Adult Novel with a Former Businessman Turned Conman with a Splash of Romance. White Collar with You've Got Mail.

I was just messing around yesterday, as I like to write first chapters of new ideas that tickle my fancy. Let me know what you think of this story. Do you want to know more? Should I keep going? Eh, eh?

Chapter One -

Rain pitter-pattered against a tiny glass window somewhere in New York.

Patrick Birch sat alone in his studio apartment just off Crown Heights in Northeast Brooklyn.

Doing nothing again, thought Patrick, as he readjusted the rabbit ears on top of his TV. Patrick didn’t even jump at the sound of sirens that had just started blaring outside his window. Another night of furious yelling and rap music had begun to replace the reassuring sound of crickets that used to fill the summer air.

Instead of cherry blossoms and rose petals, the air in his apartment was filled with a mixture of marijuana smell and fast food from the surrounding apartments.

Instead of a monthly salary, a generous 401K, and benefits, Patrick now relied on that once-a-month deposit from welfare and insurance from the state. Heaven forbid I should have to go to the doctor, Patrick thought, having just caught reception of the local Fox News.

Patrick held his breath, inhaling a deep breath of perfume a la McDonald’s Fries, and gently let the antenna go. There were still a few lines running through the picture, but that was as good as it got around here these days.

Examining the living room-kitchen-bedroom combo where Patrick spent most of his days, a visitor would only spot a patched-up recliner and a counter full of various Ramen noodle boxes and old fast food bags.

If there were a bottom, Patrick had not only hit it, but had been camping out at it for two years now.

Gone was the colonial-style mansion in upstate New York. Gone were the days of meeting with clients and eating lunches that were more than his monthly pension. Gone were the days with her. Patrick almost cringed at the thought of her. He quickly shifted his weight back into his chair, because it would only bring pain.

The last time Patrick had thought of his ex-wife was six months ago, and that was completely unintentional and unavoidable. He had seen her in Queens, wearing her Chanel bag, and her Loubuitin pumps, using the money from the divorce no doubt.

That was reason enough to never leave the apartment ever again.

Patrick took a fork of salty noodles to his mouth and narrowed his eyes on the News lady. A brunette by the name of Hope Anders, she was easy on the eyes and ears, and had become the sole feature of his nightly entertainment.

Suddenly, the square box at the corner of the screen shifted to a picture of one of the most talked-about women in New York as of late. She was far out of Patrick’s league, a beautiful brunette with not only looks, but massive amounts of power, which had only grown in the past week.

The newly-widowed Allison Barnett had just become one of the most powerful figures in New York industry. Her former husband was none other than the CEO of Golden Bank Investing Group, or GoBIG as it was colloquially known.

Hope Anders reported from the TV, “Following the sudden passing of her late husband, Ms. Barnett received word from her husband’s attorney she was to step down from her position on the board to become the newly-appointed CEO of the investment giant.”

A recorded feed earlier from the day showed Allison Barnett walking out of an office building in Lower Manhattan, shielding her face from either the sun or the horde of reporters surrounding her with a bombardment of questions. Her only two words as she looked into the camera was a somber, “No comment, thank you.”

It was either sadness or fear that trembled from her voice, but it was enough to cause a sting in Patrick’s heart. He took another mouthful of noodles and pushed the Styrofoam cup up to his face to drink the broth. Liquid that smelled of chicken splashed onto the beard that had grown over Patrick’s face in recent years.

He stood up, peeking out the blinds at the flashing lights that seemed like strobe lights in his tiny apartment.

He missed his old life, to say otherwise would be a lie to himself. He missed the fancy dinners, the shiny new toys, and the power – Oh, the power – as Chief Editor of the publishing company Simon & Schuster, he had power to grant life or death to not only books, but also his employees. The world was at his knees for a time.

Then the divorce happened. And everything, even his job, was stolen from Patrick.

Patrick smirked to himself as he stood by the last vestige of his past life, a small crate full of some of his favorite books he had come across during his fifteen year tenure at Simon & Schuster.

He let himself graze the bindings of the ten or so books that had made his own bestseller list. A murder mystery involving set in Victorian England, a science fiction book about time traveling. His head was full of so many stories from the past years, some good, some not so good, but between watching the news lady and trimming his nails immaculately, there wasn’t much else to entertain Peter.

So, he would replay the stories he knew so well in his head.

As he turned his head, Patrick’s finger fell on the last book on the right, one that he hadn’t thought about in a long time. With a hesitant look, he had an idea either so brilliant or so ridiculous, it didn’t matter anymore.

A hardback book with a red cover showed on the binding the title, The Con Man’s Woman.

Hmmmm, Patrick hummed to himself.

What if?

Maybe there was a way to have my life back…

Patrick turned back to the television where Hope Anders was wrapping up her coverage on Allison Barnett, speaking about the volatile stocks of GoBIG.

The irony hit Patrick that hope was exactly what he was looking for, and this woman newscaster had just given that to him.

Patrick looked up at the tiny round mirror that hung crookedly on the wall. He smiled to himself, a face he no longer recognized, shrouded by dark facial hair and years of hygienic neglect.

He almost laughed out loud at the brazenness of his idea. But what was there to lose?

He could almost taste the fine wine, the hundred dollar steaks, and that power that never satiated but always teased like a cruel mistress.

It would be his again…

Patrick was going to con Allison Barnett.

The Writing Life Cycle for Me a la GIF format

Hello everybody!

In conjunction with last week's GIF ensemble, I thought it would be appropriate to illustrate my process as a writer! I'm sure you can all relate! 

Hope you enjoy it! #CurethecaseoftheMondays

You're at work or playing with the kids, and then it happens...It all starts out with an idea so brilliant (at least to you) you HAVE to write it down.

You mull it over for a while the temptation grows...

thinking should I? Can I really write a novel? Little old me?

And then you convince yourself that yes...YOU can write the next great American novel!

In the beginning...

After about two hours of this.

You do this...

And this...

UNTIL...(something clicks)

And the MOJO magically starts flowing.

BUT then it suddenly stops. The dreaded MENTAL BLOCK be like:

And YOU be like:

Until you see or hear that one thing that inspires you to keep going:

And you FINALLY break the block with the BEST IDEA EVER.

Then you be all like:

Every now and then you catch a typo that makes you smirk to yourself..like the time you wrote "..and he took out his large ballpoint penis," INSTEAD of "..and he took out his large ballpoint pens," Oops.

Then, you put the last period and write "THE END." You utter  two words...

What you expect finishing your manuscript will be like:

What it really ends up being like...

Happy Monday! Write something great this week!

#writerslife #Iamawriter

-C

What the querying process is REALLY like...presented in gif format...

Just a little comedy for all the aspiring authors out there. 

Hope you enjoy!

Finishing your manuscript is like...(FINALLY!)

Queries sent...now the looooooong 6-8 week wait....per agent....lots of waiting....

FIRST rejection letter/email back...

Rejections 2-10...

 

And MORE rejections pile on...

Then out of nowhere...

the partial/full manuscript request comes along.

And then it's REJECTED.

This process happens some more, until you finally 

RAGE a little...

But then (And I'm still waiting for this one)...You get 

THE call/email...the REPRESENTATION! 

Your first reaction...

Followed by...

And then...

Finally, the realization sets in that you get to do the whole process over again...that is until you find a publisher...

#thewriterslife #amquerying

Good luck out there to all the aspiring authors!

-C

Want to KRUSH that Mental Block? Here's What I Do...

So you're stuck...at wit's end...no creative juices left, except for the ones that are slowly drooling out of your mouth as you stare blankly at the screen.  We've all been there, and whether or not it's a tiny block or a mountain of mental blocks, it can put a severe halt to our creativity.

Some have compared a mental block to being THE occupational hazard of writing. I agree!

To begin breaking down your mental block, let me take you on a trip, a Weird Al trip that is (for your entertainment).

EVERYBODY GETS THEM! You aren't alone...just check out some famous guys and gals that have the same problem...

"You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over." - Leonard Bernstein

"I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. I had pieces that were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out." - Erica Jong

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work." - Pearl S. Buck

"If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me? You are a human being with a unique story to tell. You have every right." - Richard Rhodes

It happens, and just because it happens to you doesn't mean your a bad writer, or that you should just quit.

Like anything, the first step is recognizing you have a problem!

It's common to have some stumbling blocks here and there trying to think of that perfect adjective or adverb, but we all need to recognize when it becomes a true writer's block. For me, a writer's block entails not only not knowing what to say, but it begins to affect how I feel about my writing, and leads to me questioning everything I have written. A writer's block occurs for an extended period of time (I would say at least a week, but I don't have anything scientific - I just noticed when I can't write for a week, it usually takes a while to get back to it). Finally a writer's block leads to a complete derailment of where you were heading with your writing, coupled with an overall lack of creativity.

THE CURE

There are three things I try to do when I'm hit with the block. The trick is trying one, seeing if it works, and if not, move on to the next thing until you finally break through.  

The three approaches are as follows:

1) Keep writing. But don't worry about making good writing, just write at least a sentence for starters, and then go from there. Even if you are writing about how the butterflies were looking particularly lackadaisical that morning...just write something. The worst thing you can do is write nothing. Don't go longer than a week without writing. Period.

2) Skip it. A lot of times for me, it is just one scene, one sentence, or even one chapter that I just can't wrap my head around for the time being. Even if you end up skipping to the last scene of your book, and writing that, what will happen is you will begin to fill in the gaps in between until you've finally figured out the puzzle. That's the beauty of writing a novel or screenplay...you don't have to write chronologically.

3) Read. If you decide to take the week break...start reading something related to the genre in which you're currently writing. Sometimes for me, it's all I need to trigger some inspiration, or to figure out how to word it just write. 

Those are my three prescriptions for writer's block. Take them or leave them if you will. To finish, here are some famous authors' various cures for breaking the block (see flavorwire.com for the full article)

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’” — Maya Angelou

“Suggestions? Put it aside for a few days, or longer, do other things, try not to think about it. Then sit down and read it (printouts are best I find, but that’s just me) as if you’ve never seen it before. Start at the beginning. Scribble on the manuscript as you go if you see anything you want to change. And often, when you get to the end you’ll be both enthusiastic about it and know what the next few words are. And you do it all one word at a time.” — Neil Gaiman

“I encourage my students at times like these to get one page of anything written, three hundred words of memories or dreams or stream of consciousness on how much they hate writing — just for the hell of it, just to keep their fingers from becoming too arthritic, just because they have made a commitment to try to write three hundred words every day. Then, on bad days and weeks, let things go at that… Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away.'” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Good luck out there and break the block!

-C

Twitter's "10K Characters" and Why It'll Rip the Tiny, Little Bird Soul Out of Twitter.

pbs.twimg.com

 Once upon a time there were a million social media platforms, all about the same thing: Take selfies, post cynical complaints about the world, and then poke your friends. But then, along came a little birdy that only allowed tiny little 140 character tweets...the friend-poking, selfie-taking masses were enraged, intrigued, and then captivated by the idea. A character limit actually turned out to be a good thing...because instead of ranting endlessly about such and such political, feminist thing, you had to choose your best words. And thus Twitter was born.

  By now, you have all heard about the proposed 10k character limit set to unroll in March. The idea as presented would not necessarily disrupt your own viewing of tweets, because as the Twitter pointed out:

"The design aspect is key. Making Tweets bigger by adding more content or bigger pictures has diminished user engagement in the past, according to one source. That makes sense. If tweets take a long time to consume or take up more space on your screen, it’s likely that you’ll view (and engage with) fewer of them. So Twitter is trying to add more content without disrupting the way you currently scroll through your timeline."

That's one relief, because if you've ever used Twitter, you've been subjected to A LOT of crappy spam tweets...and now we are wanting to give them leeway to use 10k character tweets to cram your nice little feed with a Facebook feed of garbage. It would go something like this...

The new future tweet limit gonna leave the timeline looking like #Twitter10k pic.twitter.com/CJmJTiWro0

— Incognito (@behlul_official) January 6, 2016

Why did the Gettysburg address have so much success? Because it was only about 270 words (1400 characters or so) versus one Edward Everett that had given an incredible, horribly-long speech just prior. Ted Widmer from NY Times explains that concisely:

Edward Everett had spent his life preparing for this moment. If anyone could put the battle into a broad historical context, it was he. His immense erudition and his reputation as a speaker set expectations very high for the address to come. As it turned out, Americans were correct to assume that history would forever remember the words spoken on that day. But they were not to be his. As we all know, another speaker stole the limelight, and what we now call the Gettysburg Address was close to the opposite of what Everett prepared. It was barely an Address at all; simply the musings of a speaker with no command of Greek history, no polish on the stage, and barely a speech at all – a mere exhalation of around 270 words. Everett’s first sentence, just clearing his throat, was 19 percent of that – 52 words. By the time he was finished, about 2 hours later, he had spoken more than 13,000.

LESS is MORE. It seems like technology today solely has the aim of either growing bigger or smaller depending on where they are at the moment. Think IPhone, IPad, etc...

But why would you want to take away the one thing that makes Twitter what it is? Instead of a short, little, chirpy tweet, now we have a foghorn blasting away at us.

And as an addendum, to relate to the writers of the world, who like me, constantly battle with page limits, or word counts, and trying to get just the right amount of words per chapter. It's a huge pain, but at the end of the day, it makes your writing that much better. It makes every word choice a rich delicacy, something that will pour off the pages and satiate our literary hunger. So keep at it with the editing phase, and make every word count.


A final plea: Don't do it Twitter! For the sake of all the tweeps in the world, don't do it!  

-C

(AND FYI, this blog post comes in at just over 3K characters...I didn't even rant enough to reach the limit. I need at least 3 times this much!)

ANNNNNNNNNND We're Back! A New Year with New Resolutions!

Happy New Years to everybody! Hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and that for aspiring writers like myself, Santa left you a gift of representation by a sweet agent that'll throttle your manuscript through to the presses. For me, I still wait with bated breath as a few of my top prospects mull my manuscripts over..

After about thirty or so rejection letters, it starts to wear you down, starts to make you question if your writing is any good, and it starts to make you rethink your whole story/plot/characters. You can only get so many "Thank you so much for thinking of me for your query..." emails/letters back and it creates a minor identity crisis as a writer.

My #1 resolution, and I hope that if you're an aspiring author you will join with me in making it, is to get published THIS YEAR. No more putting it off. No matter what happens. Even if with tooth and nail I have to scrape by and put my book on Amazon and self-publish. I have already decided that 2016 is the year my book will be published. If you're like me, you want to share your story - that's why you wrote it I'm guessing, otherwise you would just keep it in your head and not put it on paper. We write to share, to transfer our literary worlds into the minds of others, because OUR worlds that we have created our just that good.

Consider this a self-affirmation blog post more than anything, but I hope you will make the resolution with me that 2016 will be the year. Sure there's an election, and sure there are some good movies, and maybe you'll be getting married/having kids/losing weight/etc... but if you are a passionate writer, there are few things that can compare to seeing your book on the shelves and in living black and white print.

For me, the greatest thing that could ever happen would be to pass someone on the street, or sit by someone on the bus, and without knowing it, they are reading my book, and they have a look on their face like they've found a hidden gem. 

So, no more excuses. Let's make 2016 the year our books get published!

-C

3 Things I Learned from Star Wars Episodes 1-3 AND WHAT NOT TO DO WITH MY WRITING....

flowerswall.xyz

Salivating and pondering over the new Star Wars movie has almost, ALMOST, made the sad, hollow, shell of the past disappear from my memories, but the more I thought about the new movie, the more I thought about the prequel movies....and the more I thought about what I hated in these movies.

Sure, if you had labeled these movies anything else other than Star Wars...like Space Battles, or Fight of the Galaxy, or whatever, it wouldn't have had the expectation the original episodes 4-6 had. But they did happen, and although there were moments of fun, lightsaber-wielding action, there were painful moments where in the theater you wish you could have hit the fast forward button to skip to the next battle.

So, in the refrain of my last week's post, I present, Da Da DUM - 3 THINGS ABOUT STAR WARS EPISODES 1-3 AND WHAT NOT TO DO WITH MY WRITING. 

Because the great flaw in these movies is the creation and development of the characters themselves, I will again focus on the characters, and how the writing did not do them justice, nor did it help the characters reach their potential.

1) Characters acting out of character: Anyone could easily pick out Jar Jar Binks as one of the most hated characters in Star Wars, but if you examine all the characters in episodes 1-3, there is a horrible development that made them do things that just didn't fit. The biggest, blaring disparity to me is the relationship of Anakin to his mother, which eventually contributes to Anakin's downfall as we all know. In the first movie, Anakin obviously loves his mom, and granted he is only a little boy, you could argue there is some kind of attachment, and the act of him leaving his mom on the planet breaks his heart and ours a little.

Fast forward to the future though, where his mom has been taken by the Sand Raiders, where Anakin eventually discovers her, which leads his down the path of slaughtering all the little guys and inching that much closer to the dark side.

All of that is doable, something I can swallow, but the glaring fact that if Anakin really was so attached to his mom, where were his efforts to save her before this point. He had almost a decade to hire a space pirate or a bounty hunter or somebody with a lot of guns to go in, grab his mom, and plant her on a nice little resort planet. Anakin was a war hero...he could have negotiated with Palpatine, could have worked with Obi-Wan to convince him to save the mom. But he didn't....and the real issue is that up until this point, there is no attachment to his mom. No emails, no Facebook pokes, nothing that would even give us any reason to understand why he cared so much.  It was just a contrived plot point to attempt to push Anakin to become Darth Vader. BUT WHY COULDN'T WE SEE MORE OF THAT INTERNAL STRUGGLE? Then it would've been believable our dear war hero boy wonder Anakin could have stooped so low.


2) Love chemistry that is unbelievable, even in a galaxy far, far away: To set the stage, please see this stunning example of how this love story got so hot...there are about two more hours of them sitting on this freaking balcony going gaga over each other, so I will spare you the pain...

Again, this is a perfect example of the plot of the story and where it needs to go that dictates what the characters say or do. Granted, the plot forces the characters to act, but in this example, the plot was making the character act in a way that was out of their nature or personality. The characters should inherently have their attributes and it is the plot that brings out their best or worst attributes, but in the case of Anakin's and Padme's love story, they weren't acting naturally, but just because the director wanted them to have children to fall in line with his overall story, they had to fall in love, and unnaturally they did. Many have said that George Lucas didn't care about episode 2 and just wanted to get to the meat of episode 3, and that was clearly evident by the dialog between these two. That, and it just went on...for far too long. It's hard to fall asleep during Star Wars, but this subplot sure made a good case for it. In short, for writing purposes, character interactions in general, and love stories in particular, need to have characters that relate to each other on some level, need to have dialog that conveys their inner desires and is strengthened by the plot (not dictated by the plot) and needs to not be dragged on until we are all beating our heads (KISS - keep it short and sweet).

3) Characters that serve no purpose don't belong in our story! Jar Jar Binks...need I say more? Rumors were that Jar Jar Binks was suppose to be a Chewbacca kind of character, but he only served to infuriate people, and on top of it, served no purpose other than a distraction. I suppose I am of the old school of thought that I hate characters that do not necessarily contribute to our overall resolution of our plot. The less is more adage comes to mind. Meaning, instead of introducing extraneous amounts of characters, wouldn't it be more productive and of more value if as a writer we focus on improving the conflict surrounding our main protagonist/antagonist? One example is the introduction of Count Dooku as a villain, which would be perfectly reasonable, and provided some good battles such as this famous one:

However, others have pointed out, and I am in complete agreement, that raising Darth Maul up as the main person we love to hate would've been a better use of an antagonist. It seemed like Darth Maul might have died too quickly, and then another villain (Count Dooku) was hastily introduced to fill that role. Would it not have been better to have another conflict which didn't end in Darth Maul's death, but an arm-chopping battle, which almost kills both Anakin and Darth Maul, but really sets the stage for an epic battle in the next movie? Like many superhero movies, we see time and time again the good guys fighting the same bad guys, and no one dies, or they die and come back to life again, only to fight another day. AND WE LOVE IT! Because when it comes to writing, we love conflict. I think that diversification of your primary characters versus making a divers array of characters is a much better use of literary talent. Plus it enables us to really focus on that one character instead of spreading ourselves too thin.

To reiterate, I believe the reason why these movies were so harshly criticized by fanboys like myself lies in the problem of character development rather than plot development so much. They acted out of character too often, created unbelievable love stories, and in general introduced superfluous characters where focusing on the ones that were killed off would've been a better approach.

Agree or disagree? Let me know, thanks!

-C