Been Quiet Around Here Lately

Life has been a complete bear of late. Not in the negative sense (though there's been some of that), but in the sense that there's been so much to do and deal with in my personal life that there hasn't been much writing time, or indeed time to blog here.

Let's see, short list:

• Changed departments at work
• Ripping out carpeting at the house (long overdue, especially since we have pets)
• One of our cats had six kittens
• Two of the kittens died after much care (probable birth defects), causing my wife and I no small amount of grief

In the process I've read a fair amount and produced a couple of chapters of Darwin Colossus for Magic City Writers, but sadly writing has gotten pretty short shrift. Luckily we may be nearing the end of both the near-term floor refurbishing work and the kitten drama. 

In other news, Brant from Magic City Writers has had the entirety of his novel At The Lady's Behest Comes... workshopped by the group, so congratulations to him! Thirteen chapters, and more than 150,000 words, revised in full twice. The raw achievement of this has inspired me, so I'll be working to make more progress on Darwin Colossus from here out.

-Rich

Plotting and Scheming

I haven't posted here much lately because I've been focused on making progress on the Darwin Colossus rewrite. I gave an introductory scene to the Magic City Writers group for critique, and it was universally seen as an improvement. This is great news. I still have plans for horror novel The Work, but I'm giving Darwin Colossus priority for now, because A) I think it's a more complete concept right now, and B) there are a few steampunky movies debuting in the next few years, and since I enjoy writing it anyway...

I may or may not use much actual prose from the original short story in the novel, but I've been characterizing, plotting and analyzing the material I have and want to add to a fare-thee-well, working toward a Big Novel-Writing Push. I do, however, need to expand the scope and complexity of the plot to support a novel-length treatment. I think I have a handle on that, as of this evening: I have six major arcs identified, a three-act structure roughed out, and a theme of sorts to bring it all together.

Next up is a detailed series of milestones. I'd normally call it an outline, but I've come to realize that I split the difference between strict outlining and "discovery writing": I come up with goals for each scene and/or chapter to accomplish, and then in the process of writing each scene or chapter, I tend to find and figure stuff out about the characters and story that I might not have known going in. Thus, rather than easily calling myself an outliner or a discovery writer, I call myself a milestoner.

In any event, I'm excited about the story and writing marathon to come. As they come, I'll post interesting work-in-progress excerpts (WIPs), as I did during this past NaNoWriMo. I've got a visit with the parents coming up this weekend; I'll give myself until then to get my prewriting done, but after the visit, it's Damn the Torpedoes: nothing but work, sleep, exercise and hard-charging drafting.

-Rich

Enjoying the Living Hell out of Horror Writing [WIP]

I've got a chapter of The Work nearly presentable for Magic City Writers, which is good considering that they'll need it tomorrow if they're going to have a week to critique it before our January 8th meeting.

This single 2,100ish-word chapter is the hardest-researched and most-thought-about prose I've ever written, especially given the short amount of time it's been since coming up with the story idea: December 5, so it's been less than a month. Behind the scenes, I've constructed a massive mind map to support the conceptual framework of the novel, written over 8,700 words of characters' backstory, and put together two full chapter-by-chapter outlines in Scrivener (I threw away the first).

I've also been filling my head with great (well, awful, but a great kind of awful) material, for nearly four weeks straight now. In novels: Whispers by Dean Koontz, Misery by Stephen King, Odd Thomas by Koontz, and I'm in the middle of The Shining by King. And in audio: I've listened to eighteen or so half-hour episodes of the Pseudopod horror podcast in the car going to and from work. The podcast in particular has been helpful: Pseudopod is an excellent resource for what sounds good and is paced well for the ear, instead of just the page.

It's been lot of work in a short time for 2,100 words, true, but so far the result has been unlike anything I've ever produced. Rough around the edges, but almost entirely character-driven, and using better-realized characters: plot movement can just fall into place when the characters are people you feel like you know. Their motivations pull the story along, instead of the reverse.

It's all been surprisingly easy, and surprisingly simple, and yet frighteningly exposed: I'm used to a LOT more worldbuilding being required. The Work is taking place entirely in modern-day America, with only a few brand names changed to protect the innocent. There's no sheen from duralloy bulkheads or glow from magical thought-eating algae to hide behind here: it's just me, the characters and the reader.

TL;DR: this feels great. I'm enjoying the act of writing more than I have in years, and I've hardly been hating it. This is definitely a new phase of the craft for me, and I'm loving the ride.

And now, some Work in Progress:

Progress on the Office; NaNoWriMo on the Horizon!

It's been a busy few weeks of late, between a full work schedule, lots going on around the house, and other aspects of Life Getting in the Way, but matters proceed apace.

I've managed to get the office cleaned out and painted, as visible here, and tomorrow I'll be moving a chair and a desk into the room, as well as hunting down a flat-panel monitor and desk chair so I can begin to get the room suitable for use in serious writing...

...Which is good, because this year I've decided (with Amy's blessing) to participate in NaNoWriMo again! For those who might not know, during the month of November of any year, participants in NaNoWriMo try to write a 50,000-word novel from scratch. It doesn't have to be good; it doesn't even have to be coherent. But it needs not to have any preexisting text written (though outlines are fine, if you swing that way), and to measure at least fifty thousand words by machine count before midnight, December 1 in your home time zone.

The goal is to teach participants that they can produce in quantity, and to overcome being intimidated by the magnitude of the task, since that's one of the most daunting aspects of novel writing for a beginning novelist. My prior efforts have peaked around 35,000 words, but I've made a lot of progress in terms of my mental writing "stance" since those old attempts, and I feel like 1,667 words a day ought to be no problem this time around, especially with the practice that Magic City Writers has given me.

The no-existing-text thing means that I'm going to have to let Oasis and Darwin Colossus lie fallow during November, but that'll probably be good for them in the long run. I have the skeleton of a post-apocalyptic story idea rattling around in my head that should do nicely as NaNo-fodder.

So, to sum up: I'm excited! I have a dedicated writing space, a new project, and NaNoWriMo participation to look forward to. I'll post more as things start to fall into place.

-Rich

Office Cleanup, Belated Work-In-Progress Excerpt

Tonight I begin work on renovating my office, which is naturally the place I do most of my writing. Sadly the room has become completely impacted with junk and other household overflow over the years, so the time has come to fix it. Tonight I'll be throwing out all the trash I can, making it available for the neighborhood's curbside pickup service, and this Saturday I have a truck coming for the stuff that I'll be donating: ancient computers, a too-big table, my old computer desk, several CRT monitors. To replace of all of that: a small writing desk, and just enough networking and computer equipment to keep everything running. I'm absurdly excited to be getting my room back, and Amy and I have extensive plans for how we want it to look once all the crap is gone. Having a clean, spare creative space will be a real help.

Not much to report lately, aside from this past week's Magic City Writers group meeting being helpful and productive.

Now, as promised, a segment from the rough draft of Oasis, my current work-in-progress:

Once Again Generating Prose

The deadline for submission to the Magic City Writers Group is nearly here, and my stuff is next on the critiquing block. I've been slamming text down for the first chapter as fast and well as I can. Once I get things to where I'm happier with them I'll post some work in progress, but for now I'm in very rough-draft mode. I'll be editing Friday night, so expect it then.

Feels good to be producing again. Also good to have the rest of my life handled enough to be able to do so. Going for a completely different prose style with this one, much more sparse and fast-moving. We'll see how well I do.

-Rich

Progress Report

Hello! Not to worry, there's lots going on. I've collected feedback from almost all my beta readers, and had another round with the writers group, and I have a lot of feedback to incorporate into Darwin Colossus.

Several readers commented that they wanted more of the story, which is good, but also tricky, because the piece's already 1,000 words over-length for a short story. More than likely the thing to do is dial back some of the description, and then see what's possible in terms of giving readers what they're looking for. Tightness of prose and pace is generally a good idea anyhow. The intent is to start submitting this to paying online 'zines and the like once this round of edits is done, so it's time to plunge into them!

-Rich

Darwin Colossus Submitted to Beta Readers!

Hey everyone! Been a little while since my last post, but work has continued. I sent the story out to beta readers early (so very early) the morning of May 1st, and I wait with bated breath for their comments and replies.

Magic City Writers Group
Last night the group had its third-anniversary meeting, though I've only been a member for five months or so. I received a nice hand-painted mug with a writing quote I chose, and we did some more critiquing. A chapter from the group organizer's epic fantasy work was on the block last night, and it made for an involved and interesting evening.

I'm up next week, which means...

New Project
I'm actively brainstorming ideas for my next story. I kind of liked working bustles-and-waistcoats, so I'm leaning toward a "true" alt-history steampunk, maybe having to do with Pasteur, the Germ Theory of Disease and canned foods becoming available to the populace at large. Yeah, glamorous, I know. Might crash it into a story about 19th-century temperance movements, the fact that breweries were one of the big beneficiaries of Pasteur's attentions, and/or Phylloxera's savaging of the wine industry and absinthe's resulting spike in popularity. Dunno--maybe it needs some airships; perhaps a power struggle and revenge plot. Still brainstorming.

I'll need at least a decent first draft by Friday, May 13th to give the group time to do its critique reading, so if there's just no way to get it done by then I have the beta-reader revision of Darwin Colossus I can submit, which is significantly polished from when the group last saw it.

-Rich

Fitness, Mental and Physical

Went to the Magic City Writers group meeting last night, and the critique (not of my work this time, we rotate) was a bit more contentious than it's been in the past. Here's hoping it settles down for next time!

Tonight, in addition to (at long last) work on getting Darwin Colossus suitable for Beta Reader perusal, I'll be heading to the gym. I've been an avid follower of Tim Ferris's 4 Hour Body program, and it's worked well for me, both in terms of adding muscle mass, and reducing the relative stoutness of my tum. After the chaos of the past few months, Amy and I have returned to an exercise program, and we're flourishing for it.

Not coincidentally, I find it much easier to write (and to write well) when I'm doing a better job of taking care of my body. Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing podcast fame did a pair of episodes on the subject of staying healthy lately, and her advice is good--I highly recommend it.

I think there's something that needs saying on the subject of writerly mental health, too. Not just in the staying-out-of-the-rubber-room sense (important though that is), but in the sense of regulating one's input, one's "diet." One of the maxims of writing is that you have to do a lot of reading as well. Any writer planning on getting published needs to be familiar with the big authors, both historical and up-and-coming, in one's genre. Read a lot, and read widely. For that matter, listen to podcasts like I Should Be Writing and Writing Excuses regularly. Good advice I've heard is that for every hour you spend writing a day, you should try to spend at least an hour reading. You want to know the material you'll be both compared to and competing with, know the trends, know the tricks of the trade, and get a feel for what consumers of your product (because that's what it is, after all, if publishing is the goal) are expecting and demanding.

Another part of writerly head-health is attitude. As an example, it took me a long (long) time to get over my posture of scarcity toward my own work: "This is my Magnum Opus, my only golden perfect snowflake of an idea. If I screw it up, I'll never have another chance." The Writing Excuses guys, as well as just growing older and perhaps a little wiser, helped me through this, and now writing isn't nearly the angst-ridden chore that it used to be. Amy noticed (me sitting down to write used to herald great tension and grief in the house, which didn't give her or me much incentive to encourage it), and my output has improved hugely, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. An attitude of plenty ("I'm learning more and getting better at this all the time, and I've got great ideas spilling out of my head") has made all the difference.

Strive for health: the image of the starving, alcohol-addled writer suffering for his work in a garret may be romantic, but it's a hellacious way to make a living.

-Rich

Life, In The Way; Current Reads

...I am not dead. I have not forgotten about anyone or anything. :-)

It's been a little dramatic the past pair of weeks, as things around the Miller household had to be put on hold for health and recovery reasons. That issue appears (touch wood) to be receding as a concern, so I'll be getting back into revisions and beta-reader mailings this week, and possibly weekend.

The next meeting of my local writing group is coming up next Wednesday, so I've also got to get the current piece read and critiqued. Gonna be a busy weekend!

I'm also going to start doing mentions of books I'm reading and/or enjoying, because a huge part of being a writer is being a reader as well. Here goes!

I snagged my e-copy of Patrick Rothfuss's The Wise Man's Fear right on release day (3/1/2011), and devoured it over the course of the next several days, which were too crazy-full to do any writing, but not so much as to preclude reading. I don't mind saying that I have a bit of a man-crush on Patrick Rothfuss: his previous book (his debut freaking novel) affected me more powerfully than anything else I've read in fiction. Thinking of some scenes still arouses strong emotion, and I've read The Name of the Wind something like five times. In any event, the emotional peaks of Wise Man's Fear weren't as stratospheric for me as in Name of the Wind, but the storytelling was at least as strong, showing that Rothfuss isn't/wasn't a fluke, or one-hit wonder. The one question I have left is how in the world the rest of the story, knowing what we know, can be tied up in the one volume of the trilogy Rothfuss has left? Can't wait for the final installment.

I'm currently listening (via Audible.com) to The Runelords, Book 1: The Sum of All Men, by David Farland. Farland's a new author for me, but his books were recommended strongly in a few episodes of Writing Excuses, so I had to check them out. Fascinating worldbuilding, and the story's definitely sucked me in.

Finally, I'm embarking on a reread of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, an amazing novel, and one that's a bit of a touchstone for me. I love Miéville's writing: his wordsmithing, his worldbuilding, his theme play, philosophical groundedness, the whole gamut. Perdido Street Station is arguably the work Miéville's most famous for, though he's received a lot of well-deserved press lately for works like The City and the City and Kraken. John Scalzi, today, named Perdido Street Station his #1 novel of the past ten years (in lieu of his own most-famous work, Old Man's War, which recently won a Tor.com "#1 Novel of the Past Ten Years" poll). I completely agree with Scalzi on this: more than anything else I've read (including The Name of the Wind) I read Perdido Street Station (indeed, any Miéville) and think, "Hell's bells, I want to write like that!" His stuff is lush, challenging, fiercely intelligent, and oscillates between gutter-filth and transcendent glory with aplomb. Not a bad pole-star to sail by, though the trade route I follow must ultimately be my own.

More soon!

-Rich

Had a Great Time with the Magic City Writers Group!

Darwin Colossus got both great reviews and a thorough nitpicking on Wednesday night. It was a great time, and I'm very appreciative of the feedback. Thanks, everyone!

I have some thinking to do re: the story's structure, as well as clarifying some aspects of its flow: what happens when, to whom, and by what motivations certain characters make decisions. Sometimes it's hard to judge the balance one should strike between subtlety (implying) and barefacedness (demonstrating); when leaning too far to the subtle side, it's easy to confuse the reader.

Sorry for the sparseness of updates here lately: health challenges continue to complicate my home life, but it's all about keeping going!

I'm going to make a few of the more important clarity-related tweaks, then send Darwin Colossus out to my beta readers within the next week or so. I also have a few candidates for my next short story idea, and I'm going to flesh-out one of those into an outline/mind map not long after.

-Rich

"Darwin Colossus" ready for Group Critique

Went through another set of revisions tonight, and I think I'm about as far as I can go by the deadline for submission to Magic City Writers (tomorrow). The story still needs some tightening and unifying (especially the action scenes), but I'm reasonably pleased, and curious what the group has to say.

Whew! Been hard work, getting it all together, but I'm glad to have a group keeping me accountable!

Good night, all, and I'll report new stuff as it comes up. Probably time to start a new story, soon!

-Rich

Finished Rough Draft of Proxy Bloodsport!

I was thinking it would be around 7,000 words and I finished up around 6,500, as you can see in my progress box to the right.

Next step: First Draft, which will be a complete going-over and tightening, editing for consistency, adding and subtracting (mainly subtracting, I anticipate) so that it'll be ready for a good going-over by the writing group here in town.

Speaking of which, yes, I got the chance to attend the Magic City Writers Group this past Wednesday (the 16th). It seems like a great group of people, committed to producing good fiction, and not afraid to give or take the nitpicks and critiques we all need to do so!

Now, WIP: