Day 1,555 - Long nights

Writing had a rough five days. I had an appointment Friday, and realized I didn't have a document created for it. It is a complex one. I started working on it Thursday afternoon, and finished about 8:00 AM Friday morning, then went to the appointment and other ones too. I got 30 minutes of sleep right at 8AM, and that was it.I am still recovering.:-) I did manage to sit down and write today. Two sentences. I am still very tired, but happy to be priming the pump and getting back into ...

Day 1,450 - Sailing along

Our antagnosists are on the high seas and currently about one hundred nautical miles from their destination. They've been stopped by the Spainish guard for a drug inspection and are setting them at ease, letting them know they can inspect the yacht. At least, that's what they want them to think. 307 wor...

Day 1,498 - Sunni or Shiite?

I hadn't given much thought to the question of whether Mahfoud was Sunni or Shia. Today I needed to address both a recruitment and a defection event, and it became relevant. It would be unusual for someone from a predominantly Sunni country to defect to a predominantly Shiite country, and vice versa. Also, since Mahfoud is seeking to cleanse Islam, it needs consistency. I discovered that Morocco is predominantly Sunni. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram, along with the majority of Muslim countries such as Pakistan are also Sunni. Iran, half of Iraq, and Hezbollah are Shiite. In some countries they mix, but often the minority is persecuted just as minorities in any country often are. Cleared another 285 wor...

Day 1,495 - Justice

It's been several days since writing, due to early mornings and long nights with work and family as I settled our nephew in for the seven weeks he will be with us.  Once again I dived into the mind of the antagonist Mahfoud in my WIP. He is in many ways understandable. The world is black and white to him, and he believes in justice and order. He lives a utilitarian lifestyle and takes joy on his faith and his efforts to further Islam and the cause of the Western Sahara. With that comes a dispassionate, brutal sense of justice that is required in the Hadith and Koran, as well as the needs to keep order in the ranks. In Islam, Allah is not our Father in Heaven, and he proscribes unwavering justice and punishment so the community can have order. Here is a quote from a response given...

Day 1,491 - Guardia Civil, Geography Problems

I did not get to write Friday through Sunday. I prepared for and picked my 14 year old nephew up Friday night, and have been getting him settled over the weekend. He will be staying with us for most of the summer and learning about life in bigger cities. Today I wrote 230 words. In this instance, it wasn't for lack of narrative. I know exactly where this scene is going and how it will play out. The caveat is that I needed some more local information about illicit activities in the area and how policing is handled. Thus I spent a large amount of my time researching La Palma's cocaine smuggling problems and the history of the Spanish Guardia Civil, who enforces a great deal of the drug related laws in the area. Interesting factoid: The Canary Islands, of which La Palma is a part of, is the...

Day 1,487 - Dialogue and another Chapter

Simple post today. My son did not wake up, and I was able to focus on a particularly difficult part of dialogue. If I haven't said it before, back and forth dialogue is the area f writing I feel least comfortable in. I am by nature a verbose and descriptive writer. A creator. Making dialogue feel spontaneous and natural is a skill set I am working on. I feel I did well today. Another 434 words written. Finished another chapter. My antagonists story is moving alo...

Day 1,486 - Morning Breaks

See what I did there? A pun, a play on words! Yeah, I'm that guy. As the morning broke today, my son woke up early. Again. And so after two interuptions, I decided we would go down for breakfast. In the middle of ym sprint. Over an hour later, I made it back and finished. I got in 388 words. This seems to be about my average for now. I did read through about a third of chapter 2 of the Koran, which proved infinitely useful for fleshing out the chapter I was writing at that moment. I also found out the Moroccan currency is called a dirham, and one dirham is worth about ten cents. Not exactly great for the Moroccans. I immerse myself further into Morocco politics, faith, and business, I find my antagonists world is likewise gaining more depth. Worth the effo...

Day 1,485 - Moving to Mornings

Writing in bed, in the dark, next to my wife, with the screen turned down to extremes (using a special program) to not keep her awake, was not ideal. It was great in that the need to let her fall asleep first prompted me to begin writing again. Not so great in that I usually didn't start writing until near midnight, or later. And so yesterday I made the move to the mornings. I now wake up an hour earlier (6:00 AM) to allow myself time before everyone else is awake. It's a different feel, but I don't feel like I am falling asleep. I do shower beforehand to help with that. Of course, when I tried this yesterday, my five year old decided that was the morning he would randomly wake up an hour early. I managed to get in less than ten minutes of writing. Today went better. I got a solid 30 minutes...

Day 1,482 - Robots and Story POV

I didn't update yesterday, because I didn't write. I spent from morning until evening yesterday with my wife and son at the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015. I won't go into it right now, beyond saying it was amazing, and I saw more robots than I've ever seen in my life, as well as amazing people. A great experience, and one that I am sure will inform future novels. I've decided, at least for now, to focus on my antagonists story. I had been writing the two (previously three) interweaving stories chronologically. Doing so has had its benefits for building out the framework, yet now that I am diving deep into the characters, I find they cannot be dropped for a time because it's a new chapter. They want to be heard! So I will write the antagonists story until I come up dry. Then, the protagonists...

Day 1,480 - PTSD and Gender

As I've dived deeper and more frequently into my WIP, my mind starts thinking of it more often throughout the day. Where is the story going? What questions and dilemmas are arising inside of it naturally? What themes? Probably the biggest one I have been pondering is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There is a quite a bit of it in the story, as it centers around a group of people all dealing with the effects of combat and military service in civilian life. PTSD is manifested in countless little ways in life, and each person struggles with different aspects of it. While in the shower (where the deep thoughts of the universe come to all), one perspective I realized I was missing was that of a woman. In fact, so far my story basely mentioned women. It's not intentional, it's just because...

Day 1,479 - Backstory and Timelines

One of the interesting aspects of writing The Militia is that I am writing in roughly the same time in which we exist. Current events shape it, and the characters exist within it. Any passing of time in the real world before completion can lead to a need to revise backstories of main characters as well as key scenes. For example, when I start writing, Al-Qaeda was much more powerful. ISIS didn't even exist. The Arab Spring was still young, and bin-Laden had only died a few months prior. The Arab world has changed significantly since then, as had the world at large. Further, some characters now needed to be older, which affects how some parts play out. Timing, you see, is important. My story, even outside of external influences, needed help with timing. I realized over the last few days that...

Day 1,478 - A New Chapter

Sprinting went well. Starter at 12:08 PM, intending to go half an hour. Made it 50 minutes instead. I really struggled the first twenty minutes. The action and placement of people was off in the active shooter scene I was working on. People couldn't get to where they needed to in a logical way. I took a moment and imagined the entire scene again. I pictured it from the side, the top, from the shooter's perspective, and from the MC's point of view. And then I got it. Everything snapped into place. Wrote 559 words and, more importantly, finished a chapter! It is my first fully original chapter completed since returning to writing. A scene that didn't even exist in writing until the story restructure a few days ago. Aweso...

Day 1,476 - Action!

I had two opportunities to write today. One mid-afternoon, where I saw down and reviewed my questions from last night. After coming up with different possibility and imagining how each would move the story forward, I settled on one in particular. Tonight, I was able to start my 30 minute sprint at 11:00 PM instead of 12:00 AM. A big difference in mental clarity. I jumped into it with the new direction and... it wasn't quite working. Five minutes of writing, another five figuring out why, and then I had it. It was too generic. I needed to make it more human, and less mass mayhem. Changed the venue, added a Senator and a teenage girl, and I knew I had it right. With everything in place, you'd think it would be smooth sailing. A minute into the revision, and it was feeling dull and lifeless....