Skyfall (and some writing)

I’ve been looking forward to Skyfall for over a year now. Pretty much as soon as I heard that Daniel Craig was in for Bond 23 I was all over it, watching for any tidbits of news. When Miramax ran into financial trouble I was seriously worried about whether or not it would even get made.

I’ve been a fan of the Bond films since my first encounter with 007 as a child at my grandparents. Sean Connery in Thunderball was on late night TV and I opted to watch that instead of getting a good night’s sleep like I was supposed to. I had no idea that it was a “Bond” movie, or even what that was, or that there were so many more to see. Needless to say I loved it, and over the years I’ve seen every Bond film ever made, even the unofficial ones as bad as they are.

My favourite Bond for the majority of my life was Connery, whether it was because he was the first I’d seen (despite there being 4 bonds before I was born!) or because he was simply the best I couldn’t say (though I’m going to go with the latter, even if his last 2 movies as Bond are some of my least favourite).

Brosnan was good fun, and I enjoyed Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies immensely. I enjoyed watching Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough, even if her acting was flat. I had a huge crush on her at the time. Die Another Day, however, almost made me quit the franchise. It was just too… goofy I guess.

When Daniel Craig stepped into the role for Casino Royale I had just finished devouring all of Fleming’s books, and pulpy as they were, I was hoping for a Bond that could reach their potential. A cold-hearted, yet human 007. Craig delivered.

He was hard, yet not impervious, he was funny, without losing his edge, he was a lady killer, without looking like a pretty-boy. This was my Bond.

Quantum of Solace, yeah, I actually really liked it. So sue me! When you take into account that the whole thing was nearly improv because of the writer’s strike, they actually managed to fit a lot of neat call-outs in there.

Skyfall (I know, I’m long winded, bear with me) is the penultimate Bond movie in my books. It’s got everything a great movie needs. Action, Suspense, one HELL of a story, and my favourite Bond in his best performance.

I don’t want to ruin anything, but some of the stuff that gets pulled out in this movie to tie it in with the past, add in Dame Judi Dench as M and the powerful relationship she’s cultivated with Craig’s Bond over the previous movies and this one, and it’s all so far beyond amazing that I have every desire to rush back to the theatre, hand them my money and watch it again and again.

The pacing is perfect, the twists are just the right amount of “I saw that coming” and “OMG I never saw that coming” and Javier Bardem as the villain Silva is bloody awesome!

The chemistry between Silva and Bond and M on screen is simply electric. It blew me away.

So, as you can imagine, it’s made #1 on The List, just edging out The Avengers. With only The Hobbit or Django Unchained left having the potential to unseat it this year. I don’t know that that’s going to happen.

Oh right, writing, about that. I busted out a nice run on words today (~2,600), after slumping the past few days between clipping the puppy’s nails too close and having a veritable fount of blood in my kitchen (no really, who needs corn syrup and red food colouring for a horror movie? Just cut one of my puppy’s toenails too close!) and a nice head cold (still have it, yay!).

Key(board) Dependencies.

I swore I’d never turn into a “Mac” guy, and as far as I’m concerned I’m still not. The commercials annoy me, the dogmatic love of a product/company/brand despite things like price or functionality or open flexibility always irks me.

When I was given a MacBook Pro (late 2009 15″ model), I grumbled and groaned and whined, “Why can’t I just have a Dell, or an HP”, something that I could install Linux and run Windows or whatever in a Virtual Machine.

Those systems weren’t the “Corporate Standard” and weren’t supported, so they wouldn’t let me purchase one. Here, take your used MacBook Pro and shut up.

So I learned to work on a Mac, while still using a PC at home, and playing games on my HP laptop. See, I was flexible. I could adapt!

Well, adapt I have. I forgot to bring my MacBook power cord home with me from work this evening and it only had 36 minutes of juice left. There was no way I was going to reach 1,667 words in 36 minutes, not coming in cold without time to get my head in the game anyway.

So I despaired. Here I was, falling madly in love with Scrivener and cranking out words, good words, into my book for NaNoWriMo/NaNoFiMo, and I was going to have to use my HP to write for a night, without Scrivener!

Then it clicked. I could grab the Scrivener demo for Windows! I’m saved! I don’t even have to export my draft to a word doc and go back to the “old” and “clunky” way of word processing.

I set things in motion, got Scrivener installed, opened up my draft and got started. Only to find that the keyboard on my HP is INFURIATING to type on. Keys don’t take my input at a tap, I have to PRESS them firmly (F in particular, which is really no fun when your main character’s name is Flynn), and the shift and return keys are all kinds of messed up in their location and size.

Anyway, long story, um, long I guess, I met the minimum word count quota for a single NaNo day in about twice the amount of time it takes me to write 2k words on the keyboard I’m used to and I’m calling it a day.

Does anyone else find they can’t work near as productively if their environment or tools change?

– Grimm

P.S. This blog post took over 15 minutes to write on this keyboard
P.P.S. Give me a keyboard like on my MacBook Pro with any other OS (that supports Scrivener) and I’d be just as happy, so I’m NOT a Mac guy, just a guy who loves his keyboard and hates change.

Secondary vs Tertiary Characters and the Princess Bride

I spent what time I had for writing this evening getting out half a scene with a secondary character.  This character will only show up twice in the entire book, but I think she’s going to be pretty memorable, and I really like how she’s turning out.

That’s the thing with secondary characters, they can’t be a cardboard cut-outs or props. To me that’s a Tertiary character, the type that doesn’t have anything to say, or any motivations beyond ,”Hot dogs, get your red-hots.” as far as the plot is concerned. There’s certainly a place for that sort of character, the stand-in.

But in my not nearly as humble as it should be opinion, secondary characters should be fully realized and if not necessarily memorable, at the very least believable.

Think Miracle Max in The Princess Bride (we’ll go with the movie). William Goldman could have easily written a throw away scene of someone performing CPR on Westley after the Pit of Despair, or Billy Crystal could technically have phoned that character in and gotten away with it. It would have made for a much less memorable part in a much less memorable film (or book if you want to discuss the book).

Instead, Goldman opted for a truly memorable secondary character, and not just with Miracle Max, but every secondary character, from the torturer, to the old King are all wonderfully realized (with a good bit of camp, but it fit the story perfectly).

That’s how I want my secondary characters to be (albeit with less light-heartedness in this particular book). I want them to be memorable and true to the story, and I really didn’t feel that was 100% necessary until I was working on this one.  Of course that means I’ll have to pick up some slack on the next pass and figure out exactly which characters fit secondary vs tertiary, but that’s what revisions are for.

What are your thoughts on secondary characters? Do you like to flesh out as many as you can or do you leave them as stand-ins/tertiary characters unless they’re truly needed?

– Grimm

P.S. Surpassed my #NaNoWriMo/#NaNoFiMo word quote for the second night running. Shouldn’t have too much trouble catching up to where I’m supposed to be.

Home Playing Catch-up

From ~2,600 words in 3 days to ~2,400 in 2 hours I think I can catch up now that I’m at home. I’m really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed without a 3 year old flopping around.

I’m also quite happy to be home with my writing space, my selection of loose leaf teas, and my beasties.

My cat Mal, who was quite sick when we went away, and a constant source of worry for me over the weekend, seems to be doing better. He’s being his usual social self again, and eating and drinking. So it’s quite possible he’s passed some of the foam rubber and stuffed animal fluff that he ate.

My blog posts will likely be just as frequent during NaNoWriMo/NaNoFiMo, but they will likely be shorter, as I’m conserving my word count for actual writing instead of blogging.  Even my Twitter use has dropped a bit.

If anything momentous happens, or if I come across anything like, oh, say an Auction to promote Kids Literature and Sandy Relief that includes several chances at having your picture book or manuscript professionally critiqued by a professional (sorry for the redundant sentence, I had to use enough words for all the links). There are 42 items in all (currently). Go have a look.

I really need to get my book in shape for these sorts of things.

– Grimm

A Slow Start in a Hotel

My family and I are away from home at the moment at a hockey tournament (it didn’t end well but Monster played fantastically) and I’m finding it hard to write in a hotel. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year (dubbed NaNoFiMo or National Novel Finishing Month by Laura Hughes on Twitter), as I’ve said a few times recently and it’s making for a slow start.

I don’t know what it is about sleeping in a hotel that just doesn’t work for me. Whether it’s being in an unfamiliar environment with no white noise (I sleep with the en-suite fan on at home), or whether it’s my 3 year old (AKA Bear) constantly tossing and turning next to me but I just don’t get a good night’s sleep.

It could be the food. I’ve gotten quite used to eating home-cooked whole foods, and you really don’t get that when you’re away from home and at the mercy of restaurants or other parents (pot-lucks are great for socializing, and the food is often delicious, but ugh).
~
My writing has sucked while here, in 3 nights I’ve knocked out only ~2,600 words. I’m exhausted tonight and definitely looking forward to going home tomorrow and sleeping in my own bed, with my cat and my dogs and the only other person in the bed with me being my wife.

Alright, I’m done whining. Tomorrow I’ll try and get back on track, or at least get a little more done.

– Grimm

NaNoWriMo Prep and Fun with Scrivener

Since breaking 50K words a few nights ago I haven’t made incredible progress on my writing itself.  I’m sitting at 50,763 on this Revision and I’m OK with that.

I spent the last day and a half grabbing and learning Scrivener (I grabbed the demo), which I think I’m in love with.  I work in a field that deals with media content and metadata management every day, it’s kinda my thing professionally speaking. Scrivener, besides its really awesome formatting gizmos, and organizational whiz-bangs, has a completely amazing metadata system.

So while I’ve only pushed another ~700 or so words into the draft itself, I’ve probably entered about 3-4K words worth of metadata into this thing.  To top it all, I’ve already learned how to use that metadata in Scrivener to bounce around and assist with keeping consistency.

I’m not saying my draft is going to be perfect, there’s still going to be a LOT of revision after finishing this writing pass.  But all this metadata and tool set is certainly going to make it better than it would be without.

I’ll be taking Wednesday off of writing (officially, it’s Hallowe’en, I’ll still probably write).  You see, NaNoWriMo is 2 days away.  Starting Thursday and on through the entire month of November I have to write ~1,667 words a day to meet a quota that will put me at 50,000 words written in the month.  That’s the goal of NaNo, I won it last year, I intend to do so again this year.

I generally write every day, even if it’s just for half an hour.  In November, thanks to NaNo, everyone around me that knows me well enough is pretty good about giving me my peace and quiet in the evening so I can write. 50K words is definitely achievable this year, especially since my outline is more mature and ready to rock.

I do have one caveat about NaNo, the quality of my writing does suffer.  Last year I wrote 50K words in 29 days and it felt awesome.  It was on the same book that I’m working on now and from that 50K of prose a grand total of ~5,000 words have survived to this draft.  That’s 10% folks.  Considerably less than I would have written if I hadn’t done NaNo and had just continued at my normal pace of ~8-9K a week.

Now, having said that, NaNo also gave me my first real win as an aspiring writer. It helped convince me I could actually do this. Last year’s NaNo was the first time I had ever “written a book” from “Chapter 1” to “The End”.  Granted, the words “Chapter 1” and “The End” haven’t even survived into this draft, and the “book” had almost nothing worth salvaging for this revision, but that’s OK. It was the kick in the pants and the wind in my sails that I needed to move forward with this.

I’m a firm believer that in order to become a better writer I need to do two things consistently:

1. Write, every day, consistently and well.  NaNo helped me do the first 2.
2. Read, with a critical eye, and not just within my genre comfort zones.

Since I love to do both I should keep improving, and even if NaNo doesn’t produce gold for me, it does make me better at the craft just by making me do more of it.

I’m looking forward to it.  If you’re participating and want to buddy me my profile is right here.

– Grimm

P.S. And now for something completely different.  Jean M. Malone on Twitter pointed me in the direction of the Scrivener demo (Thank you!) and separately asked for the recipe to my Homemade Protein Bars.  I’m putting that in after a page break.

Here you go Jean:

Homemade Peanut-butter and Honey Chocolate Chip Protein Bars

Ingredients:
4 tbsp 100% Natural Peanut Butter (warm it in the microwave 30sec if it’s been refrigerated)
3 scoop Protein Powder (I use Promisil Chocolate Flavour)
1/4 cup Egg White
3 tbsp Raw Honey
1 cup 100% Whole Grain Oats
1/2 tsp Magic Baking Powder
1/4 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Combine Egg Whites, Raw Honey, and 100% Natural Peanut Butter in a mixing bowl.
3. Stir wet ingredients until smooth.
4. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl (minus Chocolate Chips)
5. Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients (this will get sticky and messy and possibly difficult)
6. Form the mixture into a square on a piece of parchment paper.
7. Lift the mixture into the baking pan.
8. Bake for 15 minutes.
9. Let stand for 5-10 minutes, cut into 4 bars

As you can see from the nutrition facts (courtesy of Livestrong.com where I also store the recipe) there’s a good bit of protein per bar, but they’re not exactly low fat or low carb.  I use these for a meal replacement when going to the gym.

And then some.

It’s the Saturday before Hallowe’en, time for parties and costumes and mistakenly bedding the wrong kangaroo costume clad spouse at drunken parties.  Good thing I don’t drink or go to parties, and my wife doesn’t dress as a kangaroo (most of the time).

What did I do on the Saturday evening before Hallowe’en?  I bashed out enough words to put this draft of BookB at 50,000 words.  That’s right, I sat in a chair at my kitchen table and played pretend in my head with my fingers flying across the well worn keyboard of my MacBook.

I did it to music of course.  Not the music you’d traditionally get at a Hallowe’en party, tonight it was Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which I bought during their blitz “pay what you want” sale for $8.  It did roll over into Kid A at some point, but I was too engrossed in my own little world to notice.

Speaking of Hallowe’en, or better still All Hallow’s Read, check out yesterday’s blog post for links and information on getting a free audiobook written and narrated by Neil Gaiman while supporting charity.

I’ve been thinking a lot about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and religiously following Kevin J Anderson’s blog for great tips for any writer, even if they aren’t participating in NaNo.  The goal for NaNo is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, a worthy goal for any writer who holds down a day job.

They classify 50K words as a novel, and at ~200 manuscript pages (205 with my style setup) I suppose it is.  But having hit that mark a few times now I’m not sure I could fit this novel into such a tight constraint.  Granted, the outline sits around 19,000 words, but I’m a heavy outliner.  I’m shooting for just shy of 100,000 words, and looking at my outline versus what I’ve written, that’s about spot on.

For those of you who follow my blog, or who have randomly jumped around and read that I’ve just entered the Third Act of the draft, you might wonder how I could possibly only be at 50K words.  Well, fear not my friends (and potential enemies looking for weaknesses via my blog), I have a fair number of chapters that still need to be written further back in the draft, and a good number of small re-writes to do.

If you recall (or care to search), I re-jigged the entire outline and dropped a number of viewpoint characters to rein in the story to something a little more manageable and character focused.  I’m still on track to finish the draft by the end of the year, and if I succeed for the second straight year in NaNoWriMo, possibly by the end of November.  Tack on a few months for edits and polish and I could be submitting by February.

Then again, I could be working on the next revision to clean up any major holes I leave this time 🙂

We’ll see soon enough.  Either way, I intend to enjoy the ride more than any possible accidental and mistaken pseudo-marsupial encounters I could be having.

– Grimm

P.S. Kat Ellis retweeted my Blog update announcement on Twitter (cause that’s where you retweet things) and my readership for last night’s blog post tripled!  For any of you who stick around, it’s good to have you.  There will be free explosions for words for all.

All Hallow’s Read and The End of a Different Story

For those of you not following along, All Hallow’s Read is a tradition started by the amazing Neil Gaiman.  The premise is quite simple: The week of Hallowe’en or the night itself, you give someone a scary story.  It can be a book, a short story, or even just a story you tell them.  I think it’s a wonderful idea, and I intend to celebrate this tradition, not only this year, but every year going forward.

Now, having only learned about it this year, I don’t have a story of my own to give.  I have every intention of writing something in time for next year, you’ll see it here on my blog when it’s time.  This year however, I’m jumping right on Neil Gaiman’s bandwagon and sharing his story.

You see, he’s set up a charity fundraiser with Audible.com.  He’s written and narrated a story called Click-Clack the Rattlebag which you can download for FREE by going to http://www.audible.com/ScareUs (or http://www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs if you’re on the other side of the pond) and for every download money get’s donated to a charity.

I’ve downloaded the story and it’s fantastic.  It’s only 10 minutes long, but in his magical way, Mr. Gaiman (can I call him Mr. Gaiman? It seems so presumptuous) has crafted something that actually gave me chills.  Simply put: Go get it!

As for my own writing, aside from going off on a tangent today and tracking down the Scrivener free trial, which I haven’t yet started to use, I did actually get some writing done.

I put together a fairly strong chapter, and dropped a short bit of exposition, about three paragraphs, into an earlier chapter. I needed to fill in a small piece of mythology where it made sense to do so.  I may find somewhere better to put it, or a less expository method of weaving it into the story when I do my next editing pass, or the one after that, but it’s good where it is for now.

I’m trying harder and harder to stop myself from going back and editing my previous chapters while I’m still not finished this revision.  Now that I’m onto the completely new rewrite of the Third Act I have to keep my writing hat on and leave the editing hat on its peg.  It’s even more critical that I keep my forward momentum as I head into November and NaNoWriMo.

If you want to add me as a writing buddy, I’m using the username RedAntisocial, go right ahead put me on your list 🙂

On the personal side, I took another big step today.  The World of Warcraft account I’ve mentioned a few times was completely and officially cancelled today.  I haven’t played since around March, only logging in once in a blue moon.  So today I logged in, handed off guild leadership to a trusted guild member who actually plays, and passed a bunch of gold and materials to my wife and the guild bank.  Then I signed out of the characters that I’ve spent so much time playing and closed the account.

I’m proud of doing that.  At the same time, I’m humbled a bit that such a simple and straightforward action made me proud.  I don’t regret the time I spent playing the game.  I could have been writing, but at the same time, the people I played with are fantastic people.

We went through not only in-game stuff together, and the ups and downs of guild drama, but we went through real life stuff together too.  People getting together, getting married, having kids or people breaking up.  People going through the ups and downs of life, getting promotions and losing jobs.  Changing lifestyles and getting healthier, and in the case of one friend, losing a long battle with illness and passing away.

You can’t go through all that with people, even if it is only their voice, or text, or photographs, and not feel connected to them.  It’s a chapter of my life that’s over, and I’m happy to have moved on, but I certainly don’t regret it.  I hope I can keep in touch with as many of them as possible.  I’ve met very few of them in person, but I still consider many of them good friends.

If anyone reading my blog was in Dreamers on Alleria, thank you for the wonderful time.

– Grimm

P.S.  I definitely have a bad habit of double spacing after a period.  It’s come to my attention multiple times that it IS a bad habit and I keep meaning to break it, but I haven’t managed to yet.  Someday maybe.

7 words (more or less)

No, not those words.  Besides, Carlin’s list is outdated. Now you can say most of them on television.

NaNoWriMo is on the horizon, and I’m getting in good shape for it. 1910 words written tonight.

I finished off a chapter I left off on last night, leaving me a scant 7 words short of 45K.  Oh sure, I could have pushed out 7 more words, but that would have given me a perfectly even number, and that always looks fishy.

All my writing tonight was from a new viewpoint.  It was interesting to get into the head space of a character unlike any of the others I’ve written in this book.

I suppose that doesn’t say much, but seeing as I have a single viewpoint except for the odd vignette chapter it was a good exercise.  I can’t give away much more without big massive spoilers.  I’ve come to understand that you don’t spoil best selling books on your blog, it makes people cranky and they let you know in the comments. 😛

Exploring new characters is one of the reasons I started writing when I was a kid.   They let me be something, someone that I wasn’t, and to go places that were too fantastic or simply too far away to visit for real as a child.  Basically the same reason most people read, watch TV, and play video games.

I was also the geeky know-it-all in school. That bespectacled kid that annoyed other students and eventually teachers once it wasn’t “cute” any more (I know, shocking right?).

It’s a bit of “chicken vs. egg” when it comes to whether I read a lot and became an ostracized know-it-all from what I’d read, or whether I read so much because I’d been ostracized for being a know-it-all.  Either way, I’ve loved to read and have been a voracious reader for as long as I can recall.  When I’d read through everything we had as a child and couldn’t get my hands on something new to read fast enough I’d write.

I needed to write tonight with some of the car/people trouble I’ve had this past week coming to a head.  Needless to say I’ve learned that doing the right thing and being a decent human being doesn’t guarantee that you will receive the same in return.  Of course, I’ll likely just continue right on doing the right thing and being decent.  It’s a fault I suppose, a lapse in my ability to adapt and adjust.

Actually, I’m finding that writing is one of my best escapes of late, it’s my peace and quiet (with loud music), and I think it’s a healthy hobby.

See, I used to play video games pretty heavily.  MMOs. Primarily World of Warcraft, which I played excessively from Beta (early 2004) to last November (almost 8 years!).

That’s when NaNoWriMo and my strong desire to get off my butt and actually DO this writing thing instead of just talking about it and throwing around “big plot ideas” helped me kick the habit.

I still game, I’ve played through Mass Effect 3 most recently, and Diablo 3 and I’m looking forward to Assassin’s Creed 3 (which I will have to wait to play).  I don’t think gaming is evil or reprehensible, or unhealthy (when done in moderation, like all things).  I simply don’t let it take my writing time.  I’m less grumpy when I write, and tonight that’s exactly what I needed.

I want to be a professional, published writer.  Like many other aspiring writers I want to see my name on the jacket of a book in a bookstore, and to know that someone out there actually READS these stories I want to tell.  That takes a lot of work, which I’m more than prepared to put in.

So I leave you, my faithful readers with the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever heard:

“Don’t talk about it; write” – Ray Bradbury

I’m doing my best Ray. Though I am guilty of blogging about it, which technically isn’t talking about it, I hope he’ll forgive me.

– Grimm

P.S. #HLandS is rocking Round 3 over at Kat Ellis’ Blog (YA), Dee’s Blog (MG), and Fizzygrrl’s Blog (Adult) where some of the submissions have already received Agent Requests!  I’m absolutely loving it and wishing my Draft was in a ready state to participate.

External Validation!

This is something really important, and whether it’s ego, or lack of ego (no one will accuse me of that), external validation is something I (and I’m sure other writers) crave.

It’s a small part of the driving force that makes me (us?) write, and continue to write.  Recently, well, earlier this week, I sent my pitch to Kat Ellis for her to critique in advance of #HLandS (Hook Line and Sinker).  What I received as a response has pretty much made my week.  Here’s an actual writer validating my pitch!  Despite the fact that I may, or may not, have alluded to her being either a crazy cat lady, or one of the crazy cat lady’s cats in a previous blog post.

Again, as I said on Twitter, Thank you Kat!

The rest of the motivation for writing, at least in my case, is to have my stories read.  As much as I enjoy writing them, I don’t think they really live until someone puts fresh eyes on them and breathes life into them in their imagination.  Well, that and money, I’d love to get paid to write.

As for my writing tonight, even though I feel like I’ve been hit by a mid-sized truck (got a nice head/chest cold going on) I pushed out just over 1200 words in about an hour and a half this evening.  That puts me on good pace for NaNoWriMo next month if I can keep it up.  Now that I have my Outline “complete” that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo  it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s the month of November every year.  The goal of NaNo is to write 50,000 words of Fiction in the 30 days that constitute November.  I participated in my first NaNo last year and won with just over 24 hours left.

Out of that NaNo came the basic skeleton of BookB, which has been slowly getting a full rewrite in the year since.  In fact, all that I can really say remains is a few key plot points, some of the characters, and the comforting sense that I can actually do this.  Which is really the best part of it all.

Anyway, taking my sick butt to bed.

G’night!

– Grimm