Progress Update

I’m closing in on 90,000 words! The last week has been super productive for my rough draft, with me finishing 5,000 words on a couple of days. I think it’s becoming easier because the characters are established and the plot is rapidly accelerating. I hope that as I start working on subsequent books in this series, the pacing remains this easy.

I’m sure there will be blocks, because I’ve experienced them with this book. It is extra difficult on some days after working hard, because I’d like to have time to stop and relax. Yet I know that if I want this to become a career, it’s going to take continual work. Then, one day soon I hope, I can relax in the afternoons after a fulfilling day of working on the latest writing project.

The End in Sight

It would be a lie to say that writing a first draft is always fun.

Of course, I’ve written longer pieces before, but none of those projects were undertaken with the same intensity or purpose as my current draft. This piece is one I’m incredibly passionate about, and I hope it will be my first published work.

The draft has been tedious at times, and I wonder if it is the same for all authors that tackle the project of a series. I’ve planned five books, three of them in meticulous detail, and plot strands that will not come to an end for at least another 500,000 words are being spun into place now. The initial work of creating the world and the peoples that inhabit it was more fun than I can possibly describe, but getting them along from Point A to Point B has not always been so glamorous.

It is so hard to maintain pacing with a character whose fate has already been decided. It is difficult to maintain the seemingly random story arcs that will eventually play out as the series comes to a close. Writing this buildup and beginning exposition in a way that still encourages reader engagement has been tedious at times, but now I can feel it all coming together.

As I near the end of my first draft, I know that the book is far from a finished product. I have revisions and editing to do several times through before anyone else even sees the manuscript, but at least now the story is picking up. As I write through the first major climax of the book, I have trouble stopping to save my work and call it a day. Often I wage a staring war with the clock, wondering if the face staring back is lying as to how late the hour has become. In the end, I’m forced to blink first, conceding defeat for one more day, knowing that the word count and the plot are trudging closer to that important finish.

I hope one day to share the world of Cestre and its peoples with all of you. Until then, I’ll withdraw for one more evening, defeated by the hands of time for one more day.

Poem - Ashes

This place was beautiful once
In a distant memory
Was it ever really that way
Or was that place only a dream

The scars tell me I’m alive
Yet still remind me of the pain
Their history is bittersweet
Cannot live those days again

The beauty of that yesterday
The smile spread on your lips
All has surrendered to decay
Ashes on my fingertips

Was this place once a home
How do I ever reconcile
That haven of peace and rest
With these charred wooden bones, so vile

Lost in this terrible darkness
Where once was a light, so clear
What have these haunting phantoms done
With the ones that I held so dear?

Randall Madden
February 11, 2014

Persistence

"Energy and persistence conquer all things."  

           -Ben Franklin 

This week I read an article online about the most important thing to an aspiring author. There are plenty of anecdotal quips to be found online about the art of finding your magical niche in the writing world, and most of them come across as overwhelmingly false. This article was quite the opposite; while it contained too much crude language for my tastes, I do believe it hit the nail on the head in regards to the journey of writing.

Persistence was the answer to this oft-asked question. Without persistence, an aspiring writer simply cannot make their dreams become reality. The more I considered this thought, the more I saw the validity of the idea.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard scoffers make snide comments at my chosen career.

“Don’t quit your day job!”

“You better have a backup plan, I mean, no one makes it writing.”

“You must be a masochist. I hope you like rejection…”

As a teenager these remarks nearly drove me away from writing. While I had the occasional teacher in high school and college that really tried to nurture writing talents in their classrooms, most of them were simply pushing us to succeed with our test scores. Often, it felt like we were being driven to higher-paying jobs so we could “succeed in life.”

But what determines success in life?

To me, the number on my paycheck ranks pretty low in terms of my life’s value. Life should be about a legacy, about leaving some mark on the world that makes it a better place. We’ve each been blessed with our own talents, and to deny them in order to “make more money” seems like an egregious waste.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream of Harry Potter-level success, but even then the success is about touching people’s lives and bringing them, for however brief a moment, to truly think for themselves. I think of the books that have most influenced me, such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Flies, and The Divine Comedy. I aspire to touch readers as those books have reached me.

For now, I write for a readership that varies between five and seven hundred depending on the day. None of my manuscripts have even made it to an agent’s desk yet, let alone to a publisher. I’ve been rejected from nearly a dozen writing competitions. Yet I still write, and dream of the day when I’ll hold a book in my hand, my name neatly printed across the cover. I persist, because even in the darkest hours of doubt, when I want to throw my hands up and quit, I still love writing. Something occurs that can’t be put into words without sounding esoteric and snobbish. For the time I spend at the keyboard, or at the legal pad, I feel like I can truly create.

Thus, I persist. Soon my latest manuscript will be complete, and I’ll no doubt be discussing rejection letters on this blog. But eventually, I have faith that there will be a different type of post. One in which I will revert to a childlike level of excitement that will destroy any potential I ever had of a professional veneer. I know that first successfully published piece will not end the doubt and uncertainty, but it cannot change the simple fact that lies at the heart of all these words put to paper and screen.

I write because I love to write, and I will continue to do so.

Poem - There is a Place

There is a place where a man may dream dreams

I know of the place
For I have been there often
Fleetingly, struggling to remain
Yet always in vain.

It is a beautiful land,
Hidden.
Somewhere between unconsciousness
And the first heavy eyelid.

I spend much time in this land
Though I’m no more than a pilgrim
How I long to make this world my own
And live these dreams forever.

It is a place where a man may dream dreams.

Can I claim to be a scholar?
Most times I only recognize a visit
Once it has reached conclusion.
Study as I may, I remain humbled.

How can a fleeting place
So hold the desire?
Never even sure I’m there,
Yet life’s futility fires the craving.

In that wistful place,
A million others stand.
A throng makes music in the fog
My muse’s call alluring

There is a place where a man may dream dreams,
Away from the tedium of proscribed existence.

I hope one day to find it.

Randall Madden

December 9, 2013

Rough Draft

In the past three days I’ve managed to add three thousand words to my rough draft. Now I can feel the lines of the plot coming together. Where before I felt the construction efforts of building a new world and all of its cultures, now I am struggling to write the words fast enough, as the actions and plots of all the characters are starting to come to fruition.

I’m trying not to even look back at this point. I’m aware of at least two plot continuity issues, so I’m sure there are many more waiting when I revisit the draft. For now I am simply jotting notes as I realize something needs housekeeping attention, and then pressing to finish the first copy of the manuscript.

It feels strange to see the end in sight, even if it is still very far away. Last June the world of Cestre was barely more than a shadow in my mind, but now I almost feel like a visitor there each time I visit. I can fully see the cities and the beautiful places in its nature, and I feel sorrowful with each death I inflict on this wonderful place.

I hope one day others will feel the same sense of enjoyment at the peoples and cultures of my world. Ultimately, sharing this wonderful place with others is the reason I write.

It's still a long way to the top, but I'm eager to know 

what the view is like from way up there.

The Best Intentions

The best-laid plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. Unfortunately, I am my own worst enemy in this case.

The last quarter of 2013 flew by in a whir, and I didn’t complete very many of my planned projects. Among these projects was the planned completion of my rough draft, which is now sitting at roughly 65,000 words. I struggled through NaNoWriMo with hardly a word written, and December went how it normally goes. With all this said, I’m sitting in a new year with an incomplete book.

In addition to this, I failed to place in any of the writing competitions I entered last year. I don’t feel the failures as keenly as I once did, but it would be a lie to say that it isn’t discouraging.

With all that said, I’m ready to make 2014 a different year. I’m not going to seek to finish my novel by a set date; rather, I will commit to 1,500 words per day. I also plan to work in each of my three blogs at least twice a week.

I’m actually feeling positive about the plan going forward. I’m committed to change my life, and the lives of others, through my writing. 2014, here I come!