Winter is Coming

As November comes to an end, I'd like to say I've been spending the lengthening nights writing. I haven't. I've been playing with ideas, but I can't say I've been particularly productive; I've tried to develop a couple of things, but hit a wall each time.

Although I've got several projects in their early stages, and I don't like leaving them unattended, in another way I'm not especially concerned by this in the long run, because I've been here before and I know that, sooner or later, if I keep at it something will pop out of my subconscious.

And I'm happy to say the stories I wrote in October were well received by those who have read them, and I'm currently wondering what to do with them.

Boy Howdy

My last post was written not long before a lengthy holiday during which I became ill. Many things fell by the wayside, including blogging.

On the upside, there was one evening in the hotel when I had three distinct short story ideas: two of them are now written and I quite like them. The third will be the most difficult to write and I haven't started yet.

The two stories I submitted were not accepted, however I had excellent feedback from my editor about the whole "Vamp" sequence, including suggestions on where to submit them and why. I'm currently thinking about this, and also about Les Demoiselles and Vamps II.

Onwards and Upwards!

Into the wild

Two more stories have been cast off into the wild; I submitted Thorfinn and Mathilde and Holes in the Heart to a new journal that's looking for material for its first issue.

Both stories have been around for a while and it was interesting to dig them out and revise them (Holes in the Heart has roots in something I first wrote in 1990 and discarded). I've no idea how they'll be received, but I am happy that they are in a fit state to be let out into the world.

Interesting Times

I started a new short story. I was happy with where I reached but had to put it to one side thanks to busy times at work. I was ready to come back to it this past weekend, but my normal equilibrium took a knock from the disaster of the Brexit vote. Such energies as I wanted to expend on writing went into blog posts elsewhere.

Never mind, I thought, I have quite a pile of new and recent novels sitting on my "to read" shelf, and I selected one I thought might be diverting for a day or two.

It is by an author whose work first caught my eye in 2006. Since then I have pre-ordered their work and caught up on their back-catalogue. They've built a decent audience over the last decade and can be regarded, I think, as a successful writer.

Three novels ago, for the first time I abandoned one of their novels. I found it boring: some interesting ideas but, as a story, dull. Well, I thought, lots of people are praising it so I guess it's just one of those things: you can't like everything a writer writes.

Their next book was something of a return to form. I enjoyed it right up until the point, near the end, where the author committed a fairly egregious breach of the fourth wall. This is not unknown in fiction of course, leading the reader to question who the narrator/POV voice really is, causing you to reconsider what you think you're reading. But this was just cack-handed authorial intervention, and I wondered how the editor had let it go by.

And now their most recent novel. I am on page 29 and already thinking of abandoning it. The writing is, in my opinion, poor, with the same authorial interruptions in the narrative and none of the verve or skill in execution that characterised the best of their earlier work.

Is it just me? Lots of people seem to think it is great--they must do: the author repeatedly retweets reader praise for it.

Since I started writing with some degree of seriousness, I have stopped posting reviews of novels on Amazon and have gone to some lengths not to identify the author to whom the above relates. Who it is doesn't really matter. My point is that I suspect if I, as an unknown, were to submit this novel as a manuscript, I would be told, correctly, to go away and not come back until it was a lot better.

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Added: notwithstanding the 5* reviews on Amazon, I couldn't get myself past p.29.

Time passages

Since my last, I sent all of the drafts of the recent stories to an editor for a proper assessment and edit. I was surprised when the report came back very positive and with only minor textual infelicities picked up.

When I say "surprised" I don't mean to be excessively self-deprecating: I was genuinely surprised that an objective reader coming to them for the first time didn't raise more queries. They are now undergoing a closer line-edit, so we'll see what comes out of that.

In the meantime, I have been working up ideas for a novel in the same world and am content with how this process is going. I've also been toying with a short story in a completely different context: once I have a more detailed idea of how that goes I'll write it--researching and plotting is fine, but I need the practice in actual writing.

Early in this process of trying to learn to write, I read a lot of the usual self-help manuals. I didn't get a lot out of them to be honest, a lot of them seemed to be advocating a cookie-cutter approach leading to over-familiar end results. The only book that I actually found helpful was Steven King's On Writing. Most of my 'education' came from considering authors whom I like and trying to work out why I like them and what I could use. So I like Muriel Spark's concision and acidity; George Mackay Brown's masking of subtlety within simple prose; Christopher Priest's unflashy intelligence; Dorothy Dunnett's focus; and M John Harrison's obliqueness and refusal to conform.

This weekend I have been reading James Wood's How Fiction Works, and it has been the right book at the right time for me as I consider how to develop ideas. A couple of years ago I probably wouldn't have engaged with it so well, a couple years more and it would be too late for me :-)

And for my next trick...

I'm trying to figure out what my next project is. As I wrote a couple of entries ago, I have three potentials. The most likely is to continue with the world I created in the short stories and take it further, either as a novel or as a series of novellas. Some early ideas about this are falling into place.

With the day job, I can only really devote time to developing one of the three possibles, and the other two will require more research than I have time to complete, unless the Premium Bonds pay out.

words, words, words

I've now revised all of the stories and written up the revisions. I was pleasantly surprised how well the stories held up; the main changes I made were to strip back over-writing, although some character and dialogue problems were attended to also.

I have a second round of revision to do which is quite specific: I read them all again on a tablet. I find looking at them on a different screen in different font etc., is enough of a change to let me see things I've missed on laptop and paper.

The next stage is that all of them are going to an editor for review and assessment. Assuming they survive professional scrutiny, I'll be able to polish them to within an inch of their lives. After that? we'll see.

Pausing for Breath

I have completed the collection of stories. There are eleven of them, and in current draft form they total 108,000 words. The shortest is 2100 words, the longest 25,000 words. That word count will reduce on revision, I'm sure. I've printed them all out and the task of revision will begin once the day job lets me. The last story I completed is probably the one that needs most doing to it during this revision round, but I'll leave it to last so I can bring some objectivity to it.

Meantime, day job or not, I'm trying to let my head clear a little before planning what to do next. I have three potentials on the starting blocks, each with their own challenges. I'm not sure yet which of them I'm going to commit to.

I also need to work out what I'm going to do with the collection once I am through the next revision period. I think I know my way forward on that, but have yet to set it into motion.

Where did that come from?

Life is full of little surprises.

As I hinted in my last post, a final vamp story insinuated itself into my head. Six weeks later, it is still not quite finished, although I think I'm in the home stretch now. I've had to retreat from a few false story lines to try and keep it on track. Also, I've had to fight against my tendency to write in too much detail. One of my notes to myself reads "too much narrative, not enough story," which I've corrected now, I think.

I always knew it was going to be a very dark tale, and in that sense have a different tone to others in the collection, but at the moment it seems to be going into full-on Clive Barker horror territory. whether the final draft will still do that I don't know--I need to look at how the overall story is balanced once I get into revising the first draft, and correct it again if it is anachronistic.

Thee are other reasons why this one is taking so long. Some of it is down to other things happening in my life, notably work. However I was also sideswiped by another story in the sequence that ambushed me on the way to the supermarket and flew out from my fingers more or less fully formed. I think it is the natural first story in the collection, and is also pretty much the best thing I've written so far, in my opinion. That is pleasing, but also makes the revision of the full collection that much harder, because I've raised my own bar.

That's a good thing.

Edward goes large

I heard today that The Estate of Edward Moorehouse has been accepted for publication. It will appear in an "Anthology of Respectable Horror."

The story will be published here: Fox Spirit

In the meantime, I said in my last post that I'd written the last of the vamp. stories. Er...