Short changed

I've been working on a couple of short stories recently, as it seems a good way to fail fast and try out new things. I don’t know if short stories are actually publishable, but they’re good practise, they’re a great challenge and they spark my imagination in a way that I know is time limited. Short stories get into the myriad ideas on your mind, and allow you to put them down on paper where they’re locked down for the time being and out of your brain.

Short stories also perform another function for me: they get me writing. I don’t need to do many of them, but sometimes they are a great way to get something off my chest if I have some emotion buzzing around, or if I’m not feeling in the mood. Most importantly right now, they seem to prime me. My fingers are typing, and my ‘writing brain’ gets switched on, or gets back in the groove and I can go back to my main story.

The idea, and it seems to work more often than not, is that I’m kind of jump-starting my fingers-on-keyboard mode. I’ll get to the typing and not worry about getting it right the first time, or a perfect start, or finding the best way to segue from where I've left something (chapter/page/line) to where I want it to go.

I’m also working on a book series at the moment… at least the planning of one. It’s in a type of genre that I’m not used to doing, but it feels like it’s going to be a fun project and I intend for it to be pretty much ebook only.

In fact it isn’t just in one new genre for me, it’s in two genre’s. Why? Because I've written short stories on those genre’s and I think it’ll be fun to mix to two of them. The story won’t be a comedy or a pastiche. I’m really going for broke on these. The funnest thing is that I want them to be relatively quick reads. I want them to be fun for the reader, and I want them to be in the 45-50k range. So yeah, I have some specifics.

At this point in time, there isn’t a lot of meat on the bones. Heck, there isn’t even a lot of bone on the frame. But the genre means that I have to start from the end of the story and work backward to make sure everything fits in. That’s a challenge I haven’t encountered before. I’m looking forward to understanding how the series fit together (loosely planned at 6 books), and then getting down to things and working out how the first book fits together.

This is a completely backward way for me. I usually start with a premise, or most often find myself writing what seems to be some part of the middle of the book and I keep going until I stop and need to figure things out. The ‘why’, ‘what’ ‘who’ and a lot of the time the ‘who’ question pops up. It isn’t a logical way to proceed either. I am aware of this. Sometimes I’ll start with an actual beginning which is quite nice.

But starting from the end? That’s weird. It’s another skill that I know will come in useful on my other stories, but right now its necessary. The series will be way too much work and stress to try to do it any other way. There are a couple of more firsts involved with this, including that this is the first thing that I’ll have written something purely for the ebook audience. If it somehow gets picked up by a publisher, then so much the better, but then again I may win the lottery. It’s probably along the same odds of probability. I’m cool with that.

This isn’t about worrying about finding an agent and shopping around and dealing with contracts. Heck, for a first time author, if I even get a $5000 dollar advance, it would be a minor miracle. I figure that if the book does halfway ok, I’ll be doing ok on the first book and better on the second, etc etc. Nobody jumps into book 3 without checking out books 1 and 2 first. And if they like book 1 enough, they’ll probably give the second book a chance. Hopefully I’ll have learned enough by book 2 that it’ll be a better story. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m not too worried. I still have to finish the story I’m working on, and then I have to leave it alone for a while to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes. The way I figure, the difference between the book I’m working on and the series I’m planning will be enough of a change to feel like something completely now.

It will be something completely new. It will be stretching my wings. It will be longer than a series of short stories, but it won’t be some big horrid saga stretching millions of pages. I’m not ready to go through that again. I need to get better with using fewer words.

And like the Cylons, I have a plan. The first three books will be written, edited, proof-read, covered and everything else before I put the first one up. I want the first draft of book four done and in the bag before I even consider talking about book one getting out there. If I can get the first three ready, and if book 1 takes off, and if by some type of improbable set of cosmic circumstances people notice it, buy it, and want to read more whilst telling their friends, then I need to be ready to serve them more. That’s the plan.

'Gotta long way to go.

About deadlines

After years of trying to do too many things at the same time and failing at most of them, I've spent the past couple of years trying to do fewer things.

It goes against a lifetime of habits. The one I'm working on right now?

Stop writing new stuff when I haven't finished the thing I'm working on.

I get the bug for doing new stuff. I used to tell myself that it was ok, because at least I was still writing something (of not regularly) and writing anything is better than writing nothing. And while that's true, it also means I have a grand total of one finished story that I've finally amazed to get to the end of the first draft, one epic dark fantasy that is still only two-thirds finished, and a pre-cyberpunk story that I currently guess am about sixty percent done. There was also a series of sci-fi books that are intended to go straight to ebook format that were being mapped out, and the first few chapters of a collaborative work which was intended straight from the get-go to be a series of novels. All of those I want to do. None of them are going to be looked at until I've finished this story right now.

Real life doesn't have neat lines. I understand that. But a grand total of ONE THING COMPLETED isn't what you'd exactly call a substantial back catalogue. 

This is a classic case of griping. It's also a classic case of learning a whole bunch of new things that are now relevant. I'm learning editing. I'm learning to make notes and where to make them, and how to confirm when I've resolved stuff... or not resolved. I'm learning about feedback, how to take it, when to listen to it, how to not argue, or explain, but also when to take what I hear into consideration.
I'm learning about grammar, namely full stops (periods, snicker), and how to do speech marks and commas in speech marks, and how to figure out when a chapter ends, and what makes a section rather than a full chapter and... 

The point is made. In order to finish a story, any given story, it's back to one step at a time. and figuring stuff out as they come up. None of this would be happening unless there was a first draft, however bad or fractured or grammatically mangled it is at the beginning. It's all another beginning. This time, its about beginning something to get to the end of it... of which said end is at the end of May. At least I'm into the second draft, and that's hopefully starting to wrap itself up. There are more plot holes than words on the page. That's ok. One step at a time. Just do the thing I'm doing now, and leave the other stories alone, no matter how much they call out to be played with.

Numbers game

I took a look at how much more I've still got to go through before I see the end of the first run through. Turns out that I must have passed halfway a couple of days ago. Yep, 50%!! There is a light at the end of this tunnel.

I wanted this run through done by the end of the month, And I've given myself the month of May to work out all those other hundreds of things that need fixing (thanks sis). I promised a friend I trust that they'll be able to go through that draft as a "proper" beta reader. To say that it'll have me on tenterhooks would be an understatement on the same level as saying the Atlantic could get you wet. 

Still, there's only one way to learn all this, and that's by doing it. Then all I'll need to do is learn how to chop the big chapters up. And learn paragraph spacing. And grammar. Lord, that spectre looming over me with my bad grammar is going to bite me on the derrière like a Doberman chowing down on a tasty snack. 

I know it's just anthropomorphising, I really do. And yet at the same time I can't help but to think that the whole subject just takes one look at my face and drool begins to dribble down its literary chops. 

In ones' defence, I started listening to the Grammar Girl podcast over a year ago. Please let me have remembered something after all this time.

:edit: Just because it was a personal goal, the end of the first revision was hit pretty much on the last couple of days in April:

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