Though the table of changes that will accompany the manuscript back to the agent needs a quick pass, the edits for The Last Track are finished It’s been a long road to this point, one I never expected would take nearly four years. I have learned many lessons about writing as a craft by writing a novel, found my voice, and discovered the most effective approaches for me.

Here’s a short list of personal discoveries:

1) Short scenes—one to five pages in length best complement my style. The less acreage there for hiding, the more likely I will keep the ball rolling.

2) Almost every draft seems a lot closer to the mark immediately upon completion. Once the self-love affair wanes a bit, cracks in the narrative will show.

3) When I start hating a project because it’s dragging, it’s time for a break. Taking a step back might just mean pushing away from the keyboard for an hour, or in other cases it means working on another manuscript for a few weeks.

4) Once I realize and accept where I went wrong, it’s much easier to recognize similar dalliances in other writing projects or in the same story. And those foibles are in there. Somewhere. Much like a roach, for every gnarly insect a homeowner spots near the pantry, there are a hundred more slithering through the sheet rock.

5) Feedback is almost always positive.

6) There is a time and place for a professional proofreader: around the time the manuscript is 90 percent–or more–in the pocket. Otherwise the comments will take longer to read than the story.

Enough writing noise for one day. I gotta pack for Russia…

Kerry delivered the edits for The Last Track three days early. Forty-eight hours of quiet time, a pizza in the oven, and a quart of Jaeger on ice.

Time to drop the hammer..

One of the greatest things about the Internet is its ability to connect people separated by geography and demographics. The same sort of people who might never meet in daily life, even if they lived in the same town–I’ve seen it happen–can exchange ideas and have a relationship of sorts.

By and large, people are essentially good, thus and the Internet is a positive community. More or less.

That’s a powerful concept; it’s also a lead weight poised to crush anyone who wants to fight the unruly mob of trolls who pile on controversy like ants upon a mound of sugar. When negative comments or posts appear on the Web, or what might seem like a negative post against an author, politician, or public figure, one of the worst things the target of those comments can do is engage the troll and fight them in the same medium. In other words, post back on the same site–or another one–in a nasty tone.See, in a battle of the flames, it’s not a troll who suffers. After all they want attention and validation. By snaring the target into a comment fight, the troll has already won a great victory–even if their comments are a crock of shit. Why? Because the target of the insult has now drawn 1,000 times the attention to the situation. People who were unaware of the charges, and likely did not care, now do. Bystanders begin to wonder if there might be some merit to the unflattering ink. And the more energy the target spends fighting the troll, the greater the price the target pays.

Consider the author of a very popular series of gothic styled books. For years, I was relatively neutral about her work, enjoying some books and abstaining from titles. Who she was as a person was a mystery. Mostly I figured she was pretty intelligent, well read, and liked wearing black. I certainly had no convictions about her career or her as a person.

Until several years ago when she took issue with a reader review on Amazon.com about her latest title. In a haughty tone, she tore the reviewer to the core, one who in the same post mentioned he had loved all her other books except this one, as if his opinion was equivalent to that of a madman loose in a public urinal. She challenged him to return the book to a full refund to her, even providing a street address and an email account.

So who was the one who dared dissent in a forum? A NYT reviewer in disguise? Someone from the Enquirer dogging her? No. An unknown person who didn’t like the book.

Oh, I got it. No one else is entitled to an opinion, even if they actually paid for the right to voice one. And there’s 4 billion other people like me who have nothing to do with the argument wondering what the hell the author’s problem is disparaging a customer in print.

I’ll never forget that author who revealed themselves to be a petty, trite and whiny little wussy. Personally, I’d push her down the stairs, but I wouldn’t want to dull the polish on the handrail as her head slammed into it.

And should I forget about this exchange, she need not worry.

Thanks to the unofficial Internet archives, a tiny bit of her will live on in electronic form forever.

With a new year coming, it seems a good time to decide what projects to carry forward into the new year and which would work better in a fireplace. Thankfully I only have two unfinished projects: a collaborative screenplay and The Confession. Work stopped on the collaborative screenplay because the writing partner got bogged down with life responsibilities. I’m rather hopeful they will have more free time in the next year, but if their schedule remains as congested by April, I’ll run with the project alone.

After a number of false starts, I began–for the second, well actually, a third time–work on The Confession. This is getting to be an older unfinished manuscript. Old being January 2006 as the date of its first incarnation, December 2006-February 2007 marked the second revolution. While I had The Last Track, a screenplay and a contest to keep me occupied during this period, I’m not thrilled about 145 pages kicking around in limbo for almost two years. The other day I realized I’m no closer to a first draft of the manuscript now than on day one. Kind of a bummer, and wholly my fault.

What is on the page is at least workable. There’s a lot of directions to explore; there’s a lot more possibilities. I found it interesting that one of the same issues the agent expressed concerns about in The Last Track also manifested in The Confession.

More specifically the very random and occasional tendency to traverse from limited third person to third person omniscient and then back. Having revised these sort of POV shifts just recently, it was much easier to spot them in an unrelated piece of writing. My preference for short, tight scenes and sentences probably contributed to the bad habit; sometimes I latch onto the most economical way of presenting an idea, rather than the most consistent and transparent.

In any event, my goal: work on The Confession right until Kerry returns The Last Track, get the manuscript back to the agent for further consideration by December 20th and then press ahead into the new year with this new-old project.

Oh yeah, and survive Moscow in December.