[process] The writer brain on the march
My to-do list of late has been somewhat insane. Two sets of galleys, the Sekrit Projekt novelette, the Sunspin synopsis, a pair of collaborative novel synopses completely outside sf/f, several articles, some editorial reading for friends, some blurb reading, and of course, Herman Melville. This doesn’t even account for the novella I owe Real Soon Now, plus some short stuff I want to write, plus another collaborative decadent fantasy effort to which I am committed but not yet empowered to discuss in broad daylight. Early spring will bring Tourbillon revisions, possibly one or another of the collaborative efforts, then bleed into the process of drafting Sunspin. (Plus, erm, Real Life, including a trip to China.)
Meanwhile, it’s been just under a month since I finished the first draft of Tourbillon, and yes, I have been resting. Which is to say, not drafting new fiction. Until this past weekend.
Apparently Fred really wanted to write, because I banged out an 11,600 word space opera novelette on Friday and Saturday, with two revision rounds on Sunday. A few details here: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. By rights this ought to go into a drawer for a month or three, but deadlines forfend.
And as mentioned yesterday [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ], this sucker ties directly into Sunspin. Which I now must set aside yet again to work on Green.
Still, the writer brain will out, and march where it would on lettered feet. I never fail to surprise myself.
Tags: Green, Process, stories, Sunspin, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 6:34 am Mon December 01 2008 | Comments(0) |
[process] A writerly meme
A writerly meme, gleaned from a locked post elsewhere but provided here unlocked. In case you thought this was a quick or easy career path…
- Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 14
- Age when I got my hands on a typewriter and taught myself to use it: 14
- Age when I wrote my first short story: 14
- Age when I wrote my first novel: 30
- Novels written between age 30 and age 39: 4
- Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 27
- Number of rejections prior to first story sale: About 150
- Lifetime number of rejections: Over 1,100
- Age when I sold my first short story: 37
- Age when I wrote a saleable novel: 39
- Age when I sold that novel: 40
- Novels written since age 40: 8
- Age when a story was first shortlisted for the Hugo award: 39
- Age when I won the Campbell award: 40
- Age now: 44
- Age when the money coming in exceeded my statuory employment: not yet
- Number of books sold: 8 (novels), 2 (single title novellas), 5 (short story collections), 12 (anthologies edited or co-edited)
- Number of short stories sold: about 240
- Number of titles in print: 4 (novels), 4 (short story collections), 10 (anthologies)
- Number of titles in production or pre-production: 4 (novels), 2 (single title novellas), 1 (short story collection), 2 (anthologies)
Tags: Personal, Process, Writing
Posted: 8:05 am Sun November 30 2008 | Comments(5) |
[personal] Updatery of the rankest order
Home. Finally. Orycon didn’t go as smoothly as my Con experiences usually do — most rare for me, I ditched late panels and went home when I realized that my state of tired-and-crabby was interfering with my social persona. Discretion truly is sometimes the better of valor. I’d gone into the weekend in a pecked-to-death-by-pigeons mode, and never really regained my footing. (On the plus side, a week away from the scale with social dinners and Con food, and I maintained my departing weight.)
Afterwards, karindira and I went to my parents’ house for early Thanksgiving with a cast of dozen, including lillypond and a friend of hers, the Niece, Mother of the Child, the_child, and my aunt and uncle visiting from Texas.
Woke up with a horrendous anxiety dream straight out of college — the “oh, no, I forgot I registered for these courses and the exam in next week” dream. Compounded by me being naked on campus, having no cellphone to call for help, etc. I think that’s Fred complaining about the Tor galleys, except I’m on target for those. Or maybe he’s complaining about the latest Sekrit Projekt, but that’s not behind either.
In the shower this morning, I was thinking of Dahomean history, as one so often does at 5 am on a Monday. That led me to a story title, “Ritualized Forms of Judicial Murder”, which I will almost certainly use at some point in a doubtless delightfully lateral way. Which in turn reminds of a story idea I popped out over the weekend with a panel audience assist, about Sarah Palin, the end of time on Mayan calendar, and her efforts in the 2012 election to win the popul vuh-t: “The Alaskan Book of the Dead.” Sadly, stories that immediately topical can be very hard to sell, so it’s doubtful.
I owe a post on the winner of the Post-Novel Ennui Contest, but that will have to wait until this afternoon, or possibly my lunch break. Likewise, I owe a post on the results of the “Write a Story In an Hour” panel from Saturday. You will be sore amazed. Or possibly just sore.
Meanwhile, write more.
Tags: Contests, Conventions, family, Personal, stories, Writing
Posted: 6:54 am Mon November 24 2008 | Comments(2) |
[process] Everything I need to know about Sunspin I learned from Tourbillon
Walking this morning, in between acts in the glittering show that was the night sky, I had an insight into the way I’m approaching Sunspin. I have known for a while this next project would have to be rather different from my previous ones. The scale alone is an issue — I expect a first draft between 600,000 and 750,000 words. Likewise the fact that it’s science fiction, and I need to approach both the story and the text differently than I’ve approached the fantasies I’ve been writing the past few years. Not more rigorously, but with a different rigor.
Both of the above points presage a much more detailed outlining process than I’ve ever indulged in before. I simply can’t spin three quarters of a million words off the top of my head. Well, actually, I probably could, but not while trying to accomplish my goals for this project. And the sfnal requirements are such that I’ll need them to be pretty carefully spelled out in advance. For example, my concepts about FTL, the Fermi paradox and the social structure of post-industrial, trans-human interstellar feudalism in a culture where FTL is only of limited application. Those need to be internally consistent and convincing before I ever put draft to page, and they need to inform plot, character, action and dialog every step of the way.
I’ve always resisted detailed outlines, as arcaedia and casacarona can surely attest. To me, writing is discovery, and in the past, the outline process has always felt like it robbed some of the magic from the writing process.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Tourbillon. The outline was as skinny as any of my others, but it was skinny in a different way. Because in Tourbillon, as I’ve mentioned before here on this blog, I was dealing with a serious outbreak of Third Book. Meaning, the world building, the social structures, much of the character development, and an enormous amount of the background detail were already in place before I ever started writing. I was focused on plot, character transitions and dialog in the drafting process. I enjoyed writing the book as much as I always do, and having so much of the world pre-fabricated didn’t subtract from the process of discovery. In fact, in some meaningful ways, that process was enhanced.
My insight this morning was that developing a detailed outline before writing Sunspin wouldn’t be all that different from writing Tourbillon with Mainspring and Escapement already in my head. Which came close to shocking me when I realized this.
While most of you may well be pitching peanuts at me now for discovering once again that the sky is blue, this is a significant revelation for me, and almost certainly a rather important one.
Here is what I love most about writing: You never stop learning. Or least, you never have to.
Tags: Books, Escapement, Mainspring, Personal, Process, Sunspin, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 6:21 am Fri November 14 2008 | Comments(0) |
[process] The inner mind of the writer
Lately, calendula_witch and I have been discussing the evolution of writers. Meaning, specifically, the manner in which the internal landscape is modified by the experience of writerdom. It’s an interesting proposition, at least to me.
I think most people’s lives are shaped like plot diamonds. When you’re young, all doors are potentially open. You identify your talents and interests, make educational and professional choices, find your way into your emotional and sexual maturity — each of those steps opens some doors and closes off many others, just as the evolution of a novel plot does. At some point, if you’re a bit lucky and a bit successful, you reach a place in your life where those choices are largely in place and you’re doing what you want to do, with whomever you want to do it with. Over time, you close more doors and focus on those which are most important to you, until the inevitable narrowing at the end of life.
I think writer’s lives are sometimes shaped like funnels rather than diamonds. Or perhaps hourglasses. My personal journey over the past decade has been a reversal of the choices and decisions I made in my 20s and early 30s, choices which at the time I honestly believed at the time would guide me through the rest of my years. The experience of immersing into my writing, both emotionally and professionally, has undone many of those choices, and added an immense number of possibilities which have not been open to me since I was a very young man.
We all grow in our own directions in life. Writers, if they are a bit lucky and bit successful, can grow in many directions in life.
All of this also has an odd echo in my experience of cancer this year. There’s a question I ask myself every day now. “Am I doing what I’d like to be doing on the last day of my life?” As a cancer survivor, as a writer, as a father, as a human being, my answer to that continues to be “yes.”
Is there a question you ask yourself every day? If not, what would it be?
Tags: Cancer, Personal, prcoess, Writing
Posted: 5:50 am Tue November 11 2008 | Comments(0) |
[process] Post-novel ennui, contest anent same
By rights, I should come down with a raging case of post-novel ennui in the next few days. Election Day will certainly keep me distracted today. There’s always things popping in my personal life, of course. But I’ll be curious to see if this more controlled drafting process in Tourbillon will affect the course of post-novel ennui.
In a related note, I hereby announce a contest! Leave a comment here about the way I should best combat post-novel ennui. Feel free to be highly creative.
As usual, after a few days I’ll post a voting poll. Winner as determined by a jury of their peers shall receive an inscribed ARC of Green, as soon as I have them to ship out. Usual rules and arbitrary errors by the moderator apply.
Tags: Contests, Green, Process, Tourbillion
Posted: 6:58 am Tue November 04 2008 | Comments(23) |
[process] Writing a novel
The initial rough draft of Tourbillon is complete at 198,900 words. (Of a predicted 200,000 words, amazingly enough.) 51 days of work without a missed day. 109 hours of elapsed effort. I am exhausted, elated and boggled all at once.
I’m here to tell you, it can be done.
I feel wrung out. And I’m already looking forward to the next one.
Tags: Process, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 7:52 pm Mon November 03 2008 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad “Sitting up here watching all the lights blink down below”
Achetez le timbre antituberculeux — Not sure why, but I find this 1917 French poster to be striking. A nice site for vintage art.
Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes — What? Global warming isn’t on the list? Neither is evolution? Liberal lies! (Thanks to lt260.)
kenscholes on losing his religion
Phony flier says Virginians vote on different days — Oh, look. Voting fraud. By Republicans. If you can’t win on your ideas, cheating sure helps.
McCain’s senior economic policy adviser on the McCain healthcare tax credit proposal — “What [younger, healthier workers] are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.” There’s some brutal honesty. Speaking as an older worker with a history of cancer, McCain’s plan will screw me very, very hard. Would quite literally kill me if I had another bout. Me and millions of other Americans.
A wave for GOP staffers? — GOP staff jobs on the Hill and at K Street will be way down. My heart bleeds. After fourteen years of slash-and-burn politics, maybe a few of these guys can go live in the brave new world they helped create for electoral gain and party loyalty.
The Republican shipwreck — There’s something surreal about how fast the GOP has gone from arrogant triumphalism to its death throes. It’s a funny line, and an interesting opinion piece, but I think the writer is significantly overstating his case. (Nicked from jeffsoesbe.)
Why McCain is getting hosed in the press — Politico on media bias. I wonder where all this concern about bias was when Al Gore was getting hosed in the press while W got a free pass? Sure didn’t bother conservatives back then.
Blessed Are the Persecuted — Noted liberal rag The Wall Street Journal on the conservative cult of victimization.
Question of the day: Are Paul Prudhomme, Dom DeLuise and Luciano Pavarotti really the same person?
10/29/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 226.8
Currently reading: The Best of C.M. Kornbluth
Tags: Art, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science
Posted: 6:05 am Wed October 29 2008 | Comments(1) |
[writing] Tourbillon progris riport, day 45
Today’s wordage: 3,600
Today’s writing time: 2 hours
Total wordage: 175,000
Total writing time: 97 hours, 30 minutes
WIP: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Books, Tourbillion, wip, Writing
Posted: 6:22 pm Tue October 28 2008 | Comments(0) |
[process] The write time of day
An interesting (to me) observation from my experiences working on Tourbillon. Some days I write in the afternoon and evening, schedule permitting. Some days I write very early, as I did today — got up at three, exercised, showered, and was at the keyboard from 4:00 to 5:30.
When I write early, the throughput is a lot slower than when I write late. The typos are more prevalent. But the story doesn’t seem to suffer. In fact, it may have improved slightly.
I believe I shall attempt an experiment some time in November, once this book is drafted. I’m going to try writing a short story (or more likely a novella, I owe a few of those around) by only writing very early. I want to see how different it might be when I am closer to the dreaming time and not so filled with the work of my day.
Do you write on a regular schedule? Or does it shift around for you? How does that affect your output? What is your write time of the day?
Tags: Process, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 5:41 am Mon October 27 2008 | Comments(2) |
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