Writing - Adam Christopher

Writing

July27th

View Comments

Ludmila, My Love – done and done!

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Writing
Cue the Snoopy Dance: on Sunday, I finished the first draft of my supernatural space opera, Ludmila, My Love. I closed off the Scrivener file, backed it up, and celebrated with tea and toast (well, it was about 8 in the morning). First draft of my fourth novel done and dusted. Phew!

I must say, Ludmila was an odd book to write. Each novel has been a different experience, but I think this one will stick in my mind for a while. I’d built up an expectation for it in my own mind, perhaps more than my previous projects, which actually slowed things down a bit. I was thinking, rather than doing. But we’re there. Ludmila now goes into cold storage for a few months so I can forget about her… which is coincidental (not ironic!) to the story itself. With a bit of work here and there, it’s going to be a great big scary creepy book, I hope!

Thinking about what needs tweaking in this book brought to mind how I classify manuscript drafts. For example, while I have written the first draft of Ludmila, My Love, is it really ‘draft 1′? As Mur Lafferty once said, the first draft is the vomit draft, in which you write it all down before you forget the story. Importantly, it’s allowed to suck, and you’re allowed to no worry about it sucking, because you will fix it later. That’s quite logical too. If everything came out perfectly the first time around then writing would be a very fast process indeed.

Here then is my general drafting/editing process – as with any writing advice, I’m no expert, and never take anything as fact. What works for me might be completely alien to you. But here goes.
- Draft 0 – the vomit draft, the very first version of the manuscript that you manically type at strange times of the day. Warning: it might be ropey.
- Draft 1 – the fixed draft. The writing is tidied up, problems are fixed, plot holes sorted, continuity corrected. The end result is a draft that is readable and (hopefully) logical, even if it still holds a few problems.
- Draft 2 – the elbow grease draft. Chances are some larger problems or issues became apparent at draft 1 that require large fixes and perhaps even total rewrites of some chapters and sections. It may well be here where most of the editing work comes in.
- Draft 3 – the fixed draft, slight return. This another fixing run, checking and smoothing out the rewritten material from draft 2 in the context of the manuscript as a whole. Depending on the extent of the changes and fixes, the manuscript may then flip between the draft 2 and 3 states for as long as it takes to get it all right.
- Draft 4 – the beta version. This is the first version to show early/beta readers. This is the version that you should have 100% confidence in, and would be happy to publish the next day if you could. If you don’t/wouldn’t, then you need to go back and repeat drafts 2 and 3 until you are/you would. But, importantly, this is the version you want comments and opinion on. This is the version that you want readers to read, to tell the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s absolutely vital to adhere to this step, I think, because your beta readers will give you an outside perspective you can’t possibly get yourself, as close as you have been to the writing and the story.
- Draft 5 – the beta edit. Once your reader comments are in, you’re into the second of the two major edit drafts (along with draft 2), adjusting, tweaking, rewriting based on your reader’s feedback. As with each step, of course, the amount of work and the time required will vary and is impossible to predict. Draft 4 might have been nearly perfect, or your readers might have spotted a major problem that needs a big fix or found that there was something about the book that wasn’t working.
- Draft 6 – the final fix. This step is a repeat of draft 3, being the final overall tidy-up and check. Again, you may need to go back and forth between drafts 5 and 6 until everything is shipshape and Bristol fashion.
- Draft 7 – the finished manuscript. By my estimation anyway, draft 7 is the finished manuscript and the one you want to sell or shop around.
That might sound like a lot of drafts, or it might sound like too few. I’ve included some inbetween stages which might be better as 0.5 iterations of a draft, but that’s just my own preference. It might take a year to get to the end – and remember, this is after you’ve actually finished the book – or it might take just a couple of months. But for myself it’s important to have a plan, as I’ve got certain self-imposed deadlines and goals I want to meet, and pulling apart the editing process like this is a big help when it comes to setting those deadlines and also notifying my beta readers that something will be arriving. The list above is just my own system, broken down into steps. While draft 0 of Ludmila, My Love matures in the cupboard, I’m diving into the edits on Empire State. Looking at my edit list, this book is nearly at draft 4, and will be ready for my beta readers in a couple of weeks.

Plans and deadlines, I has them!
July10th

View Comments

Short story writing and the novel-shaped head

Posted in: General, Writing

Alt Fiction was a while ago now, but the panels and interviews are coming online now. I’m reminded of one particular discussion about what you need to do to get writing and get published.

Some people think that starting out with short stories is a good way to hone your craft. Some people think it’s good practice. I agree, to a certain extent, although I’d argue that short- and long-form fiction are so utterly different that writing twenty 5,000-word stories won’t tell you much about writing one 100,000-word one. But I don’t have much beef with the advice. If you like it, listen to it.

But then some people think that it is a compulsory path to publication, that you must earn your dues in the short story market before anyone will take you seriously with a novel. It’s a natural, logical, and standard progression, they say.

The one problem with writing advice – any writing advice – is that people tend to listen to it and follow it to the letter. Writing is one of those things where there are rules and basics, and once you’ve got a handle on them you can pretty much do what you like. If something works for you, wonderful. Chances are it won’t work for the next person along, but that doesn’t matter. Write how you want to write, what you want to write. It might take you a while to work out the nuts and bolts of it – and that’s where writing advice and guidebooks can help – but eventually you’ll fine your own routines, and habits, and practices.

But the perception that short stories are a compulsory starting point sticks in my craw a little. Because – and here it is, brace yourselves – I don’t like short stories.

This is, of course, not true.

My favourite author is HP Lovecraft, who wrote nothing but short stories and a few novellas. I’m halfway through Night Shift, Stephen King’s first published collection of shorts, and a couple of pieces in there might be the best things I’ve ever read. I have plenty of friends who write a lot of short fiction – I’m lucky enough to be a beta-reader for Jennifer Williams, and nothing she has ever shown me has failed to amaze and delight. Some people have a knack for short fiction, and when short fiction is good, it’s great. You’ll get no argument from me on that point.

But mostly it’s not. Or at least that’s what I’ve found. Every now and again I go on a splurge, convincing myself that I need to pay more attention to short fiction, and go and buy a stack of short fiction magazines – American ones, British ones, famous and long-running titles, obscure and new ones, online magazines and electronic magazines and printed magazines.

After a couple of weeks of reading, I’m back at the beginning again. All I’ve done is prove, yet again, that I don’t like short fiction, and that more often than not, short fiction doesn’t work. At best, it leaves me unsatisfied and disappointed. At worst, it makes me curse the fact that I’ve spent an hour desperately hoping for a good resolution or twist or just an ending that works. Usually it never comes.

And then I think about Quitters, Inc, or The Sea, The Sea, The Sea, or The Whisperer in Darkness, and about how wonderful short fiction can be, when it works. A perfect short story is a glittering jewel.

Now, if I don’t like reading it, and I sure as hell don’t like writing it.

This is, of course, not true.

I’ve written a fair bit of short fiction, and had some published. It’s quite a privilege to be accepted by Hub magazine, and I’ve had great comments from people who have enjoyed these stories. I’ve got some more pieces coming up too, and the excitement that comes when an idea strikes is a marvelous thing.

But as a rule, I don’t write short fiction. I don’t exactly fold my arms and huff and puff and turn my nose up at it, but I certainly never sit down to deliberately write one, unless that magical idea has arrived (usually fully formed) in my mind. When I’m roughing out ideas and plot, it’s always, always for novel-length fiction. I never deliberately try and plot out a short story, because I’m just not interested. My short stories are accidents and coincidences. Sometimes they even work!

But the angst is still there. Other writers posting on Twitter or their blogs – how many short stories do you have out circulating right now? asked one. I have 12, they said, the fewest all year! Another friend posted an update on their blog – this week I sold story A to magazine B, story X to magazine Y, and story 71 to magazine 98.

Wow. For some, it seems, its easy. A short story a week is a common personal target for a lot of writers. I’m lucky if I can write one a quarter.

But then it clicked. Yes, sometimes the penny takes a long while to hit the ground.

I’m not a short story writer. I write novels. I like novels. Novels give me satisfaction to write and enjoyment to read.

Importantly, there is nothing wrong with this. It’s the style and form I have found myself drawn to quite naturally, without any particular conscious decision. Novels. I like ‘em!

But what about this road to success from short to long fiction? Sure, a lot of writers – a lot of big, famous, successful names – have followed it and for a lot of writers its a very good idea indeed. But it’s certainly not compulsory. Some people – like me – are just not wired for short fiction. I don’t like the saxophone or olives either. It doesn’t matter. All that means is that I don’t try and learn the saxophone and I don’t eat olives. So when it comes to short fiction, I usually don’t read it and I usually don’t write it, unless there is a very good reason to do either.

So when someone tells them that you must spend a decade writing short fiction before you try a novel, stop and think about what you want to do. This may be absolutely ideal. Or, like me, it might make you recoil in horror. I think it’s important to note that short and long fiction are completely different forms, and while starting with short fiction would certainly teach you the fundamentals of grammar, punctuation, etc, diving straight into a novel will probably teach you more about the long form. Sure, at the end of it you might not have something worth a damn, but it’s the experience that counts. Get those million words out and then write something great.

Always approach writing advice with caution. Including this!
June24th

View Comments

Practice makes perfect

Posted in: Writing

Back to basics

Crunch time. Things to do. Plans to hatch. Goals to achieve. Time to refocus and get cracking and… well, all that stuff.

So let’s recap:

Hello! My name is Adam, and I’m a New Zealand-born writer based in the North West of England. I write science fiction, horror, steampunk, superhero, fantasy. Not all together, and not all at once, but I enjoy many different genres, and if I have a story to tell, it doesn’t matter much to me how you classify it. It’s all speculative fiction, put it that way. Robots or ghosts or monsters or spaceships or people that can fly.

Easy.

I’ve had one novella and one short story published, with two more short stories to appear sometime this year. I also won a flash fiction competition, which, although tiny, counts!

I’ve written three novels, and am working on my fourth. My novels are unpublished, although I’m trying to do something about that. I much prefer long fiction to short fiction, but that’s a topic for another post.

So there we go. We all square? Cool.

This blog is intended to chart my writing progress, for me to share thoughts on the process with you, and also with me, because sometimes writing stuff down can help to solve a problem or to bring clarity to something. It also provides a little motivation for myself and is a good way to warm the fingers up in the morning before I get to work.

I also blog about Stephen King here. Yes, it’s a bit out of date. I realise I’ve broken the golden rule of blogging by admitting that it is out of date (never admit this, never open a blog saying “Hey, sorry about the delay”, make everybody think everything is entirely on schedule) but you’ll have to take my word that I’m about to do something about it.

And we’re done. That feels better! I thought it was time to relay the foundation and reiterate the basics, a spot of late spring cleaning. And now, content:

Ten thousand hours and one million words

There’s a theory that to be come an expert at anything – from playing chess to painting landscapes to repairing motorcyles to becoming one of the world’s most powerful CEOs – you need to invest 10,000 hours in it, or in the preparation for it. That’s a heck of a lot of time, and for a typical writer who holds down a day job and can only write in discreet blocks of time in the evenings and weekends, that might represent more than a decade of slog. I do actually believe in the 10,000 hours rule, but the reality of it is enough to make you weep into your cocoa.

Perhaps a better measure is wordcount. I’m not going to get into the argument of wordcount being a mechanical measurement that doesn’t fit with the art of writing – sometimes you just have to be practical, and in terms of measuring raw output, it works.

Stephen King said you have to write one million words before you get to the good stuff. Now, I tend to believe what he says, and it’s certainly obvious that the more you write, the better you get. I’ve seen that in my own work. It’s just practice. And there’s where wordcount is useful, because a raw wordcount includes the good and the bad. You may write 10,000 words, and they may all be the wrong ones, but that’s 10,000 words from which you should have learnt something. Practice, practice, practice.

One million words is also much less daunting than ten thousand hours, at least for me. One million words is, theoretically, ten novels. Ten novels is, theoretically, a couple of years of work. I’m not saying it’s a short cut, far from it, but based on my daily wordcount, that’s how it lies.

So how do I stack up? If I want to “get to the good stuff”, as King says, how far have I come, and how far do I have to go? Let’s add it up:

Short fiction

The Devil in Chains (Pantechnicon): 24,052
The Unpopular Opinion of Reverend Tobias Thackery (Hub Magazine): 6,416
Forevermore (Angry Robot World House competition): 375
The Nightmare of You and Death in the Room (Hub magazine [forthcoming]): 512
Unnannounced anthology story: 2,033

Novels

Dark Heart: 118,719
Seven Wonders: 111,533
Empire State: 100,585
Ludmila, My Love (current work-in-progress): 70,236

Grand total: 434,461 words

…which is actually better than I thought. So, nearly half-way there.

But does that mean what I’ve written so far isn’t good?

Not at all. The Devil in Chains, Tobias Thackery and Nightmare were good enough for an editor to buy. Forevermore was good enough to win a competition. Sure, my novels are unpublished, but I’ve got plans for them all, and the solicited feedback so far has been Snoopy-dance positive.

But it’s all practice, practice, practice. When I hit the magic million, I’ll be a better writer than I was at 434,461 words. In twenty years time, when I’ve written who knows how many words, I’ll be a much better writer than I was at 1,000,000. That’s the way at goes. Stephen King’s advice is good, but like all writing advice, it’s more about demonstrating a reality than lecturing you on a mechanical process. The only way to get better is to write more, and if you’re serious about the craft and you’re serious about the business, then you have to write one heck of a lot of words.

Which is what I should be doing, right now!
May26th

View Comments

Electric book boogaloo

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, News, The Gospel of the Godless Stars, Writing, ebooks

You might have guessed I’m something of a gadget freak. Well, that’s not quite right. I don’t collect gear or spend hours reading Engadget. However, I am a fan of tech that makes my life easier. I’ve talked about the iPad before – and I’m literally counting the hours until my very own 64GB WiFi model arrives this Friday – and I’m a proponent of all things digital, be it music, or films and TV, or books.

This week I was a guest of Angry Robot books, and I took the opportunity to make a case for switching from print books to ebooks. I’ve had numerous interesting comments about this via Twitter, and my writing pal Jennifer Williams has posted a response on her own blog. I hope you’ll take the time to read both my take and hers, and join the debate!

Writing wise, I’m finally – FINALLY – back on track with Ludmila, My Love. At 2,000 words a day, I should be done in about three weeks, which means I can let that one ferment in the draw and get straight into The Gospel of the Godless Stars, the horror Western I’m co-writing with Kate Sherrod.

This is my first collaboration, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the process. We’re currently working out the plot and synopsis, and have been swapping and expanding scene chronologies back and forth. I must admit, I was nervous at the start of all this – having spent a few days nutting out some plot points, what if Kate hated them? What if Kate’s sections completely turned my precious ideas upside down and inside out?

But of course, it’s not my story. Nor is it her story. It’s our story. We both realise and understand this, and actually it results in a much freer creative experience. Kate even wrote a short prologue at the same time as I was working on mine – and having seen hers, it’s not only a terrific piece of writing, it actually leads almost directly into my own. I suspect this project will go well.

With all this writing work on, one thing that will hopefully keep the pressure up is the brand new Manchester SpecFic Writing Group, which met for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the MadLab in central Manchester. All are welcome, and our next meeting is June 2nd, where we will hopefully have some critiques to give out. I just need to give the first chapter of Empire State another going over before I drop it into our shared folder.

Nervous? You bet. We’re using Turkey City rules. But I’m hoping it’s going to be a valuable experience. I’ll keep you posted.
May19th

View Comments

The art of project management

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, The Gospel of the Godless Stars, Writing

Time to kick it up a notch.

I find that I work best when I am busy. I have a natural tendency to cruise, which is all very nice, but unless I’m flat out it means that everything takes longer than I intend, simply because I haven’t got the pedal to the metal. The first draft of a novel should, in theory, take two months to write. Ludmila, My Love is only halfway done and it’s already taken about three.

And Ludmila is not the only project I am working on. I need to edit the book before, Empire State, so I can get it out to beta readers. The beta readers will need time to read it, and then I need to allocate another block of editing time for when they all send the book back with their thoughts/critiques. My plan with Empire State is simple enough – get the manuscript in shape so I can start shopping it around by October this year. At the moment, October sounds like a long way off, but once I programme in the three required timeblocks (edit, beta reading, edit), it suddenly looks like a much shorter timeframe.

Another project which requires some hours right now is The Gospel of the Godless Stars. This is shaping up to be the next novel after Ludmila, My Love and my first collaboration. Wyoming-based author and poet Kate Sherrod is co-writing this weird Lovecraftian horror Western with me, and so far we’re having a ball getting the story together. I’ll blog about this properly soon, but the first step is to mesh our two outlines together into a single cohesive story in time for Balticon, which Kate is attending, so she can show it to some folk. Actually, meshing the outlines is the second step – the first step is to get my outline done! Balticon is held over the last weekend in May, which means I need to get the outline out to Kate in the next few days.

So busy, and busy is good, right? Yes, it would be, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m still stuck in cruise mode. A couple of weeks ago I had a night or two where I didn’t get much sleep for whatever reason, which threw out my early morning writing routine as I got up too late. And hey presto, the morning routine has been out of whack since then. Add to that a hefty workload from the day gig – including weekend work – and suddenly I’ve done hardly any writing, zero editing, and only a little outlining.

The worst part about it is that there is no-one else to blame but myself. I control when I get up and when I go to bed. Also, I’m in the very fortunate position of being able to control how much day gig work I do. More than most people, I think, I have control over the hours of my day and what I use them for.

But the only way is up, or forward, or however the song goes. Is that even a song? The solution is simple – get up early and re-establish the writing routine; watch the among of day gig work I take on; schedule schedule schedule writing projects.

I’m a routinised person. I love lists. I love calendars and dates and deadlines. So over the next few days I’m going to do some proper planning and scheduling for my writing projects. To this end, I’ve added some little progress bars to the front page of this blog, over on the right there. Wordcount is an easy metric to measure, and while I keep my own detailed spreadsheets on progress, perhaps seeing (and regularly updating) these public trackers will provide just a little more impetus to get things done. Editing Empire State is harder to measure, but will be done by page and date – I’ll put up a tracker for that as soon as I’ve worked out the best method and deadline. Incidentally, the 68 words on Gospel are actual words rather than outline (outlining being even harder to measure than editing), but I don’t expect that number to change significantly until the first draft of Ludmila, My Love is done and dusted.
May2nd

View Comments

Ludmila, My Love

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Writing

Ludmila, My Love is my fourth novel, and one that I really didn’t plan on writing.

I’ve got a tonne of ideas – as with most writers, more ideas than I can possibly write books for during my lifetime – and while I’m writing the first draft of one book, part of my mind is already looking/thinking ahead to the next. While Empire State was in progress, I was planning on another superhero novel, this time set in Edwardian London, called The City, Golden. I’d even got so far as to make some notes during downtime on Empire State, and had a cast of characters sketched out and the major plot points jotted down.

One thing I discovered that happens when you write in the long form – one wonderful and quite surprising thing – is that even if you have a plot, or outline, or synopsis, and think you have the whole story worked out from beginning to middle to end, you have very little control over your characters. They start to do things you didn’t intend, start making their own decisions, and going off in directions that were not only unplanned, but actually work against what you’d plotted out.

I told this to a non-writer friend, and at first he thought I was making it up, and then when I’d convinced him that this actually happens, he thought I was barking. I’m sure I’m not the first writer to be told this. But that’s okay, it’s our little secret.

But I digress. Back to The City, Golden and Ludmila, My Love. Both titles with commas in them, too. I’m not sure if that is significant or not!

Anyway, so there I was planning this Edwardian superhero adventure when Ludmila arrived in my mind, and told me that I really needed to tell her story. And yes, that bit does sound barking, but hey, I tried to lead you up to it, right?

As a fan of the weird and anomalous (Fortean Times is the only magazine I ever read from cover to cover), I’ve been interested in the so-called “Lost Cosmonauts” for years. The story goes that back in the 1960s, in a mad and desperate bid to beat the United States at the space race, the USSR sent up a large number of cosmonauts who never made it back. Yuri Gagarin, it turns out, was the first person to go into space, and come back alive.

It’s probably a load of bunk, but sometimes the things which are bunk are the most interesting. It’s a mystery wrapped in Cold War paranoia and Soviet dirty-dealings, and while it might never have happened, maybe it did. Afterall, the Soviets were up to all sorts – Stalin had people airbrushed out of photos, and the Soviet space agency destroyed a lot of files. As the fortean mantra goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It was actually Fortean Times that brought the subject back to mind last year, with a feature about how two Italian radio enthusiasts had actually recorded the transmissions of some of these lost cosmonauts as they perished in space. The best recording – or perhaps worst, depending on your point of view – is of a female cosmonaut, apparently reporting back to mission control as her capsule burns up on re-entry. Although there is no record of her ever existing, someone decided her name was Ludmila.

Ludmila, My Love, is a supernatural space opera, M.R. James writes 2001: A Space Odyssey, in three acts. I’ve just finished the first one at around 43,000 words. As ever, my target is 100,000 words, and I hope to be finished by the end of May.

It’s a story of loss, betrayal and revenge, and of an impossible love that spans a thousand years. I was lucky enough to have a sketch done live on the internet as part of professional artist Brandon Dayon’s regular drawing webscasts, thanks to a cheeky request made by Twitter pal Kate Sherrod. As Brandon said during his webcast, it doesn’t look like Ludmila is having a very good day.

And to help things crystalise in my mind, the fake back cover blurb:

Abraham Idaho Cleveland (Ida, to his friends), decorated veteran and war hero, sure has some tales to tell. Not that anyone wants to hear them. Injured in battle and forced into retirement, Ida is exiled to a distant outpost to recuperate.

On the decommissioned space station ‘Coast City’, Commandant Price Eldridge and his skeleton crew resent playing babysitter, and Ida finds himself shunned by nearly everyone. His only friend, medic Izanami, helps him rehabilitate after his final heroic act, one which nobody believes ever happened.

Nobody, that is, except for his new love: a woman a galaxy away, on the other end of his subspace radio. A woman he’s never met, but with whom Ida shares the pain of loss.

A woman with a dark secret all of her own.

When fast-talking celebrity pilot Zia Hollywood arrives with her crew, leading the great space gold rush en route to plundering a strange new asteroid, the persecution of Ida only worsens. Until, that is, her mining ship is scuttled in deep space under mysterious circumstances that Zia refuses to discuss with anyone. Anyone except her surprising new confidant, Ida.

Something is out there, in the dark shadows between the stars.Something lonely, waiting, watching. Wanting.

As Ida and Zia face the demons of the past, they must each make a choice. How much would you sacrifice if could get a second chance to save the ones you’ve loved and lost?
March30th

View Comments

One for the album

Posted in: Events, Writing

This is getting a bit old so gotta get it online. Just to add to my Adventures in Meeting Cool Famous Dudes, here’s me and horror author Joe Hill in Manchester from a couple of weeks ago.

Joe was entertaining and a real gent, and I think Speculative Horizons did a good job summarising the event. Here’s his flashing-devil-horn-offensive-content-warning-system in action. Excuse the fuzziness of the pictures but a good workman always blames his crappy tools, right?

And although I’m sure he’s utterly, utterly sick of people saying this, but he really does look and sound like a young Stephen King (sorry!). There’s some serious writing genes in that family!

In a couple of days I’m off to Odyssey, the 2010 national science fiction convention (aka ‘EasterCon’), being held in the wonderful surrounds of… Heathrow. Well, okay, I’m sure the venue is good and I was lucky enough to score some very close accommodation, but I’m just a tad jealous of the World Horror Con, which was held last weekend in Brighton. At least there was opportunity to get out of the hotel there!

Anyway, it’s my first UK-based SF convention, and I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of friends, and making some new ones! I shall no doubt be in a low orbit around the bar area most of the time, so please do say hello if you spot me.
February15th

View Comments

Escape from the Empire State

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Writing

One hundred and six days and 100,615 words after I started, the first draft of Empire State is finished. True, there were some wobbles along the way. True, it needs a fair amount of work at the second draft. But for now, it’s done. I’ve written three full-length novels.

Empire State began it in November 2009, with the intention of getting half the book done as part of NaNoWriMo. That didn’t happen. Nor did I meet my first self-imposed deadline of December 31st. Or the second deadline of January 31st. Or the third deadline of my birthday, February 2nd. But hey, that’s life, right? My average daily wordcount over the writing period is a quite shockingly low 949 words – way, way off my target of 2,740 per day for 2010. But as I’ve mentioned before, some odd things happened between November and now. Suffice to say my output is much higher now – in fact, on Sunday, the day I actually finished Empire State, I clocked up 5,379 words. It’s amazing what a little motivation – like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – can do.

Now what? Well, Empire State joins Dark Heart and Seven Wonders in a dark drawer. I’ve got a Big Fat Plan for this year, which involves taking one of these titles – along with book four – and working it up into a proper second draft fit for my beta-readers. I have a feeling it will be Empire State, although Seven Wonders might give it a run for its money.

But having written three books, I’ve noticed a change which is both logical and obvious when looked at from the outside, but which was still noticeable and even surprising as I experienced it from the writer’s point of view.

Empire State is a much better book than Seven Wonders. And Seven Wonders is a much better book than Dark Heart. Not just in style and technique, but in depth of story, character and theme as well.

Or, to put it another way, I’ve got better.

Okay, that should be obvious, right? As I write more and more, I learn more and more, and I get better and better. It’s like anything, be it starting a sport or learning a musical instrument, the more you practice, the better you get. I had a couple of odd conversations about this recently with people who expressed not only surprise but mild shock and disgust when I suggested that to be a good writer you had to bust your ass. Huh. Some people think writing is easy. Suffice to say, these people are not writers. Kevin J. Anderson had something to say about this the other day. Personally, I’d listen to him. He’s written more than 100 novels. The swine.

Having realised that I’ve improved, and having actually recognised the change in my writing since I began with Dark Heart a few years ago, it gives rise to a slightly odd feeling about book four.

Ludmila, My Love is a science fiction ghost story, but unlike the previous three novels, what came to me first was not an idea or a plot, but a theme. Having always associated theme with Proper Writing, I was quite chuffed to be able to think of Ludmila in these terms even before I had the plot nailed down. In fact, I’m still outlining now, and I don’t expect to start actually writing the thing for another week. But this is good, because along with the satisfaction of finishing Empire State came a mild depression – having lived with the characters of one book for so long, it’s always sad to leave them behind. However, in this case the sadness was short lived as it was quickly overcome with excitement for the next project.

So, a week of outlining, then two months of writing. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Wish me luck!
February12th

View Comments

That end of book fidget, and iPad roundup

Posted in: Ludmila My Love, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Writing, ebooks

The end of book ‘fidget’

Turns out that I’m not alone when I say I’ve got the “end of book fidget”. It’s that feeling you get when you’re within sight of the end, with a big climax to write, but your brain is on the next book.

The next book is new, fresh, and exciting. It has a killer title. The plot is out of this world. This is the book you’ll be known for. You want to start writing it now.

The old book is old, dull, stale. You know the story and the character inside out, you can’t wait for the hero to save the day so everyone can go home. You know the book needs a gosh-darned thrashing at the second draft to solve a couple of plot problems and iron out some character kinks. You’ve been living with this book for a couple of months, or more. You’re tired.

One of the fascinating things I’ve discovered about writing is that a writer will think that their experience is unique, that the thoughts they have and the emotion changes they go through during the course of writing are brand new, and (usually) completely wrong. The universe is trying to tell you that you aren’t a writer and you shouldn’t be trying. Your story is lame, the characters weak and two-dimensional. The plot is terrible, the prose itself is the most god-awful tripe ever put to paper. If you could just stop right now and try the next book, everything would turn out fine and writing would be less like sweating bullets.

Except Neil Gaiman gets this feeling. He said so. Michael Stackpole gets this feeling. He said so too. Most writers do, from late night amateurs honing their craft to seasoned pros with lengthy bestseller back catalogues. And then when one writer talks to another writer to tell them about the terrible time they’re having, they’re shocked to discover that the other guy feels exactly the same way.

Okay, I exaggerate. Writing is fun, and it can be easy, and it’s something I have to do. It’s not continual torture, and more often than not, the plot and characterisation work just fine. If they didn’t, I’d be in trouble.

But there are moments like the above, scattered all throughout the writing process. And at this point, as Empire State hits 95,000 out of a projected 100,000, I get the end of book fidget. And despite me knowing all the above about how every writer goes through the same thing at key points, I was still surprised to discover writer friends who knew exactly what I was talking about, or who were stuck in the exact same situation as me.

Fortunately, the solution is pretty easy. Ignore the fidget, sit down and finish the book. I suspect there are an awful lot of almost-finished novels in the world because the writer hasn’t realised that the end of book fidget is just a normal part of the process. And there are an awful lot of half-finished and quarter-finished novels in the world because the writer has succumbed to one of those other feelings of inadequacy at some point.

You gotta keep on truckin’! Empire State will be done in a few days. Then Ludmila, My Love, can take centre stage.

The iPad

It’s been three weeks now since Apple introduced the iPad. The interweb is full of speculation and opinion, so I’ll leave you to Google for it if you haven’t been keeping track of the commentary. My last post, which was far, far too long ago, talked about the things I wanted from the device. Did it deliver? Yes, on every count – function, portability, and importantly, price. UK pricing has not been announced yet, but Macworld have done a pretty good estimate. Even the most expensive model, the 64GB 3G version, only comes in at a hair under £700. For me, that’s worth every penny for a good-sized, capable internet device and e-reader.
January8th

View Comments

Honourable mentions

Posted in: Dark Heart, Devil in Chains, News, Rad Bradbury: Empire State, Twitter, Writing

Week one of the new decade draws to a close (no, I’m not getting into an argument about whether the decade starts in 2010 or 2011. Get. Over. It), and after a bit of heaving and swearing (lots of swearing), I’m finally dragging Empire State back on track. After about two months in the doldrums, it’s a bit like that old metaphor of turning a cruise liner around. It takes a bit of coaxing, and it’s not a fast process. Anyway, one million words, here I come.

Meanwhile, Cherie Priest, the author what wrote that damned fine book Boneshaker that I harped on about earlier, seemed pretty pleased that she rubbed shoulders with Stephen King on the pages of this blog. Thanks for the link, Cherie!

And this I dig, a lot. Reader ediFanoB, whom I randomly bumped into on Twitter due to our shared love of steampunk, has a few words to say about my novella, The Devil in Chains, on his website. Now, The Devil in Chains isn’t a new release, and one of great mysteries of the publishing world is how books are all hot news on the week of release, then everyone forgets about them. I mean, Coke advertise several times a day on TV, and you can go to the store and buy a can. But I can also go to my local bookstore and buy, say, Salem’s Lot, but you don’t see Salem’s Lot advertised anywhere. Although writing is an art and a craft, publishing is about building name and brand. With that in mind, I’m pretty chuffed that ediFanoB enjoyed The Devil in Chains enough to not only blog about it, but demand I get on with the rest of the series and get Dark Heart (the first novel in the series, for which The Devil in Chains is a stand-alone prequel) edited and, heck, published even!

Well, that’s why I do it. I write stuff that I hope people enjoy. And if they do, that’s my job done. Thanks, edi!