Matthew Harrop's Blog

I think I really need to stop mentioning what I'm working on until it's done.

The more I write, the more aware of my work I become, and the quicker I can smell the garbage when it's coming out. It's happened with a few different works already, so I should know better by now. Maybe I do - I'm going to talk about this project, but only because it is complete, at least as complete as a third draft can be - and I'm reaching out to some beta readers to see if I can get some feedback on it before I send it along to the rest of the wide world.

I really loved working on this one. The characters popped right off the page in ways that they haven't for me before. I found myself writing extra chapters and just imaging things happening to Nonsa and Bevin and the whole cast of characters, and it was so easy, because I had such a complete picture of them in my mind. This book was nothing like anything I've written before either, so it took some time to really submerge myself into the world I was trying to build, but I think that just helped me be more intensely aware of what I was doing and why. I also think I came up with something unique because I was not already steeped in steampunk when I started writing this novel. I scooped up some steampunk while I was working on this one - not too much, for fear those words would start bleeding into my own - and I could see some of the staples of the genre that I came to love (everyone loves when the big gadgets enter), and some that were not at all my thing (the corny dialogue that makes you roll your eyes so often you get a headache).

I think that steampunk is a strong genre though, and has a lot of potential for great storytelling. I sort of skirted around the edge of it myself, choosing to focus more on the interpersonal relationships of the characters and the politics of the world than in the minutiae of gears and levers. I keep calling this a 'Steampunk Sci-Fi/Fantasy' or, for those not familiar, a 'Victorian Fantasy', but I've got a lot of positive feedback just on the concept, so I'm excited to hear what some readers have to say when they get the whole whopping story thrown at them.

I'll have to think about what to work on next while this is out for review. Maybe I'll take another dance with the Ghost Boner (there is no working title, but that's a possibility), or I have got a notion for a fantasy novel that I've been mulling around, one that combines the fantasy novel I never finished and the Neolithic early-man saga that I never got to either...

You read that right. I hope that wasn't shocking enough for you to write me off as a total freak, but I've been working on a new novel and that's about where I'm at with a working title.

I hit a wall with the Tinkers - I didn't like where it was going, I felt like it was too slow but also coming up to the climax a little too quickly. I had so much more I wanted to say, and it was already shaping up to be the longest thing I've ever written. So it's on the back-burner now. I took a break with it, but I do intend to get back to it. I just thought I would take some time to work on a project that seemed a little easier (building a fantasy world is not as easy as I thought it would be). I've had this idea in my head for a while, and I thought I would open the floodgates and see what poured out.

The idea is that a teenage boy dies while trying to lose his virginity (it's a real cluster of a situation, but I already wrote that part and it was damn fun), and so as a ghost his unfinished business is to lose his virginity. Until then, he's stuck on that oft-explored plane between this life and the next. I thought this would be a nice, light spin on an old tale. I don't know if I'm funny enough to have it turn out to match the vision in my head, but we'll see. After that, I plan on tackling the Tinkers, reading it through, and wrestling it into a finished first draft. It is a good story, and I love my main character in that one, Nonsa, she's such a badass. Her motivation needs a real tweak though, and that was one of the things that made me stop - I just wasn't buying what she was selling, you know? The other characters are pretty solid though, and I think with a little time and perspective I could turn it into something good. Then I just have to decide where I want it to end, if I want to consider it being the first in a series...

I have had so much going on in my life that I'm wary of even setting any kind of long-term goal, but I would say that tentatively I would like to see this Ghosts Can't Do It (another potential title, though that one would be copyrighted I think) as my project for the summer, and polishing up another draft of it and finishing the Tinkers as my winter project. Things should start settling into a routine soon, and then I'll put my nose right up to that grindstone.

I'll do it, too.

I know that the last post here was one where I berated myself for missing a week...

And now I've missed four.

Damn. On the bright side, I have been working on The Tinkers (the project I would love to have done by the end of the year, at least a first draft). I'll try to get an excerpt of that on the site here as soon as possible. I've been writing the first draft on my typewriter, so I've had to transcribe it all, but I've done the first fifty or so pages and am going to use my computer to finish the rest of it - turns out the rest of the family doesn't love listening to the surprisingly loud clacking of those keys when they're up early in the morning too. Who knew?

I'll make a note for myself to go through the prologue for the Tinkers and get that up here as soon as possible. I love the prologue, even in its very rough form. It's unlike anything I've published up to this point, but I think it has more of the style I would like to employ going forward - it's fantasy, with a Victorian setting, so it lets me use some more convoluted language than I could get away with in either of my first two books, and I would say it's got a little more whimsy, and I know that I for one could use some more whimsy. I find more enjoyment in those sci-fi/fantasy adventures that don't take themselves too seriously, and that's kind of what I'm going for with that one.

I've got eighteen days to finish the first draft if I'm to make my goal. I'm not quite at the climax of the story, but I'm getting there. I still have hope.

Goddammit. This was the one part of my writing life that I thought I could be proud of. I've had some time-intensive things keeping me away from the novel I'm working on in the morning, and that was where I was focusing all of my energy, but it was so reassuring to know that I was at least keeping up with these posts once a week. They're not exactly short, and they're written in as pure a voice as I've got, so that was something.

And last week I just totally spaced it.

In my defense, I've been ill. It's a small cold that's had me down, but it had me down pretty good (not pretty well, for obvious, play-on-word reasons). I haven't done a damn thing on my to-do list in probably a week, between interviewing and getting a new job (woohoo! Day job!) and avoiding the charges of this awful rhinovirus.

That being said... I still feel like a failure.

And I was doing so well! I was actually keeping and using a to-do list (I'm a hopelessly forgetful guy, and it's the only thing that keeps me productive). I was writing every day. Hell, I was even spending an hour or so a day learning a second language. I was on a roll. But alas, such things never seem to last long, do they? It was like the montage in a movie where the protagonist is really getting his shit together, painting the house, fixing a busted door, pulling himself out of the chasm of debt he'd fallen into in a vain attempt to impress the woman who ended up leaving him for the personal trainer. But that montage only ever goes on for, what, maybe two minutes at the most? And that's a pretty indulgent montage, really.

Oh well. This week I'm writing this to get myself out of that hole a little. I still think I'll be able to get the first draft of The Tinkers (real title pending) done by the new year, and I even thought I would dabble in some short stories - I had an idea for a series of them that would be fun to do, maybe just to put up here on my site, but only if they don't get in the way of me finishing a damn novel. It's been too long since I've gotten to admire a stack of finished story before plunging in with a blood-red pen. I love that feeling. I want it again.

I started another short story that I think I'll put up here when I'm happy with it. I might even shop it around, see if I can get in on some other cool site somewhere. We'll see.

That's what I keep telling myself.

I want to have a manuscript done by Christmas. I've given myself the freedom to roam, and I've worked on a lot of good things, started a lot of interesting novels and learned a lot about my writing style in the process - but I just realized that Taking the Reins came out more than a year ago. And I don't have a finished first draft of anything remotely close to follow up on it with.

If you're reading this and wagging your finger at me, I get it. I never meant to take this long between books; in fact, my goal after I finished Taking the Reins was to churn out at least two books a year. I wrote that in five months (first draft), and Circles in the Dust I wrote in three. I thought I had enough ideas to keep myself going at that pace. I was done with school, I had all this time I could use to bust out those future novels...

I'm glad that I took some time to work without too much pressure, to explore some new ideas. I'm ready to get something out there, though. I'm sure you are too. I'm sure you're thinking I should be working on my next book right now, rather than writing this... and you're probably right. But it's late, and I'll be damned if I'm going to miss a day posting here. I swore I wouldn't do that, and this is the one area of my writing life that's maintaining any real discipline.

So to update, I'm working hard on a novel that I'm tentatively calling The Tinkers. I've been slaving away at my typewriter, and transcribing some of the manuscript as it stands at night, so I hope to have a little taste of that on my site soon. My goal is to have the first draft done by the year's end. I think I'll make it. It's a good story too; I was pleasantly surprised when I picked it up again, and I think it will be a good one.

I think I was doing the dishes. I might have been sweeping, but I'm pretty sure I was scrubbing a pan when Mumford and Sons came on and I heard the line, "If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won."

That is a good line. So good, in fact, that it made me put down my brush and dry my hands, so I could grab my phone and a make a note to explore that line. It evoked something large, something huge; I got the message, but I needed to digest it.

The idea here, that apathy itself is an enemy that dwarfs to many others, is something I know all about. Hell, I'm a writer. I sit and stare at a blank page for an hour before deciding I didn't want to write anything anyway, only to take a walk and come back to sit in front of the same blank page for another hour. I can't tell you how many times I've done the dishes (might have been doing that when this song came on...) just to escape my desk for a few more minutes. I'm scared. Doing things is scary.

No one ever tells you that, but it's true.

Doing just about anything you give half a shit about is scary. When you care about something, when you've set a goal and assigned yourself to some task, you have introduced the possibility of failure into your world and that is immediately scary. There's no failing when you're doing the dishes. There's no shame to be had in watching Netflix (well, maybe a little, but that's not the point). It's so much easier to dive into those shallow tasks, those empty, unfulfilling, comfort-food nothings than to embark on a quest.

You can be eaten by a dragon, and your quest is a very sudden, charred, failure.

I've noticed this theme in a few other places since this has been on my mind (anyone seen Alfred?) and in my musing, I've decided that apathy is one of the greatest threats humanity has ever known. Yes, I decided it. Regardless of anyone having noticed it before I did, I have decided that it is fact. Now.

It's easy to conjure up all the what'if scenarios that bloom from this despondent seed - what if Einstein hadn't cared what 'E' equaled? What if George Washington had never crossed the Delaware? What if Ash had never decided to catch them all? - but this line got me thinking about all the little experiences that can so easily be lost to apathy. Sure, I struggle against apathy in my writing, but the shame of giving up on that dream overshadows even that.

But I've always liked to draw. How often do I pull out a sketchpad? I'll give you hint, it's jsut often enough to have filled eight pages, and I won't tell you how long ago I bought that... I wanted to learn a language. I started learning Japanese. I hit that pretty hard for a few weeks, and then let it fade. How many hobbies, where there's not even any real pressure, do we allow to be swiped away by the paw of that very lazy bear that is apathy?

How many books will go unread because they're out of reach? How many family meals will go uncooked because it's easier to order a pizza? How many vacations will be postponed because it's hard to get the time off work? How many walks will not be taken because it's a little cold out and you'd have to get a jacket but your jacket's in your car and you don't want to go out the front to start your walk and you'd have to walk around the whole building and that's just too much of a hassle?

How many painters will never pick up a brush? How many mothers and fathers will never be because there's too much planning needed to have a child? How many lives will be looked back on with regret, not for the things done that shouldn't have been, but the opportunities passed by?

We can't let apathy be the biggest enemy we face. Fear of missing out on life, shame at giving up on our dreams, the possibility of looking back on your life with disappointment, of seeing a canvas left blank and a page unlettered and a chance at love missed. These should be the bigger enemies.

They are long-term, though; they can wait. They can be placated for a while, can't they? Failure is immediate, isn't it? Maybe that's the real issue. We just want to feel better for a second, and we can forget our shame at having to try and fail if we just lose ourselves in a season of Friends or a case of Coors or your Facebook feed.

We can't let those enemies, fear and shame, become smaller than our uncaring (don't worry, I'm not being preachy - I'm saying this to myself in the bathroom mirror right now).

I've had something bouncing around in my head, and I think I might more easily digest it if I can write it out.

I've written already about the "Self-Loathing Fire" I use to motivate myself, and I've engaged in many online discussions on the practicality of finding success as a writer. We all know that it's possible, but more often than not we remember the voices of reproachful parents and teachers and we echo their words, when they told us that writing could be a "fun hobby" but that it was a silly thing to pursue as a career. Sometimes the only way I can get a single word on the page is to imagine a day when I'm so famous a writer that I get stopped on the street, and more often I think about a life wherein I don't write at all, where I've given it up, and the despair found there is enough to get me typing away.

Recently though, I was listening to Without a Paddle by Nick Offerman (I love that guy, and was surprised to find that he writes some delectable books), wherein he traces the path from childhood to success as the lauded Ron Swanson and all his other ventures, and there was a chapter that I just can't stop rolling around my thinkin' bucket (as he might say). He paints the picture of a day where he has married a famous actress, and I believe a decent amount of work in film and TV, at least enough to have been at a place of success, and he realizes that he's made it to a place, after struggling for many years, where he can put on some Neil Diamond and roast a bowl of the good green stuff in his pool, lay back on a floaty, and just bask. Pretty quickly, though, I want to say it was before a third song had played over the outdoor speakers, he finds that basking isn't really his bag. Not only is this endearing, and fitting with the man that you come to know throughout the book, but I think I found it enlightening. I say "I think" because it's still bouncing around my head. I think I've come to at least one conclusion with regard to that trait that he describes, of eschewing a good bask and returning his nose to the grindstone.

I want that.

Not only is that the philosophy I want to have, but I think it might be the only one that might promise real success in this vocation. In this chapter he goes on to describe how he found the most success in his work, and more importantly the most satisfaction, when he found happiness in his personal life that was not conditional upon his success in his chosen trade. Like so many others, I think I would have placed this at the end of a spectrum, let's say the complacent left, as opposed to the very number-obsessed, sales-crazy right that will only be satisfied when a multi-movie deal has been signed based on a New York Times Bestselling work.

But I think (that it should be alright to begin a sentence with a conjunction, and also that) this idea isn't at the end of the spectrum. That complacent end is the home of the hobbyist who refuses to even entertain the idea of making a living as a writer. The writer who is happy just to be doing the work, regardless of the success it brings, is the happy medium. That's where I really want to be. I go there sometimes, when I'm in the throes of a good chapter, pounding away at the keyboard, when there could be nothing better than transcribing the actions of the characters I have spent so much time shaping and giving life to, but surely I pass through that place to one end of the spectrum, when I am sure that my books will only ever be a conversation-starter when someone sees them on the shelf, or I slide to the other side when I count my sales and wonder what I can do to bolster the SEO of my website.

I want to live there. I want to live in that place, where I am happy to plod along everyday, doing the work as if it doesn't matter whether the book sells, but motivated to get it out there once it's finished and make an honest effort to actually sell it, but without the pressure of its success having an effect on whether or not I start the next work. I want to achieve the zen described so adroitly in that book my Mr. Offerman; I want to sit back in my pool for a minute, before rushing out mid-song because I need so badly to get back to the work.

I want the writing to come first, and my passion for it to be completely independent of any financial success. Maybe this sounds ridiculous, or obvious, or neurotic, but I'm doing my best to pin down this idea that's given me such comfort with words. I feel a little like the guy who pops up out of nowhere to say that he just got the joke that everyone else stopped laughing at twenty minutes ago.

I've wrestled with the idea that I want this to be a career, and I know that I do. I want to keep loving to do the work, and I don't see that changing. But I guess it's taken me until now to see the forest for the trees, to put this into the context of my whole life. I just want to be happy. Writing is one of the best parts of my life, but it can also be a source of the greatest stress. I don't want it to be. I want it to be something that gives me nothing but joy, and to keep me happy whether I ever amass a following or not.

I apologize if you're reading this and it sounds like some obnoxious pontificating, but I'm just doing my best to untangle my own thoughts here, man.

I was just thinking about my last post, about how I loved all the options that technology has given us writers, and it got me thinking about how I work in those different arenas. Do I get more accomplished when I'm working on my computer? Do the words flow more easily from my trusty fountain pen? Do my characters come alive to the clacks of a typewriter's keys?

I thought I would give them all a try over the last week, and pay attention to how working in some of those different ways actually affects my work.

The first thing that I found, which surprised me, is that I write WAY more in a day when I work on my typewriter. In terms of word count, I've demolished my word goal with ease on my typewriter, even as I struggled to hit it when working on my computer. I don't know what it is. Is there less pressure when working without a knowable word count? Maybe it has more to do with my having to really settle in if I'm going to work on my typewriter. I can't pull that thing out just anywhere and add a few words at a time to my story - I have to clear off my desk, sit down, open up the case I keep my old Royal in, find the paper, load it, reload it because it was so crooked... all of that before I write a single word. I think working that way really helps me get into a headspace that's focused and ready to hit the ground running and not stop (because it was so much work to get going in the first place!).

That being said, I found that working on my computer definitely saved me time. Not just in all the preparation that I could avoid with my typewriter, but in processing the words after and, frankly, I can type a lot faster on a keyboard, and without having to scratch out words that I misspell and type again. I would say that writing on my tablet/computer (it's kind of both) was the most efficient, in terms of words written per minute. If my typewriter is like a freight train to a complete manuscript, my computer is more like a mid-size sedan. It's not going for as long, or far, but it's mighty zippier in the short-term.

That being said, I tried to make a real effort to do serious work on my phone, and I think if I had the dexterity to make that more efficient it would be the main way that I would write. It was glorious to go out for a walk, stop on a bench or a rock, and rack up some words written without having to carry anything extra around. To just stop next to the river and write a few paragraphs that are instantly available on my computer when I get back... it was a dream. That being said, it's definitely no way to get a whole first draft written. I can add a few hundred words before I'm sick of the constant typos, my fingers not finding the right spaces on the screen to tap, and autocorrect messing with my delightfully human errors. I didn't use a keyboard or anything with it, but if I was going to do that I would just use my laptop. Overall, it was really nice to be able to pull out my phone and add to my manuscript at a whim, which I was pleasantly surprised to find, but definitely not the way to go if I've got a choice.

I didn't even really try to pen something for a manuscript; I'd like to someday, but just after I started I realized I was going to have to transpose it all and that was where it lost me. I would like to literally pen a whole novel someday; I've written out short stories longhand, but the prospect of re-typing a hundred thousand words is just too much. Even a couple thousand made me a little dizzy. I know I can write with my tablet at least, and it's remarkably adept at translating even my cursive scrawl into usable text. I have that, but I don't know that I'll ever really make much use of it. I do all of my plotting and brainstorming (what little of it I can manage to do ahead of time before I just go for it; yes, I am a proud pantser, not a plotter) longhand, so I'll always carry around my favorite pen and a good notebook.

It was really fun to give these different methods a conscious evaluation, and I think I'll try to make good use of all of them. I do like the idea of trying to write a complete manuscript with each of them individually. I know now that none of them is as efficient alone as all of them working together, but I'd like to give that a shot now. Maybe I won't let myself start anything new without committing to one instrument to write the whole thing with... as long as it's not just the computer. Been there.

But not as much as you, you see...

I do love technology, and the things that it allows us to do. I just spent about an hour cleaning up around ten pages of prose that I had written with a typewriter and scanned with my phone so that I could add them to a couple of manuscripts I'm working on. How great is that? I can use an old manual machine to slap ink onto the page, working with the satisfying ka-chunk of the keys as I hammer away at them and the beautiful single-mindedness of a task performed without any notifications popping up over my work, knowing that I can use the small computer in my pocket to digitize those words so that they can be manipulated and replicated infinitely.

What a world we live in.

Sometimes I can't help but wish I could be a writer in a different time. I think of the gritty, ink-splattered times when writing and rewriting, cutting and pasting, those were literal descriptions of the work you had to do as a writer. You had to pick up a pen, be it a fountain pen or even a quill, and put ink on a page, knowing that if you spilled your coffee on it or you lost that sheet it was gone forever. No backing up your manuscript, no recovering that chapter you'd been working on all week and just lost.

Then, I pull out my tablet and make notes in the margin of a manuscript with what might as well be a magical pen that slides across the screen like butter and watch it turn my (some might call...) illegible handwriting into perfect little characters, leaving me with notes and revisions and even a new chunk of prose I can slip right into the manuscript with, not even the click of a button, but a couple taps with my finger.

Does this not sound like some kind of wizardry to you?

This is a great time to be a writer. We have the broadest spectrum of tools available. We can use a pen, pencil, typewriter, computer, tablet, or phone, knowing that whichever implement we use we can find a way to implement all the benefits of the digital age to our work. I love being able to work in whatever medium I want whenever I want to; sure, there might be some productivity lost in playing with all the different tools available, but I think we're living in a time when we get to enjoy our writing in a way that has never before been available to writers.

Sometimes this can seem like a real grind, but I am going to try and remember that I am lucky to be living and writing in this modern day and age.

Even if it means I can't strike up a written correspondence with Hemingway or Fitzgerald... I guess we'll never have it ALL...

This is bound to be less dark. It might even be optimistic.

I realized the other day, in trying to do some self-examination (in the shower, of course; you should do it too) that, in trying to wring the most writing out of myself, I might be going about it all wrong. I still don't think that I can really know how I write best. I am sure that my strategy in that regard will change and evolve over the years, and I'm not about locking myself into some routine now. I like a good routine, but balk at limitations. If I want to write only on the weekends, or NEVER on the weekends, by God I'll do it.

Whatever works, but really, whatever keeps me sane.

I've been running with the idea lately that the two books I've written to completion and released into the world I wrote in their entirety, without having any distracting side projects along the way. My first book was a terrifying endeavor; I was so afraid that I wouldn't finish it that I pushed myself to write with a fervor I wish I could replicate now. Maybe I could somehow convince myself that if I don't finish another book I'll never write again, never really be a writer? Unfortunately, I think I'm too invested in this. I know myself too well.

Can one know one's self too well? Apparently.

I realized the other day, though, that I've been totally lying to myself (twist!). I definitely had side projects while I was working on both of those books. For fuck's sake, my second book was a side project I worked on between the first and second drafts of my first book. While I was writing that first book I also wrote a bunch of short stories (terrible things; they weren't even my darlings and I killed them). While I was working on my second book I wrote my third, a fantasy novel I've been tinkering with still. I've been trying to focus all my attention on one thing, which made me blind to the potential a piece of work done on the side can have. While I was making a second pass through that fantasy novel, I wrote a whole half of another novel (it may never be finished, because I don't know where to take it from there, but by Go those were words I wrote and I'm sticking to the hope that every word written makes me just a little better, or at least provides me a little more experience in the world of letters).

So side projects are in. The Tinkers will be glad to hear it (oh just wait). I bet the Vikings will even get a little excited, though I hope they don't let it run to their heads - they need a lot of work if they're gonna go out in public. I don't feel any great rush to publish again, and I like that - though that fire has been replaced with the insane heat of pressure of releasing not jut another book, but a good one. I want to give you, dear reader, a wonderful story to read. I want to captivate you, I want to provide for you an escape from this world, a home in another plane that you won't want to leave. I want to do for you what so many writers have done for me. Maybe there's some obligation driving me. Books have done more for me than most people I've known. Does that mean I need to give back?

I sure want to.