Project update 18/08

It’s been a while since I last talked about the progress of my various writing projects. So let’s do that today.

Singularity

My completed novel hasn’t been touched for a while. I stopped querying it a while back because I was only getting form rejections which led me to wonder if there might be something seriously wrong with something in the first three chapters. I intend to review it, fix it and then query some more but so far I’ve been to busy with other projects. In the long term I might have to self publish it because it’s so hard to market books that straddle multiple genres.

Project Kindness

Now exists as a complete Beta Version 3.1. I have a couple of beta readers looking at it but I don’t really have a timetable on preparing it to query agents. Sadly the complete version is too long and, at the time of writing, I have to cut 17,500 words from it. That’s quite a lot to cut, even from a novel that’s over 100,000 words.

I’m pretty pleased with it as it stands so I’m not looking forward to having to cut that many words. Of course the benefit of it is that it means that I can put of querying it and the inevitable rejection that will bring since, just like Singularity, it straddles genre. You’d think suave British spies vs Celtic gods would be an easy sell but I am 90% sure that it won’t be.

Project Academy

The young adult urban fantasy novel that I worked on last NaNoWriMo has been largely lying dormant since then. Now that I’ve finished the most recent re-write of Project Kindness and it’s too early to start work on this year’s NaNoWriMo novel I’m going through the first draft with a view to putting together an outline for the rewrites.

I feel pretty optimistic about it. The characters are great, the scenes and plot that I already have are pretty good and I think this novel has genuine potential. The publishing industry seems to be less nervous about contemporary fantasy in YA novels so maybe there’s some hope for traditional publishing with this one.

Project Locke

This is the working title for the novel I’ll be working on during NaNoWriMo 2019. It’s still in the very early stages but I took a gamble and submitted it to the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect competition. I didn’t get through but then I wasn’t really expecting too because although it is a detective novel it’s a sci fi detective novel.

I’ve got a lot of reading and outlining and world building to do before November. So far I’ve got some character names, some backstory, a chunk of plot and a part of a playlist. Here’s a little teaser for anyone who’s interested.

Fifty years into the future. Jack is a decorated veteran working on a memoir of heroism and debauchery. The heroism was mostly other people’s; the debauchery was all his own. After spending most of his advance an old friend introduces him to someone looking for a flat share. Locke is a skinny collection of maladaptive coping mechanisms. She’s completely immune to Jack’s charms and terrifyingly bright but also barely capable of looking after herself. Desperate for a distraction from his memoir Jack follows Locke into an investigation of a seemingly harmless new religious movement that nearly gets them both killed.

Other Writing

There’s nothing new to say about Project Cecil or Project Dingo and I have no immediate plans to work on either of them. I wrote an essay about pregnancy for a body positivity website and I even got paid for it but as far as I know it hasn’t been published anywhere yet so I can’t link to it.

I keep thinking that I should make more effort to find freelance writing work but I don’t have much idea how to do that, I’m worried about getting sick and letting people down and I’m scared it will leave me too tired to work on my other writing.

I might be about to start writing more here. I stopped writing the Zeppelin Watch stuff because it hurt too much to contemplate how fucked we all are by our precipitous slide into an alternative reality from the dreams of someone who read too many Commando comics when they were growing up. However I have recently returned to those sorts of posts because not even I can mope forever.

Other stuff

I’m still trying to find some way of generating an income but there’s nothing on the horizon. I have no idea how to set up a Patreon that would actually make money. I’ve looked into selling t-shirts but the shipping costs charged by drop shippers are so high that very few people would pay them. Once again I’m stuck in a position where I can’t get to where I want to be if I start from where I am.

Sunday Update 19/05: A wild plan appears

This week the update is going to be a bit different. I think it’s time to take stock of what I’ve written, what I’m writing and what I’m going to write in an effort to sort out my priorities and make some kind of a plan. But first a mini report on stuff from last week. Behold my mighty bullet points.

• No I haven’t made a doctor’s appointment yet.
• Yes I still plan to make an appointment.
• My new compression wraps have still not arrived.
• If they don’t arrive by Wednesday I will chase them up (always assuming I can manage to make the phone call).
• We are no longer super broke.
• We are still saving for a new computer.

And now on to the writing stocktake.

Singularity

This is the finished novel that got this|—| close to finding a publisher following the XPONorth pitch a couple of years ago. Or maybe not. I got asked for a full but by the time the full was done the publisher had decided to focus on other genres.

Singularity is in that Occult Mystery/Supernatural Detective/Contemporary Urban Fantasy subgenre that nobody can agree on a name for. It’s hard to query agents when you can’t tell if they want to represent the kind of book you have. When the agency page says Magical Realism does it mean actual magical realism or does it mean a story in a realistic modern setting with added magic?

I haven’t given up on Singularity but I’m not currently querying it. I’ve had no real feedback on it since the XPONorth pitch so I don’t know if the problem is the novel, or the query letter, or if I just haven’t put it in front of enough agents. My plan is to return to it once I’ve finished the current work in progress and see if some time away from it makes it easier to work out what the problem is.

Project Kindness.

The current work in progress. A novel of sexy spies and Celtic gods. Still in the subgenre with no name but hopefully easier to describe to an agent. I’m most of the way through the current re-write. I hope to be able to stick it in front of my beta readers by the end of the summer.

I’m at the stage of rewriting where I just want the thing to be done. I suspect that if I really pushed I could have it done by this time next week. I’m just not sure that I have the spoons for that.

At the moment I’m wrestling with the final fight scene. This is the third time I’ve been through this scene (this rewrite is the third draft) and it is not getting any easier. Perhaps that’s a sign that the novel is structurally sound? A lot of threads need to tie up in this one scene. It’s like placing the keystone of an arch.

If I get it wrong the whole thing will fall apart but only because I’ve built it so that all the narrative forces channel into that one stone holding it in place and achieving equilibrium.

It doesn’t help that it’s a martial arts fight between three skilled fighters with a crowd of people watching, some dialogue on the side, and multiple weapon changes. It’s one of those scenes that will be great if they ever make a movie but is pain in the arse to create from words alone.

My plan with Project Kindness is to get this draft finished as soon as possible, put it together into a single usable, sharable file, stick it in front of my beta readers and then focus on other stuff.

Project Academy

This is the YA (young adult) magical high school/conspiratorial secret history novel that I wrote the first draft of during NaNoWriMo last year. It’s currently a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. About three quarters first draft (some rough, some pretty clean) and one quarter detailed outline.

It’s not ready to show to people and it needs a lot of work. I still intend to finish it but I’m not sure when I’m going to be doing that. I suppose it depends on how long it takes to finish Project Kindness, how much work Singularity needs, and how much prep Project Locke requires.

Project Locke

My “brilliant” idea for this year’s NaNoWriMo novel.

This is in the really early stages. So far all I have is two pages of notes. I have a pretty clear idea of the central characters and I have a plan for the plot but the setting is still really hazy. It’s like my mind’s eye can’t focus on it. I know what the texture and colours are but I can’t see any of the fine detail.

I know it won’t be set in the past or the present so that leaves the future or an alternative present. At the moment it’s feeling like about 100 years into a future that’s recovering from decades of war and a slow apocalypse. But I could feel differently about it tomorrow.

The nice thing about this project is that it’s not linked to anything I’ve worked on before. That’s what I promised myself for this year’s NaNoWrMo. I’ve decided that I need to diversify my writing to give myself the best chance of writing something that someone will actually want.

The big problem with this project is that it’s shiny and new and I want to think about it all the time and fill in all the holes and start writing it NOW! That’s not because it’s any better than anything else it’s just because it’s new so I haven’t had the chance to fuck it up yet. I can’t allow myself to be seduced by the new idea. I have to finish the other stuff first.

Assorted other projects

These are the things which I am currently not working on but which I will probably come back to at some point.

Project Cecil – faux true crime novel. An experiment in writing something grounded in the here and now. No plans for this currently but I might well come back to it at some point.

Generic Fantasy Novel – yes that is actually the name of the novel. It’s a comic fantasy novel that needs a lot for work because it’s heavy on jokes and far too light on plot. This is one I do want to come back to but I don’t know when.

The Dune Sea – A series of novels/RPG setting that I did a lot of work on and probably deserves to be resurrected in some form. There’s a lot of good stuff in there I’m just not sure what to do with it.

Underneath – the sequel to Singularity. I can’t do anything with this until I decide what I’m doing with Singularity.

Project Dingo – the same setting as Singularity and Project Kindness. I hope to get back to work on it but I need to either sell or self publish one of the others first before it’s worth the effort.

When I lay everything out like this it seems like a lot of stuff. No wonder I’m having difficulty fitting it into a plan. Particularly when I have so many days when I can’t do much. This whole plan thing is a bigger job than I thought.

Time to make a plan

For the last few weeks I’ve been drifting. I was stuck between writing projects. I couldn’t work out what I wanted to focus on and I felt lost. It’s time to pick a direction and start walking.

I haven’t heard anything from Bloody Scotland so I’m going to assume that they don’t want the story I pitched for Pitch Perfect. Frankly that’s a relief because I didn’t feel ready to finish it. For now Project Cecil can stay on the shelf.

I’ve decided that this year’s NaNoWriMo first draft will be of a story I’m calling Project Academy. It’s another attempt to write some YA (young adult) fiction so I’ll have something that I can share with my kids. I’ve already done most of the pre-November work on this story.

That means that I have until the start of November to work on something else. So I’m going back to Project Kindness, my tale of sexy spies and Celtic gods. I’m sure my beta readers will be delighted*.

I’m aware that for most of my readers this doesn’t really count as a plan. None of this is moving my ‘career’ along. It’s not going to solve any of my real life problems. I admit that I have no idea how to have a ‘career’ and that most of my real life problems are insoluble. I do have the beginnings of a plan for a small part of my real life problems but that is a post for another day.

 

*That was probably sarcasm.

Pitching blues

This year’s Bloody Scotland is bearing down on us. There’s a pitch competition that I’d like to try but I’m having trouble working out which novel to pitch.

Until recently I would have assumed that I’d have to pitch a finished novel but that doesn’t seem to be hugely important for the competition. That’s confusing to me since every published author’s top piece of advice is “Finish your shit”.

For this competition I have to write a 100 word pitch and submit that and if they’re interested I get to pitch in person in front of actual publishers and agents and a paying crowd. The live pitch will be in late September at the Bloody Scotland festival. It’s dedicated to crime writing so the publishers and agents will be looking for crime/detective/mystery fiction.

I have to decide which novel I want to pitch because that’s the novel I should be focusing on just now. Let me describe them for you.

Firstly there’s the one I’ll call Project Kindness. It’s the one that’s closest to finished. Close enough that I could have a complete 3rd draft to show anyone who was interested by the end of September. However it’s a supernatural spy thriller. There are some murders and there is a mystery but it’s not what they’re looking for.

Secondly there’s the one I’ll call Project Cecil. It’s the furthest from being finished and I don’t really feel ready to work on it. However it’s the closest to the kind of novel they want. It’s a modern epistolary novel told through emails, chat logs and blogs. It follows a group of friends as they investigate the disappearance and murder of a mutual friend and eventually come to realise that one of them did it. I think I could do a killer pitch of it but it’s the one I feel least able to finish.

Thirdly there’s the one I’ll call Project Dingo. It’s about half done. It’s the funniest. It’s set in 2012 and it’s about a locked room mystery that nobody wants to solve. It’s the closest to a traditional mystery novel in structure but it has witches and other weirdness in it that might make it a harder sell at Bloody Scotland.

I can’t make up my mind. I feel like I should pick Project Cecil because it’s the one they’re most likely to want. But I don’t want to work on it. I’m not ready yet. Then I want to stubbonrly pick Project Kindness because ‘Finish your Shit’ and because it’s the one I’ve been working on recently and it’s in my head. But then I want to pick Project Dingo because it’s the balanced one.

I don’t know how to make up my mind. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

And if you have enjoyed this indecision you could show your appreciation by buying me a coffee with Ko-Fi.

Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2017

Every year I write a first draft in November and every year I try to learn something new while doing it. This year’s first draft was a straightish crime novel with the working title Project Cecil. The name doesn’t mean anything I just had to call it something and one thing I’ve learned in previous years is that I suck at titles.

This year’s big lesson is that I can write a novel without relying on fantasy, science fiction, or the supernatural. I’m just not entirely sure I want to. It’s really too early to tell if the story is any good. That wasn’t the point. A first draft doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be written. But I am starting to question the logic of writing it.

I wrote a straight crime novel because a friend challenged me to write it. She challenged me because my attempts to get an agent or a publisher are hampered by the kind of stories I normally write. It’s not that they’re bad it’s just that they’re hard to market because they don’t fit easily into any single genre. My friend suggested that if I could write a regular crime novel I would have more chance of getting an agent or publisher interested and once I have something published I might have more luck with my weirder books.

My friend might be right. But I’m starting to think about the long game. My ultimate aim isn’t to get a single book published or even to get paid for a couple of manuscripts. My aim is a career as a writer and to do that I need to concentrate on the books I actually want to write. I like the story I’ve been telling but it’s not representative of most of the stories that I want to tell.

Of course it might still be worth taking this novel to Bloody Scotland next year and pitching it. Even if it doesn’t lead to the career I want it might at least lead to enough money to pay to self publish the other stories well enough to build a career that way.

This doesn’t mean I regret this experiment though. I’ve met some interesting characters while writing this story and I think I’ll probably come back to them at some point and finish telling their stories properly.

Playlist Track 9 and 10

Track 9 is another song that makes me think about co-dependency but now with a heavy side order of loss and regret. If you’ve never seen the video then I recommend stopping what you’re doing and watching. It’s beautiful and poignant.

 

Track 10 is more about loss and regret and about how sometimes a brief happiness can make seem like a cruel lie when the misery returns.

 

These two songs take me into the state of mind of my little group of amature detectives. They’ve all felt a terrible loss they’re each one striving to be strong for the others. They’re each living with a gaping hole where someone they cared about used to be.

Why not tell me in the comments about the sort of music that helps you when you’re writing? Does it help you to concentrate, or help you visualise a scene, or does it create a mood. And if you don’t like music what do you like? Silence? Ambient noise? Podcasts?

All the Playlist posts.

My personal NaNoWriMo update

The good news is that I’m ahead of where I need to be. The bad news is that my plot isn’t a plot it’s a series of scenes that happen to my characters and which I may, at some point, be able to wrangle into a coherent narrative.

I have finally found this year’s Plot Ninja*. It turned out to be the deeply creepy personal blog written by my killer. So the one thing I can always write about is delusions of an untreated erotomaniac? What does that say about me?

The Fife region that I’m the Municipal Liaison for is doing really well this year. The group are supporting each other both online and in person. Fife is in the global top 50 for average word counts. That can only happen because everyone writing in the region is pushing hard and even when people fall behind they haven’t stopped writing.

Allow me to share my favourite bit of writing so far:

“I wasn’t going to apologise to Archie. He gave night vision goggles to a teenager. Creeping round the house at night is about the least worst thing I could have done with them. He’s just lucky I wasn’t stalking cute boys and girls with them,” said Maggie

Don’t you just love Maggie from that line alone?  No? Maybe it’s just me.

Good luck to all my followers who are writing this month. May your characters be loquacious and co-operative and may your Plot Ninjas be less creepy than mine.

 

*A Plot Ninja is the thing you write about when you’re completely out of ideas but you need to keep writing to keep your momentum up. So named because in one of the early years of NaNoWriMo one of the participants would just have their characters attacked by ninjas whenever they ran out of plot.

Playlist track 7

This one inspires more character development every time I listen to it. In part it’s a song about disability and co-dependance which are major themes in the story.

Like most songs by the Correspondents the lyrics seem both personal and specific. Their songs tend to get stuck in my head and send my imagination in all kinds of directions.

If you’re writing and you’re devoid of inspiration just look at a bunch of their videos on YouTube and if the music and the lyrics don’t get you going the visuals will.

For more of this go to the Playlist Page

Playlist: Track 5 and 6

Brace yourselves. Lots of video links in this one.

These two tracks go together, not just because the title combination and the swerve from folk rock to trashy pop pleases me but because these are both squad songs. In the real world no crime is ever solved by a single person, though it sometimes seems like that. That’s even more true in my story where each character has only small pieces of a puzzle that they have to assemble together.

Track 5

This is the darker of the two. My characters are in bad places mentally. They’re dealing with the loss of a friend but also with their own problems of physical and mental disability.

Track 6

No I’m not going to defend this choice. It’s my playlist. Fuck you. Fight me.

But seriously. This song is on here because it’s defiant and fun and because it reminds me of this song.

Bonus Track

This is a Tumblr track. I only know it exists because of my Tumblr friends (the RL friends who introduced me to Tumblr and the people I only know through Tumblr). My characters all have Tumblr blogs. Some of the novel is going to be taken directly from their blogs. We’ll get to see events through their eyes and in their own words.

The Project Cecil Playlist Page.

Playlist: Track 4

This track relates to another character with a traumatic experience of near death by drowning. This character however has developed a much more twisted relationship with water.

This character was much younger when they nearly drowned and the memory has mixed with hazy memories of watching The Little Mermaid while recovering and led them to romanticise the experience.

The song reminds me of the way that mermaids and sirens are used as symbols of dangerous women and their deadly attractions by a culture that pathologizes female desire. It’s also very chilled out which handy for a NaNoWriMo playlist.

Playlist page.