Interview with Author Michael McClellan - Part 2

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping.

You become a better writer.

I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me Shortly is Mike McClellan. He is the author of the CNC, a book we published earlier this year through StoryGrid Publishing. This is part two of a three part series of the conversation I had with Mike. So if you haven't listened to part one, check your feed, go back, listen.

To part one, and then jump in.

To part two as well. I hope you're enjoying it. I got lot out of this conversation with Mike. So let's jump in and go ahead and get started.

How do you keep track of. Because I think you said there was 120 speaking characters in the book. Is that accurate?

I think that's close.

Like about 120. So you have around 120 speaking characters. You have.

I don't know, at least five or six different civilizations kind of clashing in different ways.

And you would. I forgot. I should have, like marked it in when I was reading it. But there was this one line maybe two thirds of the way through the book where you just like reference this kind of minor character's parents and where they came from. And I'm like, I think he knows, like, not only that minor character's parents and where they came from, but the history of the land where they came from and probably who their grandparents were and probably like who fought in that re. Like, you know, like the one line. Finally, I finally understood that, like, again, it's not just that the final book is 10% of the hundred percent of work that went into it. I feel like the final book is 10% of the history of this world that is sitting in your head. So, like, how do you keep track of all of that? Because I think I told you before, I had to like check back.

On a character's name. I created like three scenes before the other day. And so the idea of keeping track of all that, do you. Does it. Is this just like you've been keeping track of history in your head for so long, it just kind of comes naturally? Or do you have notes written down somewhere? Like, how do. How do you. I guess when you're writing, like, and you have to reference all these different things? I mean, does it just kind of like, like, how do you. How do you do that?

Gosh.

I think one is. Yes. I think it's ingrained in me from, from childhood to be able to keep track of historical dates and names and times, right? I mean.

Yes, I know the name of all of the Zulu regiments that fought for King Cetshwayo at the Battle of Isanwana in 1879. Right. And I can name the British regiments that were there and who were the leaders of those various units. And so that is part of it, right? And I shouldn't discount that. And I think about, you know, in my mind, when I think about the Battle of Gettysburg, you know, July 1st 3rd, 1863, you know, who is, who is in charge of, you know, each of General Lee's corps and who was in charge of each of General Meade's corps and all those things. And so I think that kind of inclination or training helps with, with writing a book like the Sand Sea. But I also think. And there's no sort of superpower involved with this, right? I also think that if you live with your characters for a long time, it's not that hard. What I mean is, like, none of us have to remember, like, hey, what was my roommate's name in college? Right? Like we know. Or what's, you know, what's your cousin's name? Like you know, your cousin's name, right? And so for me, when I think of Sadak Saladin or Hamid Selassie or Maja the Irasian, who is the Khalipa's concubine, these are people I've been living with for a decade or seven or eight years. So it's not. I do know all about them because I've hung out with them in my garage for a really, really long time. And so I think that's a big part of it. And one of the reasons I think book two will be able to be written so much faster than book one is that all of the world building and characters are functionally already created, right? It's continuing the story in their world. And there's additional cast of characters that come in into book two that either are either off stage characters or very minor characters in book one. For example, Usor Napopolis, who's one of our villains.

In book one. We meet his father, Grand Count Gungor Nippopolis in book two. So he's mentioned as like a throwaway line in book one. But in book two, he's a real character, as is the Gresham autocrat, Petros Pavlos Petrovich. We get to know him and his advisors, and all of a sudden he becomes he's just a name in book one that's off Stage, but he becomes real. So too for.

Sir Bartimas Frere, the Lord Governor of Kyderbet, who's referenced multiple times in book one. He becomes a big character in book two, as well as, I don't know if you remember, at the Anglia Ball, but there's Sarah Hessegar's father. Sarah's the one that Peter Harman has a thing for as a crush on, and. And he's the general, her father, who's rude to him. Well, he has a substantial role in book two as well. And so.

A lot of these characters that may seem like, holy cow, how are these people populating these sort of offstage positions in the sand sea? It's because they are part of the story. They're just not fully on stage yet.

So I want to talk a little bit about how you write. So you said for a while you're just doing the weekend warrior thing and then you switched to writing every day. How did you make that switch?

So this was the real. There were two pivotal moments, right. One we've already talked about, which was understanding the story I was supposed to write, which was telling that alternate history, the hybrid of historical and fantasy fiction. The second great evolution was exactly the one that we're about to talk about. We had a death in the family in January of 2014, New Year's Eve, 13 into 14. And that had the effect of jarring me into realizing that life is not a dress rehearsal and that if I wanted to write this book for real and finish it and have it look like what I had envisioned and dreamed of it looking like that, I needed to pick up the pace.

I don't believe that you can write a book like this as a weekend warrior. I think you have to commit. And so for me, I began on January 13, 2014, writing 500 words a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year with no misses. And that trend has continued to the present. I write 500 words a day, and in the early years, it required me to write at 5:05am every single day because of where I was in my law practice, where I was with having a young child. That was the deal. And that was my time where no one could schedule a meeting and I couldn't be interrupted because no one scheduled meetings, at least in my world, at 5:05am that they may at some point, but they did it.

And so it was always in the morning in the early years. In later years, I was able to be a little bit more flexible on timing of day. But the ironclad rule of 500 a day has remained. And there have been days where I've written much more than 500 because I'm on a great thread and I've got momentum and I'm rolling and I don't have to.

Be somewhere with my kids or be taking a client call or something like that. But it's never less than 500, and some days it's 501, 502, 505 words. Because that's all that I can do that day. But I'm never letting go of the thread. Every day I'm grabbing the thread that I had worked on before and I carry it over into the next day. If you do that day after day after day after day after day for years, it can have a huge impact. And I think Tim and I think you would agree with this. Most of us overestimate what we can do in a month or in six months or a year. But most of us underestimate what we can do in five years or 10 years if we're literally working at something every single day.

Yeah, that's what.

I talk a lot with people about book marketing. And that's what I try to get them to see it as is like.

If you just do a little bit. I usually talk about on a week by week basis. If you just do two things a week, that's 104 things a year. You can make a lot happen with that kind of thing.

I think a lot of us get excited about a project and want to sprint on it.

And then we get worn out. And it was interesting because when I first heard you say that about the 500 words a day, I had been struggling to keep up with my writing because when I am on, I'm usually writing a thousand to two thousand words a day. But then we've had so much going on, blah, blah, blah, all the excuses that I just literally didn't have the time and something. It's super simple to just be like, well, 500 words is good too. But when you said that, I'm like, well, I can do 500 words and.

I've timed myself a couple times and I usually can sit down and get it done in like 20 to 25 minutes if I'm just rolling. So I'm like, there is not a day where I can't do 20 to 25 minutes. And it was funny this morning I wrote and I finished a scene and I checked and I had 498 words. So I literally like flipped to the next scene, wrote One sentence and then like closed the laptop and started getting ready for work.

And then.

And, but yeah, the 500 words. Because like again, when you do the math, you know, that adds up to, I don't know, what is that? 180,000 words a year. And that's if you literally stop at 500 words a day. And that's a lot of writing, you know.

So in this time after the sand seas out and you're working on book two, like, is that still how you're doing? You're just knocking out at least 500 words a day on book two?

I am, yeah. Yeah. The only days I've ever missed writing by 500 words was when we were in the final review and editorial process on the San Sea itself, in which I was doing like a 12 hour day reviewing the manuscript or something. Or in some cases a 16 hour day. I think there was one day where I was up until like five in the morning reviewing stuff before getting on the call with the proofreader at like 8am it may have even been 6am it was a rough like two hours of sleep kind of night. But other than those days when I'm doing so much on the book, then yes, it's 500. And so I'm probably, I've written probably, oh gosh, I don't know, maybe 200,000 words on book two. Now those are not all 200,000 words that are going to be in the final manuscript of book two. But yes, I mean, I've been working on book two since.

2000 in parts, since 2018. And what would happen is I would get a rewrite.

Demand or request suggestion, whatever we're calling it, from Sean. And then I would have to put book two down again and then go back to creating a new scene or rewriting a scene for the Sand Sea. I do wanna say one other thing. There is a very famous.

Historical example of writing in the way that you and I are writing, Tim, which is Anthony Trollope, the famous British novelist who I think sold more books than anyone except for Charles Dickens in that era. In 19th century Brit, he woke up and wrote 2500 words every single day. And it was said that if he finished a novel inside of that 2500, he would begin the new one until he hit his 2500. So I said, if Trollope could do 2500, I can do 500.

Yeah, yeah. I love stories like that. Stephen King tells a couple in his book on writing. There's this great effort. I'm gonna probably butcher the story And I don't remember what author he was talking about, but my favorite one was he said somebody came in and the writer's, like, laying on his desk and he's like, how many words did you write today? And he's like, seven. He's like, well, seven is pretty good for you. He's like, I'm just not sure what order they go in, you know?

And.

Yeah, so when you.

So I want to talk about when Sean got involved, because I haven't even heard this story, so I know that. Where was the book at the point that Steve introduced you to Sean?

So.

In January of 2017.

I finally had the guts.

To show Steve my. My writing.

And Steve, now, had you been emailing him? So that's. So it started in. All right, remind me. It started when? So 12 years ago. That's 2008.

September of eight. Yeah.

And then we're now in January of, what, 17. Okay. So you're now nine years in, and you reach out. So had you been kind of emailing with Steve and letting him know that you're making progress, or had he not heard from you?

Or, like, Steve and I were talking pretty often and email about all kinds of different things. But, yes, I would update him every few months on, hey, I'm writing every day, or, hey, this is what's happening. Just know it's still tattooed on my brain. Like, I haven't quit, and I'm not going to, and I'm still going. And in his graciousness and generosity, he just kept encouraging me and just kept, look, I believe in what you're doing, and I'm sure that some people are going to think you're a crazy person for having worked on this thing for nine years at this point with nothing to show for it in terms of anything public. No public.

What did you, like, what did your wife think about all this?

That is a wonderful question.

You know, Samantha, she always.

She always understood that I had to write. She always got it. And I think it was, you know, when she saw me doing my 500 words on the day my second daughter, Violet was born, like, in the hospital. I mean, literally, like.

Like, oh, yeah, I didn't even think of that. Yeah, of course.

Doing my 500. And she's like, look, like he's. He's not kidding, right? Like, he really is this every day, no matter what, you know, hell or high water.

And, you know, or Christmas day, right after everyone's opened the presents, I'll, you know, get my computer and be sitting on the couch by The Christmas tree. Doing. Doing the words. Right. Or on. On a family vacation. Right. We'd be sitting by the beach and I'd go back to the room to do my words. And I think for her, I think when she saw the deadly seriousness of the process, I think it allowed her to believe in the ridiculous ostentatiousness of the dream.

The boldness of the dream was supported for her based upon the.

The crazy diligence of the discipline. And that's, I think, what allowed her, in part, to be a supportive spouse, because she said, okay, he's. You know.

This may be just an absolute disaster for him that he spent so much time, but I think she also realized that, like, look, if it's inside of you. Right. I almost positive you'll relate to this. If the art is inside of you, it has to come out regardless of whether other people recognize it or not. You have to do it, or else you'll spend the rest of your life regretting what could have been. You know, I could have. I could have written a book. Okay, well. But you did it, right?

Yeah.

You have to pull it out of you and do it, or else you're going to live with regrets. And it's better. You know, there's a Teddy Roosevelt quote in my office that, you know, it's not the critic that counts, nor the man who points out where the strongman stumbles, where the doer of deeds could have done them better. And you have the same quote I'm.

Showing you because we're on zoom. We can see each other. I'm showing him. I have the exact same quote I just pulled off my wall behind me. Yeah.

I mean, look, and here's the punchline of that, right?

In the end, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls that know neither victory nor defeat. And I think that's the same energy that imbues press Field's. The war of art. Yeah, same thing.

There's this part of me that, like.

I don't know. I haven't. Because I wanted to say this, but I'm not sure, like, how to. Because I haven't been able to encapsulate what I feel. Because one way I want to say it is like, who the fuck do you think you are that you can write a book like this? Like, but not in this way of, like, you know, who do you think you are that you can do this? It's like, how did you even come up with the idea that you could actually pull this off. And the way that I've heard you talk about it, I think you.

You don't fully understand.

Like, what a big deal is. Cause, like, I'm right now staring at a stack of them, right? And this book is. You know, it's 752 pages. It's a hard.

You know, it's got. It's dense. Like, we had to. We had to shrink the font size just so that it could fit into 752 pages. And so.

There'S this part of me that's like, how did you even think that this was something that you could, like, pull off? I don't know if that's even asking the question in the right way, but that's just what I keep kind of coming back to is, like, how did you even. Like, yeah, that's. That's the question. And that's why I asked, like, what your wife thought about it, because it was such an audacious goal that on one hand, I'm like, he must not have understood what he was undertaking when he started, which none of us ever do. I always say if we knew at the beginning of any project how long it would actually take, we'd probably never start. But. But I don't know, there's, like, this level of, like, audacity in you to set out to write something like this that I just think is like, you know, most writers would be like. And probably most people that would give advice would say, you know, get a couple novels under your belt. Get them out in the world before you take on such a big project. And. And no, you just were like, I'm gonna dump.

I'm.

I'm not just jumping in the deep end. I'm jumping, you know, in the deep end of the ocean, and we're just gonna swim to the bottom, you know? So, like, did it ever feel like this was just too big of a project that you could. That you could tackle?

I love the question, Tim. I love the question. It's. I think.

For me, it was just about being all in. And I. The books that I've always loved the most, the ones that.

Transported me away from our life and into another life while I was in those pages, were the ones that I always just loved the most. Right? I think of Shogun by James Clavell, or I think of Lord of the Rings, or, as a younger kid, the Chronicles of Narnia, Right? These.

Either series or books that were just. That were giant. You know, some of the Michener books that My grandpa loved so much that I read also when I was young, the huge historical Texas or Alaska or Hawaii or Caravans, the Source, the Covenant, these kinds of books that make really good doorstoppers when you're done reading with them because they're huge, they're great. That was always my vision of, I want to write a book like that one day. And I was a blogger and an article writer back until 2007, and I wrote every day on the blog. And it was, you know, we talked about a little bit of politics, but mostly like culture and, you know, foreign affairs and sort of, you know, interesting things. And I had a community around that. And then I would crank out like a, like a fairly serious article every couple of months. And I realized that as much as I liked the instant gratification of people getting to read my published article or interact with me on my blog on a daily basis, I realized that so much of it was based upon the issues of the day that were fleeting. And the issues we thought were so important in 2007 really aren't that important to us right now in 2020. It's a different time. There's different things happening. There's different challenges, different crises. I realized that I wanted to write something that had the capacity of being.

More timeless, something that could actually endure, something that maybe would be worth reading in 20 or 40 or 50 years from now that still would, or that could have mattered if it was written 20 or 40 years before I wrote it, that 1960 or 2060, and it would have worked either way. That that was sort of the idea. And look, the truth is, Tim, it was always a crazy ass dream, right? It was a big, hairy, crazy ass dream.

That a normal person shouldn't undertake, right? Because it takes too long, right? It's too painful. You have to just have that. It has to literally be.

I can't do otherwise. Right. Why did you write that book? Because I had to. Right. Because that was what my soul was telling me, that if I don't do it, I will regret it the rest of my life. And I have to start now because it's going to take a really long time. I had no idea how long. I thought, oh, I could do this in two years. Two years is a really long time.

I could do it in two years from now. And I looked at some of my old emails to Steve and some of them are hilarious. I mean, it's like there was an email from call it 2011 or something where I say, steve, I believe I'm going to Be finished in six months from now.

Steve. I'm not done, but I'm still working and I have a new ideas. That kind of a thing.

Yeah. So let's get back because I got us way off track. So to when Sean came into it. So you said you had the audacity to kind of show it to Steve or something.

Well, and I did. I had never shared it with Steve because I never thought it was ready. I was too scared. The writing, the story, just the whole thing, it just wasn't there yet. It just felt too amateurish that it wasn't ready to show him. I could maybe show it to some of my friends or my parents or my wife or someone like that, but it wasn't ready. And once I got the mindset that it's not ready, then I became like, there's a line in Back to the Future where Marty goes back in time and he says to his dad, George McFly, he's like, well, I write these science fiction stories. And he's like, well, George, these are pretty good. You should share these with someone. And he says, oh, no, no. What if they say they're no good? I'm not sure I could handle that kind of rejection. I was kind of like George McFly there in 2016, 2015.

I just wasn't ready. And so finally I shared the manuscript. Not the whole thing. I shared two or three scenes that I thought were my best scenes or close to the best scenes with one of my partners, a marine named Paul Tetzloff. And.

He said, look, man, I don't know anything. You know, I'm just a guy, but I think this is really good, and I think you should send it to Steve. And I said, oh, Paul, I don't know, man. Oh, I don't think it's ready. And he said, mike, how long have you been working on this? I said, oh, about nine years. And he said.

Damn freaking thing to Steve. And I said, okay. So I emailed Steve, and I mean, it was like the scariest email I've ever written in my life. Tim. It was, Steve, I want to get your perspective and advice on my real writing for the first time ever. And to his credit, he said, look, send me 25 pages and I'll look at it. And I did. And he sent me back this email that was like, I could cry thinking about it, but he basically sent me back this email saying.

This is the real deal, Mike. And I knew. I knew coming from you, it would be detailed, it would be thoughtful, it would be, you know, well written, but I didn't know if it would have the spark, because you never know until you see it. But it does, and I want it. I'd like your permission to introduce you to.

Sean Coyne, who I think is the best editor. And.

And he did. And Steve and I, we went. We had a meeting up in Santa Monica, California, in la, and we met over breakfast for a couple hours. And I had printed out the maps in color and had them laminated, and they were sitting on the table. I had my, at the time, 1400 page or 1600 script that was as tall as four phone books. And I had a key character list that I had written out. I had a statement of the theme, and I just kind of walked through all those pieces with Steve and he asked me questions.

And that was sort of the real launch of moving from a obsessive amateur into a professional.

And so when you got introduced to Sean, what was like, did you guys talk first? Did you send him your 1600 pages? Like, what happened next?

Oh, no, no. We started talking and he asked me about the story, and he talked about the excerpts I had sent him. And he and Steve had both given me kind of conceptual notes at that point.

One of them was that they wanted me to beef up.

Hannah's character, that she needed to have a larger role. And the other was that they wanted me to.

Do some clarifying and some alterations to the supernatural element. And so I really spent some time focusing on the staff and what role the staff was going to play vis a vis Jima Jean and the Besserians and others. And so.

Basically.

Those notes led me to rewrite the manuscript over the course of 2017. And I finished that. And I consider finishing the Sand Sea the real finishing moment of the Sand Sea, in terms of having a manuscript that I would be willing to present to people, is, hey, this is the whole book. This is the iceberg. That was in December of 2017 was when I finished that rewrite. And now, of course, there were two and a half years of further editorial that went on. But the soul of the book was there. The ending of the book, the soul of the book, the big battles were all in that late December 2017 manuscript. It.

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Weekend.