All that panic because I was too dumb to know my backup program stored an archive of deleted files, and because I had allowed too much other garbage to backlog on my hard drive. (The glitch occurred when that particular hard drive filled up.)

I could sit here and ask why me, or rather ask why I do this to myself, but I’m too busy getting back to normal and on with work. Still, it seems that I go through this sort of panic on a regular basis. It happened two years ago when my old laptop gave out and I lost work that I hadn’t yet backed up. This time it resulted from the backup process itself.

Once I’m finished with this book and it’s off getting a look by some agents, I plan to spend a few weeks getting my life in better order, including both paper and digital files, to prevent future panic episodes.

But one thing I noticed during all of this was that I don’t tend to print out what I’ve written as often as I used to. In spite of what might’ve been lost, overall I consider that a good thing, a good sign that I’m making my personal transition from paper to a digital world.

I admit to some affection for the paper world. It’s what I grew up with, and where I found my love of books and the written word. There is still something sensual to me about the feeling of pen and paper or a book in my hands. I like the shape of the book, the weight of it, the toothy or smooth texture of paper, even the smell of ink, paper, and binding materials. I still recall with nostalgia the particular smell of the book I was handed in third or fourth grade when we studied the culture and geography of Japan. Ever since, I’ve looked for similar qualities each time I open a new book. All these things make letting go of the paper world a clingy process.

At the same time, I love trees. Because of that, I’ve always been troubled that my chosen form of expression — writing — has a history of felling so many trees. So when I went through my computer files and some paper files over the past few days, I was pleased to realize that I recently have less tendency to print as I write. I used to feel a need to print out what I’d written more frequently, to edit or proofread on paper rather than onscreen, or just to get a sense of what the printed story would look like.

Maybe it’s so many years of writing on a computer that’s changed this. Maybe it’s the laptop’s portability and reduced glare being easier on my eyes. Maybe it’s no longer having a job that requires me to stare at a screen all day and then do the same all my evenings and weekends for my fiction writing.

Maybe it’s blogging. The immediacy of blogging tends to encourage me to edit onscreen. My blog is even set up now so I can view what I write in two or three different fonts before I post it, which I think aids the onscreen editing and proofreading process.

Maybe it’s a combination of all those factors. It’s interesting to note that more publishing venues have opened up to electronic submissions just since the CRT monitor has begun to vanish. Hopefully the less glaring monitors that are replacing them will be much easier on all our eyes, and continue to save more trees.

I still write a good half of my personal journal pages by hand, and I still use handwriting to jump-start or unblock my writing process. This blog post is in fact a segue from my morning pages. But my journal pages don’t get reproduced, except by typing them into a digital format, and they’re unlikely ever to be published in book form. The paper is eventually recycled if they do become digital, so I’m not as concerned about my journal pages killing trees. At least that’s what I like to tell myself.

Now if we can get the ebook technology to the point where fewer paper books have to be printed, at least for popular fiction, then we’ll have made real progress in taking publishing from deforestation for profit to a more pure form of edification, expression, and entertainment. Of course there will always be uses for paper. I can’t think of a better way to keep certain legal documents or accounting records, right now, though that’s not a world I work or have much expertise in. There are also some types of books that just work better, for now, on paper. One that comes to mind is the coffee table variety, with color plates of artwork or photography. But the less trees cut down for paper and books, the better.

Even if what this Guardian Unlimited article says is true, that planting more trees in temperate latitudes won’t help assuage global warming, it also states that destroying more trees isn’t the answer, that the greater need, and indeed our motivation for attempting to slow global warming, is to preserve ecosystems, including but certainly not limited to our own.

Perhaps my panic over my files had some value. It got me not only to change what I file away on my computer and how I back it up, but also to take a hard look at how I use paper, to keep heading along the road I’ve started down, of conserving wherever it’s reasonable, and wherever I can.

Experts say that, over time and with practice, one unconsciously learns to write to length. It didn’t happen to me. I’m either word-count learning disabled, or I haven’t done enough of the right kind of writing. I never wrote for a newspaper or for magazines. My technical writing was nuts and bolts, cut-and-dried stuff, with no opportunity to be wordy. I learned a lot about deadlines, organization, and proofreading doing that, but not about writing a creative project to length. Cutting to length after the fact is time consuming.

One solution I plan to employ in the future is to write more poetry. I love it, and I can’t think of a better training process to conquer my wordiness. Poetry requires sparseness, the selection of the best word to express a thought. I plan to write more short fiction and essays, too.

In the meantime, on this project, I outlined between drafts, to help ensure the story was staying on track. I’m also employing a method that my quasi-personal-editor (husband) came up with while we got Shadows Fall ready to self publish. We call it Pages to Paragraphs. It doesn’t prevent bulk, but it helps reduce my writing to something manageable after the fact.

The original Pages to Paragraphs took its name from reducing chunks of prose that were pages in length to a paragraph or two, in other words summarizing parts of the story. There’s a difference between telling and showing in fiction, and showing takes a lot more words. I decided what needed to be shown and what told, then used Pages to Paragraphs to shorten the telling parts further. I’m not entirely happy with Shadows Fall, even now, and it could still be shorter. But it was an important step in my learning process, and Pages to Paragraphs played a role in completing that step.

My writing has changed, matured. Pages to Paragraphs has evolved as well, flexing to fit the piece of writing or what needs to be cut. I’m using it to shorten my current novel. The problem right now is inflated sentences running amok with repetition, passive usage, and convolutions that make me wonder where my brain was at the time I wrote them, or if I’ve somehow forgotten how to write.

The Process:

1. Determine the percent to cut by comparing current word count to the required length.

2. Analyze the work to determine where to cut. From the narrative, the descriptions, or dialog that’s too cute to live? Is the excess padding mostly in the beginning, middle, or end? Are some chapters more obese than others? In my current book, it’s all over the place, in the sentences, which at least makes the math easy.

3. Break the manuscript into non-overwhelming portions (I divide it neatly into chapters), and crunch each one down the required percentage.

4. Read each trimmed section through to ensure I haven’t butchered anything beyond comprehension. Smooth as necessary, without adding words.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? There’s more.

The Rules:

1. Never allow myself to say this is impossible, that I can’t cut any more.

2. Remember this isn’t the time for creative writing, only creative cutting. Turn off the pink battery bunny — remove its batteries and hide them. Bring out a GI Joe with an assault weapon intended only to kill words. Picture the tough action figure from Toy Soldiers, or Legolas taking out Orcs and Oliphants in LOTR. Some might prefer Edward Scissorhands cutting topiaries.

3. Remember this is a sculpting process, the equivalent of chipping away wood, rock, ice, or whatever medium a sculptor works with, to reveal the image inside. I need to be brutal and thorough, but exercise judgement and finesse.

4. Avoid deluding myself. Inevitably, when I start work on a chapter or scene, I read a little and think, “Oh, this one doesn’t need any work, it’s fine as it is.” But if I tell myself, “Cut or else, and cut the full amount!” and I begin to examine each sentence on its own, I soon find myself chipping away. I see redundancies I didn’t before. I find tangential thoughts that are meaningless to the story, little descriptive lists of adjectives. I notice sentences strung together in a kind of drunken meandering rather than in straightforward ways. I find passive verbs, passive phrases.

5. Pat myself on the back, after cutting each section of my darling to pieces. Give myself a cheer as I notice the word count gradually melting, and take a break for a few minutes. Then charge into the next piece and keep cutting.

One note of caution: I’ve used this method in the past and found that there were one or two tidbits I wished later I hadn’t cut. Even months later, I reread and still missed them. It’s safer, and I can be more disciplined in this process, if I back up each draft as I go. I even save “Trash” files containing the larger chunks I’ve cut. That way I’ll send off a lean, clean draft to agents and keep my soggy, romantic, full-bodied drafts in a drawer to cry over later if I want. Nobody else may love them, but I still can. (I really am that sappy — pitiful, isn’t it?)

The strength of this method applies to any overwhelming task I’ve taken on, from piles of film after a holiday, when I worked in a photo-processing plant, to book-length revisions or new projects from scratch as a technical writer. It has to do with breaking a big task into manageable portions, and engaging self-discipline and common sense — with the addition of silencing the sentimental voice that wants me to think creative work should only be fun and easy, and God-forbid, never destructive.

In other words, it’s all in my head. But if that’s what it takes, giving myself a different view of the problem and breaking it into smaller pieces, then . . . whatever works, right?

This is my final major edit of this book, its sixth draft. After that it will get a proofreading pass. Then it’s off to seek an agent.

Funny how we go through times like this. Lots going on inside, not much coming out (in the blog).

I’m sure that as soon as I’m done with this little fallow blogging period you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Meanwhile, when I am online (haven’t been much lately) I will try to get around and visit you all more and make sure I comment. Happy blogging!

Meanwhile the cat wants dinner, it feels like spring today instead of winter, and we have a new neighbor, called Phainopepla, who is really quite awe inspiring and graceful.

I’m in the second category. I’m a wordy writer, and it frustrates me to see how many extra words I write. If I’d been able to keep my words in check, the story surely wouldn’t have taken so long to come together. Or would it? Why this need to expand so much on what can be said with so many less words?

Authors who write about writing sometimes tell us a writer trains himself eventually how to write to word count. I’ve found I can do this with non-fiction, but fiction is another creature altogether. It’s all in the editing phase for me, or should I say the cutting phase. That’s where I am now, at the end of the third draft, embarking on the endless cutting phase.

It’s a matter of getting to the right words, the way a sculptor chips away at stone or wood to get to the form inside. Some people do more of the chipping away of words in their heads, in advance. I spill mine onto the page. I write and write and find when I’m done that there’s some good stuff there hidden among lots of other stuff that I have to sort through, sweep away, and haul off to the word dump in truckloads.

I wonder about the similarity of the words “mind” and “mine.” Is my mind a not so rich mine, containing too much useless ore to be sifted through? Have I never really hit the mother lode in there? Is the creative vein too thin, is there too much tailing left behind to be worth all this effort?

Do you write long or short? Do you trim away or build up content in your edits?

I started my website back in 2000, when Shadows Fall was first published, for the same reason most writers do, to promote my work. Four years later I started this blog as a way to provide up-to-date content on my website and let visitors know what I was working on—basically as a way to keep the website from stagnating when too much time passed between novels. Little did I know at the time that the blog would engage so much of my attention.

The immediacy of this format holds a certain attraction. Type, click a button, and what you’ve written is published. But that has its drawbacks. As easy as email, which carries its own risks, a blog can suck you out into public view in a way that’s scary and in some ways deceiving. It’s easy to forget you’re putting yourself “out there” to the degree we do online. After all, I’m seated here alone at my home computer as I type this into a little window on my screen. It doesn’t feel public at all, at the time I write.

I tend to be more reticent when I’m face to face with people. As a private person—in fact an introvert—I find the public aspect of blogging conflicts with those personal, internal privacy constraints. The degree of narcisim that comes into play in me when I engage in this blog or others startles me, especially after the fact, if I go back and read what I’ve said. I’ve always kept a journal, so I grew accustomed, years ago, to exploring and sorting out my thoughts by writing them down. But that used to be strictly private. Anything that might be published went through heavy editing and self-censoring. It had time to simmer, to boil down, before it left my hands and confronted other readers. Even then, I sometimes felt overexposed when submitting work. I’ve come to realize this mental exploration through words can come across in blogging and commenting as total self-absorption. At least that’s how I see it. I find myself talking about me, me, me, in a way I rarely do in real life, and then only with a select few people. I’m not sure I like doing this online. It’s a little too much of me, if you ask me.

Maybe blogging and commenting is too easy, too instant, too uninhibited—and far too permanent once it’s out there. Effective, judicious communication requires more time, more thought, more self-editing than this. I feel a need to take a step back. I’m not this spontaneous a person.

Then again, maybe getting me out of my native reticence is a good thing. The business end of writing requires that one put oneself out in the world in a way that’s uncomfortable to many of us who tend to be introverts. Writing is the form of communication we’re most comfortable with, so blog as conversation is a handy tool for us to use.

There’s a teaching attributed sometimes to Sufism, and other times to Socrates as the Triple Filter Test. It states that one shouldn’t speak until one’s words have passed through three gates or filters: truth, necessity, and kindness. Still, the questions linger in my mind, especially recently. So much of the rest of my life draws me, calls to me. I find I’m leaving the blog sit for long periods of time. I’m building dreams in the physical world that I want to pour my energy and time into.

Is all this blogging I do really necessary? Does it serve a purpose—the right purpose? If it’s all just so much babble about me or my life or my opinions, why do it at all? And what about my comments elsewhere? I’m a passionate, opinionated person. I’m an impulsive, temperamental commenter. I flare up over news or politics. I say things on the spur of the moment that I may later regret, because I didn’t think things through, or I wrote out of context to the original post, or I reacted and blurted out my first thought rather than responding from my core. Maybe I erred, or changed my mind. I’m not afraid to admit when I do that, but a comment made on a blog I visit may be around for a long time, while I may forget where it was. I have gone back and edited my posts on my blog at times, sometimes deleted them altogether. But, just as with emails, when we don’t know who they may be forwarded to, we lose control of comments.

Now this is not to say I intend to give up blogging—or commenting. I don’t. But recently I want to give all this more thought, take it a little slower. Is my attitude about this suddenly too furtive, too cautious? Am I dithering?

Sometimes I wonder if the next step beyond blogging is for the human race to become more telepathic. Here in the blogosphere we sometimes share our thoughts almost as soon as we think them. They’re not just first draft writing, sometimes they’re first draft thoughts. They spring newborn onto the screen, brain to fingers to blogosphere. Telepathy sometimes seems like the next logical step. If we need to be concerned with those three gates or filters when speaking and writing, perhaps blogging will teach us to engage them when thinking as well, to govern our thoughts, preparing us to wise up before we jump that communicative gap. Or is it possible that our thoughts already carry far more power—or distance—than we realize? Who knows?

So I wonder, why do other people blog, and how do you feel about it?
Have your reasons for doing it changed since you began?
Have you written posts or comments you regretted?
Does blogging accomplish a purpose for you? If so, what?

Some of the most recent comments here were disrupted by a MySQL database error, so one or two had to be reconstituted. If you made a comment or attempted to during that time, or if a comment you made appears with a different timestamp, my apologies.

I hope everyone is enjoying the gear up toward winter and the holidays. For me it’s refreshing just to have some cooler, moister weather. We were expecting rain tonight, but now it’s looking less likely. That’s how it goes most years. Welcome to Southern California, where we have drought or floods and nothing in between. If it’s not an El Nino year, rain is only a rumor.

The first draft seemed to go great, and I finished it quickly.

It felt a little flat to me. There was a lot more story seeping into my mind, as the original idea developed and morphed over time, than was apparent in that draft. The main problem was the limited viewpoint. After debating with myself for a while, I decided the story needed a second viewpoint character. Actually I have to admit the character himself told me this. Yeah, sounds a little crazy, huh. But this is fiction. He was coming to life, and he wanted a voice.

The character was already there. I just had to make him a viewpoint character, change some scenes that involved him so he could tell a portion of the story from his perspective, reveal some of what he knew.

It sounds so simple.

At first I couldn’t get this guy to come completely to life in my head in quite the way I needed him to, in spite of his nagging desire to do so. I had the idea of him, but not him, if that makes any sense. I had to research the region and slightly different culture he comes from, as well as his profession. I had to understand his childhood and some of the things he went through that motivate him and cause him to keep the secrets he does.

When he finally began to show not just signs of life but a concrete personality, he developed in a hurry, and he started to take over the story. Then I had to work on Iris, because, damn it, this is her series, not his.

That’s where I am now, still adding the punch of this second character’s side of things. I’m almost done. Hopefully the rest of the edits will go much more quickly. Maybe someday I’ll learn to have the whole thing in my head before I start writing. Nah—that’s no fun, knowing where you’re going before you go there? I had enough of that as a technical writer. In the meantime, I’m a bad blogger. I’m in the story, and I want to stay there. Some days I regret that I have to sleep, that’s how caught up I’ve been in my own little world. It sounds pretty sick, if you don’t believe there’s actually going to be a published book that comes out of this.