Mumble.

My current manuscript for the sequel to Queen of the World is at 51,000 words. I’ve been writing pretty much every day. I’m proud of the amount of work I’ve done – the writing began about four weeks ago – but I still sometimes wonder if I could do more. Being honest I probably could, but even now my brain is fried and my imagination comes in dribs and drabs. Writing is still fantastic, of course. There’s still that kick of falling into a scene and letting the words spill out. I guess as time goes on it’ll be easier and I’ll fall into a rhythm without as much effort. But that 51,000 seems like it should be another five figures on top. Which is nuts, really. I have some people on my Twitter page who are able to write ten thousand words a day. I managed that once. To finish the first draft of Queen of the World I wrote 12,000 words from 10am to 2am. When I’d finished I felt like I was drunk.

Stress is a factor for me, more than I perhaps realised early on. I’m trying to juggle various things in my life – I want to move back to Norway instead of sitting in my old bedroom in Essex, I want to get a job which allows me to live with my fiancée, I want to have a plan so that I can actually feel stable for once instead of living from a month-by-month basis – and it all impacts on my work. If I’m in a good mood I can hammer out four thousand words in an afternoon and then happily spend the rest of it watching films and playing games. Sometimes if I’m tired, or worrying about something, then it’s a crawl to even make a few hundred. It sounds a bit lame, like the struggling artist perception of needing to be in the zone, and I’m aware of that. If I was working as a plumber or in a warehouse I couldn’t phone in sick on the basis that I had things on my mind. I’d get laughed into unemployment. But since writing is technically a self-employed job, sometimes you have to kick your own arse and say ‘C’mon. Just get to work and stop being a dick.’

Thankfully, I find editing much easier. I received another section of revision from my editor, Sara, which I read in one sitting and applied the basics of into the Queen of the World draft. The comments and suggestions were just as helpful as before, and I’m starting to get a clear picture of my strengths and flaws as a fiction writer. One section involving a supporting character was absolutely mauled, but instead of upsetting me I actually got inspired and sat up in my chair thinking ‘Ok, so how can I fix this? Do I need to edit or rewrite? Is it even necessary?’

To my delight, when I sent out the final(ish) draft to some friends and peers, all of the critiques were very positive in their praise and any suggestions for change were pretty minor. Character names, uses of words, descriptions and the like. It was a hell of a morale boost and I did get a lot of useful information about the story, but I’d never experienced what it was like to having something directly pointed out as not being as good as it could be. So for my editor to pull out a part and say ‘This really isn’t as strong as the preceding chapters’ was like a jolt to the system, and one I really enjoyed. Getting my arse kicked is going to help much more than it’ll harm. (Though please don’t savage the rest of the book, Sara!)

That’s about it for now, really. I’m paying a visit to Norway on Friday which with a bit of luck will become permanent, so I’m passing the time with writing, drinking coffee and listening to Pearl Jam. I’ll update again in a few days with an article-thing I’ve been toying with.

Fix your face.

Last week I received my first 50 pages of edits from Inspired Quill. It was a really enjoyable experience. Reading through my work after it had been through the editing process was quite weird but super-funky at the same time. They sent it with a mixture of blue and red text. Blue text is mainly comments and suggestions, while red text is ‘Change this’. Almost all of the red text covers typos, odd grammar mistakes and incredible tense errors. A few of them had me wincing. ‘How the hell did I miss that!?’

There were a few editorial observations which have really helped already. It was pointed out I use a lot of ‘He/She’ at the start of sentences. While it made me giggle a little shamefully – mainly because there’s another 190 pages of that particular fault to come for Sara as she goes through the manuscript – it also made the problem quite clear. As a result my future writing will keep an eye out for overuse of such simple language terms. Also I tend to repeat words quite a lot. Some of it is stylistic, but occasionally I get carried away. Obviously this is a second draft thing, but I’ll certainly be looking with a more critical eye over my future drafts for five uses of the word ‘Bounced’ in a single paragraph.

There was also some positive stuff throw in, along with chapter summaries. Sara has been very kind with her feedback so far. One of her comments about the protagonist, Sarene, really had me smiling. It’s quite a kick to be told by your publisher that a character is a favourite. In addition the small dashes of humour I throw into my work seem to be well received. I can’t wait for the rest of the edited manuscript to come back to me. Here’s hoping that she still enjoys it when the vampires and werewolves turn up in alien spacecraft halfway through the book.

-grins-

A recent conversation with @madeleinecook on Twitter gave me a bit of inspiration for this blog. Y’see, a lot of times when we communicate with others through text it’s hard to pick up how something is written. Sarcasm is a tricky one. While you hear a wry tone of voice when you type it, the person who reads it may hear deadpan, straight-forward delivery. Smileys help – a pokey-out tongue here and a wink there cuts a lot of the bite out of potentially hard words – but what if you don’t tack one on? (I smiley the hell out of my Facebook and Twitter posts, and it sometimes annoys me. Surely it just detracts from the words themselves?)

I guess the better you know a person the easier it is to work out their intentions. An odd example is when I send applications and cover letters to jobs. Yep, I’m job-hunting at the moment. Anyway, when I write those emails out to prospective employers, the words on the screen sound a little soulless and forced. You can’t inflect them with wit or charisma. You can’t build a rapport anywhere near as well as you can with a phone conversation or face-to-face meeting. You certainly can’t add a fucking smiley. While it’s now easier to communicate with others than it has ever been, the communication has changed. Words are plentiful but charm is lacking in its place. In my opinion anyway. But then, I’m one of those stuck-up arseholes who thinks textspeak will be the death of the English language, so you can’t really trust what I say too much.

In other news: I’m still in Essex for the time being. It’s been a bit quiet over here. Had one incredibly messy session with a few old friends in Romford last week, which was ace. Next week a lot of my buddies here in Grays will be taking various breaks from work so will be looking to be out and about a bit. I’ve picked up my workrate during my break from Norway, so the other two WIP I have at the moment are ticking along nicely. However that may all change when the new Star Wars MMO is released next week. I’m going to have to be pretty strict about doing my daily work before logging on. I might even get my brother to set up a parental control on my internet, arf.

Please feel free to add comments or thoughts below, and remember to follow my Facebook page (ick) and my Twitter account. Cheers.

Camera on Four. Rolling...

So this is going to be a fairly long post. I’m going to cheat quite a lot and post something from my book.

Basically the last couple of weeks have been busy. I’ve finally finished the book – now to be known as Queen of the World – and it has been edited, redrafted and tweaked about as much as I can do without seeking professional assistance. It’s about as good as it is going to get. I’ve sent off a few agents in the States because I haven’t yet gotten around to finding a printer. Most UK agencies was a regular mail submission. I trawled a few agencies which accept email submissions and tried my hand. So far, no joy.

I did get one request for a full manuscript submission though. I’m not going to name anything yet in case it all falls through. Hopefully I’m going to get more than one request for a manuscript in my career so naming each one as it goes seems a bit silly. If it gets accepted then, of course, I’ll plug the bejeezus out of it. We’ll see.

Oh, and some guy offered to give me a thousand euros if he can invest in the manuscript. Bit of an ego boost, to be honest. We’re talking a salad-tossing confidence boost here. Reckon it’s going to be turned down though. As someone said on my Facebook - If it’s good enough to be invested in then it’s good enough to retain 100% ownership of it. But anyway, felt a bit splendid when the offer came in.

In the next couple of days some proper work will begin on the sequel. It is currently in progress in the sense that I have about four scenes and two new characters in my head. I also have the first few chapters primed and ready to go. I know how the book will open and how all the robot ninja sharks will be seamlessly integrated into my world of magical realism.

(Part of the above paragraph may be a lie.)

Now to the long bit. This is the prologue to Queen of the World. I hope you enjoy it and get a better sense of what this blog has been banging on about for the last two months.

Most people say that magic doesn’t exist. They’re correct, to an extent. Magic is a product of the imagination. People would like to be able to fly; to conjure fire from their fingertips. Those early days of childhood, where anything seems possible, stay with us. They help form our future and they linger long after we have matured. A boy may eventually stop pretending to be a famous hero, but the dream of fame itself does not completely fade. Neither does the ambition of being the greatest swordsman or the finest archer in all the land. The world admires those skilled in the martial arts.
The world wants heroes.
Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way and so admiration comes in other forms. A man who can provide for his family is respected. A loving parent is, in turn, loved by her children. The king of a nation who rules with a fair and steady hand is given the loyalty of his people. This is how it should be, and this is how many believe it to be these days. For most, life is relatively peaceful.
It was not always so.
The world was once savage and cruel. Respect and admiration was demanded by the strongest and the most barbaric. Loyalty was given to those who were feared the most. Nations were forged by warlords, by chieftains, by people who were larger than life. They ruled with an iron fist, caring little for the common wants and needs of their subjects. They made vicious examples of any who stood up to them. Those who would not fight worked the fields and were at the mercy of the very soldiers who claimed to protect them. War was common, as opposing factions fought for land, resources and power. Lives were short and brutal.
Then came the Four.
Nobody knows where they came from or why they came. The Four walked separate from one another, each journeying one corner of the land. Slowly, patiently, they came to every one of the warlords and the chieftains in turn. They were viewed with suspicion, with intrigue, with derision and scorn. The Four would ask for an audience. This was sometimes granted, but often denied.
The Four could be persuasive.
It is said that they could do anything. Anything. The legends tell of mountains being cracked open with the wave of a hand. Whole cities brought tumbling down. Rivers made to boil and the sky turned to flame. Men were shaped to appear as beasts and women to birds. They could kill with a look and torture with a word.
The warlords and chieftains listened.
The Four came with a simple message. Those in power would use their position to help their people. They would make peace with one another and focus on advancing culture, education and science. They would protect those who lived under their rule and no longer terrorise them. They would ease the burden of taxes and let the people support themselves as well as each other. They would promote trade. They would provide sanitation and medicines.
They would do all this, or they would be removed from their rule forcibly.
One does not argue with a God.
Some did, of course. Some tried to silence these arrogant men who made demands of them. They did not live long to regret that choice. The more intelligent of the warlords, the smartest of the chieftains, these were the ones who survived. They did as they were asked, and they pledged to lead their people into a new age of prosperity and peace.
The Four, once satisfied, left. They did so with a warning.
Let things return to how they were, and we will return.
Since that time, over five hundred years previous, no nation has dared test this promise.

Second daft. (sic)

I’m done with the second draft. Ish.

The missus read through the manuscript. It was printed out, all two hundred and forty pages of it. It looked lovely. Having the thing in my hand after nine months of staring at it on a laptop screen was great. I was like a kid at Christmas waiting for it to arrive. When it did it was laughs and smiles all round. Anyway, she read through it and gave me some excellent feedback as well as some morale-boosting affirmations that it wasn’t a big pile of poo. I’ve since mailed it off to a few other friends who agreed to critique it, and am now anxiously waiting to see what they say.

I found this very cool PDF file from Darcy Pattison giving advice on the second draft. It gave some tips which most other articles covering drafts touch on, as well as some others I hadn’t considered.

So after drafting a bit extra and touching up the first three chapters – well, making three chapters since the original manuscript isn’t chaptered, just broken into pieces – I’m looking to agencies who may be interested in representing me, providing they don’t think the story is a big pile of poo. It seems only a handful of agencies in the UK represent fantasy. There’s a list of them to be found here. Reading through it struck me that getting an agent is going to be pretty tricky. They get hundreds of submissions monthly, it seems, and not only do I have to ensure my work is saleable but also that the submission stands out in the first place. What if it turns out that a person is a great story writer but terrible at submissions? That isn’t self referential, but looking at some writing forums a common complaint seems to be ‘I’ve been submitting for years and never got a single good reply back from an agency’. Is that due to their writing or the way they submit?

Also, I need to write a synopsis. I find the idea of doing so to be difficult. It’s not so much condensing down the story into a single page – that shouldn’t be too tricky, I haven’t written the Bible – but the deep-seated need to want to keep things interesting. I would rather say ‘Then the character arrived to meet his nemesis WITH HILARIOUS CONSEQUENCES’ and then let whoever I’m describing it to read for themselves what happens. I have this idea that if you know the story in advance, and get it all in five hundred words, why would you then read a hundred thousand more?

Of course I understand it from a selling-the-bloody-thing perspective. It just makes me go ngggghhh.

I sent one submission to John Jarrold. The submission was terrible. I’m not expecting anything in response. Balls.

In less than a week I move to my home for the next year. Student shared accommodation. Get in. Also, I’ll be home to visit the family and friends in sunny Essex later this month. The sunshine here in Arendal is excellent at the moment. I caught my first Norwegian fish. It was a cod. I was happy.

Really happy.

It tasted awesome, too!

Prologue, Pt.2

So there is an objective to this blog. I have three objectives directly. Between those objectives I have some other stuff I’m going to write about, such as the second draft of the book, the process of revising and researching the bits I blagged the first time around (Like how to build a windmill. No, really), and anything I read which generally proves useful to me. I should start by giving a little more information about all this, so you lovely people have a reason to come back and read more. I’m not sure how successful my ramblings would be otherwise.

The book is called ‘book’ at the moment. I haven’t decided on a title but I have a few in mind. I wanted to wait until I’ve reviewed what I have before naming it all. The book is a fantasy story of a young girl’s adventure as she finds herself in a situation she knows nothing about. Forced from her home and chased across the country, she finds herself escorted by a reclusive woodsman in the search for her brother in the hope that he can protect her from the people who hunt her.

Now that’s about as basic as I can get it. Being honest, when I write it with such a vague tone it sounds a little unoriginal as well (It isn't, I hope!). I don’t want to give a full blurb just yet until I’m sure all the elements I’ve used so far are retained in the second draft. Also, don’t be scared by the word ‘fantasy’. There is not an elf, dwarf or dragon to be found in my tale. That sounds snotty, but it’s true (Don’t get me wrong, I love high fantasy novels with monsters, magic and mythical beings). The story is intentionally character driven, and while it may not be a modern day story, I think certain aspects of the story can be adapted to everyday life.

I like the story. I’m proud of the book so far. I had the idea in my head for a good three or four years before I sat down and put it down in words. Let’s be honest, if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have made this blog. I would have waited until I had a ‘better’ book with a greater chance of success. As it is I think I this story is good enough to push. I’m looking forward to finishing it completely and getting the ball rolling. For now, I’m waiting a few weeks until I’ve forgotten about it to an extent. Apparently it’s important to leave a first draft for an extended period (experts!), but I do want to just get back to it. Rawr.

Anyway, here’s the main three objectives of this blog:

1. Find an agent.

No, I probably don’t need one yet. I mean, I’m one guy with a big chunk of text at the moment. I don’t have any writing credentials, publishing credits or anything. However, it appears that a lot of authors who seek the traditional publication route (I.E want their books in the stores) could do worse than have an agent to help them do that. I also like the idea of have a literary agent, Californication style. There’s a few I’m interested in but until I’ve finished up the second draft, I can’t really send off manuscripts.

2. Find a publisher.

Yep. Get someone to print the book. Not a real hard one to understand, but for me the best part of writing is having other people read it. If someone’s willing to put in the time to read the three or five or seven thousand words committed to page then that shows that what I’ve done is at least vaguely interesting. Now I’ve got 131,289 words, though. Mwuahaa. Anyway, it’s been something of an ambition of mine to have something I’ve written on the shelves of a Waterstones or W.H Smiths. I think I’d get a hell of a kick from achieving that. Suppose it’s the same from a band seeing their record on a CD rack, or an actress having their name imprinted on a theatre poster. It’s certainly an ego thing, but also a validation that they’re getting somewhere.

3. Failing those, self publication.

In recent times, authors skipping the old school publishing houses and going straight to Amazon Kindle, E-books and iPad typeofthings has become pretty popular. Last year e-books sold more copies than regular books. Now bear in mind that there’s a fair few reasons for this – e-books are a lot cheaper, it’s more convenient to just download a book than go to a store, internet shopping as a whole is still rising, to name a few – but it’s interesting to note. It has been said that self publication (termed also as ‘vanity press’) is for those people who’s work is not deemed good enough for regular publication. I feel that’s quite a cheap way of phrasing it. With the advent of companies like Createspace you can supply paperback copies of your book to those who buy it online. I think the main difference is that publication companies will provide a much more stable route to the bookshops. I really want to get my book into the regular publishing machine, but self publication is always a fall back option.

I’ll probably learn much more about this over the coming months. Come back to this page later in the game and we can laugh together about how completely uninformed I am/was.

Oh, and feel free to share and follow this blog. I’ll try not to spam you too much, and it’d be nice to hear what people think about the process. <3