Word Count for October 2020

I wrote a total of 9,908 words in October 2020, over two separate projects. This is up from September’s total by 7,333 words. July remains my most prolific month by a little over 700 words.

I wrote 517 words on a project that has been in my brain for many years, a comic or graphic novel, tentatively titled Cursed. In Cursed, a princess turns into a metaphor for Depression. I wrote 517 words on this project in two days. I have no idea if I will pick it up again in 2020.

The overwhelming majority of my October words came from Something Undone, formerly “Untitled Nursing Home Project”, . Something Undone is my first finished feature length script, coming in at 94 pages or 17,088 words. According to the standard of screen writing, each page should be around a minute on film, giving me an hour and a half run time.

I haven’t been this excited about a project in a few years. Something Undone really picked up steam in October. I wrote over 500 words for multiple days, ending my streak with 2134 words in one day. I experience this a lot when I finish a first draft. Once I write the emotional climax of a story, the rest falls into place with relative ease. This, coupled with a contest deadline, pushed me to finish the project on October 25^th, 2020.

I am tentatively proud of Something Undone. The story itself is good. Any missteps can be corrected in the editing and revising. I have no idea what will become of the script if anything. That’s for the future. Right now, I’m just proud of the finishing, more than the story itself. I started planning the script at the end of June and finished in the last days of October, roughly four months from concept to physical script, easily the fastest turn around I’ve managed in my career. I don’t expect to repeat it any time soon.

What happens after a project is finished? In the early days of November, I’ve gone through Something Undone and fixed the most glaring practical errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and continuity. I’m sure I missed plenty of problems. My system is to figuratively but the script in the drawer and come at it with fresh eyes in about a month. With luck, and help from my screenwriter friends, I can polish the story and create a product to shop around at festivals and contests. But that is a task for December Kate.

November is National Novel Writing Month. I will not be participating this year. I am still very much in the world of Something Undone and have no desire to court burn out by starting a large project so quickly after finishing my first feature. I’m still writing (literally, right now) but I’ll be writing with frivolity, leaping on to whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. I plan to return to Something Undone in December, and hopefully emerge with a polished feature in January or February of 2021.

Word Counts for August and September 2020

July was my most productive month of 2020, with 10620 words written across seven projects. I felt good, like I had a handle on living a creative life in the midst of a global pandemic and national unrest.

Then my word count dropped by an average of 4022 words for the next two months.

Let’s examine the data before we start making conjectures about why and how.

I wrote 6026 words in the month of August. The majority dealt with my screenplay, then known as “Untitled Nursing Home Project” with 4244 words. I ran into a fairly significant roadblock toward the end of August. The antagonist of the script is a malevolent ghost named Gertrude who can only be seen by protagonist Helen due to Helen’s recent near death experience. Helen’s loving husband, Larry, assumes that Helen’s talk of ghosts is a symptom of dementia. Gertrude delights in causing the couple strife so she had no motivation to reveal herself to Larry. I needed a way for Larry to start believing in ghosts, without completely ignoring Gertrude’s character profile. (Gertrude’s character is that she’s a bitch.) This problem stopped the script cold for several days, into the month of September.

While trying to figure out how to make a fictional Grandpa believe in ghosts, I wrote 865 words on blogs, most of which are available here, but some were deleted.

I wrote 652 words on Comedy in August, as part of an application for an internship that I did not get and don’t want to talk about. They were good words and I’m glad I wrote them, but not as glad as I would be if they’d done what they were supposed to.

I wrote 2575 words in September, entirely on the screenplay. On September 17^th, I figured out how to get Larry to believe in ghosts. SPOILER ALERT: It’s more ghosts. More ghosts, different ghosts, different motivations. Ghosts whose sympathies are with the living reveal themselves to Larry, proving that Helen is sane. Once that’s settled, she and Larry can take on Gertrude.

Why did my output slow to such a degree in August and September? First, without going in to too much detail, August and September were a hard couple of months. Covid continued to affect nearly every aspect of my life, including my extended family. I remain worried about them, my friends, my finances, and my country. The irony is that I am faring better than many of the people I know. I’m young and relatively healthy, with a support system I can depend on if things get worse. Most people don’t have that. Even as my anxiety consumes me, I appreciate the stability I have.

Second, August and September were busy months. In August, I got a job and in September, I started working for it. I am now an In Home Social Service worker, helping a wonderful elderly gentleman with his day to day needs. Because the state provides my paycheck (Thank you, California), there was a mountain of paperwork and orientations to go through. Once my place was secured, I went from working whenever I could finagle it, to working six hours a day for six days a week. While the job was an absolute godsend for my finances and peace of mind, it was also an adjustment. Energy and focus that usually went to writing were, appropriately, transferred to the new job.

Most importantly, I believe I didn’t write as much in August and September because I wrote 10,000 words in July. Most of the time, writing is mentally exhausting. Long word counts require the physical ability to sit at a computer, stare at a screen, for hours on end, and/or the mental energy and focus to write quickly. More than that, writers are not just typing random words or copying from the dictionary. It takes time to come up with a story, to arrange the words in the right order to illicit the correct response in the audience and move the story forward. Due to the factors described above, I simply did not have the energy.

Word count is not the only measure of a writer. I spent a lot of August and September staring out of windows, reading books, talking to friends, and moving around in my city. These are all part of the creative process, experiencing the world around you and allowing yourself to think. It’s just very difficult to put it up on a graph.

If you’ve struggled creatively and need some extra commiseration, check out the Onion article Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive or the Oatmeal’s Creativity is like Breathing. I hope things get better.

Word Count for July 2020

Greetings from the abyss!

It’s always been hard for me to feel productive, even in the best of circumstances. Now that I spend most of my time confined to a three room apartment, it’s easy to lose track of what I’ve done. So I started graphing my word count by project and keeping it by my desk. It’s a good visual tool that changes everyday and encourages me to write more.

In July of 2020 I wrote 10,620 words, divided among seven projects. I did not write every day but the output was greater than either May (5904) or June. (4509).

 

 

 

 

I wrote 3,487 words on The Lost Souls Veterinary Clinic Pilot script. Based of a short story written by my good friend and better mother, Marcia Canter, Lost Souls explores the responsibility we bare to those around us. Joe, a homeless veteran marked by addiction and loss, finds unexpected friendship with a cynical veterinarian, Rachel, and her bubbly yet social conscious receptionist, Jesse, when he brings an abandoned kitten into their office. When his dark past becomes clear, Rachel must decide if she’s able to trust him and Joe must decide if he’s worthy of redemption. I finished the pilot and added it to my writing portfolio.

I wrote 3708 words on a yet untitled film. It follows an elderly couple who discover ghosts in their assisted living facility. In these 3708 words, I finished the beat sheet and summary and began the script itself. I’m very excited to finish it.

I wrote 689 words on blogs, most of which are available on this website.

I wrote 1518 words on Comedy. Writing comedy is very different process from writing prose or even a script. In the case of stand up, I am likely the only person who will ever read it. Stand up isn’t about how words look on a page but rather how they sound out loud. I may do another blog about my stand up writing process but the cliff notes are I get an idea, try it at a few open mics and then write out the actual joke to edit and memorize. 846 words of that 1518 were on a sketch about breakfast cereal.

I wrote 782 words on Shy Turtle, which is a short story about a shy turtle and the various woodland creatures that try to make her less shy. I have no idea if anything will come of it but Shy Turtle is extremely relaxing. If you are ever stressed out, you could do worse for your mental state than researching semi aquatic animals.

I wrote 201 words on Gilded Girls, a D&D parody of the Golden Girls. Ideally it will become a comic but honestly I don’t know where, if anywhere, it will end up. It follows adventures Orcthy (a half orc warrior), B’lanche (an eleven bard), and Rose (a halfling monk) as they help Orcthy’s mother, Skullphia, (Orc mage) find a death worthy of her.

I wrote 235 words on a film outline tentatively titled Defarge. In a list that includes a D&D parody of the Golden Girls, Defarge is still the nerdiest thing I’m working on. It’s an epic film following the life of Therese Defarge, the main antagonist in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Madame Defarge has fascinated me since I read the novel in summer 2017. Obsessed with revenge at any cost, she is easily the most interesting woman Dickens ever wrote, possibly the most interesting character. I want to explore more of her life before and during the French revolution, to see the moments she embraced or turned away from her ultimate humanity before totally embracing her role as the villain.

I tend to write where the wind takes me, unless I’m working with a professional deadline. I can often go months without writing on a particular project, if I don’t abandon it all together. Blogs and Comedy are broad enough subjects that I usually write on them every month. Lost Souls is finished for the moment. The untitled film currently holds the highest August word count. Gilded Girls make take a back burner since I wasn’t particularly inspired in July and Defarge is still too new to get my full attention. We’ll see what August brings.

 

Update: Time is Made Up

I have always felt better starting at the beginning. I have this idea, drilled into me by the protestant work ethic of my forebearers, that I should start whatever I am doing on the first of a new year, a new month, a new week or a new hour, and continue at a steady rate until it was finished. If I fell behind or missed a day, I’d have to stop and wait for a new year, a new month, a new week to start again at the beginning.

It’s not a great way to finish projects. Or to keep up with a blog/website.

Like most of the country, I’ve been under semi-lockdown for months. Suddenly, all I seemed to have was time. My creative pursuits are limited only by what I have available in my apartment and my imagination. I learned quickly that a global pandemic and state brutality are incredibly hard on an imagination. Days run into each other. All of my great plans fell by the wayside.

I want to say that I’ve found a way to work within my new reality but it’s too soon to tell. At the moment, I can’t consider my life much more than a week in advance. So much has changed so quickly, future plans seem ridiculous.

So where does that leave me? Here and now. I can’t wait for Monday to roll around. Can’t put off my goals until the first of the month. Who knows what will happen between now and January First?

The only question I need to ask is what can I do now? What, at this moment, feels like necessary work? I can’t say whether the work I do now will eventually yield positive results. None of us ever could. That knowledge is both terrifying and liberating.

I’m struggling not to apologize for not updating sooner. I’ve been working, and not working, on various projects that are important and unimportant to me. I’ll continue that journey, whether it involves regular updates or not.

Stay safe. Maybe I’ll talk to you soon.

Book 8 of 2019: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

In 1929 London, Private Investigator Maisie Dobbs unearths a series of suspicious deaths connected to a home for disfigured veterans. Using her knowledge of psychology and quiet determination, Maisie must unravel the mystery and finally leave her own trauma from The Great War behind.

Maisie Dobbs is an intriguing and complex read that will stick with me for a long time. Anyone with even a passing interest in World War One will find Winspear’s descriptions of the scars it created fascinating. Maisie herself is a well-rounded and intriguing protagonist. Her journey from a junior maid to university student to a battlefield nurse could be a novel in its own right, but Winspear manages to 126 pages, somehow without feeling rushed. Maisie is brave, intelligent, and resourceful but still very much a woman of her time. Her goal isn’t to break through the boundaries set for her sex and class. She only wants to help people.

As a historical novel, Maisie Dobbs is nearly flawless. I found the mystery element slightly disappointing. Soldiers dying under mysterious circumstances, leaving everything to the leader of their cloistered retreat, and buried under only their first names could have been milked for incredible suspense. That line was dropped in the middle of the book in favor of describing Maisie’s past and wartime love affair for over a third of the book. The skillful prose and complex characters make the interruption forgivable, but they would have been better showcased in their own novel or paced intermittently between the 1929 storyline. Thoughtful historical fiction is lovely, but I picked the book up for a murder mystery.

Winspear has penned an impressive fifteen novels of Maisie Dobbs adventures. I can easily see myself picking one up when I am in a less bloodthirsty, and more historical, mood.

Happy National Writing Day!

Happy National Writing Day, according to the dark cabal of Twitter Hashtags!

Writing is both my favorite and least favorite activity. It’s saved my life multiple times and inspired countless suicidal thoughts. I’ve devoted most of my life to perfecting this craft. Someday I’d like to be paid for it.

I decided to be a writer in second grade. My motives weren’t based on any deep artistic inclination. It was 1997, and I heard somewhere that JK Rowling had more money than the Queen of England. More money than the Queen of England felt like a good starting paycheck, so I started writing.

Then I kept writing.

And kept writing.

And kept writing which brings us to today. I have significantly less money than the Queen of England. I’ve made peace with not being J.K Rowling. I’m still writing and, somewhere along the lines, I found artistic inclination. The revelation that I would keep writing no matter what else happened surprised me, but it’s true. Even if I never make another dime, I will keep writing.

Please don’t misinterpret the previous statement. I still want to be paid. Artistic inclination is a poor substitute for food, rent, and healthcare.

So how do you keep writing? That question is not rhetorical. I love hearing about everyone’s process. I love specific advice to ignore or embrace. A process is a method and conditions creators use to create. They evolve and change over time. If you don’t think you have a process, you probably have many. I have at least two, depending on what I need to accomplish.

My day starts at 6:30. My phone alarm goes off at 6:30. I turn it off and go back to bed. If I remember to charge my phone in the kitchen, I have to physically rise to turn it off. Then I can feed my cat. If I fell asleep with my phone by my bed, I turn it off without getting up, and Sherbert bites my feet. I recommend getting an alarm clock that bites you.

By 7 or 7:30, I am awake enough to make coffee. Then I go back to bed, or I get dressed. After I am dressed, I take my medication, or I go back to bed. My bed may as well be a magnet. Eventually, I go to my job if I don’t go back to bed.

I pay the bills with pet sitting. Dogs and cats don’t require a lot of mental focus. If I don’t have any extra duties, I go home after about an hour. When the job is over, the work begins.

First, I clear my mind by cleaning the apartment for a half hour. I clean the same four areas every day: my desk, my bed, the cat box, and the dishes from the night before. These tasks don’t always take thirty minutes, but I always find something else to do. Focusing on menial labor allows me to free my mind of distraction before I write. Finishing these tasks gives me a feeling of accomplishment that creativity seldom affords.

After I finish cleaning, I write. My daily minimum is 250 words, though I usually write more. When I was younger, I could write thousands of words in one sitting. However, those sittings were few and far between. Now I focus on consistency rather than breaking records.

I usually have three to five projects going on at once. I write essays for this blog, prose for publication, scripts to be performed, and new comedic material. I try not to write on any given subject for more than a half hour at a time. After forty-five minutes, I become sluggish. I get into my own head about editing or originality or money or any number of distractions. When that happens, I close my computer and do something else. When I’ve done something else for thirty minutes, I return to writing, and the cycle starts again.

Something else encompasses the entire rest of the universe. On bad days, I fall into the vortex of the internet and lose hours of creative time. To avoid that sticky spider web, I go off screen.  I count creative activities, like writing longhand, drawing or painting, and reading books for research or inspiration as time spent working. Exercise, eating, cleaning, playing with my cat, or taking a nap are necessary for my physical and mental health. Physical and mental health is required for writing.

Incorporating health into my creative routine is the hardest lesson to learn. Yes, I can ignore my aching back, grumbling stomach and drooping eyes to finish a project on time, but it’s not sustainable. We have a vision of the starving artist, squinting in candlelight with blisters on his fingers, breath visible in his thatched hovel. Reject it. Suffering can lead to art, but life will provide plenty without your input. You do not have to sacrifice health and comfort for creativity. I write much better with my anti-depressants, sugar loaded coffee, and my cat at my feet at the desk I love than I would in a cardboard box with only a bottle of cheap whiskey and negative self-talk for company. Life is necessary for art. Make caring for your body and mind a part of your routine, regardless of your creative inclinations.

I can keep the write/something else cycle up for most of the morning. Once I accomplish my word count, I am free to seek out other diversions. I may pick up some extra jobs, go to the library and research, or socialize. I seek out new opportunities and complete the mundane tasks of promotion and budgeting. I keep writing. Writing is fun. It can frustrate or depress at times, but most of it is fun. I couldn’t have kept writing for so long if it wasn’t mostly fun. My process keeps the work fun for longer and helps me navigate everything else.

Enjoy your work, your creativity, and your life. Find your own process.

If you enjoyed reading about my writing process, you should check out Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, a book detailing the creative process of such figures as Georgia O’Keefe, Leo Tolstoy, and dozens more. Also, How Do You Write, a fantastic podcast where author Rachael Herron interviews other authors about their process has become a part of my process! I listen to the show while I clean in the morning!

Book 7 of 2019: Lavender Los Angeles from Roots of Equality

Roots of Equality Authors: Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, and Justin Emerick

Published in 2011, Lavender Los Angeles provides a brief overview of Queer history in Los Angeles, from the pre-colonial era to the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008, including photographs and illustrations.

The history of Queer people in Los Angeles is rich and storied. Lavender Los Angeles provides an excellent starting point for those, like me, intimidated by more massive tomes. At 127 pages, the authors don’t have time for much-nuanced analysis of the events. Instead, they focus on the events themselves, the notable people, and how they fit into the overall narrative. Lavender Los Angeles is a history book for the people who hated history class.

Despite the page limit, Lavender Los Angeles makes a concentrated effort to include women, people of color, and trans people at all stages of the narrative. From the two-spirit healers of the Indigenous community in the colonial era to Margaret Chung, the first known Chinese Woman Doctor who boasted romantic affairs with Sophie Tucker and Elsa Gridlow in the 1920s, to Angela Douglas, founder of TAO (Transvestite/Transsexual Activist Organization) in 1970. In a field predominantly focused on white, cis men, I appreciate the intersectionality of Lavender Los Angeles.

However, that intersectionality would have been better served with color illustrations. Black and white pictures create a sense of distance to the events. Distance is fine when discussing the lavender marriages and police raids of yesteryear but Proposition Eight, banning same-sex marriage in California, passed a little over a decade ago. Monochrome photographs separate the reader from the immediacy of these issues.

Roots of Equality also managed to avoid the pessimism I usually find in Queer History. While never sugar-coating events, they focus instead on the victories and the sheer joy that the LGBT+ community achieved in Los Angeles. Lavender Los Angeles, despite the closeted connotations of the title, made me proud of my community and eager to participate more fully with my city.

Who Are We?

There are concentration camps in The United States of America. Human beings, many of them children, have been locked away without trial in horrifying conditions. They are sick, dying, and outright murdered by their captors. Their captors operate with no independent oversight, little press coverage, and the financial backing of The United States Government. Our tax dollars fund concentration camps.

The sun is still shining. I had coffee this morning and went to work. I played with my cat. Later, I’ll attend a class and call my mother. There are concentration camps in the United States of America, and I could very reasonably go through my entire day without thinking about them at all, let alone doing something to help. It’s both a privilege and a shame.

Who are we, as a nation, that we can allow such things? We are the same nation that nearly destroyed ourselves over the right to own other human beings. We are the Trail of Tears, Mexican Repatriation, and Japanese Internment camps. We tore people born on this land away from their families and their homes, why am I shocked at the treatment of refugees? If I am so shocked and horrified, why do I read books about liberation rather than taking to the streets against injustice?

Because it is easier. I feel safe with my doors locked, running the errands necessary to survival. Occupying my mind with creativity, petty desires, and tedious dilemmas feels better than confronting and dismantling my own privilege. I tell myself that it’s a different world now. I ask who would be served by risking my income or physical safety? Whose mind can I really change by arguing about fascism and human dignity? If we have been fighting the same battles for centuries, what hope is there for victory now?

There are concentration camps in America. It cannot be unknown. We can go about our lives, but there are concentration camps in America. We can quibble or sob or shake our heads in resignation, but there are concentration camps in America. There is a precedent for the concentration camps in America. This is who we are.

Who do we wish to become? Can I become the type of person I read about? Can I act, not for comfort or safety but because the action itself is right? Can we, as a nation, stare our crimes in the face and make honest recompense? If I recognize that the safety promised by silence is an illusion, will I break it?

Now is the time to find out.

Book 6 of 2019: An Act of Villainy by Ashley Weaver

I am continuing my crime fiction spree with An Act of Villainy by Ashley Weaver. Amateur sleuth Amory Ames and her formerly philandering husband, Milo, are called to investigate a series of threatening letters sent to Flora Bell, a rising theatrical star and mistress of their married friend, Gerald Holloway. When Flora is killed on opening night, everyone in the cast is a suspect. Amory must find the real killer to save the Holloways’ marriage.

An Act of Villainy is the fifth book in the Amory Ames series. I have read none of them. I followed the plot without any problem. Weaver is skilled at establishing background without being bogged down. We know that Amory and Milo had difficult times in their marriage but have since rekindled their affections, through solving murders. We don’t need to know anything else to enjoy this engaging mystery.

Weaver’s greatest strength is her character work.  She manages to elicit sympathy for a betrayed wife, her cheating husband, and his mistress all at the same time. The stereotypical villains have soft emotions, beloved families, and sordid pasts. Amory is an intelligent detective with lots of empathy and little patience for patriarchy. She inserts herself into a murder investigation, in 1933, with little to no pushback through sheer quiet determination. She doesn’t sneak through alleys or infiltrate criminal organizations. She sits down and drinks tea. Somehow this solves murders.

Unfortunately, this particular murder left a bad taste in my mouth. The mystery is technically serviceable, though the culprit felt shoehorned in. Like Amory, I suspected nearly everyone else before the actual killer, because there was no stated evidence against them until the last few chapters. There was no smoking gun, merely a collection of details glazed over as description. Of course, we learn about dozens of suspicious deaths surrounding the murderer, after they confess. Amory solves the case thanks to an offhand remark from her mother, rather than actual detective work. The solution was a surprise, not because of its originality, but because there were more likely options.

The rest of the story was good enough to overshadow the lackluster solution. For me, the actual crime is the least important element of detective fiction. I want to follow the clues and solve the case, yes, but most importantly I want to care about the characters involved. I care about Amory Ames, so I’m looking forward to reading her other adventures.

Book 5 of 2019: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

As the first lady private detective in Botswana, Precious Ramotswe solves problems in her clients’ lives, exposing con men, tracking missing husbands and independent daughters, and battling the powerful to rescue the innocent.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was just as engaging the second time around. Mma Ramotswe is practical, independent, and hilarious. Botswana is portrayed as a modern country, avoiding the poverty fetishism that so often appears in books about Africa. You can tell that McCall Smith, a former professor at The University of Botswana, truly loves the country.

My one complaint is with the narrative arc. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency wants to be both a novel and short story collection at the same time. Some of the chapters work as stand-alone pieces, while others must be read together. Chapter 12 is a two-page description of Mma Ramotswe’s house. It’s charming and gives the reader a better understanding of the character, but it’s not a story by itself.

Still, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is an engaging read. The mysteries are uncomplicated but not obvious. There are no grizzly murders, criminal geniuses, or convoluted ciphers. Mma Ramotswe helps ordinary people with everyday problems until she discovers the case of a young boy abducted by a witch doctor. Even then, she approaches it with the ultimate pragmatism, lamenting only the superstition that would drive her countrymen to commit such crimes.

Alexander Mcall Smith is a talented and prolific author. I look forward to continuing the series.