Just writing about this subject makes me
tense! Oops, bad joke.
All of my novels are written in the third
person, as the omniscient observer. One
of my old drinking buddies, Edward Abbey, told me that a first person novel was
almost impossible to get published. I’ll go so far to say he was right. We were friends but usually on the opposite
poles of philosophy. I was a cattle rancher
when we met and he was the guru of Earth
First. Somehow we let those differences slide and he coached me on my first
novel, OIL SPILL.
Since those early days I’ve been fortunate to
hang with some authors and screenwriters of note; Werner Egli, Dutch Salmon, Ed
Peterson, John Nichols, and Michael Blake.
I lifted ideas from all of them.
I’ve experimented with first and third person – ALASKA BE DAMNED &
BOOMER. I have a character on stage; speaking in the first person in REVOLUTION
OF FOOLS. Should I choose to rewrite
Crystal Cowboy, I would structure it like BOOMER; key characters being on stage
in first person prior to a new chapter.
Those few people that read BOOMER have all given it five stars.
Screenplays are written in the present tense;
like you’re writing an instruction manual for a smart phone.
EXAMPLE; Curtis
lays his hat on the table and balls his fist.
That same sentence in 3rd person
would read; Curtis laid his hat on the table
and balled his fist.
I’m converting all six of my screenplays into
novels; it’s double difficult. Even
though the story is already outlined; conversion is a tough job. I take my hat off to Larry McMurtry. He wrote LONESOME DOVE originally as a screenplay. It didn’t sell for a number of years so he
rewrote it into a novel and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
I’m twenty-five thousand words into a novel
that represents page sixty of a one hundred-twenty page screenplay. One would assume I’ll have a fifty thousand
word novel when I finish, right? Nope,
to make this novel proper, I’m taking two screenplays and laying them
together. They’re both prequels to
PARTNERS, the book I took on tour with Michael Blake. My intentions are to write the four Curtis
& RC screenplays into a trilogy of decent sized novels. In between I’m writing the third in the Jimmy
Hart series. MURDER IN PANAMA has been
published, REVOLUTION OF FOOLS is at the editor and HART RULES is fully
outlined. I’m currently in the research
stage. BURN SCARS, the fourth in the
series is just a broad brush outline.
Sliding between all these projects are the postings
to my two blogs and the promotion of all my work.
The other day a friend of mine asked me what
I’ve been up to. I told her via Google chat
that I’d written five thousand words of my new novel in the last three
days. Her response was – SO WHAT?
That renders down to big deal or ho-hum. Her
response was like a kick in the head; I realized not everyone sees achievement
in writing. Since this blog is about
writing and publishing, I assume I have an audience that appreciates the
efforts involved to create a novel that sells for 99 cents to $2.99.
If not -- SO WHAT?
