29 posts tagged “aotw”
Tonight, I finished the first major rewrite of my first [unpublished] novel. For those just tuning in, it's a fantasy genre thing, so if that's not your boat, then you can just ignore this post. I like the fantasy genre (plus, it's important to note that I'm one of those annoying buttheads who thinks that most of what passes for "science-fiction" these days is merely fantasy with an extra helping of techno-babble to fool the rubes), so I've been writing a fantasy. Next, I might try my hand at something more contemporary. But first, I have this huge pile of unread books that have been waiting for this milestone...
This novel has been in the works for a long time, but it spent a lot of that time sitting untouched on the shelf because I wasn't sufficiently motivated to finish it. The first draft has been sitting on my hard drive since I sent it around to a select group of friends, most of whom reacted with variations on "it's kinda interesting, but it's full of problems— here let me show you them!" Some of that was useful, so I took the plunge and dove into a full rewrite from the ground up.
The second draft is quite a bit different from the first. It still has most of the same characters, and the story bears a strong resemblance to the one in the first draft, but there are a lot of major departures. The world is more than a little different. I think the second draft is much better plotted. The characters are stronger, too, I think. All in all, I'm not terribly ashamed of this draft.
I will be giving it another quick pass in the next couple of days, looking for howling discontinuities and other vermin. Then, I will be fulfilling my promise to Gee by sending off query letters to the appropriate literary agents. (She won't believe it's unpublishable until I collect the rejection slips that prove it. I suppose that's what spouses are supposed to do, but it still feels weird. I've never been terribly concerned over whether a publisher ever develops an interest in it. I just wanted it to be of commercial quality. I think I've succeeded at that, whether a publisher ever makes an offer or not.)
Those of you who are on my LiveJournal friend's list (editors and agents excluded): if you're interested in reading it, send me an email or post a comment in the LJ version of this thread, and I'll add you to the group I'll be using to post the chapters.
So, it's NaNoWriMo... and yeah, I know, I really should quit writing while I'm still unpublished, but I'm hoping I can finish up the second draft of Arts Of The Wize this month.
I just finished chapter seventeen (of twenty-three). The manuscript is currently 339 pages long, which is down from about 470 where the first draft was at this point in the story. I'm thinking the finished manuscript will come in right around 450 pages. Still longer than I hoped, but not too bad.
The story is really benefitting from the rewrite. I've pitched a lot of dross, and I've added a whole lot of additional grief for my protagonists to manage. (A comment from DCJ about one of the conceits I used in the first draft gave me an idea for a different one that I'm now finding works a metric truckload better...)
I'm in the process of cleaning up the mess of a final act I wrote in the first draft. Pretty much all my volunteers who read it complained they had no idea why anybody was doing what they were doing. Too many factions, with not enough clarity in what they wanted to accomplish. The fix for that was to stop trying to be so goddamned clever.
In the rewrite, I just show how there are really only two factions, with some individuals more or less committed to their respective causes than others. The jam my protagonists are facing is a lot more clear— they're basically caught between two powerful factions, and the only way for them to get out of it is to do something everyone thinks is impossible. To do it, they'll each have to cooperate in ways that neither of them ever through they would do. (Yes, this means I have to insert a twist in the climax that wasn't there in the first draft. It's going to be a pretty satisfying twist too, I think.)
I'm also eliminating a useless character (I might bring him back in another story), and using another existing character in his place— one that wasn't given enough room to play in the first draft. This has the effect of making one of the subplots Rone complained about into a much more relevant aspect of the story. As a result, I get to keep one of the other characters I really, really don't want to lose. Rone will probably still complain, but that's because it's just his way to complain about something.
There are four weeks left in NaNoWriMo. I have six chapters left. I doubt I'll finish before the end of the month. I'm pretty certain I'll finish before the end of the year. If I pick up the pace, and write every morning and evening on the commuter shuttle, I might make the goal. We'll see.
I may post more as the month rolls forward. If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm busy writing.
My employers have started operating a commuter coach service that runs between the Park And Ride center in Colma / Daly City straight to the corporate campus where my office is located. It only adds about fifteen minutes to my commute time, but it saves me about seven dollars per day in gasoline plus additional maintenance costs. The huge extra benefit to this is that I sometimes have time to spare while riding the coach to work on personal projects, and not company business.
This means I can write again. Progress on Arts Of The Wize is now proceeding at a completely reasonable pace. I feel certain I will finish the second draft by the end of the year, and probably not long after the Thanksgiving holiday.
I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.
Sadly, Michael Jackson has died. A brief moment of silence, please.
...
I bottled the Too Many Secrets porter today. Naturally, I had to forget something. This time it was to put the priming sugar into the fermenter before beginning the bottling procedure. So, that means spooning measured quantities of sugar-water into the bottles by hand before putting the caps on. The last time I did this, it mostly worked okay. Some bottles were more carbonated than others, but none of them were over- or under- carbonated.
I also cracked open a bottle of the latest Tumultuous Uproar imperial stout. It's excellent. This is my best batch yet. Smooth, perfectly carbonated, not a hint of off flavors, goes down easy, and rings your skull like the liberty bell. If you're a lucky recipient of one of these bottles recently, then feel free to open it whenever you want. No need to wait until October or November.
I'm participating in a Lexicon game run by my friend Dan Johnson. No, not the Dan Johnson you're think of— this one. The theme is epic, dark science fiction "in which rival clergy vie for influence in the creation of a new religion - one that will serve as the True Faith of all sentient life in the known and civilized universe. Will they succeed in forging a new creed, or will long-held dogma and ancient disagreements prove too bitter to overcome? Will they come together in the hopes of building a better civilization for the future - or does dark and dangerous blasphemy still secretly lurk in hearts and souls?"
If you're a friend of mine, and you'd like to follow along as we play it out, send me an email, and I'll send you a link to the server for you to bookmark. It's hosted by a friend of a friend on his personal home DSL account, so we don't want to publicize it very widely.
Finally, I'm not sure I'm going to be successful at keeping my dirty mitts off Arts Of The Wize much longer. Leopold is almost sort of starting to be manageable again. I'm getting hints that I might start having time off on Sundays again.
I shelved it today. I don't know when or if I will be able to return to it. I'm not optimistic.
This hurts a lot. I'm angry and very depressed over having to do this, but I don't have a choice. I simply don't have the time to devote to the project anymore. I've been ->this<- close to completion of the revised draft for five months now. In that time, I've been able to write three chapters. Three badly structured and desperately in need of rewrite chapters.
The reason? I've been trying to make progress by stealing little bits of time— an hour here, a half-hour there, usually when I'm least able to concentrate on what I'm doing to keep the narrative big picture straight— and it hasn't been working. I've been making a mess of it. Without reliably having blocks of time when I can write for at least four hours uninterrupted, I just can't work.
I don't have time like that anymore. Not like I used to, anyway. Work is more demanding than usual, and promises to be so for the next year at least (unless I get fired or something). I have to look after Leo full time on the weekends both days, and by the time he's asleep in the evenings and I've done all my other housework chores, I'm exhausted and I can't write. I've used up all the vacation time I can afford giving Gina the time off she needs to keep herself together, and there isn't any left for me. I thought I might have some time to write while I was in Chicago, doing IETF work, but that didn't happen. I was up to my eyeballs in work work work from morning to night.
What little time off from work and childcare and housework I get is structured from start to finish by obligations to extended family and close friends. This weekend, I was in Mt. Shasta visiting relatives. No time for writing. Last weekend, I got Sundary off to brew. No time for writing because Gina insisted that I brew. Other times, when I've been free from work and childcare and housework, have been assigned to similar non-writing activity. I'm not getting any time to write. I'm just not. I can't even get enough time to read other works in the genre I'm trying to write. Looking at the calendar, there won't be any time for writing between now and the end of the year, and I see no reason to believe there will be any time after that until Leo is old enough that I can start having Saturday mornings (or something) all to myself again.
This is maddening to me because I feel like an awful failure. For once in my life, I'd like to start a serious attempt to create something of lasting artistic nature (however pathetic and awful Arts Of The Wize would have eventually turned out to be, that's what I've been trying to do) and to finish what I started.
I continue to slog along slowly and pitifully. Leopold is eighteen months, and not yet leaving me with enough time to devote to writing at a decent pace. I'm also up to my eyeballs in work these days— I have a busy week in Chicago scheduled next week. That's not helping me very much, either...
Still, I reached a minor milestone this evening. I completed the draft of Chapter Fourteen in the rewrite of Arts Of The Wize. This is good news because it means the forklift upgrade to the middle of the book is basically complete. I had to rip out a whole bunch of stuff that went off the rails in the middle of the first draft and replace it with stuff that manages better to keep the overall story coherent. Chapter Fourteen needed to be totally thrown out, and a wholly different chapter needed to be dropped into the gaping void left behind. I've done that now.
Chapter Fourteen is longer than I'd like by about five pages, but it might shrink in further revisions. We'll see. In the meantime, the new story is plumbed up properly now to where the old story started to go interestingly non-linear in the ramp up to the climax in Chapter Twenty-two. The remaining divergence requires a lot less creativity to implement, so look for my pace to pick up at least a little bit. The last bit of major revising comes in Chapter Twenty-two, but I don't think it will require a whole new chapter. Just ten or fifteen whole new pages.
Progress is slow, but not completely stopped.
I have very little time these days to spare for writing. It's all I can do to steal enough time here and there to get about 1000 words per week done. Sad, but that's where I am. Hopefully soon, Leopold will become easier for his mother to manage without requiring me to put in full time childcare duty both days every weekend so she can have a sanity break. I'll get more revising of Arts Of The Wize done when that happens.
Where am I in the rewrite process? I just finished chapter thirteen (of twenty-three), which puts the manuscript at 232 pages. Chapter fourteen is a major overhaul from the first draft. I have to draft a completely new set of scenes to replace the badly designed and over-engineered ones in the initial pass. A whole bunch of crap that hadn't been revealed yet in the first draft is already under the bow by this point in the rewrite. Here is where a whole bunch of additional revelation is supposed to happen so, when the chapter ends and all my characters are reunited in the site where all the action in final acts of the story take place, chapter fifteen can pick up with all the conflict meters redlining.
This next chapter should be the last really big departure from the first draft. Everything afterward amounts to smaller, incremental adjustments: eliminate an extraneous minor character here, delete some obsolete exposition there, tie up a loose plot thread more effectively in the climactic scenes.
Breathe. Yeah, that's what I think about it, too.
I'm still on budget for my word count objective. Depending on schedule, I may be able to send the revised manuscript out for critiques in August or so. Later than I wanted, but life is what happens when other people are making plans for you.
Charles Stross gave one of those "SF Writer Pretends To Be A Futurist" talks to some engineering consultancy a while ago, and he just posted a transcript of his prepared remarks. In the section "putting it all together," he pops out with a prediction that should look pretty damned familiar to anyone who read my first draft of Arts Of The Wize.
I clearly need to get my act together and finish the damned novel soon.
p.s. I should point out I'm not a huge fan of his "total history" concept. I can foresee practical engineering considerations that I don't think can be solved. They involve the speed of light.
I continue rewriting Arts Of The Wize. The manuscript is now 192 pages, and it's about half completed. The BookHate is almost overpowering now. I can't remember when I started this project, and the only thing that keeps me from quitting at this point is the shame I would feel for having spent so much of my disposable free time only to abandon it before even receiving a single rejection notice. That would be undescribably lame.
I like my characters, and I like the world I've imagined for them (especially the world of my rewrite, which is a bit different than the first one). I like the story. There is just no way in hell it will sell.
How do I know this? I know it, because I'm dismayed at the prospects of trying to write a 100-word hook for Arts Of The Wize that will make it seem both fresh and interesting to a literary agent or publisher. Meanwhile, I've still got about another 200 pages to go with about 300 pages of first draft to use for raw material. Today, I actually gave serious consideration to the idea of adding a talking squid to Chapter Fourteen, just because I figured that would round out the collection. I'm imagining the conversation with the hypothetical agent who gets suckered into asking for my full manuscript.
"So, J.H.— why'd you put a talking squid here?"
"Because it's fantasy, not science fiction, but it's already got spaceships and robots, so I figured— hey, why not complete the set with talking squids?"
"Lose the squid."
"Could you sell it if I took it out?"
"Um… well…"
"You were just playing me there, weren't you?"
"Can you blame me? It was a moment of weakness. Freakin' talking squid. WTF is wrong wit you?"
In other [completely unrelated] news, I'm very close to releasing an Internet Draft that I expect will go over like a lead balloon in the V6OPS and IPV6 working groups. I'll post a link to it here when it goes up on the IETF.Org servers. So far, readers to whom I've privately circulated it have reacted with a collective Why-The-Fnork-Are-You-Doing-This? I wish I had a good answer to that. The truth is abjectly, painfully embarrassing, i.e. no one else is dumb enough to bring this idea up in front of the IETF, and it's my job to be this goddamn dumb.
Secretly, there is a part of me that hopes my idea will be so obviously dumb that everyone will come to their senses and realize that network layer policy-enforcing packet filters in organizational-boundary IPv6 routers are just a phenomenally bad idea, and we should have never listened to anybody who wrongly insisted they were essential for proper functioning of the Internet. My worst fear, actually, is that IETF might actually take the idea I've been tasked with championing seriously enough to make it a standards-track effort. At that point, firewalls in your ISP will be able to collect vast amounts of information about what software you are running and for what purpose, even if your computer doesn't actively communicate with anyone else. When I think about what a Big Brother authoritarian could do with the protocol I'm proposing, it makes my blood run cold, and my boss is insisting I fight for this thing in the IETF.
Now, do you see how talking squids could seem like a good idea to me? (Okay, okay— losing the squid. Jeebus.)
I'm slowly closing in on the point where I can stop writing.
I've carved a lot out of the first draft of Arts Of The Wize so far, and I'm pretty sure I can't really squeeze it down much further. (Naturally, I would expect Sean Lindsay to insist that all of it could be deleted without damaging anything of real value, but— let's be honest— his jihad will not be complete until no human person is ever capable of writing another word of prose again. I honestly wish him all the best in that endeavor— everybody should have a windmill to tilt at.)
Oh sure, I might be able lose a few words here, a few words there, maybe it will add up to a few hundred, maybe even a thousand or two over the course of the whole story. For the most part, though, I'm a lot less worried about the length issues. In fact, my biggest worry is that I'm going to leave out something important without realizing that its original purpose was sound in the first place.
Where am I now? I've written chapters 1-5 (minus a bit of 4), 7, 9, 11 and 13 (with bits missing from 7 and 13). There are a total of 23 chapters in the outline. The manuscript currently weighs about 138 pages. In the first draft, this material accounted for over 200 pages out of 640. I think there's a pretty good chance I will come in under 400 pages in the rewrite. Certainly under 450 pages. A lot of wankage is getting cut, now that I know all the angles in the story and I can concentrate on tying them together properly.
With any luck, I can be done with this by June. I'm hoping. There will be much celebrating at Woodyatt Station when that happens. (And, no— Sean Lindsay— I'm sorry. I expect to query literary agents when I'm done writing. Your efforts are insufficient. Have you considered taking up opium smoking? I hear it's quite satisfying and generally produces useful results every time you try it.)
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