King Hellry

Who would think that procrastination would be so hard and exhausting?

Jack keeps getting pushed aside to make way for the homework that I'm not doing. I'm only 9 days away from Los Angeles again, and I'm hoping to double or even triple my page count in the three wees worth of laziness I'm allowing myself. I've got a pretty good idea of the structure, now it's just a matter of making the time to implement the insanity.

My friend, Lane, sent me a copy of his novel, King Hellry, to read over and edit for him. He's finished the first draft and maybe a couple of light read-throughs and the thing just died on him. It makes me jealous to see that he actually has a novel done. And it makes me want to do work, so that I can have something to toss his way in return. His writing style is concise, direct, and doesn't wallow in trying to give you too much description. A bathroom is a bathroom. You know that. You know what a bathroom looks like. You fill in the rest of th blanks, and redefine your sight as he lets more and more details slip out slowly like a leaky faucet. I like that. It makes my Jack novel seem just ridiculous and weighted in its desire for you to know how everything is set up. It just feels slow in comparison.

I'm about 40 pages into his novel. It's about 260 pages. I'm hoping to finish it by Friday.

I'm nearing the end of chapter 4 and I'm hoping to finish chapter 5 by Friday. Part of me thinks that's a lie, considering how swamped I am, or am pretending to be, or am letting myself become (it's all a little fuzzy when I try and figure out where the system is breaking down).

Technology hates me.

I have to send in critique pieces for my Fiction Seminar class, and this is the second one I've sent to be critiqued, and the second time I've had an issue making sure everyone in the class (especially the teacher) gets it. Is it procrastination manifesting itself in some divine payback?

I skipped ahead in the scene I was working on in my novel because it's been giving me more trouble than I thought it would. I changed some things (Jack is now in the house of Cormoran, the first giant he kills, instead of Al Keeder (the green man)). It kind of feels like cheating, though, going ahead and saying "meh, I'll get back to it later." But maybe this is something i need to do in order to get everything onto the page that I want before I become exhausted with the idea.

I'm hoping to wrap chapter 4 up in the next day or two, and get started on chapter 5, which introduces Detective Roger Gans, or Mother as his colleagues refer to him.

I also took a break from Facebook in order to ensure that I get serious amounts of writing done. I want to tear through this novel so that I can actually have something substantial completed.

Never Go Back

When typing up a chapter this morning to turn in for my advanced fiction class I was forced to reread it. And upon a second reading it dawned on me how little scene there is in this "scene." That was what we were supposed to turn in. A scene. I'm afraid it's stunted my continued writing.

The first month of writing saw a blast of about 50 pages, and now into my second month that page count has dwindled to about five.

Right now I'm trying to work my way through a conversation with Al Keeder, a man in the woods. I think I know the next step, I'm just unsure of how much magicalness to reveal, how much boy Jack can take on before it becomes too bizarre and unreal even for a lad of 8. Hopefully by Thursday he can be free of this old man and well on his way to facing his first giant and meeting Cole, King of the Gypsies.

Alright. Now I have to pretend to do homework....