I think that sums up my state of mind better than the old Beckett "I can't go on I'll go on" phrase. I've never been so ill-prepared to start a large project in my life - and yet, I know that at a certain point, "research" and all the reading and note-taking can become more of a crutch and hindrance than useful. Like keeping that old Raggedy Ann doll or blankey around long past your teens. Or, er, twenties. :P So, I'm going to ignore the part of me that's begging to futz around with books and geological charts for another decade or so, because that's just a load of crap. I'm starting the novel on Monday, and I'm not going to worry (too much) that I don't have all the details of the plot. Most of my truly inspired ideas don't occur until well into the writing process, so that means I can't get to them until I start with chapter one and forge ahead, regardless of whether it's "good" or "bad" or if I'm prepared enough. There's no such thing as "prepared enough" when it comes to the arts.

I thought about posting the outline of the novel, but I don't think it would interest a lot of readers. Too many details, and frankly, the subject matter won't be interesting to any but a few people. Suffice to say, the novel is about a young man and woman who meet at college and fall in love. The catch? The man is gay. So, they go about trying to find a bisexual man to "bring them together", as it were - to make them a couple, sexually as well as romantically. They do find someone, eventually. But is he a man, or something else? Hmmm... that's where the horror and screaming comes in. And that, in a nutshell, is the plot.

I don't think I'll post much in the way of what I've written about - that gets boring, if you're not interested in who the characters are to being with. But I was thinking of posting a daily word count, and then maybe once a week posting several paragraphs from the WIP - nothing you need to have extensive character or plot background on, but just bits of scenes that might be interesting to read, more for a sense of the world and the style of writing (and the style and level of horror) than anything else. So I guess this is a warning - starting next Tuesday, I'll have a little Writertopia word meter popping up here. I'll start out with a daily word count, but I may switch to every other day - word meters are kind of boring on their own. :) However, I'll also blog about what I plan to do when the novel is finished - the redrafting, and the submission process. I'll talk about how I plan to send it out to agents, and who will be on that list. I'll also be finishing up a couple of stories for specific markets & deadlines, so it's not like it'll be ALL WORD COUNT ALL THE TIME. Just most of the time. :)

Labels: "the ruins of love"

This past Monday, I met with the other member of what will be a two-member novel writing, critiquing and overall support group. The name of the group is officially "Genre Elephants". Because we write novels with not elements, but ELEPHANTS of genre - you can't ignore elephants, and you shall not ignore our stupendous, earth-trembling works of art! Also because when we're drunk and blabbing about writing, we say elephants instead of elements. :)

Anyway, I think this is going to work out very well - I wrote my first novel in complete isolation, which wasn't a bad thing, but not necessarily something I think needs to happen with the upcoming project. My G.E. partner and I hope to get together a couple of times over the next few months for some brainstorming/writing sessions, and we'll send each other a weekly email update with word count and a few paragraphs or two of the WIP. And more important: when we're both finished with our novels, we'll each have the other as a dedicated beta reader. It's very difficult to find people willing to commit to critiquing an entire manuscript, and as a newbie, I'm an unknown and therefore considered a bit risky - who knows what kind of horrific crap I could be writing, so why on earth would anyone volunteer to read it? And then there's always the problem with the fact that it's difficult to find anyone who has enough time to read and crit an entire manuscript - especially when they're working on their own. So, this should work out. I'll provide updates as we email and meet throughout the rest of the year. The plan is to start our novels on October 1 and finish by December 31. Since we're both working on stand-alones, three months is plenty of time to crank out a 80-90k word manuscript.

Next week I'll probably post the outline for the novel - titled "The Ruins of Love" - and I might also post the outline for a quartet of dark fantasy novels - tentatively titled "Archipelago" - that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. The Archipelago Quartet idea is a combination of some new ideas, some very old bits and pieces of writing from almost fifteen years ago, and a very large chunk of the worldbuilding and backstory from my trunked novel. Basically, I'm taking the suburban setting and dark urban fantasy elements of that manuscript and setting it aside for a contemporary horror novel, and taking the high fantasy elements and characters and putting them where they won't be so ridiculously out of place. :) And this is why I never, EVER throw anything I write away. If it can't be published, it can be used for something else - because I figure if I thought it up and took the time to write it down, there must have been something of merit in it, even if I bungled the initial "translation" of the idea with the wrong setting or project length or just plain lack of writing chops and insight. If you can't get it right the first time, set it aside and get back to it another day, when you're better equipped to. Well, that's my philosophy, anyway. Or my ego. Yeah, probably that second one....

Labels: "genre elephants", "the ruins of love", archipelago, outlines

You can read Parts I and II right here.

In other news, I've been working on the outline for a quartet of fantasy novels, in part based on a lot of the subplots and world building I did for my old unpublished novel. It's also based on a couple of scenes and character sketches I wrote almost ten years ago, about an archipelago of islands on an unnamed world, and a young woman who is charged with the task of looking for and then raising to adulthood the last living clutch of dragons in the islands (for reasons which cannot yet be revealed!). I spent the weekend outlining the first novel in detail. I'll probably start this series next year, after I've finished writing "The Ruins of Love" and it's completely edited and out on submission. This will be a long-term project - meaning, it's not going to be a couple of years. I expect the series to take at least a decade, if not longer, to write. There are, of course, other projects I'll work on in between each book in the series, including a novel or two, but they will all be shorter stand-alone works. This quartet is my Big Kahuna, so to speak.

As far as the Tacoma Steampunk novella trilogy goes - while I'd love to start writing it, the fact is that I can't until I've done more reading and research on the city and the Pacific Northwest of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Part of the problem is also that the one set of books I require the most - Herbert Hunt's three volume history of Tacoma - is about $300, and I just can't afford that right now. Maybe in a few years, when I've paid off some debts and have some extra cash from story sales, I'll be able to buy it. Until then, though, I can't justify the cost.

Tonight I meet up with someone who will also be starting a novel on October 1st, and we'll hopefully hammer out some kind of support group of sorts. Meaning: probably lots of beta-reading and critiquing, but also lots of mutual crying and drinking. For writers, it's nice to have beta readers if you can get them, but the crying/drinking type of support is downright indispensable. :D

This is another fantastic cover that I happen to be under - I'm just about batting .1000 with the great artwork, thankfully. My Clarion-written novelette "The Four Hundred Thousand" will appear on Subterranean Online sometime this fall. I'll post the link to the story when it's up. In the meantime, click on the photo and view the full-size version. It's quite pretty. :D

Well, I'm back from my trip to Belgium and France - it was a phenomenal vacation, with lots of sightseeing and plenty of time for basically spacing out and thinking about nothing. I honestly didn't plan to spend any time on writing, but I did get several one-line outlines for some stories (that I'll write in the future, but not anytime soon), and a complete outline for the revamped version of "The Girls of the World". Not so shockingly, I've come to realize that it needs to be a novel in three parts - a three-act Victorian-inspiredmelodrama, complete with all the elaborate trappings and stagings that go along with such animals. And while the "flavor" of the novel will still be steampunk, with that distinctly Victorian London flare to the setting and behaviorisms of the characters and culture, there will be many more fantastical elements, which will probably push it directly into the "New Weird" camp. I'll write it next year, after I've finished "The Ruins of Love".

And of course, I thought a lot about "Ruins" - I've come up with a tentative outline (nothing on paper, only in my head) of the first half of the novel, but I'm unclear about what happens between then and the ending. I tend to get anal about outlines, thinking I can't write anything longer than 20k words without one, but the fact is, I can't postpone the project just because I don't have things completely worked out. I have to trust that I'll find the way, that it's already in my head, already fully complete - just that my conscious hasn't caught up with that murky subconscious of mine quite yet. So, I'll keep thinking about the plot, keep tinkering with ideas - but lightly, and not with any intentions of finding a final solution. Come hell or high water, outline or no, I start writing the novel on October 1.

FYI, I'll be posting my vacation photos over on Flickr, and blogging about specific things on Livejournal. I'll post the links when I start uploading the photos. Right now, I've had two beers and am coming down off of three hours sleep, eight hours of flight, and a six-hour time change. I'm not to be trusted with links. :P

Labels: "the ruins of love"