You see, I'm terrible at updating this thing. I had thought about doing it a week or so ago, but kept putting it off. Ugh. Anyway, I'm much farther in the book now and I've read several books since the last time I put up a blog post. I read Dean Koontz Frankenstein book one, The Taking, The Door to December...and now I'm working on Fear Nothing.

In my own novel I passed page 300 and I'm now up to around 340. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer by doing the rewrite of this book. I can remember back a few months ago where in my mind I was thinking that page 300 was a ways off. I could see how the story was flowing, but I didn't know how long it would take me to get there. Stories always do take on a mind of their own and around page 300 I figured out how the book will end. The journey is always fun, but at some point you have to look at what you have so far and see where it's ultimately leading. I don't even remember the last chapter I wrote about in this blog, but now I'm up to chapter 28. I have several threads going at the same time and keeping all of the characters and their motives in check is becoming more and more daunting. The bad thing is that with Dean Koontz I tend to read more than write and I have to force myself, sometimes, to put the book down and write some more. Shame on you Dean Koontz! Anyway, I don't know how much more I have to write.

I have found that I, for many years, have thought of length of a book. If it's about this it's going to be x amount of pages. Sometimes I have to literally tell myself to stop thinking that way and just let the story figure itself out. If there's more to tell, then tell it. Tell the story until you can't tell it anymore. As the days go by I get more and more excited about the breadth and scope of it. I have read different blogs on this time a few times about how to write and what makes a writer. A good bit of advice I read was that just because it happens, doesn't make it worth writing about and someone reading it. There are things in the book that I know are happening, but writing them down doesn't make the book any better. I write what needs written. I don't have a specific deadline, but I'm hoping for 'by the end of the year' for this rewrite. Now, as long as I can stop reading Dean Koontz for a few minutes...

Yes, I'm getting to it once again. I finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child a couple of days ago. It was good. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I don't think I'll read another by Lee Child for awhile. I have since started Strangers by Dean Koontz. Yes, I took a break from Dean Koontz and read about four books. I have read quite a few Dean Koontz books, so I know his style pretty well and I like the fact that he always has psychology in his books and well as philosophy. He doesn't shove it down your throat and he doesn't just put people together and see what happens. There's always an underlying point to everything. I would've put Gone Tomorrow as a book I'd read, but jacketflap.com doesn't seem to have the book listed.

On the writing front, I've finished Chapter 18 and am working on Chapter 19. A good deal of Chapter 18 was dedicated to the story behind a rather new character in the book. Her name is Karnei and as soon as I put her in the Leviathan chapter several chapters back I knew there was going to be more to her. Now, some of her story has been established and in Chapter 19 I'm getting back to a villain in the story. Several story elements are quickly revealed. I felt it was time to say what had happened earlier in the story, and with the kind of villain I'm working with, he says things and thinks about things as though they are nothing. I'm looking forward to writing more from his perspective in the story. One of the things of recent horror movies that I don't like is that the movie shows the villain. I'm a firm believer in showing as little as possible about a villain. That makes he/she/it much more mysterious.

Well, anyway, that's it for now.

It has been quite a few days since my last post. There is a reason for it. I finished The Funhouse by Dean Koontz and I liked it. It ended pretty abruptly. I thought it was going to go on for another five or more pages...Dean Koontz tends to do that, but not on this one. It's probably because it was one of his earlier books. Anyway...now I'm working on Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. The cover had caught my eye a month or two ago and I had read the back cover a couple of times. I've never read a thriller and I'm not quite two hundred pages into this one. It's quite good so far...I can see how you can simply keep turning pages when you read something. It also helps that most chapters are very short. Not one page or two pages short, but still short.

Now we come to the writing side. I'm up to the start of chapter 17. Chapter 16 was a sluggish mess. I've never been good with writing details and scenery and the passing of time. I can say it just the way it is...the chapter sucked and I didn't know why at first. You know it's bad when you just don't want to write because when you sit down to write you just stare at the screen...and you hear things in your head...things to write, but nothing is good or concrete. So I took a couple of days and just thought about it. Each of those days I'd write maybe a couple paragraphs or so, but that was it. I found it boring and I'm sure any reader would've found it boring. The other day, thankfully, I figured out what was wrong. The last couple pages of the chapter is me paraphrasing what's happening. It's hard to show emotions and character when you're just paraphrasing what they're doing. Do you add dialogue? What's the point? So, I deleted the last couple pages and wrote it so that instead of several days passing, only one day past. Now, it's chapter 17 time and I'm a lot happier with the previous chapter.

Writing shouldn't be hard and a person shouldn't make it hard. It should be fun and the words of dialogue and the description of scenery should just flow from a persons fingers naturally and quickly. Thankfully I can now figure out what was wrong and make it right.

It's been a few days since the last post. I have now completed up to chapter 15. Now, normally, like I said before, I'll complete a chapter and then I'll go back and add a couple things or whatever to make sure it flows. The story is coming along very nicely.

On the reading side, I took a couple days off reading, and then I tried to read the Sword of Shannara book for the second time. Yes, I tried to read it and I just couldn't. Sorry Terry Brooks. I got halfway through the second chapter and was very bored. I have since picked up The Funhouse by Dean Koontz and it's good so far. Yet again I seem to be drawn into his novels.

I finished chapter 14 the other day. The story is coming along briskly. I also got to page 200. The original novel ended on page 216, but the revision has a completely different story after the first five or six chapters so I don't see the end of the book for quite some time.

I have a basic outline in my head as to how I want the rest of the book to go, but it also depends on how the story works itself out.

Yesterday I finished reading Magyk by Angie Sage. It was pretty good. It does have me thinking about picking up the second book in the series.

I wrote another ten pages the other day. The story is actually coming along really well and I'm very happy about not writing in the first person. I have to backtrack occasionally since I can slip up at times, but only sometimes.

I'm almost done with Magyk, the Angie Sage novel. It's good, but I don't know if I'm going to read the next one or not.

I was reading a few pages of Stephen King's On Writing. In it he said you need to write ten pages a day until you have a book written. Well, today I went ahead and finished chapter twelve, writing ten pages. I have also finished converting chapter two into the omniscient perspective.

Angie Sage's book Magyk is still pretty good. I'm up to about page 300. It's better than Leven Thumps so far.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm too tired to write anymore.

I'm almost done writing chapter 12 and I've decided to go back and rework the previous chapters into an omniscience perspective. Basically, going from 1st person perspective to a higher power's perspective. I think this will help the narrative along because many times I want to go into that style, but I can't because of how I've written the book so far. I had thought about it a few times in the past and didn't do it...but this time...I'm doing it!

I picked up the book Magyk. I'm really liking it so far. It feels a bit like the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. I'm around page 130 so far. It's a fast read.

I finished writing chapter 11 last night. It has started as a very small chapter because I had a simple idea, but it didn't come together right away. Then, when I was at work, I thought and thought about it and was able to come up with interesting things the characters could do.

Chapter 11 is a transition chapter. Not much excitement, but the characters interact. It can be amusing and interesting. Chapter 12 is the start of a large battle. Again, I keep going back to previous chapters and making sure things make sense and that everything I wanted to have in the chapter is there.

I have read another chapter in Leven Thumps. Still interesting, but I think I'm going to try a different author after the first one.

I'm off to write a little more before I go to bed.

If a person who is reading this is at all curious, the book I'm rewriting is the book I self-published. You can see it on my Jacketflap page.

I finished a novel a couple of months back. It was a project of mine that started over three years ago. I had an idea and a premise, but it was extremely difficult to get anything written. Of those three years only about six months of that was writing. I had originally written a story based on my premise, but I wanted to go back and do the history of the world, an origin story, so I started over.

But, as any writer knows, you have to put something aside for awhile and start on something else. That something else is the novel that was published several years ago. It was the only novel I had that I thought would be worth publishing. I read it several times, correcting grammar and spelling and then I went through each chapter and asked myself questions about it. Currently I'm rewriting a good portion of the book. I think it's a good thing I'm doing it now because I have a better grip of what's good and what's not in a story. I always just write first, but now I go back and make sure that everything makes sense and that there's no plot hole or a section where a person could just have no idea what's going on.

I'll continue to update this and say how far along I am.

On the subject of reading, I have a few chapters left in Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo. It is keeping my interest, but it seems to be an introduction book.

ben f.