Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Pluggin' away...

I just started re-writing I Had to Fall, and well, chapter one kicked my ass.

At some point this evening I realized it wasn't a hill to die on and moved on to chapter two. All of the plot, character and world changes had been made; I was just killing myself over the details in the prose. So I'm moving on. I'm halfway through chapter two and I'll probably work a few more chapters, then maybe jump back to one. Or wait until the end. Doesn't matter. All the important stuff is in place, so I just want to keep the ball rolling.

And of course, while I was working away all hum-dee-dum on this re-write, another story idea blindsided me. A tad bit distracting, that. But I don't want to lose the idea, or its characters, so I'm closing up shop a bit early tonight so I can spend some time jotting down ideas.

It's a bit out there, but I want to try my hand at something really different, and I think this is it. And the cool part: I'm going to try to write it from the guy's point of view. In my head it's a little bit romance, a little bit cyberpunk, a little bit fantasy. Might even be YA. Scary.

So before I take that idea any further... any recommended reads for similar work, YA guy's POV?

Monday, March 28, 2011

It's a Love-Hate Thing

Why do I even get out of bed on Mondays?

I'll check with the boss and see if I can do something about that. Think she'll go for it?

...That's what I thought.

My computer wasn't working this morning. Just wouldn't start. When I fixed that (good old Mac Safe Boot) I realized the company website and emails had been down all weekend (for which I blame Yahoo) and we missed any and all client emails that may have been sent between 4:30 Friday and 9:30 Monday. While fixing that, a second office computer crashed.

I love technology, but sometimes... not so much.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

And then there was a plan.

Worked for about eight hours today on world-building. As usual, Sundays are my best writing days. Nothing else going on, nothing but writing. And feeding the cat. Sometimes, I even remember to feed myself.

All in all, it went really well. I've got a much more solid history in place that provides the evolution for the technology, mega-cities, clothing, food, transportation, etc. in Deyl's world. It all seems to tie together quite neatly, and is based on the up-and-coming technology we have in place today. I tried to keep my question from yesterday in the back of my mind: what would it be like today, after 150 years of war?

I also put together my revision plan for book one, based on my notes from book two, the new world-building, and all the other little ideas that have been percolating through my brain while the book was on the shelf for the past five months.

Tomorrow: onward to the revisions!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Faster Than Expected...

Today I finished a quick, post-draft review of the second book in my Deyl Parker series. It went a hell of a lot faster than I had expected: four days.

When I say a quick review, I mean it. At this point I'm merely making notes on things in book two that might affect elements of book one. Where necessary I also made comments on the plot for book two, or fixed obvious spelling errors, but otherwise I went through it quickly, thinking mostly about book one.

So tomorrow I'm back, fully focused on I Had to Fall. I'm going to spend some time—a few days or a week—planning the changes I want to / need to make during the re-write, before diving in to make those changes. I also need to spend some more time on world building, the technology in particular. I mean, if a war between man and fae (just pretend, folks) were to break out today, and last for a hundred and fifty years, what kind of technology would we have at the end of it? What would we gain, what would we lose?

Friday, March 25, 2011

First Post

Title is pretty much self-explanatory.

I'm going to give this blog thing a go. Do I have anything interesting to say? Remains to be seen. However, it doesn't really seem to me that to keep a blog you necessarily have to have anything to say. What I have to say is mostly about my writing.

I began writing just over a year ago, and no lie, it all started with one of Kim Harrison's blog posts where she discussed some of her writing tips. I realized, with a bit of shock, that writing a novel was an extremely structured, disciplined and organized undertaking.

Day job: graphic designer. And I love it. What appeals to me about design is the blending of creativity with structure. You can break all the rules and create an incredible design, but you need to know the rules through and through before you can break them. That same unique combination of imagination and organization, with some careful rule-breaking, applies as much to writing a novel as it does to design. Naturally, I fell in love with writing almost immediately.

So I've given some of the characters that were wandering around in my head a place to live, to grow, and to change, by putting them together in a novel. It's an urban fantasy (think Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, Laurell K. Hamilton) titled I Had to Fall, and it centers around the adventures of Deyl Parker, a less-than-heroic protagonist. Is it any good?

Remains to be seen.