Frazzled

I was going to write this post at the end of last week, but wound up too frazzled to. Plus, I had a fun announcement that I wanted to make, and let’s face it, we’d all much rather read something like that, right?

But I want this blog to be about my writing journey, and a part of that is talking about the stuff that makes writing hard.

Right now, my health is rearing its ugly head again and playing havoc with my ability to write. My energy is fraying and I’m struggling to get writing done on my usual commute to and from work. Sometimes I just need to nap; other times my brain just can’t cope with trying to be creative or even reading text. I often write posts for this blog on the train (once my weekly Starwalker is done), and that’s a struggle sometimes, too.

Part of it is most likely caused by the amount of things I have going on right now. There’s the Writer’s Asylum to organise (taking more steps in this all the time!), and the Writer’s Retreat is ticking along in the background too (which I have to chase up soon). I’m currently scoping out costs so I can put together a crowdfunding campaign to get Starwalker published over the next year or so.

Then there’s the non-CFS health stuff that is getting in the way. I’m in (albeit mild) pain and discomfort at random times most days, and that is wearing me down, too. I’ve got some exploratory tests coming up to track down the cause (and investigate a dodgy diagnosis I had about 8 years ago). They’re going to put me out for the tests, which I’m not looking forward to (I have an unhappy relationship with anaesthetics and have no idea how I’ll react to being knocked out completely), and that plays on my mind from time to time.

I’ll be very glad once the next couple of weeks are over, because the tests will be done and I’ll hopefully have some information to move forward with.

In all of that, I’m entering the final chapter of Starwalker’s initial story. I have the pieces I want to play with in mind, but I’m still juggling the logistics of the chapter and I’m not entirely sure how it’s all going to pan out. I want to do the story justice. I want to upset the apple-cart. I want my readers to hold on for the ride and be grinning (and maybe crying?) at the end. I kind of want to write the entire end before I start posting it – to make sure I get it right – but that’s not how my web serial works. Nope, I’m going to just dive in and swim along, and see where it takes me. No retcons; I hate retcons.

I’ve had chronic conditions for a long time. I’m used to pushing through and refusing to let it stop me living my life. It’s getting harder to keep doing that, but I’m not going to stop yet. If I put my life on hold for this, when would I get it back, y’know? Damned if I’ll let it stop me being me.

There’s a lot going on in my head right now. I’m trying to keep up but it’s taking its toll. Wish me luck, and hopefully I’ll catch the upswing again soon.

Starwalker spreading through the internets

It’s no secret that I adore my readers. It is in part because of how much time they spend on my work, and today I’m delighted to share some of their effort with you.

Thanks to one of my lovely readers, Francisco, Starwalker has joined the illustrious maze of information on TV Tropes. Starwalker has its own page and a bunch of links to the tropes that it features (and lots of spoilers, but it’s okay, they’re hidden behind spoiler filters).

It’s so exciting! It’s like seeing my story on someone’s bookshelf, like it is becoming a legitimate piece of (webby) literature. It feels like a step towards Making It.

The fun doesn’t stop there. Starwalker also has its own wiki! The wonderful Lianamir set this up and seeded it with information. (I meant to share this aaaaaages ago when Lianamir first shared it with me – and I thought I had – but apparently it slipped past my mental radar. Sorry, Lianamir! I’m late but I get there eventually.)

Everyone now needs to go check these things out and update them with all the fun info and links that you think are relevant. Enjoy!

Big thanks to Francisco and Lianamir.

I shall now return to my corner and squee quietly to myself, while petting the internet. It loves me too.

The confluence of ideas

Or, where do you get your ideas from?

Go to any convention or talk with creative people on the panel and someone will ask that question. The panellists will smile or maybe even roll their eyes, because it’s a common and difficult thing to answer.

It seems as if it should be so simple, as if there’s a single, consistent answer. The truth is that inspiration is a vaporous beast, one who lives in the cracks of the world around us. Usually all we get is a wisp; occasionally it emerges, fully-formed and demanding, but those creatures are rare.

The truth is, stories are never created from just one idea (this might be true for short stories, which are focussed on a single idea, but not for longer work): it takes several to make a full, rich tale, whatever genre you’re writing in.

In a recent discussion with a writer-friend, Nick, I described ideas as “like spider-webs, and you have a tiny, tiny flashlight with which to discover them.” We shine light on one piece at a time, and it can be difficult to see the whole picture.

So what are these pieces? What are these wisps of inspiration? They could be anything. It could be an image, or a particular situation or scene that has caught my attention. It could be a turn of phrase that sparks something. It could be a character, or maybe just a particular part of one. It could be something done so badly that I think of a hundred ways to do it right. It could be a single fact spun out to the extent of logic to see where it takes me. It could be someone else’s story. It could be the way that dust motes are caught in a beam of sunlight. It could be the gap in another plot that is begging to be filled in. It could be the sound of a name on someone’s tongue. The patterns the birds make in the sky or the colour of a sunset that just doesn’t seem real.

Anything.

Once I catch the scent of that wisp, it’s time to try to bottle it. But how do you capture something like that? First, you need something big enough to grab hold of.

That’s when the ‘what if’ games begin. Asking endless questions, rolling possibilities around like a bowl of chicken bones, to see what future or past they might tell. I spin and tease and wheedle to see if I can take a single spark and make a flame out of it.

Sometimes, it works. It can be that straight-forward. From a single wisp of smoke, I can draw out a whole story, complete with cast and characters, just by asking questions. By being curious, I discover everything I need to know.

Starwalker was like that. I had a single, strong idea: a ship’s log as told by the ship. Then I asked myself questions. Who is this ship? Why is she different or interesting enough to write about? I knew I wanted her to be part human, but why is this unusual? How did she come to be? What is her mission? Who are her crew? What kinds of battles can she face? What is the main challenge that she needs to face and overcome? From there, the background, characters, and plot emerged.

Most of the time, it’s not that easy. A single idea isn’t enough to build an entire story around.

A writer at a talk I went to once said it best. Sadly, I can’t remember the who the writer was, but the message remains true: sometimes you’ll get an idea long before it’s time to use it. It’s good but it’s not complete. So you file it away, tuck it into a drawer and let it sit. Later, you’ll get another idea. It could be weeks or months or years, but there it will be. It will click with the first one and fill in the gaps, and suddenly you’ve got a story.

I’ve had this happen. Even with Starwalker; that single idea gobbled up a few facets that had been hanging around in my mental filing system for a while. I knew I wanted to write about a serial monogamist, and that became the captain. Elliott took on elements of Harper from Andromeda (among other sources). Kess is a character that I have been writing for over a decade, in many different forms and iterations; this is the first time she has fit into a much larger story. Scraps of ideas from many sources merged into the whole.

With Tales from the Screw Loose, a story I’m still in the process of teasing out of inspiration and into a plan, it has been much more bottom-up. I had the initial idea some months ago: a robot brothel, told from the perspective of the mechanic responsible for the whores’ maintenance. I have a few choice scenes already mapped out in my head. The mechanic is a character that I’ve been toying with for a few years but haven’t found a place to make hers until now.

But that’s all I had to start with: a main character and the place she works. Ideas from several sources but not enough to make a story. There was still a lot missing.

A few months after that initial idea-gathering, another element fell into place when I got to thinking about tidally-locked planets. (Tidally-locked planets do not rotate: one side is permanently turned towards the sun, so there is a dark side and a light side. Our moon is the same, except that it always has the same side facing Earth, so the light-based implications are not the same.) From this, a whole wealth of ideas sprung. The implications of living on the dark side of the planet, even the impacts of perpetual daylight, are interesting to me. Putting a city on the terminus between night and day and placing the brothel smack in the middle was just too perfect to resist. Symbolism, imagery and metaphor all rolled in with delicious simplicity.

It meant that the story definitely couldn’t be on Earth, and that slid the story into one of the colonies in the Starwalker universe. I now have a solid basis to build from and the freedom to build a new colony planet (the Starwalker story hasn’t visited this particular colony).

It is taking shape but it’s not ready to write yet. I’m still missing a few elements that I don’t want to push forward without: namely, the details of the supporting cast, and the central conflict that my poor protagonist has to battle. I’m missing a driving plot. I may be planning to serialise this story, but I can’t write it without a central purpose or a goal to aim for (others may be able to do this, but it’s not for me).

I could force it. I could sit down and try to map out a plot, but that seldom works for me without that initial conflict in mind. The forced nature of it shows and honestly, it’s much less fun to write. They organic development of ideas makes for better stories and that shouldn’t be rushed. Sometimes the idea is knotty and requires a lot of untangling before I can write – and I’m not afraid of putting the work in – but it’s hard to do that without the idea in the first place.

So I’m still waiting for that wisp of inspiration to show itself for Screw Loose. Waiting for that last piece to snap into place. It could be months before I figure out what that piece is, or I might come across the spark for it tomorrow. When it does, I’ll have a complete entity in my head that is ready to write.

(Complete doesn’t mean fully planned-out – I don’t work that way. It just means I have all the elements I need to start writing.)

And then the words start flowing.

So what does this all mean? It means that searching for ideas is something that never stops. It means that even though you have the best idea in the world, it might not be enough to make the best story on its own. Sometimes you’ll take three mediocre ideas and make something fantastic. Sometimes it will take a dozen different elements. Sometimes it will be months or years before that perfect lynchpin for your story appears.

Never throw away an idea. Inspiration is never wasted unless you discard it. Makes notes in your mental filing cabinet, or a notebook, or a scrapbook, or on a pinboard, or on post-it notes stuck around your bed. Keep even the smallest glimmer of an idea, the barest wisp of inspiration, because you never know how you might use it one day.

And then you get to make it awesome.

Getting back into the swing of Starwalker

I’m going to let you in on a secret: I haven’t written Starwalker for a while.

Why is this a secret? Because I wrote so much during NaNoWriMo in November that I’m still enjoying the buffer. It’s posting away happily and all I’ve been doing in the meantime has been editing and formatting it for release (and moving house and sorting out all kinds of other things, but this post is about the web serial).

After the long slog of NaNo, I needed the break. Writing it so quickly pushed the story along in ways that I’m not entirely sure about. Now that I’m down to a handful of pre-written posts, I’m looking at them more and more closely and asking myself: is it really going where I want it to? Eventually, sure, it’s all heading towards the ending I have in mind, but the journey is what’s important to me. I’m just not sure that they’re doing it right.

So I’ve been using the last month or so to look at Starwalker more critically than creatively. I’ve already decided to scrap one entire post (and it was a monster; nearly 2,800 words!). It was torturous and not entirely necessary, and I think the story will be better off without it. The plot had started to feel like it was dragging its feet and it didn’t need a long, talky post that revealed little that we didn’t already know.

I’ve spent some time pondering over the details of another post, too, and finally figured out what was bothering me about it. I spent some time this week going over it and fixing it up, and hopefully it makes more sense now.

Part of the reason why I struggled during NaNo was that the next step of the ship’s journey was being slippery to pin down, but I think I have a plan of attack for that now. I’ve had time to mull over the options and try to work out what would be the best thing for the story. I’ve mentally thrown away my original idea and replaced it with a new one, which I think will work much better. I can already see ways I can use the tension to the story’s best advantage.

So where does that leave me? I have another couple of completed posts ready to go up (I’ll get them all scheduled and ready to go over the next few days). I have a half-completed post, which was where I stopped writing during NaNo. I stopped before I ruined it out of sheer exhaustion, but the scene is one I love, so I’ll be keeping it (and finishing it!). I’ve got that one scene to throw away, but I’ll be picking out a few choice facets that will crop up later; possibly, much later.

Once that’s all done, it’ll be back to writing for me. It feels weird now that I’ve been away for a while. It feels a bit like chatting to an old friend; no matter how long it’s been, the conversation comes as easily as it always has.

The end of the story is on the horizon. If I squint, I can see it. I’m not entirely sure of the path that’ll get us there but that’s half the fun. I’m trying not to think about what will happen after that, because that’s a distraction: what I’m writing here and now for this wonderful adventure is what’s important to me.

Join me. It’s gonna be a blast.

2013: plans and dreams

I’ve done the retrospective for 2012; now it’s time to look to the future. Now is the time for possibilities and ambition.

I usually like to aim high at a time like this. I know I probably won’t do everything I put on this list, but if it’s not here I’ll never do it. I’ll most likely get to most of it and that’s all good.

Let’s get the boring, necessary stuff out of the way first.

Work

This is settling down for me at the moment. I’m hoping to stay with my current team for a stretch and make a bit of a home for myself, and the management have assured me that this is likely (as far as their current plans say, but, well, you never know with these things). Some stability would be nice.

The stress is a lot less than it was and I’ll be aiming to keep it that way.

Financial Issues

Now that our house move is complete and we’ve reduced some of our overheads, I’m hoping that this will plateau as well. We’ve got a bit of work to do on this front but, with luck, our situation should be sustainable for the next few months at least.

I’m working to worry less about this stuff.

Health

The CFS isn’t going away anytime soon, and as long as it doesn’t get any worse, it’s manageable. I’m used to dealing with it (I was diagnosed over 7 years ago), so not a big worry there.

I’ve got some testing coming up in a couple of months to investigate some other issues I’m having. I’m nervous about the tests (mostly because they’ll put me out and anaesthetic doesn’t get along well with me), but I’m glad at the possibility for answers and, hopefully, treatment. I won’t say ‘cure’ because I don’t believe in unicorns and there’s no way I’m that lucky. Progress is good, though, and it’s moving in the right direction.

Writing

Ah-ha, here’s the important part! Here’s the section of my life where I get to have fun, where I aim for the stars and am quite happy with landing on the moon. So, what’s on my list for 2013?

Starwalker: Web Serialising

First up, I will finish Starwalker. I keep saying that there’s still a lot to come, and while I don’t want to put a date on its conclusion, it will definitely finish this year, probably in the first quarter.

When I say ‘finish’, I mean that I’ll get to the end of Book 3, which is the end of the original story arc I planned when I set out on this journey. Will that mean the end of the web serial completely?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t believe in stringing stories out for the sake of it (which is why I haven’t gone back to the Apocalypse Blog in so long: I haven’t felt like I’ve got more story to tell there). However, I’m pretty sure my readers will have something to say if I kill it completely and I’ve come to love my readers a lot.

I do have a follow-up story in mind. There has been a notecard with the name of the story-arc on it pinned to my planning pinboard for a couple of years now. I don’t think it’ll be a full novel-length story – it’s a novella at best at this stage – but maybe it’ll make a good interim story for me to tell while I ponder the future of the Starwalker and her crew.

Starwalker: Ebooks

This is something I’ve had my eye on for a while now. I’d really love to package the Starwalker saga up into ebooks and release it.

However, that’s not a quick process. Firstly, they have to be edited. I already know of some rewriting I want to do (nothing major, but it’s work that needs to be done), and I’m sure there will be more honing and polishing that I’ll do as I go through. This all takes time, and how much I continue the web serial will impact on how quickly this happens.

Next up, I need covers. That will probably cost money, which I’ll talk about later. I have some base graphics already but I want something really slick and professional for the book covers. Which means no home jobs by me (I freely admit that I suck at graphics).

The formatting and releasing parts are easy once all the above is done. I’d like to get at least one book out this year.

Starwalker: Shorts

I made a start on this in 2012 and I mean to continue it. I have stories planned for almost all of the crew (the shorts are character-focussed stories) and I’d like to get through all of them eventually.

It’s hard to have a fixed goal with this, because so much depends on other commitments. Shall we say one a month? That’s probably a bit ambitious; one every two months is more realistic.

My end goal with this is to compile them into an ebook – a Starwalker ‘get to know the crew’ anthology – and release it. Possibly for free. (Having a freebie available really helps draw people into paying for the series: this is what the Apocalypse Blog ebooks have taught me!)

Alternatively, I could release them individually, but that depends on being able to get the covers for them. On the plus side, I would be able to release them sooner if I didn’t have to wait for the anthology to be complete. Also, individual character covers would be awesome.

Vampire Electric

My goal for this year is somewhat simpler here: finish the first draft. I already have a pile of notes for the second draft, including a bit of a restructure, but I really need to get the first run-through finished. I’d love to find out how this story will end! (Yes, yes, I have something in mind, but as always with me, it’s a general, blurry picture that I won’t truly figure out until I get there.)

Tales from the Screw Loose

This is, potentially, the next web serial on my list to pick up. It’s set in the Starwalker universe and is the first spin-off that I have in mind to tackle (I have a whole list of spin-off ideas for the Starwalker universe!). You may have heard me refer to it as the ‘robot brothel story’: Tales from the Screw Loose is its proper name.

I’m not sure if I’ll get to this over the next year. A lot depends on whether or not I keep Starwalker going (as a web serial), because I have a strict rule of one web serial active at a time. I know my own limits well enough to know that both stories would suffer if I tried to keep two going in tandem.

Regardless, I still have some work to do before I can get started on this story. I have made a start on the worldbuilding (it’s set on one of the colony planets) but I need to work out the cast and some of the plot elements before I start putting fingers to keyboard.

I also need to sort out the website and I’m pondering some custom graphics/design for it. This may cost money, so is dependent on a number of factors. On the plus side, I’ve already got the domain: screwloosetales.com (yes, it’s a bit early, but I’m determined like that and I didn’t want to lose the domain while I sorted the rest of it out).

For this year, I think I’d like to have the prep all done and the story ready to go. Actual words on the page will be a bonus!

Apocalypse Blog

The ebooks are going pretty well. I’d like to capitalise on some of the good reviews and see about marketing it, but I’m pretty bad at self-promotion, so I won’t make any firm plans about this.

I would like to do paper book editions of it, however. Most likely through Amazon’s CreateSpace, which will link nicely up to the ebooks on Amazon (and it seems like a better and cheaper system than Lulu).

I’ve had a look at the work required to do this and it’s not as easy as the ebooks were. It’ll take some time to get the formatting done for printing, and I’ll also need to get the covers redone.

I’d also like to get the books re-edited, and will most likely refresh the ebook editions when I do that.

I’ve been tossing around the idea of doing an omnibus edition, at least of the ebooks, so I’ll look into this, too.

There have been many calls for another (fourth) book in the series, and a part of me really wants to satisfy this desire. However, I’m not sure what that fourth book would entail. I’m letting it rest in the back of my brain for now; if inspiration strikes, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Never say never!

NaNoWriMo

Ah, my annual nuttiness. I don’t have a huge amount planned yet, but we’re all pretty sure that there will be another Writer’s Retreat. This time, up a mountain! I’ll be heading on a roadtrip soon with my lovely co-MLs (I might have two this time!) to check out the options. I’m sure that it won’t be long before that ball is off and rolling.

The rest of the NaNo stuff will be worked out over the months leading up to November. No other firm plans yet, but there will no doubt be plenty of write-ins at our favourite Coffee Club, drinkies, and possibly a write-out or two.

Crowdfunding

This is an option that I’ve been looking at lately. I know other writers have had success with platforms like Kickstarter and have raised money to allow them to develop a new story, pay for covers and printing costs, and that sort of thing.

As mentioned above, some of what I want to do requires paying for services. I’ve had donations through the links on my websites and I am endlessly grateful to the donors for their generosity: they helped to pay for the Starwalker graphics I had done in 2012. But what I have in mind is going to take rather more.

Due to being based outside the US and UK, I can’t run a Kickstarter campaign. However, there are other options available: most notably, Pozible and iPledg look promising, but I haven’t gone through all the crowdfunding platforms available to me yet.

A campaign seems like a lot of work but I think I want to give it a go. I am terrible at asking for money (see previous comments about self-promotion), but I have always been astounded by the generosity and support of the online community. I approve of the notion of the rewards you can offer to supporters, too. And at the end of the day, what’s the worst that could happen?

It’s good to know that I have this option when I’m looking at commissioning covers for Starwalker, or a website for Screw Loose. All those things that require money for me to achieve could actually be possible!

Now all I need to figure out is what to ask for and what I can realistically offer as rewards. And then the time to do it all.

Other Stuff?

Wow, I’m not sure. What else might 2013 hold for me? No doubt I’m forgetting about something. These are the things that are buzzing around in my head right now. This is what I’m taking with me into 2013.

Now excuse me, I think I’m going to go away and write something.

The year that was… 2012

The beginning of a new year is not so different from any other day. It’s an arbitrary demarcation of a calendar that we give meaning to, rather like a lot of people did to the Mayan calendar (particularly, its end). It think it’s good to remind ourselves that calendars only hold the meaning we give them.

The turning of the year is a way to mark time and, hopefully, progress. It’s a chance to step back and take a look at where we were and where we are now. It’s a chance to try to gain some perspective. It’s when we look forward and think about where we want to be. It’s when we take the time to make plans, rather than the usual day-to-day we live.

So let’s start with the road travelled so far. 2012: a year of struggle for me.

Work

Necessary toil: my day job as a technical writer pays the bills and lets me do my creative writing. Plus, I get to put my writing skills to good, professional use.

Over the past year, I coordinated the delivery of:

• A major release, 2 and a half years in the making. I coordinated the entire documentation side of the project from start to end. Getting it released was a huge effort and I was glad to see if over and done with!
• 2 minor releases, both roughly 4-month projects. There might have been another one in there. I lost track; they kept turning up on my plate without any warning.

With all that to juggle, there were a lot of changes. Over the year, I changed:

• Positions twice. Once from team leader to team writer, and then back to team leader again (it’s a different role now and I’m managing developers and testers as well as writers, which is all new to me).
• Teams thrice. Lots of reasons for this, most of them positive about me.
• Desks more times than I can remember, but at least three times!

Other challenges included continuing to strive to overcome problem team members (despite no longer actually being in the same team as them) and adapting the documentation processes after a restructure as our department moved into Agile practices.

It has been stressful to say the least, and a lot of mental effort to stay on top of it all. But I did. I pulled off everything they handed to me. I made it to the end of the year without snapping and breaking down or getting myself fired. I’m still here, working away and keeping my head above water.

Financial Issues

At home, things have been tough, too. Like so many others here and around the world, our financial situation is not good. We’ve been fighting to make ends meet, and wound up moving house to reduce our costs. (It’s a good move and a lovely house, so I’m not disappointed by that, but wow it was a lot of work.)

A lot has been resting on me at home. I’m the primary breadwinner, which means those times when I’ve wanted to walk away from my job, even downgrade to something less stressful, I can’t afford to. So I’ve pushed through and done what I can to support my family while they get their own stuff sorted out.

It’s all coming along, as slowly as it always has. We’re in a more sustainable position now, which is good, and that should lift some of the pressure.

Health

Between the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other issues that are exacerbated by stress, I haven’t had the best of years. I’m running ragged most of the time. I’ve been sick more than usual.

I’d like to think that it hasn’t impacted my writing but I know it has. I’ve missed posting deadlines; more than once, I’ve put posts off for a week because I can’t make it. I despise that. I hate knowing that I’ve failed to keep my promises; my readers are wonderfully forgiving, but I’m not. I know that if I don’t push myself, it won’t get done at all. I don’t like letting myself or my readers down.

I don’t know if the quality of my writing has been impacted. I don’t have any real perspective right now, but I suspect that it has.

It’s just another one of those things that I’m pushing through. I’m carrying on despite it, because I refuse to let things like this stop me from doing what really matters to me. Which is:

Writing

Here’s the part that we’re all interested in: that wonderful activity that I fill up all my off-time with, the thing that gives me a break from everything else when I need it and keeps me going. The things that spurs my hopes and dreams, and spills my soul out onto pages.

Even with everything that has been going on (and still is!), even with all that clutter in my head, I have stories to tell. I have characters who want to speak. I have things to say. It has been harder than usual – writing with energy when you don’t have any is far from easy – but I’ve done my best to keep up.

Starwalker

My web serial is still going strong. I’m averaging a book a year and this year doesn’t seem to be any different (though this third book is looking like it’s going to stretch well into next year!).

I’m still loving it. Starry and her crew are so much fun to play with, even when I’m torturing them. I have a wonderful, supportive readership; checking the comments on the posts is a highlight of my week.

The visit rate has been holding fairly steady through the year, slowly creeping upwards. Currently, I’m getting over 3,000 unique visitors a month, and anywhere between 250 and 400 visitors every day. It’s easily beating the Apocalypse Blog‘s stats, which hit 200 visits on a good day if I was lucky (I think it averaged around 180 v/d).

Starwalker has made it to the top 10 of Top Web Fiction‘s lists, and has been hovering around the number 1 spot for science fiction for some months now. This makes me insanely happy and proud.

The actual writing part has been rocky. As mentioned above, I’ve had to delay posts a few times this year. Keeping it going has been a struggle at times; one that I hope hasn’t been visible to the reader, at least not in the writing itself.

I feel like Starwalker’s plot has slid sideways and meandered more than I’d like, but it’s still heading in the right direction. I still know where it’s going to end up and how it’s all going to end. I’m excited to get there, though it’ll be a little while yet. So many miles to go!

Overall, I’m really happy with where I am. The serial is over 300,000 words now and still going. All my plans are still working and I’m laying the foundations for what’s to come. It still makes me smile when I sit down to write it.

Shorts

This is usually something I keep promising that I’ll do and then never get to. But this year, not so! I made a start on some Starwalker shorts, and three of them are complete.

Not as many as I had hoped for, but it’s a start. They prompted positive reactions and I can’t ask for more than that. I have lots of plans in this area, but that’s for another post.

Vampire Electric

Ah, the elusive steampunk novel. I started off this year writing it in tandem with Starwalker, but had to take a break around March to get my breath back. It took until November for me to pick it up again. I made good progress with it, though there’s another big chunk that needs to be written before the first draft is done.

I’m really pleased that I’ve been able to keep working on it, even if my attention in this area has been sporadic. Often, it takes me a while to get back into a project – it’s one of the reasons I try not to take ‘breaks’ – but not so with this one. It still speaks to me loudly enough that I can take a few months off and still go back to writing it without any problems.

It’s not finished yet but it’s getting closer.

NaNoWriMo

The annual novel-writing craziness was a wild ride this year. I’ve written four blog posts about it, so I won’t go into details here. In brief: it was hard, I learned things, my people are awesome, and I’m completely nuts (but the Retreat was amazing).

Apocalypse Blog

This one is last because I haven’t done any actual writing in this area this year. However, there has been activity!

Early this year, books 2 and 3 of AB were released. Around the same time, Amazon realised that Book 0 was free elsewhere and price-matched it, which led to a huge up-kick in sales.

I am now getting monthly cheques from Amazon. They’re not huge, they’re not enough to pay the bills with, but they do mean that I’m a published, paid author. I still grin like a kid when I think about that. I feel like I’ve Made It, at least in the indie sphere.

The books are doing well! After some experimentation with pricing, I’m selling roughly 150 books per month. Book 0 (the free one) usually hovers in the middle of Amazon’s top 100 (in science fiction).

I’m also getting some pretty awesome reviews. People keep asking when the next (4th) book is coming out. There’s no more, not yet!

Readers like my work enough to want more. Couldn’t ask for more than that, really.

Writing Community

I wrote about this in reference to NaNo, but it’s worth saying how awesome the people around me have been this year. The group has been building for several years now, and over the past year or so, it has taken on a momentum of its own. I feel that the writers in this city have really gelled and become a wonderful, supportive community that I’m a big part of.

In fact, I’m often leading it, which is intimidating when I stop to think about it. As a NaNoWriMo ML, I naturally do a lot of the coordination, but it extends well outside November. Its monthly write-ins and weekly drinks run all year now, along with my regular writing group.

My Creative Writing Group is still going strong. It has been running for over four years now and I still have a good turnout every month. There are new faces joining and long-standing ones drifting away, but that’s the way of things. We have yet to run out of things to talk about and explore, and if I know my group (which I do pretty well now!), we won’t stop any time soon.

I’ve made many good friends through the various groups and events that I’m a part of. They’ve become dear parts of my life and I’m grateful for all of them. As years go, this one has been a winner in this respect.

Not to mention that I have an actual social life now. Who knew that would happen to me? Who could have predicted that it would come out of what is, essentially, a solitary activity?

Life is strange. And there’s so much more to come.

That has pretty much been my year. Productive, hard work, and progressive. I’m in a better place now than I was at the beginning of the year. I’m getting there, one slow step at a time.

I’m glad 2012 is almost over; I’m done with it. I’m looking forward to closing the book on this year and starting a new one. Next year will be better and brighter.

NaNoWriMo 2012 Part 3: the wrong project

For the past few years, I have worked on my web serial for at least most of my NaNoWriMo wordcount. It’s a good way to build up that buffer of posts that I miss out on for most of the year, and power on towards the end of a story arc, or even the story.

It’s not really what NaNo is for, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s not the best way for me to use that time.

NaNoWriMo is supposed to be about starting something new, about writing that project that you’ve been putting off, or haven’t got to yet, or just can’t find the time for. It’s about kick-starting your writing and galloping on until you’ve got 50,000 words. It’s about making time in your busy life for making stories.

I write regularly – every day, if I can. At least a post a week; sometimes more, depending on my energy levels and what projects are buzzing around in my head at any particular time. I have a routine, a habit.

Disrupting that routine to pump out enough words to meet NaNo targets is hard. It’s especially difficult when it’s the same project that I’ve been writing for months: I’m doing the same as I was before November; I’m just doing more of it. The same characters, the same story, but faster and more frantically. It’s not so much a change as a cranking-up of what’s already there. It’s difficult to really grip that November enthusiasm and run with it, and I struggle to get caught up in it the same way I used to.

NaNo is also supposed to be about turning off the internal editor and just writing. It’s freeing and wonderful for shaking off those wordy cobwebs. But when writing the web serial, I can’t switch off that editor. I can’t do all those things that NaNo encourages, like running off on a tangent or pausing to write up some exposition that’s useful for me but going to be cut before it’s published, or just chasing a plot down a rabbithole to see where it might take me.

I have to publish the web serial every week and that means I have to keep it on the straight-and-narrow. I have to write only what I intend to publish, or I suck up precious NaNo time editing them into shape – and wind up cutting many of those words that I so freely inserted. I don’t have time to explore wild tangents or ramble about a character’s childhood. I don’t want to break the good writing habits I’ve developed around my web serial writing, either. I have to write proper, publishable words.

On the plus side, I know that my 50,000 words are all useable and there’s little dross in there.

I miss the freedom of just writing for NaNo. I miss being able to throw words at a page just to see what happens. Sometimes, I feel like I’m missing some of the frenetic fun of the challenge.

In the last couple of NaNos, I have wound up switching away from my web serial to another project (the steampunk novel is coming along nicely as a result!). I get to a point where I know I just can’t continue writing anything useful, so I move on to something else. That’s the point that I’ve delved into something new, something different to what I normally write, and not something that’s going to be posted anywhere soon, so I have the freedom to let my editor sleep for a while.

That’s been more NaNo-ish for me. And I think that’s going to be my plan for next year.

Now, I’ll be clear: it’s not that I don’t like writing the web serial. I still love Starwalker, with all of its beautifully flawed characters and the plot that is careening towards the end of the story (it’s still a way off, but I have it in sight). I love writing it. But it’s just not working as a NaNo project for me any more.

That has been one of the biggest lessons I’m taking away from this year’s NaNo. Continuing with an existing, ongoing project isn’t good for me, so I need to shake it up. Next year, things will be different.

If I’m still web serial writing at that time (what will happen after Starwalker ends?? I have no idea), then I’ll have to put some effort in to build up a buffer to carry me through November. I’ll make sure that I’ve got something new all planned out and lined up (the robot brothel might be a good candidate).

And when the ball drops on NaNoWrimo 2013, I’ll start something fresh and different. I’ll let my editor off the leash and chase it out into the park. I’ll play in words like a kid in a ballpool.

Who knows, I might even get to the end of the story this time.

Drained

A few weeks ago, I was riding on a creative high. Writing short stories for anthologies, posting Starwalker, returning to the steampunk novel I put down in March, and generally working on a whole host of stuff in my spare time.

It looks like that spurt of energy has faded. For the past week or so, I’ve been struggling to write much of anything. Last week’s Starwalker post was done pretty late (though it posted on time!), and I’m okay with how it came out in the end, but it was a struggle. More than I like.

This week, it’s more of the same. I feel like I need a break, a chance to rejuvenate. I’m not feeling Starry’s story the way I usually do. I have an idea about what I want to do this week, but when I look at the page, the opening words escape me. If I started it now, it would be forced and that seldom comes out well.

It doesn’t help that I’ve just got through a major plot turning-point and the ship (and story) is heading off in a new direction. The characters are all reeling and I feel like I am, too!

Add to that the fact that the CFS is not being kind to me right now, sucking the energy out of pretty much everything I do, and you’ll get an idea of where I am right now. The last thing I want to do is turn out crap; my readers deserve better. But I hate missing posts and breaking my promise to my readers, too. These are weeks when I wish I had a buffer.

But it’s not all dire! I have another choice that I can take advantage of. For the past few weeks, I’ve been poking at some Starwalker shorts (sometimes with a stick from a distance, but there has been actual writing done, too). I’ve got a couple just about finished, and this seems like a good opportunity to release one of them into the wild. A short can take the place of my regularly scheduled update.

The moment I considered that option this morning, it felt like a weight lifted off me. That was when I knew it was the right answer. So I think I’ll take a little break. See if I can get my mental breath back. And in the meantime, I get to share a little piece of a character’s backstory with my lovely readers.

Here’s hoping they won’t mind the break. With luck, I’ll come back next week brighter and fresher than ever. I’ve got a couple of days off work coming up, too, so hopefully that will help. Wish me luck and sleep!

Starwalker shorts

In the hiatus between the first and second books of Starwalker, I released a couple of villain shorts I’d done. They were about characters in the Starwalker universe (but not part of the web serial story), and I had all kinds of plans about doing a whole series of the shorts. I even planned out a list of things I wanted to do and started follow-up stories to those two pieces.

Then, as often happens, various life factors got in the way and distractions appeared, and I put them aside for a while. ‘A while’ turned into a year and then some. I’ve thought about them occasionally in the meantime but I haven’t done much more with them.

Lately, I’ve had more mental space to deal with side projects. I got to thinking that maybe some kind of prequel or ‘specials’ book around Starwalker’s characters would be a good freebie to put on offer to draw people into the series (when I finally get around to editing and releasing the series as ebooks, that is).

One thing led to another, and now I’ve got ideas clamouring for little short stories about the Starwalker’s crew. Fragments of their lives before they came aboard the ship. I’ve written one about Rosie already, and I’m hoping to get one or two more done soon.

Rosie’s one surprised me. I had planned it to involve something of a mentor figure, but the story had an idea of its own. It wound up involving Henry from the previous shorts instead, in a collision of characters and ideas that worked so well I wish I’d meant to do it from the start! I love it when that happens.

Now I’m wondering what to do with it. I could just post it up on the web serial site, or save them for the ebook, but those seem like the easy, lazy options. There are so many more things I could do with them.

I could do monthly specials, featuring a different character every month. That would mean having enough done and releasable to make it a decent run! I don’t know if I could commit to that. I hate making promises I can’t keep, and a ‘series’ of two shorts would be disappointing for everyone.

I could offer incentives. I could release one every time donations reach a certain level. Or whenever I get so many reviews (though I’m not a fan of ‘buying’ reviews, so probably not this one). Or when so many merchandise items are sold. Or every time I get a new (non-spam) commenter on the site.

So many options! I’d kinda like it to be a thing, though, and not just something I throw up on the website. My readers are fantastic and I’d like to get them involved, too.

So what do you all think? Tell me! In the meantime, I’m going to ponder whose story to do next and maybe even write something.

Starwalker merchandise is here!

After much toil, mostly on the part of the lovely and talented Svenja Liv, Starwalker merchandise is now available! Here are the images of our favourite ship and her avatar that Svenja Liv created for me, along with a supercool image showing Starry’s special perspective:

Aren’t they awesome?

Those images (and more!) are now available on a variety of items, such as t-shirts, mousemats, keyrings, and more! Check out the new Starwalker CafePress store for the full list of items.

Don’t see something you want? Then please tell me! You can add a comment here or send me an email, and I’ll see what I can do.

If you want to check out more of Svenja’s work, you can find her on Facebook and Deviantart.

Hope you all enjoy them as much as I do!

(Cross-posted on the Starwalker site)