The re-write of The West Wind is going well following some gracious words of a new author friend: I just finished the first scene, a little over a thousand words, of Due West.
That part about the re-write going well. Ha! Not really. But I do appreciate the encouragement.
Update: Finished the first chapter. 2,000 words. I guess when the muse sneaks up behind you and plonks you on the head with a knobby stick, you best do something about it.
Hello lonely blog follower, Facebook friends, and even Twitter account holders who made the ill advised action of following my never so frequent updates. You can be thankful at least that I am not filling your mailboxes and feeds with endless posts. Focused posting. That’s good enough for me… when I get around to it that is.
Despite numerous heartfelt attempts, I have decided that I am completely incapable of generating any enthusiasm for rewriting “The West Wind ” (at least presently) I am therefore pursuing what I believe to be the only sensible course of action… Start writing a new book! If there is a rule that I need to finish rewriting the previous before starting anew, like some sort of literary lima beans before desert, I am afraid I am guilty of its violation.
“Due West” picks up roughly a year following the conclusion of “The West Wind.” Rachel West returns as a principle POV character, as does my favorite troubled and unstable heir Eli Hardy. For my third POV I am introducing a new character, the inimitable inspector Edward Percival Alford sent by the American Colonial government to investigate the extraordinary events of the previous story. The setting remains the same – the Steampunk Western alternate world of the early 1900s.
Scrivener files created, timeline drawing template opened, let the plotting begin!
Finished revising and resubmitting “The Curse of Knuckles Gap” a SteamPunk western horror (weird west) tale. It had received a couple of polite rejections in its original form so I took some feedback and reworked it. I think it is a much stronger story as a result. My insight here: having someone else read your work helps find the things that you think are there but never really left your head and made it to the page.
Insert usual apologies about not updating blog more frequently…
I received a question from a reader regarding how I constructed my timelines – any special software?
When setting out to write The West Wind, I knew I was going to need something to create timelines. I had never written something so big and complex but knew that I needed something to organize the multiple story lines. I am also a very visual person – I often find myself drawing a picture to help describe some point I am trying to make. Notebooks are fine, but I really needed something a bit more specific. There were several features that, at the time, I thought I needed:
I looked at the writing apps that had timelines built in, e.g. yWriter and even basic notecards. They covered most of my requirements, but ultimately lacked a fourth item that I discovered along the way: flexibility! Notecards, I need to point out, was a horrible experience. I didn’t have enough space for all the cards, couldn’t keep the relationships, and most importantly, couldn’t read my handwriting.! My romantic notion of a writer staring at a cork board plastered with notecards was quickly dashed on the rocks of practicality.
Then I started using Visio. I use it in my professional life and in the design of boardgames, the other often referenced hobby of mine on which I will blame my lack of writing… I put together timelines for each of my characters, a timeline for the world, and connected them all together with the dynamic connectors. I found the flexibility I needed to move things around without losing anything and had control over cutting and reconnecting the relationships. I also found I didn’t need to use any tagging, like an action vs reflective scene, instead I used colors. Worked just fine…
Until I found out how much I was missing using the Windows Beta of Scrivener and, as luck would have it, demands of my professional life gave me a great excuse to invest in a MacAir. Darn.
I finished writing The West Wind in Scrivener on my new Mac but then found myself wanting to re-arrange my timelines. No, nothing really easy or cheap for importing Visio documents into Mac drawing programs that I could find. I also didn’t want to go back and forth between platforms. I wound up re-building the timelines in OpenOffice.org Draw which, as it turned out, was needed anyway due to the amount of drift from the original story timelines over the year that I wrote the story. Re-building the timelines got me back in touch with the story and allowed me to implement an idea I had for telling much of Rachel’s backstory through a couple of key flashbacks.
To give some context, here is about the first third of The West Wind timeline as it was orginally in Visio:
First third of the West Wind timeline in Visio.
Even if only in a small way. I am excited to announce that one of my short stories has been selected to be included in a forthcoming horror short story anthology. My first of, hopefully, many more.
I have written and submitted several short stories recently, each taking place in and around the events of The West Wind. Yes, I know, I should be working on the book but I can rationalize these side efforts in a couple of ways:
I am re-writing. Finally.
No more excuses. No more indulgent distractions. Time to buckle down and get going on the re-write.
Rachel’s backstory, though not actually in the novel, was my first task. Something I had wanted to do following reading Jeter’s “Infernal Devices.” The whole “inherit a clockshop” thing seemed a little too trite, too cliche. So Rachel now has a new and better backstory. Much darker and dangerous than previously. Even better motivation than finding your fortune in the American Colonies… fleeing a dangerous conspiracy in England. Unfortunately, Rachel and Clarence are only going to find themselves embroiled in even deeper intrigues. Sort of “out of the frying pan an into the fire” type of thing. Can’t let the two of them off that easy now can I?
Ummm. Well. Not so well.
I’ve heard much about the fear and incapacitation caused by a blank page. I am suffering the opposite. The sight of a full page of my prose sends me running the other direction. I keep finding plenty of other things to do… such as…
I was flattered to be asked by David Mark Brown to beta read his latest work “The Austin Job.” If you are a follower you recall that I had read and reviewed his first work: “Fistful of Reefer.” This next installment brings back some “love to hate” characters from the first book and a few “easter egg” references for readers of Fistful to discover. David continues to develop his narrative skills as he begins to explore the “punk” side of the v1.0 Xpunk genres. Ever present are the over-the-top characters and action that I enjoyed from his first work. Expected release date of “The Austin Job” is on or about December 24.
In the meantime… back to not doing what I should be doing…
Finally, a topic about which I am almost qualified to dispense advice. Being still a new writer and all.
Slight detour…
I just returned with my family from Great Lakes Games, a four day annual invitational event for about 100 friends and family to get together and play boardgames. Boardgames and board game design is another of my frequently exercised hobbies (see “Other Publishing Credits”). This was the ninth year and we have attended all but the first. The timing is such that several of the folks in attendance have just returned from the Spiel in Essen… meaning lots of shiny new games unavailable yet here in the US. It also means getting together a number of game designer friends who are regulars. Exciting and notable this year was the placement of Hawaii by Greg Daigle on the FairPlay Essen scouting report – one of the more reliable predictors for commercial success of a game and pretty remarkable for an American designer. I am extremely happy for Greg – he has worked very hard at his craft and deserves the success and recognition for his work.
So what does this have to do with writing? Well not a whole lot really, but over the weekend I had a number of folks asking whether I had any games in the works. I always have games in the works, like stacks of half finished designs, however this time around they have all taken a back seat to this new writing thing. Several folks were surprised, several others shared their interests or desire to also write. The next question was how did I get myself up and going…
1) Preparation – I attended Michael Stackpole’s “21 Days to a Novel” seminar at Gen Con 2010. In an hour, he was able to explain in simple terms a number of writing exercises that would help prepare and construct a novel. Subsequently I found “The Secrets” podcast available at Stackpole’s site and iTunes. I listened to and enjoyed these podcasts. A portion of this podcast covers the 21 days process with examples. There is also an eBook available at his site and on Amazon.
2) Technique – Hands down the best source of information is the Writing Excuses podcast. Short, fun, and very educational. This should be recommended listening for anyone learning to write! Start at the beginning because they are that good.
3) Technology – I spent a great deal of time trying different writing applications. YWriter was the best application I found for the Windows platform. But hands down the program I prefer is Scrivener. I suffered through the Beta version of the application on Windows long enough to discover its true potential. Finally broke down and bought a Mac, the native platform for Scrivener. Haven’t looked back.
4) Encouragement – Wherever you get it, however you get it, it comes in handy. Give NaNoWriMo a try (adequate preparation is necessary to succeed), take a couple of Continuing Education classes at nearby community college, find a writer’s group, enlist your friends and family.
Enjoy! And best of luck.
No NaNoWriMo for me this year. I enjoyed it last year and found it a challenging and rewarding experience. Rewarding in the sense of personal accomplishment but also the first 50,000 words of the West Wind. Considering it took me 6 more months to write another 50,000, it truly was a great experience.
Instead, I am going to buckle down and tackle the rewrite of the West Wind. NaNo would just turn into another month long excuse not to get cracking. I have been doing well enough distracting myself with short stories (I have convinced myself it is good for honing my editing skills). I think I need a month of NaNoEditMo!
So for the folks that are going to take take up the challenge, whether for the first time or more, I wish you best of luck. Enjoy and I will see you next year…
I have all the timelines worked out, the arrows all going the right way, etc. If you have no idea what I mean… you probably missed the first three parts.
Step 8: Make it make sense. This part is hard to describe. I worked my way up and down the timelines making sure that the scenes flowed well. I moved a whole chapter because it made more sense earlier in the book. I also started making notes on some of the scenes suggesting additional content to rationalize action in another location. I identified long strings of POV scenes without interaction with other POV characters (not sure how I feel about that yet… I suspect a lot of it will get cut maybe to re-appear as a short story…). Finally, I highlighted the scenes that I wanted to insert as flashbacks.
Step 9: Put it all together. Having all of the scenes and dependencies helped with the next steep: numbering the scenes in sequential order. Using those numbers, I created a collection in Scrivener and added scenes to it in the newly assigned order. Finally, I switched over to the outline view in Scrivener where I could see the scenes and word counts to try grouping them into chapters. I ran into a bit of a problem here. I had no idea how to create chapters in a collection and after banging my head against the wall way too long I did what I should have done sooner – gave up and just rearranged the scenes in the binder *Then* I could create my chapters. With a few exceptions, I was able to group the scenes meaningfully and keep the word count around the 3,000 word mark. Why 3,000? Back to Stackpole for the answer – it is short enough to make you want to read “just one more chapter” before I put it down.
I should probably have named this string of posts “preparing for revision and editing” because now I am ready for the real work… the actual revision and editing part. That’s all for this series of posts. Thank for following along and please feel free to add your comments.
D.W. Beyer 