Category Archives: Writing

The Hack’s Progress

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Interesting writing session tonight.

I set out to get my 2,000 words and wound up with 2,800 (maybe a little bit more, if I have them explore the Stygian Drift). I have found I tend to do my best worldbuilding (or galaxy-building) when I don’t really overly plan out the universe…Kate, my female lead, led us straight to a crashed starship and now they’re off to hide in a particularly poisoned part of space.

Overall, 23,600 words out of an estimated 40,000. I think I’m right on track, but we’ll see if further developments ensue. Overall, very happy with this little novella so far.

I’ve been calling it Once, but I think I’m going to have to change that. Just not sure to what. Some of the words I’m playing with in it include “echoes,” “memory,” “ghostlight,” and “shadow,” none of which are lending themselves to titles right now.

I should get to bed. Alas, I am cranked. Might as well write more…

Suz vs. The Classics

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The classics

I am apparently going to read these very large books

Well, The Aeneid and The Iliad were waiting for me when I got home.

They’re a lot…thicker…than I thought they’d be.

(Insert that’s what she said joke here.)

(Insert insertion joke here.)

I’m doing this for you, my Iron Age Britons of Trojan descent! It’s all for you!

Go Holly

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Holly Lisle’s heading down the indie publishing route.

Holly is a fantasy/science fiction/romantic suspense writer with more than 30 published novels under her belt. She’s also the patron saint of all would-be writers; she’s maintained a website with a blog and writing courses/advice that I remember perusing as a sophomore in high school instead of doing my math homework. Over the years, her retinue has expanded to include paid courses, several of which I’ve taken when finances permitted. I haven’t always been able to participate in her classes to the best of my ability, but her teachings are sound, and she has always struck me as an intelligent, thoughtful writer, one who very much wants to help others succeed. She’s also always been honest about the difficulties of the traditional publishing route, even as she persisted with it.

Her decision to go indie is a momentous one, and I think it might well spur on this revolution. In an FAQ she’s putting together about indie publishing, she notes:

“[you should look into self-publishing]…first, not after publishers have tied up years worth of your work while they publish it badly, promote it not at all, and never, ever send you money for what they do sell.”

She also remarks on the changing legacy publishing industry. Ten years ago, she did slam self-pubbing. But the market has changed. Everything has changed. She also explains the Thor Power Tools decision, which heavily impacted traditional publishing and possibly led to many of the problems midlist writers face today. (And is it just me, or does Thor Power Tools sound like divinely inspired power drills?)

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Suz vs. Homer

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“Do we have a copy of The Iliad anywhere?” I asked Dad.

“What about Illinois?”

“No…The Iliad…you know, Greek verse, fall of Troy, Achilles…”

“Oh! Homer wrote that, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m rather hating on Homer right now…or rather, most free translations I can find.”

“I read that years ago,” he mused. “It was long…very bloody, too.”

“Yes, well, I need it for a project.”

My Cordeilla Project, all 100,000+ words of it, started out as a fantasy retelling of King Lear. Shortly thereafter, it spiraled into something even bigger, when I decided to include the “Trojan survivor” aspect of the mythos. Well, to be fair, it started including itself…and I decided at some point to follow Stacy’s advice and go big or go home. So I went big. Way big. Epic big.

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May I Live in Interesting Times

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Mom had Leo The Tech Guy on the radio on Saturday while I was getting my second cup of coffee. He had a young, self-published author who had gone through Amazon’s program. I think she was asking about marketing (I admit I was inhaling my coffee and missed the first couple of minutes), as the conversation mostly talked about websites, Twitter, and the like.

I thought it was pretty serendipitous — I hope I’m using that word correctly — and wrote down her name. I will check out her book once I’m finished rereading GoT, which will be in the next couple of days.

Looking at the gal’s website and blog made me think about what I should do with my own site, when the time comes. I’m not planning on doing anything at the moment — the Great Experiment is still, erm, stalling on my hard drive while I mess with Leir, Cordeilla and their wacky friends — but once I do finish my zombie tale…what next? Website with a blog on it? Pen name? I have one, I guess I should use it. Link to it through here?

Dammit, I worked in Internet marketing for two years. I know how to do a lot of this stuff, in practice if not in application. Aside from the friends I made, it’s the only decent thing I got out of that job. It’s just the theory of applying it to myself, rather than a client. I was reading an old friend’s blog, and she was struggling with much of the same stuff, and she actually put a name to why I’m finding this difficult — it feels pretentious.

Which, I understand, is something I need to get over one of these days…

Abandon All Hope

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Hark, the Santa Anas have arrived.

Actually, they might not be the Santa Anas. They might just be high winds — I’m not sure what the cutoff is. But I’m calling them Santa Anas anyway, because they are fierce. I woke up to the screen door banging around and the trees in the courtyard being thrashed within an inch of their lives.

The Santa Anas are an allergy sufferer’s nightmare, by the way.

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Storytime

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I just plowed through 3100 words on the possible self-pub experiment.

I feel…great. I’ll need to tweak some things later on, but once I got going, the words came easily, and the scene will act as a springboard for later events.

The story is, as of now, untitled. Its working title has been The Evil That Men Do (named for the Shakespeare line and the Iron Maiden song), although at the moment I’ve been calling it Purgatory. I wrote it in 2006 for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve come back to it over the years, cleaning it up as I can and picking at it as necessary.

I still like the story, the characters, the narrator. When I first started contemplating testing out self-pubbing, Purgatory/Evil came to mind immediately. It’s already a tough sell — a weird mashup of urban fantasy and post-apocalyptic hijinks, with zombies to taste — and the market is getting tougher. This is not a story I’m sure I could ever sell to an agent or publisher. So I pulled it out and looked it over and chopped off the entire second half.

Oh, and somewhere in between all that, I started on a short story set several years later, just to see what the narrator was up to. One thing led to another, and I suddenly had a more fleshed-out universe — and some ideas as to where to go with character development in Evil.

And here I am. It’s 1:30, I planned to be in bed hours ago, but I think I’ve set the stage to give the back end an appropriate rewrite. Which makes me happy.

Along with figuring out how to market myself as a freelance writer/editor, I’ve also got to consider marketing this thing. How do you drum up an audience? I could post snippets, I guess. Maybe a short story or two (if I can figure out how to write one — all of mine turn out long).

But I’ll figure that out tomorrow. Another fun day of editing ahead.