Tag: novel

St. Peter’s Brewery :: a sneak peak

I’m at roughly 70% of the way done with my nanowrimo novel. I’m wondering now if I can wrap things up in 15,000 words or not. Maybe it will leave room for a sequel for 2009 :-).

Either way, thought I’d share a passage I’m working on right now. As always, the comments are open so feel free to critique, give suggestions and so forth. I won’t be making any changes to the text as of now – editing comes later – but I’ll take the suggestions into consideration when that process begins.

So here ya go ::

Jimmy was startled that he had revealed so much. He had only revealed that part of the story a few times before. And those folks had always ended up leaving him as well.

“Wow! That’s tough stuff,” Josh said. “It sounds like you’re beginning to understand your mom’s perspective. I’ve found that it’s so easy to cast judgment on someone when we just look at surface issues. It’s like we see a flesh wound and ignore everything that might be going on underneath. We either cast them away or try to fix the surface issue, never dealing with the disease or root of the problem that might be growing underneath the skin.”

“Hmmm,” Jimmy thought. “Explain that a bit more.”

“Well, let’s take prostitution as an example,” Josh continued. “We all want to be angry at the prostitute or the women who are sold into the sex trade industry. We want to cast them out and say they’re in the wrong. We don’t want to be around them. It’s like they have a contagious disease that we might catch if we spend too much time with them. Yet rather than being angry at the women, we should be mad at the men or women who likely abused them in their past and made them turn to prostitution. We should be mad at the people and companies who make between five billion and nine billion dollars a year encouraging and trafficking these women around the world.”

“Or here’s another issue close to my heart,” Julie spoke up. “Let’s look at abortion. My mom almost aborted me because she was dirt poor, living on the street and had no help. She couldn’t support and care for herself, let alone another human being. She didn’t want to abort me simply because she’s was an evil person, she just didn’t know what other options she had.”

“So what happened,” Jimmy asked.

“Well, obviously she didn’t abort me,” Julie said with a grin. “My mom ran into a lady who found out about her situation and agreed to adopt both my mom and ultimately me into her family. She cared for my mom all during the pregnancy and then cared for me like I was her own daughter or granddaughter. She helped my mom get her GED and then get an associate’s degree at Austin Community College. She even set up a college fund for me along the way. It was the ultimate example of getting to the root of the problem and not just dealing with one individual symptom. I think it’s provided a great example to me as to how we should treat issues systematically rather than just treating individual systems.”

Jimmy was genuinely stunned at how open Julie was.

“I found out later that that’s very similar to what Mother Theresa did in India,” Julie added. “She offered grace to those who really needed it. And rather than condemning someone for their mistake – or the mistake of others – she offered grace and would adopt numerous mothers and their unborn babies. She would welcome them into her home and care for them till they could make it on their own.”
The group mulled these ideas over with several other questions, explanations and ideas. Jimmy had never been a part of a group as open and sharing about their lives, their pasts and their faith. They simply had no qualms telling someone else where they may have messed up, or where someone else might have hurt them, or where they might have hurt someone else.

This struck Jimmy as something totally different than anything he knew about so called Christians. He saw glimpses of it in Capt. Matthie and his wife, but found it easy to question the authenticity and genuineness of their kids. Perhaps like Jimmy, they were simply drug somewhere they didn’t feel a connection with or a desire to be at.

The other Christians he knew growing up all came across as living a plastic religion. It wasn’t very solid. It looked great on the inside but was usually hollow or weak when tested. They made a big deal about attending church on Sunday, Wednesday and Fifth Quarter Celebrations on Friday nights but many times their lives just didn’t match up with what they claimed to believe in. Other times they may have done everything possible to do what was good and right, but it was obvious their heart was never in it.

It was just repetitive actions done out of duty. They were always trying to add more good deeds to some magical scale that God holds somewhere in heaven – like Lady Justice. The good deeds were added to one side of the scale with the hopes that they would be able to outweigh the bad deeds on the other side.

These new friends seemed to be living for something more.

St. Peter’s Brewery :: 25k words

Don’t worry, this won’t be a 25,000 word post. I now know that would take 58 pages in a word document.

I have crossed the halfway mark for #nanowrimo on Nov 18! WOOT! (25,298 words to be exact as of 10:12 p.m.)

Now in all seriousness, the challenge is to reach 30k by tomorrow night at midnight. I’m doubtful that I’ll be able to get a 5,000 word streak going tomorrow, but if I keep punching out at least 2,100 words a day over the next 12 days – I’ll be done with time to spare.

So as a “teaser” for those who keep asking, and I keep shrugging off, here’s the rough synopsis of the book ::

A twenty-something moves to a small town to try and run from the troubles he’s had in his past. Along the way he meets up with a community of quirky friends who show him that real life is not life lived alone – but lived in community with others.

You knew it would have something to do with community now didn’t you?

So now the struggle begins. I’ve reached the halfway point. Have I put too much into the story so far that I won’t have enough storyline left to reach the end? Am I still still trying to squeeze too much into the storyline? Are my characters developed enough? Does it matter?

Time to stop thinking and worrying about it…..

As a side note – I’ve heard two different strategies on writing/publishing/selling books. One strategy says all you need to do is sell one book to one fan. The fan will take care of selling the rest (as he tells their friends, who tell their friends, who tell their friends.) The other strategy says that if you can’t sell 100 books, you need a different book.

Which strategy to you subscribe to? Maybe I can get 100 people to say they’ll commit to buying the book for say — $12 (or less hopefully) — and then it won’t really matter will it 🙂

St. Peter’s Brewery aka a #nanowrimo update

Here’s my stats as of right now. I’ve gotten a little bit behind, as you can see I haven’t updated each and every day.

Starting out, I think you need an average of 1,666 words a day to finish all 50,000 words in a month. I think my average for the remaining 20 days is now around 1,950 words a day (that also takes in consideration the 2-3 days I’ll probably miss this weekend due to the marriage retreat we’ll be going on).

So anyways, I’m having fun, trying not to think about it too much as in making plot decisions, grammar and such (I think that’s the biggest suggestion everyone has given).

Here’s to hoping I’ll win and have something worth sharing at the end.

A few random trivia points thus far. See if you can piece the story together. 🙂

  • The name of the book is St. Peter’s Brewery
  • The title comes from a scene in Jamie Moffett’s great documentary, “Ordinary Radicals“
  • Many of the brews served at St. Peter’s are inspired by beers at Pagosa Springs Brewery or St. Arnold’s.
  • One of the characters is named G.T. He’s a tall truck driver with a long goatee and loves community and organic communities of faith.
  • It takes place in a small Central Texas town.
  • Just introduced a group of seven folks who live on a farm together.

OK that’s all you get for now – unless you can track down my profile on Nanowrimo.org 🙂

Or you can follow my #nanowrimo updates on Twitter.

Or see what other writers are tweeting about.

And read what Kevin Hendricks has written thus far.

Almost late for the dance

I’ve heard/read about the National Novel Writing Month in the past. In fact I’ve seen several of the novels written during previous years on Amazon.

While I’m just hearing/seeing things about this years “competition” I think I’m going to join in this year. I’ve started two novels in the past and neither of them made it much further than 1 chapter. I think I got too caught up in the plot development to really write much of anything.

Either way, the goal for the NaNoWrMo is to write one 175-page novel (at least 50,000) words. There’s a Write-A-Thon on Nov 15th, but Laurie and I will be at a marriage retreat that weekend – so I guess I’ll have to schedule mine another time.

Hopefully this time around I can be spurred on to bring a novel to completion and see it published (self-published if nothing else). I’ll keep you all posted either here or on Twitter.

Now with 5 days before the competition begins – what in the world should I write about?! 🙂

10 Tips for writing your book

Brian Bailey from Fellowship Church in Dallas has several tips for writing your first, second or 100th book.
I keep meaning to sit down and work on my first attempt at fiction but I just haven’t been motivated. Maybe it will come later or maybe I’ll move in a completely different direction. Either way, here are his pointers. Anyone else have any ideas? What book would you write if you had all the time in the world?

Top 10 Steps to Writing a Better Book
10. Get more exercise
9. Allow time for editing and formatting
8. Have a regular place to work
7. Schedule rewards at each milestone
6. Disable wireless for long stretches
5. Write a small amount each day
4. Set aside time for book busywork
3. Develop one writing process and stick with it
2. Print it out
1. Schedule regular getaways to write

Read the full post

A work in progress

Sunshine on my shoulder

I’ve started it.

After debating and thinking, I finally decided “forget it…” I’m going to start a book.

I’ll post updates online as I go. Check it out, give you input.

And remember it’s a work in progress.

UPDATE: This book didn’t quite make the cut. It stalled after the 2nd chapter. Perhaps I’ll go back to it sometime in the future. However – I did finally finish a full novel just over 4 years later: St. Peter’s Brewery. You can find out more about the novel and order copies for your entire family at StPetersBrewery.info.