Forward thinking

With the Apocalypse Blog running headlong towards its conclusion, I have been turning my brain to the brightening question: what next?

Some of you may know that I’ve had another blogfic knocking around in my brain for most of the year. As often happens when I dive into something new, ideas clamour for attention. When I was getting into the groove of AB and loving it, I asked myself ‘what else can I do with this format?’ And an answer came immediately to mind. I have held off doing anything with that idea, because I wanted to remain focussed on AB and get that done before something else distracted me.

More recently, I’ve had another couple of ideas crop up, one with a story attached and the other more of a character and concept. These are both blogfic-type ideas as well. They’re not very well-formed, but one might take shape soonish if I have the time.

There are some other things that I have been putting aside in order to focus on AB as well. The post-a-day schedule really hampered by ability to get any other writing done, and the novel I wrote last year has fallen by the wayside. I’d like to get back to it, edit and redraft it, and start to do something with it. I also have a short story that I stopped halfway through (I can’t remember why – I think I hit a snag with it), and I want to get that finished too.

And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I am not quite ready to say goodbye to AB forever once the new year rolls around.

So, things I have lined up for the next year:

• Novel – edit/redraft. Aim to submit.
• Apocalypse Blog –
  • Finishes 31st December 2009.
  • e-book it – need to look at how, where, etc. Also need to decide whether/how much I should edit it.
  • Shorts – short stories showcasing different cast members. Masterson, Jersey, Bree – I think I can do these without any problems. At some point, I might look at the Seekers’ future, too.
  • Merchandise – design and make available (?).
• Other blogfic –
  • Starwalker – a ship’s log, told by the ship. Site is halfway done, planning is partly done, needs some work to nail down cast and details. Posting 2-3 times per week (none of this every day craziness!).
  • A smite-happy angel in a Hawaiian shirt. Earth suddenly cut off from Heaven and Hell. Ahhh, handflappy. Yeah, that’s all I have right now. Tentative name: Earthwalker.
• Short stories – various. Finish that outstanding one! This one is definitely a maybe.
• Do more writing tips posts.

Hmm. It’s a lot, looking at it like that. I get tired just thinking about it all. The first thing I have to do is finish up AB. It’s a struggle at the moment – I still have over a week left to write, and it’s hard to find the time and energy with everything else going on right now.

In my original planning, I had hoped to be having a break right now. AB was supposed to have been finished off in November, leaving me a couple of weeks of December to myself as a break, and then a couple of weeks of planning for the next one. AB would post itself up until the end of the year, and by the time 1st January rolled around, I’d be ready to start posting the new blogfic. Perfect.

Yeah, that hasn’t happened. I’m still writing, editing and posting AB. I’m still rushed off my feet with everything. My head is reeling with everything I have to get done, and I am never going to get everything (anything?) prepared for the next blogfic before the beginning of 2010. Considering how painful it is to write and post with no kind of buffer, I don’t want to start the next one without at least a week or two’s posts in-hand. Preferably two weeks’ worth.

I’m the only one setting these schedules for myself. And you know what? I don’t need to punish myself with them. So I’m going to take January off. I’m going to take that month to do my planning, set up the site/s, build up a buffer of posts, and get myself ready to dive into the rest of the year. I need a chance to get my feet under me before I set off running again.

So that’s the plan. Get through the next week and a half, collapse, then catch my breath and start the craziness all over again. With slightly more planning and maybe a trace less crazy. Who knows?

You gotta try, right?

Kicking off NaNoWriMo

Wheee. Well, it’s 2nd November and I’m way overdue with a post about this. My poor chronicle of my writing activities is sadly lagging behind my reality.

As many of you will know, November means NaNoWriMo for writers. Crazy wordthrashing for one month out of the year, possibly resulting in a manuscript to spend the following 11 months editing before you start it all over again. It’s nuts, it’s fun, and there’s a great community that get involved.

Needless to say, I’m doing it this year. And as for the past two years, I’m also MLing (ML = Municipal Liaison = crazy person who not only tries to write a novel in a month, but also organises events and competitions for the local writers also involved). Thank goodness, I have some solid help this year and don’t have to do it all myself.

So, of course, we got all ambitious and have arranged all kinds of things. Goodie bags for giving out to writers. Sponsorship from local business to get prizes for the competitions we want to run. Two (or more!) write-ins a week. I was even interviewed on the local radio! (Terrifying, by the way, and thankfully not live.)

That’s one reason why the last couple of weeks have been nuts, as I’ve been trying to do my part in getting all of the pieces together. That, and a family reunion at which I was expected to show my face a lot around work and other commitments. Oh, and I had to keep up the Apocalypse Blog posting.

The good news is that it’s all working fine. We had the big Kick-Off Party on Saturday (I had to do public speaking and wrangle 50+ slightly loony writers) and an astounding write-in yesterday. Everything seems to be falling into place. I haven’t missed an AB post and am set to never miss another one again.

I paused and pondered this year’s NaNo a while ago, and knew that I would never be able to handle another writing project this year, especially not one as concentrated and life-sucking as a NaNo novel. NaNo is all about diving in and running with something, and that doesn’t work when you have to stop and write 700-1200 words a day for something else.

So I looked at my stats for AB and the goal I set myself when I started it. It runs to around 25,000 words per month (and more than that lately – I think my posts are creeping longer again), and I have two months to go. It’s not rocket science to work out that I have a NaNo novel left to write right there. So why make things difficult for myself?

This year’s NaNo effort is therefore going into writing the final instalment of the Apocalypse Blog. I’m going to steam through November and December’s posts and bring the whole thing to a sweeping (and hopefully half-decent) conclusion. Whee! What could possibly be better than that?

Of course, I didn’t realise until after I was committed to it that there might be a flaw or two in my plan. First of all, I’m in a rhythm with the blog – one post a day, lalala, off I go. I have to double that – okay, I can do that. No problem.

Secondly, I have to edit. I realised this yesterday, and this presents a couple of extra NaNo-related challenges. You see, you’re not supposed to edit during November – it’s all about pushing past the urge to edit and just writing anyway. Whoops.

Editing reduces my actual writing time, as I have to read over and edit posts before they go up (I always do this, of course, I had just forgotten that it would also apply during November). I often cut things out when I edit, which will impact my wordcount.

Because these posts are going up live (as ‘finished’ articles), I can’t pad them out with extra babbling and tangents. I also can’t use other NaNo wordcount-raising tactics, like throwing in extra adjectives or avoiding the use of contractions.

Not only do I have to write 50,000 words, I have to make it coherent and of a quality decent enough to post. And I’m pernickety about these kinds of things. It’s possible that my attempt to make NaNo easier for myself this year has, in fact, made it a rather different challenge. Whoops.

Oh well! I’m off to a good start (today wasn’t so great, wordcount-wise, but I’m ahead of the target so far), and hopefully things will fall into place more solidly soon. I know where I’m going (mostly) and have a couple of days to get my head down before I have to deal with work again.

Wish me luck! And good luck to all of you out there also attempting this wonderful challenge.

Moving, shaking, writing

Wow, I haven’t posted here at all yet this month. It’s been a weird week and a half, and I’m sneaking this in on the sly.

I made a snap decision last week. It was because of a lot of things – which I won’t go into – but I think it’s the right decision. It’s time for me to get my own place.

At the moment, I’m sharing with my folks, mostly so that I can save enough money to buy a house. Now is the perfect time to buy, but I don’t have anywhere near enough money to do that. I look at the bills I’ll be facing, and unless I want to live in a shoebox at the arse-end of a grotty apartment building, it’s just too much. And I don’t want to live in a shoebox, or in an apartment building. I’d rather the place wasn’t grotty either, kthx.

Which leaves renting. By far the cheaper option, and it means I can afford a house of the type and size I want, in a reasonable location. It’ll give me much more time to save up for that eventual house that will belong to me. It’s a plan.

I was so wound up that I went a little bit nuts last week, and I got myself a list of places to look at on the weekend. Only one of them was remotely what I wanted – a bit smaller than I’d hoped, but clean and nice, and a little bit kooky. Turned my application in this week, and now I’m waiting for a response. Hopefully I’ll hear by the end of today (looking unlikely now), or tomorrow at the latest.

So I’m a bit caught up in the notion of moving to a new house, filling it with furniture, getting everything set up, and not going crazy in the process. I’m also running on the edges of exhaustion at the moment, which is not helping.

I meant to do some work on the novel on the weekend, but wound up procrastinating and gaming instead. It just seemed like Too Much at the time. Hopefully I’ll get to at least a little bit of it tonight – I’m determined not to let it slide any more. If this moving business takes over my life for the next few weeks, I’ll never get the damn thing done. And I want to get it done. It’s a good story! I think I could sell it, if I can only get it done already.

I am managing to keep up with the Apocalypse Blog posting – thank goodness for my train commute. I’m trying to get my head down this week to cover this weekend’s posts, so that I can go furniture-hunting. Moving shouldn’t interfere with the blogfic too much, as long as it doesn’t take too long to get the internet connection turned on. (I’ll have to wait for the bed before I can move in properly anyway.) I’m going to have to work extra-strictly in the meantime to build up some buffer, just in case.

In other news, I had an interesting meeting with my boss and team leader this afternoon. I can’t say what it was about yet (I have been sworn to secrecy), but it was good news (for me). Things are going to get interesting in some ways, and easier in others. If ever there was a time I needed some good news, now was it!

Also, my Creative Writing Group has its first Author Talk tomorrow. Marriane de Pierres is coming to chat with us! How cool is that? Maybe I should put together some probing questions for her. Or maybe I’ll just go along and make stuff up like I usually do. I’m looking forward to it – hopefully we’ll get a good turnout!

Wish me luck!

Novel slews sideways

My novelling group met last night, and we had a really successful meeting. Lots of chatter about different aspects of writing, and I have a million links to email out to different members who asked me for resources. I will do that when I get home, guys!

They also gave me feedback on the opening of my novel, and we wound up talking about a load of other facets of it as well.

Let me back up a bit and mention that I haven’t worked on the novel since about February. I edited the stuffing out of the opening section and submitted it for a competition, and I haven’t touched it since. (I didn’t get shortlisted for the competition, so I can stop hoping about that and move on now).

Since then, I got very disheartened about the whole thing (since submitting it, not since knowing that I didn’t make the shortlist – really, it was a longshot anyway). It felt old and tired, and the story just didn’t seem to want to make the right shape. It stopped feeling like something I thought other people wanted to read; I write because I want to be published, so that makes a difference. If I just wrote for myself, I would have been happy to crank out the first draft and move on.

I have been pondering some fairly radical changes, and the discussions last night helped me make a couple of decisions. The first is that one of the subplots and main points of view has to go. I love my pair of cops, and they will still be in the book, but I think that giving them their own voice threatened to overwhelm the plot of the novel and slant it off-track. Trying to do them and their story justice took up bigger and bigger chunks of space, and I don’t think that was helping matters.

One of my group made a good point that brought it home to me – was there anything that they had to solve, in order to resolve the plot? The short answer is: no. Their presence has a purpose, but the mystery they’re solving doesn’t really impact the main plot. Which leads to the simple question: why give them so much real estate in the story, then?

I’ll miss Charlie’s voice (and I’ll probably bring him into another story anyway), but he’ll still show his head in the story; the police presence is still required. That, I think, will help to focus the story and will also help to sharpen their role in the main character’s plot thread. On the plus side, I have two characters that are fairly well fleshed-out to write in, which makes things easier for me.

The other big change I decided on was genre. I have always said that the novel is Crime (or Mystery) genre, mostly at a loss to pin it down anywhere else. I usually go for scifi or modern fantasy in my writing (like I have with AB), but the nature of this story didn’t require a different place, planet, time or metaphysical rules. It could pass as real-life, with a bit of ninja thrown in (I don’t intend to put in any ninja magic – at least, not in this story). So, because it is essentially a murder mystery, I filed it away under ‘Crime’.

I don’t think I ever felt quite comfortable with that. It’s probably because I know how hard it is for writers to cross genres, and the chances of me wanting to stay in straight crime were not good. (That’s once I’m published, of course, which… okay, it might be jumping the gun here, but a girl can hope.)

I don’t want to go down the magic route – ninja magic is cheesy and would detract from what is a very serious story. I like to twist cliches and stereotypes around into something new, but I think that I would feel that faint edge of the ridiculous if I tried to get that in there. So that rules out modern fantasy.

Which leaves scifi. The story doesn’t need a different time or place, but it can exist in one. Scifi gives me more freedom with the rules of the game that is being played around and with my main character, and I can use that to bring certain elements to the fore if I need to. The more I think about it, the more I like the notion of jumping the story ahead a few decades – less Law And Order, more Blade Runner.

So I have a bit of work to do. The good news is that it won’t be hard to set the story in the future; it doesn’t change any of the important points. If I can get a day this weekend, I will sit down and see if I can sort out the new structure. Then edit last night’s comments in the opening, and start on reworking chapter 2.

Wish me luck!

Novelling… maybe

Here it is again – another novelling group meeting. Hard to believe it has come around again, though it seems like ages since I was here. Of course, I had to Skype into the last meeting because of the sicky.

I’m not sure what I’m going to write tonight. I should really take the time to work on my novel – tonight’s meeting is going to be more like a write-in – but my chronic hand-to-mouth posting on AB makes me want to use the time to get ahead on that. Even now, I can feel myself leaning towards where I can see tomorrow’s post waiting for me to polish it up.

It’s been two months since I wrote anything on the novel. As soon as I submitted it for the competition, I relaxed and took a break – which is fatal, really. I work better with a deadline and under (some) pressure. Bah!

The next couple of weekends are going to be pretty busy for me. There’s the big geek con in town this weekend (Supanova), and after that is Easter in which I shall most likely be Doing Things.

Wow, it’s almost like I have a life. I can’t remember the last time I had such a busy social life, and it had to come along when I was determined to really get my writing going. Not that I’m compaining! I like being busy. I just haven’t got the balance right yet.

Right. Maybe I’ll see if I can get the next few days’ AB posts sorted out, and then look at the novel. Yes. It’s a plan!

Perhaps I should post today’s post first. Hm.

I love lists

I had a time management course at work a couple of weeks ago, learning how to make the best use of my time, how to plan, and so on. Useful stuff! Nothing I didn’t already know, and most of the stuff I do already. I do like to be organised when I can be.

Lists are a good thing. All those bits that I have to get done laid out, and can be ticked off in a productive manner. It gives my OCD side a happy glow. 

So far today I have edited and scheduled up this week’s AB posts, poked Twitter with a stick and tweeted like an overcaffeinated loon, and sent out emails to my two writing groups to prepare for this month’s meetings. 

Last night I did the final edits on my novel and sent the submission in to the Debut Dagger competition. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on it and helped me pull it into shape!

Still to go this weekend, I have to set my PC up for VPN access to work and test it. This is in case the rail strike goes ahead on the 16th Feb, as it is currently scheduled to do. No way I’m getting to the office if that happens, so I might as well work from home!

I also have to read and comment on a couple of writing pieces for my mum, take apart the vacuum system built into the house so I can clean it out, and plan the writing group meeting on Friday. I want to get a few more AB posts done, too, to give myself a bit of breathing space.

I’d like to start putting up some of the writing info that I amass for my writing groups on here. I’m finding that a lot of the same issues come up when we do exercises and workshop pieces. I’ve already got one piece up on the local writing forum, but there’s not much activity there at the moment. I think I’ll put them here too. No harm in that, right?

Right. So there’s my list for this weekend. Best get on with it, I suppose. 😉

Novelled out

Today, I have been over and over and over the prologue and first chapter of my novel-in-progress. I had over 500 words to strip out of it, and lots of comments from the novelling group session last Tuesday to take into account.

It’s been weird – I had to restructure the whole opening of the first chapter – but good. I’m learning to pick up on my writing habits, some of which are good, some of which aren’t. I managed to bring it under the wordcount limit for the Debut Dagger submission, though, and I’m happy with how it’s coming out. I think it’s stronger now.

Then I had to go through the synopsis and get that into shape. That was harder, and I wound up rewriting the whole thing (as in, retyping it from start to finish). It’s very stripped down now, but that’s the point, so that’s okay. It’s still missing a subplot or two, but there’s only so much that I can do in 1,000 words. Luckily, they’re not expecting it to be accurate. 😉 If I remind myself that it’s a selling tool and not a true representation of the story, then I can make peace with my obsessive need for accuracy.

It’s tempting to submit it now – I’ve got it all formatted correctly and set up. But no, I think I’ll let it rest for a day or so, read it over for those last-minute OMG typos, and then submit it. 

I don’t know if I have a hope in hell in this competition, but I might as well try. I’ve learned lots in the process already, and hopefully that’ll put me in a good position for completing the second draft. And it feels good to kick off the submission ball, even if I am going to be waiting for it to hit me in the head on the rebound.

Nightowls gathering

This week has been a bit crazy all over the place – I meant to post about this a couple of days ago.

The first meeting of my new writing group was on Tuesday night – the novelling group that a few of us from NaNo decided to get together.  We’re hoping to keep up at least some of NaNo’s momentum, to encourage each other to keep writing, to get to the end of the story, to edit and polish, and to submit.  I don’t know if we’re all aiming to submit these novels, but we all want to work on these works of ours, and we all want to improve on what we’re doing.

As first meetings go, it went all right.  Floundered somewhat to start with – I haven’t run a meeting like this before and it showed.  The fact that we all ordered dinner kinda got in the way, too, but that’s okay.  It was nice to eat and chat, and I didn’t mind that at all.  We were all catching up after the Christmas/New Year break, too.

I threw in the first few chapters of my novel to see what they made of it, and got lots of useful feedback.  I need to cut about 550 words out of the prologue and first chapter for the Debut Dagger competition, and the feedback I got will help me do that, I think.  I’ve looked at that particular part of the novel so much (and rewritten it from scratch about twice, including one change of tense) that it desperately needed fresh eyes.

So I have a lot of work to do this weekend (as the Dagger’s deadline is in about a week).  Which is good!  I’ll get that done and submitted, and then can relax a little bit in that regard.  But not completely – I am determined to keep plugging away at it.  I have lots I want to do with and to it, so I won’t be short of work there.

After the session, I put together a post for the forum about writing synopses – I did some research prior to the meeting and might as well share!  I’m hoping to get more things like that put together and posted up for people.  Should I put that sort of stuff on here too?  Might be good to have all my writing ramblings together in one place.

I’m trying not to add another thing to my list here – I really have enough to do at the moment, and I’m already riding the raggedy edge of my energy.  I need a list of ‘when I have time’ things.  In the meantime, there’s some novel-ripping in my immediate future.  Where’d my red pen go?

Whipcrackin’

I had a very productive weekend, all told.  Rearranged my room to put my desk in a better corner – coincidentally, closer to one of my pinboards.  The cats are thoroughly confused but appear to like the new configuration.  I took the opportunity to sort through and organise all the stuff that had been piling up on my desk, so now it’s clean and usable again.

Got the next week’s AB posts all edited and scheduled up.  I had to rewrite one this morning after some feedback from the lovely Julie – I was having a dilemma over what to do with a couple of the characters, and changed my original plan.  It gave me the chance to throw another spanner in the workings of Faith’s little group, which is always a good thing.  Or at least interesting.

And I finally got down to really editing through the first portion of the novel yesterday.  I’m being pretty ruthless at the moment and it seems to be shaping up pretty good.  I’m shuffling a few things around, and patching up after that is proving to be a pain. 

It’s almost time to submit it for feedback, though.  I’m considering taking out one of the subplots and POV threads, but I’m really torn about that – I love the characters involved, but I need to work out if they’re really any use within the story.  I like what they add, but I don’t know if it’s really necessary, or, worse, a distraction.  Hopefully a fresh set of eyes or three will help me work that out.

Phew.  So much to think about.  I’m really tired today, but I’m determined to crack on with, well, everything.

Went to see Bolt yesterday, too.   I am in love with the hamster.  I’m gonna go get my ball.

Weekend- where?

I have no idea where this weekend is gone.  I had such plans!  Or, well.  Some, at least.

I made a start on the novel editing yesterday.  It felt good to finally get going on that, and it has been long enough since I wrote it that I can come at it with fresh eyes.  The beginning section is fairly solid, which is good, and doesn’t need a huge amount of work.  So far.

Didn’t have a full day of it, though.  I was pretty tired, and there was family stuff going on, so I decided to take a break and spend some time with the folks.  Seems ages since I took a break from everything – AB has eaten up the past few weeks, and before that it was NaNo.  So it was nice to take an afternoon off completely and not think about all the writing stuff I should be doing.

Today was a bit like that, too, though I hadn’t meant to do that either.  We had guests over for lunch, and they only just left.  It was good, though – lots of talking and (yet more) eating.  I’ve done nothing writing-related today and it feels a little bit strange.  Well, okay, I put a couple of posts up on the forum, but that doesn’t count.

I do feel a bit more energised with regard to my writing projects, though.  I think my brain needed that break.  

The next few entries for AB are starting to clutter up in my head – I should get them down into text tonight.  Or at least start it, so I can pick it up tomorrow on the way to work.  Time to start the Aftermath section.  Wheeee.