Victimized by Technology

That was exciting, I pretty much took March off.  It's that ADHD thing spiked with a touch of incurable curiosity. 

The story's milieu is onboard a destroyer in the South Pacific during WW II. I had a rough outline and a few random ideas.  However, unlike Marathon Watch, I had no first hand knowledge of WW II ships, weapons, tactics or battles.  That means I had to delve into the realm of the author dreaded R-word: Research. In past years that would have required endless days at the library and perhaps visits to one or more museums, but this is the age of the internet - that black hole of focus and concentration.

My typical day went something like this - I would set off at 8AM trying to verify the range of the US Mk II torpedo. Along the way I would find interesting comments about anti-aircraft guns, depth charges, Fletcher Class destroyers, the Japanese 18-inch guns, the state of the art in Radar and Sonar, the Navy's rating and specialist system, berthing compartments, the samurai warrior culture, depth charges, ship repair facilities, the number of ships lost in the Pacific, and twenty-four other topics that I can't remember but which at the time seemed irresistibly interesting. The nefarious authors of this internet information cornucopia always included the dreaded hyper-link. For more information all one has to do is click; it's so easy!

The IHL (Internet Hyper-link) is a weapon of mass mental destruction and researchers report that IHL's are 100% fatal when used against curious people with ADHD.  Due to IHL's, my day would end in a cascade of ever increasing disasters.  About 6PM my browser would crash because I had too many browser tabs open. Marsha, my wife, would call me to dinner, and I would ignore her.  I knew she was pulling my leg since I had only been at my computer for fifteen or twenty minutes - max. 

Never at a loss for a back-up plan, I would reboot my computer and turn to my ever-present yellow note tablet to see what I was supposed to be researching. The top page of my note pad would be crammed notes, links, ideas, and half-thoughts written in three different colors of ink and in at least fourteen different angles. As always, items of special interest were crammed into a corner and the writing would curve down to avoid the edge of the page.

This wasn't as disorganized as it seems.  Some entries would have a nice little box drawn around them and the really important stuff would have arrows or stars next to the entry.  Using this advanced form of organization, I could quickly ascertain that I was looking for data on water temperature near Samoa in February even though I couldn't remember why, but it seemed interesting and that entry had a box, two stars AND an arrow.  About an hour later, Marsha would retrieve me, feed me cold leftovers, turn off my computer and hide the power cord.

After about ten days of this, I had learned so much about so little that I realized I knew absolutely nothing about everything.  That's just about the time, I learned something about modern medical science. My doctor had switched one of my medications to a new wonder drug that could cure anything, and as I would soon learn, that included ADHD.  This particular medicine takes about ten days to build up in the blood stream, and it has only one side-effect: it makes the patient drowsy.  By the eleventh day, I was sleeping about twenty hours per day which, considering the progress I was making on my research, didn't impact my effectiveness one iota. Besides my ADHD was completely gone!  On the twelfth day, Marsha managed to wake me up and suggested I go back and talk to the doctor, who promptly put me back on the old prescription. 

Soon the fog cleared and I was wide awake trying to figure out what to do next.  As it turns out, all was not lost, Scrivener (remember the writing tool from the previous blog?) came to my rescue.  One of the neatest features of Scrivener is that it allows you to save and organize research material.  You can cut and past stuff right from the internet into folders and pages, save pictures and write notes. In Scrivener, I had a treasure trove of information on almost any subject I would ever want to know about relative to the US Navy during WW II. All I had to do was reorganize it a little bit and I was ready to go. 

It was time to start drafting.

My goal is three chapters in the next week.  Let's see how that goes.

The Sport of Writing Software - or How Not To Do a Cyber-header

Okay, I choked. Not a single idea for the story.  I know, I'll do some free writing. Disaster. I couldn't connect a noun with a verb if my life depended.

Time to change strategy.  If I am going to write another novel, I want to avoid some of the manuscript management problems I had with The Marathon Watch; keeping versions straight and moving stuff around etc.  In other words, I wanted to find a way to put off the outlining and character development while wasting time in the name of working on my next novel.   I decided to look at tools to help me manage my manuscript and Voilà I found two potential software tools that not only helped manage the manuscript but would also help develop outlines.

The first was scrivener.  A great tool for novel development. It allows you to manage multiple versions of each scene, move things around and keep everything straight. It even lets you organize and keep your research and bible inside scrivener so you don't have post-it notes, paper and binders all over your desk.

The second was Dramatica. The intriguing thing about Dramatica is that it comes with a large manual that describes the physiological theory of "The Story." With it, the author claims, you can create complete stories that support your theme and leave your readers with a sense of closure and completeness. I am naturally curious and am always looking for things to learn. Learning  the theory (while putting off the inevitable) seemed like it was going to be fun.

The problem was the poorly written manual uses terms a physiologist would use, but not a writer. Despite the insistence on using the strange vocabulary, the author uses supposedly precise terms inconsistently leaving the reader wondering what was being said. The biggest complaint I had against the manual is that it did not go from the general to the specific, or from the known to the unknown, it started at the ultra-specific level without context and then kept piling it on. I struggled mightily to decipher the manual and failed. To put this in perspective, when I was in college I solved third-order differential equations in my head while driving to keep my mind occupied.

Fear not. I am fearless. All I need is some practical experience and it will all come together. Time to dive into the software tool that implements the theory for the author. And, I reasoned, it would get me started on the outlining and other prep work that needed to get done. Ouch!

The dive in quickly turned into a painful cyber-header. As I struggled to use Dramatica software, I found that it broke the story elements down into extremely fine detail with no way to pull it back together. Very quickly I developed hundreds of Dramatica elements for my story, but had completely lost track of where I was or where I was going. I did learn a great deal from Dramatica in terms of character structure, outlining and ways to build a novel bible so the effort wasn't totally lost. In short, Dramatica seemed to hold great promise, but failed me miserably as a tool and as a theory.  I abandoned Dramatica.

Well, that was fun and I managed to waste almost two months. What I had to show for it was a rough outline of plot, a muddy idea of theme, and pieces of the novel bible. I guess it was time to get to work.

Well, almost . . .

 

Dilemma Resolved - Or out of the frying pan back into the fire

Ok, where was I?

On the horns of a dilemma. Either go for the money with The Marathon Watch (but the money might never materialize), or Write the Ethosian Sci-fi series. First writing books like The Marathon Watch (which I consider serious fiction) is very difficult for me - I have to put so much of myself into it. On the other hand the Ethosian book series would instead be fun. Money vs. enjoyment. Hard work vs fun.

Seems like a no-brainer right?

Well let me add one more bit of information. I had 20 beta readers for The Marathon Watch, and everyone of them emphatically said I should pursue the Marathon trilogy. That's powerful persuasion.

Then there was the final nail in the coffin. Marsha, my wife, "suggested" I continue with the Marathon trilogy. I learned long ago that Marsha's suggestions carry the force of law - unless I want to be miserable for a long time. But I am no wimp. I fought back and finally had to put my foot down. Decision made.

I decided to work on the Marathon book, although I still dream about my Ethosian world in my spare time and it is becoming more real to me every day. When I do write it, it should be a killer.

Now what? The task before me seems enormous. Develop theme, characters, plot and outline. When I wrote Marathon Watch, I had trouble keeping everything straight so I wanted to see if there were authoring tools available that could help. I wanted to improve my skill, are there night classes available?

A long list of things to do and I decided to start on the outline and characters. No problem right?

Blank page-itus.

Complete mental vapor-lock.

Blank stare at the wall, mouth agape.

My muse had caught the last train for the coast without warning.

Choke.

Do not fear, it is always darkest just before it turn pitch black. More in a few days.

Finding the Shore

Okay, a little set-up is necessary to get this journey started.

My first novel, The Marathon Watch has been published. It is a serious novel with a serious and universal theme. I had ten beta readers. They all went nuts over the book. Despite the fact that the story was set aboard a US Navy Destroyer, even the female readers loved it because of the theme. This was not expected.

The next thing that happened is one of the beta readers gave the book to an agent, who also went nuts over the book. He is now representing me and wants me to turn my one novel into a trilogy, and is now working to sell the trilogy as a combined book and movie deal. Wow, I hadn't sold a single copy yet. But the plot thickens . . .

Before my beta readers got back to me, I had started outlining a science fiction novel which would be the first in a series titled "The Ethosians." I fell in love with the concept and the characters, especially my strong heroin who would become queen.

Now I am torn. Money says bet on your Marathon Watch Trilogy, my heart says to go build the Ethosian world.

We will resolve that dilemma in the next installment.