Yay, I’m off for my writing retreat (I guess a little like Jodi’s cave) for a week. I have a stack of first-draft manuscripts to work through. Some of them feel close to what I was thinking so might just take some editing, others are pretty loose and bedraggled and will quite possibly need full re-writes from scratch. I’ll also be looking at the pesky last chapter of the novel and try to knock that into shape. I will also be doing some story outlines for stories I’ll think about developing in coming months. It’ll be a busy year. Mood: excited.
Category: fiction
Currently reading – Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason
I got a copy of this book – the seventh in the series apparently. I’ve just started in on and so far I’m engaged and intrigued. Indridason wrote the novel which was filmed as Jar City, which I’ve blogged about before. I’m not usually one for police-procedurals, but this one is off to a good start.
New story in Bewildering Stories, January 25th
My story “Into the Green Pit”, after lots of editorial work on the title (whew, titles – I think I’ll do a big post on creating titles sometime), will appear on Bewildering Stories on Monday January 25th. Usually I post on the day, or a little after something comes out, but I’ll be away from the web for a week on writing retreat next week, so here’s the news.
Bewildering Stories is one of the more eclectic sites – publishing a range of speculative genres, and a great range of forms, from poetry and flash through short stories, novellas and serialised novels.
Reading for writing #1 – plot
Writing involves lots of elements – voice, character, style, plot, structure, etc. I find that whatever I’m reading at a given moment influences how I write, so I try to be a little more targeted when I’m working on a big project. During the outline phase of my novel, I tried to read more for plot, to get a sense of pace and how things fit together. These are some of the books I read during that period:
Reading for plot:
Jack Kilborn, Afraid. This is a pacy thriller with a twisted plot, lots of strands. Sometimes a little unbelievable, but it’s all good fun. File under Rollercoaster.
James Patterson, When the Wind Blows. Again, pacy, action-filled, slightly stretching credulity, but loads of tense fun. I read this without realising that it was kind of linked to the Maximum Ride series.
Matthew Reilly, Seven Ancient Wonders, I already mentioned Reilly in an earlier blog. Also under Rollercoaster.
The plot in the draft did diverge somewhat from my intitial outline, but of course, that was influenced by other things as I worked.
Next “Reading for writing” post – style
Writing a novel – the sountrack: individual albums, post 1
My earlier posts about the music I listened to as I wrote, were broad genre strokes, to give a general sense of what was inspiring my writing musically. I thought I’d do some about specific albums:
Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne is a few years old now, but it strikes me as one of the few albums around that’s pretty even – not like one of those with two awesome songs and a boatload of filler. Part of what makes the album so good is how the guys borrow freely: it’s an unabashed rock but sometimes it’s a little emo (Mexican Wine), sometimes a little bit country (Hung up on you). Certainly I have my favourite tracks – Bright Future in Sales, Supercollider – but it’s an album I can just stick on, crank up, and write to for an hour. The subsequent albums Out of State Plates (b-sides) and Traffic and Weather didn’t quite do it for me, but Fountains of Wayne, finally, have a new album out – haven’t heard it yet, but I have high hopes.
Currently listening to: True Blood Soundtrack. Nice mix.
The Next Time: Alternate Reality/Time Travel
My story “Berg” is out now in the print anthology The Next Time: Alternate Reality/Time Travel, again from Lame Goat Press*. “Berg” is a more light-hearted piece than many of my stories, and plays with the idea of time-travel paradox.
This is my first publication of the year, yay. With another four already accepted and more out in slush piles it’s shaping up to be another good year. Well, another year of hard work, at least.
*Lame Goat Press has published the volume through Create Space and if you buy through there then the publisher makes a little more money than through Amazon.
Story endings
I was going to continue my reading list, and write about endings a few posts from now, however I’ve just finished the first read-through of my novel’s draft. Bleh. Endings. Lots of work to do now.
Endings seem like a tricky thing. Some writers can write brilliant endings, others not so much. Right now I know where the story needs to go, and it does tie up okay, all the threads are brought together and resolved. At the moment it does seem that I will need to do much work on those last couple of pages as I will on the whole rest of the whole book. Whew.
John Irving is one of those authors whose endings I admire. Irving says he starts with the end and builds the story towards that: “I always begin with a last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.” He rarely changes as much as a comma in that sentence. My favourite of his novels – A Prayer for Owen Meany – is a prime example. The end of the book is extraordinary: even on re-reads when I know what’s going to happen, the end moves me to tears.
Often when I’m writing a short story, I try to do something similar – have a final sentence in mind and write the story to reach that point. I often feel that these have been my most successful stories – see Eddie’s on Fire or Breathe In where I’ve had an ending in mind and looked back for the start of the story.
So what am I going to do with the ending of my novel? The end I had in mind when I began, isn’t quite the end that I’ve arrived at. It works, to an extent, but it needs to be right. I’ve started work on it, developing and extending – the main problem was it was all over too suddenly: 300 words, and not especially good words. The final scene probably needs 1000 and every one has gotta shine like a diamond. It has to be a singularity. I have my work cut out for me, but I will make it.
The last sentence? That might take as much work as everything else. Combined.
Writing a novel – the reading list
I’ve just done a couple posts on the music that sustained and motivated me through drafting the novel. There were also a bunch of books I read that in their own ways helped sustain and motivate me. I won’t list everything – just the stuff that has really propelled me. While the novel is a science fiction technothriller (not to pigeonhole it or anything), I tend to read outside the genre, though in the process of writing I have read a bit more sci-fi than usual.
Modern Ranch Living by Mark Poirier. This has been around for a while – I first read it years ago and came back since it’s so good. Poirier’s style is laid-back and laconic and his characters rich and hilarious and his descriptions of the Arizona landscape are so real and invigourating that I’m just swept up in the book, before even getting to the complexities of the plot and the craftsmanship of the writing. I love writing about the southwest and have even set some of my own stories there – Eddie’s on Fire and Breathe In (okay, that was a shameless plug – last one I’ll do here, I’ll stick to the reading list).
Mars Life by Ben Bova. I enjoy Bova’s books from time to time, though I sometimes wish there was a little more depth. His plotting and characters are great, the ideas (I really like the nano-suits the Mars explorers wear – ultrathin so no bulky clunky stuff to haul around) and the feel for the environments he creates.
Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce and Pirate Sun by Karl Schroeder. The first three books in the Virga series – the fourth is out already. Schroeder’s “playground” is an astonishing world – a 5000km diameter (I guess that’s 3000 miles) air-filled balloon, orbitting Vega, populated with drifting cities and artificial suns. While the technology that’s created Virga is hyper-advanced, the civilisation within is more steampunk or dieselpunk – jet-propelled wooden ships, wheeled cities and the like. A delicious milieu.
The Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly. Pace, pace and more pace. If you want to learn how to just keep the action going, Reilly is a great example. There are things that bother me about his writing (sound effects, for one), but it’s kind of like a rocket sled ride as much as anything else. This is theme-park ride literature, pure fun and sometimes we just need some fun.
Okay, enough for now. I’ll do another post soon.
btw – if you want to know what the novel I’m writing is about, you can get a sense of it from the original flash fiction “The Rotated” here on Infinite Windows. The novel is based on the story, same characters, same situation and so on.
Writing a novel – the soundtrack part two
My last post listed some of the ambient music I had going while I worked on the first draft of my current novel. There were loads of others ambient artists on the list too – Adham Shaikh, International People’s Gang, Ryonkt, Coelacanth, Sawako, Minus Pilots, d’incise, Mollusc, Johnathan Hughes, etc. Too many for big write-ups and links in a post like this, I’ll do individual posts over coming weeks, as the next draft progresses.
I did, however, listen to other kinds of music too, though probably a little more well known and not needing their own links and plugs. Some of these show my age I guess, but I do try to stay somewhat current … somewhat.
Depeche Mode – Songs of Faith and Devotion (I’d always kind of liked them, but this one really captured me. I like them better being more bleak), Ultra, Playing the Angel, Sounds of the Universe
Limp Bizket – Results may vary. Don’t know why, but this is the only album of theirs I really like. Seems like not many other people did though.
Fort Minor, The Rising Tied – I like this more than Mike’s other project, Linken Park.
Genesis – lots of their stuff, but have mostly been listening to the Live in Europe 2007 double disk set, which covers material from most of their history.
Duran Duran – Astronaut, Red Carpet Massacre, Pop Trash, Both eponymous albums.
Blancmange – all three eighties albums got re-released on CD last year, so I’ve had them on high rotation. I wore my old cassette tapes out.
Plus others, a little U2, some Peter Gabriel, The Fixx, Talk Talk, Eagles, Jay-Z(!), Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Daniel Lanois, Joseph Arthur …
Writing a novel – the soundtrack, part one
Some writers write with children and dogs clambering and slobbering over them while the television blares and the elevated train blasts by the window every eight minutes and the neighbours down below argue about fishing trips and meter money. Others write in silence. I’m closer to the latter, but I do have music on pretty much always as I write. Sometimes it’s very mellow, other times a little more edgy. Here’s a selection of music which has sustained me through the task of drafting my novel.
Woob 1194 – a seminal ambient album that I’m lucky enough to actually own a copy of. Paul Frankland, the artist, has recently made the album, and some other tracks available again through bandcamp. Also listened to other em:t releases like Woob 4495, Gas 0095 and Undark 3396, as well some of the compilations.
S.E.T.I. – The Geometry of Night. This extraordinary album is somewhere between ambient and dance and science fiction. Some of the most startling rhythm patterns I’ve ever enjoyed. This is hard to find on CD, but it looks like he’s made it available on bandcamptoo.
Taylor Deupree – Northern. Taylor was part of the other S.E.T.I., not to be confused with the above (even though some sites do). Northern is minimal music, but as rich and full as can be, almost ambient but not quite. The original pressing (which I have) sold out, but Taylor did a re-issue which was a kind of re-visioning – reloading the original files with missing plug-ins so the sound is different, though I haven’t heard the new version.
Pitch Boys – O.S.T.. One of many remarkable releases on the Test Tube Netlabel (full disclosure, the Venus Vulture album Stick With Me Giselle, Things Can Only Get Better was released on Test Tube last year). O.S.T. is an hour-plus excursion into new realms.
Next post – rock.
Triple V Publishing 