Tag: Writing

Attempt number seven

It’s that time again. National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo to those in the know. This is the 10th year it’s existed, and they’re celebrating with an ugly t-shirt. This is the 7th year I’ve participated. I’d have started sooner, but no one told me. Actually, I heard about it too late to play in 2001, but ran a local one of my own in the spring of 2002, so this is sortof my eighth go. I’ve also attempted to write novels in 30 days or less on several other occasions since 2002, so it’s more of baker’s dozen times I’ve faced down this challenge.

Officially, for attempts in Novembers, I’ve only “won” three times. 2002, 2003, and 2004. That’s Lost and Not Found, Dragons’ Truth, and UTFBF, Book 1, respectively. 2005 was a big fail, 2006 was practically a mental breakdown, and 2007 was a sort of emotional cleansing that ended in my getting married on December 1st. So this year (and from now on) the TGIO party is also my wedding anniversary. (I’ll have to remember not to confuse the sentiment of “Thank Goodness It’s Over” with thoughts about my marriage, though – it should be relief/joy that one thing is ending coupled with relief/joy that that other is continuing.)

As I believe I’ve stated over and over again in various places (was one of them this place?), for NaNoWriMo this year I’m writing a collection of short stories instead of a novel. At least, that’s the idea. That was, incidentally, the idea for 2005 and 2006 as well – and those didn’t turn out well. (Though I do have the several short stories I’d managed to complete those years on my HDD somewhere, just waiting for something to do.) The stories are all supposed to tie in to and expand upon the fiction and world of the novel I wrote this year, which I’m currently calling Forget What You Can’t Remember, which I can then sell as a companion book to the novel -expect both to be available in December- and which I’m thinking of calling More Lost Memories. On one hand, doing short stories makes things easier in a few ways: If I get stuck somewhere I can just switch to a different story. I can podcast the individual stories as they get finished without worrying that something I write later will contradict something already live. (The first story from More Lost Memories to hit the podcast is available now.) If one story or one set of characters runs out of steam before 50k words it’s no problem, because I can just start another one. Yay! On the other hand, I’ve never succeeded in writing a book-length collection of short stories. This will be the second attempt this year, and the sixth attempt in four years.

The collection of time-related short stories I was working on is close to okay, but it needs a good edit, and at least a couple more stories before it’s the size and scope I want from it. Problem is, I don’t currently have more ideas for time-related short stories. Hopefully I’ll come up with some in 2009. You can see four of the stories in their current state at modernevil.com/inProgress, and give me paragraph-level feedback on the text (I’m also using CommentPress over there) or general feedback on your impressions of the stories. The short story collection I started for NaNo’05 is less than 20% complete, on a story-level. I don’t know how long it is. I tried to throw one together last year, but it was a mess. I have one mapped out, outlined, characters developed, and barely half of one story written yet – that one I’ve been working on since 2003. The short story collection, so far, has eluded me. Hopefully that streak will end, now, and perhaps by this time next year I’ll have two or three such collections in print.

Anyway, so far I’m not doing great on my word count. The daily target, to hit the goal on time, is 1667 words. I’ve been writing between 750 and 1200 words a day, so far. Right now, my word count is only 5240. At midnight (almost 2 hours ago, now), it was supposed to be 8333 or more. The 860+ words in this post are definitely not in my novel’s word count. Neither are the words I’ve been posting in the NaNoWriMo regional forums. But I’m pretty sure they’re worthwhile. Just as I’m pretty sure podcasting my book-in-progress is worthwhile. And helping my brother try to get his car working is worthwhile. And the break I took to play the Mirror’s Edge demo, a little while ago, was pretty cool. There was that one jump that took me thirty or forty tries, but otherwise it was a lot of fun. Depending on how tomorrow goes, maybe between editing Friday’s Lost and Not Found podcast and helping my brother with his car I can get some writing in before the write-in at the library tomorrow night. Maybe I can catch up to where I’m supposed to be.

If all else fails, in a couple of weeks I’ll start a new novel -a proper novel- and get it written by the end of the month, anyway. Actually try to do NaNoWriMo right for a change.

New novel complete!

(This post was originally created for and posted on the Modern Evil News (& Podcast) feed.)

Monday night I finished typing up the first draft of my new novel. (I’m still working on a name – what do you think of “Forget What You Can’t Remember”?) I wrote the entire thing on a manual typewriter, an Olivetti TROPICAL, which is to say ‘on paper, with ink.’ In between other projects and errands in the last two days, I’ve read the entire thing from start to finish. Out loud. Mostly to myself and to the cat. But it sounds pretty good, and I think it’s self-consistent, well-resolved, and perhaps yet another novel without an easy answer to the question “What’s it about?”

Briefly: It’s a followon to Lost and Not Found, though not a direct sequel. There are roughly two characters in common between the two books, and the main character from Lost and Not Found does not appear at all in this new one; it has an entirely new cast of characters and settings. It begins with the event that changed the world at the end of Lost and Not Found, and with zombies, but soon the story follows the characters to the flying city of Skythia while delving into the ways these various characters respond to both what has happened to them and the strange environment they now find themselves in. Going back to their old ways, moving on with their lives, lashing out against a system and a world they don’t understand, falling in love, or simply going a bit mad in a mad, mad world – the several interconnected characters’ journeys are really the heart of the story.

I’m about to start re-typing the whole thing into my computer. I haven’t decided how and when to first make it available, but I know for sure that it’ll be available in all the formats I have to offer: Paperback, eBook, and audiobook. I’m also planning on writing a companion book in November (for NaNoWriMo, actually), a collection of short stories which will tell stories somewhat perpendicular to the main thread of this novel. That is, where the novel follows closely the lives of its ensemble cast, especially re: the main progression of events, the short stories will help to build out the world the story takes place in, adding richness in the periphery of that story by telling stories that intersect with it. So, for example, in one chapter of the novel a superhero interrupts a mysterious, murderous heist at a Kwytzwyk Temple, and it changes his outlook on justice and ethics – and I want to write the story of the thieves, their previous exploits, and to give a lot more detail on the specifics of the Kwytzwyk religious practices and beliefs; all things that weren’t relevant to the main story of the novel, but which is a narrative with details worth exploring. (Playing around with a title for that gives me things like “More To Forget” and “More Memories For Forgetting”…)

Working on a new novel

So last month, July, I decided to try to focus on writing. The goal was to try to get a new novel written before the end of the month. According to my calendar, I started on July 9th. I made reasonably good progress for about a week, and then my undisciplined nature began rearing its ugly head and progress slowed. Days would go by without writing anything. Writing a single chapter sometimes took several days instead of a few hours. I know I can write quickly, and during the first week of work I was estimating that I should be able to finish the first draft in under two weeks, second draft, layout, cover design, copy editing, and the rest done by the end of the month, and maybe have the new book submitted to my printer by August 1st.

Alas, it is now August 12th and I am only 120 pages into a manuscript I’m aiming for 300 pages with. And while I almost never know where one of my books is going until it gets there, the nagging feeling that I don’t know where this book is going just keeps pounding away at the inside of my mind. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the book has no conflict. No antagonist. No plot, that I am aware of, so far. This is not a new problem; most of what I write seems to have these [features|problems]. Dragons’ Truth didn’t really have a plot, an antagonist, or much in the way of meaningful conflict until chapters 13 and 14 (of 15) – and many readers agree with me that it doesn’t really have a good ending; it just stops, after an anticlimactic confrontation of only words. Lost and Not Found has four main stories in it, none of which have any real conflict or antagonist beyond the protagonist’s internal struggles and a couple of catty women who serve as little more than a foil to same. The Untrue Tales series was my attempt to write what I thought people wanted, and is chock full of conflict, sex, and a wide variety of antagonists — and frankly, I don’t like writing it, much, though there are several more books required to finish what I’ve started there.

This new novel is actually set in the same world as Lost and Not Found, and one of its main characters is featured prominently in the first couple dozen pages of that book. Everyone else is new. The setting is new. The theme may very well be the same, though I am not the best judge of such things – in my books or in anyone else’s. If you’ve read Lost and Not Found (which is available at modernevil.com as a free eBook in, like, eight different eBook formats -including the Kindle, if you own one- so what’s your excuse for not reading it? Paying is just one of your options), the story starts with Paul, who was predicting a sort of a doomsday at the beginning of Lost and Not Found. If you read the whole book, you’ll see that his doomsday comes, right on schedule – in a way. This book follows Paul, shows where he went to try to escape that world-changing event, and the lives of some of the other people who survived it and who live where he retreated to. Since some of Lost and Not Found’s timeline overlaps this new book’s timeline (and some occurs years later) and most of the characters are not (at least, not yet) in this book, I’m wary to call it a sequel. But it’s definitely in the same world.

Okay, a little more info about that: In early drafts of the book which turned into Lost and Not Found, there was another section after what is currently the end of that book. Like, twenty-two thousand words. After leaving Haven, ten years after the main story of Lost and Not Found, the main characters travel on to a flying city called Skythia and take up residence. They find Paul living there, among other things. That part of the story was cut out -in its entirety- from Lost and Not Found. This new book takes place in between the first section of Lost and Not Found (ie: the last place we hear about Paul in that book) and the section that was cut. So far, we’re within a few months’ time, so nowhere near the point where Lost and Not Found’s main characters would enter the story – though I won’t rule that out at this point, since I have no idea where this story is going.

Anyway, mentally, the presence of Skythia in a part of Lost and Not Found that was cut completely puts a few restraints on what can happen in this novel. Not in a bad way, necessarily. More like, I know vaguely where Paul -and Skythia- will be in ten years, as though this was all something that had actually happened and I’m merely documenting it with these books. Maybe I’ll work the cut part of that book into the end of this one. Maybe I’ll start a future sequel with it. Maybe it’ll remain cut out forever (or until I’ve died and someone decides to publish a new “more complete” version of Lost and Not Found containing the “lost ending” … bleh. Oooh, or maybe when I feel I’ve got enough readers that it would be profitable to put out such an edition, like the ‘anniversary’ editions of The Princess Bride with a new foreward here and a new chapter five years later and a new cover and a new afterward ten years later and so on…). Any way it ends up, the presence of that part of the story in my mind, in the universe of my imagination, creates a constraint on this novel. Even if I introduce the supervillain character I’ve been trying to wedge in, the city cannot be destroyed (not without being rebuilt) and Paul cannot be killed (not without being resurrected) nor politically ruined (I’m not telling). The utopian nature of Skythia and the basics of their government cannot change significantly. Et cetera, et cetera.

So, that’s what I’m not writing right now. It doesn’t yet have a title, but it does have zombies, robots, a utopian flying city, drama, politics, many fantasy races (elves, faeries, Kwytzwyk, centaur, &c.), ooh, and maybe dinosaurs soon. I’m not sure when it’ll be done, but I’m now trying to aim for it to come out in paperback around the same time the Podiobook release of the Lost and Not Found audiobook is complete.

At least it’s writing…

I think I’m writing here largely because I was having trouble at my typewriter. You see, I’m writing another novel, and I’m doing the first draft on one of my typewriters. This novel happens to take place in the same world as Lost and Not Found, chronologically after most of the events of that book, though not actually a sequel as such. It’s been a few days since I’ve written anything – I was working on getting started on the audiobook version of Lost and Not Found, then on composing a musical theme for same most of the week ((If you want to hear what I have so far, email me or leave a comment and I’ll send you a link)) – and I set down and tried to pick up where I left off. Apparently something had interrupted me in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a paragraph. I’ve been trying to write chapters for this book for a variety of reasons -people seem to like and/or expect chapters, they help create a structure for moving between or tying together different elements of the story, it makes it easier to stop and pick up again at another time if there’s a chapter break, because I don’t have to match the flow of what came before quite as closely- but for whatever reason (now lost to me) I was half-way through this chapter. I set down a while ago and tried to just start going.

I read the preceding pages. I looked at the sentence. My hands sprang into motion, the keys of the typewriter clacking away noisily as the words formed on the page, and then … well, then the sentence started giving me trouble. It got longer and longer and, as it grew, it became less and less coherent. Where did this sentence think it was going? In the time I can usually pour out a couple of pages all I had managed was to mire myself in the first sentence I’d attempted. I XX’d out several words, cut the sentence short and -relatively- understandable, and stepped away from the typewriter. I finished my research on Klein bottles (one of the things that managed inexplicably to wedge its way into the sentence (which you will now be able to look for in the finished book, to find the troubled phrase)) and then came here.

To blog. Because I’ve been meaning to write something here for a while now, but keep either having something better to do (sleep, work on my novel, sleep, et cetera) or not enough to say.

Although that isn’t really the case, is it? I always have something to say. And I’m working on a lot of projects right now, have a lot of things coming up, going away, et cetera. So what is it? One long post, or a lot of little posts? I think a lot of little posts. I’m making a list right now of subjects to cover, so I don’t forget them.

Press, Release. Marketing, Products.

Haven’t decided whether I’ll be verbose or brief on this subject, here, today.  Have to look back and see, I guess.

Conversation threads this morning on Twitter (which I can’t retrieve, on account of Twitter is “stressing out” – and I don’t feel like trying to track everything down with tweetscan/summize), included one creator saying they were thinking of planning on releasing a project they’re working on … in September or October.  To which my mind replied: “I don’t understand.  If you have a releasable product, why not put it out there as soon as it’s ready? For a finished product, why wait?”

Now, I can see how with certain products – say, a dancing Santa Claus doll or a new line of Valentine’s Day candies – releasing at a particular time of year might be appropriate.  And I can see how products which will only be relevant for a limited time should be released in a specific time period – though that’s now, not later – to avoid irrelevance.

I can even see where something like a blockbuster movie, trying to maximize attention and profits would want to schedule its release to not be the same weekend as a directly competing release, which would not only compete for viewers dollars but for the actual, finite number of screens, but — and this is a big but — I can’t see why a studio would hold off on releasing a movie for months or, as actually happens more often than you’d think, years after it was ready to be shown.  The finite number of screens is (I believe) now well over 30,000 in the US alone, and even the widest of releases hasn’t topped 1/3 of those – there’s a LOT of screens, if you have a movie ready to go, put it out there!   If you don’t think it’ll make “enough” money in theatres, throw it to DVD – as long as you keep it in print, it’ll be available to whoever wants it.  As long as it’s sitting “in the can”, unreleased, it’s not making anyone any money, it’s not entertaining anyone, it’s not communicating anything, it’s wasted.

Which, I think, is part of my problem with the whole thing:  Someone, possibly a lot of someones, put their hard work and creative energy and ideas into creating something, and that work, that creation, is being held back, hidden, kept from its audience. Continue reading Press, Release. Marketing, Products.