Back again

Luckily, nobody noticed. On the internet, nobody can hear you scream. So I took a year out. There were a couple of reasons, and the whole time I was doing it, all I could think of is that I was giving myself yet another excuse not to write. It was hard. I still don’t know whether it was the right thing to do, but it’s done now.

I had finished my first book. After five drafts, it was as complete as it was going to get without me tweaking it to death. The next step was to get a book cover and get it up. I worked with one person, and then another, trying to come of up with a cover that made the right promises to the reader.

Actually, no, I didn’t. Let me take a step back. I do the language of graphics like King Kong does flower arranging. It’s possible, but you probably didn’t want to see the results. Not pretty. I was trying to find a way to show what the story was about, and I couldn’t do it. I had two tries. Both sets of people - friends who were great at art and drawing - who made covers for me were amazing. And then… real life happened. It’s a thing. The covers weren’t quite finished.

I realised that I needed to find a way to contract out creating my cover. I found out about a person who did developmental editing. A developmental editor? I didn’t even know they existed. It was yet another of the lessons I’d picked up over the last few of those lost months. What about book formatting? I could learn, sure. I need to learn. That isn’t a thing in doubt.

To cut this short, I needed a better job to pay for the incidentals that self-publishing a book (or even multiple books) entail. There wasn’t a sensible way for me to go forward. And that was when I made the conscious and extremely frustrating decision to give it up for a year and concentrate on getting a pay rise, no matter how. So - things happened. I pretty much went all out and somehow it paid off. I have a new role and I don’t need to rob from Peter to pay Paul as the saying goes.

Winter of my discontent

And now, this new year, I get to pick up where I left off. A little wiser, but without the writing habit that I built up over time. I get to do it all over again. This time, I have a plan (no, I am not a cylon). I aim to shoot for actually publishing two books a year this year and next. Then I will aim for putting out four books a year for the next four years. And after that, six books a year for the next six years. For me, who hasn’t even properly managed to get even one book out to the public, that’s a bit of an insane unhinged ambitious aim.

Even I have to back up and pause. I haven’t completed one, and I’m going to do two a year? Oh, and I’m not allowed to count the thing I already did. They’re already done.

The good news (I don’t have any way of scribing this to acceptably convey the amount of sarcasm) is that there are any number of unfinished stories that need to get got. I chose to do a follow-up to my existing story, in the equally implausible hope that people will want to buy and read the first story. If it takes off, then hoorah and all that jazz. If not, so be it. I will have completed the journey of my heroine.

For my second story, I chose something in a different genre that I started some time ago. Yes, I will cringe when I go back to read it and remember the ebb, flow, sentence structure and way of thinking that created it. Kinda looking forward to that bit of stress. I really am. I mean - to be able to pick up one of my older scribblings, wrangle the rest of the story out of the murky firmament that sits somewhere on the shores of purgatory, damnation and what-the-hell-was-I-thinking, and slap a coat of spit on it, only to slap it on its flank and send it onward is going to be… well, I was about to say the word fun. Now I begin to think about it, maybe it should be a phrase that describes being drowning by kissing the sea gods so well that your toes curl, and your hair spontaneously changes colour. Or color.

In any case, I thought the story was somewhere near three-fifths done. I haven’t gone back yet to be able to see it with older eyes, to review the skeleton of a plot that I pray hope think I must have done. Of course, I did. Definitely. This was obviously the right time to check, and the story is currently at 20 000 words. After tapping furiously on my calculator and trying to remember which one carries where, I think I need to do another 16 000.

Oh. Gee. That puts the story at something around 33 and a third thousand words, and that’s a perfect number for…  aww, dang. That’s like wonderfully straight in-between a short story and a novelette. A whutnow!? I mean, that’s like at that stage when you had a growth spurt over the summer, and all of a sudden the boys were looking at you and you start to bump into everything, which makes it even worse, because all the boys keep putting their eyes all over you and they’re stupid.

This is not a good size for a book. Even an ebook. I mean, heck.

So also, the plot I have is now going to be revised. It’s one story. There isn’t going to be a part two, or any other part, section or addendum, sequel, prequel. No more “-uels” on this thing.

Once again, I am filled with joy.

Right, let’s get to that planning then. I've scheduled doing all of it to be done and dusted in January.

That’s right, I’m baaaaack!

First times

I wrote this a while ago, I think back in last April. I never realised that this had never been posted. So I thought - why not? This was both an odd and a familiar feeling when I started to read, and hopefully it will be good for me to look back when I finish up. Have I gotten any better at doing this whole regular writing thing in a year? Maybe. I'll read this again and decide later.

In case you were wondering, my money is on that I have possibly wasted a lot of time that I could have been a little more productive. As I said, I'll read and have a think on it. We shall see.

Clean palate

Two things have happened recently.

My writing discipline (the part that makes me sit down and start typing) is starting to kick in a little. I’m not doing the writing on the thing that I want to be writing, but seeing as I've been so inconsistent recently and coupled with my new ‘write fast’ philosophy that I’m trying to try out, meant I’m trying to write more period. It may not be the thing I should be working on, but at least it means I’m doing something.

I've found a couple of places that provide writing prompts. They’re for short stories, which is a good thing, because it forces me to figure out a beginning, middle and end, and it absolutely means I have to write tight. I’m not great at that.

So this is good practise. It’s a way for me to get fingers on the keyboard and to start typing. The great news is that although I’m not looking for feedback in these things, one of the places I’m getting these prompts is reddit. I've not been a redditor (is that the write right word?) before so this is all new to me. The specific sub is reddit.com/r/writingprompts. If at any point you feel like you need a good cleansing of the palate, then I sincerely recommend popping in there, finding a good writing prompt and letting loose. There’s no reason why you have to post it up on Reddit if you don’t feel like it. but it’s nice to have it up there in any case.

I’m using this opportunity for quick spontaneous writing for another reason. I’ll be trying new things; for instance to write a scene with only dialogue, or to write from first person, or from third person limited, or with short choppy sentences, or to use long, descriptive styles. Anything other than what, or rather how I normally write. If I read a story that has captured me, but I can’t work out why, I’ll take a theme and try that. I’ll make up a story in a genre that I don’t normally write in, or even read, and see how it turns out. It’s all practise, but it’s also practise in forcing myself to make something, even if I’m not in the mood. Especially when I’m not in the mood.

I can’t recall where I saw these two sayings, but they go a little like “the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that an amateur writes when they’re ready to do so, and a professional writes even when it’s the last thing they want to do”. The other saying is “If you want to be a professional writer, then look at it as a job.” When was the last time you didn’t go to work because you weren’t in the mood? You get up, you go to work, and you do your job.

Sometimes, most of the time, there are probably more fun and more interesting things you can think of to fill your time. But a job is a job. If I want to do this thing which is probably the funnest thing you can do with your clothes on (but if you need to get a little freer with the clothing situation then knock yourself out), then I need to keep doing it. That’s the only rule. I lose some of the ‘feel-like-it’ and gain some of the ‘this-is-what-I-do’.

Write more, write better, write faster.

Whilst I have no idea whether I am indeed accomplishing number two, and I have a plan for number three, I can definitely work on number one.

I am not a professional writer. I'm trying to act a little more like a professional, so one day I can look up and realise that there isn’t any difference. I am in no way trying to fake it until I make it, rather, keep doing it until I am it. I've heard for years that almost all writers have a second job. In that case, it means that these writers treat their hobby, their fun, their passion as a first job.

Granted, posting thoughts onto a blog, or onto an internet forum is not going to put food on the table, but in terms of learning how to be coherent, its a damned good place to start.

And it’s kind of refreshing too.

The Wall

There’s a story I began a long time ago. I really liked this story. It details the beginning of a now pretty much dead genre called Cyberpunk. I wanted to know where the whole thing came from? How did the world end up as messed up and dystopian as your typical world? And more importantly, I wanted to tell the tale of people, because at the bottom, middle and top of every story, it’s usually about people. It’s what we’re interested in. Of course, the where, how and when is important. It frames the conversation, but if there’s no real who, then the whole thing is an exercise in world building a world without a population. That’s… not as fun to read as you may think. When’s the last time you read of a dead world without someone to witness it, or someone who will be affected in some way?

So I made it about some people. These people, these characters? They didn’t care about the birth of Cyberpunk. They wanted to stay alive, they wanted to make it. The bad guy was just doing something so logical, it wasn’t even bad to him. It was necessary. Appropriate. It had to be right in his (gender neutral usage) context.

So I have three main characters, all heroes in their own right. They’re interesting, and fun, and they all have their own hangups. The thing is, I don’t seem to be able to move the story on. I've been looking at this thing for the last two weeks wondering how to progress from here. I've been getting around it by getting the other projects up-to-date, finishing my short stories that I put up, and generally not stopping the whole writing thing, whether it be editing or something else. but I’m not writing. I’m not creating. I’m not doing the thing on the big story, the one that should be holding me tight. So again, I’m reaching out and trying to figure out how to do it.

Eventually I’m going to end up writing what’ll probably end up as pure crap for a bit, just to get into the swing of things. I don’t want to do that. Or maybe I’ll have to accept that this is the cost of starting a story and then leaving it for so long. Maybe there just isn’t any good way of getting into it, and the only way to go back to the story is not think about cutting it up, moving it around, peeking around plot points or fixing the characters or understanding motivation, or whatever I think may help in the end, but to put my fingers on the keys, type out whatever awful phrases or concepts are rattling around in my mind and just get it down.

I can’t go back to the phase I was in when I lost myself in the words and knew exactly what the next chapter or sentence was going to be like.

I guess that’s why the whole process of drafting and then redrafting exists. But I’m mightily tired of going to the same place and not knowing how to move it forward. You can’t fix something that hasn’t been written yet.

Which kind of brings me to my current dilemma: instead of doing what I’m telling myself to do, why am I still writing about doing the writing instead of actually doing the writing? Beats me. But if I knew all the answers, this blog would never have been born. I think it’s time to give this particular wall the death of a thousand keyboard cuts.

Say, don't spray

Maybe a week and a half ago, could be a fortnight ago, I was so glad. I thought the final draft was done. I thought I was well and away and I wouldn’t have to look at the thing again. Oh foolish, foolish me. It turns out that there are about three more rounds to go from what I've been learning in the interim, and I think this manuscript needs them. Maybe other stories won't. Who knows anymore?

At this point I’m past caring. I've had to step away for a while because each word or sentence is looking very similar to every other sentence, so I think a break from this story is a good idea. I’ll start working on the outline for the last part of another story I've been working on for a while, and its enough of a change of a genre to clear out my editing head. Once I’m done on breaking down the plot into chunks I can go back and do the last three passes on this one, which at this point I think are a details and description pass, a dialogue pass, and a line edit pass where I think is the stage where I go line by line and make sure there aren’t any stupid typos. I say ‘stupid typos’ because I've got a very uncomfortable feeling that the intelligent typos will be a lot harder to spot; they’ll be the the ones I’m blind to because I’m the one who wrote them - you know the things that sound just fine in your head, but come out a little bit weird on paper. They’re the ones I always have had trouble with, so it’ll be a fun challenge to figure out a system to be able to spot them. I’m not holding out much hope that I’ll nail all, or even most of them, but that’s ok. It yet another step I need to travel on, and I’ll get better over time.

The details/description pass is needed because although the story was intended to go at a fairly decent pace, it's also a little sparse in descriptions of things. In no way do I want to litter the book down with prose that describes every little thing, but a sense of place, or person, or location is kind of required if a story really wants to stand out and live inside the readers head. I’m not entirely sure I could do florid and evocative if my life depended on it, but there should be something. This is the pass where something gets added in. What does home look like? What was the stand-out thing that captured the protagonists attention the moment they arrived at the end of the journey? What was the last thing that stuck in their head before they suffered a tragic setback and now haunts them for the rest of their days?

After that, I reckon its going to be a dialogue pass. I don’t really need one of my characters to have a speech impediment, but I do need them to stand out from one another when they talk. Why not? My best friend doesn’t speak to me in the same way my old school teacher did, so I need a way for the characters, plot or relationships between them to stand out separate and distinct from each other when they open their mouths. Its going to be a tricky one, but its not impossible if I work through the people one by one. At least, that’s the way I’m going to approach it and see what happens.

The very very last thing I will also need to do is go through what I’m going to call a tightening round. This is the part where I think I’ve got to chop about 10% from the whole thing to make it tighter. How on earth do you figure out how to get rid of eight thousand six hundred words and still keep the story feeling like - well, the story?

Not entirely sure, but it’ll be an adventure finding out. If I was able to spray that much wordage down on a virtual page, then I guess its my job to tidy it up into a leaner, meaner beastie of a story. I’m licking my lips in anticipation.

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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Family time

My sister came to visit over the last weekend. We caught up, drank, talked about stuff, and she cooked, so I have food in the house. Food. Nice.

The funny thing about having family around is that when it happens infrequently enough that it's an honest-to-goodness event, it's important to take advantage of that time. That shouldn't mean I don't do any writing things, but that's exactly how it feels. I had this little 'tick, tick, tick' in my head, letting me know that whatever I'm doing at the moment may be fun, but it's not editing. 

I should be editing. I should be spending at least a little time staring at this pile of words and trying to beat it into submission. On the plus side she finally read my first draft and really liked it. 

And then - at my request - she poked holes in it. Lots of holes. Some of them I have a way to fix, and others I have no blooming idea on how to fix yet. There's still that big horrible plot hole that I need to find and fix. 

I'm glad she came. New things to do once I've finished the thing I'm doing. This writing stuff certainly isn't boring. Now to go do some more editing, and at some point I know I'll need to figure out where I've accidentally left a good third of the printed pages that I left scribbles over. 

Maybe I could have asked my sister.

New things

First times are great. Except… when they’re not.

This is the first time I've succeeded in finishing a story of anything over short story length, (courtesy of nanowrimo, which boosted my word count from 25 000 words written in what, two years -  to something around 75 000 words) and the first time I've had to really think about editing.

Editing is a joyous thing. Its taking the drek that seems like some never-ending thing that I can’t see the good parts from the bad, and working through it to find the rough diamond that I’m reliably assured lies in the heart of all manuscripts. Its picking through the dumb lines, mistakes and typos. Its finding out that time after time, I've used the same word two sentences running, something which I think would annoy the hell out of me were I reading it.

Wait, I am reading it, and it annoys me. It also bores me. My goal was to run through the whole story looking for the things that don’t make sense, the plot elements that go nowhere, the missing bits. After reading the whole thing through, I was bored. I bored myself with my own writing. Yep, there were fun bits, and certain parts I thought were quite clever. Yep, in all probability, those are the parts that are likely needing stripped out at some point.

Yeah, its almost definitely true at some point.

Currently I’m at page 55 of approximately 8 million as far as I can see. I won’t give up, but I think I started this some time back in the stone age. At the rate I’m going, I think humanity will either have evolved into a higher state of consciousness, or nuked itself over so many times that our mutant forms may actually be able to mate with spiders.

In any case, woven through all this new editing stuff is realising that there’s something wrong with the story. Its the way the climaxes don’t work properly or something, maybe the beats are wrong (if that’s what I’m actually talking about), or off. Its there. I can feel it, and I don’t have enough awareness of story to tell me what it is. Hopefully I’ll figure it out in the next pass.

Yes. The prospect of doing this all over again is filling me with excitement.

Really.

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