.

According to this game, if you don’t beat the level you have an IQ of zero. Zero. I tried it, and, well, uh-oh…

If you’ve followed along in the Saga of Me, you’ll recall that Darling Wife, who is my editor, has sat upon my needs-to-be-read-by-her novel for 2.5 months (10 weeks, but who’s counting), waiting for other, more urgent projects to be accomplished. And they truly are important tasks, so, no pressure.

But, you’re a writer – you know how it goes. You don’t write something to put on the floor of the closet. You write something to be read. This new novel has been read by my brother, who thought it was great, and by my lifelong best friend, who also thought it the grooviest of groovies.

My nephew the doctor has it, but has already advised me that the read is likely months away.

Sigh.

But in swoops Sister of Darling Wife. Sure, I’ll read it. Not only that, but I’ll give you feedback! AND, perhaps most importantly, my judgement can stand in for that of Darling Wife! Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Tick-tick-tick-tick. There goes a fly.

So, whilst a’waitin’, I’ve been entertaining myself, as you know. Making dumb videos, working on a sequel, writing about pirates.

And playing solitaire. Toooo much solitaire. I wake up in the morning muttering “black six on red seven.”

And worst of all, according to this game where you pull digital pins to make digital stuff fall down a digital hole, how hard could that be?, according to this game, which I’m certain was developed by brain surgeons and clinical researchers, yes, according to this game, in which a couple of the words are misspelled because we all know it’s easier to program a digital pin than it is to follow spelling rules, according to this game, my IQ is GOING DOWN!!!

The stunner for me is that, even with an IQ of zero, I can still feed the dogs and tie my shoes.

Oh, hey – black ten on the red jack…

You’re probably too young to remember the A Team show on TV. I’ve only seen it reruns, so I’m not THAT old…

The A Team was a bunch of rough-and-tumble-misfit Vietnam veterans who banded together to help out those folks that had nowhere else to turn – usually the fathers of cute girls.

Now, this was the late 80’s, and TV producers were under pressure to reduce the amount of gun violence in their shows.

So, the A Team fired 50 caliber machine guns and recoilless rifles and threw hand grenades and set off land mines and fired off all sorts of weapons, but never hit anybody. Never. Oh, they blew up cars and trucks and buildings and shot the heck out of everything. Everything but people. Oh, if only the real world was like that…

Hannibal, the brains of the outfit, was played by George Peppard. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognize him from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Blue Max, among others. His catch phrase on the A Team was “I love it when a plan comes together…”

Okay, how about this: The Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is laser-swording it out with Luke Skywalker, and suddenly says “Sistuh…” in that weird almost-but not-quite-British Mid-Atlantic dialect used by actors of a certain genre, like Katherine Hepburn, you ooollld poooop or Mr. Howell, heavens, a Yale man! You and I would say “sister,” but Darth Vader was more like “SIStuhhhhh” with a long, drawn out “uh” at the end.

What are you rambling about now, you ask? Howzabout this:

My wonderful wife has a wonderful sister who is herself a writer, a published author. Said sister has graciously agreed to read my book.

Whaaat? Say it ain’t true!

Oh, but it is! Think about this: said sister reads the book in lieu of my darling wife, and totally digs it. She tells said wife it’s great, the heavens open up and I ship the thing off to find a literary agent with the darling wife’s approval!

Oh, I love it when a plan comes together.

That is, of course, if said sister likes the book. I just read it through once more to see if there was anything missing. At just 50,000 words, it doesn’t take very long.

Nope, nothing missing. In fact, I like it better than the last time I read it. It’s as snug as a, well, tight as a, well, dark as a well-digger’s… no, none of those work. No stupid aphorisms. It’s good and done, and I think she’ll like it.

Can you imagine my excitement? Well? Can you? I know I can!

All the wonderful sistuh has to do is like it…

Who wrote that song that has that line that goes “the way-yay-ting is the hardest part?” I’d give that person a nickel.