Feb
20

State of the writer: Frustrated

You have good weeks and bad weeks. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Last week was a bad week. My schedule got messed up, I wound up writing at awkward times of the day and with large gaps between sessions and I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. Those are the breaks. Still: forward momentum was maintained even if it did feel like wading through syrup.

On the short story front, I intended to get at least one more of my pieces out there but I’m struggling to find markets for an eight thousand word story of the kind I have on my hard drive that pays. There just doesn’t seem to be much about at the moment. I’ll need to noodle on this some more over the next week.

This week is all about the novel. I’d like to complete the first act, give it a light polish and a small test read to make sure it’s working before I plunge on. We’ll see. In related news, Forever has test read well and so I believe the next draft is likely to be more of an editing pass than a heavy rewrite. This makes me happy.

My present mood is determined to make some actual forward progress.

 

Feb
18

Music to write to

These days I tend to mix up my writing habits in order to prevent myself becoming too dependent on a single setting to write.

I don’t ever really want to be one of those writers who can only compose when the wind is blowing south westerly, listening to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on repeat, wearing a toga and sipping wine from a plastic skull.

I only did that one time.

However, there are patterns in how I write. Generally, I write with music on unless I’m very tired or line editing.

I’ll compose first drafts to whatever fits the mood of the piece.

For example, with Forever I wrote most of the first draft while listening to Kings Of Leon because it made me think of travelling through a neon lit city at night, good bourbon and relationships falling apart. I have no idea why. In the case of All That Glitters, I’m taking a different approach as the language of the piece – in particular the voice of the narrator and the lead character – are so important, I’ve dispensed with lyrical music almost entirely and I’m listening to instrumental pieces.

In particular, I’m really enjoying cellist Zoe Keating’s stuff because – damn – that musician can play. I’m so glad I’ve seen her perform live. I’m blending that stuff with some more tradition classical favourites like the previously mentioned Puccini, Beethoven and soundtracks such as Master and Commander and Morse.

Naturally, all fight scenes are written to Metal. How about you?

NB – This is Zoe performing Tetrishead at Macworld 2011:

Feb
12

State of the writer: Need to push it…

I appear to have inhaled January. Most careless.

I’m trying to review my progress with a bit more care and attention than I did last year to avoid feeling like large chunks of the year have just slid away like wet cake. When you have lots on – day job, friends, LIFE – it’s easy for things to slip. Rather than lose energy beating myself up about it, I’m trying to create systems that work for me. That’s what I’ve spent this weekend doing.

The good news for me is that January proved unequivocally that my best time to get work done is before work. Early starts enable me to have time without distractions, maintain forward momentum, feel positive that I’m in control of the project and stops a tough day disrupting everything. I can bank that. It also convinced me that thinking about my writing in a more structured way – I’ve always been a bit seat of the pants about first drafts – really does help.

I’m still not entirely sold on the merits of detailed outlining but we’ll have to wait for the end of this draft to really be certain.

The bad news is that things still got away from me towards the end of the month as deadlines loomed on other projects. The impact of this wasn’t as severe as last year because I am much better at recognising the signs and I have a number of hacks to maintain progress on the composition front from minimum word count to twelve sentences*. However, it does mean that all the other things I really need to start throwing into the mix get lost: submitting material, revising and thinking about what I’m doing further ahead than arriving at my desk.

This situation was brought home to me at the SFX Weekender when I saw how long ago it was since Stone got put out there and I considered the number of completed, unsold, stories on my hard drive not to mention the two novels festering there. I have every intention of trying to get an agent and publisher in the second half of the year. I need to pull my finger out and put my money where my mouth is. I also need to stop with the cliches. :)

Time to crack on!

* I think I picked this up from Adam Christopher’s blog but I can’t be sure. In any case, it’s for the nights when you are really flagging and so you just write twelve sentences. Enables forward momentum and rest. Use sparingly.

PS – Incidentally, if you haven’t read Stone you can still buy Issue 14 from Murky Depths here. Though if you’re strapped for cash there’s a wealth of my flash available right here, a reasonable range being: Pixies, After the Rain, Territory and Blink.

Jan
29

State of the Writer: All That Glitters

The new project: my slipstream fantasy crime novel, working title: All That Glitters, has begun.

I spent the last week revising the synopsis, adjusting the outline and making sure I knew enough about the characters.

There’s a point when all of that planning starts to feel like procrastination. I’ve decided that’s the point I should start writing and so today I wrote the opening scene. It feels pretty good to be working on fresh material.

As part of the state of the writer posts I’m doing here, I have added the project tracker back onto the side bar for the purposes of keeping me honest and I’m aiming to hit my 110k word count target by the end of April. From here I’m trying to build towards a duel schedule in order to reduce the elapsed time to a submission-ready draft and so I’m intending to use the short story I wrote in January to test if I can managed editing in the evenings at the same time as composing. This is a bit of a stretch with a demanding day job but I think I need to try it. At the moment I have a section of the year blocked out for revisions, just in case this doesn’t work.

Initial feedback from beta readers of Forever is more positive than I anticipated, proving that it probably was the right time to get some feedback as I had lost all critical distance from it, if I ever had any. The plan on that is to take it through another revision based on their feedback and then test it against one more reader before seeing if I can find a home for it. I’m still undecided what to do with The Scarred God though I would be lying if I said that Angry Robot’s submission window hadn’t caught my eye.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I should be writing.

Jan
21

State of the writer: New Projects

I’ve spent most of the last fortnight working on the planning, outline and characters for the next novel length project I want to tackle.

As I’ve mentioned, this isn’t my default way of working but I want to see if it produces a cleaner first draft and, to be honest, this project is by far my most ambitious to date. There’s no way it will work without a fairly detailed plan. I want to do something that is a bit more light-hearted than my previous two projects, full of stuff  I like and that stretches me by going further away from my comfort zone.

There are three genres  all entwined in this next project: mystery, comedy and high fantasy, all wrapped up in a modern day city setting. It’s about the grinding inevitability of the world, the power of choice and the corrupting influence of power. There’s some science versus belief sprinkled on top. More than one murder. And hopefully some laughs.

Yes. I said it was ambitious.

I start composition next weekend. Lots to do still before then. Wish me luck.

Jan
09

State of the writer: Progress

A week into the New Year it’s perhaps rash to make bold assertions but I think I’m off to a reasonable start: I’ve completed the first draft of the short story I mentioned in my last post and have the beginnings of a plan.

If you recall I was testing a new way of working…

It was strange. I quite enjoyed the planning stage which was a big of a surprise. During writing, I was worried that it would kill my enjoyment but after the second session it actually became easier to pick and I was able to spot cul-de-sacs as they occurred rather than get to the end first.

The initial read through seems more coherent than a lot of my first drafts though I didn’t stick to the plan as rigidly as I thought I might. The major beats are all there but the plotting fell slightly differently in the writing which is, I think, as it should be. I’ll need to do a second draft soon before passing it onto someone to read.

Coming up, I’m pretty much working on planning for the next novel. I have a working title, blurb (my technique for making decisions on projects) and some rudimentary world-building notes. This project will use mystery/crime based framework and so plotting will actually be critical to a coherent draft. That’s this week’s task.

From there I will revisit my world building to make sure I have enough depth for the plot and characters to stand on.

And then I write. :)

Jan
02

State of the writer: New Year, New Approach…ish

I’m not doing New Year’s resolutions this year.

The difficulty I have with them is that constructing useful ones is quite challenging because of the time scale is relatively large, habit forming is a slow process frought with distractions and breaking them can lead to levels of guilt bordering on the religious. (What..? Just me..?) There’s a strong part of me that feels any attempt to form habits concurrently is doomed to failure. I’m going to have to put this coffee down to eat chocolate and keep typing, aren’t I?

In any case…

If I were to describe most of the resolutions I would like to make, they all revolve around writing and fixing the issues I mentioned in my end of year post:

- submitting
- avoiding redrafting endlessly
- becoming distracted
- getting rid of that terrible stop/start project judder that characterised the majority of last year

I believe there’s a root problem underlying all of these issues which is that I’ve not really adjusted the process I use to write to fit my lifestyle. I’ve noted before that my instinct for writing is very much born out of my preferred reading style, that is I like to binge, writing in long sprints until my brain fizzles to a stop. This works well for short stories under 4k in length when I have plenty of time but kind of sucks for novels. The approach has some major obstacles:

- It requires me to keep an almost impossible amount of story information in my head, which means other activities fall by the wayside.
- The number of drafts required to approach readability is higher as draft 1 is essentially a basic outline, draft 2 is structural, draft 3 is structural based on feedback and so on.
- I have a natural inclination to get bored and distracted the longer the process runs.

In short I need to work smarter.

With this in mind, I’m experimenting with a much more detailed approach to story plotting to see if this allows me to produce a more readable draft, faster. My hypothesis is that this approach will:

- better suit the demands of a challenging day job (which I like) by requiring me to carry less of the story in my head while still being prepared;
- allow me to generate ideas further ahead without having to compose entire drafts satisfying my need for variety while preventing large gaps between projects;
- mirror professional pitching where you can’t really not produce an outline and allow me to make smarter choices about what I do next.

My hope is it will also be a bit quicker.

I didn’t just conjure this out of the ether. There is some evidence from my experience on Forever that this approach is more effective. For example, it was only when I got really detailed in planning out the end of the draft I managed to finish the book.

That said, I can’t really afford to experiment at novel length on something this fundamental, the time cost of getting it wrong is simply too high and so I’m experimenting on a short story with the added bonus that it buys me enough time to work up an outline for the next novel*. I made good progress on the short story plan which definitely made a difference today when I came to start. I was able to begin writing with very little preamble but the confidence that I had a story that worked and that’s when I enjoy writing the most: when you can turn the internal editor off and just go. Seems to be the internal editor can’t talk with an outline in his gob. Who knew..?

This working smart seems to offer rewards. I may introduce it to other things…

It’s not a resolution though. Oh no. :)

*I think this is probably where I see any short fiction I work on fitting in the future as it’s a more economic way of experimenting. Like I said, I haven’t been working smart.

 

 

 

 

Dec
31

The year that was…

2011 is done. Shit. Insert sands of time cliche here.

There are lots of reason to dislike 2011: financial meltdowns that roll on and on, riots, large swathes of the world still embroiled in conflict, large swathes of the population still living in abject poverty that we seem increasingly too self-involved to do anything about. Ho hum. I mention these in passing to remind myself that, really, the low points I experienced weren’t anything really.

Pass the whisky.

Writing wise…2011 was a bit of a mixed bag for me…

- I recovered my spine and moderated my first panels at Eastercon.
- I wrote a new book (technically I rewrote an old idea but it was from scratch so it counts. It does to. Shut up.).
- I revised said book (and learned the perils of Not Planning Enough).
- I read a bunch of awesome books.
- I met new people.
- I renewed acquaintances (and made a fool of myself in front of someone I admire a lot but…well…that’s a running theme on this here blog, besides, the author in question has been good enough to keep talking to me).

But…

- I didn’t submit enough.
- I didn’t read enough.
- I didn’t play to my strengths.
- Stuff got in the way, which is not an excuse but something to overcome moving forward.

Of course, none of that really matters to me because I got married this year and it was fantastic. That’s what I’ll actually remember*. :)

I hope 2011 was equally memorable, in a good way, for all of you. May 2012 rock for all of us.

* Self indulgent but true.

Dec
05

State of the Writer: Planning

Let’s see: a writing update. When last seen I had just completed the 2nd draft of Forever.

I’m in the process of doing a short tidy pass before handing the manuscript to my first couple of test readers. This should only take a couple of days (cold not withstanding).

While the draft is out being knocked around by readers I plan to write draft zero of my next novel. I’ve been making idle notes on this one for a while, they’ve accreted into the start of a world building document and the threads of a basic plot. I’m hoping to have started this in earnest next weekend.

I’m pretty much focusing my efforts at novel length now as most of my ideas seem to be occurring at that length, the learning curve is a bit steeper, and I have quite a few half baked short stories on my hard drive that need revising. I plan to do something with these in the spaces between drafts before I start any new ones.

Mood: cautiously optimistic.

Nov
20

Heinlein’s Rules

I finished the second draft of Forever today.

It’s been a difficult slog and a pretty tough year writing wise. Somehow I lost my way and by chance I was recently reminded again of Heinlein’s rules. I have determined to note them down here, in my study and my notebook so that I do not forget again. I have added four of my own. A pep talk to myself (you in this case is me). If they help someone else: fantastic.

Do these and you will get better:–

  1. YOU MUST WRITE: Sounds easy but you fall foul of this when you forget time is finite but when you remember you CAN do it. For example, recently despite working 51 hours you wrote 14500 words. You DO have time. It is your CHOICE.
  2. YOU MUST FINISH WHAT YOU WRITE: I actually think in the beginning this is easy. People will say it’s hard but they’re probably smarter than I am. It’s once you’ve done a few stories, met the hordes who also want to get published and realised it isn’t easy this gets hard. You have to finish it to tell if it works. You have to finish it to fix it. You have to finish it to get it published.
  3. REFRAIN FROM REWRITING, EXCEPT TO EDITORIAL ORDER: Your biggest SIN. If it hangs together as a narrative. If it reads out loud OK. If your test readers enjoy it. You’re done. Move ON.
  4. YOU MUST PUT YOUR STORY ON THE MARKET: You know the deal here. Until a) humans evolve telepathy b) they also develop telepathic search engines no one is going to find your story by chance and offer you money for it. You’ve got to HUSTLE. Get it out there.
  5. YOU MUST KEEP YOU STORY ON THE MARKET UNTIL IT SELLS: Yes, you’ve been rejected. So has everyone. It doesn’t make you special. Everyone has to keep plugging away and so do you. GET ON WITH IT.

Some additions of my own:

  1. YOU MUST BE PRESENT: You must allow yourself enough time to have thought about what you intend to write before you begin. Simply being present at the desk is NOT enough. You will just fall into the trap of phoning it in. This will kill your motivation when you read back through the piece and realise it’s flat.
  2. YOU SHOULD WRITE EVERY DAY: Your ability to be present is greatly improved by repetition. It’s not the amount. It’s the frequency and the quality.
  3. READ EVERYTHING: You can tell a professional fiction author in five minutes of conversation. They’re the best read person in the room, even amongst a brood of readers, and not just in the area they work in. Only editors and critics overtake them and rarely in my experience. 
  4. YOU SHOULD WRITE WHAT YOU WANT: Writing takes a big time commitment. It doesn’t really matter what your goal is. Pick ideas you think are fun, make the intellectual challenge to make that readable to as many people as possible – regardless of how out there the idea is – and go at it that way. Trying to be clever, commercial or such as a starting point doesn’t work and you’ll struggle to finish anything.
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