Writing

Adventures in Editing – The Seven Isaacs

(sorry for the long post… iPad won’t let me “Read More”)

A couple days ago, I posted a photo of the recently finished up corrections draft of my novel, THE SEVEN ISAACS. it boasted a nice, staggering number of 100,000 words. It boggles my mind that I actually wrote something that big. It clocked in somewhere around 550 pages. Yes, I tend to be wordy. I like to write. I also like to write here and tend to get wordy here. In my mind, a blog should be filled wi the written word of it’s owner to really open up that avenue into that bogger’s mind. So that’s what I do here.

My novel has been a long time coming and I really am busting my ass to get it truly finished and all the typos corrected and all the formatting stuff fixed so that I can get it on the market in October. It’s a rush, but it’s the best time of year to release my book. I try and deny the science fiction aspects of my novel, because to me it’s not about science or fantasy at all. It’s about humanity. It’s about being human and learning to be human. That being said, it is science fiction and the best time of year to release a scifi and horror book is Halloween. So, there, we have a goal. Goal is set.

Each and every day I am spending reading my novel aloud to myself to find the mistakes that need to be corrected. I have sent the book out to a few friends and family and acquaintances as well as gotten it into the hands of a couple agents and publishers (who declined btw) I know friends and family aren’t always the most objective when reviewing and there can tend to be some bias there, but I do trust the people that I have handed the book over to. I trust them to not hold back and to play it straight for me.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. Never a novel, but I’ve been writing for a very long time. I wrote my first script in 1998 and self produced my first film based on that script in 2001. Then, I was off. I was a writing machine. My early work is CRAP. Utter garbage. Some of it got better with time. Two Days with Juliet, my feature from 2003, garnered itself a couple small awards that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t written so much shit. Juliet was a story about a cutter who was dealing with the sudden loss of her parents. It was a very tightly wound story that I wrote around one location. The characters were great. Deep and well thought out real people. That was the first time characters appeared in my writing and not caricatures.

That script had zero editing involved. I wrote what I shot and shot what I wrote. It was the perfect script. There was no room anywhere to cut anything. I thought it was the Same thing with Cold Winter. My backyard, again, award-winning, WWII spaghetti western. The script was tight, but this, I ending up learning a valuable lesson about editing. When you film something and one shot Is completely fucked and you have to rewrite the final film around that missing scene, can get interesting. You learn how much can be said and not shown and shown and not said with missing scenes. I ended up cutting ten minutes of scenes from the film, because we couldn’t keep them for various continuity reasons.

With a book, I have a tough time editing. It’s difficult for me to know what and where to cut scenes. So, I have to go with my gut. My gut tells me. My instincts let me know how much is too much and what is good and not good and what pushes the story forward and what is just filler.

About three years ago I started the novel. Then it got put aside for many months after a few chapters had been written. Then life got in the way and writer’s block got in the way. I’ve always hated that chapter. The transitionary chapter between the old me and the new me was a mess. I wrote it when my life was a mess. I didn’t truly become a writer until I got an iPad and I was able to write with the flick of a finger.

So. I the process of the third read through… I completely cut out chapter six. It’s gone. I went from 100,000 words down to 97,000 words with that flick and swipe of a finger. A short rewrite at the intro of chapter seven…. And poof. Fixed.

This morning I get an email from a friend who has been somewhat of a creative sounding board with me for the last few years. She doesn’t pull any punches and lays everything down straight. She’s always the first to tell me stuff is too wordy. Me… I just see the movie in my head.

This is what she had to say about my novel, which she hasn’t finished yet:

” I was enjoying what I was reading, but, as you know, there is a lot of editing down I think that can help.  But it is unique and, in a word, visonary.”

Visionary.

To me, that’s not a word I take lightly.

Thank you for the compliment. Hopefully I can get the book out to a few more readers and start getting some feedback before I decide to develop this into a tv series or something!

The Seven Isaacs – synopsis

The Seven Isaacs – Synopsis

When Eight awoke he never suspected it would be the last time he would see Father.  He also never suspected that he, along with his brothers and sisters would suddenly be thrust into the wild, hunted by an elite and specially trained military task force.

Eight and his six siblings are by-products of an underground, illegal human cloning experiment.  Born and raised in a laboratory under constant scrutiny, observation and experimentation, they’ve rarely, if ever seen the blue skies of the world outside. 

One day, the alarm sounds and the man they call Father ushers them toward safe passage, as the laboratory is seized and shut down by a government task force. The seven aptly named and numbered children are forced into a world unknown and unseen by their senses to experience the vivid realities that we consider day to day living.  While struggling with the rising emotions of anger, greed, love, loss and religion, they quickly learn of their delicate place in this world along with the frailty of their bodies and minds as they cope with medical side-effects of their condition as only Father could explain.
 
Oh, and lest we forget, the task force that is set upon their capture and if necessary, extermination of this inhuman and abnormal breed of humanity.

The Seven Isaacs spans 100,000 words and dissects the journey of the seven children as they discover the modern world for the first time, for better and for worse, while fighting for their lives against a military that is hunting them and the secrets in their past that haunt them.  Bordering on a science fiction modern reality and medical discovery, the story unfolds and gently touches on the philosophical effects that human cloning can have on the minds of children when faced with the harsh realities of their differences in this world.

Hit me up if you want to give it a read.

100,110 words!!!! Free book anyone?

I just finished up the first REAL run through of making corrections on my novel, THE SEVEN ISAACS. Now, I feel it is ready for people to read.

I have been blogging here for the better part of a year and have done it more of a personal release than anything else, and have never truly embraced the depth of the social connections in tumblr. After the last few weeks I have begun to expand my tumblr horizons.

I have seventeen followers at the moment.

I know the easiest way to gather followers is to show some post a few tags and nipple piercings for a couple days and I’ll have all sorts of followers, but damn me… That’s not going to garner me readers. It’s going to find me lurkers and titmongers. so… I have no idea what to do…

But, if you are one of my seventeen followers And would like to read my novel, hit my box and I will get you an ebook version for your enjoyment.

I will reblog the synopsis shortly

So I came home from vacation to this.  My ONE AND ONLY COPY of MY NOVEL.  I had a single copy printed up just for posterity reasons, as well as for formatting and sizing purposes.  I needed to see how it really looked.  A novel isn’t really a novel until it’s tangible and in your hands is it?

The editing is coming along.  Soon I’ll have links for the ebook and such available.

So, I came across this today. They are some handwritten chapter outlines for my novel The Seven Isaacs. …and wouldn’t you know it, i didn’t follow this at all! Good thing. My stream of consciousness was WAY better and took me to a special dark place to write from. I am absolutely fascinated by the process of creativity.

This is the design I made for the cover of my novel, The Seven Isaacs.  I finished it up not too long ago, and it is in the process of being corrected and edited as we speak.  It’s a long process that hopefully won’t take too much longer, then I will have links and free copies via ebook for people.   the cover speaks multitudes and is yet abstract enough to make you want to read more. There’s still some work to do both on the cover and on the book itself.. but we are getting there!

I knew it was coming.

I have been on vacation this week and just haven’t felt the need to sit down and plop down some words.

A few years ago, my son was diagnosed with pseudoachondroplasia. 

That is a GIANT word.  Essentially what it is, is a bone disease where the joints at the end of all of your bones that connect you from the hip bone to the leg bone to the anklebone and ALL of every other joint in your body… they don’t develop properly.  Where a normal person has a ball and socket, in the case of some instances of Pseudoachondroplasia, the ball and sockets just don’t grow there.  A lot of times it’s like a nub in a pocket kinda deal. 

He has dealt with it for a few years now.  Before his mother and I split up, we noticed it as a baby, but the doctors didn’t see any reason for alarm, until it came time to go to school and the physical didn’t go so well.  Since then, it’s been tests and xrays and all sorts of bullshit just trying to figure out exactly what it is that he has.

Now that it has a name, it has it’s consequences.  At the most recent checkup, where they have been tracking some slight scoliosis caused by this, I brought up the fact that he’s been struggling a lot the past few months.  Stairs are almost impossible for him and his legs hurt a lot.

I give the kid credit, because I think he has developed a tolerance for pain that we will never know.  One of the common side effects of pseudoacondroplasia is an early onset of arthritis, as early as age ten in some cases.  My son hasn’t hit that yet, but I can sometimes see the early signs lingering there.  He’s in pain.  One trip to the mall and he is wiped before you can make a loop, let alone get him back to the parking lot. 

Those consequences developed as a bowing of the legs.  To picture it, when he walks he looks like the cowboys in the old cartoons.  Just picture that on a real person and with a shitload of pain involved.  Yeah.  Not fun anymore, is it?  So the little guy struggles and he has pain reliever just about every day half due to growing pains and the other half due to his situation.

At the most recent visit that I almost write about and keep avoiding subconsciously here… the doctor got a little spooked after he excused us to leave and I pointed his legs out.  The doctor panicked when he quickly examined him and told us right then and there that we were looking at surgery options.  Because the hips haven’t developed right, it has caused the bowing in his legs.  The underdeveloped hips led to misshapen knee joints which caused the bowing to begin with. 

My son immediately broke down and collapsed in horror and melted into tears.  I don’t blame him.  I was right there with him.  I was pretty damn close myself.

The doctor immediately referred us to the best orthopedic surgeon in the area and we were on our way.  The doctor must have been scared, because the appointment was mere days away and getting in that quickly with the surgeon can’t be easy. 

My son is strong.  He takes it better than any adult would.  A few days have passed and he is nothing but an ox.  He is ready to take on the world and understands that this could help him walk better. 

…just don’t tell him what the procedure is going to be.

…we are most likely looking at the breaking of some bones in order to reconstruct them to where they need to be.  There’s going to be casts and wheelchairs and physical therapy… it’s gonna make his summer really blow. 

And for that, I can’t contain the pain I feel for him.