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....
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
