book notes #2

I wrote 5,538 words yesterday.  It's about twice as much as I've ever written in a day.  I'm pretty proud of myself.  Of course, it did take all day.  I wrote a little bit, watched television, ate, surfed the web, wrote some more, and then repeated the process until falling asleep. 

Because I have been off this weekend, I suppose I haven't been so stressed out and that has allowed me to have a clear mind to write.  That's another reason I hate my job.  It's so mind numbing and all consuming that even when my shift is over, all that residual anger and frustration and fatigue comes home with me and all I want to do is go to sleep, but I don't go to sleep because the faster I go to sleep, the faster I'll be back at work.  I need a bigger buffer zone than that.  But since I'm too tired to write, I just sit around and do nothing productive.  I hate that I'm that way but I can't think of a better solution so I just kind of coast for now.

It seems that I can write until I hit some sort of wall with the story.  I'm kind of trying to let the story tell itself without putting too many restrictions on the direction, therefore the story is going its own way and that often leads to bumps in the road.  Depending on how much energy I have or if I'm thinking clearly, I can overcome those obstacles rather easily or I'll step away from the writing and not come back until a week or two later.  I think the combination of work and hitting one of those rough patches made me hesitant to get back into the swing of things.  In fact, that's why this whole process has taken so long.  I managed to write a little over 50,000 words just in the month of November last year and since then it's taken me 4 months to write a little over 28,000 words.  That's not very good.  I think if only I could have continued at that pace, I'd be done writing and well into editing by now.  I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up about it too much.  It is my first book and I am battling outside factors.  Just the fact that I'm working on this thing almost consistently is a good sign.  I think I'm pretty close to finishing the story and it's taken less than a year.  Way better than the memoir that I've been putting off for years now.

As I said, the story seems to be shaping itself and I like that.  I feel uncomfortable trying to change too much.  It's almost as if maybe my subconscious needs to tell the story a certain way so I'm kind of letting it take the reigns.  I feel like if I get too involved, it might muck it all up and it won't be as good as it would be had I just let it all happen.  Plus, so far I'm pleased with the way things have happened.  I'll be writing and suddenly I'll think, "Hey, this is the point where this needs to happen."  And then it does and it opens up wonderful new avenues for the characters to travel and it all feels very organic and natural and I like it like that..  It's actually kind of fun to see how the story unfolds as I write it instead of having this rigid outline that I have to strictly follow.

I was hoping to be super close to finishing by this weekend.  I was going to write every day this week and try to come close to the conclusion by tonight.  Well, I didn't even start until yesterday so I'm way behind but I think I wrote just about as much in that one day as I would have over the week so it's kind of worked out.  I just hope that today is as productive as yesterday was.

My only real problem now, and this is a minor one, is I have no idea what to name the book.  And that's really weird because I am usually really good at coming up with titles for the stuff I write.  In fact, I'll come up with a title in my head and then base what I write around the title.  I guess I'm a title first kind of guy.  I'm not saying I'm great at titles but I think I am.  I remember my nonfiction writing professor in college didn't like any of my essays' titles.  He said they were too cutesy.  I would agree with him but I like cutesy so it works for me. 

It is bothering me, though.  I'd like to think that maybe something will happen in the story that I can pluck a title from.  I love it when I read a book with a sort of obscure title that you're not sure how it relates to the book but then toward the middle or end of the book the title comes up in a character's dialogue with another or it comes from a memory or an observation and suddenly it all comes together and makes sense. I love that.  I hope I can recreate that. 

This is so lame.  The tentative title is Decay.  I will not be sticking with that if I can help it.  I feel like it's hard to name a zombie book without stepping on the toes of every other zombie book title out there.  Anything to do with rotting or deterioration has pretty much already been taken.  And let's not get started on how many ...of the Dead titles there are.  Plus, there's no zip to my title.  There's nothing to hook the reader into reading it or buying it.  Decay?  Where's the creativity?  It's kind of frustrating because I'm normally so good at coming up with titles but this one is really escaping me.

There's also a part of me that wants to discuss the book but at the same time that would spoil some of the surprises that pop up throughout the story.  I'd also like someone to read a rough draft just to give me pointers but I don't want to ruin anything for anyone.  In a perfect world, the story would be perfect and ready for everyone to read and enjoy without having to point out my (probably numerous) missteps.  But, I really do think I need some outside help.  This is my first book and my first foray into the world of large-scale fiction so I'm probably making a nice mess of things without even realizing it.  Sure, I've written short stories but there's a world of difference between short stories and novels.  I think I'll try to push the story as far as I can until I feel like it's decent enough to show and hopefully whoever reads it will still be entertained, even if they are proofing it for me.