During my blogging days (2007 to 2015-ish), I always cherished the Mom Comment. She read everything I wrote. It could be nostalgia trips through old Sega Visions magazines, Dorito reviews, deconstructions of Harry Potter World, or whatever nonsense was on my mind. She probably had zero interest in the actual topics, but it didn’t matter. She still read every word and she was always the first comment with a “well done, honey.” It hit me that this is the first bloggy thing I have done since she passed away in 2019 and there’d never be another Mom Comment. Even though I deeply appreciated her feigned interest and loved her comments, I don’t feel like I ever expressed to her how much it meant to me that she spent time reading all my bullshit. I miss her more than I could ever convey with words.

The Long Journey to a Novel

Here we are capping off another assy, COVID-tainted year. I spent most of these pandemic years plowing through my video game backlog and binging Netflix. This past November, I finally put away the Nintendo controller and crushed a major milestone in my sputtering journey as a writer: a completed first draft! If you have ever written anything, then you are aware that a first draft is really just one step on the arduous hike to a completed work. But, it’s a necessary step–one that took me four years to complete. To begin shaping and editing, you must first slop together the K2 mountain of shit that is a first draft.

It’s claimed that writers should establish their brand with a social media presence using a website, Twitter, Facebook, IG, and whatever else you rotten kids use. Brand. Ick. I have my doubts. I have gone down this rabbit hole before and found blogging (do people still blog?) to be a useful distraction to actually writing a novel. While I truly love writing 5,000 words about my He-Man toys, you won’t find those posts here.

My plan is to use this space as a motivation tool through the editing process. I also want to share any lessons that I learned through this writing/re-writing/editing thing. If I can stomach it, I will also try to post on social media, but seriously, BARF.  

And, yeah, if I get into it, I may make some words about the awesome line of retro He-Man toys that draw me to the Target toy aisle like a mosquito to a bug zapper. I already threw down for Ram Man, Sorceress, Teela, and Orko. I don’t know how many more times I can pass that fuzzy Panthor without shamefully tossing him into my cart. Then, I’ll need a Skeletor to ride in his saddle. And a Battle Cat/He-Man combo to balance the universe. And OMG did you catch that new He-Man series on Netflix?! This is how it happens. This is how I incur the wrath of Mrs. Cooper.

So, About That Book?

Right, my novel. It takes place in the 80’s. The story is about a failed boxer who is trying to break into the sport of professional wrestling. Yeah, the sport. Professional wrestling is real in this story. It also follows an older, female wrestler who is the longest reigning women’s champion of all time and the dirtiest heel in the business.

Many of the characters are based on paper wrestlers that I created when I was in 6^th grade. My parents refused to buy any of the new, plastic WWF wrestling toys. “You’re too old for these toys,” they said. So, I took a pen, some printer paper, a cardboard box for the ring, and I made my own damn wrestling toys. Haha! Eat it, Mom and Dad! I was such a rebel.

I do not have a book title, yet. For now, I am going with It’s Real To Me. Don’t hate. I haven’t put much thought into it besides recalling the grown-ass man crying “it’s still real to me, dammit!” in this video:

This is my second attempt at writing this particular novel. The first attempt stalled immediately after NaNoWriMo 2017. That’s National Novel Writers Month where you commit to writing 50k words during November–a typical novel runs about 80k+ words.

During my first NaNo, I veered way off my outline, added a new main character, and wrote myself into a corner. My draft came to a screeching halt around 65k words where it remained dormant for years. I had a few moments of inspiration and some much appreciated rah-rah speeches from good friends. But, nothing could get me back to that keyboard, making words. In late October 2021, I had a conversation about my dead novel with a co-worker. Somehow, I got excited about writing it again. November 1st came around, I surprised myself, opened the laptop, and just started hacking past that four-year roadblock. Thirty days later, I had a completed first draft.

My problem was that my original story idea relied on a rigid timeline. My 2017 NaNo writing introduced some unexpected characters and plot that resulted in a six-month gap in the story’s timeline. I had no clue how to bridge that gap–every idea was just stupid. That’s where I threw up my hands and went back to playing Zelda. How did I finally conquer that roadblock? I just shortened the story’s timeline. Simple, right? Yeah, why the fuck did that take me four years to figure out?

I would say the story wrote itself from there, but it still took some major left turns from my original outline. What started as a fairly simple sports story morphed into a much deeper story with some twisty intrigue. I really wanted to adhere to a good outline and plan out my novel before writing, but I have come to accept that I might just be a Pantser at heart. Most of my ideas hit me in the shower, or in the gym, or during my commute. I only seem to get these ideas during times when I’m actually writing something, not just planning it. Otherwise, my mind’s on fantasy football, Halo, or Survivor.

After 2021’s NaNoWriMo, my draft weighs in at a flabby 106k words. The length seems about right for the story–it hits all the beats I want to hit. What is more impressive is the 200+ F-bombs that Scrivener reported, which equates to about one fuck every other page. I am rather proud of that statistic, but I am self-aware enough to recognize that it’s a problem. I will find some better adjectives and nouns during editing. Here’s a minor spoiler: fuck is never used as a verb in my story because even the idea of writing *those* scenes makes me cringe. Actually, I use it as a verb, too. Just not *that* verb. I’ll clean it up.

Turning Dog Shit into Dog Salad, or something

Which brings me to editing. I have never edited a novel before and that’s the primary reason I started this website. Editing is a slog. And I need a NaNo type of motivator to get me through this process. So, I am posting through the process and hoping that you can learn something through my pain. Maybe it won’t be so bad? Maybe I will actually enjoy this? Who knows.

I’m following the advice of Randy Ingermanson’s How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method and putting each chapter through a triage: Yes, No, Maybe. The Yes’s are keepers that just need some polish. I have one Yes chapter so far. It’s a bar scene that introduces the other POV character and gives us a juicy first glimpse into an antagonist’s dickish behavior. The scene still needs a good spit shine. Again, probably too many “fucks” and whatnot. But, I absolutely love this scene. It’s exceptionally rare for me to love my writing. Reading my own shit is kind of like hearing my own voice on a recording. Do I really sound like that? How can other people tolerate that horrific voice without reflexively punching my face?! Anyway, that bar scene gives me reasonable hope that the other scenes are worth saving.

The No scenes are total dogshit. These scenes should be shift-deleted and zero’d out. Then, just to be sure, you should dissolve the hard drive in acid. I have not run across a No scene, yet. However, I know they’re out there, waiting for me to discover them like brushing across a giant, sore zit.

The Maybe’s comprise a majority of my chapters. These have decent bits, but require some serious revision. Usually, the scene is missing a clear goal or there’s no conflict. I found one Maybe scene that did not even have a resolution. The scene just kinda stopped; the next scene picked up later on without any mention of how it all worked out. Er, uh, what just happened?! Hell, I don’t know! It’s a major problem when the writer doesn’t even know what happened.

In my NaNo 2017 run, my protagonist did not protag much at all. He just kind of flopped around while the supporting cast pushed him through the story. Not a very exciting character. Kinda beta, ya know? I was mindful of that during this last NaNo. My later, newer chapters show a much more engaging character. He’s still a meathead, but he’s a meathead with purpose, dammit. A lot of the rewrite will involve making him more proactive in the earlier scenes.

Here’s my process: during my first read-through, I am clearly stating goals, conflicts, and resolutions for each scene. Then, I mark them Yes, No, or Maybe, and move on to the next one. Right now, I’m about 1/8th through the triage process. Once that’s done, I will go back and completely rewrite the Maybes. Then, and only then, I will bring in some beta-readers to thoroughly shred my masterpiece on professional wrasslin’.  

So, am I doing this editing thing right or am I way off? If you have been down this road before, let me know.