125 Words

…is that I have no idea. All I know is I have literally spent all week just thinking about it and not doing it. Thinking is good, but at some point, you’ve got to open the app up and tear into it.

I made good progress today. Writers block is real. I used to think it was a phenomena that was just related to that session. But it is something that can go for days…maybe years.

I questioned if I still “had it.” You know, the idea. Did I still have the idea in my head? When I opened Scrivener, it was like my mind clicked to the “on” position. It’s weird that way.

I wrote 1,500 words before I knew what had happened.

I’ve been in this business, as of this year, for 30 years. I have never had a steer tire blow out on me.

First of all, I was empty. Thank the LORD. Second, I was at a stop light. YES! Third of all, and very important, I was about five miles from the terminal where I load fuel and I was very thankful to get there without incident. If this were to happen loaded, it could have killed me and others.

This tire had 380 miles on it. Brand new.

This is how I ended my week. I literally had three more hours to go and I was done for the week. In any case, this week has been like this in one way or another the whole time.

I’ll check back next week with some material worth sharing.

#WritingCommunity #Writers

803 Words

I just finished The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett.

I don’t think I’ve been properly frustrated by a novel in a good while. This one did it. It literally changed my demeanor for a good solid day.

First off, the reason I was reading this book was by the advice of the legendary literary agent, Albert Zuckerman, in his book Writing the Blockbuster Novel. It’s a good insight on what the agents, editors, and publishers are looking for in a novel and what they are not.

I usually read non-fiction and the fiction I’ve read is anything from Beowulf to Mark Twain to Tom Clancy to Michael Crichton. Ken Follett has a huge following of his own, but I’ve never read historical fiction. Now, 30 years later, most anything by Tom Clancy would be absolutely considered historical fiction, but at the time it was the Thriller genre, because he was writing in current political environments, not historical. It was simply military thriller scenarios that could have realistically played out in real time, but not so much now.

Follett, being British, writes this novel with stunning accuracy in the cultural day-to-day lives of the British and Russian aristocracies and the day-to-day life of the common peasantry. The only way I know that the political climate that he set up his novel in was accurate, was because I am a pretty ardent student of European cultural and political history. You’ve got to understand the cultural history to understand the political history. I was amazed at how well he intertwined these two histories and made a remarkably believable novel.

In my opinion, this aspect of Follett's book is why this volume, and many of his other works, are absolute mega-blockbuster sellers.

The biggest issue I've had with it was he let me down on the character(s). One thing I've learned in this process is the characters must change. From high and mighty to lowly or lowly to high and mighty. From wealth to disparity or from disparity to wealth. From great strength to weakness, and so forth and so on. I don't think there was a main character in the book who did not suffer from great change.

For example, Lord Walden had everything together. He was an earl and that was as high as one could be in the British aristocracy and not be in the Royal Family. He was also, by standards of other earls, one of the more wealthy earls in Britain at the time, owning five glorious estates, real-estate investments in London and railroad ventures in America and Russia (rail was just coming into full bloom). He still has his wealth near the end, but he entirely lost the largest of the estates to fire; when we started he also had the perfect family, by the end everything he thought he had for a family was essentially dismantled. I point out the mansion fire, because I love those old homes and I’ll be honest, when the fire was started in the library, it greatly disturbed me. Imagine the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC being destroyed by fire.

Lydia, Walden’s wife, was the picture of beauty at 39, but on the inside, she was a moral failure the likes of which you cannot imagine. Her character was bookended by moral failure. The early moral failure I could excuse because she was a mere 18 year old girl messing up, but quite frankly, she let me (the reader) down immensely at the end. Her daughter Charlotte was the picture of innocence and that innocence was savagely taken from her. I’m not talking moral innocence, I’m talking naiveté and just not knowing what life was about for anyone outside of their class. It was hard for me to see Charlotte literally turn into a Marxist before my eyes.

The thing that disturbed my demeanor for a day or two was Lydia. I swear, I had more confidence in the woman than that which was given. One thing Shawn Coyne’s book Story Grid had taught me was that you don’t want to frustrate your reader. Well, it may not have frustrated the mainstream reader, but the book shook my core. I five star reviewed it, but it hurt me. The point Coyne makes is if you frustrate your reader, they may read your novel and love it, but decide “well, if he’s going to write like that, I don’t think I’ll read another one of his novels.” This is exactly where I’m at on Follett. I’m not sure I want to read another one of his novels.

This was a great book, don’t get me wrong. It does every single thing that a great novel is supposed to do and that’s the important thing to remember.

Let’s call it research. More specifically it’s a good cigar and a cool Saturday morning after I put a couple hog shoulders on my grill for dinner this afternoon. It’s my sister‘s birthday and we’re going to have some good old fashion eastern North Carolina barbecue. The Man from St. Petersburg was actually recommended by Albert Zuckerman as one of the best books for understanding good novel writing. Is it a “potato chip” read for me? Very close to it. It’s a good read, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not exactly what I would find myself pulling off the shelf; but I am enjoying it.

I’m on my second book of doing novel writing research. I finished Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris last week. I will go ahead and say it, Silence of the Lambs is a masterpiece.

…and every bit of it he did shred.

Like I wrote earlier, somewhere in the 2013-2014 range, I wrote a whopping 10,000 word chapter. Whopping, because a chapter should be bite size; the 1,200-2000 words range is plenty. This week, I had some down time. I decided to shred it.

I still like my characters. I still like the “situation” in which they have found themselves, but it was atrocious. Shawn Coyne was exactly right, the more you read the more you grow. As much as I like what I wrote in 2014, the more I now think it was total garbage on several fronts.

• The protagonist was essentially bullet proof. He simply didn’t have problems and everybody liked him. Who is going to care about that? I would have hated the guy if I knew him.

• The truck was perfect. There wasn’t an ounce of chrome that was needed to complete the package. Well, a truck is meant to be a journey and that’s not a journey. If all you’ve known is going to the car lot and picking out a car and driving off and never even adding anything more than floor mats, then you may not understand this concept.
• I was writing way too much comedy in as if it were comedic relief.

All in 10,000 words. It was just junk. So, I wrote about 2,500 words on Monday and Tuesday spread out in three chapters and it was very much more appealing. I will start writing some short stories here to give a taste; like 1,000 words short stories.

“Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.” – Earnest Hemingway

If you’ll remember, I quoted Hemingway in my first post. I have personal attachment to Hemingway. In his older years, he looked exactly like my uncle on my mother’s side. Uncle Cletus. Don’t laugh at the name. Cletus held over 30 patents and you use many of them every single day of your life.

Hemingway was an intriguing figure. I’ve been to his place and the restaurant in Key West he frequented. I felt as though I made some sort of ethereal connection with him down there. Of course, I know and you know I did not.

“In order to write about life first you must live it.” – E. Hemingway

These two quotes boggle my mind, yet they are very simplistic and real. They speak to a temptation that all writers have to resist: writing about thing of which you know nothing.

He said he decided he’d write one story about “each thing” he knew. Good heavens. Think about it. He’s not talking about little minute details he knows or anything like that. He’s talking about bigger concepts, but still, what a resolve.

I’ve thought about writing nearly my whole life. I’ve always been enamored with writers, authors, and the like. But I know nothing of that guild.

…about my motives. In all my time spent in undergraduate studies and also in my time learning about the backgrounds and lives of men and women all throughout English and American literature, one thing was evident: as great an author as many of them were, they were broke.

I have no preconceived notion that if I write I will automatically make money.

With that being said, publishing is not what it used to be, either.

When I was coming along in my childhood, I was the bookworm hitting the library and the book fair whenever possible. I could get lost for hours in our library at our small rural school. I can’t tell you how many times I began to write...something. How many times I would get on a Radio Shack PC at the library or on my mom’s typewriter and just start typing. I usually would get several pages deep before I ran out of steam (direction).

One of the things that kept me from doing much more with that 10,000 word start to my novel almost a decade ago was the sad fact of who in the world would want to publish this book? How would you get an agent? How in the world would you get this manuscript, whenever it was finished, on the desk of a publishing house editor – only then to be put in another stack that would be narrowed down from there.

Independent publishing has changed all of that. Anybody can write a book, regardless of how poor the Story is and regardless of how good the Story is, and get it published. Not entirely to the credit of Amazon, but they do deserve a lot of applause, and among many others in the self-publishing world, anybody can publish a book. That doesn’t mean anybody will buy the book; that is where the rubber meets the road. In 2012, was it possible to earn a living writing books? Yes, but much, much harder than right now. The market has been absolutely turned on its head. The author is now the marketer. It can be done, but it does take Story craft and business savvy marketing. The good thing is that there are those who have gone before me.

My expectations are best set at not what one book can do for me, but what a series and several novels can do for me. It will not be overnight. Most successful authors write anywhere from two to several books per year and this is the goal.

At the end of the day, the goal is to “write for yourself.” I should write as if nobody is ever reading, but myself. I know if I never sell a book, I must do this for myself.

nov·el | ˈnävəl | noun a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism: the novels of Jane Austen | she was reading a paperback novel.

A novel is defined in modern literary style and function by word count. ProWritingAid defines a novel in terms of length as follows:

Most publishers consider novel length as between 50,000 and 110,000 words. The average length is about 90,000 words. Big, epic stories can be 120,000+ words.

I’ve got to admit, when I first saw this numerically defined, I was taken aback. I thought to myself, I’ll never get 90,000 words on paper about this guy, this truck, and this girl. Then it hit me, I’m at 10,000 words on my current draft of the first chapter (written in 2014). That’s roughly 11%. Then, as I kept researching, I then found out that a 10,000 word chapter is a ridiculous monster that should be utterly destroyed. An average chapter should be about 1,500 words, or 2,000 words on the outstretch of things.

So, to break this down, you need about 60 sessions of writing 1,500 words to reach 90,000 words. To make this even an easier bite size portion, that’s two months of writing 1,500 words a day. Many authors, from what I can surmise, probably most experienced authors write about 1,000 to 2,0000 words per session.

That’s when it hit me…

…I can eat this sandwich. This is an eatable sandwich. It got the juices flowing. Driving 400 to 750 miles a day, I can’t write 1,500 words a day for a couple months, but what I can do is write 500 words a session while I am unloading and so forth. LP (propane) season is the easiest, for certain. If I have three loads in a day, I have 3 hours of unloading time, alone. These posts on this blog are around 500 to 700 words each. This isn’t as hard I have imagined it to be when I first laid eyes on it. With that being said, there’s a remarkable difference from writing a blog to writing a Story (yes I capitalized Story).

The Craft of Story…

…is something that we all see and hear. When you watch a movie or read a book, you are seeing Story Craft. It’s something I’ve witnessed, something I’ve took mental note of, something I’ve admired, but I know little about it. When I was in college on my second trip, I was going to major in European history and minor in Literature (probably English Lit). So, I had experience, but I need more experience understanding what a publisher and/or reader is looking for in a novel. To put it plainly, I needed to understand Story Craft. Antiseptically speaking, literary devices.

What I am doing here is showing you the progression of how I've come to where I'm at now at the end of February. More to come in the next few days.

Years ago, I bought Scrivener. Scrivener is the go-to application for writers of long form writing, whether it be a novel, magazine or journal articles, research projects (educational or otherwise, short stories, or however one would like to use it. Very few authors will use anything like Word or any other standard word processing application because of the understandable limitations of the platform. Scrivener had my attention in one single line of their marketing, “...the ability to write without needing to worry about whether or not you're writing the last chapter or the first.” It went something like that, but here's the statement on their site in 2022:

Tailor-made for long writing projects, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don't know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea.

I like the idea of being able to move freely like this simply because that’s the way my mind works. I can be on the first chapter today and then get the brainstorm of what I want a obligatory scene to be like the next day and write that without destroying the paging or other features of how Word works. Scrivener is so much more than this, however. I’ve written several short stories through the years with it and I’ve always been totally amazed at how little of the application’s features I have even began to use.

Scrivener seems to be the big game in town. The 900 pound gorilla in the room, if you will. On the horizon, there is a competitor and it does have my attention.

Atticus is the new kid on the block. The advantages to Atticus is many fold. I’ll list a few here for simplicities sake:

1. It basically does what Scrivener does and…

2. Networked author and editor support. In other words, your editor or beta-readers can peer into what you’re work without the hassle of exporting and so forth. I’ll be honest, this is big to me. Of course this is all with granular settings of privacy and control on the author’s part. Editor’s can get Atticus certified, therefore making it easier to find editors which are capable and working with Atticus.

3. Formatting for publication – instead of spending $250 on just the software for doing one single thing, exporting for publication, Atticus does everything for the price of one.

All in all, Atticus is a very attractive package and I do see myself moving to the platform. For the time being, however, I have Scrivener and Atticus does seamlessly import all of my work from Scrivener, so I will be working with Scrivener for the time being.

My goal now…

…is to educate myself on Story Craft. And my next post I will discuss what tools I am using and books I am reading in order to do that.

As some of you already know…

I am a truck driver. I have been many things. I have attended a conservative Bible college in the early 90’s; came home to work with my dad in his trucking business; ventured into the world of tech at the turn of the century for a few years; married and moved to Michigan with the love of my life; move back to North Carolina in the mid-2000’s and trucked more; left trucking for more college (liberal arts, concentrating on European History), while selling life and health insurance; finally getting back in the saddle full time hauling various types of petroleum. I currently haul LP (propane) in the fall and winter and gas/fuel in the spring and summer. That’s literally the summary of my working life. “I’ve been everywhere, man.” I’ve literally driven over 2,000,000 miles.

I’ve seen a thing or two, because I’ve done a thing or two.

So, why write? Wilson, what's your “writing prompt.”

I've always been able to tell a story. Story telling isn't always fiction. I've always been able to come into a public setting and be the guy that someone says, “Hey Wilson, tell them about the time...” It's natural for me. I've never had to lie to make a good real life story worth talking about, I just have always had a way of being able to craft a true story to keep it true and still make it interesting. There's a reason why there is such a thing as reality TV; because reality is just as funny and interesting as fiction, for the most part.

My writing prompt

About the last week in January 2022, I had a co-worker and friend become very sick, to the point of death. He just had his 59th birthday a couple weeks before this event. It's complicated, but he basically had a clot in his leg. This man was the super trucker of truckers. He was the guy that everybody thought was invincible; one who they could absolutely rely upon to get the job done regardless of the conditions and challenges. In a matter of a couple days, he became a shell of a human being. After a couple very invasive and life threatening surgeries, 14 days in ICU, and now rehabbing at home, he is on the mend, but it will be at least six months before he can come back to work.

Update: When I wrote this, I was unaware that the very same day I was writing this that my friend has a huge medical setback. As of this writing, he’s back in ICU after another emergency surgery and the six months timeframe is looking rather bleak.

This was a wake up call for me

A week ago, I turned 48. Am I just 10 years from such a disastrous diagnosis? Currently, I work my ass off. I work constantly. I don't even mind it. If there is anything to do, I'll do it. I don't say “no” to anything. If they dish out the work, I do the work. It was the way I was raised.

My goal is to write...

I love writing. I've always loved writing and I've done quite a bit of writing through the years. I've had poetic and short story work published in academic journals. In my mind, it became time to polish this craft with the intent on writing novels based on my life as a trucker.

When you say the word “novel,” it’s such an intimidating word. However, when you break it down into chunks, it’s not as intimidating as you’d think. I’ll talk about this more later.

From here out...

...I will share with you my journey on how I am learning to write...professionally.

Will you follow me?

Will you join me on this journey? Subscribe to this blog to see the progression, get short stories regarding the characters of my novel to whet the whistle, and more.