Family is in town for the holidays. Next blog post will be on December 22.

Yikes, I almost completely forgot to squeeze in my weekly posting on my site. Not sure if it's because I was so active on my Twitter this week, or because I've been consumed with editing, but I only remembered at 9:30. But I digress...

The first end to end edit of my book by someone other than myself was just completed and the reaction has been very positive, which is more than I could ask for in my first attempt at a full length novel. I'm still tracking to have the work published this month (what?!), but with family coming into town soon, it's going to be a close one.

However, because I've been back in editing mode, I've been grappling with the difficult question that I think most writers face: how do you know when your book is done? Not the actual ending, but the editing. The changes. The revisions and rewrites. Should I spend another month changing this character? What if I abandon that plot point and replace it with this? How about I change all my characters? What if I make the ending seem as if it was all a dream, influenced by water laced with LSD by the Illuminati?

Stop.

This is where my laziness and vanity is helpful. Even though I want to do a good job and I hate making mistakes (especially ones other people get to see), I realize that no book, electronic or otherwise, is perfect. It's very easy to say this about other writers, but when it comes to our own work, we tend to forget that part and obsess over tiny details that ultimately do not impact the enjoyment of our books. I believe the key lies in finding that healthy mix between thoroughness and obsession, between wanting to do the best job possible and stirring the soup just because it's there. At a certain point you have to realize the changes that are being made are detrimental and it's time to stop touching the keyboard.

Where is that point, though? I know I haven't found it yet. This is my first swing at this outside of academia, and the magnitude of the job and the desired outcome are both intimidating. Just as with writing, though, experience will play a factor. My second book has been much easier to write, and I believe it will be easier to edit as well. Not because I will have made less mistakes or overlooked things less frequently, but because I'll have a system and a groove, and I'll be better and finding that tipping point.

No book is perfect. That is truth. I have stone tile throughout my house. Each one is different. They have texture and granularity. They have specs of grout caught in tiny grooves that can't come out. They are not perfectly square. They are beautiful, each one reminding me of something else in this wild universe. Let your book be the same. Care about it, work on it, but know that the flaws lend themselves to individuality. Work to find that balance. If you're tired and frustrated and feel like your book is getting worse, you should smile, because you're at the end.

A.C. Harrison
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To divert from my usual entry on writing, I wanted to share my thoughts on time: it's passage, and what it entails for us all. This was triggered by the rather untimely death of actor Paul Walker, who died this November 30, 2013, doing what he loved, which was sharing his love for motorsports.

Now I didn't know Paul personally, nor could I even claim to know what kind of individual he was. By all accounts he was a very humble and respected individual, not just in Hollywood, but also in the motorsports community. I am not discounting the feelings that must be going through the hearts and minds of actors that knew him, but the fact that an entirely different community, one that has no obligation to express sympathies in this instance, feels the need to share publicly that Paul was a good person says a lot to me.

Paul was 40 years old. He was not young. He was not old. He simply was, and then he wasn't. Killed riding as a passenger in a high powered supercar, being driven by someone who has experiencing on race tracks. It's not something which the mind easily wraps around. But people die everyday in cars, so why is this one significant?

To explain that, I should point out that one of my passions, one of my great loves in life, is driving, modifying, and enjoying Japanese sports cars. I have a third generation Toyota Supra twin turbo in my garage, and another frame with a roll cage on the side of the house that's patiently waiting for me to find time to finish her. It's safe to say that as a boy growing up, I was sucked into the culture portrayed in films such as The Fast and the Furious, which to this day I can quote line for line at the drop of a hat.

The movie series itself has its share of faults and triumphs. The first one smacks of adolescence, but when I watched it I was adolescent, and so I love it. Other films in the series were actually quite good action movies, with great stunts and plenty of eye candy. I think it's foolish for people to tear into a film that's not trying to be Shakespeare, not trying to be anything other than what it is. The films were sincere and pure, and spoke to me as a car crazed half-man. That sincerity is something that I think is greatly lacking from many artists and authors. I write cyberpunk/gritty sci-fi because it's what I love and what I know, and I don't pretend to be any kind of Gibson or Stephenson. I don't have the time for that.

Time is, ultimately, what this is all about. In time we lose people. Some of these people will have had an impact on your life, especially when growing up. Family and pets will be gone before you realize it. Other figures, people you have never met, will also die, sometimes before we expect it, sometimes in ways we couldn't imagine. It would be easy to feel that Paul was a victim to time, snatched away before he got his fill, but Paul died after spending his time doing what he loved, knowing what was important to him and chasing after it. Yes, he died too young, but we should all be as lucky to experience so much before our flash of existence is gone.

A.C. Harrison
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I think we can all agree that writing is a challenge, as well it should be. It's not everyday that people sit down and hammer out a manuscript, or short story, or screenplay. Writing takes planning, research, careful thinking, and endless revision, distilling down what you have to what you need. With modern digital publishing, a book could theoretically go on endlessly, but that wouldn't necessarily make for a great read. Through writing and editing, the prose has to be pared down to the root, the core message, that tells a story fully without overstepping. This, the basics of writing, doesn't even begin to approach what I feel it takes to be an effective author (for whatever that's worth).

In my personal view, writing should be painful. Not agonizing, not brutal, but rather uncomfortable. "Art through adversity" is a phrase I use often enough, and I believe it to be true. I like to by physically active. I run, I lift, I teach martial arts. I've done these things for many years, and by now they should be easy. In a sense, they are, as I have become accustomed to the pain. But I still push every time to go a little bit faster, a little bit further. To make progress, one has to step outside their comfort zone, to find out where they fail, and then to practice that part again and again until the failure point moves out. Then you start again, chasing down that failure point. I do it in my physical training, and I've learned to do it in my writing as well.

Take, for example, vocabulary. As a base rule I set for myself, I will not use the same adjective or noun within the same sentence. Even using "same" twice now bothers me. If possible, I will not have that word in the next sentence either. I do this because I think it makes the writing more varied and less stilted, and to challenge myself to come up with new and interesting ways of describing scenes and situations. So the aircraft in the first half of the sentence is the plane in the second. In the next sentence I will describe the fuselage and the paint on the hull, all draped over the frame. These are all nouns that are talking about the exact same object, but they make it feel more complete and more dynamic. It's a personal challenge I put to myself, so that I'm not so comfortable writing. I can't sit back and use the same word over and over, unless it's for a particular effect.

Adding to this, when I describe a setting, I push myself to find new facets to focus on, rather than rehashing a similar description. There's a particular author that I am a huge fan of, but when describing his characters arriving in a new city, it's like hearing about the same city we just came from. I share the challenge of diversifying these paragraphs, but that's the challenge I'm seeking. I still struggle with this one, as it's a new one for me, but I know I will come to master it, becoming more skillful and comfortable. Of course, then it's time to move on to the next challenge, to push for that next level. That alone is one of the things I find most exciting about my writing: that next plateau. The push to go higher is a huge draw for me, and I appreciate being able to look at myself and see growth and advancement in my abilities.

It's your writing. You can either embrace the pain and grow with it, or you can just copy/paste that same description you used the last time.


A.C. Harrison
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I admit, I'm terrible at planning. I don't do well with a rigid structure, especially when I'm writing, because it makes me feel trapped or obligated to something I may not be ready to commit to. Some people feel the opposite way, in that they need to know exactly where they are going or else they feel lost. Either approach is fine; what's more important is knowing what kind of writer you are and working down that path, or working to change it if that's what you really want.

For me, my lack of structure can sometimes lead to stagnation, where I don't know what's going to happen in the plot, or how a character is going to get somewhere or do something. It's like standing at the edge of a canyon and seeing the other side, but not knowing how you'll get across without either falling and snapping your neck, or else getting several tons of steel to build a bridge (and I'm no engineer). That's why sometimes I do something that you're not supposed to do: I paint myself into a corner.

I didn't say it was a good idea, did I? As most people know, when you do any job, you should always leave yourself a way out, or else you wind up stuck with nowhere to go. The phrase "paint yourself into a corner" represents the trapped individual who now is surrounded by wet paint and can't escape. Of course, who paints the floor? Maybe don't tile yourself into a corner? But I digress; my main point is that when it comes to writing, painting yourself into a corner can sometimes be a very good mental exercise, and thankfully is easily reversible if it doesn't work out as intended.

What it comes down to is this: when I have a situation (for example, being inside an enemy compound) and a result (escaping said compound), but no method (bees?), I will introduce factors that make things a little more wild than what would normally be expected (bees with rocket launchers?). In the example of escaping the compound, we know that the good guy is going to sneak around, he's going to shoot some bad guys, and he's going to find a way out. But that's not very compelling, nor does it develop the character in the slightest. You could just as easily gloss over that part of the story and not lose anything in the process. Complications in the plan are what make for good reads. No plan survives contact with the enemy, so apply that to your writing.

So what happens if the good guy is injured or otherwise incapacitated? What if he needs to carry something with him, like a child? He can only use one arm, and the kid won't shut up, giving away his position. That's a start and it adds tension. Now we need to risk something. His girlfriend is trapped one floor up, but he needs to go down to get out. Now he needs to be creative, needs to split up his resources. We're getting some excitement now, but we're not really in the corner yet. Okay, one last thing: he's being hunted by the Predator and several aliens at the same time. Too much? Okay, there's a helicopter gunship tracking his movements throughout the building, and he has no chance of escape. Now we're pretty much in a corner, and now you as a writer get to be creative, to explore options, to find out how deep your character can reach inside himself to pull out an unexpected ace in the hole. 

Of course, this doesn't work as well if you already know how it's all going to play out, but in those cases where you're not sure how to proceed, throw something impossible (within reason) at your protagonist, then get crazy with it and see what sticks. The worst that can happen is you laugh at your bad writing, delete the chapter, and lose a day. But when it works, it makes for a gripping read, where the pages fly by as the reader tries to figure out how in the hell Laser McHawkeye will escape the tower of doom while being chased by a crystal dragon, all while playing the magical flute that keeps his heart from stopping.

A.C. Harrison
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I'm not going to lie: writing is a pretty sweet gig. I mean, if you discount the fact that I have made $0.00 in my writing career, I still hold a day job, and I have to delay handling other responsibilities in order to find time, then it's one of the best jobs I could ever think of.

As examples, I recently came across the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, which I proceeded to watch about fifty times in a row for "research."

Even better than getting me in the right mood to work on my books, the trailer does a nice job of summing up in under three minutes the look, feel, and theme of my genre of writing. It's a much better tool than what usually happens when someone asks me what my books are about, and I get to collect myself and start with, "Well, have you ever seen Blade Runner? No? Okay, um..."

Another benefit of being a writer (a phrase I used to hate, but now catch myself using) is the fact that playing the right video games gives me perspective when I'm writing about weapons, tactics, units, and combat, something that is prolific in "Unto Persephone." Or, when not playing video games, I'm falling down a Wikipit, finding out about Russian nuclear submarines that used liquid metal cooling. Read that again.

That's really the fascination for me. Writing is a form of self-expression, but it's also in large part a form of self-discovery and of seeking out knowledge. I couldn't imagine writing a novel without finding out new things about the world around me, where that world has been, and where it's going. A good writer is more interested in finding himself in humanity than selling a single copy of his work. If, when published, my book goes on to be wildly successful, I will be eternally grateful (and lucky, because the chances are slim). But I would have done it anyway, and I would have done it the exact same way. The late nights, the headaches, the revisions. All worth it.

I learned a lot writing "Jupiter Symphony," about myself, about others around me, about life. From that book I learned about my own writing, which got rolled up into "Unto Persephone." It will be interesting to see what carries forward into "The Long Night." Stick around to find out.

A.C. Harrison
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"Unto Persephone" is closing in on 50,000 words, and should be wrapped up in about five or six weeks. Thinking over my progress and what I wanted to discuss today, I felt it important to touch on something that I think stymies a lot of potential writers: originality.

I know last week I stated I was planning on delving into short stories in order to practice my writing and to get more examples of my work in circulation, possible increasing website traffic. I still am keenly interested in doing this, but to be honest, it hasn't happened yet. For once, this isn't due to any laziness or distraction on my part (hey, I write science fiction because playing video games becomes "research"). Actually, I haven't been able to do any short story work because my second book is coming along at a staggering pace--10,000 words a week, minimum! There are several reasons for this rate of progress, so I wanted to share the primary drivers.


Firstly, writing is just like any other skill. The more you do it, and the more frequently you work on, the better you will be at it. If you have an idea for a story, don't waste time mulling it over in your head. The sooner you start actually writing, the faster you'll gain the skills you need to write effectively. More to the point: when you first start writing you'll waste a lot of time figuring out how you want to say things. Getting over that hump and filling a toolbox with expressions, adjectives, and turns of phrase will greatly increase the effectiveness and speed of your writing.

Another point I didn't appreciate until recently was my focus. This actually comes in two forms: my focus within a certain time period, and the overall focus of the book. Because I've worked on a schedule and pushed myself to write for longer periods, I'm able to settle in and focus on the work at hand, minimizing distractions and enjoying the process as I develop my craft. In dealing with the focus of the book, this comes from the benefit of now being on my second novel. Going into my first story, I only had a general idea of what I wanted the book to be about, and who the characters were. It was sort of a drifting gas cloud, that you could see and comprehend, but couldn't really fill in. In writing that book, I learned to look ahead, planning upcoming portions of the book as I was writing, as opposed to early on when I had to write, stop, think, write, stop, etc. The plot, characters, and details of the second book come much more naturally, and so writing sessions are almost non-stop writing, with occasional Scotch breaks to read over a particularly good line.

Lastly, planning was a factor in my progress as well. As I was nearing the end of my first manuscript, I was already brainstorming ideas for my second, and had an overall theme and direction to go with. When my first book was done, I was able to take those concepts and spend a relatively short time outlining the book itself (in loose terms), after which I just fell into the writing. This will be even more interesting to explore in my third book, which is currently an idea and a paragraph, but comparatively is being started on earlier than any of my other works.

In other news, my second novel now has a title, "Unto Persephone." I'll be taking time this week to build out the portion of the site that will house a blurb on it, and I'm currently picking out some excerpts to post. I think everyone will find it an interesting and enjoyable read.

A.C. Harrison
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Over the weekend I clocked in about 16 hours remodeling my house, so I'm lucky enough to be pulling off this blog post, though I can't promise much in terms of length and cohesion (ladies...).

I was having a think about writing, marketing, the use of this blog, and other independent author-esque things. I want to have more opportunities to showcase my writing, but that is difficult due to the fact that my first manuscript is 100,000+ words and my second novel is already 30,000+ words, and neither one is completely ready to be published. As such, I recalled that some of the best works that I read while growing up were short stories, an artwork in and of themselves.

In my mind, short stories make a lot of sense to the emerging author. Yes, they require a different style of writing and they could potentially take time away from your primary work (assuming your primary work is in full length novels). However, there is a great appeal in this challenge, and not a lot to lose. Learning to write short stories helps a writer to form a tighter narrative, to develop characters quickly, and to be as descriptive as possible in as little space as possible. It boils down to the core details; being able to leave everything in is easy, but paring down a work is hard.

My thought is that I (or anyone else who would give it a go) would work on short stories whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as those evenings where I'm banging my head against the wall, unable to work on my larger manuscript, stuck in a rut without advancing the plot. The change of pace and freedom to try new things would shake things up, and likely only help me when I turn back to work on my full length stuff. Moreover, I think it would be rather nice to post the short stories on my site, allowing interested readers to get an idea of my writing style and genre, scoring marketing points as well. And any stories I don't like are just as easily wadded up and thrown out, no damage done to my larger novels.

As with anything new, I'll need to set some time aside to give it a go, and that's always a challenge with everything else going on, but I'm rather keen on this one, and hopefully over the next couple weeks, I'll get some snippets posted and see where things go from there.

A.C. Harrison
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The book title. Good book titles pull you in. "Snow Crash," "Neuromancer," "Starship Troopers." As it turns out, good book titles are a huge pain to come up with. In my academic writing, I always came up with the title of the paper once I had finished writing it. Retrospection allowed me to come up with a fitting descriptor to apply; a name that would encapsulate the main point of the text. I always thought I would do the same with my first novel, "Jupiter Symphony." Then I found out that coming up with a title after writing 120,000+ words about multiple topics and characters is a monumental challenge. Should an author be expected to have a title for their work before they've finished it? What about before they begin it?

My second manuscript, currently rolling past the 30,000 word mark and growing, was a little different. I had a more unified theme, and a clearer picture of where the book would go. The novel also has a more narrow scope in both plot and characters. It's not less of a book, just more laser focused on a specific niche: military power armor pilots, and what war does to a person. That being said, early on I already had a few ideas of what I wanted for the title, but I haven't settled on anything yet. Once I do, I'll be putting up a new page on my website to start sharing information about this new book that I am excited for.

Interestingly, my third book is a rough concept and a single paragraph, but I already have the title. Perhaps that is progress on my part, but I think it has more to do with the fact that the more you create your own written universe, the easier it is to expand further into it and explore it further. I was nearly done with my first novel when I came up with a concept for the second. I had just started the second when I knew what the third one would be. Ideas beget ideas, if you work at growing them.

Titles are a challenge. I don't think I'll ever like one of my book titles, but to not have one would just make things confusing (oh, and also make sales practically impossible). As I said in my previous blog post on best practices, it's important to identify areas where you struggle and work to improve upon them. Turns out I didn't realize coming up with titles was a weakness until I thought about it.

In other news, "Jupiter Symphony" is on track to be published this winter. If you're thinking of giving someone an interesting holiday gift, keep in mind affordable novels by emerging authors. Cover art will be developed in the coming weeks, and I will have it up on the website immediately thereafter, replacing the bland, default header atop each page. Because I am writing my second novel concurrently, I'm shooting for a 2014 spring or summer release. I'll be sure to keep things posted on acharrison.com.

A.C. Harrison
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