June is coming up quick, and I need to be done with the first draft of TOO DEAD by then. I HAS OTHER PROJECKS YOU KNOW! So, an ultimatum: this book will wrap itself up by 120,000 words, and in aid of that I will glue my butt to the chair and churn out 1,850 words each day for the rest of this month. (I’ve already done today’s writing. Go me! I have a list of events that have to happen between now and the end, and I just tick them off as I finish them.)

On June 1st I can then shove TOO DEAD in a drawer for a while (not that I don’t love it, but we’re heading towards three months of immersion in it, you know?), and get serious again about ROT, so that I can get the rewrite of that done and get serious again about MERCY, which I’m dying to work on (but ROT comes first ’cause I’m going on a research trip for MERCY in late June—no writing on that till the research is done. I’ll be researching for this year’s NaNoWriMo novel, POSSESSION, at the same time. I’m excited about that one, too!).

Meanwhile on the graphic novel front: I’ve set a limit of eight “issues” on that as well, by which point the story has to manage to reach some sort of closure. I won’t get to everything I have in mind for it in just eight parts but I can revisit the storyline with a volume 2 down the road. (And a volume 3, volume 4….). (I should be set for Script Frenzy projects for the next three years.) So, that means I’m halfway done with that, too! Also: I’m not calling it GROWL anymore—that wasn’t working for me. Now it’s FRENZY. Issues 1 - 4 are titled, respectively, “Freak in the Night,” “Last Resort,” “Bloody Rockstars” and “Negative Chug.”

I’m just a page shy of 100 pages on the graphic novel script; at the same time, I’m so far from the end of the story I think it’s in another time zone. I’ve been breaking the story down into 33-page chunks, and it’s worked well so far, but what I really need to do is sit my ass down and figure out where the story is ultimately going—otherwise I’m just going to write till it peters out.

Heh heh. I said “peter.”

TOO DEAD, on the other hand, has hit the slogging-through-it middle bit. Mark’s going away on a business trip for six days, starting tomorrow, and I’m going to use that time to push through this slow bit, though I don’t know how it can be so freaking slow—my characters, split up into three groups at the mo’, are under attack! Under attack, I said!  

Meanwhile, the presales for both the Charlotte, NC, Stone Temple Pilots show and the Lexington, KY, Nine Inch Nails show are scheduled for tomorrow. I waited all day to find out what time the NIN one would go off. Thank goodness it turns out they’re a) not scheduled for the same time (STP is 10am and NIN is 5pm) and b) not scheduled for a time when I’ll be shuttling Mark to the airport!

Hey, look who made it into a pic from the BRMC in-store in Lexington earlier this month!

(Photo credit: Whitney Waters)

I guess I must have been getting ready to take this with my phone:

Passed the 60K mark on Too Dead today. Still really enjoying working on this story!

I also made it to 40 pages on the (still ohmyfuckinggod untitled) graphic novel script, which I’m also really enjoying, though in a different way. I have no idea how long this thing is going to end up being, but I still have enough material in my head to keep it going to the 100 page mark and beyond. Eventually I’m going to have to figure out what the end of that story is, so I can start working toward it, but for now I’m good, I think. I’m not writing completely blindly; I have a direction. I have what I want to explore with it. I just need to follow it through to its logical conclusion. …whatever that is.

I do know (and have for some time) how Too Dead ends. And although I don’t think I’ll end up writing a sequel to it, I have (and have had for some time) one spooling in my head. What would most keep me from writing it (aside from the fact that I have other characters and stories I want to explore!¹) is that the first chunk of it is an ohmygodcrushingly depressing arc. I don’t know if I could stay motivated enough to face that on the computer screen day after day for a month. Daydreaming a story is a whole lot easier than writing it. (I, for one, am looking forward to the day that I can download movies straight from my head to YouTube and be done with this manual writing business once and for all. ;)) (Plus I haven’t actually gotten to the part of in the sequel where the oppressive mood starts to lift a little. (But it’s gotta, right? Eventually?)) Yeah, so, Too Dead is a lot of fun to write. Too Dead Two wouldn’t be….

¹Oh man, I remember 10, 15 years ago it was work coming up with an idea for a story. Hard work! To the point where it sucked to finish a story because it meant, shit, I needed to come up with another story idea! I want to go back in time to my younger self and yell “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.”

Saw Saul Williams at The Loft in Atlanta Friday night. Had to drive four hours through pouring rain for it, but it was worth every soaking wet mile. I actually can’t imagine Saul putting on a bad show; I felt that way before I ever saw him, and I feel that way now. He’s got something special, and I consider myself lucky to have experienced it live. Also! When’s the last time you went to a concert and heard every song you hoped to hear (and the band had more than one album out)?  I think Friday was the first time ever. Oh god it was so good.

I liked the opening band, too—Dragons of Zynth. I bought their album off iTunes Plus after we got home, but it’s not the same as the live show. (The sound sucked at The Loft, by the way, but I was still really into DOZ’s performance, and Saul could kick ass with no P.A. system at all.) Both DOZ and Saul are firmly on my “I’d see them again” list.

Meanwhile: things are moving steadily forward with TOO DEAD. Still having lots of fun writing that. The Script Frenzy project is going well, too. Wish it had a title. Wish the band in it had a name. I hate coming up with titles and names. But otherwise, it’s good.

Trent announced the final two band members for the upcoming Nine Inch Nails tour. Robin Finck rejoining the band was a surprise. And Rich Fownes—that was way out of nowhere. But now that the line-up is complete, I’m excited for the shows to start. How much longer till August?!?

But first: it’s time to finally get around to watching last Thursday’s Survivor!

The script writing went better today. I didn’t have to stop and look shit up at least. I’m feeling pretty good about it now—little rough on the first of today’s four pages, but then I got into a groove.

The nice thing about writing four pages, no more, no less, is that each day ends in the middle of something (kissing, in today’s case—something I’ve seen zero of so far in that novel I’m working on), which gives my brain something to latch onto when I come back a day later. Very, very handy since when I sit down in front of the script, my brain is floating around in the novel world (because that comes first on the writing schedule).

Speaking of the novel, writing on Too Dead went well today, too—1,877 words, making it the second most productive day on the book yet. In fact, I’m finding more often than not lately that I glance at the word count and go, “No! 934 words already?”

(It is so going to need cutting, though. As of today I’m also thinking that this first draft might go over 100K. So going to need cutting!)

I wrote my four pages for Script Frenzy today. It was a frustrating exercise, in large part because I had to keep looking up how to format things. But the worst (getting started!) is over.

There are some questions on the Script Frenzy forums as to what constitutes a “page.” Here we are on April 1st without an answer. So I’ve decided that a page in my world equals one graphic novel page. Yes, some pages might end up with significantly fewer words than others, and I may not be able to validate it on the Script Frenzy site at the end of it all, but who cares? If I end up with a script for a graphic novel, woohoo! Good enough for me!

April starts tomorrow! What that means has just set into my brain—yikes! On top of it being a busy month at work, I am also: 1) not quite halfway through Too Dead, so writing will continue on that at a rate of 1,000+ words/day throughout the month, 2) going to six concerts, none of them local, and 3) doing Script Frenzy at a rate of 4+ pages a day (to make up for the days I may not have time to write because, hello! Six concerts!). (OMGYAY!)

(I don’t have a title for the Script Frenzy project yet, and it’s driving me nuts.)

I hear that 100 pages of script isn’t as cake as it sounds (but it still sounds like too much fun to miss).

I thought about the text-based role-playing game idea a lot today. I figure, okay, I’d need to make a map with a written description for every location. Naturally I’d have to know how all the locations relate to each other. Locations. Easy! I’d also need a main character for the player to follow (”you,” Arthur Dent, you know—whatever). Then I’d need to figure out the main character’s goal and what can come between him and the goal.

Really, so far it doesn’t sound too far off from thinking through any other writing, right?

So then I’d need to think up everything a player could do from the opening screen till he wins or gets eaten by a grue.

This “think up everything the player could do” stops my brain. I’m so used to thinking along a single storyline; doing otherwise seems exhausting—and then I not only have to think these things up, but I have to write them, too? Gee, this sounds as fun as writing a choose-your-own-adventure story!

SO! I’ve been thinking maybe I could just do that vampire idea I was never going to use for anything anyway as a graphic novel script. Or maybe I can do Rot as a graphic novel script, because it’s NOT GOING ANYWHERE FAST AS A NOVEL. *sigh*

Screenplays, graphic novel scripts, teleplays…. If I write one of those for Script Frenzy, I’m sure it’ll be fun, but it’s never going to be anything more than a script. If I write a script for a text-based role-playing game (think “Zork“—god I loved that game), I can actually turn it into a final product. Drawing? Can’t do. Filming? OMGno. Programming? OK!

That’s what I’ma gonna do then.

I ignored the whole Script Frenzy concept last year. I don’t write scripts! But I got an email from Chris Baty this afternoon about, among other things, Script Frenzy, and ever since I’ve been turning the idea over in my head.

The goal is to write 100 pages of scripted material in a month. Unlike with National Novel Writing Month your project can be a series of shorter pieces—television show episodes, for instance. According to the website, “You may write screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.” And you can work with a partner if you wish. It starts April 1st, and 100 pages works out to be just 3.33 script-formatted pages a day. Have you seen script-formatted pages? 3.33 pages of that should be cake!

So the only thing holding me back at all is…. What am I gonna do with a script?

But it sounds like fun. Maybe I’ll see you there? (Since you can use your NaNoWriMo account to sign up, I’m over there as “ScrewTheDaisies.”)

Maybe I’ll write that vampire story I’m never going to actually do as a novel, maybe do it as a graphic novel script…. (Heehee—maybe as a teleplay!)

Seventeen days to decide!