Tom

“I’m really glad to see you,” she said bitterly.

Adverb is necessary because the dialog means something different than it says at first glance. It might be better to show that instead, like this:

“I’m really glad to see you,” she said, slamming the car door shut so hard she almost took her finger off.

Note adverb “almost” in above sentence is also necessary because the finger is still there.

Tom

Before: “What are you doing there?” she asked quizzically. Quickly, the man unloaded the shotgun and rapidly ran into the woods, trailing hunting dogs yipping frantically at his heels.

Note that the text looks bloated. It’s obvious from the context what the verbs are saying.

After: “What are you doing?” she asked. The man unloaded the shotgun and ran into the woods, trailing hunting dogs yipping at his heels.

See, you get the same picture in your mind with less words.

I write, revise, outline, or markup something (doesn’t matter what) a minimum of fourteen hours per week. I tried to stay on target with the book, but all along other things wanted to get written–I did some erotica, a fable, a children’s story and at least two long posts for Urbanagora while I was working on it.

At one point, Marcey made me stop revising and write something new because I was so depressed–rewriting, as I said earlier, is hard. When something new comes up, I can work up to seven or eight hours straight taking breaks only for bathroom and a bite or two.

On my first draft, I write about 850 words per hour. This means that my longest short story took about twelve hours to write. This was not at one sitting–as a matter of fact, I wrote 8500 words of it, send it to my first readers and one said it was unclear, so I went back and added 2500 words of flashback and it made for a much better story.

I am happy with the finished product or you would never see the book. Whether anyone else thinks it’s any good is a big question. Writing is an attempt at telepathy–where I take something from inside of my head and try to install it in yours. It’s very painful to me when it doesn’t work. Nonetheless, I had to write this book.

About 60% of it is revised Urbanagora articles from November 06 through February 08. The other 40% is totally new and mostly fantasy. I kept the fantasy and SF completely separate from the non-fiction.

If you, or any other reader would like a 2500 word sample from one of the unpublished stories, send me an email at tcgtrf(at)gmail(dot)com and I’ll send it to you.

One thing I’m going to try to do is offer new stories for download from my website–say a few bucks for a short-story via paypal. We’ll see how that model works. I’m also planning on sellling new stuff to one or more of the online Fantasy and SF magazines.

Thanks for your interest,

Tom

I really enjoyed reading this post. It’s a rare thing to get inside a writer’s head, especially before his first work sinks or swims. (I hope yours swims!)

I have a few questions.

I’ve never heard that advice about overuse of adverbs. Could you illustrate the point with an example? Maybe a sentence where you cut an adverb and one where you thought the adverb was necessary?

How much time did you dedicate to writing on a weekly basis? Was this book something you focused on exclusively for a period of time?

Are you afraid of people’s judgments/criticisms or anxious to hear them? Do you think you’ll be happy with the finished product, regardless of its reception?

I could probably come up with 20 more, but this will do for now. Thanks for sharing this with us!

I’m reading a few writing tips books now, it’s tough when you spend all day writing legal memos to totally change gears, but more and more I think writing legal memos can be about telling a story, just a much more boring story than most of yours :)