Author: Writer guy

Last words on a last draft

Writer guy

Reviewing the final proof tonight of The Last Track before it’s uploaded to Ingram, Amazon and elsewhere. If everything goes well, the book will be available for sale exactly as scheduled, marking the end of the beginning of a multi-year saga. Been wrestling with variants of these characters for what seems like forever. Soon others can deal with them. :)

For those who read review copies, the final product is pretty much the same with  some very stringent typographical corrections ( thanks, Kerry ), slightly larger margins at the top and bottom, plus a change to the ending. A very slight refinement, consisting of five new lines and the removal of one. The ultimate finish is more shocking, yet at the same time more credible given the character development.

The last revision has a legacy of sorts. Often suspected the final reveal would turn out this way, but every time the manuscript moved past another hurdle, I decided against making the change. When the publisher had that “you know, everything else is working for me, but there’s something bothering me about the ending” conversation, it was time to put instincts before stubbornness.

Only four people have read the new ending, which is cool for me, because despite the fact the story has been circulating among small groups of readers over its years of evolution, there is one last surprise for the faithful.

And a very big surprise for uninitiated.

Furni-thoughts

Writer guy

One of the great things about ready-to-assemble furniture is the pricing. When a customer ( say me, as I am the most important consumer living, and the only one who has access to my wallet ) bears the chore of delivery and assembly, it’s possible to save serious bank on new furniture. Since I hate spending money, this arrangement usually works out well. Sometimes though, the math can break down tragically. Not all costs are obvious at the cash register.

For instance, let’s say one can’t stand fully upright for several days due to muscle strain  from toiling nine hours over heavy slabs of wood, metal or rubberized parts. Well that’s an additional costs, and though not explicitly included in the price, really exists and part of the deal the consumer makes with the purveyor of ready to assemble furniture at establishments like, oh say, IKEA. A decent looking piece of furniture in exchange for sweat and ducats–hopefully far less ducats than those extorted at Mr. Big Name Department store.

When the modest sticker price far exceeds the amount of effort required during assembly, everyone wins. Consumer ( again think me ) gets quality stuff at bargain prices, producer get sale, and when it happens often enough, weasel at Big Name Department Store gets terminated. Hear my shekels roaring.

So began the tale of this past weekend, when the moment seemed right to overhaul the bedroom. Breaking down the canopy bed frame and chucking the nightstands to the curb not only marked the end of an era and; the open space made room for new stuff. It also revealed cat size dust bunnies wedged in unspeakable places, but that’s another entry.

As promised by language neutral documentation, the frame and matching bed shelf assembly went together exactly as the universal pictographs alleged. Every part depicted was present and in fine condition. Last, the resulting platform bed and bed shelf looked really good. But wait, there’s more!

Point unmentioned: nearly seven hundred pieces impelled by its construction, and nine hours of assembly time. Also missing in the product description, the fact I can not grip a pencil for more than three seconds without crying.

Really a meager price to pay for part of a  new bedroom set. After, there’s some dressers that need replacing.

Resolutions

Writer guy

Here’s my plan for the new year:

1) Divert 90 percent of the energy and time spent on Facebook and Twitter in 2009, back into this site.

I will continue to use both mediums and others that may emerge, but I definitely fell victim the comment trap last year to extreme detriment. Posting pretty much anything on Facebook or Twitter will elicit a comment. Silly as it sounds, this really mattered at one point for me.

Websites, even really successful ones, net a paltry number of comments relative to their readership, but that is not a shortcoming of its design. That is the design. Most people lurk. If someone is moved to comment, they do. So it goes. If you want quick note of sympathy, it’s easy enough to find on Facebook. Sometimes that’s an appropriate solicitation. Other times, it’s a distraction.

To me the most important edge of a journal based web site over FB and Twitter is the persistence of the entries and the categorizations of material. Related entries appear in some kind of context and remain for people who might want to find them days, weeks or months later. This is very difficult on FB and Twitter, which hinges on right-now-oh-my-god-I-just-missed-it. All too often that turns into gee-what-the-hell-was-I-looking-at-anyway?

See Facebook and Twitter are made for  sharing personal details with your friends and family, which is great, but seriously how many feeds and status can one person follow before feeling like a zombie staring into a ceaseless stream of text? Even when you really like the person at its source. The ultimate arbiter of material: randomness. And that’s fine. For a little while.  Sooner or later I find myself wanting more. Maybe I can’t get everything I want, but I can at least put out more of what I’m looking for into the Universe.

In the end, I’m a writer–not a tweeter. While I have no expectations about competing with the comment machine that is Facebook and Twitter by concentrating here–I will always need a mechanism for sharing a thought longer than 140 characters and not subject to a usage agreement that tends to shift with the global warming vs. global cooling debate.

2) Finish a draft of the oft mentioned but unfinished manuscript that began in December 2006 by July 2010.

Four years is enough time. Seriously. All that matters at this point is having something down, even if it looks like pig vomit spewed across the page. I spent way too much time trying to “get something right” that was never even close to being done in the most elemental terms. So I’m finishing this draft even if I spend all of my vacation days, nights and weekends to do so. Which might be what it takes, actually.

3) Promote The Last Track.

More on this very soon.

A bit late in coming, but . . .

Writer guy

January nearly half-over and still no resolutions! Perhaps that constitutes slacking. Ah well. No time like now for starting over, I guess.

Usually my resolutions accompany a year in review, but this late in January it seems redundant, and writing a really thorough one will  take away from actually completing yet another entry, so what follows is the condensed version of 2009:

1) After many attempts found a home for The Last Track. In February ( next month! ) it will be available for purchase. On my birthday, so better yet.

2) Learned a lot about the review process from the marketing person and my own solicitations for blurbs.

3) My boss proved several times how cool he is. Can’t go into details, but suffice to say there are in fact decent managers in business and they really make a difference in job satisfaction.

5) And finally, probably the coolest thing that happened was the review that came back from a Purple Heart stationed in Kirkuk, Iraq. Of all the blurbs received so far, theirs is one of the most meaningful and will appear–and as long as I have anything to say about it–remain on the back cover.

So that’s what happened in 2009. Onto 2010 . . .