Jay Lake: Writer

[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.)

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Tags: Fiction, Process, stories, wip, Writing

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

[personal|writing] In which both progress and regress are made

Yesterday’s weather here in Omaha was beastly. The kind of weather that makes me wonder why anyone not under the supervision of a court actually remains in this place. In fact, this morning, when faced with 10 degrees, wind and ice patches on sidewalks in the predawn darkness, I gave myself a very rare bye on my morning exercise.

Day Jobbery yesterday was productive if lengthy. At home, if I get tired (and fatigue is still very much an issue), I can go sit in my easy chair for 15 minutes and read work email from there. No such option in the office, where you’re pretty much full on the entire time you’re in. It’s the little things that are wearing. Still, I’m holding up and doing well.

On the home front, the_child did another high school visit yesterday. We are coming to grips with her choices for next year. And though some subjects are definitely harder than others for her, she remains diligent in her assignments, while playing hell for leather on the girls’ basketball squad. She makes me proud every day.

In my own world of assignments, I got another writing session in after work. 2,400 word in an hour on “You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens”. Plus the plot sort of did this origami lurch and I now see what my subconscious was foreshadowing the other day. Fred, the little man inside my head, is way smarter than me. I’m sure glad he’s in there. Doubtful there will be writing today due to my work and social commitments, but there will be more tomorrow.

And a little bit of WIP… Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Child, Omaha, Personal, stories, wip, work, Writing

Posted: 5:45 am Thu January 12 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing] And so it begins

Well, I managed 1,500 words of first draft over the course of about an hour yesterday. It’s a steampunk fairy tale entitled “You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens”, and I’m aiming for about 10-12,000 words here.

The words came a bit slowly, but not clumsily. I worried a lot about them being crap, but recognize this as my own headnoise. This is a bit like starting the lawnmower after its long winter’s nap. Everything has to cough and ping and rumble and smoke for a bit, burn through the bad gas in fuel lines and carburetor before really kicking to life.

At least that’s what I tell myself. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. My hope is to have this done in first draft by the end of this coming weekend, but I’m not going to force the flow of words. As it happens, there will likely be no writing today due to an after-hours social function with my professional colleagues.

Meanwhile, a tiny bit of WIP: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Process, stories, wip, Writing

Posted: 6:00 am Tue January 10 2012 | Comments(2) |

[writing] Sunspin progress redux

2,500 more words on Sunspin last night. I finished section two (of three) of book one, Calamity of So Long a Life. That makes 71,500 words on this section and 131,200 words overall. So I’m pretty much on track for wordcount.

Starting today, I will drag back through this section, do some line editing and rewriting. Some time next week it will go off to first readers. At that point, I’ll do some revising and updating on the outline. Then a week or so away from Sunspin while I bat cleanup on some short fiction invitations and generally ratkill writing/career stuff that’s been awaiting my attention.

After that, I’ll probably move into revising Kalimpura, because it’s due to Tor in June, and I don’t really have time to write the next tranche of Calamity beforehand.

So Sunspin will be in the drawer a bit before going on. Ah, life. I’m fairly pleased with the project thus far.

To celebrate, here’s a bit more WIP:
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Tags: Books, Calamity, Kalimpura, Process, stories, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 4:45 am Fri March 25 2011 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Sunspin carries on

After two days’ break, I was back on Sunspin today. Knocked out 2,600 words yesterday afternoon, then got on with the rest of my day. Today I have another full day of day jobbery, then I’m visiting a friend with a cancer very similar to mine in the afternoon. More Sunspin this evening.

A bit of WIP for you from Calamity of So Long a Life. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Calamity, Cancer, Sunspin, wip, work, Writing

Posted: 5:25 am Wed March 23 2011 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Sunspin, Sunspin

Tight for time today, so in lieu of the usual wit and erudition, I leave you with a snippet of Sunspin WIP.

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Tags: Books, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 5:03 am Wed March 09 2011 | Comments(0) |

[writing] Sunspin continues

I’m starting to find my pace in the middle section Calamity of So Long a Life, book one of Sunspin. Given the break I took after section one to review the copy edits of Endurance and deal with a couple of short fiction projects, it’s bit like starting a new book. Interesting effect on my process.

I like the direction and momentum of the book. Even yesterday afternoon, with a headache and feeling a bit woozy, I managed to lay down 3,000 new words.

A longer bit of WIP than usual: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Calamity, Endurance, Process, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 6:43 am Tue March 01 2011 | Comments(0) |

[writing] More comments on Sunspin, as of January month-end

7,800 words on Calamity of So Long a Life this weekend. This draft is running slower than usual, as I’ve observed before. I spend time touching back between the manuscript and the outline, updating both documents. My normal forward momentum on novel writing is not in play here. Rather, this is a more iterative process for me involving continuous re-reading, editing, and forward outlining of scenes/sections.

Quite a learning experience, too. I’m enjoying this, but the process challenges me. I have no real sense of how this is going, as I don’t have a first reader anymore, but I’ll sort it out.

Some WIP… Read the rest of this entry »

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

Posted: 6:10 am Mon January 31 2011 | Comments(2) |

[writing] SUNSPIN takes shape, more, plus some novella WIP

Today I finished the first draft of the Sunspin novella I mentioned recently. It now has a title, “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future”. Draft came in at 23,100 words, just shy of the 24,000 I’d set as a target.

As I mentioned previously, this is in effect a prolog or chapter zero to the novels. I still don’t expect to actually include this in the manuscript of Calamity of So Long A Life, the first of the Sunspin trilogy, but it sure helped me set some direction. Among other things, I uncovered several more key worldbuilding issues and a couple of important aspects of the trilogy’s MacGuffins.

Interestingly, all my other Sunspin shorts seem to have tied into “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future”. Which is something I had not anticipated when I wrote them. Proving once again that Fred is much smarter than I am.

All of which leads me to reflect that my increasingly common practice of writing discovery fiction set in my novelistic universes is really paying off for me. Plus it’s fun!

Upcoming projects (as in, starting tomorrow, most likely) include revisions to “The Stars Do Not Lie”, the steampunk lost colony religious novella I wrote last spring; followed by revisions to “A Long Walk Home”, the Sunspin novelette I recently wrote; followed by revisions to “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future”; then a solid shot at finalizing the Sunspin outline so I can get started on Calamity of So Long A Life sometime in January.

And yes, because I care, just for y’all, here’s a bit of a WIP:

Her strategy was utterly obvious. Her tactics, far less so.

Still, her fingers hovered over the fire control interface. Indecision was like agony. The small noises of her starship echoed like cannon in her mind. She remembered cannon fire, on 9-Rossiter during their post-Mistake isolation. She’d even commanded artillery for a short while. The morning mist off the Polomoski River had blended with the acrid smokes of their still too-crude powder, that caused the occasional shell to cook off in the barrel. Horses tied on the picket line screamed their terror at the first of those explosions, and she’d had to send that kid, what was his name–

“Captain!”

It was Shinka. No, the kid wasn’t named Shinka. He’d died, more horribly than usual, following her orders.

“Michaela.”

Cannon blinked. She was aboard Sword and Arm. Not at the Battle of Bodny Bridge.

“Where were you?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Eight and a half centuries out of time,” Cannon muttered. “We’d better–”

Her words were snatched from her mouth by an air shock that pressed through Sword and Arm‘s interior cubage like a fist down a throat. Cannon felt her ears bleeding.

She whirled to see the damage control boards lighting up. Third Rectification had scored a hit on the Alcubierre drive, apparently with a ballistic package. The delivery method was obvious enough. Low albedo, tight-beamed comms control, so running dark and fast. Maybe even boosted by a quick snap of the mining lasers covered over by the bigger starship’s lurch into motion.

“Returning fire, ma’am?” Shinka asked urgently, though her voice was like someone talking at the bottom of a pan.

“No!” Cannon shouted, trying to hear herself. “That’s our only ride home, now.”

Tags: Books, Calamity, Process, stories, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 1:48 pm Sat December 18 2010 | Comments(4) |

[process] Writing is hard, let’s go shopping

So I’ve been working on an as-yet-untitled novella in the Sunspin continuity. As a practical matter, in terms of story action it’s the prequel to the opening of the novel cycle. Though I don’t anticipate including this wordage in the novel manuscript, I reserve the right to change my mind later on. Necessary off-stage action, as well as plot character development, comprising a story in its own right.

But the is science fiction. With, you know, actual science in the story. Or at least as much sciency-stuff as a middle aged liberal arts fart like me can swing. For example, I’ve had to read up on neutrino effects (and the lack thereof) on ordinary baryonic matter. As I write, I keep needing to stop and spot-check issues which are too important to just [handwave inside a bracket for a fix on revision]. Not to mention referencing back to dozens of pages of continuity notes from the existing short fiction in this setting, as well as the unfinished novel outline.

It’s not that the writing on this project is harder than so much else of what I do. It’s just I need to work more to get some things right. By contrast, I recently drafted Kalimpura, where as a third book in series I know the cosmology, the local area of the world, the physical and societal settings and the characters very well. As a result, the prose tended to flow very quickly. I didn’t have to think those elements through as I went along. And the demands of verisimilitude are different in fantasy than they are in science fiction.

This prose, she is not flowing so quickly. calendula_witch assures me it is reading well. But, yeah, not just a gear shift here. More like a transmission swap.

God, I love this stuff.

And, what, you want a WIP?
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Tags: Calendula, Kalimpura, Process, stories, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 4:49 pm Wed December 15 2010 | Comments(1) |