Monday, July 30, 2012

Busy Week

I didn't get anywhere near as much writing done this past week as I would have liked, but it was a good week all in all.  I've just finished another chapter of this revision, so I figured it was time for an all around update.

I got my Alpha Readers started (thank you!), saw The Dark Knight Rises, which was a fantastic end to a very well done trilogy all things considered, and celebrated my wife's birthday.

I've also uploaded a new file for my Alpha Readers to have a look at, the last batch of feedback was good and exactly the sort of information I'm looking for.  Of course, as more of the story is filled in for you guys, you'll have to help me find any promises I make that I don't keep etc.  But so far so good.

Beyond this point there's non-writing related stuff about getting a dog, it meanders a bit and probably gives more information than anyone could possibly want.  If you don't care, don't read after the jump.  Just pretend this post ends here.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Alpha Readers?

RAWR!

Did a good stretch of writing today, and expanding some of my outline points nicely tying up a sub-plot.  Got about 3/4 through a very important scene, of course, I haven't touched the most important part of the scene yet, I'm getting too tired to do it justice and I don't want to mess it up.

So, the title says "Alpha Readers?" I wonder if that caught anyone's attention?  Here's what I'm looking for in an Alpha Reader.  Someone who:

  • is willing to take this on as a bit of work and return comments in a timely manner
  • isn't going to worry about spelling and grammar
  • can deal with horrible early drafts and not hate it. 
  • doesn't mind reading little bits of a story without the whole story
  • doesn't mind reading a story in a disjointed out of order state
  • isn't just looking for a preview
  • realizes this is a work of love for me, even if it sucks :P (a lot of it is tripe at this point, that's what revising is for)
  • is willing to give me real feedback, not suggestions on how to fix it though, just what's broken.


Basically, I'm looking for someone who can help me make sure scenes make sense, dialog flows nicely, and characters are believable.  I don't need help with spelling and grammar (most of that will be corrected in later drafts, speed is too important right now to get caught up in all the little crap).  I'm trying to sort out style and voice, and make sure my plot and sub-plots work in the end.

What you get for being an Alpha Reader?  Well, you get my never-ending thanks (and possibly a call-out on an acknowledgements page if it ever gets published), and yes, you do get a preview of a book so early in it's inception that it may be entirely different and you may hate it by the time it's done :D

I'll be connecting with my Alpha Readers privately, who you are will never be made public until/unless the book is published and I have your permission to do so.  I will arrange to get you PDF versions of individual chapters in various states of disarray, which you can mark up with questions and comments and return to me.  I'm new to this, so this will be a learning process on its own.

You have the option to back out of being an Alpha Reader at any time without any hard feelings.  Just thought I'd put that in there.  I can't be angry at someone if they bail out of some hard work they're not required to do for me as a favour.  That's what it is, a favour.  I can't pay you anything but gratitude (and possibly the occasional cookies or tea if you live close enough).

Of course, if I don't get any Alpha Readers, I'll just soldier on until I need Beta Readers, but that may take a while.

- Grimm

Saturday, July 21, 2012

I had a nap.


So, a few nights without blogging.

Thursday I didn't write, instead I watched The Dark Knight with my oldest daughter (Monster) and my dear wife.  Friday night I did write, and didn't stop until I was too tired to be bothered to blog.  For that I apologize, I know how much my adoring public waits with bated breath for these updates.

I had a bit of a stylistic inspiration while writing Friday night, and I hope it works out.  I'm not sure I can carry it through this revision, as I'm just trying to get the plot and story working cohesively on this run through. That effort involves reconstructing a lot of scenes or simply creating them from scratch.  I've highlighted the section in my revision document as something I'd like to come back to and experiment with on the next pass to see if it fits the tone I want.  I think it will.

The title says I had a nap, and I did.  It's not something I do regularly, but I've been feeling so tired the last few days that I didn't think I'd be able to write at all tonight without one, so after getting my youngest daughter (Bear) into bed, I set an alarm and had a little lay-down myself.

I woke feeling groggy and cranky when the alarm went off.  It really didn't help in any way shape or form.  Still, I had committed tonight to writing, so I set everything up and got to writing (I'm such a good little boy, I deserve a cookie).

I spent this evening writing the next scene and a half, which is really 2 full scenes from one character perspective, but the viewpoint switches half-way through the second scene to another character, and as I'm sticking with the one character for now to keep the feel consistent I cut it off there.

So far so good on that front.

More tomorrow night!

-Grimm

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A little at a time.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, BookB is coming along.

As promised I went over last night's work tonight, and luckily it wasn't complete tripe and got to stay. There were a few rough spots that needed tidied and words that needed added and subtracted, but that sort of stuff is always pretty simple.  Besides, that's what copy passes are for, and I'm not due for those for another revision or six.

I completed the scene, retouched how the conflict at the end is done, and wrote another scene on after it.  Now, a section of the previous revision that was 4 pages and really really rough, is closer to 40 pages and starting to feel a little more like something readable.

For those not aware, I'm doing my writing on a MacBook Pro lately, I'm not much of a fan of Apple and their products, with their closed eco-systems and "don't overthink it" mentality.  It's my work machine, and it certainly serves the needs of a writing machine, mostly because it's small and quiet, with a decent screen, and a simply wonderful backlit keyboard.  Most importantly, it can't play any of the games I want to play.  So I get more writing done.

One thing I've truly missed (I have Word and Chrome and WinAmp all handy in Mac versions), is the Everchanging Book of Names, which means any time I have to add a new character, or discard an old character and combine them with another etc.  I have a hard time with their damnable names.

I've got a system and an etymology set up for names, but in EBoN it was a simple matter of building a rule set and letting it generate something close, which I would then modify to suit my mood.  Now, I have to start from scratch.  Really, I just wanted to whine a bit there.

I'm still enjoying the "work", even though it's taking considerably longer than I thought it would, but when you only have an hour or two a night, after your job, family, and kids, all while still neglecting to spend much time with your beloved, it's simply going to take more time.

I have to live with that.

- Grimm

Monday, July 16, 2012

Two nights in a row!

Not only have I had a very productive two nights in a row writing, now I'm publishing back to back blog-posts?  I hope I'm not setting anyone's expectations too high (ha! right!).  The catch of course being that these more frequent blog posts are, in point of fact, shorter.  You'll survive :P

After a productive day at the office, and a fantastic dinner made by my wonderful wife I settled in to finish off a scene that I had started revising and nearly completely re-writing last night.  Well, not only did I finish that scene, I plowed through the next scene as well.

I'm feeling pretty good about it, but I'm also feeling pretty tired, so I'll have to read over it tomorrow night and fix anything that turns out to be tripe (hopefully not the whole thing).  Then it's onto re-writing a first meeting, which in this revision should happen much more elegantly (writing wise, the characters involved aren't particularly the elegant types).

- Grimm

A good night.

Well, after such a good start last week, the whole thing kind of went to hell in a handbasket.  A pretty important presentation and project at work took most of the week's writing time away from me.  Then there were family functions on the weekend.

Tonight though, I did my 5k run, showered, got my protein bars ready for work and some laundry on, then sat down to write.

I did a second pass on 2 scenes from last week and tidied them up, then hammered out the first pass on a scene that was really badly broken by the end of the last revision.  This rewrite (so far, not 100% done) should work a lot better with the changes to the whole story.

Here's hoping this coming week allows for more writing time, though the project that took up most of last week is entering a pretty busy period.

I WILL find the time to write.

- Grimm

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Ok, so I suck at blogging.

Granted, you all know that better than I do.  Let's see.  March, April, May, June.. not too bad, I've only been silent on here for four months.  One third of a year.  An entire revision and a bit of my book.

Yeah, so that's the good news, I'm still writing, getting into the "work" part of the whole thing.  I'm enjoying it, more so on this revision than the previous revision.  I think that's mostly due to having a much better sense of all the major plot points and how they fit and weave together.

And the characters!  Oh, how they torture me.  I've cut, combined, and heavily altered seven or eight characters so far in this revision, all in the name of making the characters I keep stronger, more complete people.  I'm also cutting down on the number of viewpoints severely, which allows me to do a little more misdirection and pull off some of the surprises a little better (i hope).  Let's call it addition by subtraction.  See, it's not just for big cost-cutting corporate empires any more.

This revision, we'll call it full revision 2, is being done a little differently, aside from the above standard revising process of executing my little literary loved ones with aplomb (or at the very least feigned aplomb), and the mandatory re-writing of, well, damned near everything so it doesn't feel like tripe.

This time around I'm writing entire story arcs, start to finish, from a single view-point character.  Essentially I'm writing a third person narrative of each view-point character as they experience the events of the book.  So far I'm about a sixth of the way through a single character.

It doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that I've actually only been at this revision itself for about two weeks, it's not a bad pace.  It is a new method for me, but one that several actual writers I've been in contact with recommend for getting inside a character's head.  It's working wonders, at least for me, and I'm hoping the finished product of this draft will have characters that don't feel quite so wooden.  If I pull that off on this revision, I may even let some of my Alpha readers have a peek for some feedback.

My notes are turning into a veritable spider-web of details, most of which will never be IN the book, but they make me feel better knowing that I have reasons and the "how" of everything written down and worked out.

Real Life has been picking up at work, big projects and all that.  I'm staying on top of it.  Home life is relatively peaceful and quiet, it not being hockey season and all that.

I'll try to blog more often, but I'm sure I've said that somewhere before.  Right now though, the book takes precedence over the blog, it's a matter of priorities.  Time for bed.

- Grimm