Sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in-between
Novels
[Writing] Progress update
01 year ago
OK, I’ve stalled out. The novel stares back at me with dead, soulless eyes and says “let me go” in a piteous, mewling whisper.
I haven’t written more than three lines in it for a week. Obviously, this isn’t working. With DayJeorb, family, house, and medical things going on, writing has become an occasional, if-I-feel-inspired-for-five-minutes-on-the-bus kind of thing. The only time I get a solid two hours to write — a basic minimum for me to be productive these days — is on the rare evening off. Looking at my writing folder is getting depressing.
Here’s what my average weekday looks like:
- 5:30: Wake up, get dressed, brush hair, and so on.
- 6:00: Do some dishes, eat breakfast, get bicycle ready.
- 7:00: Out the door.
- 7:45: Get to the office, prep for DayJeorb
- 8:00: DayJeorb
- 11:00: Get lunch, eat, write if possible with remaining time (this never happens)
- 12:00: DayJeorb
- 5:00: Get on bicycle, go home.
- 5:45: Relax for a little bit (thank you, Loreen!)
- 6:00-ish: Various combinations of family activities, dinner, playtime with Bee, and everything that can’t happen during the work day. At the end of it all, I read Bee some stories and put her to bed.
- 9:30-ish: Time in which I could write, if I had any brain power left (this never happens).
So, what to do when you need to write, but simply don’t have the blocks of time you need to write the novel you started the year so desperate to finish? I’m entirely open to suggestions. For the time being, I’m going to go back to my old sentence-a-day rule, so that if nothing else happens on any given day, I’ll have written at least one sentence of new prose. It’s something, if not ideal.
Beyond that, I’m kind of stuck.
Writing parallel novels
01 year ago
The novel editing proceeds more or less on schedule, which means I’m still wondering what the hell I was thinking, but I guess that’s basically my natural state as a writer.
One of the challenges I had with this novel in its first draft is that one of the most important characters is off-screen for much of the story. Her scenes and activities are conveyed in summary form after the fact, interspersed throughout the novel. There wasn’t any help for this at the time. I had to get the story out from the main protagonist’s perspective first. But now that it’s done, all that summary is just a godawful drag on the story, and needs to go.
So I’ve been taking those summarized details, and expanding them into full scenes that shift the point of view to the secondary character. And as I do this, I’m converting the info dumps that exist in the first draft to drama that actually appears on the page. The protagonist’s chapters are beginning to shrink to manageable sizes while these new chapters grow.
In essence, I’m writing the novel again from the secondary character’s perspective. It will be shorter, with fewer overall chapters — right now the pattern seems to be working out to one secondary character chapter for every two primary — but it still feels like writing the novel again. And I’m finding that to be a good thing: I’ve recaptured the excitement of writing it in the first place.
It’s very liberating. I don’t feel any stress over ripping out huge swaths of talking heads and info dumps, because I’m going to make those into shown-not-told scenes for the secondary character. And I don’t feel any need to wax loquacious with the new chapters, because everything else is already in the first draft chapters. Can’t say for sure this will work out in the end, but so far so good.
And so it begins…
01 year ago
I have officially started editing the manuscript that, Squash willing, will become a marketable novel by the end of the year. I’m starting out by mapping out the plot, characters, and storyline threads, with the goal of breaking the novel down into bite-sized, easily digested chunks complete with cross-referencing links so I don’t lose track of details like character descriptions.
I have never done this before. I have no idea whether this will be a useful exercise or a waste of time. But I do know I was terrified of opening the manuscript up until I started doing this, so it’s already accomplished that, at least.
Of novels, short stories, and pascalines
01 year ago
Not too long ago, I found myself writing a zombie horror story. Not my usual thing, but a great deal of fun. That story is done, and sitting in my rewrite queue, growing rancid and moldy — like its subject matter. I’ll take it out, cut off the bad bits, polish the good ones, and send it out after I feel like enough time has passed.
Most of the writing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks has been of that nature, rewriting stories that are complete but need work. At the end of the month, I plan to submit a few of those to short story markets prior to the big novel push.
But right at this moment, I’m working on a pre-Victorian science fantasy story. It’s got Renaissance-era cybermancy, mystical pascalines, heroic aethernauts and… Well gee, it’s an awful lot of fun writing it. And somewhere down the line, the world its set in might have room for a novel. That would be nice.
February goals update
01 year ago
Egads, I had no idea what a mess some of those “almost finished” stories actually are. I think I’ll probably end up with no more than 16 or 17 stories in the mail by the end of the month. But it’s all well and good. I’m really pleased with some of my edits, especially the rewrite I’m doing of a rather tragic necromancer story.
Speaking of fantasy stories and tropes, I’m embracing fantasy more and more lately. I’ve always thought of myself more as a science fiction writer, but if the muse is filling my head with magic, who am I to argue?
All this is leading up to March, wherein I will begin my descent into novelist madness. By the end of the year, I will have an 80,000 word novel. It will be fully edited. I will submit it to an agent.
Obviously, I’ve lost my goddamn mind.
A novel idea
02 years ago
Hah! I pun! Am I not clever?
…
Here’s the deal: Over the last half-decade, I’ve written four novels. Not a single one of them is in any sort of publishable shape, but each has its strength, making it a candidate for The One — as in, the one I’m going to spend this year focusing on, as I mentioned here. I’m having trouble overcoming my fear of each deciding which one I should choose.
So here, in chronological order, are the pros and cons of each:
Novel #1
Pros:
- Completely finished. This one has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it’s in three solid acts.
- Consistent. It’s been edited multiple times for consistency, so there aren’t any characters in places they couldn’t be, doing things they shouldn’t do, and so on.
- Not NaNoWriMo. This is the only novel I’ve written outside of National Novel Writing Month, so it’s considerably less messy than the rest.
Cons:
- Long. Hoo-boy… This is a monster. 120,000 words. Unpublishable at that size, for the most part. I suppose I could change my name to Stephen King…
- Simplistic. I wouldn’t have said so when I wrote it, but the plot isn’t terribly complex, and frankly, it’s a little hackneyed, because…
- Old. This novel is the first piece of fiction I ever wrote. The prose is undoubtedly immature, the characters unrealistically portrayed… In short, it’ll be as messy as a NaNoWriMo novel to clean up, because of basic storytelling mechanics problems.
Novel #2
Pros:
- Completely finished. As above, this novel has a proper end.
- Well-developed world. This novel takes place in a world setting I’ve been working on for years. I’ve written several short stories that take place in it, so I know the mechanics inside and out.
- Fun. Since I know the setting well, writing in it is like wearing a comfortable old shoe, so I know I’ll enjoy working in it again.
Cons:
- Broken. This was my first NaNoWriMo novel, and I hadn’t yet gotten the flow of things when I wrote it, so there are many places where a scene will retcon things that happened before.
- Complicated. The first novel suffers from simplicity. This one goes the other way. There are many characters, intense intrigues, and complicated situations. I’m afraid of this novel. I may not be a good enough writer to work on it yet.
- Short. It came in at almost exactly 50,000 words, by skimming and summarizing things terribly. It’s an 80,000 word novel in compressed form, and rewriting it would essentially amount to writing it all over again.
Novel #3
Pros:
- Awesome idea. The idea that led to this novel gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I would love to do it again, and do it right.
- Better prose. I’m a better writer than I was when I wrote the first two novels. There will be more I can save and reuse in this one.
- Good length. It works out to 60,000 words. I think it’ll work out to 60,000 words again if I rewrite it.
Cons:
- Bad characters. Ouch… The characters are cardboard cutouts. Reworking them into likable people looks like quite a challenge.
- Nebulous world. I never did make certain key decisions about how things work in this novel. Making those decisions now could result in large swaths of text down the drain.
- Unfinished. It didn’t end so much as stop.
Novel #4
Pros:
- Well-developed world. I did a lot of world-building prior to writing this novel, knowing I wanted a story set in it.
- Good prose. As the most recent novel I’ve written, the prose in this one is easily the strongest.
- Strong plot and characters. I did a better job laying this one out than any of the previous ones, and the characters are good, especially the protagonist.
Cons:
- Unfinished. Stopped writing. Ran out of steam. No idea how the damn thing ends.
- Complicated. Again, I’m not sure I’m a good enough writer to fix the problems and tie everything together, even if I do figure out an end.
- Controversial themes. This is by no means an adults-only novel, but there are issues of sex and sexuality in it that might make it a non-starter even after I’ve polished the heck out of it. I’m not at all sure that’s a landmine I’m ready to step on.
Of course, all this leads me to option #5… Write a new goddamn novel and throw these ones in the rubbish bin.
Well anyway, I’m open to suggestions.
January goal wrapup, February goals, and looking ahead
02 years ago
So January is done, and I feel very much like I kicked its ass. Sure, I didn’t manage the 25 story submissions I hoped for, but that was largely because I managed to get everything worth circulating back in the mail. For those keeping track at home, that’s 15 stories total, with something like half of them edited (or re-edited) and pulled out of submissions purgatory.
Yes, I feel like a writer again.
I have some new goals in mind for February. I’m going to maintain my short story circulation, obviously, and I’m going to take any remaining stories that require only light edits and get them polished for submission. I figure I should end February with 20 stories out, assuming none of them sell. I’d be happy to fail at this goal for a reason like that.
Another business-related goal: Get my financial tracking in order. Writers — if they’re trying to make a profession of it — can deduct a lot of writing-related expenses on their taxes, but only if they know what writing-related expenses they’ve had. I need a simple application I can enter such expenses with, preferably on my Android-powered mobile phone. I don’t need a full-fledged financial app, just something I can make quick, easy line entries in. I’ll be researching that myself, but I’m happy to take recommendations.
Finally, it’s high time I became a novelist. This month, when all my short stories are in order, I’m going to figure out which of the four novels I’ve written is actually good enough to bother rewriting. For the rest of the year, that novel will be my writing focus. You read it here first… I will query my first agent by December 31st, 2010.
Aw yeah.