15 entries. 5,826 words.

January, 2014

• Writing Plans for 2014. 2014-01-02 5:40 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The first week after NaNoWriMo I had to force myself not to write a new story draft because it had become such a habit. The second week it was kind of a relief not to have to write anything, and that terrible story had finally left my brain. In the third week I was anxious to get back to planning or writing something, lest I fall into a not-writing habit. Then came the holidays and the end of the year, and I predictably fell out of the writing habit. 507 words.

February, 2014

• Sovereignty Summary. 2014-02-21 12:35 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So yeah, somehow two whole months have disappeared and I haven’t done much writing. It’s actually more intimidating to try to revise existing manuscripts than it is to try to write new manuscripts. Anyway, in order to spark some positive momentum, I challenged myself to write a 100-word summary of the plot of The Sovereign of Tel. That probably sounds trivially simple, but for me to zoom that far out from the story and give such a super high-level overview of it is quite a challenge. I have tried to write “pitches” of my books before, but those only included the setup for the story. For this, I wanted the entire story arc from start to finish. 459 words.

March, 2014

• Sovereignty 1000-word Summary Completed. 2014-03-07 5:08 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  FYI, I completed a 1000-word summary of Sovereignty, but I won’t post it here because it’s filled with spoilers, just in case it turns into a real book some day. It’s now abundantly clear that there is no place for my original story in the book. Not even as a side plot. One of the original driving forces for this book was: What if there was a culture of people who bred servants in the same way that we breed pets? The original main character was going to be one of those servants. 460 words.

June, 2014

• June Writing Update. 2014-06-24 5:56 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It’s been a while since my last writing update, so I will now write one. Ha-ha. Get it? Write a writing update? So funny I am. Let’s see. Where was I? Hold on a moment while I read my last post from March. Oh yes, I was writing 50-100 word summaries of each scene that would be in Sovereignty. That did happen, sort of, but I never actually finished an outline that I felt comfortable with. There are still holes in the plot that I can’t fill in. Still, I wrote about 1,000 words of a new first chapter. Unfortunately I was not happy with it. I just can’t find a “hook” for that story. It remains tantalizingly out of reach. 507 words.

July, 2014

• RE: The Leftovers. 2014-07-23 12:17 AM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I feel like there should be some sort of law against television shows (or the books they are based on, I guess) that only raise questions without giving any answers in the first four episodes of the series. I can handle two episodes of story without context. I could even go to three episodes without any context. But four? Nope. That’s too much. I should have a basic understanding of where The Leftovers is going by now. (I have talked before about my need to understand the goals of the characters early in a story.) But now I have lost faith in the writers. Didn’t we learn anything from Lost? They are clearly just making it up as they go. 120 words.

August, 2014

• July Camp NaNo Results. 2014-08-13 1:36 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I suppose I should finally reveal the results of my July Camp NaNoWriMo experiment: Total failure. I was doing all right until things at work took a turn for the stressful, and then it became impossible to write in the evenings. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s hard to be creative when you’re totally drained. I tried to set myself up for success anyway, by changing my target word count from 50,000 to 15,000. (You can do that in the summer NaNoWriMos.) That goal was well within reach until things at work took a turn for the even-more-stressful and exhausting on top of it. So I wimped out and gave up. I ended up completing a little over 10,000 words. 234 words.
• RE: The Leftovers, Episodes 8 and 9. 2014-08-28 1:52 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just finished watching episodes 8 and 9 of HBO’s The Leftovers, and something finally clicked. Yes, I know, I said I wasn’t going to watch more than 4 episodes, but I was intrigued by a television show (and a story) that does nothing but raise questions without ever answering them. Oh, that crack I made about Lost? Turns out, Leftovers producer Damon Lindelof did write for Lost. No wonder! Spoilers below if you haven’t seen the show yet. (I don’t recommend it, by the way. Unless the 10th and final episode of the season blows my mind, I just don’t get the point of this show.) 660 words.
• August Writing Update. 2014-08-29 4:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  With August coming to an end I thought I would release another writing update. Being temporarily unemployed (which I prefer to think of as a short sabbatical), this is the first month in forever (aka. 2000-ish) where I have had nothing but time to write. So you would think that I would have written tons of stuff, particularly when I’ve had this ongoing crazy notion that I should someday get paid for writing. 640 words.
• Two Days In A Row. 2014-08-31 2:20 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve written about 1200 words a day for two days in a row. That may not sound like much, but it makes me feel like a rock star. I’m working on adding the middle part that goes between the beginning and ending of Moving Day. I couldn’t just leave it hanging the way it was. (Also I did some brainstorming and came up with some neat ideas for it.) It’s sort of morphed from a science fiction story to… I don’t know… horror? But not the frightening kind of horror. It’s like the later-era Stephen King kind of horror that is really more of a plain story with some external supernatural forces that put characters into conflict, but it still gets labeled horror because he’s Stephen King. I’m not sure what you’d call that. “Fiction” I guess. 137 words.

September, 2014

• The Killing, Season One. 2014-09-01 4:17 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Why didn’t anyone warn me about this show? Don’t start watching The Killing unless you’re willing to put in the time to finish the entire thing in one sitting. Because it’s really addicting. And in case you’re thinking you can get away with just watching one season at a time: The murder is not resolved at the end of the first season. The story just keeps right on going into the second season. I’m writing this paragraph to avoid spoilers, but my full thoughts are way down below: I had an idea of who the murderer might be after four or five episodes, based on my award-winning strategy of “picking the least plausible person it could possibly be.” Through the whole first season I was more and more convinced I was going to be right, because they never showed anything that directly refuted my theory. Once, it was close, but I can think of a way to explain it. At least until they arrested that dude in the last episode of season one. But then some evidence surfaced that made me think my theory could still be plausible, so I’m sticking with it as I start watching season two. In many ways, The Killing is a stereotypical cop show. It’s got the cop obsessed with finding the murderer at the expense of her family. It’s got the victim’s family coping with the loss of their daughter and the morbid depictions of how a victim’s body gets back to the family after the crime. It’s got the cop who went too far undercover and got hooked on drugs. It’s got the crusty police lieutenants. It’s got the city hall with their political agendas that are more important than the truth. But somehow it’s still a compelling show. 436 words.
• The Killing, Season Two. 2014-09-02 11:14 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The Killing really should be regulated as a controlled substance. It’s impossible to stop watching it. I finished the second season, and you may or may not be happy to know that they do finally reveal the murderer, and it looks like you can walk away from the show after two seasons. Spoilers way down at the end of the post. (Not really, though. I don’t tell you whodunnit, but I do sort of rule out one person.) They really punch you in the face with feels in the second season finale. Get your hankies ready. 248 words.
• RE: The Leftovers, Season Finale. 2014-09-09 4:00 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I should have known. There were no explanations. No resolutions. No whys or wherefores. No way to tell if my theory was correct or not. The story just reached a convenient stopping place (sort of) and the season ended, all questions left up in the air. The only thing that we found out was what the Guilty Remnant had been up to. It occurred to me that by leaving out an explanation for why the people disappeared, we the audience are left in the same position as the characters in the show. After all, they don’t know why the people disappeared either. Although I would swear that at some point (or points) during the season I was convinced that there was an explanation that someone knew. Maybe not someone in town, but somebody somewhere. 425 words.
• Thoughts on Mr. Mercedes. 2014-09-15 4:00 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A while back I decided to cancel my Audible.com subscription, because my income was decreasing. I had somewhere around eight credits saved up that I had to use before I could cancel, so I picked up a bunch of random audiobooks. One of them was Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. I pretty much like anything that Stephen King writes, so it’s no surprise that I liked it. But it was the first time I had ever listened to Stephen King read as an audiobook. (Actually that’s not true, but it was the first time I’d listened to a full-length King novel as an audiobook.) 236 words.

October, 2014

• The 100 First Impression. 2014-10-29 1:26 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve just watched the first episode of The 100 on Netflix. Well, actually, I started writing this at about the 35:00 mark. Is it wrong for me to want every single one of these whiny teenagers to die horribly? I mean, it’s not just that I don’t like any of them. It’s more of a deep-seeded loathing, a visceral hatred of everything about them and everything they stand for. I don’t just want them to die. I want them to die suffering, only lingering long enough for them to finally realize in their last moments-too late-just how awful they are as human beings and potential role models. They must, in the end, die knowing that it was the only just fate for them. Because if these whiny teenagers are the last hope for humanity, then I think we can all agree that it’s okay for humanity to die out. We should, in fact, celebrate the end of this breed of whiny teenager. 533 words.

December, 2014

• Holiday Binge-Watching. 2014-12-29 2:51 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The holidays means sitting blankly in front of a television screen. My recent Netflix binge-watches include: Broadchurch. BBC murder-mystery series starring David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame) and also the guy who played Rory in Dr. Who. This is a gripping series of 8 episodes. Great, great acting. Gracepoint. Of course, I then had to get a week-long trial of Hulu Plus* to watch the American version of the Broadchurch murder-mystery, which also stars David Tennant, using a different accent. (I actually thought this is what I was watching when I started Broadchurch, because I remember seeing ads for Gracepoint, but it quickly became apparent that everyone in Broadchurch had an accent.) Gracepoint is a decent series of 10 episodes with some slight but interesting changes from the original, but it’s nowhere near as good as the British version. If you have to pick one, definitely watch Broadchurch. (It was interesting to see that the American script had clearly been edited so that scenes and lines were much shorter.) 224 words.