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Even after the devastating realization that I had lost the file of the screenplay I had been working on for Dig Down when my barely year old laptop crashed, I didn’t let that deter me from continuing to work on scripts. While I couldn’t bring myself to start over from scratch with Dig Down right away, I was able to focus my energy on converting my second book, Lock the Doors into a script.

After completing the conversion, and a couple rounds of polish, I actually felt that this turn of events may have actually been an odd blessing in disguise. The reason for this admittedly bizarre point of view was because I had been attending free webinars on screenwriting, and one of them had to do with writing a horror franchise. The webinar started off with the statement that Hollywood studios were actually always in the market for horror because they were cheap to produce (a big reason why there’s 10 Friday the 13th films).

Lock the Doors could absolutely be made a shoe string budget because its slasher DNA – isolated cabin in the woods, a small group of friends that get picked off one by one, and a silent hulking killer. Lock the Doors was my love letter to the genre, and also a unique take on it because it flipped the genre on its head and told the story from the killer’s point of view.

While I’m admittedly anal retentive and want everything done in the proper order, I did feel that working to get my books produced into movies out of order may have been more beneficial in the long run. Studios would be more willing to take a chance on my story if the cost was low enough (even with rampant inflation, I feel you could make it for around a million, maybe even less, the cabin is the only major expense I can see).

I also felt the bar for success would be very low. I’d be a first time screenwriter, and if my script was made into a movie, I now had a film on my resume, and hopefully some decent buzz and returns to go with it, I would have an easier time pitching my next screenplay.

There was still one last hang up…I wasn’t really a screenwriter.

Even as an author, I worked with an editor to make my stories as good as they could possibly be. But I didn’t know anyone who edited scripts, or even where to look. So when I found a screenplay contest devoted to horror, AND it provided feedback and scoring, I jumped at the opportunity.

I’ll share more on that experience…next time.

For the past three years, I have been working on converting my published novels into screenplays. I made the decision to pivot away from novels for the time being to screenplays in an attempt to reach a wider audience. Books are where my heart lies, but I also love movies, and there’s something about seeing ‘Based on the book by’ in the opening credits that I think goes a long way towards creating a new audience for a book.

The decision to go this route was motivated and inspired by all of you. There were so many readers who told me when they were reading Dig Down and Lock the Doors that it was so well paced and that they could see it as a movie that I decided to explore adapting the stories to this new medium.

During the pandemic, I was taking several classes through Udemy. I had been laid up on my couch for months years prior, and although that eventually led to me finally writing and submitting Dig Down to an editor to see if I really had the writing chops I always believed I had, I also how miserable I was feeling that I had wasted so much time, and not wanting to repeat that experience, I was always looking for things to keep myself active and engaged during a time of heavy isolation.

One of those classes was a course on how to write screenplays. There were several great resources provided, including where to find copies of existing screenplays, as well as screenwriting software that was recommended. This was how I found the program Fade In, which I’ve been using draft my scripts.

As I said, I’ve been working on these screenplays for the past three years. This is in large part to the bumps and hiccups along the way. I had first worked on the screenplay for Dig Down, typing it up on a new laptop I had bought, only for the entire computer to crash just a few months later. Sadly, I had not backed up the file outside of the laptop I had written it on.

While I was slightly deterred from starting from scratch, I shifted my focus to drafting and revising the script for Lock the Doors (and sending myself a file through my email) before eventually returning to Dig Down late last year.

I now have two drafts, and a good sense of where they stand in terms of marketability. But I didn’t always have the latter. Despite my confidence in writing novels, I consider myself a novice when it comes to screenwriting, and was looking to change that last year as quickly as possible.

My solution to that was screenplay competitions.

More on that, next time.

Hello everyone!

I’m pleased to announce that I was able to complete the first draft of Between the Maws & Claws. I had given myself a revised goal to have it finished by the end of 2021. Although I did not make this second self-imposed deadline, I was able to wrap up the initial draft of the manuscript on January 2nd, so all things considered, even though I missed the mark, I wasn’t too far from hitting it.

I actually really enjoyed the momentum that I had attained as I was closing in toward the end. Throughout writing the first draft, I had alluded to the average time that it takes me to write a page, which was roughly a half hour, and that for most of this manuscript, it was taking me the better part of an hour for large sections of the manuscript. As the finish line starting coming into view, my pace really started to quicken. Not only was I writing pages in about twenty minutes, sometimes I was sustaining full hour writing sessions, resulting in typing up three pages in one sitting.

It might be too bold to state that my overall average for writing pages actually got below a half hour, but I don’t think its too presumptuous to believe that in the end, my writing pace rounded back into its usual form.

So, what’s next?

Well, with each draft I write, once its completed, I force myself to step away and take some time from the story. If you’ve been following the chronicling of this story from the beginning, you know that I have been focusing on telling this story for over five months now; three months devoted purely to outlining, and another two months writing the draft. There are definitely shortcomings, areas that need improvement, and areas that need to be hacked with a machete. But at the end of the first draft, with so much time spent with this as my primary focus, I’m too invested in the story. Everything about it is my baby. I need the separation of time to provide some distance from it, so that I can observe it objectively, assess what still works and what doesn’t, and take the next steps to start rounding it into shape.

So for the first time since the summer, I’m taking a break from the project. Again, this is routine, and what I did for my three other books. And once enough time has passed, that I’m not only ready to return to it, but can view it with the shrewd objectivity it needs and deserves, I’ll be back to work on it again.

Until next time.

Hello everyone.

It’s another week in the post-NaNoWriMo world, and I’m still in the midst of writing the first draft to Between the Maws & Claws. This has been an odd time writing. I feel like I’m back in college, not in my freshman year, not in my senior year, closer to the end than the start, but still feeling like the end is nowhere in sight.

I think some of this just has to do with the time of the year. The end of the year is always a bit of a struggle for me, and I do feel that my writing isn’t escaping this. I’m very anal retentive in trying to keep things ordered and compartmentalized, and I always prefer to have things that I’m working on get wrapped up by the end of the year. I really like having the sense of a fresh start to each new year with everything.

Last year, I was trying to wrap up finishing listening to Words of Radiance, part two in The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson, and I still had about 20 hours to listen to going into the final week of the year, as well as trying to finish Dragon Quest XI, a long RPG, and for fun, in the final week I decided to start playing Shovel Knight again with the goal of beating it. Everything felt like a rush at the end of the year to complete everything.

This year, everything’s a bit more laid back. I’m in the process of finishing Rhythm of War, book four in The Stormlight Archives, with a much more manageable amount to listen to that I’ve got plenty of time to finish, and I’ve still got the first draft to finish, with a week’s vacation to end the year and focus on it.

I know that this seems like I should have it pretty easy compared to last year, and I definitely do. But last year, one of the things I wasn’t trying to wrap up before the new year was the completion of a first draft. I feel like this is just another sign that participating in future NaNoWriMo’s isn’t going to be a given, as I don’t like the idea of feeling the pressure to finish before the end of the year when I’m working on a crucial first draft. 

If I expect my manuscript is going to be novella length, as it was with I’m Not My Father, I expect NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to tackle it. But if I’m going to be writing something that’s going to be closer to the average length of a book, I believe I’ll be giving myself an earlier start in the year to make sure I accomplish it with plenty of time to spare.

The goods news is this past week hasn’t been completely negative. I’ve experienced a rush of new story ideas that I feel are promising and really want to sit down to write. Although it never works out this way, I really like the concepts and could see them being the next books that I release, and as a writer, you never feel like you have enough of these.

Happy holidays everyone.

Until next time.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to life after NaNoWriMo. I think you’ll find its very similar to life during NaNoWriMo.

Although the writing competition is over, I still have a manuscript to finish. I feel that I made it approximately halfway through the manuscript. With that in mind, my new goal is to complete the first draft before the new year begins.

I’ve found it easier to write post-NaNoWriMo. During November, part of my attention was focused on tracking my word count to see if I could finally hit the 50,000 goal (better luck next year). I always set out to actually win the competition, but never expect to. Regardless, it has been nice no longer feeling the need to be preoccupied with how lengthy my manuscript has gotten while I’m in the middle of writing it.

I think the word count also weighed on me because of where I felt I was at in the story. On average, a published book clocks in at around 70-80,000 words. I had surpassed the 40,000 word mark, but was in the early stages of part 3 of a 5 part story. While I know from my outline that parts 4 and 5 are the shorter sections of the story, as the plot will have ramped up as it comes to its thrilling climax, because I was tracking my word count throughout, I couldn’t help feeling that I was not only behind where I wanted to be in my writing, but that the pacing also wasn’t to the quality that I expect out of my stories.

The latter may still be something that I need to address in later drafts. That being said, the constant reminder was not helping.

It’s been nice being able to just enjoy the process of writing. It has made me reconsider whether to wait until NaNoWriMo to write my future manuscripts. I do enjoy the writing competition, but I don’t want anything that would serve as a distraction to the books I plan on publishing. I want nothing to take away from the focus of storytelling, because I want to deliver the best experience I can to the reader. I don’t necessarily want to abandon participating in NaNoWriMo, but I may want to limit my involvement to interesting concepts and ideas that I’d like to explore, not future manuscripts that I have plans to publish.

Now that the writing competition is over, and I’ve been able to focus all my attention solely on my writing, I’ve found my writing has returned to its regular pace. I also feel that the quality has improved, although this could be part of a continuing process that’s been evolving throughout the competition. I definitely have gotten a stronger sense of the characters and the tone of the story as I’ve gone along, which is common for me whenever I write a new book. I still have a ways to go, but I feel confident the further I go, especially now that I’ve gone beyond the halfway point of the first draft.

Now it’s all about finishing the initial draft of the manuscript, and crafting it to be the best possible version it can be. That will still take some work, but I feel that I’m on the right track.

Until next time.

Hello everyone.

By the time this is posted, NaNoWriMo will have wrapped up for about two weeks. The delay comes from the way I posted my progress during the competition, with my first post occurring four days into the month to summarize how day one had went, and the next post a week later giving an account for the first full week.

So how did I do?

Well…I missed the goal to write 50,000 words in November. I even cheated and I still fell short.

By “cheated” I mean that I was also including the words for the blog posts that I was writing during November, because they concerned updates on how Between the Maws and Claws was going. I even wrote extra posts, so now I have a small reserve in case I ever need to skip a week writing actual new ones. This is technically not allowable because the words weren’t towards the actual manuscript, but I included them because they were focused on the project I was working on.

And I still fell short by about 5,000 words. So, if anyone was tracking my career record for NaNoWriMo, I am now 0 for 3. I know that it has to do with my pace for writing novels. I don’t like rushing through a first draft, I prefer to take my time to help better understand the tone and voice of the book, as well as the characters. The longer I take to let the writing simmer, the more ideas spring to mind, small details to include, or thinking about how characters will behave to events in the story. Also, a first draft always needs a lot of work, and the more time I take writing the first draft, the more things I typically am able to spot to improve in the later drafts.

This is also the longest manuscript I’ve written for this contest. I knew that going in, but I didn’t know how much that would impact my writing. I really didn’t think NaNoWriMo suited writing this manuscript. For my three published novels, this format for writing works really well, because they were all novella length, cutting right to the point. For this manuscript, I knew I needed to take my time to let the story settle in, laying the foundation so that once everything’s in place, the story really accelerates to the explosive ending. I think I need to keep this in mind for manuscripts going forward, and whether NaNoWriMo will be a good fit for them.

This may all sound negative, but I’m actually pretty happy with where the manuscript is right now. I feel I’m about halfway done with the first draft, with a lot of ideas to improve it through the later drafts. The weight of word counts is now off my shoulder (until I’m done with the first draft and will need to start focusing on edits), and the changes I’ve made to the writing style seem to already be paying off, as I’m noticing I’m having a much easier time writing pages, whittling the time down closer to my norms.

I’ll continue posting updates as I work through the rest of the first draft and beyond. NaNoWriMo may be done, but there’s still such a long way to go.

Until next time.