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

Word Count Envy: A Pep Talk for Slow Writers

It’s all too easy to feel inadequate as a writer of fiction. So many opportunities to embrace self-doubt arise during the writing process it’s remarkable any writer has ever managed to complete a book.

Are the characters fully developed? Does the plot make sense? Is the manuscript riddled with continuity errors? Does the sentence structure create a natural flow for the reader? Should the story be told by a first person narrator, a third person limited narrator, a third person omniscient narrator, or a biased, secondary, first person narrator? Is my grammar flawed? Does the book I just finished writing tell the same story as the book I began writing eight months ago?

There’s almost no way to keep some of these doubts from lodging in your brain and festering, but there is one often self-imposed hurdle that should be avoided right from the start: fear of inadequate productivity.

It seems no matter where you turn for writing advice – blogs, books, magazines, chatrooms, social media – everyone has a firm idea about how many words you should write each day to consider yourself a serious writer. Two-thousand words a day and one-thousand words a day are the most common numbers you’ll see handed down as required output. They are preached so frequently and so adamantly that not achieving them can weigh heavily on your authorial conscience.

The problem with expecting to write thousands of words a day is it isn’t always realistic, particularly if you are, like me, not a full-time writer.

When I see comments by other authors on blogs or in group discussion threads in which they tout their daily word count, some reporting as much as 8,000 words during the course of a single weekend, a fleeting sense of envy often surges through me. My current work in progress is thoroughly outlined and my enthusiasm for it is boundless, so why can’t I achieve a similar level of productivity?

The answer is simple. I can’t write 8,000 words in one sitting, or two, or even three. It isn’t the way my brain works, and it might not be the way your brain works, either.

After a maximum of 1,000 words, my brain wants to go back and reread what it just produced. My brain wants to take in the latest effort and consider it, make certain it accomplishes what it should, and ensure it will lead me properly to the next thousand words. I learned a long time ago that forging ahead without the full consent of my brain yields only page after page of substandard writing.

There’s also the matter of time.

I have a job, and three teenage kids, and friends, and family, and a dog, and a house, and a life, and all of the experiences and requirements that come along with all those things. In order to remain a viable activity, writing has to take a back seat to the primary responsibilities that provide steady income and make life worth living in the first place. Not only do some days pass without my having an opportunity to write, sometimes entire weeks will pass without the first word of fiction being set to paper. If I allowed every day that passed without accomplishing any writing to impact my belief that I am a good writer with a good story to tell, then I would have given up trying years ago.

If you need a 2,000-word goal in order to keep motivated, then set that goal and achieve it. Does a one-page-a-day goal work better for you? Go for it. Is it enough that you take the time, when you have it to spare, and do as much as you can? If you don’t have a publisher pressing you to meet a deadline, yes.

The best any of us can do is experiment with writing and find a level of productivity that is sustainable. Just keep in mind, it isn’t how many words you’re able to churn out on a daily basis that matters most. It’s the quality of the final product.

2014 Mark Feggeler

Two Books and a Blog

It's amazing what can be accomplished when you apply small bits of time and attention over a span of years.

In January 2010, when I decided to start writing this silly blog, I hadn't written a thing in more than 15 years. And blogging? I'd heard about the practice, but didn't have the first clue how to make it happen and whether or not I could dredge up enough posts to last a month.

I felt the same way in May 2010 when I began writing my first book. Figuring out how to structure the novel, how to manage the small amount of spare time available to yield the greatest results, and how to maintain enough interest in the project when, at best, I could produce only a handful of pages each week, were daunting tasks. Had I known from the start it would take close to three years to move the project from first draft to finished product, I might never have attempted it.

Yes, the blog has suffered in quantity and quality due to time spent writing the books, but it's free, so you're getting what you paid for. That said, the books also have had to wait on the blog from time to time. The fact is I can't write when I'm supposed to be working, and I won't give up the fun of family and friends just to hunker in the solitude of my basement to write, so time really is limited.

Covers for my first
two books.

Yet here I am starting off 2013 with an almost-finished novel-length murder mystery, an almost-finished novella-length children's paranormal fantasy, and three solid years of blogging under my belt. If all goes well, both books should be available for purchase as ebooks within the next 60 days, which will be a big relief. I have discovered the only thing more annoying than not being able to write when you want to is having to wait on edits and feedback when, in your own mind, the book is finished. But all it takes is one person to point out several typos and examples of unintentionally poor grammar to make you realize you can not serve as the sole editor of one of your own books.

As hobbies go, writing is a rewarding experience I recommend to anyone considering giving it a try. The biggest obstacle to overcome is the fear of sharing what you've written. Once you move beyond that, the rest is easy.

© 2012 Mark Feggeler

How Not To Write a Book

So, there's this book I've been writing over the course of the past two years. I wouldn't call it the Great American novel. More like the moderately decent Southeastern regional dime novel. I've wanted to write a book for the better part of my adult life, but I kept convincing myself such an unwieldy task was beyond my capabilities, like it was brain surgery.

One of the three things that challenged that outlook was this blog. After all, if I could find time to tap out these silly little posts, I certainly could find time to write a page or two here and there. The second thing was when I viewed the task as a puzzle. Ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed working on those large interlocking puzzles. Piecing together a novel shouldn't be all that different. Each page is just another piece that drops in to help create a larger picture. The third and final shift in my thinking on the matter came when I learned about online self-publishing. I had no more excuses. It was time to write a book.

It's a murder mystery of sorts, with characters shaped from bits of people I've known or heard of during my life. No one character is modeled directly after any one real person. [This is where I should write some cleverly structured sentence to use fancy words like "melange" and "gallimaufry," but I don't feel up to the mental challenge at the moment.] Suffice to say to those of you who know me, if you read the book and think a character is based entirely on you, you're wrong.

Some of the settings might seem familiar. For instance, the main character is a newspaper reporter. The office in which he works is very similar in layout to the one in which I worked many years ago. My coworkers from those days should have no trouble envisioning it if they read the book. Believe it or not, I worried about this for quite some time. Why was I doing it? Nostalgia? Laziness? Was I subconsciously trying to make a point about my first post-college job? No. As it turns out -- and this was a revelation -- I did it because I wanted to. Creating an environment similar to the one in which I worked back then, with its back-to-back cubicles and limited privacy, worked well for the kind of book I was trying to write. End of story.

In fact, much of the writing of the first draft involved time wasted worrying about what people might or might not recognize from real life, as though it were my authorly responsibility to utilize nothing from the real world and completely fabricate every aspect of the fictional environment. Looking back from where I am now, I'm amazed I didn't require some sort of anti-anxiety medication when writing the first draft.

I certainly needed it when I began work on the second draft. It was painfully clear upon reading what I had written I had no idea what I was doing in the first five-to-ten chapters. Utter crap. All of it. I made several half-hearted attempts to salvage it, but it was futile. After a couple months of delays, the rewrite began in earnest as just that, a complete rewrite. Every word, sentence, paragraph, page and chapter would need to be rewritten from scratch. Eventually, I thought, the quality of the material would level off and I could begin lifting large chunks and dropping them in. Not so. I'm almost exactly two-thirds of the way through the rewrite and have finally come to terms with the realization that not a single bit of the original warrants "ctrl-c/ctrl-v" inclusion in the second draft.

With every stage of the book, my initial assumptions about the process and schedule have been wrong. For instance, I thought:

1. I could start off writing the scenes that seemed most clear in my mind, then come back later to string them together with connective scenes. Wrong.
2. I didn't need an outline to keep the story clear in my head. Very wrong.
3. Once I outlined the story, the structure wouldn't change. Even wronger.
4. It would take 12 months to complete the first draft. Fairly wrong.
5. It would take 3-4 months to complete the second draft. Unbelievably wrong.

When you take into consideration the number of books and articles I've read over the years on how to go about writing a book -- and given the fact my college major was Writing -- it truly is astounding how thick-headed I've been from the onset of this adventure and through every twist and turn along the way. But you know what? I wouldn't want it any other way. You can learn a lot from books and teachers, journals and professors, but the best way to truly understand anything is to jump in with both feet and figure it out for yourself.

Unless you plan to be a brain surgeon. You might want to stay in school for that one.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler