Marcy,
You simply can not get discouraged or only for a short time - everyone gets discouraged. First those notes are relaxed. He allows the I in the notes. He does not try to do something that is perfect or uses any jargon. He allows his voice too shine through, like he is writing an email to a close friend and enjoying the conversation.
When I write I start out with absolute chaos. I put observations, data and notes in tentative chapters in a manner that is completely chaotic. Then gradually order emerges from the chaos. This happens because I revise millions of time. Print, read, revise, Print read, revise. The only thing I know is that nothing will get done if I don't do it. Therefore I keep doing it knowing
that something will emerge in the end and might have to revise it again.
I think your military training has led you to be very tight and organized and try to get perfection too quickly rather than tolerate the chaos that is part of the creative process.
There are certain rules of writing such as describing a character when he or she is first mentioned. The suspense is usually in the details. You have to always remember you are telling a story that the audience knows nothing about. You will be better able to describe what is happening if you try not to overidentify with your characters. Make them as human as they indeed are. both the good ones and the "evil" ones. Of course there are alway some sociopaths and you will just have fun with them, describing their look and their lies and perhaps if you are in teh book how you felt when you listened to
them.
Marcy, I know you think you can write a perfect book in four to six weeks. I do not know any writer who can do that, not even the best known journalists who write one book after another. They write faster than me but they still take about a year of steady work and they do it full time.
Incidently soem of the most famous writers have ghost writers these days. It is a dirty little secret that no one really admits.
The problem with writing is that you have to give everything else in your life up almost to do it. That is why writers so often have "epitaphs" that say things like, thanks to my wife nancy for tolerating my never participarting in anything for two years of our lives.. bla bla bla.
Some people can have a life and write. I
try but am often tired. Because I work full time as a professor and have to pay for my own research, it also takes me forever to research and write a book and believe me sometimes I get very discouraged and wonder why I am doing it.
Marcy, if i had the story you have i would just grab it and run. Free yourself up. Stop trying to be perfect. Stop sometimes and read a beautiful paragrpah from a writer of narrative nonfiction like Stewart or Thomas Ricks. See what they do that makes their books such page turners (Take someone who is not writing about the military). Try the same tricks.
I think one of the issues right now for you is that you might overidentify with Frank. You might want to write to perfect a book for him or for Neal. You just have to relax. What is nice about your voice is the simplicity in which you sometimes
write.
Try an exercise. Think of Frank at one point or anther in time and try writing an email that provides a description of him physically that includes the way he walks and carries himslef. You are writing the email to a friend. (i.e. pretend). It might help to look at the picture of him.
Another exercise. Take one or another crime scene pictures. (being the nut I am I would take one if you have it of the dead Iraqi children or maybe the dead Marine killed in the car bomb). Describe it vividly.using as few adjectives as possible and making teh description lively with the use of really powerful verbs.
Remember it is not a failure to eventually get a ghostwriter to help you. It is done all the time. you have the story.
love jch
SKYPE - jennifer.hunt10025
Jennifer C. Hunt
PhD
http://www.seven-shots.com
From: Puckett and Atwood <puckwood@comcast.net>
To: jennifer Hunt <hunt_jennifer@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 7:18 AM
Subject: How Do you Find It Again?
Hi Jennifer, how do you find the energy and the drive to keep going? I just read a supporter's version of the last day of trial - (attached) and it's so much better than my own notes. My notes being straight dialogue without the commentary - which I know is the only difference here. I'm discouraged and facing a ton of work to get caught up this week.
Let me guess an answer to my question. One hour at a timeâ
PS. I read this one because Clo was sitting right behind me in the court-room and has some sort of understanding of the military, the process, and the real issues - she heard at least half of the evidence even though she is bias toward the notion that there was no wrong doing that day by anyone. It is dawning on me that some people's agendas were revealed to me last week, it is an interesting story.
OK, feeling not quite so in despair after writing to you. Thanks for
listening!!!!!!! Moving on.
Marcy