Doubt

What a bastardly force. It creeps in everywhere, every moment, to the point where I am convinced I am not and never will be good enough.

I am Patrick Eckhardt. Tests taken as a child put me in the top 1% of the nation in intellect. I was a high school valedictorian, a state-qualifying athlete, and a National Merit Scholar (top 1.5% I think). I was the life of the party in college. I was Prince Harry, sitting in the pub brimming with promise. I was loved and respected and admired. I am.

I am as bold as a lion.

Monday evening freewrite

Tomorrow is December first, meaning as of midnight tonight I have exactly one month to finish grad school applications. In the range of the 140 American MFA programs in Creative Writing, I will apply for one school in the top 15, four in the top 50, possibly another in the top 100, and one in the bottom 16. If I can't get into one of them, I will be in a very tough place.

And this is the problem with writing: its only value is in the public forum. The naive purist, I suppose, will point to the value of personal enrichment and growth, but truth be told, every piece of writing is ultimately written for public consumption. The risks of seeking a public forum are, of course, both success and failure. It would be nice to say failure is not an option, but frankly, it is. Not even just an option, but a mathematical probability.

Giving up, on the other hand, doesn't have to be an option and won't be. But persevering in the face of failure is enough to cause any person to question every step that led to the point of failure, and every step to come.

Success, I am sure, breeds its own perils. But that is a bridge I am more willing to cross when I come to it.

Making moves and enjoying words

Today was a good writing day. Between last night and this morning, I re-wrote and refined the first six pages of what I plan on being my writing sample for grad schools. I scouted out the very initial threads of a personal statement, and it is something I think can be good, once it is refined.

I don't know what I can do about a statement on teaching writing, although I think it is just a matter of time until it comes together. These things are coming together. Just need to find a way to nail the GRE, and things will be ready to roll. After that, it's a waiting game.

The good we try to do

I read a friend's blog tonight, a friend who I love dearly and talk to sparsely. I really wish I were better about things like that, but for whatever reason I am not. Perhaps all it takes is effort, and I know I have effort in me, but my brain does not remember to do what my heart wants.

He is a dear friend, one of the dearest, who I think for a season in life understood me better than anyone else, and probably still understands me better some days than I understand myself, because we are so much the same. There was a trying time in his life a few years back that he talked about, a time in his life where I tried to help him. It was romance, of course, but then the Bible uses romance as an archetype of our relationship with God, so romance is never just romance. It becomes, quite literally, supernatural--bigger than life.

I thought I knew what was best, and I'll be damned if i didn't try my hardest to make sense of his relationship, I knew her and him very well, and maybe it was just selfish of me, to try to help work out a relationship that was out of my fantasy as much as anyone else's.

In the end, they broke up, and are still both broken. In different ways, but there is brokenness there. And there is brokenness with God then, a shattering, a cracking that let in doubt, bitterness, pain, disillusionment--and I wonder, what could I have done to make things better?

I tried, I really did. I tried and I loved and I gave of myself to them and it didn't just fail, it supernova-ed. It exploded and destroyed entire solar systems. The good I tried to do--how much of it is my fault, years later?

"ditto"

Really?

A lesson in math

A 400 page word would contain approximately 100,000 words. Given a pace of 1000 words a day, hard to stick to as evidenced by my lack of consistency, that would take 100 days, or 14 1/4 weeks. Add in a weekly day off, and that adds another 14 days, or two weeks. That makes it about a 4 month project, assuming consistency, determination, etc, etc, to complete a 400 page work.

Which says nothing of shaping the lumpy manuscript from something worth writing to something worth reading.

Wing Commander, reporting in.

It's early in the morning, and I didn't sleep much last night.

But what I did do is start writing again. I wrote about 5 pages--1500 words--a re-birthed my dedication to the novel. Poor Sammy has been living in stasis (and in the midst of a crisis, I might add) for a month now. But the guy's getting along now. Home to visit dad and bro, then off to discover America, I suppose.

My temptation this morning as I'm sitting here is for a titanium spoon. Yes, a titanium spoon: 16 ounces, extra long handle (good for cooking while camping), durable, etc, etc. Also probably for all the use it'd get, a waste of $7.95. I think metals like that (titanium, tungsten, and so forth) always remind me of Privateer. Perhaps that why I want to buy them: I'm buying a memory, a piece of childhood. I'm buying summers playing video games with the Jordans, who introduced us to the joy of Privateer, Civilization...and later (in a way) Jesus.

Perhaps I'm buying back innocence.

The introduction to Privateer (don't know how to embed video...that would be something good to learn. [And...learned!]

And that's a wrap

1000 words and they did not come easy, but I created about 4 pages out of nothing.

Well, not out of nothing, out of 65 pages in Times New Roman size 11 font.

Oops.

So I'm on page 71 now, which gives me a lot more confidence that if I finish Book I by the end of the semester (3 weeks, I think) I will have 100+ pages.

Words came slow tonight, as I'm not completely sure where I'm going, and I'm tired and dirty and distracted. Piss.

Hopefully tomorrow will loosen up a bit and I'll be able to get a bit more done. Tonight was discouraging overall, but there is still light ahead, so I will keep moving in its direction. (Hope it's not an anglerfish.)

On Writing a Novel, Entry #12

Well, three weeks of laziness and one week of vacation later, I have fifteen pages written, zero blog entries, and a somewhat shaky view of where I'm going.

As far as positives go, I know I can get to 100 pages of writing by semester end, which, for the temporal requirements of class, is enough. A more negative note is that I am not sure Book I of the novel will make it to 100 pages, meaning I will start on book two, while my heart is in perfecting Book I. Still, perhaps I need to write it in its entirety before I can really know what perfection (or at least its best pursuit) will be for the story.

I think I need to finish Book I before I will really understand where Book II will take Sammy. I am sort of scared of becoming a Rabbit, Run clone--essentially, what I know is that Sammy will run. Still, I do not have either the style or perhaps ability of Updike, and no matter what Sammy will not be Rabbit. But the similarities are unavoidable--former athlete who, rather than deal with the pressures of a disappointing/disillusioning life, flees. I did not mean to do this, and yes there are blatant differences, but...to steal some more, so it goes. (Thanks Kurt.)

Essentially what has happened since I last blogged is an unlocking of Sammy, to an extent. I do think that for it to work, I need to go back and lock him up a bit more. He goes two ways in a lot of places--closed off, but still likable, still socially comfortable. I think perhaps I want him to be likable, to be charismatic and appealing, but that isn't him, can't be him, because his life is shut off. Still, that is a proofing issue and not for immediate concern, I suppose.

Tonight (and I start so late, and waste so much time...) I have to figure out how Sammy and Lydia react after their first real emotionally intimate moment. I have to figure out a way to make an unbelievable act not only believable, but to flow within the current of the story. I think it is doable; or, I know it is doable, but whether or not it is best will be seen. Perhaps more subtlety makes sense, but I like the idea of Mr. Vonachen being a liberating force for Sammy, an enabler, a strengthener. A fairy godmother, to pull on the old archetype, in some ways.

Anyway. Off to write. Hopefully about 1500-2000 words later I will be in bed content with my work.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #11

I kicked butt tonight. Probably 2000 words, maybe 2500.

Didn't blog post and stayed up way too late, but got a lot of work done.

A fight between Sammy and Lydia. Tension between Sammy and Mr. Vonachen. Rising action. Blah blah blah I hope it doesn't become melodramatic, but I do not think it will, I do not think the characters (and the depth of said characters) would allow it.

I am encouraged tonight and know that my dream is attainable. It is as if at the end of a long corridor, and in the corridor is a rapid current flowing towards me, a river I must find a way to travel upstream and past. And so while the going is slow and the terrain treacherous, I am making progress, I see my goal, and I see others who are no different than myself up ahead of me, and that is enough to press forward.

Defeated again by a brain too tired for its own good, and a procrastinator's penchant for waiting until after the point of no return to write.

300-400 fairly terrible words, I think....have to finish this section in the morning, see how that treats me.

Ugh.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #10

Not quite sure where to go from here. Mr. Vonachen has kind of (uncharacteristically) spilled his guts to Sammy.

I feel like Sammy has to reply somehow...but I'm not sure how to do that. Basically my story has been vacillating between Sammy/Lydia conversations, and one other day of the week when Sammy interacts with others. Perhaps just to fit in another day--just a day at the alley. Maybe league night, on the weekends. Sammy could run into an old teammate. That still bugs me--if this is a sweet bowling alley and supported by the surrounding community, then I'm sure there would still be people who tried to seek out Sammy.

His high school coach, for one. Old teammates. Ex-girlfriends? Regardless, he's close enough to home that people would definitely have dropped by the alley by now, and yet there's no mention of it.

I've kicked around the idea of a high school coach coming out and really helping Sammy, although Mr. Vonachen's kind of taken that role. Would they be rough? Crude? Sympathetic? Farther advanced in life (married, kids even?) or stuck in high school still?

Retreating to an earlier note, I'm wondering if my chronology (two days per week, essentially, and implied minutiae in-between) needs work. Do I need more days, more interactions, more happenings throughout the week, or is it okay to climb ahead at the pace it is currently at? None of my readers have commented to that end thus far, but still, it is worth searching out. I hate that proofing is so time-consuming, because I wish I could be fixing these small errors as I go. Oh well, I suppose sometimes there are no shortcuts.

Just writing and reading and more writing and more reading. Right now that's all there is.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #9

Back in action, baby.

"Spring Break" hasn't exactly been the wave of productivity I hoped for. Oh well, it was a long weekend and there is still time.

I worked over page one again today. I've put probably 4 hours into page one alone. Well, only 199-299 to go, right? Still, I think it reads the smoothest of any of the pages by far, and it is actually at this point approaching good writing. It is discouraging to look at how much I have ahead of me, but it is encouraging to see something start to form. This must be how a sculptor feels when he starts to see an arm emerge from a chunk of marble.

Actually, I have no idea how a sculptor sculpts, so maybe they wouldn't get that particular moment. But the sentiment is the same.

Mr. Vonachen's character is changing. He'll change a lot this chapter, and then I will have to go back and change him. Which is okay--this new development speaks to the respect Sammy feels for him, and his "goodness." He will be an imparter of wisdom, and as such we will delve into his backstory a bit. I think the reader (or at least the writer) will be intrigued by him, and will want to know more about him. Since I am holding off on Sammy's story (or at least teasing it out slowly) hopefully Mr. Vonachen's story can be enough of a stopgap before moving on to the much slower "real" plot.

Brit pointed out that I have some character issues thus far. Sammy is at once withdrawn/depressed and yet gregarious and likeable. She said she can't get a finger on if he's shy or withdrawn or not. I guess she's right and I need to clarify that. Originally I wanted to write this as an exploration, to an extent, of depression. Sammy's depression comes from fleeing life instead of confronting it and living it. But at the same time he does still have some confidence, some expectations of himself...plus he has to be likeable. It's an quandary that I need to solve so my reader doesn't have to without any help. Withdrawn (to an extreme) seems more difficult, in that is will be an impediment to any conversation and that sort of opening to character revelation. It will also slow down an already slow story even more, because he will necessarily take longer to get out of his shell. I suppose it would make the narration more introspective and could even necessitate a first-person POV fiven that I'd need ro replace external dialogue with internal. I do not think I can do that.

Still...maybe we need to see Sammy spend some time on his own. So far he is always working or talking with Lydia. What does he do when alone in his room? How does that loneliness affect him? Who is he when he is only with himself?

For now, Mr. Vonachen. Perhaps I need to take the block of marble, take off all its corners, and start to create a rough shape before I can bring out anything too specific elsewhere.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #8

Well, trying to do what I failed at last night. First priority, staying awake with functional cognition. Second priority, painting a beautiful tension between Sammy and Lydia, a tension of distances intimacy, a convenience of time, place, and loneliness, and a two-sided fear floating them like repelling magnets.

On a far less literary subject, I am absolutely loony with distraction, as in 43 minutes the NFL free agency season officially begins. Of course, I do not expect the Bears to be active immediately, if even within the weekend. But still...what if?

So: first writing, then reading as a reward.

Oh, and back onto a literary subject: I received Kenny's book in the mail today. Somehow I ordered it from a British shop selling a book printed in America by an American author. Odd. That book has as many stamps on its passport as I do.

First I am going to read his book of short stories. I read a few before, but never read through the whole thing. That is my first order of business. My second is to read his novel. And my third is to leach off any useful information he can provide me regarding publishing, the pursuit of an agent, the cynical yet necessary financial consideration, and, of course, just some catching up. It has been too long, with so many of my high school friendships that I've let slip away. I must get better at that.

I must also get better at my faithfulness to Sammy and Lydia, and the others in Cedar Fort and Axtell.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #7, addendum

I cannot do this tonight. 150 words later, I am exhausted.

Goodnight.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #7

I am exhausted.

I skipped writing last night for the sake of Steinbeck, so tonight I am getting back on track. 1000 words.

I realized something yesterday. My 10,300 words is a full 5.5 pages less than Amanda's 10,300 words. It is the unfortunate side-effect of a character/narrative-driven story, rather than a plot/dialogue-driven story. My pages are "thicker."

But, the more I can do to press myself forward, the more I will accomplish in the end. I find myself questioning if I can pull off this piece--and I think that is the right place to be. Were I confident in that ability, I would not be striving hard enough, and would not be using this writing as an expansion of myself, but rather a continuation of the status quo.

Tonight I am trying to delicately weave a conversation where Sammy is trusting Lydia more and more, and enjoying her int he present but not ready to let her into his past. He feels an impossible and wrong fear--a fear that causes him to shift the conversation to her, rather than on himself.

I think she will like this shift, and start to think more about him than an idle conversationalist/companion. So I have to show: his fear, his diversion, her surprise (and pleasure), and her story. Will she dive into her story? I am not sure. I think she, too, is willing to give the present but not the past. And I think that will be enough for tonight.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #6

I got distracted with everything but this blog and forgot to start here. Perhaps that is why my brain is constipated tonight--there is no flow, no sense of direction. I have cerebral thoughts and ideas, but no passion to put into them, no reason to make them alive. Sammy is a transparent character in less than 10,000 words right now and no person.

They are all characters and contrived and desperate. Every one of them is desperate because this is all they have, their only chance to live, and I am the poor vessel chosen to bring them to an uncaring world.

Ugh. It is melodramatic, that is for sure.

The more I write, the more I realize I will have to write. There are an absurd number of words to be written so far, and what is there needs years of work to make readable. As it is, I have the accolades of people whose compliments are insulting--this is crap, I know it is crap, do not patronize me.

I suppose if I simply can't get published, I can always just twist the ending to mention Jesus and settle into the friendly (if mind-numbing) world of Christian fiction. Perhaps I should be there in the first place; after all, I am a Christian. But I simply can't believe writing hokey stories of salvation for bored and listless housewives is a worthy pursuit.

Is that my call, Lord? (Please no.)

--Ice cream break--

Even this post is crap. This is stupid. It is not my night.

Perhaps if I just write I will soon enough find something worth saving. Or something worth throwing out in a fit of cleansing. I suppose either one will be cathartic at some point or another, and even necessary.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #5, addendum

1,124 words. 2 am bedtime.

I rule. I suck.

On Writing a Novel, Entry #5

Well, I've hit it--the wall, if you will, if there is one, it has been hit and I am, rather than charging through, laying content to play on this side of it.

It has been eleven days since I have posted a blog entry (I'm sure all of you, the readers I don't have, are anxiously awaiting more), and in those eleven days I have actually lost some of my total word count. On the plus side, I re-worked much of page one. I probably cut out 150 words, which were all superfluous. (Well, superfluous at best--plain bad at both worst, and most common probably.)

So, it's 12:41, I've wasted the last two hours (at least), and I'm sitting down to write, not knowing where I'm going. But, I'm writing. I'm writing and I'm putting down words--I'm planting a seed and raising a tree, that will someday become a large tree, which will someday become a log, and then become a log cabin for me (or, for Sammy) to dwell in for a time. Something not only built by my own two hands, but something tended, carefully created out of the smallest of something in the first place.

In some ways it is beautiful. In the reality of this moment, though, it is tiresome. I have any excuse you need: my long fingernails hit the keys funny, I should trim them. It is late, I should be in bed. My outline isn't in front of me, and I'll probably change this whole section anyway. I've waited 11 days, why not make it a round dozen? (And then, a baker's dozen? A fortnight?) Whatever the reasons, at some point my resolution has to be stronger than the cunning of my sloth. Tonight is a night where industry wins, though "industry" will probably be offended when I read back over what it creates and realizes the whole thing was a waste.

Still, it is a means to an end, or an investment in a future, for myself and my family and the Lord. I cannot imagine not fulfilling this gift--it will kill me if I cannot get words out beautifully.

Sammy, you better be worth it. (Patrick, you better be worth it.)

On Writing a Novel, Entry #4

Tonight I sit down to a very late start. I spent the weekend off--enjoying Tennessee, the mountains, great grilling, great friendship--the only thing lacking was great writing. That was in very short supply. And by short supply, of course, I mean non-existent.

Perhaps it was good to leave Sammy for a while, to step back and relax him, relax my brain and my fingers to let the story simmer and develop. But I think it was more laziness. I was starting to develop a steady rhythm (which is abnormal for me, and I was overly proud, as you can tell from my last post), and suddenly the rhythm is gone. And now I'm realizing that the end of this week is the mid-point of the semester, at the end of which I am supposed to have 100 pages written.

I have, concurrently, 21. I have 4 more hand-written, and one 1/2 more typed for the future. This means I will have to triple my current output to complete on time. And I wonder how much it is worth it--how much value is there in spewing out page after page of crap, and how much more or less valuable is it to make sure the foundation is solid before I move on to the next chapter? I suppose it may not be possible to perfect a chapter first (if ever) because it could change to fit the story as it develops. Obviously I am not completely sure where I am growing, so how do I know how to build the foundation?

I need to know where I'm going, but I suppose until I do I can enjoy the ride, and my stops camping along the way. We're not in a hurry. Take it in, breathe it in and enjoy the crisp mountain air of literature.

On a side note: I purchased Kenny's first published novel tonight. I'm proud of him. He's a hell of a guy, and I'm proud to have called him my friend. I should call or write or something--reach out to stay in touch with him. I really, really suck at that. Really bad. I hope I get better someday because there are so many invaluable people from my past that I would love to draw back closer to me.

Perhaps someday. They all, after all, have made me what I am today. And so every word I write is them, too.

On writing a novel, Entry #3

For a time, tonight, I thought that I couldn't bear the thought of sitting down to write. My excuses were plentiful and effective: I got home from work at nine, and needed to relax. I spent so much in preparing for and going through my peer review today that I simply did not have any energy left for writing. I have misplaced my chapter outline, and having finished chapter three, I don't know now where to go.

I also thought, perhaps, to cop-out by doing edit work, or by letting my manuscript "rest" or "breathe" or whatever other romantic procrastination I could think of.

But I found that when I sat down to write a small entry, excusing myself to my unreading internet audience, that I couldn't stand the idea of not writing tonight. I do not want to go to bed without 1000 words having been created, find their way from my brain to my fingers, to the computer, to art. So I brewed a mug of tea, opened my work-in-progress, and now go to figure out what to write.

On writing a novel, Entry #2

So far so good. Last night's limitations got me to bed earlier than has become the norm, and with a greater sense of satisfaction than I have had in quite some time. I had always heard that any writer serious about his craft should write no less than 1000 words per day--now, accomplishing the practice of it encouraging in that I am finding a discipline and determination that I never knew existed. I honestly do not know if I have been this determined about anything as I was when I first knew Christ, or when I peaked out in my running career.

Which is, of course, at once encouraging and discouraging. How many years have I loafed through my various pursuits, seeking the easiest way to impress others, rather than the best way to treat myself and my gifts?

But regret and melancholy do not do me any good. We are now in the IS, and it is enough to know that I continue to plod forward, taking strides, and believe in the best that lies in me.

Tomorrow we will be workshopping my first 5000 words in class. I am sure to be at once entranced and enraged at the comments of my peers. I suffer from an obstinate belief that I know more than anyone else and will come to greater things through sheer intelligence and determination. I may be wrong, but I do believe that given enough determination I will be right. Of course I do appreciate insight, any insight, but I am the fastest I know to defend and dismiss as myopic rather than accept my own blindnesses. Perhaps it is the ownership I am not feeling, the pride, the sense of doing and creating. This is my story, Sammy is my character, his life is, in many ways, my life but more--my life extrapolated, distorted, onto frame of different dimensions. Same yet totally different, but still mine nonetheless.

And I will learn to live by my words, which I should now go commit to paper.

Entry #1

I am currently writing a novel. I no longer say "attempting" to write, because I have now decided that I am simply going to write. That I will be a writer, that I am an artist, and that I have greatness within me.
Steinbeck wrote to a friend as a "warm-up" before digging in to write. I think, perhaps, this approach may be more helpful to me than attempting to start cold. Once rolling, I know that I can find prodigious results, but all too often it is the starting that stops me. Perhaps ten, twenty, or thirty minutes, or an hour (or a day) after I sit down I will finally begin to write. So here is my warm-up, my stretching as I attempt to go in already moving. Getting a running start.
Hopefully, too, I can work out tiresome athletic metaphors and not fill my prose with that sort of rubbish.
Back to the decision to write: I will write. I will write and write and write. Steinbeck wrote a self-imposed minimum of 1000 words per day. I see no reason I cannot do this. I often wondered how writers did it, but I believe I am learning. With repetition comes productivity, with productivity comes love. I love writing. I love sitting down to create. I love the realization that, come hell or high water (I am working out cliches too, I suppose), I will write until I have written something worthy of being read. And then I will write more, until I write something more worthy of being read, until someday I can write something that needs to be read.
Steinbeck did it this way. I suppose he is, in some ways, my current muse--by necessity, because of my SR class, but also as an inspiration from a person whose personality nearly mirrors my own, even if our philosophies and theologies do not easily co-exist. (Indulgent side note/extrapolation: The more I learn about Steinbeck, the more I see similarities to myself. Which is encouraging in that I do have the makeup, the constitution, the inborn ability to be a writer...if I can cultivate that, discipline the puer aeternus, chain the eternal boy to a desk and mine until I find diamond.) It is going to happen. It is simply a mechanism, now, of work and time.