I’ll be attending this year’s Eastercon in London and appearing on the following panels:

7pm Friday 6th April – Sex & Fantasy on TV.
2pm Saturday 7th April – Who likes reboots?
1pm Sunday 8th April – Relative Dimensions (the limits of Doctor Who)

That’s a pretty light schedule that means you’re also likely to see me in the bar and in the audience for some great writers who are also attending, including (but not limited to):

- Gareth L Powell
- Kim Lakin-Smith
- Aliette de Bodard
- Adam Christopher
- Danie Ware
- Paul Cornell
- Justina Robson
- Adam Roberts

I tend to be pretty shy at these things but please do say hello.

The middle ground of any project is always, to me, when the doubts start to creep in and you start to second guess yourself. I think I’m realising that this is true in a more general way for a writer when you’re in the middle ground between novice and competent because you’re aware of all the good writers out there working just as hard as you; of the gap between what you have in your head and what you’ve got down on the page; of the need to press on but the need to refine to a razor’s edge.

I’ve been fighting in that kill zone* that drags so many down for a while now and so the last fortnight’s been a bit of a slog.

The full thrust of my focus has been on The Scarred God rewrite. I’ve finished the submission package rewrites, had some feedback on them, and and am pressing on with the tidying of the wider manuscript: just in case. However, I can’t say it’s been easy, I know the story so well by this point I do worry I keep sliding back into “phoning it in” which I think is one of the problems that tarnishes the previous draft. The difference this time is that I have specific changes in mind to tighten up the through line of the piece and to clean up the prose that should keep me on the straight and narrow. It’s a slog.

At least I won’t feel slightly ashamed the next time I send it out.

What’s hard for one project is good for another. On the positive side, I have been noodling along – albeit slowly – with All That Glitters and the good thing is that my inner editor is getting worked so hard he’s checked out on this one which is – generally speaking – a good thing for a first draft as it means you actually get a full draft done. I’m into act two and enjoying the change in rhythm from my normal work. Walking round the city is helping improve my scene setting too. All hail the mild weather!

Anyhow: stupid busy and so that’s all for now.

Mood: Slightly frayed…

* Fiction writer: drama’s my thing – go with it.

On All That Glitters I have paused composition to make sure Act 1 is OK with all the major pieces in the right places before I move on. I’m trying to avoid the significant structural changes in the second draft that have caused me quite a lot of lost time on previous projects by making sure I have a solid foundation. Given the structure of this book is, at its core, a crime story I also need to make sure the mystery elements are building in the right way. I think I’ll be back on composition by this time next week.

Speaking of old projects…

The Scarred God revisions are going well. I think. Presently, I’m working on tidying up the structure of the book with much recasting of back story and some reordering of scenes in the first and last acts. As an attempt to keep myself from wasting time on something that may not work at all, I’m taking the unusual step of showing the first 15k of the new draft to readers as soon as I’ve finished mucking about with them. This is a compare and contrast exercise to ensure the manuscript can be lifted into a reasonable state. We’ll see.

Whatever else, working this flat out, accelerator to the floor, is producing some useful insight into just where my limits are: turns out that, provided I don’t freak out, I can get much more done in a day than I would have thought a year ago. I’ve also learned that I find it much easier, and bizarrely enjoyable, to focus if I have to work at speed as I am much less likely to leave less agreeable tasks (like line editing) to one big long chunk at the end.

Oh. I don’t care what anyone says. This isn’t meant to be macho. Writing every day really does help.

Current mood: optimistic.

While it does feel a little like juggling, it is great to have a couple of things on the go and be able to switch between the two when I hit a wall on the other. The focus of a hard deadline really helps.

Progress on All That Glitters continues at a steady rate. The first act is just about in the bag at this point and so I’m about to take a pause and give it a once over pass. Again this isn’t something I’ve done before but is part of trying to be a bit more circumspect on first drafts in order to prevent endless redrafting…

*coughs*

That segues nicely into The Scarred God. Last week was about rereading the last draft to check my list of Things To Fix was still valid and start building a new outline that would tidy up the ending which is one of the last draft’s Glaring Issues.

It’s difficult reading back over something written some time ago: I’ve gotten a lot better since, there were some structural experiments that just don’t work and some lazy story elements that I’m determined to twist into something better. It’s heartening to be able to see the problems now as I can fix them but I feel a little let down by myself for not leaving it in a better state to begin with. It also underscores the need to have a firmer grasp on the story before drafting.

Lots to do.

Mood: determined not to drop the balls.

This week went much better on the writing front. The main change I’ve made is getting up a shade earlier again to give me enough time to write a few more words and not feel like I’m constantly on the back foot. It does mean I’m wiped out a bit earlier than before but my word count on All That Glitters is creeping up at a more reliable rate that means I have a chance of finishing the draft in a reasonable time frame.

On the revision front I’ve been looking at the viability of knocking The Scarred God into submission shape for the Angry Robot open submission period. It needs a bit of work before I’m happy submitting. First step is to work out how many adjustments are needed and any work will have to be done concurrent with the other book. They are substantially different and so really it’s only available time that’s the issue.

Mood: cautiously optimistic.

More next week…

Last week was a bad week. My schedule got messed up, I wound up writing at awkward times of the day and with large gaps between sessions and I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. Those are the breaks. Still: forward momentum was maintained even if it did feel like wading through syrup.

On the short story front, I intended to get at least one more of my pieces out there but I’m struggling to find markets for an eight thousand word story of the kind I have on my hard drive that pays. There just doesn’t seem to be much about at the moment. I’ll need to noodle on this some more over the next week.

This week is all about the novel. I’d like to complete the first act, give it a light polish and a small test read to make sure it’s working before I plunge on. We’ll see. In related news, Forever has test read well and so I believe the next draft is likely to be more of an editing pass than a heavy rewrite. This makes me happy.

My present mood is determined to make some actual forward progress.

I don’t ever really want to be one of those writers who can only compose when the wind is blowing south westerly, listening to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on repeat, wearing a toga and sipping wine from a plastic skull.

I only did that one time.

However, there are patterns in how I write. Generally, I write with music on unless I’m very tired or line editing.

I’ll compose first drafts to whatever fits the mood of the piece.

For example, with Forever I wrote most of the first draft while listening to Kings Of Leon because it made me think of travelling through a neon lit city at night, good bourbon and relationships falling apart. I have no idea why. In the case of All That Glitters, I’m taking a different approach as the language of the piece – in particular the voice of the narrator and the lead character – are so important, I’ve dispensed with lyrical music almost entirely and I’m listening to instrumental pieces.

In particular, I’m really enjoying cellist Zoe Keating’s stuff because – damn – that musician can play. I’m so glad I’ve seen her perform live. I’m blending that stuff with some more tradition classical favourites like the previously mentioned Puccini, Beethoven and soundtracks such as Master and Commander and Morse.

Naturally, all fight scenes are written to Metal. How about you?

NB – This is Zoe performing Tetrishead at Macworld 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmM13E6oxzY

I’m trying to review my progress with a bit more care and attention than I did last year to avoid feeling like large chunks of the year have just slid away like wet cake. When you have lots on – day job, friends, LIFE – it’s easy for things to slip. Rather than lose energy beating myself up about it, I’m trying to create systems that work for me. That’s what I’ve spent this weekend doing.

The good news for me is that January proved unequivocally that my best time to get work done is before work. Early starts enable me to have time without distractions, maintain forward momentum, feel positive that I’m in control of the project and stops a tough day disrupting everything. I can bank that. It also convinced me that thinking about my writing in a more structured way – I’ve always been a bit seat of the pants about first drafts – really does help.

I’m still not entirely sold on the merits of detailed outlining but we’ll have to wait for the end of this draft to really be certain.

The bad news is that things still got away from me towards the end of the month as deadlines loomed on other projects. The impact of this wasn’t as severe as last year because I am much better at recognising the signs and I have a number of hacks to maintain progress on the composition front from minimum word count to twelve sentences*. However, it does mean that all the other things I really need to start throwing into the mix get lost: submitting material, revising and thinking about what I’m doing further ahead than arriving at my desk.

This situation was brought home to me at the SFX Weekender when I saw how long ago it was since Stone got put out there and I considered the number of completed, unsold, stories on my hard drive not to mention the two novels festering there. I have every intention of trying to get an agent and publisher in the second half of the year. I need to pull my finger out and put my money where my mouth is. I also need to stop with the cliches.

Time to crack on!

* I think I picked this up from Adam Christopher’s blog but I can’t be sure. In any case, it’s for the nights when you are really flagging and so you just write twelve sentences. Enables forward momentum and rest. Use sparingly.

PS – Incidentally, if you haven’t read Stone you can still buy Issue 14 from Murky Depths here. Though if you’re strapped for cash there’s a wealth of my flash available right here, a reasonable range being: Pixies, After the Rain, Territory and Blink.

On the whole I prefer smaller events, as they offer more opportunity to chat with old friends and meet some new people. SFX may have changed my mind offering as it does a rather nice blend of literary SF, TV, Film and gaming that pulls in an epic crowd giving all those different media a chance to reach outside of their immediate fan base. It was fun to see people on the bill who I haven’t seen since my teens.

Highlights for me revolved largely around seeing friends I don’t really get to see enough given we’re scattered across the country, talking about writing, and seeing my own name on a magazine cover (this never gets old, though I really do need to get some more out there). The Just a Minute with Paul Cornell, China Miéville, Sarah Pinborough, Joe Abercrombie and Toby Whithouse really made me laugh. It’s a great game that’s particularly well suited to a room full of merry geeks.

The accommodation wasn’t great…and it was colder than a polar bear’s proverbial…but I don’t think I really stopped chatting, drinking and generally hanging out with people long enough to notice.

I suspect I will be visiting again next year. Maybe I’ll even manage to wangle my way onto a panel.

*hands shake* Maybe not…

I spent the last week revising the synopsis, adjusting the outline and making sure I knew enough about the characters.

There’s a point when all of that planning starts to feel like procrastination. I’ve decided that’s the point I should start writing and so today I wrote the opening scene. It feels pretty good to be working on fresh material.

As part of the state of the writer posts I’m doing here, I have added the project tracker back onto the side bar for the purposes of keeping me honest and I’m aiming to hit my 110k word count target by the end of April. From here I’m trying to build towards a duel schedule in order to reduce the elapsed time to a submission-ready draft and so I’m intending to use the short story I wrote in January to test if I can managed editing in the evenings at the same time as composing. This is a bit of a stretch with a demanding day job but I think I need to try it. At the moment I have a section of the year blocked out for revisions, just in case this doesn’t work.

Initial feedback from beta readers of Forever is more positive than I anticipated, proving that it probably was the right time to get some feedback as I had lost all critical distance from it, if I ever had any. The plan on that is to take it through another revision based on their feedback and then test it against one more reader before seeing if I can find a home for it. I’m still undecided what to do with The Scarred God though I would be lying if I said that Angry Robot’s submission window hadn’t caught my eye.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I should be writing.