[Not sure why, but my instinct tells me to re-run this post (the first in our “Reports from the Trenches” series) today, rather than posting a new one. Sometimes things need to be seen twice. I think this might be one of those times. So … here goes, in its entirety:] I’m gonna take a break in this series on Villains and instead open up my skull and share what’s going on in my own work right now. It ain’t pretty. I’m offering this post in the hope that an account of my specific struggles at this moment will be…

  For part of my time in Hollywood, I worked with a partner. I called him “Stanley” in Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t so I’ll continue that protocol here. Stanley was an established writer. He had been the force behind two big hits. I was the junior member of the team. Stanley was also a major sci-fi enthusiast. He had read all the magazines, the short stories, the novels, the collections. One of the ways Stanley developed movie projects (he was a producer too) was to option a short story or novella by, say, Philip K. Dick and then…

  My sense is that maybe it’s time to dial down our “Reports from the Trenches.” The big takeaway of the series actually came in the first week:   Even long-time successful writers crash and burn. It happens to me just like it happens to everybody.   I hope the follow-up posts have been helpful. But my sense is that we may have reached the point of diminishing returns. The last thing I want to do is bore anybody. So … Lemme try to wrap up today with a quick “lessons learned” post. Aside from the acknowledgment that EVERY WRITER…

I’ve always been a believer that our stories exist before we write them. Our job as writers, once we stumble upon these tales, is to bring them up into the sunlight in such a way that their best and most truly intended contour is revealed. What has screwed me up on my current project—the subject of this “Report from the Trenches” series—is that I excavated the story wrong the first time around. If we think of the tale as a giant dinosaur fossil, I inadvertently chopped off the legs and dug so deep under the skull that the whole damn…

  I said in last week’s post that, watching myself wrestle with this rewrite, I realize I’m attacking the problem on three levels. Level One (which we talked about last week) was about genre—making sure I knew what genre I was working in, and then re-hammering the narrative so that it lined up with the conventions and obligatory scenes of that genre. The second level of this work, what we’re gonna talk about today, is going back in the global sense to Basic Storytelling Principles. Specifically: A story must be about something. It must have a theme. The hero embodies…

  First lemme say thanks to everyone who is following this series. Believe me, writing these posts is helping me as much or more than it’s helping you. This new book is my nineteenth, I think. I’ve gone through this same hellish, tear-it-down-and-start-all-over-again process on almost every prior book, but I’ve never really paid attention to what I was doing. I just put my head down and ground it out. Having to write these posts has made me play witness to my own process. It helps. I never really knew what I was doing. Okay. Where do we stand today?…

  I’m gonna get this quote wrong, I’m sure. It’s from Kierkegaard, as cited somewhere (in The Moviegoer, I think) by Walker Percy:  

  What exactly am I doing as I reconceive/reconstruct/rewrite a project that I’m already eighteen months into, based on some pretty stark “do it over” notes from Shawn? I mean, what specifically? What’s the process? What am I actually doing? Answer: I’m doing what I should have done the first time. I’m doing what I’ve told myself to do a hundred times but somehow didn’t do. I failed to do these things because I was Lazy Scared Because I didn’t think hard enough and didn’t push myself deep enough. Is this sort of thing new to me? No. When I…

  The last two weeks’ posts have gotten a lot of positive response, so apparently they have struck a nerve. I confess though, as I sit down to write today’s Report #3, that I’m not really sure exactly WHAT is proving so helpful. Obviously I want to stay in that vein. So, spitballing a bit, here goes … The specific question readers might be asking right about now is, What exactly did Shawn’s notes say? And, How exactly did you, Steve, respond? The bulk of Shawn’s problem with the manuscript I gave him was that I had violated conventions of…

  Continuing our “reports from the trenches,” let me flash back briefly to last week’s post with the aim of setting today’s piece—Report #2—in a relatable time context. The plot so far: April 28, 2017. Shawn sends me his editorial notes on my new manuscript (my Draft #10.) Same day: I go into shock. Two weeks later: I summon the courage to read Shawn’s notes again. I succumb to shock a second time (though not quite as badly.) Three days later: I read ’em one more time. Shock is receding. Two days after that: I begin to actually grasp what…