Progress report

[gadgetmind]

Well, I started my first (only?) book last August and wandered in here with the short "I had a dream" thread. Since then, I've been lurking but not posting, and have taken a lot from here. I obviously need to work on putting something back in, but as I've never written anything before I've never really felt qualified.

Anyway, after the initial flurry, progress became patchy. It's just so hard to start writing after a long day at work, weekends are always busy, and getting down words that I'm happy with just takes so dratted long!

The longer days have revitalised me, and I'm now approaching the 100k word mark so just need the final push to the finish, which I expect to be in 25-30k words times. Pretty much all of the remaining scenes exist in outline form, with many having so many notes that writing them is easy. Others need more work, but I don't intend to let these block me, and I'll just get something in with the intention of reworking once I'm done.

I have run the first 70k words past a published SF author, and received encouraging feedback, which is hopefully honest. He's also asked if he can see more, which made my day!

My plan is to get it completed, then take a break during which I'll read through the three foot stack of books that are on my reading pile just gathering dust. Then I'll start polishing and looking at routes to market (yes, I know!) Fortunately my day job means that I don't need to stress about making any money from this, but it would be silly not to give it a go.

Ian

 

[Boneman]

Good luck, and keep us informed - it's always educational to see how someone makes it! And you're right, keep the day job, just in case it take a little longer than you think...

 

[gadgetmind]

The day job is under no threat whatsoever! As for "makes it" all I really want is to make it to the end, to get the story out of my head, and then to decide where to go next.

The parts of my book that I have enjoyed the most are about ten short stand-alone sections that I casually refer to as 'vignettes' that fill in what's happening elsewhere in the world. While the events in them do weave into the plot, and I will revisit most of them later in a madcap sequence of even shorter (250 word?), they are off to the side of the key narrative.

Maybe I'm really a short story writer? That would be annoying as I understand that this pays even worse than novel writing!

Perhaps I ought to describe how I have structured my book? While it works for me, and not a single reader has raised even the subject, it is perhaps a trifle unusual.

I have a number of chapters, each 4-5k words long, and each with a single word title. Within each chapter, I have an initial 'release note' (which I'll explain some other time) and then typically 3-4 scenes of between 1k and 4k words. Each scene also has a single word title, which helps me organise things, and I'm undecided as to whether they will remain. These scenes are also usually about events that occurring at roughly the same time but feature different characters and places.

The single word titles of chapters are designed to relate to or summarise, (albeit obliquely) all of the scenes in the chapter, and while the scene names make sense after you've read the scene, they don't give anything away in advance.

Ian

 

[The Judge]

You're doing well if you've hit 100,000, but it's the end which is always the hard bit!

Re the structure, it sounds intriguing, and if it works, fine. Don't be a slave to it, though, unless there is meant to be some kind of hidden meaning inside it -- if a particular chapter works best if it is only one scene, don't pad it just to make it the same length as the others. I do envy you being able to sum up each chapter in one word, though -- I'm so verbose, one word would never be enough!

Good luck with it.

 

[gadgetmind]

Completing it would worry me if I didn't have the whole plot worked out and copious notes for most scenes, but I do. Whether it's all enough, whether my bad guys are bad enough, my characters real enough, my writing good enough, all of that kind of stuff, well that does worry me, but I've done the best job that I'm currently capable of, so the worry is mild to moderate.

I do have some 'spare' characters that I'm not entirely sure how to use, but I'm sure they'll come in handy at some point. I keep threatening to kill some of them, but wife and daughter get upset at such talk; perhaps I'm better at breathing life into mere words than I give myself credit for?

Regards a slave to structure, I have some chapters that are just a single scene, and I'm also considering a tweak for the final third as a general part of raising the pace. Not that the pace is slow: I'm not aware of any padding so far, certainly nothing deliberate. Obviously I can't have every scene being just plot progression and character development, and there are a small number of scenes that you could argue have none, but only one or two could truly be called self indulgent.

The single word thing is starting to bug me; I keep coming up with 'perfect' two word phrases, and have even weakened and used one of them exactly once; I must have an OCD neuron, and it isn't happy. However, I also have a prologue to dismantle and distribute, and one scene with a glimmer of third person omniscient. A good friend (and prolific SF reader) both spotted these and ragged on me. I'm going to worry about things that are easy to fix such as titles and names once the high priority things are done, with finishing the sodding thing being uppermost.

Ian