The Late 2008 - Shine in 2009

Like my cheesy title? *grin*

So, given it's what everyone else is doing*, I thought now would be a good time for my 2008 recap.

Raw stats first.

In 2008, I:

* wrote 161,207 words of fiction.
* finished a draft of TBAEO.
* did preliminary edits and replotting of TBAEO.
* worked on The Black Gates, then retired it at about chapter 5 - the plot Needs Work.
* started Logan. Wrote 10 chapters only to realise the story started at chapter 11. Put aside, as the MC was too boring.
* learned how to write short stories - hoorah! Total of 8 in various stages.
* edited my first 'proper' play. Wrote several others, including an 8 act one to be performed in a week's time.
* began The Project. Wrote half, outlined the rest, realised I hated the MC and put it aside.
* signed up to write a self-pubbed non-fic ebook, to be completed this month.
* began several MG novels for nano, none of which behaved, so they've been temporarily put aside.
* started Jesscapades, which I adore, and which at this point I'm planning to be my debut novel.

My main goals for the year were to make 10 submissions and have 3 complete manuscripts. Sadly, the year has been fraught with false starts, so I have only one :( As for submissions, I've done 12 :) So that's a success. Granted, a lot have been resubs, and I've had no bites yet though a couple of commendations and personalised rejections, but hey - I did more than 10 subs :) Rah!

Although on the one hand I feel like the year has been a bit of a failure - I haven't completed any novels that I'm happy with - on the other hand, my total word count is up by 60% on last year's count. And more importantly, I've learned a lot. Sure, I've had a lot of false starts - but I know why they were false starts, and each time, they've been for a different reason - which means I'm learning.

And now I've hit on a novel that I like, with a reasonably strong voice, a fun plot, a great MC... Mind you, I'm not halfway yet, so I'm hoping like mad that I like the book because it really is good (this is what the beta readers are saying) and not because I just haven't hit the wall yet (what my brain is saying).

So, this is what I've learned from each of my false starts this year:

1) TBAEO - not a false start, but something that DEFINITELY needs work before it can see the light of day. From this I learned perhaps my biggest lesson of the year - that I can finish a complete novel, and that I can dissect it and replot it to make it stronger.

2) The Black Gates - this is actually my first novel. I've been working on it off and on for years - and because of this, it's fraught with beginner mistakes - not least of which was a lack of original, interesting plot. I fixed that by introducing some great twists - but I'm yet to figure out how on earth it all goes together. It's not complex enough - but it's too complex. Gack.

3) Logan - heh. From this, I relearned the importance of having not only a strong MC, but one who has enough tension and internal conflict to drive the plot. Logan, the MC, was not strong enough to be a driving force - instead, he was someone who was driven, being forced and manipulated into making his decisions instead of reacting to the situation himself - and so he was boring. It was about now that I also realised that I didn't actually want to write traditional-style fantasy after all...

4) The Project. If TBAEO could be called an exercise in character development, then TP is its opposite: an exercise in plot. I set out to write this deliberately as a pot-boiler, simply to force myself to learn how to keep up the pace and tension, how to introduce stumbling blocks and small problems - in short, how to keep the middle from sagging. I succeeded pretty well, but unfortunately in doing so sacrificed character, and the MC turned into someone whom I didn't like, couldn't identify with, and just plain didn't want to write about.

5) The Edge and Gem series - I only made a tiny start on these at the beginning of Nano, but it reinforced for me the necessity of knowing your character's voice before writing the book.

6) Jesscapades. With luck, this one won't be a false start. So far (about 1/4 of the way in) it's got a great combination of character AND plot, and I'm excited to see just how much better this is than anything I've done before.

And that, my friends, was 2008. I know, I haven't talked about my goals for 2009 yet - but to be honest, I can't really get my head around the idea of new goals until this big camp (Jan 16-24) is over, and the dog book is written. I'll think about goals, and post them either in the final week of Jan, or in early Feb.

In the meantime - what's the biggest thing you learned in 2008?


* I was going to do it anyway. It just seemed like a good excuse O:)

Updatory Things: Changes of Direction

Two direction changes today. Firstly, I seem unable to resist the urge to give weekly updates, so my 'regularly scheduled' blogging will be thrice weekly: One serial piece, one Blog-Of-The-Week, and one update.

Two-thly. The Change of Direction. *sigh* Logan.

*shakes head and determines to cease being cryptic*

Logan. For those of you that have either been reading this blog for a while, or have access to my wips (critique circle...), you'll have heard of one of my wips, Logan. Logan is a prequel-by-several-hundred-years to the story variously termed (at different points in its life) Athara's Search, Search, Messiah, and The Black Gates.

And I've just realised: it's all wrong.

For quite some time now I've been having trouble getting enthused about it; in fact, pretty much since I read Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found. MLTF is such a great, pacy book (more on that in this week's serial post) that I found myself thinking - boy, my stories are so boring. They drag. Nothing exciting actually happens.

A few days after this, I found myself writing The Project, an incredibly fun little potboiler that I decided to write as a potboiler as an exercise in Making Things Happen. So far the feedback has been extremely positive, so it seems to be working.

And I got thinking about Logan. The MC, oddly enough called Logan, bores me. The chapters bore me. And I developed this sneaking suspicion that the nine chapters I've written, which equate to nearly fourteen thousand words, were all backstory. The story doesn't actually start until chapter ten, when Logan... er, is dragged off to school. (See, no spoilers O:)).

And besides that - did I mention this? - Logan as a character bores me.

So, after some thought and discussion with a critting partner, I have come to a conclusion. Bran, Logan's 'villainous' elder brother is far more intriguing. This means I ought to write the story from his point of view.

I'm yet to get my head around how the story will start from Bran's POV, but I can already feel the tingly excitement at the prospect of getting inside Bran's head. It's one dark, twisty place to be, but at least it's interesting.

And so my change in direction. Let us hope it's for the better. %-)

May Recap

Scary that I typed the title (twice, given I spelled it wrong the first time!) as 'April Recap'. Oich.

So, goals for this month were (laughable):

* Edit to chapter 11 on TBAEO
* Write 4 shorts
* Get to 15k on Logan
* Polish and submit Murder
* Polish and submit Shoe

And achieved this month:

* 1374 on Logan, taking total to 13,710
* 6048 words on The Project, taking total to ~8100
* Two complete shorts, Shoe (1384 words) and Sea Foam & Blood (4378)
* Two partially complete shorts, Finding Bunny and Lightning
* One chapter of Secret Breaker
* Overall total of 17,522 words
* Murder & Shoe both polished and subbed

So a nice, productive month, even though it's been mostly on things other than my official goals! Regarding TBAEO, I'm taking a break from editing it at the moment since it's become the second book. I'm not sure how edity I want to get with it, so will continue if/when the mood strikes, but shan't push.

Evil, Word Counts and Housekeeping

I don't know if I've mentioned, but May is the Month of All That Is Evil.

If you can correctly translate that to: 'there is way too much assessment due in the month of May and exams are fast approaching', then congratulations, you are one of the few people in the world who speak Inkish :D

Despite this fact, my writing has not been lagging /too/ much. In fact, my pretty spreadsheet informs me that I have written 868 words on Logan, 3890 on The Project, and 3591 on short stories for the practice queue.

That's 8349 total. An average of 440 words per day. And given I've only actually written 7 days out of the last 18, I think that's not too bad.

I'm also doing some housekeeping. Very shortly you should notice both an increase in the number of links in my sidebar, and with luck a better organisation system for them.

Finally, I've just come back from the best weekend I've had in months, which involved some Really Cool Books. Expect to hear more about those soon :)

April in Review

This is a little late I know, and yes I am back dating this entry - but I have to at least pretend that I'm up-to-date with something in my life at the moment O:)

So, here's what I accomplished in the month of April:

* 17,388 words total. I am absolutely stoked about this - this is my best word count ever, apart from Nano :)
* Of which, 8,842 on Logan. A little shy of the 10k I'd hoped for, but the total w.c. is so shiny that I don't really mind.
* Edited 1.5 chapters of TBAEO. Pathetic. Really, I mean pathetic. I blame it on the fact that it was all-new material, so it was in effect first draft writing, not editing. :S
* Polished In Search of Freedom. FINALLY. This was on my to-do list for JANUARY. But, happiness, I also submitted it to a publisher - my first ever query.
* One of my CC friends, in a determine attempt to teach a few of us 'I Can't Write Anything Short' people how to write shorts, started a queue where we have weekly prompts and have to write 1 story per week to a maximum word count of 3000 words. I wrote 2 stories for this (The Dress and Murder, though Murder I'd started last year). I also finished Bran prior to the establishment of this queue, and...
* Wrote something that was supposed to be a short but has turned into a new novel, now called The Project. I'm summarising it as Huxley's Brave New World meets Wells's The Time Machine, plus magic. Much fun :D
* To top it all off, I critiqued an entire novel for a friend, and stayed on top of all my uni assessment.

So, all in all a very productive month :) Here's to May! :D

Another Progress Report

Tuesday was Wonderful. Absolutely Wonderful.

Just imagine - an entire day, in which nothing has to be done... Mmm...

So, thanks to my lovely 'day off', I have:

* 3,347 new word on Logan, bringing the total to 9,110. That's the first six chapters done and posted. Yay :)

* A new scene for TBAEO, which is really good. I've been slacking on it lately because I've hit a run of three pink (aka completely new) scenes - and we all know how much I love first drafts :S

I also have a whole new bunch of shiny ideas to add to my list, which is growing horribly, horribly long. *stabs shiny, new, distracting ideas*

This afternoon I have lots of homework to do, but will try to do at least 500 words of something, I think. Will see how I go...

Long Time No Post...

Whoops! I see I have been shamefully neglecting this dear little blog lately. All I can do is apologise and blame Real Life; the last two weeks have been rather shocking.

HOWEVER.

Yes, there is a 'however'.

The last two weeks have indeed been shocking, but, oddly, I've still managed okay with the writing. Here's the report since the last post:

* 5 chapters of TBAEO revised and typed up, including one brand new scene which will help explain Z'a'k'r'y's background better. Am having a lot of fun with this, and wish I had more time to devote to it :)
* Started and completed a new short story, temporarily titled 'Won'. It's a quick flashback into the history of Logan's brother Bran - why he is the way he is :) About 2500 words total.
* Nearly 4200 words on Logan, the current wip. First drafts are awful, horrible little things that ought to run away and die.
* Edited In Search of Freedom, the play. Something (which goes by the names of 'Mercwriter' and 'Capthook' in its various incarnations) has possessed me to actually think about querying this... As well as editing I've formatted the first two acts.
* Added about four new folders to my writing folder, which means four new novel ideas...
* Have another short story in the pipeline, related to TBAEO. Should prove comic %-)

So. It's not astoundingly brilliant or anything, but it's progress, and it means that my total word count for the month of March was 6577, and that for April I'm currently sitting on the beautifully round figure of 1300.

I'm aiming for 10k again this month, which I hopefully should be able to hit if I use my uni 'holidays' wisely.

Of course, it might help if I went and did my uni homework /now/, so I could get onto some writing... Me? Procrastinate? Never... O:)

Logan Appears

So, I appear to have officially decided that BG is on the back burner until it's been world-built better. It's going to be one big, complex story, and I'd like to have a more solid grasp on it going in than I currently do.

I say I appear to have decided, because while I didn't actually consciously decided, the first few lines of Logan (scheduled to be the next wip) appeared in my head tonight - and quickly turned into about 900 words. Nearly the first complete scene :) I intend to complete it after dinner (no, have not had dinner yet, was distracted by computer. Yes, am starving hungry!), and hopefully make a start on the second scene.

Teaser, anyone?

Logan looked up at the wall in front of him. In the nighttime gloom it seemed to stretch up forever, even though he knew it was only as tall as the nearby houses.
"Go on," said his brother, B, from behind.
"No way," said H, shaking his head. "There's no way we can go in there."
Logan glanced left and right to see how the other members of the group were reacting. T looked resonably interested, but the others seemed to be echoing H. He turned to his brother. "I don't know, B. It's asking for trouble."


Yes, the other characters aren't named yet. Deal with it ;)

'Black Gates' Wins Out in the Portalverse...

So, after all my fluffing around, it seems The Black Gates has finally won over Logan in the 'Which Book Gets Written Next' competition.

Why?

Simple. It may not have as complete an outline, but it does have that one thing that Logan sorely lacks - world-building. And now, also, a beginning, which came to me last night as I lay in bed struggling to sleep. Teaser, anyone?

Athara tensed under the blankets and strained her ears in the darkness. Was that the gate?

I'm horrified by the fact that it begins with the MC waking up, but at this stage, it'll just have to cope. Besides, it's not waking up so much as being woken up. And that's completely different, right? *sheepish grin* At least it has a beginning now.



In other news, my universe finally has a name. A nickname, anyway, something quick which I can use to refer to it. It came to me this morning as I was driving to work.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time reading agent Kirsten Nelson's blog, and subsequently doing some actual agent research (cue scary music... dun dun dun...). It was interesting, though I bemoan the fact that so many more US agents make themselves accessible through the web - I'm yet to find a single Australian agency that even lists bios for its agents :\

ANYway. My universe.

Somewhere in the mountains of advice I read yesterday, an agent spoke of a story she'd taken on - to her suprise, a 'portal story'.

*shock* and *surprise* on my part. Prophecies? Chosen Ones? Sure, they're overdone in fantasy, that's a no-brainer.
But portals?

Well, yes. I suppose so.*

*cringes*

Any of you that know the background that ties my stories together will understand that this is crushing news for me. (Though I don't really care; see footnote below). In my universe, portals abound. They're pretty much a staple, you could say.

And all this rushed through my head this morning as I drove, distracting me from focussing on the on-coming traffic (O:) don't tell my father!)... and the perfect name appeared.

My universe is, officially, the Portalverse.

:D

*(A large part of me wants badly to argue that they're only as overdone in fantasy as space ships are in science fiction... People need to travel after all. But is this self-defence or logic at work here? Who's to say...)

P.S. Say hello to my hundredth post. Hoorah! Aren't I verbose *beams*

World Building - Too Many Ways To Do Things

Help.

It's the third of the month, and I haven't started writing yet.

I know why, and I need some advice...

Basically, I need to do a WHOLE heap more worldbuilding before I continue with any of my stories - and I mean a LOT. So my dilemma is thusly:

Do I sit out the mini-nano we're doing over on critique circle and worldbuild industriously this month (something I find hard to concentrate on in large amounts), or do I write the story anyway, knowing the worldbuilding will be thin and the characters not fully rounded until about half way through??

Which is basically what happened with TBAEO, being a true Nano. It's going to need a complete revamp come rewrite time.

And of course, there's styles of planning to consider - what if writing the story and world building as I go is just the way I work?

Argh. Why can't there just be one definitive way to do this?!

*Sigh*

Sometimes It Comes... And It Isn't What You Expected

I know, I know, I'm spamming you this week. I'm sorry. Hopefully, you'll cope.

Sometimes, the book you plan to write isn't the one that wants to be written. I sat down tonight, prepared to force myself to begin outlining The Black Gates.

Instead, I now have a 1300+ word outline for (temporary title) Logan's Prize. Stupid title, since he doesn't have a prize. Maybe I'll just nickname it Logan.

This story is a bit of history for The Black Gates; I've known the general gist of it for months now, but the story just came to me, a few weeks ago, first act complete, just like that. I could see the scenes vividly in my mind, and I just knew it would work.

I typed it up...

And then I lost it. I've spend the last two days scouring my home computer, my work computer, my email accounts and my notebooks... All to no avail.

So tonight, instead of outlining The Black Gates, I sat down to write what I knew about Logan. And ended up with a complete, finished outline.

I think Logan's impatient to be written. Athara may just have to wait...