The First Week

I've been working a full 75% of the time, which is a significant improvement over the percentage of time I worked on it during NaNoWriMo.

Having never been much of a joiner, it's not surprising.

The word total stands at 28,592. I'm adding, on average 220 words each day I write.

I had gotten out the teleplay script to see what would come up next, but the more I skimmed it, the more I came to realize how much the story had changed. The teleplay was fairly silly and a parody of the hard-boiled detective genre. The novel is neither of those. It has humor, but isn't silly, is a detective story without being a parody. I think it has some literary value, at least I hope it does.

It strikes me that one of the reasons why the detective genre works as fiction is because detectives presumably do the same thing that writers presumably do: Observe life and report on it. This in a way, makes it a shame that so many examples of the genre are written so poorly.

The Next 40

I've redone my spreadsheet for another 40 day run. The idea now is to just motor on Drayton until it is done. If I work on it every day, that should happen in just over two months. That's how close I am. All I have to do is add less than 300 words per day every day and I can have a full novel drafted in 76 days.

By adding in the last three chapters of the previous version--the ones in which I started catching on to how to write a novel--I've upped the word total to 28,128. That's about 6,000 words basically overnight. Now, if I could keep that pace up, I'd be done sometime next week, but i wouldn't get any bets down in Vegas on that if I were you.

A Small Milestone

I have surpassed 22,000 words today. I'm hoping to continue working on it, so I won't give a final total quite yet.

I am trying to improve both the percentage of days that I work on the novel and the number of words produced each time.I really want to finish this and not in a year-and-a-half. I'm not setting any deadlines, but am trying to make this my obsession. I'm trying to minimize the amount of time I spend writing other things--including blogs--so my other blogs might start to wither. that's what has to happen, though, for now.

Days 39-40

It is at an end. Not the novel, just NaNoWriMo. No mo' NaNoWriMo.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write an entire 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I, of course, started early and managed a whopping 2732 words total, or about 5% of the NaNoWriMo goal. And that's fine.

I did some good work, including a final 180 words today. (Nothing yesterday, unfortunately. I doubt I would have written 47,268 words, but something would have been nice.) Chapter 10 is not quite done, but it's getting there.

Here's some statistics: I ended up averaging about 68 words per day over the entire 40, and a whopping 124 when only the days I actually worked are counted. I wrote on 22 out the 40 days or 55% of the time. My current word total is 21,588.

At the rate I'm going, I would have a 50,000-word draft done in about a year-and-a-half. If I worked on it daily, that time would shrink to about nine months.

If I had to come up with a resolution from this, it would be that I would like to work on the manuscript more than 55% of the time. I don't mind the low daily average of words simply because I don't have much time to devote to it each day, so being able to do anything is helpful. However, I should really be adding those 124 words 70% or 80% of the time.

I'm trying, though.

I wonder what the next 40 days will bring?

Day 38

I added another 136 words today, bringing the total to 21,408. Chapter 10 is taking a quick turn for the surreal, which has been fun. And now for some more completely pointless statistics. (This is what happens to you once you start messing around with those evil spreadsheets.)

Over 38 days, I am averaging about 67 words per day. I've worked on the novel on 21 out of those 38 days and have added an average of about 122 on each of those days.

I could go on, but I need to save some materila for later.

Days 31-37

I have not been idle these past seven days. Oh, no, friends! Look at the chart. I wrote on three out of those seven days and accumulated a hefty 356 words. That brings the current total is 21,272. Chapter 10 is coming along. With a strong wind at my back, I just might be able to finish it before November is through.

Keep an eye on your windsock.

Day 28-30

17. That's all I managed today. 17 words. File this under "Something Is Better Than Nothing." The total so far is 20,916.

Nifty chart, though, huh?

Of course, I did spend some time trying to figure out why Ten Rod Road in North Kingstown, RI, is called Ten Rod Road, just in case I could work it into the narrative. It appears that the width originally was ten rods or about 165 feet. I don't think I'm going to be able to work that in.

Days 24-27

As you can see from the trusty chart, work has proceeded, even if somewhat fitfully. I accumulated 117 words on Day 25 and another 96 on Day 27, raising the total by some 213 to 20,899. 21,000 is just over that next rise.

One of the things that I'm having the spreadsheet calculate for me is an average of how many words I write per day over the total 40 days of this experiment. If I stopped today, I'd be averaging about 51 words per day. The average for 27 days is about 76.

Instead of working yesterday afternoon, I futzed around in Wikipedia and came across a link that brought me to an interview that S.J. Perelman did in the Paris Review in 1963. He says many great and funny things in them, including this: "I used to know several eminent writers who were given to boasting of the speed with which they created. It's not a lovable attribute, to put it mildly, and I'm afraid our acquaintanceship has languished."

He also said, when asked if he reread his old stuff, "[L]et me assure you I don't sit in the chimney corner cackling over what I've written."

And, "I don't know whether I approve of the picture you suggest of me, lounging about admiring myself in a hand mirror."

And, "In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age."

And, on writing for TV and movies, "[W]hile it's ignominious to be an anonymous gagman, perhaps, eleven hundred dollars a week can be very emollient to the ego."

And, after being told that Hervey Allen, the author of Anthony Adverse, channelled his ancestors to help him write, "I fully believe it, judging from my memory of his work."

And, when asked how many drafts he did, "Thirty-seven. I once tried doing thirty-three, but something was lacking, a certain--how shall I say?--je ne sais quoi. On another occasion, I tried forty-two versions, but the final effect was too lapidary--you know what I mean, Jack?"

This is why I love Perelman. That's music, Jack.

Here's an copy of a manuscript page from a story Perelman wrote, proving that it's never as easy as it looks on the printed page:

Days 21-23

The weekend, again, was a total bust, but I did get a whopping 24 words down today, raising the overall total to 20,686. They were a good 24 words, though, 24 that really moved things along.

Some interesting notes: The current chapter (10) and the previous chapter (9) are an expansion of a 71-word sequence at the end of what was Chapter 7 in the previous draft. I'm getting three chapters totalling, so far, over 5800 words from that one chapter from the previous version.

By the end of Chapter 7 in the previous draft, I had written 14,180 words. At not quite the same point in the story, I now have almost 21,000. Pretty good.

The next chapter is the one in the previous draft in which it all started to gel, so I have hopes that the pace will pick up significantly once I get past this chapter.

I think I had to stop where I did before and regroup. I've fixed so much this time around. Even my mistakes are closer to the mark than they were before. Now the challenge is to just stick with it and see the whole thing through.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Day 20

I'm actually rather pleased despite adding only a paltry two words to the total, bringing it to 20,662. You see, I've been reworking a single paragraph for the past three days, and I was actually expecting to wind up with a negative number today. Anything in the positive makes me smile.

This is the thing that isn't mentioned in the pamphlet, "So, You Want to Be a Writer"; you can spend days on a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word, although that is an extreme case and may involve spending too much time watching reruns of "The Match Game" on GSN. But still.

Days 18 & 19

Okay, so the last couple of days haven't been quite as productive as I would have liked, but at least yesterday I got a little bit done. I worked it and reworked it and came out at the end of the day with 59 new words. Today, I got bupkis. That leaves the total at 20,660.

I guess there's always tomorrow.

Day 17

A better day yesterday with 228 words added, bringing the grand total to 20,601. I'm hoping to do as well today, if I get the chance.

Day 16

Productivity picked up again today, and I added a whopping (by recent standards) 155 words to the manuscript, bringing the total to 20,373.

It was good work today, too. I enjoyed writing about the psychic meaning of the topography of East Greenwich and North Kingstown, Rhode Island. I did not manage, however, to mention the Del's Frozen Lemonade on Post road in North Kingstown, even though Drayton and Alan would have passed right by it and even though it is one of the great Del's stands. It just didn't fit.

I guess that's just the writing game.

Days 12-15

There hasn't unfortunately, been much to report. I've written only 29 more words, but that puny total comes with an explanation. I spent most of the week copyediting a newsletter and couldn't steal as much time away for writing as I had hoped. Also, I'm having to think about the new chapter, and I'm adhering to the notion that it's better to be good than quick. I know that flies in the face of the whole NaNoWriMo ethic, but that's who I am.

In the meantime, I'm thinking, and, as Dick van Dyke pointed out in the episode in which Rob tries to finish his novel, thinking is writing. And I printined some stuff out, only not for Drayton, so maybe that doesn't count. But I'm thinking, and therefore, writing. At least according to Dick van Dyke.

Day 11

Nothing today, except thinking. And the thinking is the hardest part. Other than the writing, which is no walk through the park. I've also been up to my knees in words at work lately, which seems to sap my ability to work on the novel while no one is watching.

But there's always tomorrow. Right?

Day 10

I will post the chart tomorrow, but Halloween got in the way today.

The total today was just 31 words, bringing the total to 31 more than it was yesterday. (Organization is not my top skill at the moment.) Chapter 9 was completed with yesterday's work and Chapter 10 was begun today. I'm not expecting it to be a very long chapter, maybe 1500 words, which probably means that it will come out somewhere around 7000.

That's what we'll find out over the next several days.

Day 9

In one sense, not so good today: I only wrote 37 words today, bringing the current total to 20,158.

In another sense, it went okay. Those 37 words finished off Chapter 9.

There will be a Chapter 10, and it will concern Drayton taking Alan home and then going home himself. I'll try to get at least 37 words on it tomorrow.

Days 7 & 8

We went out-of-town on an overnight trip this past weekend, and I'm afraid that my word total was a big goose egg. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

That, of course, means that there's no point in posting the chart today, because it looks exactly the same. I'm hoping for a good week this week, though, so that I can make up for words lost.

In other news, I'm not completely certain at this moment, but I think I'm about to add yet another brand new chapter to the fold. The one I'm currently working on takes place in a restaurant in which Drayton and Alan have dinner. Originally, I was going to take it through Drayton dropping off Alan at home and heading home himself, but I feel that I should just make that part into its own chapter. The current chapter, nine, is giving off an "I want to be done with" vibe that I think I will honor. I should have a better sense of this by tonight.

Stay tuned for details as they develop.

Day Six

Here's the chart, at long last:



Today, I added 193 words, bringing the new total to 20,121. That's right, I finally crossed the 20,000 word barrier. They said it couldn't be done, but I did it.

Day 5

I had a good day today: 317 words. The grand total now stands at 19,928. This means I have now passed the total for the previous draft, which stood at 19,865. And I haven't quite reached the same point in the story yet, either. And they're 19,000 better words, too, arranged in a more pleasing and effective fashion.

But five days in a row. Not bad. I'm averaging just over 200 words per day, which was my goal.

Day 4

The word total for today was 296 and the grand total is up to 19,611. And just for the record, yesterday's total should have been 28, not 25.

It went well today. I'm getting back the feel of the story, and I'm starting to think about it when I don't have to. I guess my real goal through this NaNoWriMo experiment is to get myself in the habit of adding a couple of hundred words, on average, every day until the draft is drafted. At that rate, I would be done in three or four months.

My first big test of this system is coming up this weekend because we'll be away from home overnight. However, I pledge that I will add a couple of hundred words, even if I am in an entirely different county.

Day 3

I did write yesterday--a whopping 25 words--but I just forgot to post this monumental addition. But you just wait. Today will be better! Yeah! You just wait!

The streak continues. Only 53 days behind Joe DiMaggio.

Day 2

Today I did 225 words bringing the grand total to 19,287.

Due to a series of circumstances beyond the control of anyone other than the DeKalb County School Department and the dunderheads at Comcast, it looked for a short time as though I would end up breaking my streak at one. However, rugged discipline won out over the vicissitudes of life, and I managed the 200 word minimum I've arbitrarily assigned myself.

Day 1

Today's total was 206 words, bringing me to a total thus far of 19,062.

I'm still figuring out how to paste in the chart.

Stay tuned.

Good Intentions

The dreaded NaNoWriMo month, November, is fast arriving. The point of this activity is supposedly to encourage writers to complete a full-length manuscript in 30 days. Well, this will be my third NaNoWriMo while working on Drayton. I think it's been worth the effort.

So, I won't be trying to write a novel from start-to-finish this year, however, I will try to participate in my own crummy little way.

It is my intention to try to work on the manuscript every day for all 30 days of the month of November. I'm not going to try to finish it in that time or anything like that. I'm just going to try to add a little to it every day. In fact, I'd be happy if I could finish a decent draft of Chapter 9 by then.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get a running start by beginning the streak either later today or sometime tomorrow. I will try to post updates, however brief, here as I do. I'll get my word count up-to-date and post that as I go along. Who knows, maybe I'll even do something mildly nifty with a bar graph. I mean, you know how rowdy those bar graphs can be.

Let the countdown begin.

Catching Up

It has been much too long since I've kept up with this blog, and so I intend to remedy that with occassional updates starting with this one.

I am now working on Chapter 9 and have written over 18,000 words. The current chapter, in which Drayton gets taken out to dinner by Alan Worth, has not appeared in any previous version of the Drayton story, except by inference. This was previously something that happened offstage, like Medea poinoning her children or Oedipus performing do-it-yourself lasik surgery.

However, it seemed like a good idea to bring it out into the open and to find out just what did happen at dinner that evening. We'll see how it works out.

Also, I realized that there was another scene never previously considered that I ought to add to this version: I never had anybody going to Briarbrook's funeral, even though there must have been one. I'm going to let this one percolate for a couple of chapters before trying to work it in.

that's all for now, but I promise to be a better corresponent in these matters from here on out.

Not Much New

I've been stuck on Chapter 8, mostly because I haven't had the time or energy to think about it clearly. Whenever I hear a famous writer talking about how they write every day, I suspect them of living some sort of sheltered, ivory-tower existence. I've never had the priviledge of subsidized living and consequently loathe it and deride it out of both jealousy and condescension. I've had times both good and bad and have had to spend too much of my time on things like surviving the current day to always get the chance to trot out a few more pages of brilliance.

I should be back on track soon, but first I have to clear about four inches of accumlated anxieties off my desk. The original manuscript is buried under there.

Since I Been Gone Away

Because reality had to decide to stick its ugly puss in where it wasn't wanted, progress on the novel has been somewhat stunted as of late. It hadn't stopped completely, but was coming along in dribs and drabs (or maybe drabs and drabs). I've gotten a bit more done in the last couple of days and am now in the home stretch with Chapter 8. The total word count is up over 17,000.

This has been an interesting chapter to work on because I can spot the point in the original draft where the story changed from being a parody to being a novel. The first part of the chapter was pretty broad and had the tone of an early Woody Allen movie. About two-thirds of the way through, it suddenly changed and became about the characters instead of a string of comic ideas.

Maybe that's part of why it has been such slow going: It's all about the people now, and I let the jokes fall where they may. I've learned a lot about myself over these last several months, both as a person and as a writer. It's been good. In spite of reality.

The Wall

Sometimes I hear about writers who build themselves underground bunkers or some other form of isolation booth in which to work, and then sequester themselves there for months on end while they spin their feeble magic. And, when I consider these folks, my tendency is to scoff. Oh, I might start out by merely snickering or raising a sardonic eyebrow, but I usually end up shaking my head in a knowing fashion and dismissing them as wimps and weenies. This is probably motivated by jealousy.

For there are other times in which I truly envy them their ivory towers. Times like the last several days, times when, just because of real life, I get next to no work done. In fact, I hardly even think of working because there are obligations to attend to and crises to avoid.

Which is just a longwinded way of saying that I haven't gotten much done over the last few days. And it is a shame, because the chapters I'm rewriting now need less work to get them where they belong. I just haven't had the time or the concentration. I am, however, hoping to remedy that today and in the next couple of days.

Unless, of course, life intrudes.

Another Finished

One of the hardest jobs I have on this blog is coming up with new titles for each entry. I could probably get away without entering them, but I do enjoy the challenge.

Anyway.

I finished Chapter Seven yesterday afternoon and have begun Chapter Eight today. Chapter Seven was hard work, but I think it went well.

I'm closing in on 15,000 words, which might not seem like much unless you've had to type them.

And Signifying Nothing

Due to a variety of circumstances that I'm going to claim were beyond my control, I got no writing done yesterday. This has been a rare occurance as of late, but one that will happen inevitably eventually.

I'm already a paragraph in today, so there's been progress. All is not lost.

Journal

John Steinbeck kept a journal during the composition of The Grapes of Wrath, a journal which has since been published. Well, a few years back, I read it, and now that I am at work on my own small contribution to the decay of American literature, I had intended to use this space as a sort of modern equivelent to Steinbeck's log.

Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.

Steinbeck's journal was, if memory serves, filled with all sorts of juicy nuggets from his daily life and provided real insights into the process of compostion. It is a good and solid and useful thing. I'm glad I read, both as a writer and as a reader.

This blog, however, has tended to be little more than a record of word counts, showing little in the way of insight. And that's okay, I guess. I mean, it does give the curious some idea of how the work is progressing, and it is not only possible but likely that most people are not interested in the experience of composition itself. They have problems of their own and don't need me complaining about my quandry in choosing between "although" and "albeit."

It would feel a lot more literary if I had some profound observations, though.

In the meantime, I did have a decent weekend with the novel, producing consistently in the short bits of time I could allot to it. Chapter 7 in nearing its completion, probably only a day or two away.

G ive Us This Day Our Daily Word Count

Things are starting to speed up again. I wrote over 300 words yesterday, most of the worth keeping. I'm now over 13,000 total.

Work is progressing as well this morning.

Part of the current slowness has to do with research. Since Drayton is now getting to see the crime scene, I'm left having to figure out a lot of details, hoping to get all of them right. What needs to be noticed? Would the crime scene investigators still be there? And if so, where might they be in their investigation of the scene?

I've never been a good researcher. I get impatient and bored. I want my answer quickly gotten and easily interpreted. It's so much easier to just make stuff up.

Unfortunately, I also want the book to be at least vaguely plausible. Just another character flaw, I guess. Which I wouldn't mind if this hadn't so many siblings.

A Small Step Forward

Yesterday's yield was a paltry 162 words for a total of 269 in Chapter 7. They were good words, though, and got me unstuck at last. I'm closing in on a total of 13,000 for the entire draft.

There's a very good chance that the entire story won't reach the magic number of 50,000, but it should come close. I would guess something over 40,000 at this point. Of course, I don't really know, and I'm not going to add filler just to pad it out. I want something publishable, but, more importantly, I want something good.

Yesterday

Yesterday's progress was measured with a big, round zero. Not a word, not a syllable. (And, believe me, there are days when a syllable would be appreciated.)

Things are going better today, but just barely. And the monster named Prior Commitments is waiting to kill my progress at any time.

These patches happen, though, and it is most important to just muddle through them.

After all, tomorrow is another day, as is Thursday.

So Little, So Little

I began Chapter 7 over the weekend. I wrote a paragraph, hated it, brooded over it, hated it some more, came up with a bright idea, tinkered a bit with Chapter 6 to pave the way for this alleged bright idea, and rewrote the paragraph. I stand at 107 words for all the effort.

And now, I'm stumped.

I wouldn't mind a good 1000-word day, but I'm not counting on it. Right now, all I can do is leave Chapter 7 up all day and look at it periodically and hope the sentence occurs to me. It's always that next sentence that's the problem.

Undone by Research

I just found out this morning that the headquarters for the Providence Police is no longer where it was when I left Rhode Island back in 1983. As a result, I've had to go back and rewrite the opening section of Chapter Six pretty thoroughly.

Damn research.

Chapter Six

Chapter Six was completed in about two days, and I think is much improved over the previous version. The ghost of the Sitcom always hangs over my shoulder, and I've been working hard to exorcise its presence from this draft.

If I keep up work at this pace, I'll be done sometime in July. I'm not countin on it, but it is comforting at this point.

Update

After writing the previous post, I couldn't quite live with myself. The idea that Drayton needed to work out of his apartment and not have a separate office just gnawed at me like a child on a jawbeaker. So I went and did it. I revised chapter one so that it took place in his home office and rewrote a small bit of dialogue in Chapter Six to reflect the change.

At least now I'll be able to sleep and look myself in the mirror.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five is a revision of what had been the last two-thirds of Chapter Four in the previous version. In this scene, Drayton meets an attorney, Morris Hepplewhite, who gives him a mysterious message from the now deceased William Briarbrook.

In the previous version, Hepplewhite was waiting for Drayton at his office, but I changed it to have him waiting for Drayton outside Drayton's apartment. This connected it more directly to the previous scene, and I just liked the idea of it being in a less formal setting. I even toyed with the idea of doing away with Drayton having an office at all, but didn't want to go back and do that much rewriting. Laziness, too, is a creative force.

Just for the record, I got the name Morris Hepplewhite from Ernie Kovacs, either stealing it outright or making a variation on a theme, I forget which.

I significantly chaged Briarbrook's letter from beyond the grave, turning it from a collection of zany ravings into a kind of simple code. Take that, Dan Brown!

The entire chapter took about five days to write.

Chapters 1-4

I started revising the NaNoWriMo version last fall. I had learned a lot about writing, writing a novel, and writing in Drayton's voice during the first version. The work on the first ten chapters improved steadily from chapter-to-chapter until it was really achieving a particular sound and feel. I had been helped along in this by an Internet friend, Robert, who kept telling me which parts he liked, which sentences hit the mark, and so gave me clues like breadcrumbs on a storybook road.

A great deal of writing is listening.

I proceeded in fits and starts as time and inspiration allowed, and by February I had reworked the first three chapters and a portion of Chapter Four. I had rewritten pretty ruthlessly and changed a lot, taking out hard, unnecessary, jokey jokes, and allowing the humor come through more naturally. I had to learn to let Drayton talk and to let the story tell itself.

Things were creeping along, however there remained on big impediment: The Radio Show.

Concurrantly with writing the novel, I have been developing a radio show. By February 2006, I had completed 11 out of 13 projected scripts, and had begun work on number 12. Switching back-and-forth from Drayton to radio scripts was proving difficult and both projects suffered. And so, I made the decision to concentrate on finishing the scripts and to put Drayton aside for the time being.

After three-and-a-half months of working on the scripts and a couple of other things that came up, I was able to get back to work on Chapter Four about a week ago.

I found it going in a direction I had not anticipated. Instead of covering the same ground as the origninal Chapter Four, I found that I was expanding on just one portion of it: the portion in which Drayton finds out that his client has been killed and following up on that info.

Most of the new Chapter four concerns Drayton's trip to a restaurant called Dinky Donuts for coffee, donuts, and a newspaper. Other than in the announcement of Briarbrook's death, the plot was not moved forward at all.

It turned out to be a tiny, little chapter, but necessary, I think. After consulting with my editorial consultant, Robber G., I rewrote the first portion--the part I had done last February--and was done with it. The rest of the old Chapter four was destined to become the new Chapter Five.

How I Got Here

The first seed of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy was planted back around 1978 or 1979. My best friend from high school had gone into the Army and was home on leave. During one of my visits at his parents' house, he showed me a science fiction story he was writing about an intergalactic detective. Inspired, I sat down and wrote the beginnings of a parody of it.

That went nowhere simply because I don't personally care for science fiction. (Please, no letters of condemnation. I don't care if anybody else likes it. As far as I am concerned, drink the cup dry! Just don't try to force it on me. Okay?)

A year or two later, I took a course as part of my benighted college career called "Film as Literature." The second movie the professor ran was "The Big Sleep" (the first had been "A Night at the Opera") and he had us read the novel as well so that we could make note of the differences. I wasn't expecting to like the book, but, by the bottom of the first page, I was smitten. I now had two new friends, Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe.

My interest in writing a detective parody revived, and since it seemed like Chandler had most likely gotten the name Marlowe from Christopher Marlowe, I decided that a nice, small joke would be to use the name of another of Shakespeare's contemporaries for my detective's name. There is a legend that Shakespeare died after having gotten drunk with Ben Jonson and a Warwickshire poet named Michael Drayton. Although it is likely that this story is at least an exaggeration since we know that Drayton was a teetotaler, I decided to pinch the name. It just sounded right.

After another year or so went by without a word being committed to paper, I happened across an old book that was being sold outside the tiny Gothic library in Kingston, Rhode Island. It was an edition of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that had been originally printed around 1900. Inside the front cover was a handwritten inscription, "Jesse Bertha Gibbs, 1904." It occurred to me that such a volume might be used as the hook in a mystery. (This notion has since been split, like the atom, and is used as a plot device in two Drayton stories.)

Years passed and I did nothing with the idea. In the mid-80s, while I was living in the Washington, DC area, I took a flier at writing the story as a novel, but got nowhere. The writing was poor, flat, and unconvincing. The idea went back on the back burner.

By the early '90s, I had resettled in Atlanta (having first lived there for two years in the '80s). I had, at some time, come up with the idea of turning Drayton into a teleplay for a TV movie and worked on this project studiously. I produced a pretty good version of it by sometime in 1992 and set about marketing it. One agent in the Atlanta area really liked it and wanted to represent me on it. However, she wanted me to make changes to it that I thought would hurt the script overall, such as removing all references to drinking and changing mild oaths such as "God!" to "Gosh!"

After being rejected by an agent in Savannah who was more interested in a script someone else had sent him concerning a mystery-solving team of grandfather and grandchildren and having a local attorney-cum-agent lose the manuscript I gave him, I got caught up in other projects and left the teleplay to molder in a drawer.

When I found out about National Novel Writing Month in the fall of 2004, I thought that turning Drayton into a novel might be a good way to participate. And now it's all this.

Reborn

A while back, I participated in something called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo to those who are too lazy to type out entire words.

Anyway.

I decided at the time to blog the composition of my novel, Michael Drayton, Detective Guy,as an experiment in public writing. As the month wore on I posted each chapter in the bits and pieces in which I wrote them and eventually accumulated almost 20,000 words of manuscript in 10 chapters. (I went a bit past the one-month deadline in doing so.)

I hit a wall on it then, though, and put it aside for a year or more.

Earlier this year, I decided to start revising the chapters I have as a way of getting a running start on it again. Unfortunately, other writing commitments got in the way, and I have only started seriously revising it in the last week.

It is my intention to use this blog as a journal recording the evolution and progress of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy.

Tomorrow: the Evolution of the idea.