Hi All,
I’ve been blogging here at Cranium Outpost since November 2006. A lot has changed in 3.5 years. I went from this blog being mainly about my family, to a lot of stuff about my writing and a little about my family.
The good news is that for those of you who have come here to read about my family, you will now be less bored by my writing related posts. They’re moving over to http://www.joebeernink.com/blog in an attempt to draw move visitors to my writing related web site, and to ‘consolidate my brand’. Yes, I am now referring to myself as a brand. I am really focusing on my marketing platform this year, developing a marketing strategy, and trying to gain both blog and twitter followers in the anticipation of selling my book, hopefully in 2011.
The bad news is that I now have another blog to maintain, and it is entirely likely that Cranium Outpost will be relegated to 2nd or even 3rd place behind that aforementioned writing blog, and DevScape, my technical blog, which I try to keep up to keep my employers happy and my non-writing career progressing.
For me, the change is bittersweet. I hate stopping doing something that I love to do. But I also know my blogging time is limited, and it is very important for a blog to be consistent in focus.
So my hope is that people who want to know everything that is going on with me will be willing to check out two blogs. For those who only care about my personal life and not my writing, I’ll try to update this when things are happening. Maybe I can get Lisa to do some guest blogging. For those of you who just want to read about my writing, check out JoeBeernink.com. I’ll keep that as current as I can, and hopefully you can be part of the beginning of a beautiful new thing.
I’ve been working pretty hard the last few weeks, both on writing, prepping for the PNWA Conference, and getting organized after the conference. So I rewarded myself by sitting down with a book today, Robert Dugoni’s Damage Control, and reading it pretty much cover to cover. I did read twenty pages or so last night, so I can’t say I read it all in a day, but I did read it all in less than 24 hours. That’s a good sign of a good book.
I read Dugoni’s first book The Jury Master a few months ago. I thought that book was good, but could use a little tightening up. Damage Control is much better. The plot lines are more believable, the characters less cookie cutter and it moves, fast. Damage Control, is a thriller, with a little bit of legalese, and little bit of politics, and a whole lot of action. It’s a great Sunday afternoon book for any reader.
I’m glad I gave the book a chance. After The Jury Master, I wasn’t sure I would. I have a very limited amount of time to read for pure fun, and if you look at my reading list (see the side bar), you’ll see a very long backlist. If I hadn’t met Bob Dugoni multiple times at PNWA events, I probably wouldn’t have picked up the book. It’s not what I generally read these days, as I lean more into adventure and Sci-Fi. But as a writer, I pulled a lot more from the book than a normal reader might
1. Every writer learns a lot from their first book, and their second book is almost always better. I’m aware of this with my writing, and in Damage Control, Dugoni’s style and execution is crisper and cleaner and better than in The Jury Master.
2. A good writer takes an event, and finds a way to amp it up beyond what the reader would expect to happen in reality, but not beyond the point of plausibility. This generates the suspense and the ‘whoa’ reaction that an ordinary story doesn’t get, and that an over the top story exceeds. Dugoni found the sweet spot. Way above ordinary, and just below where credibility is lost. There are no obvious coincidences that help to resolve the plot, and no giant leaps made by the protagonists that miraculously save the day.
3. A reader wants to sympathize with the protagonist, and to despise the antagonist. But you can’t spend the whole book making the protagonist look like a wimp and the antagonist look like some type of invincible super villain. After the first quarter of the book, the protagonist is as low as she can go, and then there is that moment, that turning point where she stops being a victim. Dugoni placed this moment perfectly, and it was at that point that I decided to skip my afternoon nap and continue reading.
I enjoyed Damage Control, and am looking forward to picking up Dugoni’s next book, Wrongful Death. The only problem is that I need to know when I’m going to have a full day alone to read it.
My first PNWA conference was in 2009. I was nervous and shaking every time I talked to an agent. I scrambled from session to session, took a lot of notes, tried like crazy to organize a writing group, left exhausted at the end of the day, and was generally demoralized by the time the conference ended. Not because the conference was bad, but because it was at that conference that I learned I didn’t know what the heck I was doing when it came to writing. I had written a 139000 word novel (and another 169000 word novel 15 years ago, but that didn’t count anymore). I was a writer. What else was there to know?
Plenty. I didn’t realize until I had multiple agents at the 2009 PNWA Conference tell me that I had a lot more work to do to go from writer to good writer, let alone to commercially successful writer. 2009 PNWA Con was the turning point for me, and I worked my but off between the 2009 Con and the 2010 to improve my skills.
The 2010 Conference was a completely different place and pace for me, and so much better. This year, I participated in the conference. I didn’t just go to it. I volunteered to help out where I could. I stayed late and went to the bar and talked with other attendees and volunteers and speakers. I approached the agents earlier in the conference and by 4:00 PM on the second day, I had finished my pitches. 7 pitches. 7 ‘send me your stuffs’. I targeted the agents ahead of time, knew who they were by sight, squashed my fears, and just did it. And it worked.
I went to some of the sessions, and even moderated one, with the wonderfully witty Gordon Kirkland. But for me, this event was more about networking than learning, though I did come away with a few lessons that should help me to write better. I gained a few new writing buddies, and maybe a writing group will come out of it, and that would be fantastic. But the best part of conference was the volunteering.
They gave volunteers a special badge that showed you were a volunteer, and wearing that around the agents and editors and speakers opened a lot of doors and started a lot of conversations. And I have to say, the work was fun too. Extremely fun. The other volunteers were amazing, and we bonded, and laughed and sweated together, and had a great time. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Hopefully by the time next year’s conference rolls around, I’ll have an agent and a book deal, and I can just volunteer, and work on my marketing. I would love to form a ring of writers that gain success from the PNWA conference and cheer each other on. I look at CC Humphries and Bob Dugoni and Pam Binder, three successful writers in the PNWA, and I’m a little jealous of the friendship they have with each other. I want that. I want to be part of that inner circle of published authors who realize that getting published is just the first step, and that helping others to achieve their dream can be just as important and rewarding.
So maybe the lesson I learned this year is that helping others through volunteering returns as much to you as it does to the people you help. I never saw it that way before. Now I know there is something that I was missing, and like last year, it is definitely something I am going to work on.
About a year ago, I built this web site, and the “What’s New” page on it was static content. That is, I had to re-roll the web site out every time I wanted to updated the words on the ‘blog’. That didn’t lead to many blog entries.
On top of that, I also maintain three other blogs, my technical blog http://devscape.blogspot.com, my personal / family blog at http://craniumoutpost.blogspot.com and a blog for my work (which I won’t list here, but it is not hard to find. Three blogs plus a web site that was hard to update meant this site didn’t get updated. It also meant that my family blog where I am supposed to post pictures of the kids for the grandparents to see, started to become my writing blog, not because I don’t love my kids, but because I have more to say about writing right now. I spend time with my kids and do stuff with them, but I spend a lot of time thinking about writing and actually writing too. It’s a lot easier to blog about things you are thinking about than things you are doing.
Anyway, I recently attended the 2010 PNWA Conference in Seattle, and I had a great time. I’ll blog about that later, but one of the key things coming out of there for me was to get my collective marketing crap together and to really build my platform this year. Straightening out my website and driving people to it as opposed to my old blogs is my first step. It was easy, and didn’t cost anything, and it’s a proven technique. Don’t believe me? Ask John Scalzi.
So anyway, I suspect that my personal site may get the short end of the stick going forward. I’ll try to update it. I really will. And I’ll feel bad when I don’t. And guilt does work with me. But here is where I’ll be for the foreseeable future.
Maybe I can get a guest blogger to handle Cranium Outpost. Honey? Darling? Dear Wife? Can I ask a favor?
Weekends can seem long, or they can be long. It kind of depends on how the kids are behaving, and how much you preplanned to get done during the days.
We didn’t plan a lot for this weekend and the kids seem to be behaving, so this long weekend is both long and a weekend. It also gives me a minute to get caught up on goings on.
We live on a nice little cul-de-sac in Seattle suburbia, and last night we had a neighborhood Mexican Fiesta. Nothing says 4th of July like tacos and burritos and Spanish Rice. After the food came the fireworks. The kids loved them. I’m a little split still on the whole fireworks thing. I think it’s a gigantic waste of money. But I think aliens cruising over our town last night looking for a good place to set down and commence eating our brains would have decided to move on, thinking, “The little ones here spout fire from their finger tips and the big ones all have artillery in their back yard. Their armies must be powerful indeed. Let’s go somewhere easier, like the Middle East.”
The thermometer said it was 65 here yesterday, but that’s a lie. It was brutally cold for July (now called Julyuary). The wind was howling, and by the end, people were bringing out their winter coats, mittens and Snuggies to keep warm.
All that fresh air did me in, and I forced everyone in our house inside at 10:00 and I was asleep by 10:15, with fireworks still going on around us.
I’ll try to get some pictures uploaded today, but we’ve been having technical difficulties with my all in one printer lately, so no idea if this will actually happen.
On our docket for today is to go and buy new beds for the kids. They’re outgrowing their toddler beds, and it’s time to get them big boy and big girl beds in the hopes that they will spend more time in them, especially in the evening, when bedtime is still too much of a fight.
Of course, the likelihood is that the beds won’t fit in their room, and we’ll have to switch them to the guest bed room which is larger, but not painted kid friendly colors, nor does it have the custom closet setup we installed in the kids room before they were born. So I see that buying a couple of beds is going to lead to a lot more expenses in the near future.
The biggest change coming in the next few weeks will be the kids starting full day pre-school at a local Montessori school. For the last three years, we’ve had a fantastic nanny caring for our kids while Lisa and I work, but the time has come to challenge them a little more intellectually, and try to tire their very active brains out (again in the hope that tired brains lead to better sleep at night). This switch is going to lead to a lot of other changes for us like figuring out how to pack lunches for them, how to get them out the door by 8:00 every morning, and how to make sure I leave the office on time every day to pick them up after work. But that was all going to happen at some point, and it might as well be now.
We haven’t watched many movies lately. Just one that I recall – ‘The Pentagon Papers” about all the skullduggery and lying that went on regarding Vietnam in the 50s, 60s and 70s. I highly recommend this movie, and I can’t wait to see the sequel – ‘The Pentagon Papers 2’, about all the skullduggery and lying that went on during the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s and 10’s about Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ll probably have to wait until 2040 to see that though.
I’ve read just one book in the last few weeks as well – ‘Steampunk’ – an anthology of Steampunk stories edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. I decided to pick this up to better understand this genre, since I’ve never really spent much time with it. Results were mixed. Of the 14 stories in it, I really liked three. Three or four more were good, and the rest ranged between interesting but not readable, to pretentious crap. Only my OCD forced me to read the whole thing, and I’d be hard pressed to recommend it on whole to anyone. I think it probably turned me off reading the genre much further, though a couple of the stories had enough there to make me want to read more of that author’s work. Specifically, I liked
- “Benediction: Excerpt from The Warlord of the Air” by Michael Moorcock
- “Lord Kelvin’s Machine” by James P. Blaylock
- “Victoria” by Paul D. Filippo
As I said in my last blog, I’ve been blocked a little in my writing with a section that just doesn’t belong. I’m in the process of ripping it out, but that’s leading to some other, more subtle plot changes, and that’s taking a while to get done. I was hoping to wrap it up this weekend, but now I’m hoping for the end of this week. Then I have to put the book down for a bit and go back to reread ‘The Forgotten Road’, and finish my prep for the PNWA Conference in three weeks. July is a pretty busy month.
I’ve been cruising through my latest novel and have surpassed the 40000 word mark, which is the magical half way point. But if I’m honest with myself, I’ve cheated a bit, and that cheating is coming back to haunt me.
You see, three years ago, I started on a book, got twenty pages into it, and stopped. It was one of those cases where I had a good scene in mind, but no plot to go with it. It was my first real attempt at writing in half a dozen years, and while that story didn’t go anywhere, the act of writing directly led to me buying a laptop and starting to write on the train, which led to ‘The Forgotten Road’ and my enormous success since then to come.
But that scene and that character stuck in my brain, and last winter, when I was brain dumping plots out into my ‘What If’ file (a file I keep of one sentence ‘What If’ scenarios that might drive a plot), I what if’d a great little idea that could use that scene I had in those 20 pages. So all along, from the time I started the outline until today, I planned to have that scene in the book.
Well now those 20 pages are in the story. And they’re bad. Spilling yogurt on the crotch of your pants at work first thing in the morning bad. You can get away with it, pretend no one can see it, and cover it up with your jacket all day and say you’re cold, or you can go to the store down the street and buy yourself a new pair of pants and be done with it. You know you’re going to need a new pair of pants eventually, because blueberry doesn’t come out of light tan Dockers. And you can pretend all day that no one sees that white crusty smear on your pants, but everyone does, and they are all wondering… what IS that smell?
So this scene, and the premise of this scene is spilled into my story, and the blueberry is sinking in, and the yogurt is curdling, and I’ve been sitting there, knowing I need to rip it out, and take the five to eight thousand word hit, and do it right, because not only is the scene out of place, the writing itself is bad. My writing is so much better now than it was three years ago, it’s not even funny. And not only is the writing itself bad, the scene forces the characters to do things and act in a way that they just wouldn’t do based on the rest of the story. It’s gummed up the whole mess, destroyed the flow, and made a mockery of my outline.
And yet, I can’t figure out exactly what to do different… yet.
So even though I’m at the halfway point of the book, I need to take a step back, and read and edit from the beginning, and see if the momentum picks back up, and see how that scene can be removed. I need to by new pants.
Of course I’ll make a backup copy first… and I’ve still got that original scene, just in case I can find another place to put it. I never throw anything (except adverbs) away.
I’ve added a new short story to my collection called ‘Under A Molten Sky’, a contest entry for the Wil Wheaton/John Scalzi Fan Fiction Contest to Benefit the Lupus Alliance of America. You can read the whole thing here. The contest winners won’t be announced until the end of the summer, but whether or not I win, I still enjoyed writing it.
I am currently preparing for the 2010 PNWA Conference in Seattle where I will not only be attending, but moderating a session as well. Should be lots of fun, if not a little nerve-racking. My other preparation includes preparing my pitch for my agent and editor meetings, and reviewing ‘The Forgotten Road’. I will also be working with Book Doctor Jason Black to do a final edit on TFR so I can, pardon the pun, close the book on that one, and decide where to go with that series. The series itself is on hold pending this edit, and pending the completion of some other work.
The biggest news is that my latest novel, with a working title of ‘The Unexplored Territory’, is going really well, and should be first draft complete by the end of the summer. I know this will sound self serving, but I absolutely love this story, and it just keeps coming. I can’t wait to put it in front of people and see their reaction.
It’s a nice day in the PNW, so what do I do? I upgrade my web site to ASP.NET MVC 2.0, .NET 4 and VS2010. Not too hard, but needed to be done.
I needed to get this done in order to prep for the 2010 PNWA Conference in July. I’ve updated some information there, including posting a new short story that I entered in the Wil Wheaton/John Scalzi Fan Fiction Contest to Benefit the Lupus Alliance of America contest. You can read ‘Under a Molten Sky’ on my short story page. If you don’t read about the contest first, your first question will undoubtedly be “Why?”, or maybe it’ll be “What the hell?”, but it was a fun contest to enter, and who knows, maybe something good will come out of it.
I’ve also updated the first two chapters of ‘The Forgotten Road’, pending another major edit coming in August, and released the first working title (but no details yet, sorry) to my next novel ‘The Unexplored Territory’. The title is not the final one. In fact, I don’t like it at all, but I had to call it something.
So go out, browse, peruse, enjoy.
And by all means, let me know if you find any mistakes or broken things, and let me know what you think of the new first chapters to ‘The Forgotten Road.’
I haven’t been writing here lately, because I’ve been writing elsewhere a lot lately. As in my latest novel. I’m hovering around the 35000 word mark, which in the world of 80000 word novels, is, you guessed it, almost halfway done. I’m not going to spill the beans on this one yet, but when I read what I have done, it is easily my best work ever, and I think, really freaking good. It is coming so fast, that if I could sit down and write all day, I could knock out the final 45000 words in less than 10 days.
Because I’ve been writing, I haven’t been reading as much, though I did read John Scalzi’s ‘The Ghost Brigades’ (good book, worth the read as the sequel to Old Man’s War).
I’m also reading a book my sister-in-law’s husband gave me for Christmas last year called ‘The Devil and the Dervish’, which is translated from Bosnian, I think. I can read four or five pages at a time, and it’s 500 pages, so it may take me a while. It’s not exactly Grisham-esque in its pace, but it is not…bad…
I’m also reading a collection of short stories called ‘Steampunk’ to become more familiar with the genre… not that my new book has anything to do with that…, and the stories are quite interesting.
Movie-wise, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” last weekend, good movie, a trifle long at times, but so worth it to see Grace Kelly. I admit it, I have a crush.
The weather here in the Pacific Northwest currently sucks bull testicles. It’s that bad. Epically bad. Atrocious. Rain. Cold. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. More Rain. Sun (tease), Rain. Rain. Rain. You get the picture. The least amount of sun in Seattle since 1953, and we’re an inch of rain away from the all time wettest May-June ever. And we still have 9 days left, with rain in the forecast for every one of them.
To keep our cheery dispositions, we’ve taken to watching uplifting TV series like HBO’s Dexter (Season 2), and the current season of ‘Deadliest Catch’. Nothing like Miami serial killers and arctic storms to make you feel good about where you are.
In other news, I will be attending the 2010 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference in July, and I will be moderating the session entitled ‘Working to a difficult deadline’ which will be given by Gordon Kirkland, a Canadian author and humorist. Two Canadians at the front of a room full of Americans. Last time that happened, their names were Bob and Doug Mackenzie.
Lisa is heading to Denver this weekend for her first dance competition of the year, so I’ll be alone with the little ones by myself for a few days and nights. We haven’t broken the news to them yet (so don’t tell them), since Lorelai freaks out when Momma goes for a twenty minute walk at night. I may be heading to the store on Saturday morning to buy a bunch of movies if the weather doesn’t cooperate.
I was going to write – write tonight, but I had to reinstall a bunch of software on my PC, so you get this update instead. Consider yourself lucky.
Joe Beernink 