Five-Year Mission

Many times throughout the two decades following college graduation, I would scribble ideas for a scene, or chapter, only to dismissively shove them in a drawer and forget about them. Although I had written a handful of halfway decent short stories in high school and at college, a novel was always the brass ring I hoped to grasp, but never could seem to achieve.

In 2010, I decided it was time to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing a book. It didn't really matter what kind of book, or if it ended up being a good book. Outlining, writing, rewriting, editing and formatting a book -- even a short one -- is no easy task. The challenge for someone like me with self-diagnosed ADD and crippling authorial insecurity was getting from the start of chapter one to the words "The End" without losing the thread of the story. The result, a murder mystery titled Damage, was just that: poorly constructed with a minimum of characters and no sense of urgency imparted, yet a fairly intact and coherent plot. My apologies to anyone kind enough to have read it for me, because they certainly weren't reading it for themselves. The only good thing to come from Damage was I proved to myself I could, in fact, write a novel-length story.

Halfway through the process, while mustering the courage to tackle rewriting the clunky first draft of Damage, I took a break from it and wrote several chapters of a fun story for my children. Then the urge to return to Damage struck and I abandoned those chapters. Some two years later, I came across them and determined they weren't half bad, so I redrafted them and created the first book in The Psi Squad series titled, quite unimaginatively, The Psi Squad: Book One. The book came quickly and was tremendously enjoyable to write. The characters spoke to me in ways none of the characters in Damage had managed to, and because I had already proven to myself I could write a 60,000-word novel, I didn't feel pressured to prove it again. The Psi Squad: Book One is only about 18,000 words long, if that, meaning it ended up being exactly the length it needed to be. The self-published book hit Amazon's virtual bookshelves in 2013.

The following year saw the release of The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost which was equally as fun to write and slightly longer at 27,000 words. Its story continued where the first book left off and fleshed out the world just enough for my liking. Intentionally short chapters, each moving the story along by inches and providing a little character development along the way, served as perfectly spaced stepping stones to keep me from veering off course. 

Neither of The Psi Squad books have made any waves in the literary world. That's fine by me. Would I like to get rich off my writing and retire to a private island where I could write all day? Of course, but writing is just my hobby and the joy of hobbies is supposed to come from the doing, not some external reward. Besides, middle grade fiction is a tough market. I'd stand a better chance at commercial success writing an un-illustrated 400-year history of gout. After that second Psi Squad book was finished, I felt it was time to try writing something other than fiction for children. I quickly fell back into my habit of scribbling and discarding bits and pieces without any clear purpose. Before long, I decided to give The Psi Squad another try and quickly completed a first draft of a third book. Then something terrible happened -- I convinced myself it was awful.

The first Psi Squad had minimal ghost story and was mostly about introducing the three main characters. The second Psi Squad had a better balance between ghost story and character development, even managing to introduce a fourth main character. With the third book, it felt I had taken a step backward and provided a story based more on the dynamics of the four primary characters than on the ghost story. As a result, that first draft sat on my Mac as, you guessed it, I scribbled and discarded scenes and chapters for stories that would never see the light of day.

Late last year, while browsing Amazon's website, I decided to take a peek at my books. Among the various details displayed for each one is the release date. I was shocked to realize it had been four years since the release of The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost. This is a series for which I planned to write nine books and there I was with only two published books to show for it and a disappointing first draft of a third languishing. To drive the delay home even more, someone named Tania left a review on Goodreads for the second book that simply stated: "This book was just as entertaining as the first one. Loved the characters and the story. Such a pity that the third is not out yet."

The very next day, during my lunch break, I pulled up that draft and started reading it front to back without stopping to make notes or edit. I wanted to see if it really was as awful as I recalled. It wasn't. As with any first draft, there were a few errors here and there, a few spots that went on too long, others that needed to go on a bit longer, but on the whole there were no major issues. During breaks in a busy schedule -- Hurricanes Florence and Michael didn't help matters -- a redrafted third book emerged and by January was ready.

So, five years following the publication of the second book in the series, The Psi Squad and the Unhappy Valentine finally is available on Amazon in ebook format (the paperback option is coming soon). At 33,000 words it is the longest of the books and, in my humble and unbiased opinion, offers a simple yet effective ghost story, some excellent character development, and several important setups for the next few books in the series. More importantly, work has already begun on the fourth book. While I won't promise a quick turn around, I can promise it won't take five years.

© 2019 Mark Feggeler

Avoiding the Inner Voice

There's this guy I knew way back when. Let's call him Jack Weinstein, which is appropriate since that's his name.

Jack was a year behind me at college and lived for a year in the dorm room next to mine. We were friendly, but not what I would call friends. As with other people with whom I was friendly-but-not-friends, Facebook has allowed us to reconnect in the virtual world for occasional glimpses into each other's lives. In the years since Plattsburgh, while I moved from journalism to public relations to sales, Jack became a philosopher. Seriously. He's a bona fide, published philosophy professor who writes a blog and hosts a public radio show called "Why?" once a month.

Just the other day, Jack dispatched through his philosophy-themed PQED blog a post that struck a chord in me. It was as though someone with a greater vocabulary, keener insights, more rapidly firing synapses, and a brain far less clouded by books like "Who Moved My Cheese?" decided to write an essay expressing my thoughts about the creative process and the inner voice that all too frequently seeks to crush creativity. It's easy to dismiss the inner voice that nags at you with unfounded fears and then berates you for having believed and acted on those fears. It's much more difficult to dismiss, however, when someone other than yourself drags that inner voice into the harsh light of day to lay bare just how insidiously harmful it can be.

Eight years ago, I realized two decades had passed since graduating from SUNY Plattsburgh and I had yet to fulfill my dream of writing a novel. Had I, or had I not, majored in writing? The only thing stopping me was fear of failure. To warm up to the daunting task, I started this blog. I figured if I couldn't write short essays about movies, parenting, candy, or clogged toilets then perhaps the novel was just a pipe dream. Fortunately, clogged toilets are great blog fodder. Is Ramblings of a Very Pale Man a great American work of living art? No. Did the novel I eventually get around to writing win a Pulitzer? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I never expected art, prizes, accolades or monetary windfalls. All I wanted was to find out if I was capable of accomplishing the task. The experience was so pleasurable that I wrote two more short books, introductory episodes in a series aimed at middle schoolers. Then, just as I finished drafting the third entry in the middle school series, something quite unexpected happened.

I lost faith.

When you lose faith in yourself, it's easy to blame other things for your lack of productivity. Busy work schedules, family responsibilities, the nasty political climate in the country -- anything becomes an easy scapegoat to avoid admitting the real problem lies within. After six years of writing blog posts and books for fun, it suddenly became a chore. And why? After the first year, people stopped buying my books on Amazon. The blog's tracking of visitors had plateaued. There were the occasional digs, as well, by dismissive people. No one other than me seemed interested in my writing. Perhaps all those people who weren't me were right to be disinterested. Who was I to judge my writings worth reading?

[NOTE: My Lovely Wife informed me, upon reading this post, that she misses my blog and that I am, and I quote, "a doodyhead." She would be correct.]

During the past two years, and despite having completed a first draft of that third book, I fell back into the tried and true, unfocused, fruitless endeavors of a nay-sayer. I started writing and outlining at least four different books without conviction or success, considered trying my hand at a screenplay, and entertained other lofty dreams when, in reality, what I wanted to do was write more silly blog posts and finish the middle school series. But, because no one cared about them, they weren't fun anymore. They were unrewarding, or so I thought until a few weeks ago.

Frustrated at my inability to move any project beyond a few chapters, I opened that third book in the middle school series and started reading. It didn't suck. It wasn't perfect. It needed some nips here and tucks there, but it didn't suck. Before I knew it, I found myself in full rewrite mode and enjoying it. How could I have forgotten how much fun creativity can be? That inner voice lied to me and I was stupid enough to believe it. It told me my writing didn't matter because it wasn't worth anything to anyone else when all it really needs to be is valuable to me.

When Jack's blog post about creativity titled "Maybe Your Work Isn't Lame After All" appeared in my Facebook feed, it was a perfectly timed validation of what I was already coming to understand. While his post presents a longer list of ways to assess the value of one's own work than I needed, since all I need is my own personal satisfaction as a contented hobbyist, the basic message was clear -- don't let self-doubt crush your creativity. That's what relatives are for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to edit and a blog post about deadly apple slicers to write.


2018 Mark Feggeler

The Year of $100

One-hundred dollars.

That's roughly how much money I earned last year as a direct result of my writing. Three books and this blog as a platform to tell the world about them and all I managed to make off those books was one-hundred dollars. Sounds about right to me, and let me tell you why I think so.

For starters, I ain't no Shakespeare.

I realize that, as an author, I should be the first person shouting from the rooftops about why you should buy my books. I should be that person you avoid at parties, the one who'll bore you to tears with details about the painstaking care I took to plan out plot twists, afflict my characters with bizarre yet endearing traits, and leave the story dangling precariously at the edge of a precipice so the reader achingly yearns for the resolution offered in the sequel. But, even after years in sales, I've never been a fan of the hard sell.

What do I think of my books? I like them. I enjoyed writing them. They were fun to outline, fun to write, and fun to edit. I had a good time creating the covers. And while they are far from perfect, I think you might like them, too.

Secondly, I never planned to make a living off this.

Hobbies should be just that -- hobbies. The problem I see is when people experience the smallest taste of success or attention, they tend to run wild with it and get way ahead of themselves.

One of my lifelong dreams was to write a book. Just because I realized that dream doesn't mean my book is any good, or that I deserve legions of adoring fans tripping over themselves to hand over their hard-earned money. That I have a collection of blog posts and two finished fiction books to my name (with a third coming out in the next few weeks) means just as little. All I did was find the time in my busy schedule to indulge in my hobby. Nobody owes me anything for that. It's the difference between chasing your dream in the hopes of realizing fame and fortune and chasing your dream because it brings you a sense of fulfillment.

Sad to say, on those occasions when I do peruse the blogs and websites of authors with similar track records to mine, it seems these authors spend far more time than I working the market, buying ads, attending book signings, managing social media, and for what? So they can end the month having sold seven copies of their books on Amazon? No, thanks. I have far more important things to do (like spend time with my family and earn real money by being good at my real job).

Thirdly, I'm cheap.

If my hobby were wood-working, I wouldn't spend hundreds for a professional to design the rocking chair I planned to build in my basement. If my hobby were painting, I wouldn't seek out a mentor at a national art gallery for pointers on how best to paint a picture of my dog.

Likewise, with writing as my hobby, I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on cover designers and editors, regardless of how many times established authors tell me I should if I want to be taken seriously as an author. I'm a hobbyist. By definition, I don't give a crap if people take me seriously.

Of course, I do feel warm and fuzzy when people compliment my books in reviews, or tell me in person that they enjoyed reading one of my books. I'm not immune to feeling a sense of pride or accomplishment when someone shows appreciation or admiration for what I've created, but I try to keep it from going to my head. Publishing success (either through self-publishing or traditional publishing) is, like any other success in life, equal parts hard work and luck. Call me a no-fun practical stick in the mud, but I'd rather put my energy into my day job which yields success in the form of a paycheck every two weeks.

So, at the end of the day, I enjoy writing and hope that my skills improve with each book I complete. If what I write brings a few fleeting moments of enjoyment to friends in my neighborhood or strangers halfway around the world, so much the better.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Edit Me, Big Boy!

You might know that I've written and self-published two books. One is a murder mystery written for an adult audience ("Damage"). The other is a paranormal adventure for middle-grade kids ("The Psi Squad").

Well, I finally finished the first draft of the second book in the "Psi Squad" series and am set for the most rewarding part of the process -- edits and rewrites. Writing a book is like assembling a model with parts that fit roughly together, leaving bumpy bits and sharp edges. Editing and rewriting are like taking sandpaper and paint to that model to make it all smooth and pretty.

It's good to have a high opinion of your writing while you're writing it. After all, if you aren't excited about writing your book, you can't really expect anyone else to be excited about reading it. But you can't let it bring you down when, upon review of your completed first draft, you quickly begin to realize it isn't the masterpiece you hoped it would be.

The other night, for example, I read the opening chapter of the new Psi Squad book to my sons. I had already performed a quick and sloppy edit on chapter one and believed it to be in excellent condition. After reading it aloud -- one of the best things anyone who writes anything from an epic novel to an off-hand Facebook post could ever do -- it became clear there were at least three harsh transitions and a moderate amount of unnecessary verbiage.

All this despite the fact my editor had already reviewed the material and assured me it was error-free. In fact, I believe the words "perfect" and "no mistakes" passed his lips several times. I know you're thinking "get a new editor," but that's easier said than done, since my editor is half of the twins that are my sons.

The Italian is an avid reader and connoisseur of some of the finest literature ever to pass through a middle school library. According to the asinine Lexile system presently being thrust mercilessly down the throats of students in our school district, he is a sixth-grader who reads at a college freshman level. Mind you, he is still expected to show growth in his reading skills, which means he is required to consider reading books that fall within his lexile range such as those by Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Or, he can read a nice nonfiction book, like Stephen Hawking's "The Origin of the Universe." But I digress…

In short, the Italian got the job of editing my manuscript for three reasons: Nepotism, No Cost, and Begging. (I should point out that he begged me to let him edit the book, not the other way around.) He pestered the living daylights out of me for months about wanting to edit the next Psi Squad book, although I suspect his motives were less of a helpful nature than they were selfish. He wanted to read the book before anyone else, most especially his twin brother.

His "editing" of the first few chapters magically required no red ink and resulted in not a single criticism. He found no typos, no grammatical mistakes, no incorrectly used character names, and no plot holes. This is what happens when you hire a drooling fan to do the job of a slash-and-burn critic. Fortunately, the errors I am finding while reading the book to the boys are easily rectified. Even better, the boys chuckle when they are supposed to and I haven't had to explain any parts of the book to them after the fact.

Now that I know better than to trust a twelve-year-old who loves me to edit my book, I can start searching for a proper editor. I wonder if my Mother would be interested?



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

A Brief Update from a Busy Life

The Pale Rambler, my mainstay blogging alter ego, must be scratching his pink and balding scalp and wondering what has become of me.

After all, he was created for the sole purpose of providing a creative outlet for the wanna-be writer trapped deep inside of me. He hasn't always had profound things to say, but he had been posting fairly consistently up until recent months.

Truth be told, time has been scarce. What little spare time I've managed to get my hands on has been devoted to writing the second book in the "Psi Squad" series. I've never written a series before, and to date I've only completed two books, but I take seriously the challenge of completing the nine-book series as originally outlined. That leaves little time for pale ramblings or other online shenanigans.

Some day in the distant future, when I smell like my Grandfather and worry more about the regularity of my bowel movements than the earning of a paycheck, I might find the time to sit and write all the day long. Rather than scratching down errant sentences or paragraphs here and there on scraps of paper in the hopes of tying them together into a collective whole, my energies can be focused from dawn to dusk when the mood strikes and the ideas are flowing.

It's a pleasant dream, just not one to be realized today. Today is meant for more important things.

Today was spent bringing a meaningful wage into our household. Today was spent calling the school (and being called by the school) to straighten out our twin sons' schedules on their first day of middle school. Today was spent talking with our daughter over breakfast as she prepared for her first day of eleventh grade. Today was spent sitting at the dining room table as our entire family of five attempted (and failed) to solve a sixth-grade math problem. Today was spent enjoying a quiet lunch in a noisy restaurant with my best friend.

As time continues to pluck hairs from my head only to plant them in my ears, I realize how fleeting are the opportunities to carpe the remaining diem of my children's childhoods. The memories of walking Sara through the hallways of middle school for the first time have hardly faded, yet here we are entering her critical college-planning year. Two years might sound like a long time, but for a parent looking at the prospect of sending a first-born to college it might as well be two weeks.

And so, the Pale Rambler waits patiently, as do the "Psi Squad" characters. They'll be there when I need them. They'll come running when I call them out to play.

In the meantime I will cling tightly to every hug, capture the essence of every laugh, collect kisses and wipe away tears. Those are the things that make up a life, and they are far more tangible, valuable and meaningful than any silly dream.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Word Count Envy

[I try hard to keep my fiction writing hobby from spilling into this blog too much, but from time to time I figure "what the heck?" Here is a recent post from my author site (Books by Feggeler) that I felt like sharing here.]

I'm not one of those fortunate few able to spend countless hours each day writing to my heart's content. When I see comments by authors on blogs or in group discussion threads wherein they refer to writing two thousand words a day, or eight thousand words during the course of a weekend, a fleeting sense of envy does surge through me.

Imagine my output of published (albeit self-published) works were I capable of dedicating similar quantities of time to writing. The remaining eight books of "The Psi Squad" series would be finished by the end of 2013. And those two murder mysteries I've outlined? I'd be celebrating their sales by this time next year!

Instead, I'm lucky to manage three thousand good words a week. Why?

Well, let's see. Among the things getting in the way of daily writing are: cycling class, breakfast, bringing the boys to school (sometimes), bringing my daughter to school (sometimes), work (and that handy thing called a salary that comes along with work), business travel, meetings, phone calls, laundry, lunch, more work, picking the boys up from school (sometimes), picking my daughter up from school (sometimes), dinner, helping with homework and projects, dance, hockey, church, church youth group, marching band boosters, band concerts, after school meetings, and sleep. Oh, yes, don't forget that every now and then I wouldn't mind spending quality down time with my wife and children, which is why I don't even think about writing on weekends.

It seems my problem stems from not being able, or willing, to give any of that up. All that stuff makes up my life, such as it is at the moment, and it's all meaningful and rewarding. My resulting writing time consists of a maximum of two, maybe three, hours wrenched in bits and pieces from each busy week, but that's okay.

If nothing else, I've discovered a slow pace forces me to think more about what I'm writing than I otherwise might have. It allows me to fully consider the seven-hundred words for the new murder mystery (working title "RevPAR") and the four-hundred words for the second "Psi Squad" book I cranked out in an hour early Tuesday morning before I advance to the next scenes. All that time for extra thinking helps me catch plot holes and fix mistakes before I get too far ahead of myself.

You other writers go ahead and write your two thousand words a day, if only because some oft-quoted remark from Stephen King has you believing you're not a serious writer if you don't achieve that daily goal. Go ahead and celebrate NaNoWriMo by cramming during the month of November to complete an entire novel in thirty days. I did enough last-minute, panic-fueled, late-night writing during college to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. If self-imposed deadlines and massive word-count goals are the things that feed your passion for writing, then God bless and best of luck.

I'll continue to envy your production levels, but I'm not interested in trading places with any of you.




© 2013 Mark Feggeler