Let Me Add to That

Having read through some of my older posts (well, they're all older, but that's not what I mean), I'd like to point out that not much in my brain has changed.

While writing the first 3,000 words or so, I hated every word I put down. My narrative style is too gimmicky, the main character asks too many questions, my scenes are too short, the pacing feels all wrong.

But, because this was part of a group thing, I kept going. I did my best to just push those thoughts away and just keep writing. Every day doing a little more.

I don't hate it as much as I thought I did. I cheated though. Even though we're not supposed to show each other our work, I did send the first few scenes to a friend with specific feedback questions such as, "Does this suck as bad as I think it does?"

The feedback was generally positive, There was an admittance of "first draftness" to it, but he said he kept reading because he wasted to see where it was going. It pulled him forward.

And I beat it into him to be honest. I said that I wasn't going to quite either way, but I needed to know how to silence the voices and honesty was required to find the best approach.

I still think my first-person narrative structure will be seen as gimmicky, but I like it. It's essentially a book I'd want to read. And I guess that's the good part.

About the skeletal writer comment...Here's what I've come up with that I need to know for each scene to start writing:

The Sentence (one sentence that covers the protagonist and antagonist of the scene, what the scene tension point is, what changes between the two characters at the end, and where the scene occurs.

Also, I need answers to these four questions:

What element gets the character closer to the next milestone (turn, pinch, decision, etc)?

What unknown plot/theme info is revealed to the reader? (not necessarily the characters)

What deliberate action is accomplished?

What bullet point items do I as the author want the reader to know in this scene (which may or may not be big plot/theme related).

Time Machine

Apparently I forgot this even existed. Anyway, the old project I was talking about two years ago is shelved. I lost all interest. In between, I tried resurrecting my Ancient World concept as an RPG. The designer and I haven't been able to match schedules for any length of time, so very little has progressed. That one's just back-burnered. I also fiddled around with my occult ensemble book for a while, but could get any fire for it.

Ah, but what am I working on? I actually started a second run through a novel writing course I took a few years ago. How to Think Sideways  I convinced a few people at work to give it a try and we'd go through all the exercises and stuff together, sharing our perspectives, questions, and such. Well, only one guy has stuck with me to now (but others say they're going to join back in).

It's been a few months, probably... three? It took 'til week eight before we started writing the novel itself. We set it up on a weekly basis so we'd all have time to read the lesson, ask questions, do the lesson, then share our experiences.

But to answer your unasked question, I'm doing an Urban Fantasy project this time. Already 13K words deep. For me, that's a huge number on a personal project. Sure, I've written more for company things I've done in the industry, but this is all mine.

I'm finding out I'm a skeletal writer. Not fully an outliner and definitely not a discovery or "pantster." I need to have my primary milestones thought out with some A, B, and C for those scenes. The rest fills it in as I go.

On this project I have tried SO hard to not world build before I wrote. Usually I can spend months just writing a world bible - designing cultures, languages, communities, weapons, magic systems, etc. This time, I limited myself to writing any world ideas in a file in the shortest way possible. And I didn't write more than I had at the time. I sure didn't let myself develop an idea and let it spiderweb out of control (like I am wont to do).

So there you have it. An update.

I have no idea when the next might be.

Not Standing Still

This has been an interesting time.

I've mentioned I've had a tough time on this project. I've got about 8-10 stabs at an opening scene. I tried different points in time, viewpoint characters, 1st person vs 3rd person, etc. and I hated all of them. In talking to people, I actually said that I hated all of them. They were poorly written; they didn't feel right; they were clumsy; and so on.

Uh, did I mention that I haven't attempted a full-scale writing project in a few years?

Yeah. I was saying this out loud to people (sometimes rather angrily). I'm thinking that the "out loud" part may have been important simply because of the subconscious implications. I haven't written a long-form project in years and with several attempts I've openly criticized the writing that was happening. And I wondered why things weren't improving.

I went from getting full scenes that weren't letter perfect on the first go, to writing start/stop scenes, then I'd end up with a paragraph or two before I'd say "This sucks!" Now? I haven't written a word of actual fiction. Sure, I've been researching like crazy, and have had a few mind opening twists that dramatically alter the story, but I have no words to show for it.

So, now I'm going to approach this quite differently. It may still be a while before I'm back to writing full speed, but I think I may be back on track.

**Edited to add: I went back through some of those false starts. They weren't near as bad as I thought. Sure, they're raw, a little too succinct, and there's some grammatical issue, but they are far from the piles of vomit I felt they were at the time.

Failure All Around

Still no work to speak of on my project. So that sucks. Yeah, there's a lot of problems going on at home (financial and employment issues, my mother was found comatose and rushed to the hospital, stuff like that), but I still should be able to get some writing done. I've also been taking Japanese classes at work - that's eating up some time (study and practice).

I have done a lot of research and prep work (kind of an outline). A while back, I decided to scrap the story I had and rebuild it. It's definitely a lot cleaner and more interesting. But there's a huge gaping hole right now: Why on earth would these two characters set out on the journey? There are several logical reasons for one or the other to do it, but not both - especially since they can't stand each other. I'm going to actually focus on this question and see what I come up with.

It could be that I fall back to an original idea... only one of them sets out on the journey. But crap goes wrong. Very wrong. Hmmm... I'm gonna make note of that and see if it's actually workable.

We'll I didn't have much to say this time. Not feeling the impetus to update since there's not much to actually say. But I haven't given up.

E-Books II

So here's Nathan Bransford's viewpoint on the e-book pricing question along with some math. It does shed some light on the issue, but it's still a very murky room. I'm using my iPad to expand on the books I read, not to replace them. I still get my copies of Jim Butcher, Tanya Huff, Simon R Green, Cassandra Clare (and a few others) in print. These are authors I've been reading for a while and I trust their work. I've been horribly burned on recommendations, "employee picks", and "If you liked A, you might enjoy B" deals. So I look for ways to reduce my investment. Electronic distribution was supposed to be one of those ways.

E-books

Why are they so expensive? I wanted to check out Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series. The first book, "The Mediterranean Caper", was published in 1973. There was a paperback reprint done in 2004.

Amazon is selling the 2004 paperback at no discount for $9.99. The Kindle and iBook versions are also $9.99.

What the...?

I've noticed this trend lately for several books. I refused to buy the e-Book of the third Gail Carriger book because they wanted the same price as the physical book. I looked into "Shades of Milk and Honey" by Mary Robinette Kowal. The paperback Amazon price is $9.77, but they're charging $11.99 for the Kindle version? Not gonna happen.

I don't know what the publishers are doing, but I believe they're trying to keep the popularity of e-Books at a lower level. Why do I think this?

My response in these and other instances has been to by a used copy of the book. I really hate to do this. In doing this, the author receives nothing and the publisher receives nothing. So the only concept I can logically come up with is that they want to force people to buy hard copies of the books. Maybe they think that Kindle or iPad people have wads of cash just lying around... but if that's true, then I'm not one of them.

Once, I contacted an author and told them I'd bought a used copy of their out of print book and requested a PayPal address so I could send them what I would have paid for it. For something in print, that seems... creepy.

I'm not a person that has to read a book the day it comes out. I can wait a week and pick up a used copy for 30% the cover price. I'd rather keep things electronically, simply to cut down on the environment impact of yet another book.

Podcasts, II

I still listen to "I Should Be Writing"; it's excellent. But the focus has drifted. Previously, it was primarily about writing and lately it's been mostly concerned with authors. I totally understand that the two are significantly intertwined. :) And I also get that this podcast has been going on for over five years. There are only so many topics for shows focused solely on the craft of writing. But I'm starting to miss the writing focus.

To that end, I've now picked up the podcast "Writing Excuses." I'm starting with this season (#5). There were two episodes I checked out a while back and they just didn't grab me. One was some live event, and another was a more generic topic that was just a poor choice for me. The episodes are usually about 15 minutes, so I figured I'd give it another shot. I'm liking it so far.

The other two just don't exist anymore, which is sad ("Holly Lisle On Writing" and "The Secrets" by Mike Stackpole). I was hoping maybe one of them would reignite since last August, but no dice.

Anyone have other recommendations?