Hello, world!

There’s clearly a link on this page that anyone with web access can use to yell at me for not posting here regularly.  I blame you, reader.  Clearly this is your fault.

So I (sigh) shelved Space Heist.  Moving on.

I’m working on something else.  I’m going to return to my prior practice of not talking about writing projects.  I need to take down that word count bar.

In other news the Nicholl Fellowship is coming up (and the picture of last years foo’z who aren’t me is suspiciously stocked with attractive folks) and I had been planning to tackle a Page One rewrite of  The Ugly Life.  It only took me a few weeks to figure out what the “write script” reminder on iCal for a solid month was referring to, go me.  But after buying an ebook of Writing Movies for Fun and Profit I decided to pimp something more conventional.  So I’m moving on to War Geeks, which came with a nice tag line that lended itself to an easy elevator pitch.  Unlike my man against himself story about two guys who start off the movie sucking at their jobs and attempting statch (inadvertantly, of course) whilst extremely intoxicated.  Yeah, that’s an indie.

But I’m not sure when I can find time to create both a first draft manuscript and, well at this stage scene cards.  I’m again dissatisfied with the logistics of my writing.  Shocking, no?  The GF suggested I get a small office for writing, which would be a whole lot less expensive than I’d anticipated.  Alas there’s this irritating credit card debt (stupid dental work!) between me and that.

I was paralyzed with indecision all of last week. I was suddenly afraid that the direction I’d taken my core thread of Space Heist was all wrong. I thought I’d come at it too straight, that I’d forced the character into a situation that would work better if I pushed them toward it but let the POV finish the job.

I might have a point, that character is pretty reactive. But as of this morning I’m over 12,000 words into it and I’m loathe to ditch all that in the first draft and start over AGAIN. So I’m gonna finish what I’ve got and consider the new angle later.

Closing in on 20k

I was plugging along on Space Heist working pretty much in order off an outline spreadsheet with the various storylines when I realized I was telling a pretty boring story. There was no umph, no emotional engagement because the core of the story, the source of the conflict was traveling incommunicado. While I figured the reader would remember that element was there, I was having trouble.

So I suspended my efforts until I had that part written. And this morning it was about 9,600 words and nearly toward the end. So I’m making better progress than I thought.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding time to write. I was on a pretty good run but a period of odd shifts at work screwed everything else up and I was just having a hard time getting back into it. Project fatigue, I thought.

Then I realized that Space Heist is an order of magnitude more complicated than A Company of Rifles. That was a single POV limited third person omniscient. Pretty straightforward. Space Heist is at least four storylines and six or seven POVs. Craziness. Attacking it straight on, the way in wrote Company wasn’t gonna work.

So I’m doing one POV now. I should be able to salvage most of the prior work for the next important POV, the more weight bearing one. Then I’ll weave in the third POV that adds more emotion, then the last two which are definitely supporting characters. There are cameo POVs that add details and thicken the story too, but those are mostly single scenes.

10k!

I broke the 10,000 word barrier on Space Heist with an 1,100 word morning! I was having a lot of trouble getting started on this. It’s my first time working with an outline and the little flow problems I’d seen there turned out to be rough to write around. Things feel like they’re starting to pick up, which probably means an entire rewrite will have to be done on the opening. But that’s for later. First draft first!

Write/Read Balance

I’m at the gym and it took a significant effort of will to drag my current book out of my locker. Outlining on “Space Heist” (I really need a better working title) is done and I’ve got a little over 3,000 words, but mostly stuff I pounded out on my iPhone before I did the outline. I really want to write on the go and get into some new territory.

But in wage slavery bosses give lip service to the “work/life balance”, I believe the same is important in writing. Ya just gotta read. Looking at nothing but your own words probably results in nothing but distilled caricatures, like the later seasons of a successful TV seasons.

So I’m gonna hit “publish” and get on this book. Space Heist can wait a little bit.

It’s Done.

Finished, I mean.

And *gulp*, submitted to an agent.

Project 1, with the working title “A Company of Rifles: Betan’s Adventures in Branna” is on its way. My first submission is to an agent whose blog I read regularly. It’s probably too much to hope for that the first pitch is a hit, but it’s not like the 50th is really more likely to succeed than the 1st.

So, time to move on. I’ve been working on A Company… for five or six years and if the current draft isn’t good enough then it’s page one rewrite time and at this point, the point where I’m working a shitty job I hate for the same money I was being paid when I started the manuscript, which was before I got a degree in a supposed growth industry (gasp, wheeze), I’d rather work on something new.

That something new is, not even on my project list.

Really? Let me look.

(hum Jeopardy theme)

Shit, it ain’t. It’s the same science fiction setting as Projects 2, 3 and 8 (who what a disaster Project 8 turned out to be). So it’ll be Project 9, working title Space Heist, which is more like an inverted detective story slash techno-thriller. I’m still breaking it down, it’s kinda complicated and I don’t want it to turn into Project 2.

Also, I have decided (hopefully finally) that Project 7 is my next project. I don’t have a working title (at least not one that doesn’t give away the source of the idea) yet, but I’m gonna come up with one because even I can’t keep these project numbers straight.

In other news, Project 5 has been submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship. Yet again. I should just put a line item for that in my budget.

What else, oh, Project 4 is still on submission. I need to send it to the next market on the list.

Exactly what I didn’t want to do

This pass at Project 1 was supposed to be a polish. Clean up, tweak a few things and start submitting.

Oh, silly, silly me.

I actually added a good chunk to the first chapter that hopefully clarifies the setting. Hopefully. I’m now rewriting, from scratch, the first battle. It’s long. I mean, long. It’s easily the largest single part of the manuscript. Which makes sense, I guess. It’s the protagonist’s first big challenge, the cherry so to speak. The problem was it was too long. As written until now it was a two day battle between two very small forces. The kind of thing that really takes an afternoon. Plus I was detailing every maneuver like I was writing this for West Point.

So I’m really afraid what this is going to do to my word count. I added another passage that also enhanced the setting, provided a bit of the old casus belli. I think I’ve mentioned the word count problem before but it’s been thrown into stark relief as the publisher I’ve always thought of as my relief valve (which is overconfidence to begin with) has a pretty hard 100,000 word minimum.

I dunno. Despair is setting in. I’m not sure this thing’ll ever get really finished. But all I can do is keep plugging away.

Now the work begins

Every time I go through Project 1′s manuscript it gets shorter and it’s already a bit short for a fantasy novel. I whacked about half of chapter one and made a new opening that didn’t quite make up for the cuts.

Now I’m up to the first battle. Another consistent feedback is the jargon and descriptions can be hard to follow. I don’t know if fixing that will lengthen or shorten the text, but I fear the former. I’m adding a sequence I’d shown in flashbacks on the advice of one reader, that should help.

I’ve been working on this thing a long time, I don’t even write this way any more. That makes for trouble when I catch myself tightening sentences. Bad for both word count and style consistency. If this round of revisions doesn’t finish Project 1, I might have to declare it a failure.

Bit of a breakthrough

One of the consistent feedbacks regarding Project 1 is it’s never really made clear why the war in it is happening.

I didn’t get it for a long time. I couldn’t understand why that was even a thing. It was suggested that I since I knew what the conflict was I figured everybody did, forgetting that I had to put it in the text. That didn’t seem to be the case to me, but I couldn’t come up with anything better.

Yesterday, it clicked somehow. Project 1 is a man against himself story (although it’s about a chick) and I knew that but hadn’t thought about the ramifications. The war isn’t the conflict, it’s the setting. That’s what I’d underdeveloped and that’s what I was missing from the feedback.

There’s still the possibility I have also underdeveloped the man against himself conflict. I have to ask my readers about that. If I have, I’m kinda fucked. The setting’s pretty easy to tweak, but if I’ve neglected the protagonist’s motivation that’s a structural problem.

Well, crud…

Project 1 is not as done as I’d hoped. I found a website for writers and someone I paid forward on came back with notes on the first few chapters. I’ve got the first chapter way too front loaded and not detailed enough. Detailing it would of course result in more front loading, so I’m gonna have to redistribute some stuff. Another reader hit me with some ideas that are giving me pause. I’ve got some ham-handed flashbacks about a forward time jump and the suggestion is to not jump time. That would also add to the word count, which is a bit shy of what publishers of fantasy works expect.

Project 4 is rough draft complete, got some good feedback on it from a former classmate. It’s in the drawer now, I’ll come back to it with fresh eyes in a few weeks. Seriously. I have a reminder set. If anyone wants to read it it’s a short story, definitely a single sitting read.

Projects 2 and 8 look like they might be merged. But half of project 8 got cut out for piling on, and now I have to decide just how 2′s & 8′s stories combine. It’ll work, I’m convinced, just need to figure out how.

Projects 3, 6 & 7 are the next to work on. John August says given the option between film and prose projects, do prose, so that puts out Project 6. Project 7 needs more development and I want to write, so Project 3 it is.

It’s a mess. I mean, some of the writing isn’t even very good and the opening, like, nothing happens but a lot of exposition, or more explanation because it’s mostly characters explaining something to a new arrival. Still. Nothing happens. Not sure what to do about that. I’ll probably write it out and clean or cut it later. Gotta gets words on the page now, I’m on a bit of a roll.