Always Open With a Grizzly Murder

Does the Prologue's first line count as the first line of the book? If so, this one makes the reader read on to find out. Here's the most recent first line I have in my "first lines" group.

It was the seventh time they had pushed the American boy down into the liquid excrement of the cesspit that he failed to fight back and died down there, every orifice filled with unspeakable filth. 

When they were done, the men put down their poles, sat on the grass, laughed, and smoked. Then they finished off the other aid worker and the six orphans, took the relief agency off-road, and drove back across the mountain. 

It was May 15, 1995.

Forsyth, Frederick - Avenger

Hard to believe, but the description of this act only gets worse as the reader continues reading.

Chapter 1's first line made me think of my own book, Toe the Line for the mentions of the Triathlon.

He leaned into the gradient and once again fought the enemy of his own pain. It was a torture and a therapy. That was why he did it. 

Those who know often say that of all the disciplines the triathlon is the most brutal and unforgiving. The decathlete has more skills to master, and putting the shot needs more brute strength; but for fearsome stamina and the capacity to meet the pain and beat it, there are few trials like the triathlon.

Forsyth, Frederick - Avenger

Note to self, when faced with the choice of a first line about triathlons or about murder of children in a cess pool, choose the murder. Forsythe does and it makes you want to know more.

Some Links

I follow several different writing groups both on LinkedIn and on Facebook, both of the ones I've linked to are for the National Novel Writing Month. Since I'm a part of these group I get detritus in the form of links and silly articles that usually don't even hit my radar. This one in LitReactor did.

8 Ways to Support the Writers in Your Life by Robbie Blair provides eight different bullet points and associated paragraphs on how to deal with writers. Among the these, two caught my eye.

2. Don't lie.
If you want to express interest in something your writer is crafting, then that's fantastic—so long as you're actually interested. Sure, some writers will feel put off if you don't love their work as much as you love them, but you'll be doing them a disservice if you pretend to like something that bores you to tears.

Authentic interest is something we crave—but don't offer interest if it isn't real. If you want to become interested but aren't yet, try asking gentle, open questions about the story. Note that some writers will not enjoy this at all while others will enjoy both the attention and the opportunity to further formulate their ideas. If they're comfortable talking about their work, guide the conversation toward the elements of the story that actually appeal to you.

It's not just the "interest" that I don't want readers to lie about, but it's the edits as well. Let me know when something doesn't read well . . . Let me know when it doesn't work . . . Let me know when you get bored or confused. When I ask someone to help me by editing or reviewing then I'm providing you carte blanche to be open, honest and truthful. Be brutally open, honest and truthful.

4. Get them to write, right now.
Not talk about their writing. Not brainstorm. Not organize. Not research. Not read articles on LitReactor.

Write.

Just write.

Writers face what I refer to as an "inertial barrier." It's difficult for us to get started with writing, but once we've gotten there it gets progressively easier and more enjoyable. We tend to be quite practiced at procrastination techniques, especially the ones that make it seem like we're working on our story, but this only serves to increase the inertia. If you give us an extra push toward simply writing, you'll be helping us get the momentum and energy required to get past the inertial barrier.

This resonates a tad less if only cause the only way my family can provide me the motivation to write is to get out of the house or allow me to. At this point, with two toddlers and an 8 year old, those moments are few and far between.

Nevertheless, it was fun to see motivation and thoughts on how to support a writer from a perspective that I had not seen before.

Oh No!

Anyone who has read this blog and seen these posts  had to know that this post was coming when they saw the news yesterday of Tom Clancy's death.

Stunned. I was stunned. My brother was too until he said, "he smoked a lot" then it seemed the stunnedness wore off on him as if he had been expecting it.

I read this article, by David French in National Review and reminisced about the books I'd read of his.

I can think of few better books for boys to read, where the heroes were tough, honorable, and brave, and they understood that evil can’t be appeased but must be overcome. For a Cold War kid, the stories had a ripped-from-the-headlines feel, and many of them felt almost plausible enough that you could imagine you were reading a classified debrief.

Hunt for Red October was far from my favorite. That honor goes to Debt of Honor but might be beat out by Red Storm Rising if I happen to read it again. I thought the final scenes of Dead or Alive was life altering, literally and figuratively. I thought Without Remorse was a waste of time and much of his most recent stuff has not had the same impact as the earlier books. Despite all of that, they are some great books and he was a terrific, I would say genre bending, author.

Yep . . . Can Be Done

This article I found by Alison Heller called Why a Lawyer Mom Decided to Write her First Novel is not a bad three minutes investment of time for an apsiring writer with a family and full time job. It proves that despite those obstacles (and I don't generally like calling my family obstacles) a successful writing life is out there.

The Love Wars, although not on my To Be Read list, is her go at having it all. In the article she writes:

When I signed up for a writing workshop, in the midst of all I was doing, I kept it quiet. I was embarrassed for even having the goal of writing the book that had been buzzing around in my head, let alone selfishly demanding the time to try to write it.

This is exactly why I'm waking at 5 AM to write for an hour or so. Three days into it and still struggling to make it a habit, but it's better than not being able to throw the ball with the seven year old and his friends in the street as I did last night.

I do like the way she saw hours as "billable time" to be traded and bought as needed.

More difficult was owning up to what I let slip: exercise; home-cooking beyond the microwave; staying on top of thank-you notes and dentist appointments and school deadlines. I still managed to waste time on the Internet (and then, of course, more time beating myself up about it). I also incurred the literal cost of buying more time. For example: food—I relied on online groceries, prepared dinners and take-out. My husband’s salary enabled the hike in expense; mine on its own couldn’t have.

As a lawyer, I’d found it unnatural and unromantic to view an hour as a commodity. But at some point in that year, I forced myself to budget my time like it was money, spending first on the necessities: family time and client needs. After that, I consciously “paid” myself in writing hours. (And after that, there was almost no time left.)

Nevertheless, she's prove that you can "have it all" providing you have the proper motivation and support.

New One For Me

I've read what? About a dozen or so (maybe two dozen) books on the craft of writing? This is the first time I've run into this theory. Lifted from Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Book in a Month, part of her second day of writing and outlining.

When I worked as a film analyst, I noticed that A-level movies had approximately ten to twenty scenes total, and B-level movies had thirty-five to sixty scenes total. This happened in every single case. Some A-level movies are now three hours long, but even so, the better movies just don't have as many scenes as the lesser ones do. The writers of the B movies were trying to do too much, switching scenes to try and make it seem as thought there were a lot of action or drama taking place. They didn't use the scenes they had to full effect. They didn't use the opportunities for action and drama that were right in front of them.

So she has the writer sketch out the ten key scenes that will be a part of the book in a month. Sure there might be some minor scenes stitching it all together, but there should be ten key scenes that take the reader through the story arc to the end. It's an interesting exercise and as I said, that's the first time I've heard that.

I wonder how true it is. It almost makes me want to sit down with a counter the next time I watch a good movie just to see if I can see more than ten or twenty scenes in an A-level movie. Anyone else ever heard this?

Precedent Setting

I have now successfully established a precedent for this year's NaNo. I woke up at 4:55 with the intent to write.

Did I write?

A bit.

Did I pay bills? Check the sports scores from the night before? Check on my home warranty?

A bit.

But the waking up precedent is there. The writing precedent will follow.

I did write some. I am still writing 2009's (or is it 2010's) NaNo entry. I'm a quarter way through it and still writing. With each new scene I write I am reminded why this year's entry needs to be different (as I wrote here). I'm having to write stuff out of whole cloth. It's as if my work on the entry doesn't matter at all. None of the writing made it over to this draft. What was the point of writing it if none of the writing stays? I could have just written a good outline and gotten more out of it.

Still, as my grandfather used to sing, "you got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. Inbetween" . . . so in that spirit . . . I woke up and wrote for an hour.

NaNo Goals

I know when National Novel Writing Month is getting near cause I get so many (tongue in cheek) calls from my brother about it.

But, in an effort to make this year's experience more worthwhile, I'm doing a couple of new things. First, I'm reading a book about writing a book in a month by Reader's Digest. I hope that Miss Schmidt's Book in a Month, which is really closer to a workbook than a book book, will make the work I produce a closer draft to the finished product than what I've produced in the past. I find that on 25% or less of what I've written in previous years actually makes it through the re-writing process. Those are not acceptable losses.

Secondly, I'm setting some goals. Based on a website I found on personal goal setting, I intend to provide the following goals:

1. State each goal as a positive statement - I will knock out 80,000 words during the month of November by writing approximately 3000 words a day during that month. They will all be toward the specific goal of writing the novel I've outlined during the previous months in my workbook on Book in a Month. In order to find the time I need to write I will wake up 6 out of every 7 mornings at 5 AM to write for atleast one hour on nothing but my NaNo writing. 
2. Be precise - Okay, so not 3000 words, more like 2666.666667 a day.
3. Set priorities – During November, waking up to write takes precedence over working for SEAL PT and sleeping. You have one day out of every seven to sleep in or work in the park. 
4. Write goals down – Done
5. Set performance goals, not outcome goals – Performance goal = 3000 words a day. Outcome goal = write a blockbuster novel.

Onward and upward to NaNo Victory!

Another First Line

Despite the move that has forced me off of this blog, I have still been reading. Here's another first line from the past couple of weeks.

It would be so easy to kill you while you sleep.” He rolls onto his side and faces his wife, tangling his fingers in her hair. Her face is shrouded in a dried blue mask; an antiaging beauty product that has begun to peel. The moonlight peeking through the bedroom curtains makes her look already dead. He wonders if other people look at their partners at night, peacefully dozing, and imagine killing them. “I have a knife.” He brushes his fingertips along her hairline. “I keep it under the bed.” Her lips part and she snores softly. So ugly, especially for a model. All capped teeth and streaked hair. He wedges his hand between the mattress and box spring and pulls out the knife. It has a large wooden handle, disproportionate to the thin, finely honed blade. A fillet knife. He places it against his wife’s neck, gently.

Konrath, J.A - Bloody Mary

Although Konrath can be unnecessarily visceral and over the top in describing murders, particularly bloody murders, he does grab the readers attention with his first line.

Back to Re-Posting The Kill Zone

There is a fun article on The Kill Zone today about time management, something I need to do a better job of based on my inability to keep to my posting schedule. There are a couple of snippets that spoke to me. First:

Never before have we had so many options. It’s an exciting era, but it’s also utterly time consuming. Who has free time when we can publish our entire body of works through various formats, and spend hours on the social networks promoting them?

Now add the "full time job with travel and three kiddos" plus "move" and you have my life at the moment. No excuse though particularly with NaNo coming up.

Then there is this on setting goals, again, something I'll need to use more aggressively in the coming months.

Establishing priorities is paramount. When I’m in a writing phase, I set myself a daily quota of five pages a day. That’s my minimum, and I have to be at least halfway through before I’m permitted to peek at my email via Microsoft Outlook. I have to be finished before going online. This is the only way to get your writing done. Do it first before anything else intrudes.

Not a bad article by Miss Cohen. Always good for a refresher on how to balance a Writing Life."

Sorry

Sorry that I've taken some time off, but I've been busy moving. But! I'm back on the band-wagon and getting prepped for this year's Nano.

But before we get onto that, I have a first line.

I WAS ARRESTED IN ENO’S DINER. AT TWELVE O’CLOCK. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.

Child, Lee - Killing Floor 

Again, I say that these Reacher novels are modern day Louis L'Amour dime store novels. Having finished this second one, I'm standing behind that statement.