Finish your Novel; Finish what you start

            That’s my dad talking. It was his favorite rant. This line was the only thing I inherited from him besides high cholesterol and back hair. TMI? That’s your problem.  BTW this is the first blog entry I ever wrote that has two titles, it is also the only one with S/A acronyms.

            Let’s press on. No really we need to keep going.

            The big fat tips for finishing your novel are:

            

    Your going to type one hundred and ten thousand words over and over again so just get to love it. Fall in love with the process of writing.  Some days your best friend will be a WIP that means work in progress. Keep progressing.

            

    Environment matters. I have sincere ADD and I have to keep my surroundings undistracted. I do this by going to the same place with nothing to grab my fickle attention. I can stare at a blank page and my ADD will become antsy for something to do then suddenly my fingers start tickling the keyboard and whoop-dee-doo words start flying out of me like lies from congress.  I do not need it quiet nor does the space have to be devoid of design or nice things. Just has to be the same for maximum effect. I get bored of a scene in about forty seconds. My favorite spot is a corner of the room with curtains drawn.

           

   Keep your ego out of the way. It’s a lying little bastard telling you your not good enough to publish. This is true at first but not last. I went to Toastmasters for a year and began to win more than seventy percent of the contests I was in because I left that idiot ego out of the room before I practiced or listened to a single critique.  I have more than twenty awards for public speaking based on one simple idea. Keep your ego out of it.

             

   Keep an open mind. Let it all in. Notice during critiques people will tell you specific things about craft or general comments about how your writing affected them. This feedback is priceless if you learn to channel it. Your ego will toss up a wall at this time. Crash that wall and toss the little bastard out of the room on the spot without apology. You will get back to your environment with your notes and rediscover the process that you fell in love with.

            Most importantly keep writing. Your first draft is supposed to be the brain dump of all time. Edit later. Keep major ideas clumped together, call those chapters for now. Get that 80 to 100k words DONE and forget how you’re supposed to do it, just do it.

            If you want the best website to start and live at for a while I can recommend:

http://blog.janicehardy.com/

Celebrity Death

Pardon my lack of name-dropping, but I like to maintain a person’s right to privacy.  I will never mention the name of any victim.  In my seven years of working crime scenes, I have worked enough celebrity cases where that practice gets put to good use.

I have little to no idea about the ‘who’s who’ nature of Hollywood.  I am inherently poor at following names and connections, therefore I just don’t bother.  One night, I took a call for a death investigation.  Like so many before it, I arrive at the scene, shoot overalls, and wait for the coroner.  I briefly glance at the name and address written on an envelope containing the job information, folded it up, and placed it into my pocket.  (This envelope would later hold a CD of the images taken at the scene.) 

It was a pleasant day, which made driving to the location a pleasure.  I do my best to enjoy the simple pleasures around me, especially the ones that cost me nothing.  The sun was just beginning to set in the distance.  The sky was alive with glorious shades of magnificent color complimented nicely by the lush, green hills along the way.  A sunset in Los Angeles is unlike any other.

I am barely paying attention when the radio station begins its top of the hour news cycle.  A name is dropped occasionally, but it seems only vaguely familiar to me.  I turn two more tight corners and the road opens wide.  It’s a short street with a cul-de-sac big enough for a delivery truck to make a u-turn with no problem, packed with every news media you can think of on its perimeter, and jammed to standing room only by paparazzi.  I’m already ticked off.  

The major news outlets know where I am on the food chain and leave me alone.  I sometimes kibitz over gear and shoot the breeze with others who, like me, are stuck out there.  Suddenly, I have jackals in my face.  These are the same types that caused Princess Diana’s death.  I’m not fond of their behavior and let them know immediately to stay clear.  First Amendment rights are fine until I’m annoyed.

This yapping crowd is right where I need to work.  I turn my I.D. brass side out.  The officers securing the driveway see me pointing my hand just past them and they know that means to clear everything in front of it.  They’re nice enough to ask if the unit they’re driving needs to be moved.  I tell them I just need about 40 of the scuddering crumb-hoovers to move back so heads don’t block my view of the house.  I finish my overalls and head up the driveway after the officers and I have a chuckle over the whole situation.

I come up the sweeping driveway, which appears to have been expensively paved and manicured.  The mansion covers the top end of it, almost like a cave.  I begin my ascent up a staircase leading towards massive double doors, which open to an oversized kitchen.  Inside, there are sad looking people.  A tall man off towards my left looks as though his guts have just been ripped out of him.  I’ve never seen a man appear so broken and still able to stand on his feet.

I’m faced with even more stairs as I make my way to the scene.  All of the floors on this level are carpeted in white.  I enter a massive room divided by closets larger than my bedroom and a bathroom bigger than my kitchen.  Windows providing panoramic views to the city are heavily shuttered.  Any spare shelf or flat spot is adorned by knick-knacks or small bottles, common in homes owned by those in the industry.

After doing some overalls and some close-ups at the direction of the investigators, the coroner running the show directs me to take a few more photographs.  The victim had been taken to the hospital and pronounced dead upon arrival.  

As I prepare to wrap up, I pull out the envelope in my pocket, place the chip from my camera inside, and give out the number listed on the front.  The number, never the name, is how we file every job we do.  It dawns on me that the name heard over the news is the same one provided on the envelope.

Like anyone else, I have a great respect for those who create success from nothing to very little.  We hold celebrities in such high regard.  Unfortunately, that is a position so many are poorly equipped to handle.  I’ve never seen any other group voluntarily starve and then closet themselves into just 1,500 square feet of a 6,500 square foot house.  I don't understand how someone worth millions, with access to so many free resources or assistance, can experience such a state of debilitating anxiety that they literally starve to death.

It makes me stop to think what it is I decide to hunger for in this life.