If you missed it last week, I announced my new blog on writing called Elsewhither. There were three posts this week:

• The Creative Process
• The Journey of a Thousand Miles
• Query Letter Fail

The last one falls under “Friday Fun” so if you had to pick just one of them, I might go with that one. And don’t worry, I’m not planning on making spam a permanent feature here at the fridge. Just hoping to give the new guy a little boost in its early stages. They’re so cute at this age!

A short while ago I mentioned I had another blog in the works. This won’t be the first time I’ve had more than one blog. Some of you may remember I used to have two: Back to the Fridge and Lord of the Onion Rings. The latter was intended to be a place for recipes, but I just simply didn’t have the time. So I decided to not renew the domain and just let it go.

But now here I am again with a second blog. Though instead of food-related, I wanted a place that was completely focused on writing. My posts here on writing don’t interest everyone and when I visit other writers’ blogs, I’d rather not send them back to the funny food site. Hence, it was time for a new persona.

If you head over there and find you’ve somehow left a comment on a blog that didn’t exist until very recently, it’s because I decided to seed the new blog with all the writing-related posts (and comments) from The Fridge. And in case you’re hanging out here and ever wondering what’s going on over there, I’ve added a new RSS feed box on the right-hand side.

And how will you know what this other place is? Easy. If I’m not here then you can find me elsewhither. Hope to see you there!

I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I gave a book update. That was early January, just after I hit a wall near the end of the first draft. Shortly after that, I abandoned that draft. It was not only good, it was good enough (which is a code word we writers use for “total crap”). As I mentioned then (and I’ll really try not to rehash this point too much) the story was just plain boring. It contained more plod than plot and had an ending so infinitesimally pointless that I decided I needed a reboot.

And so there I was: back on the synopsis. I needed to tear it apart, figure out what was wrong, and put it all back together properly. This was a very painful and drawn out exercise—but very necessary. Writing with your heart (first draft) is easy. Writing with your head (second draft) is hard. This is what really separates the writers from the tire kickers.

Once I got the synopses (plural: I wrote one for each of the three books in this series) knocked into shape, I hit that other wall which has slowed me down over and over again. I call it “Starter’s Block.” It’s when you should otherwise be fully ready to start a project, but you can’t. It’s hard to describe but for me it’s always been a very difficult block to overcome. I’d love to do something about it someday (I’ve considered a brain transplant) but for now I’m just stuck with it.

Then came FitBloggin. I was on the road, had some time to kill, it was quiet, and I decided, “Screw it. I’m going to start writing again.” And I did. I opened up a blank document and began rewriting from scratch. While this sounds more like a Second First Draft than a Second Draft, I really did use the First Draft as a guide: but I didn’t want to edit what I had. It was beyond editing. I needed to write fresh.

And write I did. Between Sunday, March 21 and Sunday, March 28, 2010, I wrote 27,098 words. (Which is pretty good for one week: that’s somewhere between 80 and 90 pages.) And then something happened:

As happy as I was with the rewrite so far, I stepped back and it was still boring. So I decided to add a couple scenes to bring a bit of foreshadowing to the story early. One was good enough. The other stopped dead in its tracks after one paragraph. Then I spent two or three more weeks back on the synopsis. The good news is, the story improved a bit more. The bad news is, I completely lost the will to write after that. The good news is, that didn’t last long, and so I was back at it this last weekend.

My only plan right now is to lose two pounds a week until . . . oh, wait a minute. Wrong post category. My only writing plan right now is to just keep writing. I’ve explored just about every other “non-writing” method of writing over the past eighteen years and surprisingly not a single one of them has generated even a single paragraph. So, yeah, I’ll try the “writing” approach to writing this time.

Romeo and Juliet had name troubles. One of them a Montague and the other a Capulet (or perhaps a Jet and a Shark, if that’s more your thing), their love was forbidden by the very labels given to them by their families (or by their toe-tappin’, finger-snappin’ gangs, if that’s more your thing). But Juliet knew. She got it. Juliet knew that a simple label did not define her Romeo. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Call a rose a pickle, and it would still smell like a rose. The name does not matter.

Or does it?

I’ve read of several independent experiments that tested whether the name given to an object changes the way we smell the object. Essentially, smelly things (good, neutral, and bad) would be put into bags or otherwise hidden from view and labeled. Test subjects would then read the label, smell the substance, and their reactions were recorded. What happened? If you labeled a bag of cheddar cheese as “cheddar cheese” people reacted favorably. If you labeled the same bag as “body odor” people hated it. Guess old Bill got it wrong.

So what’s in a name? If you read the results of these experiments: a lot, apparently. And I’ve struggled with this concept for two, ten, or forty years, depending on where you start counting. If you’re reading this post and you happen to be my biological mother, you might want to skip down a bit.

For the rest of the world, I have a confession: I don’t really like my name. Meaning no disrespect to the Great Charlies of the world (Chaplin, Brown, the Unicorn, …) but the name just always felt, well, a bit dorky to me. I always wanted a real name, like Mike or Steve or maybe Tom or Richard. As I grew older though, I got used to it, and I realized it was part of my uniqueness (meaning no disrespect to the other Great Charlie Hillses of the world).

But early feelings like that never really go away. Not completely. And once I realized I wanted to write, I started thinking about using a pen name. I knew in my heart of hearts that my real name just wouldn’t look right to me, given the subject matter of interest.

Take, for example, Exhibit A:

You might look at this and think nothing of it. “Hey, great book title. Hey, I like that author. I’m going to buy it.” However that’s not how I see it.

The way I see it is represented in Exhibit B:

It just doesn’t look right. So what’s a budding author to do? Well, just make up a new name, of course! Many, many great writers have, and I bet their mothers probably didn’t even get mad at them: Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Mark Twain, Dr. Seuss, . . . the list goes on.

But there’s a catch! Before you use a pen name you have to actually come up with it, and that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. Sure, you could pull any two random names out of a hat (for example, “Harry” and “Potter”) and run with it, but if you’re going to go to all this trouble, shouldn’t it have some real meaning? Shouldn’t it pay homage to someone important to you? And shouldn’t it be infinitely more amazing than the name you’re leaving behind?

The answers to these questions are different for everybody, of course. For me, however, after years and years and year, I’ve at long last found the perfect pen name for me:

If you’re a fan of Cosmos or just an astronomy buff in general, then you’ve surely heard of the Drake Equation. Formulated in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, duly pictured here, it’s a mathematical equation designed to predict the number of possible extra-terrestrial civilizations out there. It’s fairly straightforward. First, figure out the average rate that stars are born. Next, figure what fraction of those might have planets. Now figure how many of those planets can support life. Next, how many of them do support life, and so on. Follow this pattern far enough and eventually the formula tells us how many Frank Drakes there might be in the universe.

Whatever number is produced by the formula is essentially meaningless, for many of the equation’s factors are based on pure conjecture. But the general principle is sound: start with a large pool and whittle it down until you have the finalists.

If you think about it, variations of this formula can be created and applied to almost anything. Take, for example, the one hundred thousand people who audition for American Idol each year. A small fraction of those make it past the scouts. A small fraction of those make it past the producers. A small fraction of those actually make it in front of the judges. Another fraction goes to Hollywood, and so on. Eventually, you get down to the season finale where one person, usually Frank Drake, is declared the winner.

This ‘whittling theory’ applies to essentially any discipline. Musicians, actors, athletes, and, yes, even scientists: all of them form vast pyramids where one superstar is supported by an exponentially large number of wannabes at the base and those with varying degrees of talent in between. And it has to be that way. You simply cannot have 100,000 American Idol winners. By definition, there can’t be 100,000 Number One radio hits on the Billboard charts at once. You can’t have 100,000 J.K. Rowlings out there simultaneously, because that would mean a LOT of people buying 100,000 books all at once. Mathematically speaking, the universe is fundamentally designed to support the against-all-odds theorem.

Funny I should mention Rowling just there, since this meandering essay is now at last turning to the point at hand: becoming a successful writer. So in this spirit, I’d like to offer my own variation on the Drake Equation:

It breaks down something like this:

H = The number of humans on the planet capable of writing at all.
f_pf = The fraction of these who have even a passing fancy of writing a book.
f_i = The fraction of these who actually come up with an idea for a book.
f_s = The fraction of these who start writing a book.
f_fd = The fraction of these who by some miracle finish a first draft.
f_m = The fraction of these who complete a final manuscript.
f_a = The fraction of these who find an agent.
f_p1 = The fraction of these whose agents manage to find a willing publisher.
f_p2 = The fraction of these publishers who actually publish.
f_$ = The fraction of these who make any money on the book.
f_$$ = The fraction of these who actually make a living off writing.
f_$$$ = The fraction of these who make a really nice living off writing.

I’ve spent the past few hours playing with some numbers and have accurately concluded there’s about a one in 3.79 brazillion chance that I’ll end up anywhere in the f_$ range. Yet for some reason, I keep at it. Though my higher order brain functions understand it’s against all odds, one fact sticks in my head: no one has yet ever become a successful author by never writing anything. Or, as the state lottery puts it, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”