Actually, before the blogger came a picture. I saw a pen and ink drawing of a somewhat serious looking young black man with a goatee, and I thought… oh, that’s him. I don’t know *why* I thought that, because the look doesn’t fit the original of the character at all, I mean his personality and all that for the brief time he was supposed to be on the scene. But then I realized… the first time meet see him he is acting a part, of sorts. As we meet him more, we realize that. I tossed this around for a bit, and it felt right, and fit with the story. But I needed more, still, he was too flat and conventional.

So, now, enter the blogger. I don’t know him. I have heard his name around the black blogs, but if I visited his site I didn’t stay or go back. Not that anything he wrote was bad — quite the opposite, in fact. I just never put it on my rotation. This time, though, I went to his site through a link, read the recommended material, and realized that I had my character. Well, partially, anyway.

I still don’t know the blogger, but now not only am I following the blog, I’ve been clicking through the back links, trying to get a handle on not so much who he is, but how he thinks. And why he thinks the things he does, in the way he does. Why is his world, and his view of it, the way it is? So far I’ve gathered a few things, but not nearly enough. He’s very intelligent, a little intense, and not at all perfect, but of course I need more, and I need to combine it with what I already know of the character. Should be fun.

I don’t know if my character himself will be a blogger — it’s an interesting idea and if I can fit it in smoothly, I might. But I do know that he will be this guy, or at least the impression of this guy that I glean.

Blogs are good for so many fun things, no?

I think, possibly, it’s because it seems to me that to get to the Teabag Republicans we have to go through all the perpetually disappointed Democrats first. And that’s the discouraging part. And, also, of course, the false part. And, I think, the wrong way to go about it.

When I hear the word “progressive” now, it sounds as one near-incessant whine in my ears and I get annoyed and want to slap at it, like a mosquito. But, I think, a better idea would be to engage them and talk about what they are planning to do in their local political races, if they are going to get people out to vote, and so on. It doesn’t matter if, as some say, they are not going to vote for Obama as the top of the ticket, as long as 1: they vote for the down ticket politicians, and 2: they are promoting Democratic policies in their own cities and towns.

The rest will take care of itself. The important thing is to keep the right wing out of the White House and any more of the House or Senate seats. However that is best accomplished, for each individual, is fine with me. Mind, the ones longing for a Republican victory so “things can get worse so they can get better” are still fair game.

I don’t want every little thing I write on here also posted on Facebook — I ain’t that profound! So, I have removed it and now I am free to natter, chatter, and navel-gaze to my heart’s content and the only people who will have to endure all that are the few that visit this site. And if I happen to write something that I think others will benefit from reading, I’ll just post that. Whew. Glad all that is over.

I’ve been trying to figure out what the difference was, in my mind, between writing here and putting it on Facebook or whatever, and I think it’s because the “automatic social network sharing” feels like I am, or should be, writing for someone else. Yet I started this site so that I could write for myself. So that I could experiment with this and that, try my hand at memoir writing, see if I can get my “create your life” type series going, work out my thoughts on social justice issues, and more. But — call it stage fright, maybe — if I know I have an audience of people who are not self-selected, I have trouble doing all that. It’s not that there is a huge audience, mind — I only have like 40 friends on Facebook. But every little thing posting just felt intrusive (on them) to me, so I wound up writing rarely.

So, I should be posting more, and half of it will be ungrammatical blather, so yay! Everything is back to normal.

See, this is how it’s gone so far.

I rattled off a scene that was sort of in my head, to send to the person who offered to mentor me. Once she liked it, and sort of affirmed that I at least had the basics down, that I was ready to write something, I then sat down and (over a few days) wrote about 8,000 words of the story, the first couple of chapters or so, I thought. I had the general idea of the book in my head, now I was just filling in the parts. I came to a good stopping place, cleaned up the text a bit, and mailed that off to her to see if she thought the first part of the story made sense.

And a day or so later emailed her again and told her not to spend too much time on it, because in the meantime I had ripped all those pages out of my typewriter, loudly scrunched them up and tossed them, one by one, into the trashcan. Or, at least, that’s what was going on in my imagination; in reality I just clicked “delete.” (Don’t you think writing software should come with “real writer” sound effects?)

Anyway, I started over from the beginning. Only this time I added a bit more depth, had a better idea of who my character was, what was going on in the scenes and all that stuff. This second writing/draft that I sent her (the 10,000 words I was so excited about the other day) was *much* better than the first – and that’s only to be expected. After all, that first thing was the only fiction I had written that was more than just a 1000 words or so, ever.

So I tooled along at a fast clip (or fastish, anyway) and when I had almost 20,000 words done I was about at a good stopping place for sending those off for a reading, to see how the story hung together. As usual, though, I read back over it to see if I’d missed any huge mistakes or anything. And consulted my notes. And realized that the character and plot elements I jotted down to put in “later”, and the backstory I needed to add, would probably mean writing this first part almost all over again.

I did try adding things here and there, or moving this scene to this place (very easy to do, in Scrivener), and then building up this part here and that part there – but things were getting a bit confusing. Plus some of the secondary characters were asserting themselves and coming more into focus and then some popped up that I’d never even thought much about and it seemed to me that what I had on my hands could best be characterized as “a mess.” Worse yet, the question most in my notes is – “Where is all this going?” And my most frequent answer – “Heck if I know.”

I was pretty sure I was lost and needed to start over yet again to work my way out of the mess I was in.

And then I thought of the many thousands of words I had yet to go to complete a book and what a pain it would be to keep doubling back and filling in and starting over as I thought of things. My heart, as the saying goes, quailed. Forget that.

Whoops. My novel writing career was over before it began!

Only it’s not, of course. I realized right away that my first draft, the first 8,000 words or so, functioned basically as an outline of the first 5 or so chapters. What I didn’t realize was that my second draft was sort of fulfilling the same purpose. It moved the story forward, filled in some holes and introduced a few more personalities. But because it also lacked a lot, it also was basically a working outline. Just a really well-stocked one!

So, you can probably guess what I’ve decided to do now, yeah? Exactly. I am going to sit down and officially outline the entire book. And do a little bit of character stories, backstories and stuff (not so much that I get bogged down, though.)

I think it’s okay that I’ve done it this way. Just sat down and started writing, with no plan in mind and all. I don’t consider a bit of that time wasted. What I needed most, for myself, was the knowledge that I *could* do it. That I can sit down and craft a story that is readable and interesting, and perhaps maybe even a little exciting. Until I knew that, no amount of plotting, or outlining, or characterization, or world building would have helped me. I’d have done all that and still not written a thing.

Plus, in addition to not knowing if I could write at all, I didn’t know what sort of writer I was. Seat of the pants? Planner of everything to the last detail (not that one, I assure you)? Or some other type, maybe a combination?

I would have said the first, but it appears not. I mean, I could do that, but I doubt I would ever finish the book. I find I simply don’t have the patience to be a seat-of-the-pants writer, though that may seem a bit counter-intuitive. So I am going to try to be at least a bit of a planner. Figure out an outlining method that works well with how I think.

Lots of methods to choose from, too, it appears. One person asks questions of the story or the characters, or a scene, and the answers to those questions work as an outline for him. I think I like that. Others do the kind of outlines you learn in school – main idea, sub idea, sub sub ideas and so on. To me that method screams “bog,” but then I’ve always hated doing outlines (but found them easier to write from after I was done.)

Anyway, I’ll figure it out. I am going to spend the next few days working on it – and I’ll do a good job, because now I know it is something I need to do, a tool I in my writer’s tool box that I need to employ. I know, also, that I am not just using it as a delaying tactic or anything.

It’s still in beta so it’s free for now, as long as you are willing to put up with a few bugs… and I am. I downloaded it this morning, just to try it out and to see if it was easier to work with than, say, Liquid Story Binder – and I’ve been tooling around with it ever since. Creating characters, making notes, jumping from one thing to another, which is what my mind does anyway. Next is to gather all my notes on this particular book from all the places I have them scattered and put them in there, organize some stuff, make a sort of plot outline and have it just where I can see it – and then write.

I think I like this software, lol.  If they disable the beta copies when the real thing comes out, I will probably even buy it – I think it’s only $40 or so. It doesn’t have as many features as the Mac version because it has been in production for less time, but it works for me and that’s all I care about right now.

Plus, I can smile at Mac users now without even a tinge of envy-green. Okay, well still maybe a lil’ bit, but still.

“… the women and children of colored soldiers …”

And about what an excellent resource the National Archives’ Prologue magazine is.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had a tough time finding  some of the women – of my family or any others – so I am anxious to try some of the methods the Prologue article suggests. I will write about what I find on TBoL, and list resources as I come across them on the Research page there.