Notchless Number Five

I started writing this short story just before my son was born in December of 2008. I was filled with wonder and anticipation of what his life would be like, how I would be as a new parent, and then... where he had come from.
Science tells us that people are created at conception, just as it tells us that we cease to exist after death. But just as I find it hard to believe that there is absolutely nothing after death, I found myself wondering if there had been something before life. What if, as a soul, my son was wandering around the infinite trying to decide what he should do with his eternity? What if, having found nothing of interest on his own, he went to a soul's trade show and was taken in by the pitch of a soul that had lived a life? How would that pitch sound?

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9 Lives - Chapter 9, "Let's All Give the Doc A Mighty Hand"

I have always loved psychiatry, especially criminal psychiatry. I'm not sure why. But serial killers have always fascinated me, most notably the ones that I believe really were sick. In the interest of political correctness, I won't name any names, but I really would like to know what compels a man to eat another man when he's not starving to death; or to chop up a fair-skinned woman and save pieces of her in his freezer. It's this kind of abhorrent behavior that completely escapes my level of understanding, and I find myself asking the same question over and over again whenever I read about it:

"Why?"

In this chapter, I thought of a psychiatrist who's bored with his life. He follows the same exact routine every day, and wonders what the point of it all is. In an effort to relieve his boredom, he takes a post in a hospital for the criminally insane and meets a truly fascinating patient. In an effort to "cure" the patient, he makes the mistake of getting emotionally involved...

Obviously, since this is the last chapter, I can't give too much away. But I will say that it will probably require the most rewriting of any of the chapters because so many details are joining the plot every day that need to be accounted for in the final act. I like that it has a nice rhythm, and is told mostly through dialogue.

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives - Chapter 4, A Goth Hero's Tragic Fall

This guy, called TX, was supposed to represent the turning point in the story. At the time I wrote it (it's the first of the 9 chapters that I wrote), I had a different idea for the ending than I have now. However, with a few word changes here and there, I wound up with a humorous tale of rock star cliche. A guy shows up to perform at a concert, and suddenly the concert is cancelled and the police are after him.

What I like about TX is that nothing rattles him. Whether it's the bouncers not recognizing him without makeup and refusing to give him entry to his own show, spending the night in a coffin, getting accused of being a serial killer, having a groupie go nuts on him and trashing his dressing room, or getting kidnapped by the real serial killer and facing certain doom, TX handles it all matter of factly, as if it's all in a day's work. In his final encounter with Murphy's Law, he's presented with a delicious irony that only a character with as strong of a sense of self as TX has can answer:

Is it better to die a horribly painful death, or to live and spend the rest of your days in prison with the world knowing you are guilty of horrible crimes?

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives - Chapter 3, "A Jock's Life After High School"

In this novel, the task of starting new chapters has provided the greatest challenge so far. Because I'm coming off of the high of having completed a chapter, and I'm used to producing upwards of four pages a day, it's difficult to start anew. So many questions are unanswered when I sit down and look at that blank page that I have to take myself out of "production" gear and put myself back into "imagination mode".

The problem with this week's character, Billy Cobb, is that you've heard so much about him in the first two chapters. That kind of ties me down a bit. In this novel, I'm telling many sides of the same story, so it's entirely plausible that one character speaks ill-ly of Billy while another claims him as the love of her life. However, all along I've kinda fostered the impression of his being an abrasive personality, and that does not bode well for entertaining writing. One of the cardinal rules for a good read involves characters that people like. They can be flawed, but overall, they need to be likable, otherwise why would someone continue to read about them? Readers want to read about character that they want to be, or hang around. When you've got a guy that is completely unredeeming, telling his story in the 1st person, it's important that he at least be respectable.

When I sat down today to write about him, I spent about 3 tedious hours trying to find his voice. Make him too jock-like and he's stereotypical; but make him too human and his role in this tale becomes too watered down. He needs to be a jerk to perform his role in the story, but how much is too much? I saw him as a guy who is naturally likeable, but who's character flaw is his cluelessness towards the feelings of others. He takes it for granted that people gravitate towards him, and doesn't understand how it hurts their feelings when he loses interest in them, or doesn't love them as much as they love him. Or how anyone could possibly have a different opinion than himself and be anything but "wrong".

Billy is high energy, charismatic, and very physical in both his speech and mannerisms. He's the kind of person you cannot help but stop and listen to, and then follow to the next party. But by the same token, he is also doesn't understand why his best days were had in high school and how he just can't seem to get his life together.

Today, I came up with his voice, but I also came up with his motivation and vehicle into the main plotline. No pun intended, he becomes obsessed with finding the Lincoln his best friend in high school used to have, convinced that if he can somehow acquire it again, he will find himself living the good life he had back in high school. To his excitement, he is able to buy the Lincoln, and his life does improve. Everything seems to come together.

For a short while, anyway...

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives - Chapter 1, My Brother's Cool Car

The first story is where I have to build everything. I have to create characters, action, sprinkle in a bit of drama, and set the pace. More importantly, I have to set a first impression that's going to last with the reader probably until the end. Do I want them to feel angry? Sad? Do I want them to laugh?

It's a fun job to do this because you can't possibly go wrong in the first draft, so the pages flow very easily. Usually, I'll get anywhere from three to five pages done in a 4-hour block (my allotted daily writing time). But when I'm doing something from scratch, I can often get twice that. It's in the rewriting that it all comes back to haunt me and I realize that I'm going to have to get rid of this plotline because it leads away from that and this character needs to kill so and so in chapter four, so he can't do this in chapter one... So I'm sure that what I'm about to write about Freddy McDaniel will be completely different than what winds up in the final release.

After all, they say write the first draft with your heart, and turn off your inner editor until the first draft is complete.

Freddy is the youngest of three brothers, each of whom are at least 10 years older than himself. Kyle, he idolized, while he barely spoke to Michael. Their father had a 1973 Lincoln Continental that he loved, but which winds up being an omen of terrible things to come; of youth and innocence lost, and finally, of life itself lost. Freddy inherits the Lincoln, unable to part with it because of the memories associated with it, but also unable to respect himself for not getting rid of it. One night's mistake haunts him for his entire life, and he winds up leaving his life on the East Coast behind in favor of the glorious sunset offered by the West...

I set most of the story in the Arizona desert, in order to paint a picture of vulnerability. It's a beautiful part of the country to see, but if your car breaks down, you could very easily die out there.

Each of the characters starts out in a vulnerable place that they have to work their way out of. But Freddy's unique challenge is that he's the only one that has to do this completely alone. Without help from any of the passersby, and without companionship, he becomes lost mentally as much as he is physically. And as he becomes less sure of the difference between what is real and what is a heat-induced hallucination, he is less able to rely on himself. Finally, he is forced to face his most traumatic memory, and rectify it.

Structural and Plot Notes:

It's not the kind of piece that would make a great movie, as the struggle is mostly internal. But on the page, I really like the pacing of it. I haven't changed the language much in subsequent reads, either, as I think the characterization is solid. I am, however, waiting to do anything major with it until I've finished all of the others as I can already see some details that may need to be changed.

Also, during the first draft of this story (before grammar, or any other rewrite), I came up with a list of details that seemed insignificant when I wrote it. I almost cut them out on a second read because they didn't contribute to the story. But for now I'm leaving them in, with the intention of expanding on some of them in the stories to come. It's a nice, natural way of linking everybody together that I expected to have to work a lot harder on to achieve.

-JJ McMoon

2/27/09

Prom Queen Trials and Tribulations

Just to get it out of the way, I foster no opinions of prom queens (or prostitutes) in general, so please don't take offense:) I like writing about characters no one else writes about; people who aren't necessarily good-intentioned, and who, in spite of justice saying they need a break, don't always have happy endings. It adds to the suspense, since you don't know how it's going to end, and I think it gives my plot lines more of a "real" feeling.

I started out writing this chapter as more of a shocker than anything else. I wanted to present a character that people don't like and then make her likeable. The best stories are borne out of conflict with extreme resolution, and I couldn't think of a better vehicle for showcasing this. Sandra is angry, bitter, corrupt, yet self-confident. She's honest about who she is and what she does, and she expresses little shame over it.

She's crass, rude, vulgar... everything a lady isn't.

However, she's also been in love and is able to redeem a little of her humanity by allowing herself to believe in love again. I was happy when, on my final read, I found myself touched by her revelation. This one, more than the others, truly goes the distance, and I felt everything from disgust to hope in listening to her tell me about herself.

In my travels, I've found that a person's character presents itself in it's purest form only when there's a tremendous struggle involved. For example, I've hung around people that were in Sandra's situation and found that some were broken, while others weren't. I wanted to write about a woman in this situation who wasn't broken... yet. I wanted to show a person so intent on NOT being in denial that she falls into the greatest denial of all: The denial of her own humanity. In fact, I don't even give her a name until halfway through the piece, because until then, she doesn't even view herself as a person, but as a piece of meat.

In closing, I'd have to say that the biggest challenge in writing this chapter was to stop writing this chapter. I could have told the entire novel's story just from her point of view, so I had to force myself to end it at 20 pages and let one of the other characters pick up where she left off. I may change this strategy in the final draft, but for now I think that it works. Leaving some loose ends isn't necessarily a bad thing in storytelling, and I do hope people will discuss the love triangle between Sandra, Kyle, and Billy long after I'm on to my next book:)

-JJ McMoon

2/27/09

Introduction to Lives

Since January, I've officially changed careers and became a professional writer. I did this with several goals in mind, namely to finally start, and complete a novel. I've had many ideas over the years, and have started many novels (how many writers haven't, lol), but this year I decided to start with a fresh idea, outline the story, complete writing it, and self-publish it before year's end. My goals are:

1. First draft by June 1st

2. Polished, printable draft by August 15th (allowing a little over a week per chapter)

3. Stock ready to sell by September 15th

4. Release / shipping date of October 1st.

So far, I am ahead of schedule on the writing, and have my ducks in a row for the other goals as well.

So what's the story about? Well, let's talk about how I chose the idea first...

Since I've had a hard time completing novels in the past, and yet I've written dozens of short stories, I decided to take what I know about short stories and expand that into the novel format. Writing "long" shot stories wasn't something I wanted to do, and I didn't want to do a compilation, either, since that's not really a novel now is it?

So, I came up with a hook (which you'll have to read the finished work to have revealed) that allows me to write 9 longer stories (about 10,000-12,000 words a piece, or about 20 single-spaced pages in MS Word) that add up to one long story. The format is obviously 9 chapters, each of them on a specific character. My first challenge was to come up with characters that people would relate to. So, I first listed them, along with their prospective titles:

1. I Wish I had my Brother's Cool Car

2. From Prom Queen to Trucker Whore

3. A Jock's Life After High School

4. A Goth Hero's Tragic Fall

5. Being a Serial Killer is Over-rated

6. Why my mother said, "Pretty Girls Shouldn't Hitchhike"

7. Young Punk Mixed up in the Jailhouse Rock

8. An Orderly Named Barry

9. Let's all Give the Doc a Mighty Hand

While I have finished the 1st draft on 4 of these (1, 2, 4, and 9), I am still not set in stone on the titles, nor am I set in stone on the characters, either. One of the things I've been pleased to discover is that my imagination has given me some great details to work with. I'll start out with an idea and by the time the week is over, the character will not only sound better than I had anticipated, it will also touch off some additional ideas to put in the finished product. The hook gets stronger with each story, and each story discovers additional threads to weave itself to the previously written stories. I realize this will give me alot to clean up in the re-write process this summer, but I am confident the reader will have a better value as a result.

One last note: I am writing this novel as an exercise in getting readers to relate to my characters. I write a few hundred pages a year in journal entries, so actually completing the 200 or so of this novel isn't that large of a milestone for me. The fact is, it is alot easier to write when you don't have to think of a market who will read it. So, my hypothesis is this: if I can create characters that people like, that keeps them reading until the end, then I can absolutely make a living doing this:)

-JJ McMoon

2/27/09