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Happy April Fools Day!

I spent a lot of unnecessary time this week thinking about what sort of April fools post to make. Given the frequency of my posts lately, I suppose I could have just skipped it and called it good. However, coming up with a topic that is simultaneously BS and relevant to writing was going to take a lot more time than I’m willing to invest just now (You may call this for what it is – lazy). It’s not that I’m a huge fan of the pranks and what-not that sometimes happen today. Last year for April fools a couple of the ladies at work cleaned my office. If you’ve ever seen my office, at least before last spring, you’d know that this was not only a massive undertaking, but also that the effect of looking as if everything had been moved out of my office, leaving nothing more than a clean desk and a computer. The real joke was on my colleague down the hall. Much of the mess in my office was transplanted to his. This was funny because his office is usually tidy, everything in it’s place. Anyhow, after that, I thought I should really do something BIG this year. Nope. Just not in me.

I could have written a big post about how my wife eased me into purchasing some 27 baby waterfowl by breaking it first into small numbers that sounded vaguely like the added to say much smaller number. I didn’t think to add up before yesterday. She also use the ‘free shipping’ argument. I’m not really convinced free shipping is worth 30 birds living in the house for six to eight weeks and all of the feed the free shipping is not going to pay for. No, I couldn’t write that because she already did, and it’s also not an April fools joke. This is happening.

Also on the list of possible posts for a short while was to post something about the hippopotamus found in Kenai Lake, that may be part of Pablo Escobar’s feral herd. Google this, I dare you.

No, I didn’t do any of those things. I concluded I would be much better off not doing anything for April Fools this year. You know – roll like it’s a regular day off of work to focus on writing. Instead I decided to leave you with a picture of the tattoo I got today.IMG_0451

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Milestone

I took the week off (most of the week – I have a budget meeting on Thursday) to work on finishing a first full draft. It was a fairly lofty goal given that I’m trying to squeeze in the rest of life during this period. I’m not sure I’ll quite hit the end of a full first draft by Sunday evening next week, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility either. Here’s what I’ve accomplished so far since Friday night:

  • Finished the third re-write of chapter 10, which is much better now.
  • Rewrote chapter 17 to fit changes in plot better (this was actually a pretty major rewrite)
  • Wrote chapter 18 – this rounds out a major sub-plot with a brother.
  • Started chapter 19 – I have 1000 words written as of right now.

All of the work I’ve completed above is not in what I would call a polished format, it’s very much draft. Chapter 17 still needs some major work, but I’m going to save it until I go back through the book again. The issues are largely related to character development and I want to try and address all of those problems in one or two passes. Chapter 18 is very short, and will probably need more detail, but it’s plenty good for a first draft, and chapter 10 still needs a considerable amount of polishing. My target, right now, is 21 chapters, meaning I’ve got to finish up 19, with two more to follow (this alone is likely to be 10K-12K words). I haven’t ruled out the possibility of inserting as much as a chapters worth of material earlier in the book to explore some character elements a bit more.

If you’ve read to this point, I suppose you’re wondering what the milestone was, after all I didn’t finish the book or anything. Well, the original target was 80K words. With the start of Chapter 19, I’ve hit that mark. Given the direction I want to go, and the additions I know I need to make, the new target is looking more like 90-100K words.

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Nobody cares that it’s called a ‘poop deck’.

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If you’ve read any of my recent posts, you are aware that I’m having an epic and very public fight with chapter 10. I’ve drafted it twice and was getting ready to rewrite it for a third time before I handed it over to my wife. My wife is a lovely and tolerant woman, and also the most well read person I know. I actually had to design our house around built in bookcases (if you don’t believe me, ask her. This actually happened.) Anyhow, she’s usually a good sounding board for identifying ideas that suck, but she’s always kind enough to not say “this sucks,” instead offering suggestions on how it could be better.

Turns out, chapter 10 didn’t straight-up suck, it just needed a little more focus, which we got to the bottom of fairly quickly before dissolving into an argument discussion about the intention of a particular character, as if he were real. It kind of made me feel good because it’s the sort of discussion we have over other people’s books. One of the big messages though, was “you’re not Patrick O’Brien*, nobody cares what a poop-deck is.”

There is a balance between what is necessary for plausibility and what is just too much information. While I have spent a reasonable amount of time and energy researching historical British naval terminology, it’s completely unnecessary for anyone reading my story to know that. Furthermore, it would be best if they didn’t. So, describing the poop-deck is overkill, I need to find another way to deal with the description.

At this point, I bet you’re already not asking yourself, what is a poop-deck? -assuming you haven’t already not bothered googling it. Contrary to what you may be imagining, this is not where sailors take their poops, that’s done at the head. According to Wikipedia, the name poop-deck originates from the French word for stern (rear of the ship), which is la poupe, from the latin puppis. The poop-deck is the highest deck at the stern. It was typically unarmed and served as the station for the signaling officer. So, poop-deck aside, how am I going to deal with naval terms nobody except Patrick O’Brien fans will care about? Well, it’s pretty straight forward. As much as possible I’m going to limit the naval jargon to dialogue, then back that up with action for context. Instead of saying something like:

  Todhrel made his way to the poop-deck.

I’m going to say something more along the lines of:

  “An’ he’s on the poop sir, shall I call ‘im?” the young midshipman said.
  “No, I’ll fetch him.”
  Todhrel mounted the narrow stairs to the deck with more vigor than he felt.

I can’t say this sort of approach would be a solution for everyone, but it’s how I’m going to do it, and hopefully, I’ll be able to avoid the over-sharing of details no-one cares about.

 

* Patrick O’Brien wrote the Master and Commander books, which are exceptionally dry and full of obscure naval terms. I love these books. Jack Aubrey is my 3rd favorite captain after Mal (if you have to ask, don’t bother), and Kirk (I repeat).