On top of feeling generally tired, I made a realisation today – I’m attempting to write a subversive teen spy thriller set at a school, when I don’t like writing about school, and I don’t like spy thrillers. Despite the fact that there are some good ideas here, I really don’t think this is something I’m meant to write right now. Added to which, it’s also suffering from a major case of Passive Protagonist-itus, with a main character who spends most of the story reacting and doesn’t do anything truly pro-active until the final quarter of the book. After spending major chunks of The Hypernova Gambit trying to get my main heroine less passive and more active, I think it’d be good if I started with a pro-active protagonist, and then worked from there…
Writing
Crossing the Finish Line
It’s done. Blade and Crescent, my sexually explicit dark fantasy novella, has a complete first draft (running at just over 21,000 words). To be honest, it’s a bit of a mess, and like The Hypernova Gambit, I don’t know how much rewriting it’s going to need beyond the all-purpose “lots and lots and lots.” I’ve also come to a realisation that while I’ve got a natural inclination towards “going dark” (I once tried to think up a children’s drama series, and within a couple of days the story had gotten to a messed-up and all-out horror level that was rather difficult to believe), but I think I’m actually at my best when I’m blending that with a general attitude of silliness. The Hypernova Gambit is damned silly in places, but it’s also dark – and I think that’s where I want to be. That, and the fact that I’ve really got no interest in doing something that’s exactly like everything else– I want to be proud of it, but I also want to be able to look at it and know there really isn’t anything else like it out there. I don’t know if just getting this thing down on paper is all I needed to do, and whether I can leave it now, or if it’ll be worth the serious effort that rewriting will entail. For the moment, just having finished is enough. I’ll leave working out what to do next for tomorrow…
One More Step Along The Road (My Friend…)
I just wrote nearly 3,000 words on the novella I’ve been working on since November. It’s bordering on 20,000 words now, which is concerning – but I’m closer to finishing a draft of the damn thing, which is making me feel good. God knows how long it’ll take to knock it into shape, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…
It’s dark as hell– bleak fantasy with a very explicitly sexual edge. I’m going to be interested to see whether I can get the damn thing to even work.
After that? Who knows…
It’s Gilt-edged and glamorous and sleek by design, you know it’s jealous by nature, false and unkind…
It’s official. I’ve just started work on a novella. It’s part of a series that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while – and at least two of them I have to write, just to find out if I can. My novel was (and being able to talk about it in the past tense is just weird…) a fun, frothy sci-fi romp with lots of comedy. What I’m writing is bleak dark fantasy with a sexual edge, and it’s messed up in a whole variety of ways. It’s currently playing like a mixture of Carmen, Oldboy and The Doom Generation, by way of City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer (which, to anyone familiar with all those stories, is probably making no sense whatsoever), but it’s been sitting in my head for so long that I need to get it out. I’m trying to write some other short stuff mainly because I need to finish some stuff. I’m currently waiting for feedback on the novel… and the wait is a killer. I’d rather have something to occupy myself with, and I need to finish something before I start the next novel.
The cuddly Cthulhu sitting on my desk is telling me that it’s time for bed. Automatically rising at 7AM thanks to the sunrise (I usually sleep with an eyemask, but it’s gone missing) will do that to a guy…
Return to the Forbidden Planet
I’m back. And hopefully, this time, for good.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my writing over the past few weeks, and one of the things I’ve got to stop myself from doing is using easy excuses not to write. There’ll always be fantastic reasons not to write, but writing is the only thing that I actually feel that I was put on this Earth to do. I may have major motivational and confidence problems, but the only way around them is to write and write, and then write some more.
I’m starting some stuff over the next week that’s hopefully going to build me up to my next novel. I’m also, however, going to be doing more with this blog. TV Eye will be returning soon, and I’ll be writing up some of my adventures over the past couple of weeks. The more I achieve, the better I’m going to feel.
Lots to do. And not enough time to do it…
Synapse Synopsis
The next stage is almost here- but I’ve got to get the synopsis right before I can officially leave The Hypernova Gambit alone. I’m working on it, and trying to get it to read well and not simply be a list of ‘and then this happenned’, but getting my head around it is a little on the tricky side. I veer from a kind of bizarre unshakable confidence in this thing, knowing that it’s so OTT and packed with so much life and vigour that something’s got to happen because of it (even if the writing isn’t always consistent)– to getting all negative and insecure and thinking that of course nobody’s going to want to publish it, for heaven’s sake. I am very proud of it, though, and I want the synopsis to reflect that, and to have as much of the energy of the novel as I can fit in– it’s just tricky thanks to the damn thing being so amazingly intricate. The detail is rather scary, but I’m going to find a way of doing this. I haven’t been doing all this subbing for the past few years for nothing.
I might know what I’m doing next, though. My head needs a little clearing, but I have an idea for a teen fantasy– and I think it’s big enough to give me a chance to do some enjoyably crazy stuff. All I’ve got to do is start it, and then keep going no matter what. Here’s hoping…
Tunnel’s End.
It’s done. The novel is done. I’ve finished the lengthy process of checking through The Hypernova Gambit, and there’s really nothing more I can learn from this, and nothing more I can do to it without help. There’s some reformatting and tidying to do, now that I’ve gotten it into one big file, but it’s complete. Unless I’ve got a very good reason, the project officially ends here, and I don’t think I’ve quite got my head around it. The bottle of champagne I’ve kept around for this occasion should hopefully help me with that when I crack it open later, but at the moment, I’m somewhat shell-shocked.
I’m also mildly horrified that in the last rewrite, despite going all-out to trim the fat, up the pace and remove any unnecessary digressions… the wordcount has gone up. And not by anything small. My last total, back on March 13th, was 150, 867 words. Now, the grand total (and, frankly, where it’s staying unless I’ve got some serious motivation) is:
164,917 words
I’ve created a monster. And the thing is- having just spent the last week solidly trudging through it… I know there isn’t really anything I can lose. It’s a wild, entertaining romp- it’s just also a terribly intricate entertaining romp, with stuff going on at almost every step of the way. Despite the increase in size, I’m still immensely proud of what I’ve done, and there’s no way I’m looking at this and going “Well, that’s enough for one lifetime”. Getting here may have taken longer than I expected, but now I’m here, I’m not going to stop. I have someone in publishing who’s interested in looking at it (admittedly, not for the next month, but publishing is always like that…), and after a short break and some subbing work next week, I’m going to finally decide what needs to be done next, and do it.
This is just the first step of the journey. I’ve no idea where it’s going to lead me, but I’m going there all the same…
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Life related updates have been a little short recently– but, I felt it was important to record that I am actually, genuinely, definitely in the final stages of the novel. The point where the book goes from ‘pending project’ to ‘something I’ll need a very good reason to tinker with’ is not that far away. I’m currently going through the ‘final draft’ version of the book, checking my English, restructuring some of my habitually overcomplicated sentences, and running it through a spell checker. I’m up to chapter 9, and I”m doing very little else this week other than getting this novel finished. There’s a lot of pages to go before the end (I have to try and average two chapters a day), but it’s an odd feeling, finally getting it to a point where I know there’s nothing I can do about it. Then, of course, I enter the risky world of actually sending the thing out… but for now, a big celebration isn’t too far away.
Tick, tock, tick tock…
Trudging through the snow, laughing as we go…
It’s possible that I might have just done all the structural alterations that I can to my novel. In short, now all I’ve got to do is try to do a fairly thorough rewrite, and get it to a state where every chapter is as good as (or at least approaching) the standard of the first four chapters. If I can do that, I’ll be happy. I just have the suspicious feeling that it’s going to be a very long way towards the end. At the least, though, I’m within reach.
It’ll all be over soon…
Lithium Flower
I’ve been lacking in official, non TV-Eye related updates recently, mainly because I’ve had a couple of tough weeks, and there’s been an awful lot of desperate staring at the novel going “HOW AM I GOING TO MAKE THIS WORK?!?” One of the most disturbing things about looking at a big novel in depth is that all your tricks are laid bare. The repeats. The over-used phrases. “The problem is…”, and so on. The fact that I’ve got several gigantic dialogue scenes, yet can’t work out a way of making them visually interesting or blocking them out in a way that makes sense. There’s a gigantic amount to do… and if I’m going to reach my deadline of June 22nd- just over three weeks from now- there’s going to be a crapload of work to do. I’ve got to take a novel that’s “Kind of there”, and push it over the edge into officially done. I know I can’t fix it, but I can try and get most of it to the level that I’ve reached with the first chapter (which I read aloud to George tonight). I’m going to make it.
Elsewhere, I’ve been subbing, doing a ridiculous amount of driving, and been on the verge of having a filling repaired, when the dentist had to cancel due to illness. Pah!
I may, at least, have solved our DVD player problem, and will be ordering a new one tomorrow which should (theoretically) do everything our old one did, and a few more things as well. There’s other things that I need to sort out, some of which will be happening on Tuesday when I return to London for a day of shopping and sorting out of things.
My second-hand SF book habit continues– I’ve been trawling charity shops recently, as there’s a fantastic selection in Alton which often have some fascinatingly weird books (I picked up Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan, and Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland for a total of £2). Every single shop also seems to have a copy of From a Buick 8 by Stephen King, which doesn’t fill me with confidence about ever reading it (I’d happily pounce on a cheap copy of The Gunfighter by King, as I’d like to dip my toe in the Dark Tower series, but it never, ever seems to turn up at the right moment…). Anyway, I also recently discovered that Alton has a quite excellent second hand bookstore with a wonderful SF section that’s crammed full of the kind of weird and wonderful paperbacks that brought back happy memories of libraries during the Eighties, and I picked up Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock, and The Space Machine by Christopher Priest. I’ve got an SFX book review to do, but once I get those out of the way, I’ll be starting on one of them. Either way, my love of reading for pleasure, dormant for a while, is finally starting to wake up again. It’s nice to have it back.
Plus, this week, George passed her Driving Theory Test, and is one step closer to getting her licence. Hurrah!
Saxon Bullock 