It Ain't Over 'Til It Is

NaNoWriMo 2012 is drawing to a close. I 'won' on the 20th, but still have five chapters or so (about 7k-ish to go) before my novel (Draegith) is finished. I am going to end up at only 60k, which is actually 10k less than the final tally for last year's book (Fnerge!). Even though I was aiming for 70k, I'm not really surprised i didn't make it.

Fnerge! had a ton of characters and hopped viewpoints regularly. In many ways it was a much more complex story. Draegith is told almost entirely from the viewpoint of the MC, except for a few brief sections where she is either not conscious or information important to the plot (that she isn't privy to) needs to be passed on to the reader. the geographic area covered in Fnerge! was vast, several entire worlds worth. In Draegith, we only see one small part of one continent. Draegith does have far more emotional content in terms of exploring the MC's relation to her world, which is why it even came close in length to Fnerge!.

I've learned a ton from the process this year. As I've noted over and over again, doing more groundwork and outlining was incredibly helpful. It wasn't easy, but I managed to average 2.5k a day for most of this month. I had several days with wordcounts in the 3k range, and my highest day ever--4.5k last Tuesday. Without all the groundwork I did in October this wouldn't have happened.

However, I've also learned just how inadequate the prep I did really is. I will likely do a much more comprehensive outline for the next book, especially in terms of worldbuilding and character development. It's encouraging to see where improvements can be made, though. And I feel like I've made huge strides in my storytelling, as well as learning a ton about what I need to learn a ton about :) The first step on the road to wisdom is recognizing ignorance.

I'm not really very happy with the novel, unfortunately. This is a first draft, so I don't expect much out of the writing, but it actually reads fairly well. Still rough around the edges, but not too shabby. The story, however, just isn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. Lacks oomph, somehow. Once I'm done with it I'll set it aside for a month or two and then come back to it and see if I'm just feeling blah because I'm worn out, or if it really is lacking somehow. And, is so, try to figure out how to fix it.

Which leads into the final topic for today. I've recently become acquainted with an entire category of thingee-stuffs: plot-aids. I bought a set of Story Cubes for me and my son to play with (he's three). Really fun. They aren't a game, exactly, more of a way of playing together. The set came with nine six-sided dice, each one bearing a pictogram on each face (all different). Things like a smiley face or a bug or an airplane. So the idea is to roll however many cubes, then make up a story based on the images that come up. Plus, little kids love rolling dice, so the whole enterprise works out well.

I've found that I really enjoy working out stories based on random prompts like this. I've never lacked for ideas to write about for my own stories, so I don't need anything to break through 'writer's block" (never had it; not sure I even believe in it), but as a tool for sparking creativity, I like the idea of these sorts of things. Or just for fun :) I've ordered another set of Story Cubes with different pictures (called Story Cubes: Actions), as well as a set of cards called Tell Tale, which are the same idea, just cards instead of dice. I'm also messing around with an app called FIG (Fiction Idea Generator) and considering several other games/tools, mainly The Storymatic. I'll let you all know what comes of these explorations.

And that's it for this week.

Next Big Thing

Rebecca Schwarz tagged me to talk about my Next Big Thing. She is the author of the short stories Flotsam, Fairview 619, and the forthcoming The Gyre. Her latest WIP is Inside Out (working title).

 

Although I've put out a number of short stories as well as a novelette (through my imprint, Step5 Transmedia) it might be better to call my upcoming release(s) my FIRST Big Thing(s), since it (they—depending on how editing goes) will be my first novel-length work(s).  Further muddling the issue is the, erm… next Next Big Thing, the first novel in a planned trilogy that I'm gearing up to write during this year's NaNoWriMo.

10 questions about your Next Big Thing:

1. What is the title of your work in progress?

Fnerge! is either the name of the first book or the name of the duology, or possibly the leading phrase of the title (as in Fnerge! Chosen1 and Fnerge! 2Worlds).

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

My interest in the transformative process is essentially boundless. The seeds of this work were generated by Greg Bear's Blood Music and the merge scenes from Rudy Rucker's 'Ware Tetrology. I wanted to do a near-future thriller/monster book involving a nano-infected menace (essentially an SF draped version of the blob). Instead I wrote a science fantasy set in schizoid secondary world/universe-next-door. With miniature dragons.

Sometimes I wonder if there is any sense at all to be made of the way my creative faculty functions.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Science Fantasy is what I'm going with. With some horrific elements, of course. Also, it's kind of YA.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in the movie?

The protagonists and generally human characters could all be played by The Goonies. One of the main villains is modeled after Stephen King, so maybe he would be interested in a non-cameo? The Xyzzerns (and other nonhumans) could be played by whoever-it-was-who-animated-Gollum. Mereg the evil supercomputer could be played by Hal 3000, and Tommy Lee Jones could be Agent Alpha (that one is obvious).

5. What is a brief synopsis of the book?

A race of tiny dragons gives a young man (Andy) the power of The Mayhem in exchange for helping them defeat an evil supercomputer on the 2worlds (a bifurcated alternate plane). Other players and powers become involved, pursuing related and opposing agendas. Also, romance happens. But not with the talking dog.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It depends on how technical you want to be about defining self-publishing. I don't require an agent for submissions to my publishing company (Step5 Transmedia), and I am fairly likely to accept my own work for publication. But I won't be publishing it. My company will.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I wrote most of it during NaNoWriMo in 2011. The last 10% took me another two months. I just recently started editing in earnest, and I expect that to take another few months. Hopefully I'll be releasing the books in the first quarter of 2013.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

I would love for these books to be compared to the work of writers like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Rudy Rucker, Piers Anthony, L. Ron Hubbard, Stephen King, and Andre Norton. The setting and story are such a cross-genre mish-mash that I really can't think of anything specifically like it, but it has tons of inspiration drawn from bits and pieces of the works of the authors listed above.


9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I guess I already answered this one in #8, above. One addition: if it isn't clear, the title (Fnerge!) is very inspired by Fnord (phrase used to 'sign off' in Steve Jackson Game's writings about the Illuminati).

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Erm… lizardmen, spiders, Ankabi, and Wuzza? Furry, insane, dwarves-in-space analogs called Gonzoi? Creepy meta-mythological characters? No tea? Did I mention romance (but not with the talking dog)?

Here are my picks for the next Next Big Thing:

 

(forthcoming)

NaNo Looms …

By NaNo, I of course mean NaNoWriMo. Which starts in less than a month. Me-oh-my, what shall I do?

I'm planning—just like last year—on writing at least the first 60,000 words of a new novel. New to this year's goal (now goals, I suppose) is this: My 60,000 words will be cohesive enough to publish without extensive revisions. I am actually hoping for closer to 70,000 this time around, but I'm not holding myself to that.

This new addition to my NaNo goals has some caveats. I fully expect my characters to evolve as I write. Thus, early scenes may need redrafting to reflect characterization more accurately. I'm not scared of redrafting to fix plot holes, add foreshadowing, etc. What I most emphatically don't want to have to do is redraft to fix structural problems—this being exactly what I'm going through with my first novel, Fnerge!.


(Yes, that last sentence is punctuated correctly. The title, Fnerge!, includes an exclamation point. Interesting related [-ish] point: I haven't decided yet whether the subtitle will be The Two Worlds, plain old Two Worlds, or the hopefully exotic 2Worlds [inspired by my publishing company's name, Step5 Transmedia]. We'll see.)

This looming of the NaNo has, in conjunction with one other factor, produced a significant change in my office layout. About a month ago I converted my desk to a standing desk, by the simple expedient of putting some paint cans and 2x4s under the desk's supports. I've really been liking it. Unfortunately, I messed my hip up somehow (probably jogging) last week. Standing for even an hour is painful, and the two to four hours I will need daily (minimum) are out of the question.

So I've had to lower my desk back to a sitting desk, which is somewhat discouraging, but unavoidable—if I want to succeed at this year's NaNo.

An explanation: I converted my desk to a standing desk for the same reason I've been jogging so much. I'm still pursuing the goal of losing 40 lbs this year. So far I've lost between 30 and 35, so I'm very close. But I've been on something of a plateau for the last few months. The extra calorie burn, plus general energy boost (seriously, definitely kept my metabolism burning harder) has been helping, especially the last week or so. Hopefully I will be able to make up for lost ground after turkey season.

Or, even more hopefully, my hip will get better on it's own before or during NaNo, and I can reconvert my desk. Or de-unconvert it :)

Back to the topic at hand. In order to facilitate a less revision prone draft, I'm taking a few steps. These are the same steps I've come to believe in taking for all my work, so this is not really a surprise. I am doing a reasonable amount of background writing, re: characters, geography, history, etc. I am doing an outline, a much more cohesive (if not less pithy) one than last year. I'm putting way more thought into what I'm going to write, and much further in advance of the actual writing.

Most importantly, I'm going into all this with a clearer understanding of Story elements than I had last time around. Hopefully this will help keep me from running into any major snags as well, like the confusion-of-direction that plagued much of my short story writing earlier this year. Crosses fingers …


I've got high hopes that this year's NaNo will be just the boost my writing needs to make a more permanent transition to (mostly) long-form fiction. I think it will. Wish me luck.