Stick this in your pipe and -delete-

While I’m unemployed, I’m writing full time.

I’ve got it down to an actually shift, now. I sit down around three in the afternoon with a fresh coffee and my headphones, switch off the Internet and just write. My aim is at least three thousand words a day. Sometimes it’s easy, and the words hammer across the page like the Road Runner. Other days I crawl along with a line here and a paragraph there, staring at the screen thinking to myself ‘What the bloody hell is the point of this scene?’

When I wrote Queen of the World, I had a break between the first six chapters and the final fourteen. I was on a motorbike travelling south through Vietnam, staying in cheap hotels and getting drunk with strangers in hostels. It wasn’t exactly conducive to writing, so I left the manuscript alone for about two months. During that time I would think about it often. The doubt would sometimes kick in. Was it any good? Was it boring? Was the pace too slow? Were the characters interesting? I didn’t let myself read what I had. I just kept churning ideas over my head, so when the time came to carry on with it I just blurted everything on the page in a mental purge. Three months later and the first draft was complete. I left it alone for about four weeks, until I watched the Game of Thrones series and was inspired to go back and read it all and begin the editing process.

It turned out I quite enjoyed what I had. The pace was steady, but I didn’t feel like it was boring. I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and how they found themselves in the situation they’d been handed. Queen of the World was never going to be an action-packed thriller. The film isn’t going to star Jason Statham. (Yeah, there’s going to be a film. Somewhere around the time I build my towered castle out of Red Bull tins and hire Morgan Freeman to read the newspaper to me in the mornings. IT COULD HAPPEN.)

Now with the sequel I’m working on, I’m having those same doubts. I feel like I just have scenes at the moment, and that they’re not very good. I also feel like I’m flailing around too much in the early scenes and that there isn’t a unified story happening yet. That’s to be expected, since the first draft isn’t meant to be spot on. It’s meant to give the structure you need to make it good. Some may argue this, of course, and more power to you. If you can pull a finished story out on the first draft then I give my complete admiration.

I think the issue here is that I’m a pantser, and I write things as they pop out of the ether.

Quick definition for people who aren’t aware of the term: A pantser is someone who has an idea for a story and then writes it down, mainly from memory. They write by the seat of their pants, hence the term. A plotter is someone who outlines a story in advance; they work out the scenes they need to write and then follows the plan. The latter tends to result in a stronger first draft but can impede the spontaneous development of a story, since the writer already wants to get from point A to B. The former, which is my camp, has a much broader canvas to work with but can sometimes get stuck, left with nowhere to go.

Since I’m working from nothing each time I write, I sometimes end up with an empty thousand words where not much happens. They might begin travelling to a place they need to be, or they might reveal a little about themselves, but it’s just scratchwords. (I call anything which is fun to read but adds no weight to the story a bunch of scratchwords- i.e stuff which can be deleted if I need to trim the word count.) I have scenes in my head, of course. I have quite a few fun things I’m going to include in the current manuscript. I think I have a good book in my head. But if I can’t make it a good book on paper then I might as well just go to people’s houses and tell them what would have happened. At least that way I might get the occasional cup of tea out of it.

Another issue is that this is my first real sequel. With Queen of the World I had the time to let things develop naturally – introduce the characters, the setting, a little here and there about the world’s history. Things unfolded with no real urgency. With this manuscript, though, I’m working with the assumption that the readers at least have some idea what’s going on. They enjoyed the first book and now want more. (Unless the first book sucks, but we’ll talk about that another time.) But I also need the sequel to be a standalone story, which people can read without being confused by what they missed in the first book. I’m struggling with how much back-story to use and how much to leave to the occasional reference. I don’t think I’ve done too badly – there isn’t a prologue, at least, and characters don’t say things like ‘As you know, this is all because blah blah blah...’ – but it’s still new ground to me.

Ugh. Anyway, the edits on Queen of the World have been slightly delayed due to unavoidable publisher workload, but everything is still on schedule. That, added with my employment status, is why I’m writing so much at the moment. And also why I’m basically emptying my brain into this blog. I don’t think this is a great blog post, but I feel a bit better. So thanks. –grins-

And please feel free to comment if you have any ideas of experience with this kind of bewilderment.

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