Ripples in Speculative Fiction

Drafting continues on the new novel, more in bursts than in a steady drip that I’ve used in the past. I’ve been writing for a day or two and then life forces me away for a couple days, then I mosey on back to it. But according to my new target of writing a 100 words a day, I should have 3100 words as of today. In actuality, I have 3900! So … crushing this new target.

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In reality, a 100 words a day is a very low target. It’s hard not to write a 100 words when you sit down to write for more than 10 minutes. Most writers I know of target 250 words as an absolute minimum (which will  translate to a ~90,000 word novel in one year). Annnd it’s NaNoWriMo right now, so there’s lots of writers out there targeting 1667 words a day, but not this guy.

1667 words a day? Madness! Even if I could eek out the time, I don’t have a super tight grasp of the plot right now to do that. I write what I can now, and then spend the rest of the day or several days mulling over where it needs to go next. Which, of course, NaNoWriMo proponents would say is kinda the point, force you out of your head and onto the page without concern for quality (that’s what editing is for). But I’m not up for a marathon right now.

As for the novel itself, I like what I got so far. But already secondary characters are coming alive and becoming interesting and throwing up my early plans into disarray. I’m not too worried about it though, one part I’ve resigned myself to quite a bit of editing work, and one part I’m still dubious this novel with sort itself out. I’m “writing in the dark” as they say, and I’m okay with this novel staying there and never coming out if necessary.

For the moment, it feels good to just be writing again.

Well, it finally happened. I was wondering when it would. I got sick of outlining and planning and researching and threw up my hands in exasperation and just started drafting.

And after thinking about it awhile, this is exactly like how every one of my other novels has gone. And yet, I expected this time to be different. I really wanted to have a whole outline and clear picture of characters and plot and setting and …. It was going to be easy this time, smooth, not as much editing work. I should’ve known better.

I honestly don’t know why I suffer writing amnesia so much. It really is like after I finish one novel, I never remember what the writing process was like so I’m forced to relearn the same lessons over and over (not sure if that’s a description of hell or insanity, but here we are). Another personal writing fallacy I recently discovered, I’ve always maintained that writing the opening act is always the easiest and most fun part for me. One of the reasons I’ve delayed beginning drafting for so long is I didn’t have a clear picture where to start this beast of a novel. And then I did something crazy, I thought back to writing the openings of my other novels.

I’ve written five novels to date, the openings for two of them went superfast and easy (The Elgin Deceptions and the alternate history steampunk). The other three– The other three were painful, slow and filled with a lot of head holding and questioning of life decisions. So why would I expect this one to be any different? (Followed quickly by, why do I do this? Which I then remembered how much I love it—it’s like a bike, it’s better once you get going.)

At any rate, I’ve begun drafting and truth be told, I’m still a little pessimistic on this one. I’ve decided to target writing 100 new words a day from now until the end of 2018. If that holds, that’ll put me at about 8200 words, which should be about a third to halfway through the first act. That should be enough time for me to really assess whether this novel’s got legs or whether I need face reality and shift to another more fruitful project in the new year.

And yeah, 100 words a day is a far cry from previous targets, but this novel is a beast, and I’ve been removed from the discipline of drafting for a while, so a nice low bar to clear for the moment suits me just fine.

Whoa, I’ve missed more posts than I thought. Ah, well. Life has seemed to accelerate once again, and time is increasingly scarce. At this point, I’ve accepted that that’s just the pace of life and it will likely get worse before it gets better. As a result, writing and writing related tasks have fallen further into the cracks of my life.

I continue to research a new novel series idea. Taken from a 30,000 foot view, I’ve actually made substantial progress. The novel seed-idea has some inherently difficult storytelling problems (at least from my POV and writing experience) and I’ve worked through them (or have a framework to work through them). I’ve also started an outline with the first few chapters sketched. This is new for me—I’m not normally an outliner, but this new novel series is much bigger in scope than what I’ve typically done before (except for the alternate history steampunk book). It’s a sprawling epic-fantasy/space-opera type of scope and I really rather not do the revision work I normally have to do when I pants it like for the Sunken City Capers books.

Speaking of which, the last and final Sunken City Capers book is going to be my next project. If I’m not drafting book 1 this new novel series by Jan. 1, 2019, I’m going to switch over and write book 5 in the SCC world. Otherwise, I’m going to finish the new novel series book 1 and then switch over to finishing SCC. Either way, I suspect book 5 will hit stores 2020 at the latest (when in 2020 remains to be seen).

And while my writing output has diminished, my reading output has skyrocketed due almost exclusively to audio books. I took a while to warm up to them, but they just fit so perfectly into the cracks of my life (working out, doing dishes, commuting, etc.) that I’m able to get through quite a bit. I’ve currently read 15 fiction books and 12 nonfiction books to date. My favorite so far is the Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown, it has a rough opening act in book 1, but it’s so worth it. It’s a rare series where each subsequent book is better than the one before it. It’s a league above the Hunger Games in my opinion (which is its closest comparative).

I’ll try to write more consistently on the monthly schedule going forward, but at this point, no promises.

Well this past month as been rabbit hole of personal finance. All my writing time had been sucked away reading financial books, building spreadsheets and the general cleaning up of financial house that needs to happen every few years. And while fiction words were not written, nor any progress on the research front, it was a very valuable (heh) experience for me (although not monetarily–despite my hopes, money did not magically appear out of nowhere).

The process of cleaning financial house helped me bring into focus why I enjoy writing, and that in turn helped bring into focus my writing goals. I had been feeling a bit listless this past year, but after this whole experience I feel like the ship has righted and I have a plan. I love plans. I love executing plans and I’ve found over the years, we, as human beings, tend to hit the targets we set for ourselves. So, I’m excited about my new plan and have already started to execute it.

My kid’s schools has flyers up in the hallway about Wildly Important Goals (WIG) that I walk by every day when I drop her off. Clearly, it’s made an impact. I’ve set a WIG and since the goal was made in light of why I enjoy doing something so much, I feel like this WIG has staying power and will help power my writing ship for years to come. Time to execute!

Well, I missed April’s blog post. The first Saturday since I dropped to once a month updates, and I missed it—oh, well. I’m going to blame it on playing Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4. I actually got it for Christmas but delayed playing it until I was between writing projects. I thought it would be 10-15 hours of distraction—ha! I should’ve read the reviews more closely. Awesome game though, I’d highly recommend to any gamer that likes sci-fi.

I finished the alternate history steampunk novel, query letter, and synopsis back in March; and I’ve sorted through agents and have started querying—so that’s one 2018 goal done. And with the now regular addition of listening to audio books while working out (I know I previously said they weren’t for me, but they’re just so dang efficient), I’m up to 3 fiction books read and 6 nonfiction books. I’ll have to pick up the pace on the fiction books. I’m currently listening to one I don’t particularly care for, but I’m a little more than halfway and the next book up is one I’m really looking forward to so I’m eager to get through the less than good book.

I’ve begun research on a new novel series. I’m excited about the setting and the central idea, but I need to spend some time to get the setting right. Once the setting has gelled in my head, then I’ll start populating it with conflict and characters and then start drafting. I miss drafting, the thrill of discovering a story. I haven’t the slightest idea when I’ll start drafting again, but I hope it’s soon. I’d like to have most of the novel done before the end of the year. I hope to have a better estimate to when I can start drafting next time, until then!

Prepping the alternate-history steampunk novel for novel submission is done. Like many of my projects, it wrapped up unexpectedly and with much relief. I’m heartened by the fact that every time I read it, that I still like it and think it’s good. A lot of times after the fifth plus read through, I get so sick of a novel it starts to make my head hurt. This novel wasn’t like that. I got tired of it at times for sure, but I still always really liked it. So, I have some hopes.

Now I need to comb through the agent listings to find an agent that will be a good fit for both the book and myself. This does not look to be an enjoyable task, mainly since it’s tedious, boring, mind-numbing work that takes away from actual writing. There are a lot of factors to consider before approaching an agent, and good-ole-fashioned excel seems to be about the only way to get it all down to a manageable amount of data to sort through and rank-order. A quick five-minute search on one website that lists agents listed about 200 agents that might possibly fit the broad parameters I put in to match my book. That’s a lot to get through and only one website.

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I also decided at the start of the year, that I’d drop my already sparse blogging schedule from first and third Saturday a month to just the first Saturday. I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to writing (such that I don’t think I’ve hit the 10 hour a week target once this year so far) and writing a blog post sucks down time much better spent elsewhere. Once a month is as low as I’ll go, since I do like posting at least that much for myself for posterity and goal tracking reasons.

Now all I need to do is decide what the next project is ….

I think I’m done with the editing phase of the alternate history steampunk novel. Now it’s time to let it sit while I wrap up the submission package materials. I have the agent query done, and now I’m wrestling with the synopsis.

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I had two versions of the synopsis laying around from several years ago for a writers swap (I ultimately did not enter) and ooh boy are they both terrible. The first was six pages long, the second was four. Guidelines say no more than two pages double spaced. Two pages! Madness!

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So now my mornings are spent ruthlessly cutting the synopsis while trying to make it all coherent and engaging. I hope to have that wrapped in the next week, then I’ll focus outlining book 2. Then one more read through for a coherency check and polish and off to agents! Not really looking forward to that part–never much fun to receive rejection after rejection after rejection, but it’s the game all writers have to play. I’m hoping to start submitting by mid-March.

After that … I’m not sure. Either I’m going to start a whole new series, or finish up Sunken City Capers with Book 5. I’m leaning toward wrapping Sunken City Capers up, the marketing push in January has helped the series and there are encouraging signs (and I still have much more marketing mojo to unleash). I also think the time away from the Sunken City Capers series has done me well, and now I kinda want to check in with them to see what they’ve been up to.

I think I’m nearing that point on a project where you start to get sick of it; where another editing pass fills you with dread. I’ve dusted off my alternate-history steampunk novel and started editing some of the character arcs of the two main protagonists. Of course, I only intended to edit one of them, but, naturally, in the course of doing that I had a revelation about the other main character and here I am. I can’t seem to stop making work for myself.

I’m hoping to be done with those edits by the end of the month. I’ve written a draft of an agent query letter and sent it out to get some feedback from fellow writers. It’s annoying how one page can fill you with such angst. Is this novel middle grade, young adult, too long, too short?

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You’d think this would be clear cut, and I hope to God it is to some agent out there, but it’s not to me. I can’t seem to write cleanly in one genre. Which makes for great reading (in my opinion) but makes for terrible marketing and selling. Anyhoo, I need to settle on the query letter and then write the synopsis (oh, joy). I think I’ve settled on trying to take this novel the traditional route and see what comes of it.

I also think I’m going to follow the advice and not write book 2 in that series until it sells to a publisher. I really hate losing work, or being inefficient. Fortunately, I’m a writer, new ideas for novels are easy. Picking which one to write is hard. And so is staying in genre. In fact, the one I think I want to write is yet another one that doesn’t fit neatly into a genre that I know of—so good job brain. It’s like you aren’t listening to me at all.

Happy New Year!

The main thing I learned from 2017 was that marketing is pretty dang important. If you build it, they will not come. How could they, unless they knew it was there? Pretty obvious in retrospect. But alas, one of the goals of rapid releasing novels is getting Amazon algorithms to work in your favor (which is a kind of marketing). It didn’t work in my favor. In short, I’m losing money on this series. I hoped releasing book 4 would juice sales. It didn’t.

My analysis of what went wrong are three areas: book 1 characterizations weren’t as strong as they needed to be, I didn’t pay enough attention to also-boughts,  and I misbranded the cover. 1) Isa’s character in book 1 is a little too cocky/strong; I didn’t include enough pet-the-dog moments to make her more sympathetic. She’s a well rounded character, which emerges in later books, but no so much in book 1. I got a lot of comments that people liked the book but not Isa. 2)  When I released the books I paid a lot of attention to gaining early reviews, but not to the also-boughts. The also-boughts are how Amazon knows how to sell your books. So if your also-boughts are all over the place (cookbooks, comics, literary fiction) Amazon doesn’t know what to do with that to push your books. This is opposed to if your book appears in all science fiction heist books, then you stand a better chance to sell books to that audience, right? Whoops. I thought that would sort itself out; I was wrong again. 3) I love the covers, but they’re too reminiscent of Paranormal Romance genre, which was by design (Sunken City Capers has a lot in common with the core tropes of Paranormal Romance so I intentionally went after that). I thought I could get crossover appeal; I think I got neither. Those that like science fiction saw the cover and said that’s paranormal romance, and those that like paranormal romance saw the cover and said that’s science fiction and I missed the bulk of both crowds. This is impossible to really assess without getting new covers, but I’m already losing money and purchasing four new covers is a painful choice.

There are two direct actions that came out of this. First, marketing is going to be the central theme of 2018. Second, Sunken City Capers Book 5 will be the last book in that series. Book 4 ended on a huge cliffhanger, so I’m going to wrap that up (my OCD nature doesn’t let me leave threads hanging unresolved). I had always hoped to keep writing adventures for this band of mischievous ne’er-do-wells for the foreseeable future, but alas, the market doesn’t seem to support that at this time. This leads to another 2018 target: start writing in a new series.

The more sticks you have in a fire, the more likely one is to catch. So I’m switching gears in 2018 to an alternate history steampunk novel series I’ve had on the backburner while I worked on Sunken City Capers. My plan is to get a submission package together and start querying agents and publishers. I’m not sure I want to go that route yet, but I figure it’s a good exercise at any rate.

Another target I have for 2018 is to be more disciplined than I was in 2017. 2017 was intentionally a slower year for me to help me recover from 2016. It’s time to speed things up again (using both lessons learned from 2016 and 2017; not too fast, but not too slow either). My target is to spend at least 10 hours on writing a week. Now I just need to find a good way to track that.

2018 Targets:
1) Learn and apply marketing
2) Spend at least 10 hours a week on writing (including drafting, editing, and marketing)
3) Polish, write supporting material, Book 1 in alternate history steampunk series and start submitting it
4) Outline Book 2 in alternate history steampunk series
5) Write 50% of Book 2 in alternate history steampunk series**
6) Read 10 fiction books
7) Read 10 non-fiction books

**I may or may not do this. Conventional wisdom says not to write book 2 while submitting book 1 in case of changes.

It’s December already (made clear when my wife and I panicked shopped this past week on Amazon for Christmas–came out of nowhere!) and so that means looking back at the 2017 writing goals and assessing how well I met those targets. The goals for 2017 were:

1. Finish and publish Sunken City Capers Book 4
2. Read 10 fiction books
3. Read 10 nonfiction books.

All targets hit! Which is good, since 2017 was deliberately supposed to be a nice and easy year after the horror of 2016. I finished and published The Brummie Con: Sunken City Capers Book 4 in October (whew). That book was a lot harder to write than I thought it would be, so I’m quite pleased it’s done. I have some theories as to why it was such a pain, but I’ll let those thoughts stew some more before sharing.

To date, I’ve read 17 fiction books! I’m ridiculously excited about this. I love reading! Love. It. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish an 18th before the new year. This year also included my first audio book listened to–not really my thing. It was good for when I was painting my office (boring, tedious work) but after that I had to listen to it in the car and I learned I really prefer music and to let my thoughts drift on my drives. What would’ve really made it better was if the ebook came free with the audio so I could read it at night (audio books are expensive!). I read a whole lot faster than a narrator can, and the slow pace drove me a little nuts (I did train my brain to listen to it at 1.5x speed, but that was the fastest I could go and still process it). My personal favorites for the year were Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and The Green Mile by Stephen King, both were awesome (for different reasons), but I recommend either to anybody that will listen.

I read 11 nonfiction books that ranged a whole gamut from writing, to parenting, to finance, to Christian theology. My favorites for the year were Creating Character Arcs by K. M. Weiland, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and Heaven by Randy Alcorn (a bit repetitive, but a really, really worthwhile read for Christians).

So 2017 targets hit! It was a good, peaceful year compared to 2016, for which I’m grateful. Next time I’ll post a joint entry of 2017 lessons learned and 2018 targets.

Onward!