Modular Stories

I’m so close, but I’m having a hard time hitting my stride this morning. The ending is still in doubt, I have anxieties about all the length/formatting rumors that seem to be running around among the 3-D writers, and I keep getting distracted with the fantasies about how great it’s going to be to be done.

30 minutes ago, I hated my story, which has morphed into an eco-political sci-fi horror romance. I hated it like a thing outside of myself. I should just nuke all of my characters and be done with them and their stupid nonsense lives. I’m sick to death of their saccarine dialogue. What’s wrong with these people?

Last night was pretty restless. Didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m., probably didn’t fall asleep for another hour. I feel exhausted, but not quite as bad as I did on day 1.

That was nice… formatted my document the way a manuscript is supposed to be formatted (apparently… I’ve never submitted on before) and my page count jumped way up. It feels like cheating, but I double-checked the formatting with multiple sources. Everone seems to agree: chapters titles always start a new page and they start about a third of the way down the page.

So that means I can pretty much relax now as far as the page count is concerned, and focus on doing the story justice. I guess that’s the way it should have been to begin with, but the numbers help me keep going.

If anyone’s still reading… sorry this is getting so boring. Most of my creativity is going into the story right now, so these blog entries are starting to get a little dry.

I’m boring myself, even, and I can talk a lot about myself before I get bored. I’ll try again in the morning.

This story is making me queasy. I want to write about pretty things now. Maybe I will come out on the other side of the contest writing nothing but lyrical verse.

Halfway there. Onward!

> Globs of raw cookie dough fuel my game of make-believe

> Carrie, my lifeline to sanity right now, reads a draft and says, “No, Jeff, I love it, it’s really good!” She did fall asleep over it even though it’s a sci-fi horror mystery thriller, but I’m sure she was just tired.

I made the 40 page mark at 11 p.m. last night.

On sleep
The contest survival guide doesn’t say anything about sleep, one way or the other. Maybe it’s just implied that you won’t sleep at all? Is that the whole point?

Anyway, I felt pretty tired last night, and I think if I’m calculating right I might be ahead of the game. So I turned in for a full eight hours, deciding that hitting my brain’s reset button might be more useful than the time I’m giving up.

I had a dream last night that I was writing a term paper for an English class and still had 6 pages to go. I think I was freaking out in my dream.

I woke up and realized, actually, I have about 60 pages to go.

This is the kind of math I do
The guide also suggests that I should be halfway through by 6 p.m. tonight.

They also say that while there’s no prescribed length, novels that win are usually around 100 pages. Sometimes 120. But that, nonetheless, you should write as much as the story requires.

So let’s say I aim for 100 pages. That means I have 9.5 hours to write 10 pages to hit the halfway mark by this evening. I write at least 2.5 pages an hour. Piece of cake.

It’s the variables that kill you
However, I have a few things working against me:

• This blog
• An accumulation of 10 notes that need fact-checking or problem solving in the editing stage
• No chapter breaks (yet)
• A lot of typos and grammatical sloppiness (again, I’m assuming I’ll have time for a good editing pass)
• My highly distractable nature (i.e., this blog) and my consequent inability to sit at the computer for more than 2 hours at time.

Time to get strategic
Ok, so the plan is, for the next hour, type as fast as possible. Not stream-of-consciousness exactly, but minimal use of the backspace key. Get a sense of absolute fastest page-per-minute rate.

Take a break, eat breakfast.

Next, do it for two hours before my next break.

Then three, and four, and so on, until it’s done.

Tonight will be my brutal all-nighter. By noon on Monday I should be moving into editing.

Well that was a good little stint. Thank you Rhodiola! (that’s an herb, not a brand name. I am not pimping products).

I feel calmer than I have since I started. The box sez this supplement “is intensively studied for enahcing concentration and endurance, uplifting one’s mental state, and supporting opitmal immune, adrenal, and cardiovascular function even under conditions of severest stress.”

As for the plot… I couldn’t kill off a character yet. They all made it through the first pitched battle. And I’d really planned to off some of them. I just like them too much to do it yet.

I really need to thin them out, though. I have 9 already, with at least 2 more on the way. Some tragic ends would make character devleopment a bit easier for the survivers. Very glad I chose limited omniscient POV, though (or rather, it chose me). At least my main protaganist is clearly defined.

Am I writing a zombie novel? Ok, I admit, the kernel of this idea was a challenge I made to myself to create a new vector for the origin of the zombie. (A critter writers first said was created by voodoo, later by radiation and mutation, later as bio buggies–disease, genetic modification, or whatever).

As a thought experiment, I wanted to create a different kind of zombie, using purely psychological and economic origins.

Of course, my zombies die like normal humans and they really prefer to cook their meat first when they have time, but when it comes down to it, they are zombies.

I somehow forgot how zombie-ish my antagonists are, deep down. When I was first thinking about this novel I planned to recuperate them, deepen them, make them more human and less ghouly.

But that intent is slipping, despite my best efforts. And so as a result, I’ve been cowering in fear next to my characters. Not letting them leave the safety of their ship. 28 pages in and they still haven’t even opened the door.

Why? Because I don’t want them to die in zombie attacks. But I need conflict and excitement, and that’s the natural place to start.

I’ve never written in this genre before. Why should they suffer for me accidentally falling down in the dark alley of slasher fic?

But there’s no going back. I gotta face it along with them. But I don’t think I have the guts to pen truly horrifying violence. Do I? Should I try? What does it say about me if I do this thing right?

Can I merely suggest it and still get away with it? Maybe be the first, I dunno, civilized zombie novelist?

How did this happen? HOW DID I END UP WRITING A ZOMBIE NOVEL?!!!

Oh, and by the way, my personal zombie pills are an OTC herbal supplement I’ve never tried before. I can’t do coffee–it makes me way too jittery.

I’m in a pretty good writing track now. Don’t want to interrupt it by thinking too much more about the blog at the moment. Will try to write more soon.