More Procrastination

Again, I procrastinate. 

Again, I find almost any excuse to avoid writing.  I continue to send my work to Agents / publishers as I can be bothered to, but the lack of replies takes its toll. 

I’m sure I will eventually find my way out of this rut.  I have a whole second, and third, book planned out in my head.  I just can't find the time to bring it out. 

Not that I’m doing nothing, of course.  I spend much of my spare time now doing woodwork; carving is inordinately fun. 

But I need to get back into writing again.  I love it when I do it, when I can lose myself for hours just writing.  But it can be hard to jump start the trend. 

Ah well.

As I try to focus myself on continuing to write the sequel to The Fire and the Fog, I still try to do something with it.  This week I will be submitting to a contest, the details of which can be found at

http://tinyurl.com/pwbds3q

The contest is for middle-grade fiction, which, as far as I can make out, my novel qualifies as.  I hope. 

Once again, as with everything, we shall see. 

Time off

I haven't written anything in...a while now.  Over a month.  That's not to say I haven't done anything though.

I solved, or at least I believe I solved, a conundrum I was having with character death.  I won't know till I get to writing the actual meat of the story, but my solution has made planning go more smoothly.

I have also submitted query letters to two agencies located in Canada.  Both have ~2 week turnarounds, and if I hear back negatively from them, well, I will send to more agencies. 

A query letter, from the research I've done, seems to be a short, one-page introduction to yourself, and y our novel.  I will post the query letters I sent, as well as any responses I receive, later.

I also applied to TOR to write a blog for them, essentially duplicating what I am writing on this blog, but hopefully making money off it.

Money makes the world go 'round, and all that jazz.

Growing Older

Yesterday, I turned 28.

To me, that sounds really old.  I think I'm still stuck with the mentality (and attention span) of a 12 year old. 

With my birthday came lots of slightly depressing thoughts.  I’m stuck in a job I hate (and I'll be stuck in it forever), I'll never get published, I'll never amount to anything, nice little thoughts like that.  All of which came about because, crikey, 28 sounds old to me.

But I guess it's really not.  I've been told several times in the past few days that life doesn't even really start till 30. 

And I want to believe.

So I will. 

I want things to get better; I want to mean something, and the only way that will happen is for me to do something about it. 

I've spent a lot of time procrastinating lately; not wanting to make decisions, not wanting to commit myself to doing things.  That's going to stop now.  Think of it as a New Years Resolution, only in April. 

I made a decision a long time ago to do my best to be happy all the time, to not let things get me down.  I'm not great at it, but I feel I've been doing pretty well.

Well, now I'm going to make the same decision in regards to what I do with my time. 

I have a lot of projects planned.  I have books and short stories to write, I have music to write / record, I have a house to fix, art and jewellery to create…

So, I’m going to do them.  I'm going to get the projects I have planned done, and more.

And I'm going to find a way to promote myself more, to try to get published. 

Because I’m not 30 yet.

But by the time I am? 

I want all those people who told me life starts at 30 to be right

Lore

I've started building lore.  In my first novel, I mention some religion, some historical and religious texts.  I'm not sure if passages from them will ever be used later, but I"ve decided it's time to write them out.  I know what they contain, in general, but I feel like sitting down and putting them to paper might be a good idea, a good place to start from.

I have a history of the world, and of the universe, in mind.  Telling the story of the world, and making it interesting, is the difficult part. 

I have three sort of starting points for what I'm trying to do with my novels, and I guess this is as good a place as any to explain them.

My first inspiration is David Eddings.  I've already mentioned here somewhere how much his Belgariad series meant to me when I was young; how much they shaped who I am and what I’m interested in.  He's the first starting point for what I’m trying to do.  My first goal.

My second starting point comes from Isaac Asimov.  One of the best, and most prolific, writers of all time, Asimov was my introduction to Science Fiction, just as David Eddings was my first introduction to Fantasy (Okay, really my first introduction to Fantasy was Tolkien, but isn't he everyone's?).  What Asimov did was to me, at the time at least, astounding.  He took all his various novels and short stories, from the Robot series to the Foundation novels, even to his R. Daneel Olivaw Detective novels and, in the end, tied them all together.  One giant, persistent, mostly coherent universe, spanning thousands of years; hundreds of characters.  Yes, some inconsistencies were created (You can look them up if you're not familiar with them.  Or even better, go read all of Asimov's books and find them yourselves.  I can wait), but the revelation that everything was tied together was, for a late-teenaged me, astounding. 

My third starting point is Robert Jordan, and here's where it gets tricky.  Robert Jordan created both one of the most detailed and expansive worlds I've yet read (I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't gotten to them yet), and one of the most secretive.  There are hints throughout of a giant, expansive timeline; one that extends from today to the far far future and back.  But they're never really acted upon.  I very much enjoyed the world Jordan created; I just wish it were more open, more revealed.  I also wish the series were about three books shorter (9, 10, 11), but that's beside the point.

The point is, I have a starting point.  Or, I have three starting points.  Three examples of what I want to do with my world building.  I've tried to start with characters; with creating people to fill the world.  But I feel like they come to me when I write; that I pull them to me when I need them, and that they're best left alone until they're needed.

So now, I'm going to try another approach.  I'm going to build the history of the world, starting with its ancient legends, its religion.  Hopefully from that I will be able to extract the lands and the people that inhabit the world.  They already exist somewhere in my head, and I’m hoping that this new approach can help me drag them, kicking and screaming, onto paper. 

Paperback

So, I've been struck by a giant lack-of-writing stick this week.

To make up for it (?) I'm going to post a video I made of a song I wrote.

The song's about books, so it's relevant.

Slightly.

Quiet on the Written Front

All’s been quiet on the written front the past week or so. I’ve done some more planning for my second novel, mainly world-building notes; countries, cultures, economies, rivalries, pastries, the usual.  But it’s been quiet.  Life intrudes.

Which leaves me with two points:

One, waiting sucks.  I understand the wait, but having to go six months before hearing back from a publisher on a manuscript you submitted is just…painful.  I feel like I’ve mentioned this before, but the waiting hurts.  And not just in a ‘oh I hope someone accepts my book and I become a tri-zillionaire and all my woes are suddenly cured because someone wants to publish me’ way, because all that is totally a thing that would happen.

The waiting hurts because of the lack of confidence it instills. 

So far, everyone who has read my first novel (and told me they have) has been a friend, or at least an acquaintance.  True, they’ve all told me it’s great, that it’s entertaining, that they want to read more, but there’s the continual nagging doubt in the back of my mind that they’re just saying that.  Waiting for someone that doesn’t know me to read my book and judge it…it’s excruciating.  Not knowing what strangers think, not knowing whether my first novel will ever be read by anyone outside my immediate friend circle, it makes it hard to write the second book. 

Writing the first, I was filled with some measure of confidence.  Some measure of, I can do this, and I can do it well.  I can take the story that’s in my head, and put it on paper.  And I could; I did. 

Writing the second, I’m filled with dread.  Yes, I can do this; I can take the story that’s in my head and put it on paper.  But why should I?  Why bother?  Will anyone read it?

The second of my two points is that life intrudes.  It intrudes often.  To begin with, working a full time job leaves little time to write.  Work, go home, cook food, relax (for sanity), sleep repeat.  Even the weekends are taken up by renovating, repairing, and managing my house; making sure the place doesn’t fall apart around me.  Important work.

I’m rushing through these two points, and I may revisit either or both of them later in more detail, for a reason.  In order to try to combat the lack of confidence, and the inability to find time, I’m going to try a solution.

Wednesday night is now writing night. 

I will get home from work, cook food, and then write. 

Who knows.  Maybe with a dedicated time to write I will be able to force the nagging doubts from the first point and the lack of confidence from the second one to back down and let me do what I really want to do.

Only time will tell.

Of Beginnings

Where to begin.

Where to begin is something I often wonder, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

With something like this, a blog, where do you start?  Do you start at the beginning?  And if so, which beginning?

I have no idea where you start.

I start here.  Or…well I started up there.

That’s beyond the point.

The point is, I want to write.  I’ve wanted to write for a long time, almost as long as I’ve wanted to read.

Reading, that’s pretty easy, all things considered.  I feel like I’ve gotten the hang of it over the years.  Grab book, or newspaper, or fancy electronic device, or cereal box, then look at little squiggly lines as long as it takes, until hopefully words start making sense.

Writing; writing’s a bit different.

I keep hearing, very often, that the only way to learn to write is to write more.  Write until you’ve finished something, and then continue to write.  It’s pretty good advice, as far as I can tell, and so far I’ve followed it.

I’ve written one thing; one novel.  The Fire and the Fog.  A young-adult fantasy.  A fairly simple beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.

Now, I’ve begun working on a sequel. 

Write until you’ve finished something, and then write more, right?

I feel I may be using that word too much.

Right now, I’m doing character outlines, location planning, setting out the first ‘act’ of the second book.  I have some broad ideas, ideas of where to begin and where to end, and vague, nebulous notion that there should probably be words somewhere in the middle.

What I find myself wondering now though, is what do I do with the first book I’ve written?  What do I do with The Fire and the Fog?

I’ve put it up on Kindle independently, for $0.99.  I’ve had 125 copies printed, and I have sold ~75 of them so far.  I’ve sent the manuscript off to two different publishing companies, Penguin (through the DAW imprint), and TOR, and await answers from both.

So there’s the background, now we can get back to the beginning.  The beginning of this blog is, I suppose, a way to chronicle the progress I make on my second novel, and the progress I make trying to get published.

Where this blog might end, who knows.

But at least there’s a beginning.