It's all on the table....

Oh dear, oh dear. It will be DOWN TO THE WIRE!

Cyn Mobley — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:39:44 GMT

Well, sports fans, it will down to the wire for this BAM book! For starters, it's a short month. And I've had a touch of the flu AND a new puppy to cope with. I am LAGGING, do you hear? LAGGING. At only 50K words -- and I'd hoped to be just about finished right now and I am NOT.

Dang. Double Dang.

Well, not to worry -- I think there's a very good chance I will have a first draft in the can by the end of the month and I think there's a good chance it won't be as smooth as I like.

Had some very interesting stuff develop in writing the First Amendment issues. At first I'd thought to center it around a prayer at graduation speech sort of thing. But when I started writing it, it just wasn't flowing. That happens sometimes -- you think you've nailed the conflict and then it simply don't sing none when you get it down. I kept seeing a round sweaty short guy who'd done something criminal -- which became a first amendment issue. I just really love the idea, because it's always a problem when bad facts and distasteful clients have righteous issues. Not difficult when you've got a little blond girl with blue eyes who lisps when she talks about Jesus. An entirely different case when your client wears a "Sex Wax" Tshirt to a court hearing (yes, this happened to me, and Sex Wax is actually a substance used on surf boards and YES, of course we were there for a preliminary hearing on a rape and child molestation case and YES, I immediately sent my law clerk out to buy the guy a Tshirt with sweet little butterflies on it before we had to go into court....but I disgress).

SO anyway -- the client is a good deal less appealing to our heroine than the original one was but a lot more fun for me as Grand Poobah and creator of this universe. I think you'll appreciate the change when you read the book.

The OTHER thing that's turned out to be more difficult is actually keeping up with the podcasts! I had intended to do one every day but it's proved really tough to get to it -- after spending all day on the story, I find myself oddly reluctant to share it with anyone. I think it's just that "lousy first draft" syndrome. I'll try to do better in these last days because I DO think it's cool to share everything with you as it happens.

More later!

Oh, if you're not on my mailing list and want to be -- drop me a line at cyn@cynmobley.com and tell me to add you.

BTW, those of you in the Central Valley of California -- my little brother JACK MOBLEY is running for State Assembly! Check him out at http://jackmobley.com . I'm going to help him blog (and I did his website last month, too.)

The Calling, 9 Feb 2008

Cyn Mobley — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:37:42 GMT

Holding at around 22-24K words -- had to clean up a few mistakes. I anticipate at least three long days next week will put me at around 50K or so by next weekend. Then a few days pressing through the wall and the final long glorious run downhill toward the end of a first draft?

Will I make it?

Stay tuned for more!

Are you all enjoying this? Drop me a line at cyn@cynmobley.com

The Calling, 6 February 2008

Cyn Mobley — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:25:18 GMT

If it comes out in fast speed when you click this button, click the download button and it should play at normal speed. Weird, weird. And yeah, I'm getting a new sound card and microphone this week. Between the old one and this cold, I sound like I'm underwater.

First, Dennis the Greyhound puppy is great! Six weeks old and just TOO cute.

Monday was a light day, 2500 words, but I expected that, give my schedule. Hit a nice rhythm and made some good decisions, though.

Tuesday, around 10,000 words. Weds, 8,000. My brain is a bit fried, so today, Thursday, will be relatively light.

A few questions have come up so I thought I’d answer those. First, my logline. I preach log lines. I make everyone in my class do log lines. I do them myself.

The logline for this one started out like this:

When the unthinkable happens and her teacher is killed and an evil force stalks the land, Bree must overcome her own fighting weaknesses and comfortable lifestyle in order to pick up the reins of her own destiny.

Now, obviously, that’s trite, clichéd and simplistic. It’s been refined since then, but this is where I started. My principle is always to just get something down on paper, a starting point, then refine it.

Conflicts:
Physical: pretty obvious
Spiritual: ki v. Christianity
Mental: What is happening with the music.
Emotional: change of dojo/style, loss of friends

Second – define bestseller. Hmmm. Okay, that requires talking about how this book will go. Most probably, I’ll pass it by my agents and see if they think it’s commercial. If so, a six figure advance will be my mark of a bestseller. If they pass on it, I’ll print it myself and I’ll arbitrarily call 10,000 copies sold as a bestseller. The difference is in the two models of publishing is a whole separate podcast.

Finally – will I post my work? No, not at this stage. It looks too awful. That's normal but that doesn't mean you put it out in public. But down the road a bit, yes, I'll post some chunks so you can see how the rewrite goes.

The Calling, 3 February

Cyn Mobley — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:16:49 GMT

Not a terribly productive day, but that’s okay. It’s Sunday and we had a number of technical problems with the sound card et al. Should all be ironed out now and most daily notes will be about five minutes or so, not the longer catch up ones.

Biggest problem new writers have is one of those paradoxes – not taking it seriously enough and taking it too seriously. The cure for both is time and words under the belt. If you don’t make time for your writing and your work – if you don’t respect that calling – no one else will. This is a hard lesson of most of adulthood.

Conversely – your words aren’t sacred. Unless you’re a freaking genius, and I don’t mean just IQ greater than 140, your work can be improved with a good editor. And it’s NOT about YOU. It’s about the words.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. No is a complete sentence. Tuesday and Weds are going to be long writing days for me and here’s how I’m planning for it.

Do the practical stuff. Make a pot of chili. Stock the fridge. Pick up the drycleaning. Make no other appointments. DO keep whatever workout routine you’ve established. Take your vitamins.

I’m really looking forward to this. There are some hard times ahead when I hit what I call “the wall”, but that’s about another 40K words from now.

The Calling, 2 Feb 2008

Cyn Mobley — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:17:12 GMT

Click here to listen to the podcast! The notes I used when I recorded it are below. The podcast contains a lot more info, but if you can't hear it, read the notes!

Rough going, as it always is early on. I’m at around 5,000 words right now and the only difference between my drafts and yours is that I KNOW I can finish the story and that it’ll be better when I’m done.

First big issue I hit up front was the question of which person to tell the story in. Obviously, that choice influences many others. I like to be intentional about this, not just letting it happen or just “Oh, that’s the way I see it,” picking one by default.

There are reasons to do this one in first person, notably that there will be things going on with the character that are best done in first. I know her well and I am certain of the voice. For many of the same reasons, it might be a better idea NOT to do it in first.

Third is a much more flexible voice. It lacks some of the intimacy of first person – in some ways, though not all. It doesn’t have to, but it takes more skill to pull it off.

The thing that finally decided me was thinking of my potential readers. I fell back on considering what I wrote about in First Pages and decided I could do a lot better job on reader identification in third person – because I want to hook in both men and women and I think I can do a better job of that in third.

In first, I think my identification with the character could get in the way of the reader’s identification.

On my conflict levels – yep, I have that pretty much sorted out, though I’m feeling a little weak on certain aspects of the end of act II fly to point, just because what I’ve got worked out is technically quite correct but I’m not sure it’s interesting enough. Oh, it probably is – feeling like this is pretty normal at this stage. That’s why some people feel like structuring ahead of time sucks the life out of it. They don’t get some of the cheap thrills out of the process.

I decided as I was structuring that I wanted to hit each type of conflict and that I didn’t want to do a traditional sort of love interest for her. The physical was fairly straightforward – physical usually is. Mental, not too difficult – I like puzzles. The spiritual bit is really the fun part, and it’s here that I think my old technothriller skill sets really kick in. Then finally, the emotional – this is where I made the decisions about traditional love interests. Now, that’s not to say that she’s not straight – she is. But her emotional conflict has more to do with the universe and where she is in it – she connects on an emotional level rather than an intellectual or spiritual one. I think that’ll be interesting to explore. There’ll probably be some personal relationship stuff as well, but it’s not coming to mind and it’s going to be fairly minor, so it’s not structured. If it turns out to be necessary, then I’ll put it in.

See, this is where structuring really frees you up. If it’s NOT working, you’re always free to go back and change it.

At this point, too, as I’m starting to write – I’m already thinking about the practicalities of this book, where and how I’m going to sell and publicize it and gethe word out. There’s soemthing nagging me about my marketing plan but I can’t put my finger on it. Part of it has to do with the timing – my time line is so much shorter than most publishers and writers that it’s tricky scheduling things like reviews and such. I mean, three months before publication is all well and good when you’re in an 18 month publication schedule and spending six months in pre press. I spent 10 days to 2 weeks in prepress. So obviously, the traditional things don’t work as well.

The other problem I’m having is that a new puppy is arriving tomorrow. Yes, a Greyhound puppy. Dennis the Menace, age six weeks. Now, normally I’d be worried about a pup that age but the circumstances are such that it’s okay. Rule of thumb – age in months plus one equals hours of bladder endurance.

Well, back to the book – the other thing I’ve yet to hammer out are all my character names. The ones I’ve got at the moment are basically placeholders, unless I get real attached to them. Her name at the moment is Bree. I’ve always like that name, ever since I learned about Bree Walker, a TV newscaster in San Diego. But whether it’s going to stick or not, I don’t know. This is actually one of the few areas of writing in which I’m a bit woo-woo. I do let it percolate a bit until the right names surface. In Rites of War, the protagonist was named after a waitress. I was out having lunch with Marion Jones in Chula Vista, bemoaning something or other about writing – I can be a terrible whiner – and I saw the name Jerusha on our waitress’ name tag. It just clicked immediately. Ever since then, I’ve been open to that sort of thing.

Now, with my structureline basically done, I’m feeling such a strong urge to commit a whole bunch of words to paper. I can’t wait until I have 40K or so words down on paper – which will be about week from now, I imagine, if my wrists and my voice hold up. And, of course, if Dennis allows that much work.

As to length – I already know this is probably going to run 80-90K words in the first draft. It’ll probably increase by another 10-15K in the rewrites. Those will be painful words to add because I’ll be ready to be DONE.

I also have a lot of other projects on my plate at the moment.

If you want to read more about how I write, check out the BAM books at http://booklocker.com and do a search on Mobley, or just click on these links: BAM: Structure and BAM: First Pages.

The Calling Day_one.MP3

Cyn Mobley — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:14:17 GMT

Join me as I work on my next bestseller, The Calling. Listen to the podcast:

Hey, all. I’ve got an exciting project in the works – and you are going to be part of it. Here’s the deal – I’m going to write a bestseller. And you get to watch while I do it.

How do I know it’s going to be a bestseller? Well, you be the judge. I’d had a couple before and I have a better idea now of what it takes. No guarantees, but I think this book will do it.

There’s a sort of universal fascination with the whole process of writing a book. I get a lot of questions about it. Some of you know I’ve written the BAM books, some of you have taken my classes or maybe you’ve listen to these podcasts an you know a little bit about how I work. For those who don’t, let me give you a little overview.

I come up with an idea.

I structure it.

Then I write it in about a month. Start to finish. Yep. A month.

Of course it’s hard work! Not the actual writing – the structuring and outlining part of it is. That’s why I can do six books a year or so, because I’ve go a system.

I think my way of working is a holdover from my Navy days. When I first started writing, nobody told me it should take a year or so to finish a book. So I sort of reverse engineered the process.
Anyway, if you want to know more about that, check out the Booklocker books.

So – this time I’m going to take you along with me. I’m going to post almost every day to tell you what I’ve done on the book that day. Sound interesting?

Now – here’s where I am. I have sort of a general idea about what this book is. This is what I call the spine of the story and it’s almost always the second thing I get to. It’s sort of what Doug Clegg – and if you like horror check him out! – calls, “It’s about a guy who.”

The first thing is some sort of weird little quirky bit – like with The Last Casualty, I had the idea of a priest hearing the dying confession of a spy, then the line “No priest should know what I know.” Now THAT book took a Long time to finally write – but not a long time to get a first draft done, to get the basics of the story on the paper. With Greyhound Singing, the idea was that the Moon was angry with Tweeter. With Greyhound Laughing, it was just a snaggle-toothed Greyhound Id’ seen laughing – might have been one of Robin and Lazes? And the idea of a Wild card.

So THIS book starts out with an idea. It’s about a woman who’s a martial artist, has been since she was a child, and how a female warrior lives in the world today – particularly when it looks like she’s got a destiny, a calling, that she can’t turn down. Or if she does, it’s at great cost to herself – perhaps not even being the same person. It’s a little a little Thelma and Louise did the Raiders of the Lost Ark, maybe. So maybe she’s an older woman. She’s been preparing all her life for this, though she didn’t know it. So I’m starting to see her now in my mind.

So is she me? Well, maybe a little. But this is fiction remember. I’m making this up as I go along. And yes a bit of Walter Mitty plays into it. Heck, that just makes it more fun to write. But no, it’s not me.

Actually, I’m thinking about a book I did a few years back for the Golden Retriever folks. It was called A Golden Opportunity and part of it was about the One Song. Now, that was far more fantasy than usual and is further off than this one will be. But still, there was something I liked about that whole premise, so I’m going to keep it in mind. Big stakes, ticking clock. Going to tie that into her other life somehow.

So – I have sort of a feel for the high concept of this book. The next step is to think about the conflicts that take place in the story. It’s not outlining exactly – it’s about structuring it. If you’ve read the BAM book, you’ll know what I mean.

I’ll be working on that tonight as well as piddling around with a few opening scenes. I know I’m going to start with action but I don’t want to start with trite action, you know? I want something fresh but still very hooky. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

If you want to read more about how I write, check out the BAM books at http://booklocker.com and do a search on Mobley, or just click on these links: BAM: Structure and BAM: First Pages.

About Chapters and why they don't matter as much as you think they do -- or do they?

Cyn Mobley — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:57:34 GMT

A lecture for students taking courses through Booklocker.com and WritersWeekly.com. This one is about chapters.

Fly-to Points Revisited

Cyn Mobley — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:54:44 GMT

You'll want to read Book-A-Monthfor this to make sense. This audio portion is design for students enrolled in an online coursethrough WritersWeekly.com.

For my dog book readers, ESPECIALLY Greyhound People!

Cyn Mobley — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:17:33 GMT

Greyhound Laughing and a few other new books. Listen to me lose my mind...

Five Secrets of Published Novelists

Cyn Mobley — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:33:36 GMT

Advanced stuff for folks who've already taken my Structure class.

Greyhound Laughing and other Dog and Rescue issues

Cyn Mobley — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:07:21 GMT

Greyhound Laughing and the FINAL edit.

Hey There

Cyn Mobley — Wed, 23 May 2007 00:03:31 GMT

The Welcome Message: the trials and tribulations of a small press publisher with too many Greyhounds.

What we're publishing now

Cyn Mobley — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:57:22 GMT

The trials and tribulations of a small press publisher with too many Greyhounds.