Jeff Cutler™ – columns, essays and opinions

I missed the joy of Monday morning this week because I was under the thumb of the flu. Stuck in the house I missed out on hearing stories from colleagues about what they did on the weekend – the whole premise behind my A Life of Play Podcast. But I made up for it tonight with an interview for that very same show.

For about 45 minutes, JC Hutchins and I chatted about writing and science and social media. It was invigorating – especially a few days away from Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month which begins on Nov. 1) – to speak with a writer who has done it. And by done it I mean reached a publisher with a novel.

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Sure, in social media everyone has an ebook or a business theory book – I’ve been to more signings this year than I went to the entire time I had my own book out in the early 200’s. But writing and getting a novel published is different. That’s the dream

Write your novel. Move to France and write a novel. Maybe I’ll take a sabbatical and write a novel.

These sentiments aren’t actually from me…or originally from me…they’re repeated all the time by anyone who wields a pen or whacks a keyboard. AND JC Hutchins has done it.

In 2002 he tried Nanowrimo and it spurred him to write a 1200 page novel. He then released it in podcast form and kept working toward getting over the threshold of a publisher’s office door. It worked.

Better still, he’s maintained the belief that social media and traditional writing worlds are still dissimilar enough that he can give the book away and still sell copies in book form. So there’s a copy here for you to have.

7th Son – PDF from JC Hutchins

Take it, read it, share it. If you want, go buy it in book form too. Or listen to the podcasts.

This day…a few days removed from Monday…I’ve got my weekly hero. A guy who did what he wanted and had fun at the same time. It’s a good way to live.

Keep reading!

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Attention span.

Mine’s short, but I refuse to refer to it as an ADD or ADHD situation as I believe those are mythical conditions created by a lazy physician and parent base. We’ll explore that opinion in another column…if I have enough where-with-all to remember.

My contention today is that it’s time to simplify. Everything. As soon as possible. There are certainly external factors forcing my hand in this decision, not the least of which are family illnesses, the cohabitation situation at my mansion and my completely frantic workload.

I take the blame for these items – except the health issues – because I’ve spent the last month working on my first novel. I finished it and have been quietly gloating the past few days. But now it’s time to get to work.

In order of importance, I must…

Write blog entries for the majority of my neglected 14 blogs;

Organize the Grampys.org site so that we can take registrations online and put up fantastic auctions;

Edit the aforementioned novel. I expect it will go through two rounds before I’m even ready to share it with my yet-to-be-named agent*;

Write a feature article for Gatehouse on holiday entertainment gift options – CDs, DVDs, and other gifts;

Finish my meeting schedule for vendor interactions while at CES in January;

Get fitted for a suit for sitboaf’s wedding;

Shop for holiday gifts – Channukah and Christmas;

Find and gobble some pumpkin pie (as nobody thought to bring any to Thanksgiving.

If you have suggestions for any of these tasks, *or are an agent looking for a literary novel – the fictional memoir of a boy whose life was shaped by the influence of his seven sisters, please contact me in the comments here.

If you’re an editor still looking for a reporter on the floor of CES in Las Vegas in January, let’s talk. My dance card is pretty full now, but I might be able to assist you before or after the event with research I’ve already completed or planned meetings.

Talk to you all soon. Head down now, gotta work.

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ILLUSTRATING my complete lack of attention span…the main reason I wrote this was because I have just been looking at the plethora of bookmarks and links to other sites in each of my browsers. I’m headed to clean those up – BEFORE ANY OF THE OTHER TASKS. Wow. Talk about ADD – or don’t!

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I’ve completed the Nanowrimo challenge and written my 50K words in the month of November. Now it’s on to editing and smoothing out the manuscript.

I can’t put into words – maybe because I’ve used so many in the past three weeks – how great this feels and how energizing this task has been.

Thanks for your support and I welcome anyone to tackle this challenge next year.

Now I’m off to put some content – not the novel, just content that’s been sitting in the back of my mind – onto the 14 blogs I had chugging alone happily until the novel took over my fingers.

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For a couple years now I’ve been getting some of my freelance assignments through Freelance Daily. It’s a newsletter that comes out…wait for it…daily. It offers up a concise aggregate of freelance writing gigs. I love the newsletter and I love that Suzanne has put so much effort into a project that helps so many writers.

Now, Suzanne is offering a blog marketing course and also running a contest for writers. Here’s the link to her post on the subject and here’s the link to vote for her as a great blog marketing genius.

If she’s in any way as skilled at blog marketing techniques as she is at running Freelance Daily, it’s well worth the $300. Take a look.

As for my writing pursuits, I’m at 43,000+ words in NaNoWriMo and hope to wrap up the novel tomorrow, November 25. That’s only 7000 words in a day. Then I can start the fun of editing and making the bare bones have a lot of flesh on them.

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Not in the election, because by the time most of you read this you’ll have voted. No, words are piling up nicely in my quest to complete NaNoWriMo.

Look over in the right sidebar and see the wordcount widget. It shows you where I stand after four days of participating in the 2008 NaNoWriMo event.

Unfortunately, my novel writing is interfering significantly with my other writing. I’ve let this blog and the others languish a little in the name of creating my first novel.

Yes, I’m already a published non-fiction author, but fiction is different. I’ve create a universe in my head (like that’s any different from how I go through life) and I’m moving the characters around on digital paper.

Unlike reporting on events or interviewing people, fiction taxes your mind because you’re compelled to transport yourself into different shoes with each sentence and piece of dialogue. So far I’ve been a set of parents, an 11-year-old boy (not too hard for me), teenage women, an old lady with a found kitten and a number of other characters. And that’s just four days in. At this rate I’ll compile the experiences of the world by the time they’re done counting the votes in Ohio.

If you’ve got a novel-writing story to share…or a tip on keeping the motivation going for other writing projects while staring down the barrel of something as big as NaNoWriMo…please put it in the comments.

Chat to you sort of soon. Tonight I’m Twittering the election at WBUR Radio in Boston. It’s light writing, but I’m gonna count it as some type of participation.

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At my office away from the office (Panera), I tried to see how easy it would be to write 2000 words on a cohesive topic.

The exercise was part of the NaNoWriMo event coming up in less than 15 days. That’s right, National Novel-writing Month is November.

Part of my anxiety – aside from the actual word-count issue – is topic. I’m a font of silly ideas, smart commentary and unique introspective conversation starters. But that’s where it ends.

The stuff I usually write are concise and powerful 600-775 word diatribes. How can I hope to create characters, plot, description and wild action in chunks of 650 words? Further, how will I paste the whole thing together well enough to entice a major agent or publisher to take a flyer on my project?

It can’t be that hard, can it?

I mean, at every Tweet-up, cocktail party, family gathering and trip to the dentist, people bludgeon me with their ideas for books once they learn that I’m a professional writer.

Sure, I get paid to write and have done so since the days of green screens and mimeograph machines. But that doesn’t mean I’m a modern-day literary Midas.

Just look back over this rant and count the number of times I’ve used a hyphenated descriptor. That’s amateur hour, but you must concede me the errors in style as I’m trying to pound out the characters.

Nimble fingers are necessary. Just like a toy boat will tangle your tongue, you should try writing alliteration always. Or don’t.

How many words is that? 900? Not even?

C’mon. I’m going to have to do twice this amount AND make it tell a story. I think what I need is some acid. Or at least a lucid dream.

Thank god it’s Friday and I won’t have to think about this heinous challenge until Monday when I’ll be limbering up my fingers again.

What?

NaNoWriMo requires you to write EVERY day of the week? That means my trip to NYC mid-month will include some frantic banging of the keys.

And TurkeyDay will make me look like Mike Felger in a previous life. Anti-social wanker with his laptop at every family event. But it’s for the greater good.

And whatever I end up with next month better be good. And it better be greater than this collection of words.

Every day.

All month long.

Until I reach 50,000 words.

Yikes.

Keep reading…I’ll keep typing.

*Leave your thoughts on NaNoWriMo in the comments. And let me know if you’d like me to dump my daily words right here on the blog. It will give you a chance to see the novel as it travels along a path from concept to abysmal reality.

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