Sunder: Day 69

Started writing the actual prologue today.  In a week or two I will have something that I can throw up on Authonomy.com.

I'm knocking off early because I didn't sleep last night and I have an early AM car appointment.  They are going to replace the "right rear stabilizer link insulator" that has worn out, amazingly, after eight long years of service.  Piece by piece, I'm buying myself a new car. ;)

Truer words were never spoke...

"I had been only a mediocre caretaker of most of the things left in my hands, even of my talent."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sunder: Day 68

Worked on outlining one of the major background events for Sunder: The Assassination of Samsa Litmanen.

Sunder: Day 67

Been a busy couple of days at work and it's encroaching on my writing time a little.  I still made time to write this week but I haven't bothered to update anything here because there hasn't been any developments worth noting.  There is a scene I am working on that takes place in NYC about 500 years in the future and since I have never been there and won't have the time or the funds to travel there any time soon I have been doing a lot of peripheral research on some key locations in that great city--key locations to the story, not necessarily key tourist places. 

It's been fun.  I've been using Google Maps to get familiar with some of the landmarks and major streets that I figure will still be there in 500 years.  I've been looking up those places in Flickr.com to get a sense of place so I can get some of the details right...or at least some of the details that I will adjust forward in time.  The Empire State Building.  The old Fuller Building (or Flatiron Buiding) in the Flatiron District.  Madison Square Park.  Google's Street View has been a huge help, too.

Finally got to sit down and do some actual writing tonight so I'm happy with that, even though I'm knocking off a bit early.  I got 1500 words down, but I can't stop yawning and my eyes are starting to water so that's a sign that this writer is running out of steam.  Shut it down for tonight and get back to it tomorrow night.

Sunder: Day 66

It's snowing like hell outside.  It's the first week of March and it's snowing like hell outside.  I shouldn't sound so dumbfounded: this is Canada after all.  I've seen it snow in April.  I've heard tell of it even snow as late as early May on cold evenings.  My problem with this particular snow is that it is coming down with all the enthusiasm of a December storm.  The city's plows have been up and down the street outside the office twice in the two hours I've been working on Sunder.  That can't be good.

I'm tired of Winter.  I'm tired of being cold and I'm tired of all the white.  And it's not even all white either.  The crusty banks along the roads, so tall and proud now, have crusty bases the colour of black coffee about six inches up from the road and they start to pale as you climb upward from there.  There's sand and salt and grit everywhere, including in the foyer of my apartment.  I have to vacuum the mat at the entry way nearly every other day and, being a bachelor with better things to do, you can see why I hate Winter more and more as the season deepens.  Ugh.  Or Brr.  Sigh...

Work went well on Sunder tonight. 

• There is a big body of water that encircles the Laurence-Freemantle city-station (nicknamed The Wheel by its residents) and I plotted out where Echols body is discovered and named a few of the smaller bodies of water near the discovery site.
• Dug through some of my old notes and made corrections to the ME's name and sex.
• Looked up some information about Manhattan Island's famous neighbourhoods for use in an upcoming scene.
• Niemeier and his partner are getting deeper into their investigation along with Hercus and Purnell, Detectives 3rd Grade who round out their investigation squad.

I don't want to give too much away in this blog, but I will say that I'm pleased with the way things are unfolding.  I am cautiously optimistic that this work will actually stick and become something other people will find entertaining. 

Sunder: Day 65

Don't have much to report tonight other than I showed up at the keyboard again.  I made a little forward progress in the time I was here (about 600 words) which is something I guess.  I spent a lot of time doing some medical research on some injuries Echols received.  I also spent some time making corrections and cleaning up some of last night's work.  If Sunder were a house I were building then I'd have to say I've alredy got the general shape drafted and I'm now starting to work on banging together the framing and the interior walls.  At this very early stage it's just a lumber skeleton of the exterior (or part of the exterior if you really want to put things into perspective).

Part of me is very impatient to get underway, to start pecking away at the novel and tell the story, but I keep reminding myself how that tactic inevitably results in a fatal stall when I come across some stumbling block in the form of a crucial detail I don't know anything about or a plot problem I can't resolve.  I had to force myself two or three times tonight to get back to roughing out the notes for the prologue and it has helped.  Those stumbling blocks I mentioned did indeed occur, but I didn't feel so much frustration about stopping to do ad hoc research.  Could it be, after all these years as a struggling, faltering hobbyist I have finally hit upon a method that works for me?  Good lord!  Did it take other writers this long?

Sunder: Day 64

Beautiful day, but cold this morning.  The tires were frozen solid and spun out a few times on the raised ice patches that have formed on the streets like scabs.  I need to get proper winter tires because clearly the all-seasons aren't cutting it in this kind of weather, but not until the fall.  This close to Spring it would be a waste of money.

Had a good day at work.  Managed to get a letter print/mail merge process working that I have always had trouble with.  The trouble stemmed from unfamiliarity, but now that I've got it down pat, I can update several of my test scripts with this new process and extend the reach of the testing program.  Woo hoo!

Had a good night of writing.  I worked on the second part of the prologue which introduces Det. Colbrit Niemeier.  I started laying out this part of the prologue with the discovery of Helen Echols' body and the start of the investigation into her homicide.  I had a bunch of good ideas, some of which I was unable to get down because I'm knocking off early again, but they'll keep until tomorrow.  I don't want to make a habit of oversleeping so if it means I have to start at six instead of seven or put in an hour or so less...well, so be it.  The day job is the only one paying the bills at the moment so it deserves the lion's share of my energy.

Sunder: Day 63

It's been pretty awful weather all day.  Started out with snow and ice pellets this morning and it went straight downhill to rain just before lunch.  There is so much rainfall expected this weekend that Environment Canada has been broadcasting flood warning for low lying areas in my region due to the vast amount of runoff from meltwater and rain.  The danger is not just from the rivers and streams bursting their banks, but the actual roadways since so many storm drains have been buried under snow banks and frozen over.  I hit a particularly wide and deep patch of flooding tonight on my way here.  Nothing happened except quite the wall of water flying up from my fenders (thank God for those Michelin HydroEdge tires!) but it's still a stern warning from Mother Nature: "Slow down!"

Did some running around this morning to pick up some groceries for the week.  Roasted a chicken tonight and I picked up a top sirloin roast for tomorrow.  Also picked up a salmon steak and a couple pork chops for midweek.  Going to use some of the leftover chicken in a couple pasta dishes that I have recipes for.  Along with the veggies and a few canned goods I have everything I need to take me through until next pay day.  Buying all fresh stuff means I avoided having to pay HST on a lot of things.  I love stickin' it to The Man!

I began working on the second part of the prologue tonight.  I mentioned in an earlier post how I was reworking some old ideas--specifically the ideas surrounding the murder of Helen Echols.  I cemented the new ideas in my mind, but I'm reserving them strictly as background and what the reader will experience is the homicide investigation led by Niemeier and Malmburg for which I also have some general ideas.  My goal for tomorrow night is to plot out roughly how that investigation will unfold and what seeds to plant for the rest of the novel.

For now, off to bed and to sleep.

Sunder: Day 62

More progress on the prologue, though I'm going to knock off earlier tonight than I have been for the last couple of weeks, but more on that later.

I think I may have mentioned several posts ago how some of the ideas that I came up with earlier on have been giving way to newer, better ideas.  The story asserted itself again tonight and I have refined a major portion of the first part of Sunder.  I am still going with the the Echols/Solis murder, but I have four pages of jot notes that have changed the motive for the extortion plot and the subsequent murder.  A new twist presented itself that I am very happy with, one that I hope readers will be, too.  All of this new material will expose some of the skeletons that the beleaguered hero Niemeier has been trying to keep hidden. 

Tonight's work has also highlighted some other areas that I need to work on in addition to putting down the foundations of the prologue: character descriptions/histories (brief ones, one to two pages, for the minor characters) and notes about significant places in the story.  I can think of at least five character bios that I need to work on and three, maybe four, settings that should be fleshed out.  I feel that I should do these things now so that I can get to know those people and places so that when it comes time to actually (finally) begin writing the prologue I won't have to break the rhythm in order to conjour something up.  It may make for a stronger piece of writing in the end.  Who knows?

I'm knocking off at ten tonight instead of the usual 11 or 12 that I have been keeping lately because I cannot keep up that schedule.  By the time I got home and got to bed it was getting well onto 1AM or later and I still had to work the next day.  So, from now on, 10PM is the limit.  It means a little less writing time, but I can keep the pace up all week. 

Sunder: Day 61

Got more writing done tonight, but I'm exhausted.  Knocking off early.

Sunder: Day 60

One of the books I'm studying as research for Sunder is titled The New Brain by Richard Restak.  I'm not terribly far into it at the moment, but it's a fascinating read.  One of the major concepts at its core is something called "neuro-plasticity" which in layman's terms simply means the brain's ability to adapt over time to most of the circumstances we put ourselves in.  The brain can physically rewire itself, a notion that was scoffed at not that many years ago. 

One of the examples that Restak uses is learning to play an instrument and mastering the associated finger movements.  He says that at first the finger movements may feel awkward, even uncomfortable, and that is because the brain has not created any permanent neural pathways to coordinate the movement.  However, as a student practices, the brain recruits more and more neurons to form evermore stable neural "circuits" to make the movements more efficient. 

This discovery of neuro-plasticity was made quite recently thanks to the development of functional MRI technology and it has all sorts of practical applications in everyday life--not just for music and sports, but in our work and even in cognitive therapy to get our emotional lives under control. 

In my case, and in particular with writing, I think neuro-plasticity is beginning to free up my imagination, that is if the material I produced tonight is any indication.  These new ideas are inventive and suspenseful and they stand a better than even chance of making it into the final version of the book.  My point is this: whatever mysterious cluster of neurons that is the all-holy seat of the Imagination, it is getting a helluva workout and it's paying off.  I'm very happy.

I'm also very tired.  Time to go home and go to sleep.