Whoo-ee, it's been a busy few months. I think I've been to... technically three cons since the last update, making five this year, and then, of course, there was NaNoWriMo (during the course of which I wrote 40k on one novel, then ditched it and wrote 50k of Dryden 2.0 in the last 8 days instead, clocking in a couple of 10k+ days, and a grand total of over 90k for the month, which is the most I've ever done in that sort of time frame. Check that awesome graph!).
And then I got a job at Waterstone's. Just a Christmas temp, for now, but of course it's extremely busy already and I am rather enjoying myself getting to be excited about books all day long. I really should stop clapping and cheering when customers who go off on an epic quest to find one specific book return to me at the till waving it triumphantly in the air, though.
In any case, that's what I've been up to and why the blog has vanished a little! I was all set to do a Fantasycon write up (probably still should; I have lots of notes and had a lot of fun) but was in the process of writing a short story (more like novella, and the most wonderful writing experience I've had in years) over the con anyway, and from then on life sort of hasn't stopped.
But! NaNo is over now, and I shall try to do some catch up here (and on my emails, which have been a bit neglected in all the hectic rush; sorry about that, patient people).
Oh, and Hanith is now out and about in very exclusive printed form; the British Fantasy Society journal finally landed at the very end of November, and I am at the moment rather pleased with how he turned out. I only have the one copy myself, so it's being passed around friends who want to see, but it's reassuring and encouraging to have him in print now.
Onwards!
Showing posts with label Hanith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hanith. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
A Pleasant Surprise
Hi there, been a while. A pretty busy while, as it happens. Done lots of proofreading for friends, a lot more running around and helping/cleaning/tidying for friends (and me), and not nearly enough writing. In fact, after some discussion with a couple of folks, I'm halfway through a blogpost about writer's block.
But that'll have to wait another day or two.
Back in February, my very first post on this blog included a short list of stuff I needed to get done. I actually managed all of them. And Hanith, that very first short story I submitted to the British Fantasy Society journal, has now been accepted for publication.
It'll be a while before it makes it into the wild, but I've had a little contact with the folks who run the journal, and they all seem lovely, so I can't imagine it'll go wrong at this point.
So there we go. Step one, achieved. Step two, get another one (or Dryden) out there.
All cool, yeah, nothing to see here. Totally composed and professional, that's me.
But that'll have to wait another day or two.
Back in February, my very first post on this blog included a short list of stuff I needed to get done. I actually managed all of them. And Hanith, that very first short story I submitted to the British Fantasy Society journal, has now been accepted for publication.
It'll be a while before it makes it into the wild, but I've had a little contact with the folks who run the journal, and they all seem lovely, so I can't imagine it'll go wrong at this point.
So there we go. Step one, achieved. Step two, get another one (or Dryden) out there.
All cool, yeah, nothing to see here. Totally composed and professional, that's me.
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Prose in motion
Quiet day after all the Marvel excitement, today. Read all the comics I borrowed, so I can give them back next time. Managed a couple of little bits and pieces around the house, including starting on clearing some space for Dance Central to happen. Soon...
A couple of things are in motion, and indeed in the post, winging their ways to me to remind me that people are amazing sometimes, and exceptionally kind and generous. More on those when they arrive.
Otherwise I generally fell into writing and got stuck all day. The current Hanith short story has more than doubled in length today, and thoroughly distracted me from everyone else. Poor Dryden isn't getting a look in at all at the moment.
What happened there is that I drew up a week plan and assigned one short story idea to each day. When I immediately went, "Damn, I'm looking forward to Friday," that clarified which short story I should obviously be writing next, so out went the plan and in came Hanith. I've even managed to hit the point where I can actually write, where I stop hunting for precisely the right word and put in info-dump filler for now. It's a point where I know what information my characters need to convey but phrasing it in a pretty way is going to take far too long, so they just get on with it and say it.
Ie, first draft. Though it's surprising how much of that kind of blunt, straight-to-the-point dialogue ends up staying, actually. Often it just works, and you don't need the prettification you think you do. People are blunt sometimes, especially when they're tired or stressed or angry or in pain, which characters in the middle of a medieval fantasy adventure usually are...
A couple of things are in motion, and indeed in the post, winging their ways to me to remind me that people are amazing sometimes, and exceptionally kind and generous. More on those when they arrive.
Otherwise I generally fell into writing and got stuck all day. The current Hanith short story has more than doubled in length today, and thoroughly distracted me from everyone else. Poor Dryden isn't getting a look in at all at the moment.
What happened there is that I drew up a week plan and assigned one short story idea to each day. When I immediately went, "Damn, I'm looking forward to Friday," that clarified which short story I should obviously be writing next, so out went the plan and in came Hanith. I've even managed to hit the point where I can actually write, where I stop hunting for precisely the right word and put in info-dump filler for now. It's a point where I know what information my characters need to convey but phrasing it in a pretty way is going to take far too long, so they just get on with it and say it.
Ie, first draft. Though it's surprising how much of that kind of blunt, straight-to-the-point dialogue ends up staying, actually. Often it just works, and you don't need the prettification you think you do. People are blunt sometimes, especially when they're tired or stressed or angry or in pain, which characters in the middle of a medieval fantasy adventure usually are...
Thursday, 6 March 2014
Inching forwards
Current writing status:
1 short story submitted, awaiting a response (Hanith)
1 short story in progress to be submitted by March 15 (Tick Tock)
Feedback trickling in for Dryden
Plotting/signing up to April's Camp NaNoWriMo for Dryden's sequel
It's a lot of hard work to remind myself that all those points up there actually count as progress. They do, honest. Really. But I get very frustrated with the inching part of inching forwards. Especially when Dryden was mostly finished in current form within the space of 30 days. The fact that three entire months, a quarter of a year, three times the length of time it took to write the thing in the first place, have now passed since then and I'm not really any further on at all grates like you wouldn't believe. Finishing the sucker was the big hurdle, supposedly. But the longer it takes, the less confident I feel in it. There's a very good reason I submitted Hanith ASAP - given enough time, I will learn to hate everything about something I've written and never let it see the light of day again.
I'd point you to all my unfinished fanfiction if I thought you needed proof, but that could be embarrassing for us all.
Anyway. Frustration. Dissatisfaction. Cabin fever. Et cetera.
Good stuff has been happening too, though. Mostly Loki-related. Because Loki is fun, in all forms.
Re: Marvel Loki, I have acquired the big display stand for Thor 2 DVDs from my nearest supermarket, so I have Anthony Hopkins or Tom Hiddleston squinting at me wherever I stand in my bedroom. It's very pretty and frees up my bookcase for actual books, so that's a win. Also, Loki-centric Marvel comics are most amusing.
Re: non-Marvel Loki, I was given a copy of Joanne Harris's The Gospel of Loki at the last local NaNoWriMo meetup. Read it the next day. I am simultaneously giddily in love and slightly worried that my infrequent ESP (Extra-Sensory Plagiarism) has struck again, because at the current time Dryden himself is very, very Loki-esque. Ah well, at least he's in good company.
I'd do a proper review of Gospel of Loki except that there are already dozens out there that all say exactly what I would: exceedingly good fun, delightfully narrated, pleasingly interweaving the classic myths with new material, and rounding off a lightly-explained magic system with consistent rules (which is hard work with old myths!). So yes. I enjoyed that a lot.
It's the little things that help, when the big things are trapped in limbo.
1 short story submitted, awaiting a response (Hanith)
1 short story in progress to be submitted by March 15 (Tick Tock)
Feedback trickling in for Dryden
Plotting/signing up to April's Camp NaNoWriMo for Dryden's sequel
It's a lot of hard work to remind myself that all those points up there actually count as progress. They do, honest. Really. But I get very frustrated with the inching part of inching forwards. Especially when Dryden was mostly finished in current form within the space of 30 days. The fact that three entire months, a quarter of a year, three times the length of time it took to write the thing in the first place, have now passed since then and I'm not really any further on at all grates like you wouldn't believe. Finishing the sucker was the big hurdle, supposedly. But the longer it takes, the less confident I feel in it. There's a very good reason I submitted Hanith ASAP - given enough time, I will learn to hate everything about something I've written and never let it see the light of day again.
I'd point you to all my unfinished fanfiction if I thought you needed proof, but that could be embarrassing for us all.
Anyway. Frustration. Dissatisfaction. Cabin fever. Et cetera.
Good stuff has been happening too, though. Mostly Loki-related. Because Loki is fun, in all forms.
Re: Marvel Loki, I have acquired the big display stand for Thor 2 DVDs from my nearest supermarket, so I have Anthony Hopkins or Tom Hiddleston squinting at me wherever I stand in my bedroom. It's very pretty and frees up my bookcase for actual books, so that's a win. Also, Loki-centric Marvel comics are most amusing.
Re: non-Marvel Loki, I was given a copy of Joanne Harris's The Gospel of Loki at the last local NaNoWriMo meetup. Read it the next day. I am simultaneously giddily in love and slightly worried that my infrequent ESP (Extra-Sensory Plagiarism) has struck again, because at the current time Dryden himself is very, very Loki-esque. Ah well, at least he's in good company.
I'd do a proper review of Gospel of Loki except that there are already dozens out there that all say exactly what I would: exceedingly good fun, delightfully narrated, pleasingly interweaving the classic myths with new material, and rounding off a lightly-explained magic system with consistent rules (which is hard work with old myths!). So yes. I enjoyed that a lot.
It's the little things that help, when the big things are trapped in limbo.
Monday, 10 February 2014
Never enough hours in the day
About a year ago Dryden informed me I'd be writing a novel about him.
He just turned up one day, nameless and superior and amused by his
current situation, in media res, and left me to work out the rest for
myself. I wrote a few of the scenes that laid out his character best,
but 2013 was a fairly tumultuous year for me, and I simply didn't have
the time or concentration to actually write the full thing for quite
some months.
Then November came along. I've been a fan of National Novel Writing Month for years, and actually managed to make the 50-thousand-words-in-30-days requirement to win in both 2011 and 2012, though both those projects were abandoned promptly on the 1st December, eternally unfinished. For 2013, I decided I'd up the ante, and aim for 75 thousand words in 30 days. 75k, I hoped, would be enough to actually get through Dryden's plot, from beginning to end, to put down one last full stop and declare the thing finished.
Finished is a magic word. One I haven't had much opportunity to use. I get distracted by other things, lose confidence in whatever it is I'm writing, and generally sigh and give up and go back to writing all the random little bits and pieces that never go anywhere, or try to get a proper job again.
I finished (cue gasps!) Dryden's first draft at 74k on the 30th of November, wrote another 1k to make it past both my targets for the month, and put it aside to start editing soon (and went off to start buying Christmas presents).
Things have been a bit busy since then. I've not just had Christmas and New Year, but been up and down the country fairly non-stop (it feels like it, at least). And there's a lot coming up too:
If I get Dryden edited in time and think it would help, there's this at the end of February. (Though it costs to enter, and that's an inhibiting factor for me right now.) (EDIT: Yeah, that didn't happen. Dryden isn't ready and I had too much on to get it there.)
I must, absolutely must, find the time to do my final proofreading/copy-editing exam and send it back to the sfep approved group who did my training course last March, within the one year deadline from said course date. (Though this requires my brain to be functioning at full capacity.) (EDIT: Did it, managed it, with a day or two to spare. Now I never have to think of it again.)
If I find time to write that steampunk short story I've had in my head for a long time now, there's this anthology (or two) which it fits nicely, to which I need to submit ideally by March 15th. (EDIT: Yup, managed that, just waiting to hear now.)
If I find time to finish up that other LGBT fantasy short story, there's also this rather nice edition of the BFS journal which I need to get to before May 5th. (EDIT: Of course, I went and worked on that one first, and finished a first draft of the thing just shy of the 5k upper limit at about half past midnight on what's now the 15th Feb. Oh well. It's all progress, I suppose. And I think it's quite cute. EDIT AGAIN: And it's submitted now, late on the 25th Feb, so we'll see what happens.)
Oh, and I'm currently ill, for the first time in about 18 months. Yay!
So here we go. Busy, busy, and a blog to boot. Wish me luck.
Then November came along. I've been a fan of National Novel Writing Month for years, and actually managed to make the 50-thousand-words-in-30-days requirement to win in both 2011 and 2012, though both those projects were abandoned promptly on the 1st December, eternally unfinished. For 2013, I decided I'd up the ante, and aim for 75 thousand words in 30 days. 75k, I hoped, would be enough to actually get through Dryden's plot, from beginning to end, to put down one last full stop and declare the thing finished.
Finished is a magic word. One I haven't had much opportunity to use. I get distracted by other things, lose confidence in whatever it is I'm writing, and generally sigh and give up and go back to writing all the random little bits and pieces that never go anywhere, or try to get a proper job again.
I finished (cue gasps!) Dryden's first draft at 74k on the 30th of November, wrote another 1k to make it past both my targets for the month, and put it aside to start editing soon (and went off to start buying Christmas presents).
Things have been a bit busy since then. I've not just had Christmas and New Year, but been up and down the country fairly non-stop (it feels like it, at least). And there's a lot coming up too:
If I get Dryden edited in time and think it would help, there's this at the end of February. (Though it costs to enter, and that's an inhibiting factor for me right now.) (EDIT: Yeah, that didn't happen. Dryden isn't ready and I had too much on to get it there.)
I must, absolutely must, find the time to do my final proofreading/copy-editing exam and send it back to the sfep approved group who did my training course last March, within the one year deadline from said course date. (Though this requires my brain to be functioning at full capacity.) (EDIT: Did it, managed it, with a day or two to spare. Now I never have to think of it again.)
If I find time to write that steampunk short story I've had in my head for a long time now, there's this anthology (or two) which it fits nicely, to which I need to submit ideally by March 15th. (EDIT: Yup, managed that, just waiting to hear now.)
If I find time to finish up that other LGBT fantasy short story, there's also this rather nice edition of the BFS journal which I need to get to before May 5th. (EDIT: Of course, I went and worked on that one first, and finished a first draft of the thing just shy of the 5k upper limit at about half past midnight on what's now the 15th Feb. Oh well. It's all progress, I suppose. And I think it's quite cute. EDIT AGAIN: And it's submitted now, late on the 25th Feb, so we'll see what happens.)
Oh, and I'm currently ill, for the first time in about 18 months. Yay!
So here we go. Busy, busy, and a blog to boot. Wish me luck.
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