Jay Lake: Writer

[books|writing] Calamity of So Long a Life is out to my last-first readers

Late yesterday afternoon I put the finishing touches on revisions to Calamity of So Long a Life, Sunspin volume one, and sent it out to my last-first readers. Specifically, several generous individuals who hadn’t read the previous draft or otherwise been enmeshed in the project, so I could get a reader reaction. I am hoping to get some feedback by late next week so I can make final revisions and send this out to la agente before the end of the month, per my planned production calendar.

I must confess to being a bit daunted about jumping into the next book, which I won’t do until April. It’s already half-written, I only owe myself another 100,000 words of first draft to nail down volume two, but the overall project is so filling my head right now that I feel as if it will leak out my ears.

Meanwhile, I have two short fiction rewrite requests on my desk to fulfill, a book review to write, and ambitions to make more progress on the synopsis of Little Dog. Given that I have the rest of the month in which to do these things, I am feeling pretty good about my goals.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Little Dog, Process, stories, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:27 am Wed February 08 2012 | Comments(0) |

[personal|writing] Choice or biochemical destiny?

Last night, mlerules and I went to OMSI Science Pub, specifically a lecture entitled “Lust, Chocolate and Prairie Voles”, about the biochemical basis of attraction, lust, love and commitment. It was a lot of fun, and I learned some interesting things. I’m always amazed at how much of what we think of as conscious behavior is influenced if not outright programmed by physiological and biochemical factors.

I sometimes wonder how many of the behaviors of successful authors are rooted in similar factors. I’ve often commented only partly in jest that I’m diagnosably hypergraphic as well as hypomaniac, not to mention scoring very high on ADHD self-assessments. I’m no clinician, and I’ve never asked my therapist or my doctor to comment formally on any of these conditions, but I certainly exhibit many of the traits of all three of them. Not to wretched excess — I don’t write on the bedsheets with bodily fluids, for example — but I definitely have those tendencies.

And really, someone who hyperfocuses, writes obsessively, and is persistently overenergetic and self-confident would seem a natural fit for being a writer. My day jobbe also has a work pattern optimized to that cluster of behaviors. Throw in strong verbal facility and a powerful sense of social ease and you pretty much have me. And I’ve optimized my life’s work around these behaviors.

So am I creature of my pathologies? Surely I am. Surely all of us are. But I do find myself wondering how deep the tendencies run. Could I have chosen to go into some quiet, meticulously detail-oriented field like accountancy? Could I succeed at an avocation where repetitive action is valued at a premium?

And does it matter, since I’m quite happy where I am in life? A few less pounds and a bit more money and my life would be ideal for me.

What about you? How does your personality and psychological profile fit what you do?

Tags: Culture, Personal, Writing

Posted: 6:41 am Tue February 07 2012 | Comments(2) |

[writing] Killing even more darlings

Yesterday I took a day off from Sunspin to let the book steep a bit in my writing subconscious before diving back in. (Though late in the day I did get back to it.) Instead I worked on revisions to my steampunk fairy tale novelette, “You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens”. A combination of wise first reader feedback and my own confirming judgment have led to me delete an entire scene. Rescued from the cutting room floor, here it is for your perusal.

(Note this is first draft, the raw stuff, and because of the decision to cut it, I haven’t cleaned it up at all.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Fiction, Process, stories, wip, Writing

Posted: 9:16 am Sun February 05 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Sunspin revision update

Well, I’ve processed my way through a couple of more passes of the manuscript of Calamity of So Long a Life. I’m now looking at one more close read for deep issues based on several salient critiques from my agent and first readers to date.

I can tell I’m nearly done with this revision because I’m starting to get sick of looking at this book. That’s my subconscious’ way of telling me to lay off it before I file off all the interesting bits and polish it into terminal blandness. I do need to do this last pass read-through, however. With luck I can manage it over the weekend, or no later than early next week.

I’m feeling good about it. Hopefully the world will, too. And I’m very pleased with being on target in terms of my production schedule for this project.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:36 am Fri February 03 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] More killing of the darlings

Sigh. An excerpt from a now-deleted scene in Calamity of So Long a Life…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Calamity, Fiction, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:36 am Thu February 02 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] The style of another time

“But I must be advised, how I be over-liberall, in publishing these wonderful mysteries, till the Sages of our State have considered how farre the use of these things may stand with the Policy and good government of our Countrey, as also with the Fathers of the Church, how the publication of them, may not prove prejudiciall to the affaires of the Catholique faith and Religion, which I am taught (by those wonders I have seen above any mortall man that hath lived in many ages past) with all my best endeavors to advance, without all respect of temporall good, and soe I hope I shall. ”

Reading this book is almost like reading a foreign language. Fascinating precursors to the science fiction of the modern era. I’m just glad I wasn’t Godwin’s copy editor.

Tags: Funny, Language, Writing

Posted: 6:21 am Mon January 30 2012 | Comments(1) |

[writing] Sunspin progris riport

Yesterday I finished the first revision pass on Sunspin, specifically Calamity of So Long a Life, the first of the three four volumes that make up the arc. This pass consisted of embedding all my various first reader comments, doing a close line read for typos and textual infelicities, and processing those comments that don’t require Deep Thought to address. I wound up deleting about a dozen scenes, and making notes for a number of additional significant revisions.

In today’s work session, I’ll make a new version of the file and accept all my changes. (I work in Microsoft Word with the ‘track changes’ feature turned on, specifically so I can backtrack as needed.) I’ll also combine the two separate .docx files that are part I and part II of the book into a single .docx, this to facilitate search-and-replace operations as well as moving back and forth around the body of the book. These are purely technical issues that I need to address before getting serious about the second revision pass.

One of the purposes of that close line read is to load the book back into my head. This way, when I have a note on page 532 that says something like, “Did Mist know this earlier?”, I have a pretty good notion of where the earlier scenes are that Mist might (or might not) have been in on that particular revelation. This sense of having the shape and details of the book in my head, within my span of control, is critical to the second and later passes. (For more on “span of control”, see here and here.)

The second revision pass will be to address scene level and structural issues, which is what the majority of the embedded comments are concerned with. My agent made a suggestion that will greatly improve the dramatic tension of the book, but requires serious adjustment to a major plot thread and a fair number of minor clean-ups elsewhere. This will probably not take me too many elapsed work days, as in revisions I am a very conservative tweaker rather than a tear-down-and-rebuild kind of writer. I trust Fred, my writing mind, and I strive not to damage or blunt the voice that is always strongest in my first drafts and only ever minimized by too much revision or polishing.

After that, I’ll go back through again, most likely focusing on character issues in the third revision pass. I’ll also somewhere in here decide if a fourth revision pass is necessary or not.

Note that none of these revision passes are surgically clean. Even though the second pass is about scene and structure, I’ll be noodling character issues while I’m in there. And vice-versa for the third pass. The process is rather more organic than I’m making it sound here. But in a high level sense, this description is accurate.

I am also pleased to report that I seem to be somewhat ahead of my own production schedule. This monster, which will ring in at about 135,000 to 140,000 words for Calamity of So Long a Life, may be in to my agent a week or two early. I’ll spend March working on short fiction and letting my brain settle, then in April it’s on to volume two, Their Currents Turn Awry, of which the first 70,000 words already exist in draft.

I love this stuff.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Currents, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:28 am Fri January 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing|process] A Sunspin darling I killed

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that working through Sunspin in this revision process has been an exercise in killing my darlings. Just for fun, here’s a snippet that got excised yesterday, for being heavy on tangential world-building and getting in the way of the plot. I don’t know if it will ever re-appear, either in this book or in a related piece. And I really do like it.

And the snippet… Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Fiction, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:26 am Mon January 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Proceeding apace on Sunspin

I spent 1.75 hours on Sunspin revisions yesterday, specifically part one of Calamity of So Long a Life, amidst executing various travel preparations and spending time with the_child. I’m already losing my weird little case of nerves I mentioned a day or two ago.

This process of revision is going differently from my usual work practices in this regard. I think this is because the book is so structurally different from my previous work. There’s a large number of shifting points-of-view, and a lot of complexity. Some of the plot threads are working much better than others, per first reader and agent input. I’m having to shift and strengthen and do some serious darling-killing.

Which of course is difficult to do given that the whole book is structured like a house of cards. I take out a few pieces here and there, move others, revise still others, all while trying to maintain the complex, interdependent structure.

It’s difficult work, and is definitely stretching my skill set.

I love this stuff.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Process, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 5:48 am Thu January 19 2012 | Comments(0) |

[personal|writing] Updatery and revisions

Yesterday I hied me off to check on the venue for JayCon. The date will be June 9th, 2012, and I’m still confirming the logistical details. Watch this space for a full announcement soon.

After that, I went to Fireside Writers, which met this week at a place called The Hazel Room. There I spent 2.25 hours booting up the revisions to Sunspin. I am into the project now, and making progress, though I’m already running into some fairly serious “kill your darlings” issues. I also confess to being daunted by the scale of my ambitions and the scope of the changes my agent and first readers want to see. That won’t stop me, of course.

Then I went to OMSI Science Pub, for the first time in months. This week the topic was urban landslides and forensic geology, which given the location of Nuevo Rancho Lake would require a major seismic event before they became a personal issue for me, but still fascinating. The speaker was energetically entertaining, and the slides were pretty cool. Fun to be out among friends, having my brain stretched.

It’s kind of like being a real boy again. And tomorrow I’m off to Epic Confusion, which is also likely to make me feel like a real boy. (Due to travel and so forth, expect light and/or irregular blogging service through the weekend.)

Damn is it nice waking up from chemo and getting out in the world.

Tags: Books, Conventions, JayCon, Personal, Portland, Science, Sunspin, Travel, Writing

Posted: 6:10 am Wed January 18 2012 | Comments(2) |