"First draft finished February 1, 2015 with 38,515 words.
Revision finished March 18, 2018 with 32,132 words."
3/18/18
Editing on A Place to Stay will begin soon.
The Dreary House is available on Kindle
Look for A Place to Stay in 2019.
The final inkling written while writing The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. This one was written in 2018 near the end of winter, coinciding with a completed second draft:
"First draft finished February 1, 2015 with 38,515 words. Revision finished March 18, 2018 with 32,132 words." 3/18/18 Editing on A Place to Stay will begin soon. The Dreary House is available on Kindle Look for A Place to Stay in 2019.
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The sixth article written while writing The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. This one comes right back from the summer of 2017:
"Going to take out a lot or all of the swearing. Will edit the style to be more consistent with The Dreary House, removing sarcasm, direct cultural references and expounding on showing rather than telling. The single space will stay. I want to keep references to thought out of the main narration and make sure prepositions do not end sentences. I’ve started with about 36,000 words and so far seem to be cutting a lot of them to amend the story properly. I’ve given myself 6 months instead of 12 this time, and may need to follow some sort of schedule." 06/06/17 The fifth of seven articles written about The Dreary House and A Place to stay while writing the aforementioned titles. I don't really feel the previous sentence works as well when it's phrased that way, but feel it's just as well to point it out as to revise it. This one goes back to what feels like a long time ago, albeit somewhat more recent:
"Considering the theme of this book today, we have a character who is coming to terms with the fact that when we begin to take control in our lives, we stop pursuing what we want in favor of what we need. In the beginning, Anna wants to go after her friends and she tries to find Tina. By the time she gains control near the middle/end of the book, what she needs and wants are battling for power. This experience is framed within frightening landscapes grounded in reality with something bordering on a dream-like quality of logic as these concepts allude to natural growth." 2/23/2017 The fourth article written while writing The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. It was written in the winter of 2016:
“'The Study', chapter 7 of The Dreary House, is proving to take a great deal longer than previously thought to edit. As Piers Anthony says, “Everything takes time.” I’m holding myself to the standards of my favorite authors and anybody else among the best. As my drama teacher told us: “Always steal, but only from the best.” These edits may be taking so long because this is the first time around I’ve tried to apply so many concepts. This requires a lot of time, because a lot of information gets sifted through before it can become the shape it needs to take." 11/30/16 The third in a series written while writing The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. This one was written about three days after #2 in this series, during the summer of 2016:
"Another thing I’m aiming for in this writing is a story able be read over and over again. I’d like it to endure, and don’t want to put in the same sort of details Tolkien used. It should to be fun to read out loud, the way I wrote it as I read it back to myself aloud, over and over again. With some luck, it will be scary, too. If I haven’t mentioned it in writing these entries yet, I’d like to make this a collection of 3 novellas comprising one over-arcing story. The first two are written, with edits being made to the first novella. By the time its all done, there's one monstrous story-within-a-story-within-a-story, enduringly re-readable. And then, there are some different stories I’d like to write. Quite a few, even." 08/09/2016 'The second in a series of articles written during The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. This was written a few weeks later while revising the first draft of The Dreary House, in the summer of 2016:
Starting with a book we had on film by Lee R. Bobker, I keep studying how film is made as chapter 5 nears completion. In the last week or two, I found a series on films called “Every Frame a Painting." (YouTube.) They’ve been helpful on not only reminding me of my love for film, but also how I want the book to feel as 'cinematic' as possible. Video games are a bit harder to broach; mostly because each time I think about it, I go back to Roger Ebert saying video games aren’t art. In the sense that I can’t really apply their form to any other medium, he may have had some validity. Even still, it gets me thinking. Some of the writing has been left closer to something one might find in an Amnesia game (A Machine for Pigs, The Dark Descent.) This is the only concept I’ve extracted from video games so far as I can apply it to this writing. Finally, something on my mind was said about LCD Soundsystem's music over and over: 'Every song on their first album sounds like a hit from a different band.' I think doing the same thing in a book is an interesting concept. If every chapter can seem like a different story, even it’s own story, I’ll feel I’ve hit my mark. 08/06/16 I plan to keep blogging. Before getting to such a project, I'm going to run a series of 7 articles written while writing The Dreary House and A Place to Stay about the aforementioned titles. This first one hearkens back to two years ago, in the summer of 2016 after drafts of the first two stories had been produced.
When writing horror stories, I want to make something everybody could feasibly read and to write a book as entertaining as any movie or video game out there. The story is also something written, for the most part, to not be easily dated. This story could have taken place as early as the 1960’s with no changes and as early as 1893 with minimal changes. (Minding the date on the bottle.) I also want my writing to take into account the popular culture such stories would not exist without. “The Dreary House” and “A Place to Stay” are abstract love letters to my perspective on horror films, their shades ought to show through within my writing. Chapters function essentially as short stories. I’m trying to keep in mind some early advice received for the first edit of a shorter version of this story: “It sounds like it’s third-person inconsistent." I’m also trying to apply all the rules of writing, most especially Strunk and White’s Elements of Style while experimenting with the idea the reader should know when a character is thinking without saying as much in the text. 7-14-16 |
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