Just because this blog has been blank doesn’t mean I’ve been slackin’!
Seriously! I’ve been working pretty hard bailing out the ocean a bucket at a time, working tirelessly to find the owners of lost duffle bags in the Delta airlines lost baggage department, and I’ve also been traveling to all the dams all around the country chewing lots and lots of gum to plug up all the little leaks and springs so that we don’t all die in an old testament style flood.
But really, seriously, no–I’ve been writing . . .
. . . I organized all my files very neatly, like a good little virgo.
. . . I pushed and pushed and pushed forward relentlessly on the piece I’ve been working on like any good dragon trying to raze the castle walls.
I think most amatuers would be very, very happy with the amount of output I’ve made over the last couple of months, even in the face of everything that’s happened, but . . .
If you work in a jigsaw puzzle factory, and keep making the same piece of the puzzle over and over but just with slight differences, you start to think that you’re never going to actually see the big picture. I’m trying very hard to get over one particular piece, and I think that I may just have, but I’m having a hard time telling when to leave good enough alone.
In my documents folder, I have my writing divided up by manuscript. The main folder has the main rough document–the rough draft that I Resisted the URGE to Edit and just wrote as one, fluid, linear document. There are a bunch of subfolders that are divided up by Story (my book is a marriage of three short stories in the traditional short-mystery style), then under each story there are subfolders for things like beginings, endings, and thought balloons, with thought balloons being something like a cross between an outline and me just scribbling notes to myself like Ralph Fienes in “spider” (great movie, if only because of him). If I were to print all these off and squish them together with the main document, you’d have 500 page document that resembles something like a “special edition” DVD with lots of outakes, cut scenes, and behind-the-scenes expos on the making of this book.
I intend this book to be book 1 of a series–a series containing at least 4-6 books ( I know that’s a long shot–NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS, KID!) that I already have synopsis written for, book two already being fleshed out (’cause I didn’t want to wait anymore) with about 15 pages of a particular scene written and a full bodied, full blooded tried and true outline all laid out.
hmm . .. doesn’t do much for me if I’m still standing here in my gray canvas jumpsuit at the puzzle factory turning the same piece over and over again, does it?
I wanted my first book to have a short prologue–eww, yes, I know I said a dirty, dirty word–prologue . . . . PROLOGUE–pretentious, pretentious prologue . . the vehicles of authors far too caught up in the smell of their own shit just to deftly drop all that backstory into the story and get on with it . . . dirty, dirty prologues ! But I’ll tell you why I wanted a prologue–I wanted a prologue because if I were a reader who stuck with a series throughout the life of it’s story arc, nothing could be sweeter than going back and reading the prologue of a story that I completely, totally, and utterly found myself engulfed in. Tell me, what is more sweet and lovely than the first 30-50 pages of The Fellowship of the Rings? what could you possible savor more than going back to those summer days when the wardrobe was just a wardrobe, the first time Lucy felt pine trees instead of coats in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe? Series are a commitment, a journey and a long one at that, so if your reader is going to be with you for THAT LONG, you better make it worth revisiting.
I wanted my book to have a prologue, and it’s a tricky thing because a prologue is something that you have to make ALMOST complete, but not quite, because if it’s too complete, you run the danger of your reader getting just enough of a story to think they’re done with it and move on to something else, but if it’s too loose you run the risk of wasting your reader’s time and then you really would have turned it into a dirty, dirty prologue. Backstory sucks, plain and simple. Interesting tidbits rule, like chocolate chips in your cookies, ’cause readers like to think that they’re onto you 
and that they’re way smarter than ms hoity toity author and can figure the mystery out before anyone else. Seriously, who can resist reading philip K dick and not grab onto all those weird little nuiances and keep it in their heads until it all clicks together?
I’ve been turning the puzzle in the puzzle factory because I’ve been very torn about using scene vs summary ( . . . I just heard something . . . sounded like a scream coming from the capital building downtown . . no? just me? alright move on) in my prologue. My prologue contains two scenes that tell the reader who my protagonist is and where he comes from and gives meaning to his struggle to find meaningful work as a police officer, but I’m getting hung up on whether or not to tell the story of him actually job hunting and interviewing and landing the job cause, well, we already know he’s going to get the job or we would have the other 300 pages that follow the prologue. I think if I were reflecting back on a book series that I really love, I’d probably really enjoy savoring a reread of that very first time my protagonist meets the people who will become his female chauvanist coworkers, but I’ve read alot of dirty, dirty prologues in my lifetime that make me all type A and want them to JUST GET ON WITH THE F*CKIN STORY!!!
maybe it’s not that the prologue itself is taking too long, maybe *I’m* just taking too long . . .
In any case, remember earlier when I said that I’ve been writing and writing and writing and have lot of subfolders and lots of beginnings and prologues and all that happy crap that are a lot like the same puzzle piece being worked over but only slightly different? Well, either which way I go–whether it’s with a wordy, dirty prologue or one that JUST GETS ON WITH THE STORY, those pieces are in the can.
So, now comes the actual story’s time to shine . . .
. . . and if I step back a little, I can peer through my safety goggles and see that this isn’t just one puzzle I’m working on here at the puzzle factory, it’s pile after pile after pile of them.
. . . I think I need to go back to dumping the ocean out with buckets 
