Tag: novel

Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piňol

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Just finished reading this wonderful dark gothic book. Despite being very different from much of what I’ve been reading lately – thrillers and young adult fiction – I didn’t feel I had to change gears to read my way through this. The book is fabulously compelling and actually, it was all I could do to have a break from reading it.

Set soon after World War I, on a nearly abandoned sub-antarctic island, with strange monsters and dangerous times, the book has a growing urgency. As a character study within a horror setting, this is brilliant, as a gothic thriller, it’s fabulous.

Perhaps it most closely reminded me of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy (which I’ve now returned to, and am enjoying, though in a different way), but with more concise and economical language.

Writing on … love to be busy

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Well, with the excitement of the publication of the first part of my novel still hovering, I found loads of energy over the weekend to write.

I got busy with my dieselpunk serial. I completed the tidied up the ending of the first draft last night. I will work on a couple of other stories over the next few days, then tear into revisions on the dieselpunk piece. Somehow in the midst of that I managed a rough cover for my Lame Goat Press chapbook – more on that later this week.

I’m having another quick retreat in a couple of weeks – heading away for three nights in a cabin: just me and the laptop. I’ve got a bunch of outlines and beginning drafts for flash stories I’ll be working on.

And I’m prepping for another Pecha Kucha night – doing some creepy slides to go with Zombie-Eyed Girl which I’ll be reading aloud.

And then, of course, there is tutoring prep – reading and re-familiarising myself with the lectures and readings. Must make some time to create some new music too. Love to be busy.

The Rotated – Novel serialization begins

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The serialization of my science fiction novel The Rotated has begun at Infinite Windows. The novel is a near-future thriller – probably best described by Infinite Windows editor D. Tannenbaum:

“What if you had a device that would let you rotate out of our world into alternate dimensions? What if an organization, shrouded in darkness and conspiracy, wanted to control you and your travels? What would you do? How far would you go to protect yourself and your loved ones?”

The novel is based on my flash fiction piece The Rotated which first appeared in the June 2009 issue of Infinite Windows.

The current issue also includes my flash fiction story “Apollo 19” – a very different tone and feel, and pace, to The Rotated, but it still probably has my “voice”.

Thanks to Dan – who has been a great supporter of the work, encouraging me to develop that original story – and Shane for taking the novel on, and to Peter Parkinson who read and gave me feedback on drafts.

Writing retreat – a new approach

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

 

I’ve been back for about ten days now from my nine-day retreat to the Foxton Beach writing house and I’m still working through what I achieved. I went with a very different approach to other times I’ve been on retreat. Usually what I do is have a specific project to write and I’m starting on a first draft – whether that be an adult novel, a young adult novel, a long short story or what-have-you. I go in with just ideas, perhaps an outline, and start writing.

This time I took a bunch of first draft manuscripts with me. I had ten stories. About half were flash-fiction (under 1000 words), the others longer (though nothing over 3500 words). These were rough manuscripts that varied in quality from fairly complete and structurally sound, to wobbly attempts where I’d just been keeping up the momentum of writing. Often I just have one or two manuscripts underway at once – often I’m too impatient to put things aside for a longer period (which any 101 writing book/course/etc. will tell you is what is important: put it aside for a week or a month and come back with fresh eyes).

Here’s the upshot.

  1. One of the stories has been abandoned entirely – I will use the idea and scenario for a full rewrite, but the pacing, tone and resolution were all too far out of whack to be able to mould or revise the existing story into any semblance of sense.
  2. Three of the stories need to sit for a while longer.  In part because I need to do some more research on boxing, on free-diving, on deep sea pressures, but also because there are some other issues that I will need to take some time with.  Overall, though, they are structurally fairly good, the characters and situations work and I’m pretty happy.
  3. Three more of the stories are pretty close to ready.  The structure is good, the pace about what I’m looking for.  What they need now is polishing to make the writing flow.
  4. The last three are done.  They were close to what I wanted from the beginning.  I spent the time at the retreat working on their endings and some polishing.  In the time since I’ve come back, I have done that final polishing and have submitted these three to various publishers.  One has already been accepted, yay (for Lame Goat Press’s Flash! anthology of flash fiction).

That’s it. I’m stoked about how productive the retreat was – using the space to do editing and reflecting was, I think, a more productive use of my time than had I gone in with a blank page (not to say that blank page is bad, just that this approach worked for me this time).

So now my task is to keep tinkering with those last six plus one stories.  I have drafted one new story in the meantime, and begun work on a from-scratch rewrite of the dud story from point 1 above.  Of course there is still the question of the novel.  My Galley proof arrived yesterday, so I will be working through that to make sure it’s working for me before I do the final submission to the publisher.

Story endings

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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 soundtrack part two

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

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.

Novel draft done at 11.41pm, December 31st

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

Whew. It’s pretty loose, but the first draft is done. That’s 6200 words today – which is more than I would normally manage on a day set aside for writing, let alone a day with fifteen dozen other things going on. So I have a full draft of The Rotated, now the real work begins as I try to knock it into shape. So good to have belted it out before 2010 starts. Gonna take a little break from it for a couple of weeks and work on some other stories, then come at it fresh. Mood, elated, exhausted.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Taking a break from the writing, we went to see the Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A wonderful and engaging piece of film making. I love the atmosphere of Scandinavian films – the long shots of cars traversing lonely desolate highways and how the locale a climate become almost a character in the film. We saw Jar City, from Iceland, on DVD a few weeks back and in many ways it’s a similar film – a mystery, with great twists and turns. Both remind me in some ways of The Sweet Hereafter, a film which startled me when I saw it, and which lingers in my mind.

Novel update – it’s about 8.15pm here, so there’s three and three quarter hours until the end of the year. Will I make it? I think there’s still a couple of thousand words to go … so I’m not out partying