Category: writing

12 Nov

Paperback Writer

After a few weeks of tweaking the layout, we’re finally at the last big step for my book: the paperback edition is now available.

Where can you get it? Several places. Which should you choose? Depends on who you are and what you want. Okay, that’s a bit existential, so let me break it down.

If you have Amazon Prime or will otherwise order enough to get free shipping, get it on Amazon!

If you’re going to be paying shipping costs anyway, get it through Createspace!

If you know you want me to sign it, send me a note! (I’ll sign any of them, but we can skip at least one step of you shipping a book to me.)

Basically, Createspace is an Amazon company that is printing the book. If you buy using the first option Amazon keeps a bigger percentage of purchase price, but not paying shipping is obviously a perk. They take a smaller cut if you order through Createspace, but there you have to pay for shipping. I can get books cheaper directly from them, but obviously then have to ship to you or hand-deliver.

Any way you do it, enjoy!

By cjhannas Uncategorized writing
22 Oct

Cover Art

If you find yourself extremely bored during daytime hours, I invite you to go on the world’s most exciting scavenger hunt. Find this room:

Ok, it’s not really that fun of a time, but this room exists somewhere in Washington, D.C. and you can totally go there! I snapped this picture about a month ago for the basic setting for my book cover. The original seems a bit more appropriate for something out of 1910, so I did a little digital renovation.

First was brightening up the walls with a fresh coat of paint:

Next up, adding some original artwork. That painting in the back? Let’s slap this piece of art in there:

The front wall could also use some more color, so why not make a mosaic tile layer with this picture?

Much better.

We need a little more life, mainly some characters from the book, and since I didn’t have any suitable pictures on hand I had to turn to a stock photo service. I give you, “attractive couple holding hands and watching the waves.”

After flipping them around to better suit the space (or to hide the fact that she’s not wearing shoes…) and removing all the glorious light shining on them, we have this:

Add in a title and the name of yours truly, and the cover process is done!

Have I mentioned it’s available on Kindle and Nook?

By cjhannas Uncategorized writing
14 Oct

The Perfect Hours

After a lot of typing and reading and Starbucks hot chocolates and time, I have finally achieved one of those life goal things. As of this moment you can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble to get my book for Kindle or Nook (or their apps on your phone).

Caleb is out of college, at a job he hates (but is good at) and can’t figure out how to get the one he wants.

Fellow mall worker Leah should be a blonde ray of sunshine, but she is overshadowed when teenage crush Sophie unexpectedly returns to complicate Caleb’s already neurotic dating life.

From different places and going different places, they each have decisions and secrets, and have to confront the battle between the urge to dream and the safety of settling.

I started poking at this story in 2010, but didn’t get far before I set it aside. Then on a Friday in late January 2011 the subject of books came up in a Gchat session with my friend Alex.

Clearly what we needed was some kind of boost to get our projects going. So we agreed to do just that [Note: I had just watched The Godfather for the first time].

About a year later I was done with the first draft, which set off rounds of editing and revamping and hating large parts of the story and loving small ones. I worked for a while to go the conventional publishing route but didn’t get far, and after shelving it again for a bit decided it was the 21st century and I had the easy access to just do it myself.

And here we are. At the touch of a button anyone in large areas of the world can read a story I wrote, and while I will be nowhere in the Pulitzer conversation, that’s still pretty cool.

By cjhannas writing
13 Jun

Knowing Is Half The Battle

I’ve written from time to time about people’s Google searches that land them here, most of which are a little strange. Often what I’ve written in the posts they land on in no way helps them.

But we all search odd things from time to time.

Just a few weeks ago, I Googled “thumb twitching” after — you guessed it — my thumb was twitching. In 1812, I would have sat there wondering what malady had befallen my limb, but thanks to modern technology I know it was most likely stress-related.

More fun are my recent searches related to the book. In the course of writing I have run across several instances in which I needed a detail for my character — usually one of the females — and had absolutely no idea what would be realistic.

That’s why my search history has things like “eye shadow color for green eyes” and “updo.” Last weekend I was trying to describe a waitresses’ eyewear, and to get a proper mental picture I did an image search for “old lady glasses.”

I’m proud to report that all three searches were wildly successful.

[Sidenote: I find it fascinating that Blogger, a Google product on which I am writing this post, flagged the word “Googled” as a spelling error.]

Since people like pictures in these posts, let me share one I took during my commute home this morning:

If it looks Instagram-y, it is. Find me at cjhannas.

By cjhannas technology Uncategorized writing
17 May

Rolling Along

I haven’t counted myself, but Blogger tells me this is post No. 500.

As I got close to this milestone, I started thinking about ways in which I could do something special to mark the occasion. Instead, I sat on 499 for days without posting anything.

So to get the ball rolling again, let me update you on something that’s been keeping me pretty busy. About six weeks ago I wrote about finishing the book draft, and since then I’ve been deep into reading the whole thing cover-to-cover and doing a round of edits.

I finished my read-through last weekend, and am now in the process of making all of those changes in the electronic version. It’s been really interesting to get feedback from my select group of readers and combine that with my own views upon experiencing the full story. If only I had an intern to make the eye-numbing changes on so many pages.

The good thing is that I feel much better about the book after both reading it myself and hearing good things from others. It’s not that I doubted myself that much, but this is the first time I’ve ventured into this kind of project so there was just no way to really know what I had.

Soon I’ll be moving onto the next step of getting closer to being able to share it with everyone. Details as they come.

My special gift for this historic post — my soundtrack for today’s editing work:

By cjhannas Uncategorized writing
31 Mar

Houston, We Have a Draft

It’s been almost three months since my last writing project update, but after tacking on another 30,000 words and making it to the end of what I had outlined for the story, I finally have what I’m calling a complete draft.

I have to give credit to my heroic printer, which, despite my best efforts to kill it today, managed to spit out a pair of hard copies. I knew from scrolling around the Word file to tweak a few things in the past week that I had a lot of content, but it seems rather ginormous in this form:

Yes, I weighed it: 2 lbs.

I’m interested to see what I find in the story when I read it as a whole and not just little pieces at a time. Yesterday I rediscovered that one of my main characters is a smoker — a detail I haven’t included with her since roughly July. Whoops. I guess that’s why we have drafts.

I posted on April 1 last year that I was starting writing, and it’s kind of incredible how things have changed since then. I went on vacation last June with the expectation of writing a lot. I probably got through 2,000 words in six days. Lately I’ve been in the habit of going to Starbucks to write a few mornings on my weekend. I can knock out 1,500 words by the time it takes me to finish a large hot chocolate.

The biggest difference toward the end was feeling like I knew what I was doing. I’ve spent so much time with these characters — working on how they talk, how they react to certain things and most of all, how they relate to one other — that I don’t have to sit and ponder how scenes would play out. They just happen.

Hopefully I can apply those productive habits to the editing process. I have a few readers, in addition to chief adviser AV, diving into the story now for some much needed feedback. More updates as things progress.

By cjhannas Uncategorized writing
12 Mar

It Would Be Really Strange If

In my very quick search for documented evidence for my Leap Day post, I came across the portfolio for the creative writing class I took during my senior year of high school.

Inside there’s a great mix of fiction and poetry, one of which I’ll share in a minute. But on the outside of the folder is a great set of seven rules we apparently had for being successful in the class:

1. Keep your hand moving
2. Lose control
3. Be specific
4. Don’t think
5. Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar
6. You are free to write the worst junk in America
7. Go for the jugular

I particularly like No. 6. It’s such a great message for what writing should be — just do it, who cares if it stinks or people don’t like it?

The piece I want to share looks like it sprang out of the prompt “It would be really strange if…” I briefly thought about utilizing my rap skillz, but I think it’s best if I just give you the text. You may rap if you please. Also, it may help to know that Oakton is the name of my school.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by goats,

If they walked around school in ties and coats,

Disciplining children and making them take notes,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by goats.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by chickens,

If they taught the students and made them read Dickens,

The brains between them would be slim pickens,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by chickens.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by dogs,

If in P.E. they went with students on jogs,

And spent the rest of the day fixing bathroom clogs,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by dogs.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by cats,

If they did nothing but comb the school for rats,

And for lunch they fed the students gym mats,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by cats.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by birds,

If they taught with chirps instead of using words,

And to lower class sizes they expelled all the nerds,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by birds.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by horses,

If they said there were no such thing as magnetic forces,

And accepted papers without requiring a list of sources,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by horses.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by gophers,

If in the dress code they required students to wear loafers,

And everyday for lunch they served microwave dishes from Stouffers,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by gophers.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by squirrels,

If they ignored the boys and taught only the girls,

And especially liked the ones who wore their hair in curls,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by squirrels.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by armadillos,

If during class they let students sleep on pillows,

Or held class outside underneath the willows,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by armadillos.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by fish,

If they listened to the students and catered to their every wish,

And they served themselves as a lunchtime dish,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by fish.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by bugs,

If all they did was harass and bite the students like a bunch of New York thugs,

And made it illegal for students to give each other hugs,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by bugs.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by bears,

If they growled at students and chased them up the stairs,

And forced them to travel everywhere in pairs,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by bears.

It would be strange if Oakton were run by moose,

If they let the students roam the halls like chickens on the loose,

And changed the school colors to orange and chartreuse,

It would be strange if Oakton were run by moose.

###

By cjhannas high school Uncategorized writing
05 Jan

It Is (Being) Written

For some reason when I promise to write about a certain subject “soon” or “next time” that post either never happens or takes weeks to actually appear. This is one of them.

I first mentioned at the end of January last year that my friend AV and I were going to each write a novel, projects we had picked up and put down many times with no real push to actually complete them. Our goal was simple — to nag and support each other through the process in order to make this time different.

She ended up diverting to another goal, but I kept writing, and while neither of us finished 2011 where we thought we would be, we still managed to accomplish things with our projects we never had before. It wasn’t a perfect year, but I would definitely call it a success.

At the time I wrote this post, Microsoft Word said my story had 52,546 words and the little blinking cursor sat near the top of page 88 (single-spaced). When I work on my laptop I use OpenOffice instead, and oddly enough they disagree on what the meaning of “word” is, giving me numbers that are a few hundred apart. I’ve always been obsessed with checking word counts, whether I was writing my sports column for the school paper, or a research assignment for a political science class. Still, I find these number pretty staggering and borderline unreal. Eventually I think I’m going to end up with around 90,000 words. My characters still have a lot they need to do.

Whenever anyone asks what the book is about I rarely have a good, concise answer. The problem is partially that it’s not actually done yet, but with an entire outline in my head it’s hard to sum up all the major and minor pieces before losing the person’s attention. But here goes.

Caleb, the narrator, has a mind-numbing job he’s vastly overqualified for, yet can’t seem to find anything better. He spends frustrating day after frustrating day wasting his life and knowing he’s wasting it. He goes home to find a letter in his mailbox, one with an envelope covered in hand-drawn circles of different sizes. It’s from Sophie, a girl he never expected to hear from after she moved away with her boyfriend, one who grew up on his street and occupied his idle thoughts while she dated guys he never thought were good enough for her.

The story follows their reconnection and explores the ideas of how people respond when their lives aren’t going well, who we push away in the face of adversity and the battle between the urge to dream and the safety of chasing more realistic expectations. Style-wise, think “High Fidelity” and “500 Days of Summer.”

The notebook I use to write on the Metro

As hard as it has been at times, I find this project fascinating. Except for a few short pieces in a high school creative writing class I’ve never really written any fiction before. My day (or night rather) job is exactly the opposite, so it’s fun to be able to completely control what happens in my little made-up town and have my characters say whatever I want them to say (within reason, or course).

I hit a very rough portion late in the summer when it became clear that the first 50 pages or so needed a major overhaul. Thanks to some excellent advice/cheerleading from AV, I slashed a bunch of stuff that wasn’t working and added back in new sections including two extra characters who have now become pretty vital parts of the story. I’ll have to do a lot to what I’ve written since then, but at least this time I think I’m on a pretty good path already.

Before this project the thing about fiction that scared me the most was the prospect of writing dialogue. Now? It’s my favorite. I could literally write a conversation between Caleb and Sophie all day. Hopefully that’s a good sign about them as characters, but I find myself in some sections telling the two of them to wrap it up so I can move on. The people at Starbucks don’t find that weird at all.

That’s another thing I’ve learned — I write in public places far better than I do at home. I think there’s some aspect of social pressure at work, since if you have a laptop or notebook in front of you people think it’s odd if you just sit there. So I write.

Hopefully I’ll be done in the somewhat near future so I can move onto the editing stages and whatever comes after that. I’ll keep you posted. Though given my track record on this one, that may take a while.

By cjhannas handwriting Uncategorized writing
11 Dec

Cup of Gold

It’s a perfect example of a cliche, but history really does repeat itself.

I write something here about every book I read, partly for my own archival purposes but also to share with others what I’m reading and the thoughts those texts conjure. For some people, I know these posts are unbelievably boring, and that’s OK. Hopefully I write enough other stuff to keep everyone somewhat entertained.

Last December I posted about John Steinbeck’s “The Pastures of Heaven,” saying weeks had passed since I finished it, and that I didn’t have a ton to say about the story itself. Well it’s December again, and several weeks ago I finished the John Steinbeck book “Cup of Gold” about which I really don’t have anything to say.

Like last year, that’s not a knock on the text, but something that tends to be a pattern with Steinbeck books. I guess the only thing to note is that this is the first in a new approach to Steinbeck. He’s one of my favorite authors and has written so many books that I had a hard time choosing which one to read next. So I decided to take subjectivity and guessing out of the process by reading all of the rest in chronological order.

“Cup of Gold” is his first, and it seems like it wasn’t exactly well-received. I can definitely understand why that may be the case. It’s kind of a crazy story that involves British indentured servants, pirates and of course, Merlin. Not exactly what people expect from the “Grapes of Wrath” Steinbeck, and I’m certainly not alone in liking the latter much better.

I have two more of his books to read before I get to the ones that really started to make him famous. That quest will have to wait until next year though, since I have turned over a lot of my former reading time to my own writing project. I feel like I’m making some progress (about to pass 50,000 words) with a goal of finishing by the end of January. We’ll see how that goes.

By cjhannas books Uncategorized writing
30 Jun

Right Way to Write

Some people need a special space and just the right conditions in order to write.

A quiet office with the perfect color of paint on the walls is necessary for them to focus and channel their creative energies. Fortunately, I am not one of those people.

At work, I have to write stories with whatever noise is going on in the newsroom — televisions, phones, people shrieking at the sight of mice — and the news doesn’t stop just because I don’t like the bland desk that’s holding up my monitor:

In the spirit of full disclosure that’s not actually my desk. It’s AV’s, but we work at the same place and I assure you mine looks the same.

At home, I have a lot more control and thanks to the wonders of laptops and wireless Internet, I can work just about anywhere I want. Not that I do, but I could.

Everything you read here is composed in one of two places. There’s the desktop computer in my bedroom:

Or more frequently, it’s sitting downstairs in a recliner using my laptop:

I guess I do have one special stipulation though — I find it very hard to work in silence. Maybe that goes back to writing so often in the newsroom that I’m used to having at least some background noise. I find the sound of silence somewhat distracting.

Ever since college I have turned to music to combat this problem. On very rare occasions that means opening up iTunes and letting it skip around my playlist playing whatever it wants. Usually though, I listen to one of three artists, and in an odd twist, this is the only time I ever listen to them.

The first is Nickel Creek. I can accomplish absolutely anything with them as my background noise. The only problem is that I only have one of their CDs, so the window of productivity is pretty limited.

The second, Delta Goodrem, does not present that issue. I think I have three of her albums, and thus can work for hours with her wailing away at a just-audible level.

If things really aren’t going well and I’m having a hard time getting myself to just buckle down and work, it’s time to go to the secret weapon — DMX. I know, you probably assumed from the start that DMX was one of the three, but I had to make sure. His song “What’s My Name” basically sounds to me like “Do Some Work.”

When even that doesn’t work, I may solve my Rubik’s Cube in a last-ditch effort to get the creative juices going. But sometimes even the best of us can totally fail, and end up opting for more successful pursuits such as napping or quality time with the Playstation.

That may mean you go a week (or two) without seeing any new content, but if you get too desperate you can always just pretend it’s 2006 and read those entries instead.

By cjhannas Uncategorized writing