I just made the mistake of dipping into the archives of this blog to see what last year's New Year Resolution was. Oh dear...

"I really only have one writing resolution for 2008 - to finish the second draft of "The Guiser". OK, so that was my resolution last year as well... The prospect of posting the same resolution for 2009 ought to be enough to motivate me :)"

Apparently I was wrong! Well, I once again resolve to finish the second draft of this blasted novel. I only have another 80,000 or so words to write, which is less than 7000 a month, barely 220 a day - how hard can that be? *lol*

Posted by Anne at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been thinking for some time that I might write some "serious" historical crime, seeing as I love the genre. Elizabethan would seem to be the obvious period: I have already done a lot of research on it, and it's popular with readers but (I hope) not too overcrowded. Naturally I want to avoid replicating an existing series, however, so I've been doing some reseearch online.

Continue reading "Second fiddle" »

Posted by Anne at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yes, I know NaNoWriMo is over - but my personal deadline is this weekend, and I have had a lot more editing to do. I finally got the last bits of Act One of "The Guiser" finished this afternoon, and even fitted in an extra chapter.

Final word count: 44,410 words!

I have to confess to being very pleased with the way the story has worked out - having a bunch of good people to push me into improving my work makes a big difference. I don't know how often they visit this blog, but thanks guys!

Posted by Anne at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the big project over (or at least, on to the bug-fixing stage), I managed a big push on the writing front and passed my target comfortably :D

Goal: 30,000
Done: 32,740!!

I still have a couple of chapters to revise, but I'm on schedule to hand the new stuff over next weekend. Now I feel fully justified in going to my friend Rebecca's birthday party this evening :)

Posted by Anne at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The big development project at work finally went live last week, and the end of NaNoWriMo is in sight, so I felt in need of a reward to keep my spirits up. Lately I've taken to using my ordinary fountain pen (a Parker 45) a lot more, but I have long hankered for a really nice one. Unfortunately the new ones I looked at online were hideously expensive (two hundred pounds plus), so I was immensely cheered up when I found a website, Vintage Fountain Pens, Inc selling refurbished pens at rather more affordable prices (despite the American-sounding name, the company is based in Buckinghamshire!).

The downside of a vintage pen is that you are stuck with the nib that it comes with, but luckily I found a very nice one with a fine/medium nib, so I snapped it up immediately! It's a Conway Stewart 75, circa 1952, with a blue marble finish and 14ct gold nib. Here are the photos from the seller's website:

Is that gorgeous or what?

Posted by Anne at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Distracted by this week's ISP disaster, I have been completely failing to keep track of my exact word count from day to day. So this week's total is only a near estimate...

Goal: 23,000
Done: ~22, 750

So, almost back on track!

Posted by Anne at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week has been a little better. I'm still behind, but no further than I was last week. My working pattern hasn't been as linear as I had planned, either; as the new opening has developed, I have gone back and added in extra scenes where I thought the story felt a bit thin, and even split one chapter into two because I felt it needed more words and events than I had originally envisaged.

I've also finally been able to go through the big pile of old critiques that I'd been saving. Some were so old (early 2007) that the scenes they covered had been completely scrapped, but others had some valuable feedback for sections I'm working on at the moment. I still have a lot to go through, but the pile is a good deal smaller now!

Goal: 15,000
Done: 13,630

Posted by Anne at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Things got off to a slow start, predictably, not helped by our elderly cat dying mid-week (something I'd been expecting for a long time, but still a bit of a shock when it happened). However I've been plodding away, writing a new opening chapter that I think will set up the story effectively (without derailing the plot, which was what happened last time!).

Goal for the week so far: 8000
Done: 6409

Posted by Anne at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been having a little difficulty in keeping track of the action in my multiple-PoV story, so I was very pleased to discover a new piece of software called Aeon Timeline. In fact it's so new that I'm trying out the very first beta release!

The aim of the software is to fill a gap in the market. Existing timeline software is mainly aimed at people who have a known, usually historical, timeline that they want to illustrate with pretty graphics. Aeon, on the other hand, is aimed squarely at writers and worldbuilders, who need to be able to adjust the timeline as their plot ideas develop. So, key features include the ability to slide an event along the timeline and see the characters' ages change in relation to it. Later versions will support user-defined calendars - ideal for fantasy and SF, but also useful for historical novels and those set in non-Western cultures - and hopefully "fuzzy" dates, since we writers often only need vague definitions like "a summer evening in 1815".

Most of those features aren't in place yet - this really is a very early beta release - but it's already stable enough for basic use. I'm finding it very useful in logging my alternate history events and making sure that characters are plausible ages at key moments, and I look forward to the finished product with keen anticipation.

Posted by Anne at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...begins with a single tap.

I've decided that my target for this month is 1000 words written/revised a day - somewhat lower than the standard NaNoWriMo target, but enough to net me a respectable 30k of polished prose. I wish I could do more, but our big development project at work still isn't finished, so I'm unlikely to have as much time and energy as I've been able to spare in previous Novembers. Fortunately I have an inescapable deadline to spur me on - I'm next up to have a big chunk of novel critiqued by my writers' group, so I have to have something ready to give them by 7th December!

Posted by Anne at 6:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm manically preparing for my unofficial NaNoWriMo at the moment, a key part of which is revising the outline of "The Guiser" using SuperNotecard. Only problem is, there seems to be no easy way to get that outline into Scrivener once I'm finished. On the off-chance that someone else out there had encountered the same problem and solved it, I posted on the Literature & Latte forum.

Imagine my surprise when, within 24 hours, Keith the developer of Scrivener replied to say that he had come up with a solution and would be including it in the next release. Now that's what I call service! Admittedly, Scrivener 1.5 won't be out until some time in the New Year because there are a lot of other changes being incorporated, but I can wait until then. After all, I've still got an awful lot of wrting to do...

Posted by Anne at 7:53 AM | Permalink

This year I've decided not to do NaNoWriMo, fun as it is, because I really want to concentrate on getting "The Guiser" (which I first drafted for NaNo '06) finished. Hence I'm going do the Forward Motion October/November Dare instead, and get as much revising done as I can. I'll still be going along to as many of the local NaNoWriMo events as I can (partly in my role as assistant ML, since I'm running my online scoreboard again this year), and hanging out on the Cambridge forum, but I won't be logging a word count on the NaNoWriMo site.

I have next week off work, so hopefully I will be able to get my brain in gear and get off to a flying start!

Posted by Anne at 6:54 PM | Permalink

The other day my husband handed me a promotional postcard for a signing in our local bookshop. It was for an SF novel by a local author, hence he thought I might be interested in going. So, I dutifully read the card...

The first thing that struck me was the lack of mention of a publisher's name. This screamed "self-publishing" at me, but I didn't want to let that bias me against it. Fortunately there was a web address on the card, so I went along to the author's site. First impressions were OK - a bit spartan, very obviously a site specifically to promote this book, rather than someone with a real web presence - but I persevered. That was when it all came unstuck. The blurb read like one of those query letters that regularly get savaged on Evil Editor, whilst the character descriptions and 3-D rendered "portraits" would have been more at home in a third-rate computer game.

Did I go to the signing? Well, what do you think?

I hope the author (whom I will not name, for obvious reasons) does well with his little venture into self-publishing, really I do. But it was a sobering reminder of why we endure the pains of the slush-pile and the agent search. Because the sad truth is that self-publishing is all too often the last resort of the unpublishable. And who wants to be tarred with that brush?

Posted by Anne at 7:42 AM | Permalink

I realised the other day that it had been a month since I last posted on this blog. Thing is, between the hot weather at home and deadlines at work, I haven't actually written anything in ages, so there wasn't much to say.

This week, however, my Muse has been hankering to play a little. I have the urge to do some more conlanging, but at first I had no idea what kind of language to create. I'm not one of those conlangers (like Tolkien) who can create a language in a vacuum and then work out a culture and world that would use such a language. For me, a language has to evolve to meet the needs of its speakers, not the other way around.

After some playing around with ideas for non-human peoples (some of which I may use it my books), I eventually decided that I wanted to create a human language; after all, I already have a non-human one in the works (for the skraylings in the "Secret Theatre" books). That led me on to the idea of magical/ceremonial language - what language would my spell-casters use?

In most fantasy worlds, magical languages seem to derive their power from having mystic origins; they are the languages of the gods, or of ancient magical races such as elves. But what if the language were just an ordinary human tongue (albeit an ancient one) used for magic because of some intrinsic property of its own? Different human languages have different ways of dividing up our experience of reality; if magic involves manipulating reality, it's not that big a stretch to imagine a language which enhances the speaker's ability to focus on, or tap into, that power.

So, that's what I'm working on right now - a conlang which encodes the kind of subtle distinctions that spell-casters might need, in particular issues of volition, intent and agency. Of course any language is capable of saying just about anything one can conceive. The point is that a language that has such ideas built in would be more elegant and concise; one that enforces distinctions that are optional in others will inevitably be more precise and accurate. A language of this sort might be retained for specialist purposes such as magic, perhaps for millennia, simply on the grounds of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" :)

Posted by Anne at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Well, the conference was even better than I had hoped, in some respects at least. On the plus side, I got some very encouraging feedback from Juliet McKenna which has made me decide to stick with the new Dreamwalkers project for the time being, and I met friends from last time as well as making new ones. On the downside, I don't feel I got much out of the Saturday programme; I've reached the stage now where the talks aren't telling me much I don't already know, and the trend seems to be away from workshops where you actually write and learn. So, this may be my last Winchester conference for the foreseeable...

At Juliet's recommendation, I have signed up for NewCon 4 in Northampton this October. The guest lineup is very good, and agent John Jarrold is attending (though of course I won't be thrusting my manuscript into his hands!). One of my crit group buddies is also booked, so it should be good fun :)

Posted by Anne at 6:31 AM | Permalink

Since sending off my sample chapter to the conference, I've been concentrating on worldbuilding for my Dreamwalkers project. In some respects, I don't have a lot to do because the world is based on heaps of previous projects, but on the other hand I have to decide which bits to keep, which to modify and which need inventing entirely from scratch.

These last few days I've been focusing on sorting out the names of countries. I have a couple that I wanted to keep, but the rest needed replacing. At first I thought of digging out my old notes and seeing if there were any other names I'd forgotten, but in the end I came up with a bunch of new ones, using a simple method. You see, an awful lot of European place names, especially on the continent, come from the Celtic and Germanic tribes who lived there before the Romans came along. So, all I had to do was to pick some tribe names and "warp" them in a different linguistic direction.

Continue reading "On top of the world" »

Posted by Anne at 7:49 AM | Permalink

I wrote the cover letter and synopsis over the weekend, and now the work sample is on its way to the conference organiser - hopefully just in time to hit the deadline. The synopsis is a bit sketchy, especially towards the end, but since my only one-to-one is with a fellow writer rather than an agent or editor, I'm under a lot less pressure to make a stunning first impression!

Posted by Anne at 10:42 AM | Permalink

That's the length of my opening chapter in this first draft - if you can call it that, since it's loosely based on something that was written and revised several years ago! However the second scene was written completely from scratch, in order to bring in the main plotline as early as possible, so it is substantially new material.

I'm not sure if the hook is strong enough, but I want to start with Ellie's childhood because the magic in this world is pretty unusual and I think readers will enjoy seeing Ellie get to grips with it. Maybe once I've written the whole book - or got some negative feedback on the opening - I will feel the need to change it, but for now I'm reasonably happy with the way it's going.

Posted by Anne at 4:33 PM | Permalink

As you may know from recent blog entries, I've been really struggling with my work-in-progress, The Guiser, for the past few months. It's got to the point where I really don't want to use it for my conference workshop, because I'm sick of trying to sort out the plot!

I thought about reviving my 2YN project, but that's still at too early a stage of development to be usable - I have to get a writing sample to the conference by June 6th! So, I've been sorting through my "trunk novels" to see if there isn't something worth resurrecting. It's been an interesting exercise, seeing all the promising stories that just foundered completely after a few chapters because I had no idea where to take the story or how to develop the initial idea into a novel-length work. I'm hoping that I can bring my experience of outlining for NaNoWriMo to these projects and turn them into completed books - there are some really nice ideas and characters in there, and I know it's going to be fun spending time with these old friends :)

Posted by Anne at 6:53 AM | Permalink

I was watching "Doctor Who Confidential" on BBC iPlayer this evening (nothing unusual about that!), when a bit of theatrical jargon caught my ear. During a section about lighting effects, the gaffer (head electrician) explained that he was following the script "from what's called 'sides'" - and I was suddenly taken back four hundred years. "Sides" was a term back in Shakespeare's day for the individual scripts which contained each role's lines and cues; lacking photocopiers or typewriters, the copyist provided each actor with only the bare minimum he needed to follow his part.

For me, one of the joys of history is discovering unexpected links with ancestors long dead, and today's find was a very small but still pleasurable addition to that list...

Posted by Anne at 8:04 PM | Permalink

I booked my place at this year's Winchester Writers' Conference today. I had my winning ticket from last year, of course, but that only covers the Saturday events, so I've still had to pay for accommodation and any extra courses. On the plus side, though, it means I can attend whichever bits of the weekend I like and it will still cost me less than usual :)

This year I've decided to do the Friday daytime mini-workshop rather than the Friday evening/Sunday morning one, as I wake so early in the summer that I'm never terribly alert by evening. It also means I can head for home on Sunday morning rather than Sunday afternoon - unfortunately I can't take a whole week off work after the conference, like I did last year, as we have a major deadline in July. The workshop I've chosen is called "Blindfold into the Maze: Plotting Your Novel" - it seemed like the most appropriate one, since that's what I'm having most trouble with at the moment.

I'm not seeing any editors or agents this year, as there's no-one really suitable, but I have made an appointment with fantasy author Juliet McKenna, which should be interesting!

Posted by Anne at 7:00 PM | Permalink

I realised this week that I've neglected my blog for two whole months, which is the longest gap I've ever left between posts. Truth is, I was burnt out and blocked after well over a year of trying to beat my manuscript into shape, and I desperately needed some time out.

Continue reading "The Wilderness Weeks" »

Posted by Anne at 2:50 PM | Permalink

My iRex iLiad arrived yesterday morning. Needless to say I didn't wait 3 hours for it to finish charging before I played with it :)

First impressions are that, although the software is generally slower than a normal computer, page turning has been speeded up noticably since the demo videos I saw on the web. Wireless was also a bit fiddly to get going - you have to hold down the button for several seconds to get the connection started, and the first time you try to connect, it can take a while - but once it was established, it went fine. I upgraded to the latest software (2.12) over the Internet, then connected to my MacBook (using instructions from the iRex forum, since the companion software is Windows-only) and loaded the iLiad up with a bunch of free ebooks from feedbooks.com.

Reading on the iLiad is a completely different experience from using a computer. The pages look like ordinary paper - albeit very pale grey rather than white, and slightly reflective from being behind a glass cover - so no eye-strain, or at least no more than if you were reading from print. No messing around with scroll bars or buttons, either; just flick the flipbar like you're turning the page on a book, and the page changes at about the same speed as using paper. Obviously you have more page turns because the ebook shows only one page at a time, not a two-page spread, but otherwise it's pretty damned close to reading a book.

I've now got all my critique reading loaded on as PDFs, so I can catch up on the two novels I'm supposed to comment on. Since I managed roughly 10k in bed last night, that shouldn't be a problem!

Posted by Anne at 7:41 AM | Permalink

I'm back at last from my writing holiday in Cornwall, with mixed reactions. On the plus side, the cottage was lovely and I did manage to get four new chapters edited and a fair bit of outline reworked. On the downside, having nothing to do except write was a bit frustrating at times; sometimes I need to do something else whilst my mental batteries recharge. I also think I prefer to write in isolation - an occasional write-in at a cafe is fun, especially in the frenzied atmosphere of NaNoWriMo, but a whole week? No offence to my companions, but I think I'll give it a miss in future :)

Posted by Anne at 10:03 PM | Permalink

Thanks to those nice folks at Mindola, the last strings tying me to Windows on the Samsung Q1U have been cut. They gave me a link to the raw JAR file for SuperNotecard, which means I can run it on Linux :D

I've tried it out on my Debian box at work and everything seems OK, so I shall definitely be pushing ahead with my plan to convert the Samsung to dual-booting XP and Ubuntu. I'd rather not blow Windows away entirely at this stage, since it still has one or two advantages, such as handwriting recognition and better hardware support, but at least I can now get serious writing work done without it!

Posted by Anne at 5:45 AM | Permalink

Following my resolution to hack on with revisions of "The Guiser", I have signed up for an online workshop "Using an Outline to Edit" and have begun listening to the ISBW podcast again. I've started the latter at Episode 78: Editing (what else) - it came out back in November, but of course I was Nanoing by then and editing was the last thing on my mind. I recommend this episode to anyone trying to edit a story or novel as, despite Mur's insistence that she hates editing and is no expert, she has some great tips. Nice one, Mur!

Posted by Anne at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You would think that with two blogs, I might manage to keep at least one of them up to date, right? Wrong. I was so busy in the run-up to Christmas, I couldn't think of anything useful to say. I wasn't writing, and my conlang project was moving rather slowly. Then on December 22nd I hurt my back - bending down to get milk out of the fridge, for heaven's sake! - and couldn't sit up and use my laptop for a couple of days... Then Christmas arrived, and things got busy again, so here I am, with the New Year underway and over a fortnight gone since I last blogged.

I really only have one writing resolution for 2008 - to finish the second draft of "The Guiser". OK, so that was my resolution last year as well, but I had never revised a novel before and had no idea how hard it would be. I've learnt a lot in the past twelve months, so maybe this time I have a chance of actually doing it. The prospect of posting the same resolution for 2009 ought to be enough to motivate me :)

Posted by Anne at 3:43 PM | Permalink

My Neo finally arrived today, two days later than anticipated (I wasn't able to work at home this week, and UPS made a pig's ear of changing the delivery address). Sad person that I am, I already picked out a name: Ivor. It's short for both Ivor Novello (I know, seriously groan-worthy!) and Ivor the Engine, who is of course green and heroic :) I don't normally name inanimate objects, but all our computers have to have names so they can be identified on our home network, and although the Neo can't be networked, it's still part of my IT infrastructure.

Continue reading "Ivor is here!" »

Posted by Anne at 8:00 PM | Permalink

Over the last couple of weeks I've been looking forward to NaNoWriMo rather nervously, hoping I can win it again and avoid the dreaded "sophomore slump". One thing that has bothered me is that, whilst I do want to use my Alphasmart Dana - I don't think I could have won without it last year - I do sometimes find the screen hard to read. And since I've also been having eyestrain headaches lately, I want to avoid making things worse by squinting at the Dana all November. I've therefore decided to get a different Alphasmart, the Neo - the screen is smaller but apparently has much better contrast. Also, although it is purely a word-processor (no Palm OS or wireless), on the upside it runs forever off a single set of AA batteries, so I wouldn't have to worry about keeping it charged either.

Continue reading "Neo decision" »

Posted by Anne at 8:10 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I spent some time trying out StoryLines (part of the Writer's Cafe suite), an outlining program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Apart from its OS-agnosticism (which is not to be sneezed at), the main difference from SuperNotecard and Scrivener is that you have to assign your cards to a story line, and the cards are laid out in horizontal rows across the corkboard. After some consideration, however, I have decided that the ability to use it on Linux is not enough to make me switch.

Continue reading "Close, but no cigar" »

Posted by Anne at 8:00 AM | Permalink

Although I post stuff online about my writing progress (both here and on Forward Motion), there's something to be said for a personal, private journal done the old-fashioned way - on paper. For one thing, I don't like to go into too much detail online because there may be plot spoilers involved; for another, we Brits are brought up to put a brave face on the world and not complain overly:

A: How are you, mate?

B: Mustn't grumble! (said cheerily - subtext "My wife's left me and my car's been repossessed, but I'm not going to burden you with my woes")

Some blog software allows you to post private entries "for your eyes only", but what's the point in that?

Continue reading "Journals" »

Posted by Anne at 6:51 AM | Permalink

Today was the last NaNoWriMo lunchtime inter-rim meet of 2006/7, at CB2 in Cambridge as usual. Also as usual, only myself, Lottie and Anne-Lise were in attendance, and as usual we got almost no writing done.

That was OK, though, because the real agenda for the day was looking at holiday cottages in Cornwall, the reason being that at last month's get-together it was suggested that we have our own little writing retreat in the off-season when holiday homes are cheap. Amazingly, not only had Lottie and Anne-Lise both printed out their short-list of seaside cottages, but we actually managed to choose one we all liked and reserve it!

The cottage is called 'Waterwitch', and it has a wood-burning stove and lots of comfy sofas - ideal for long hours of writing or just pondering. It's also a mercifully short stagger from the pub - one of our main selection criteria :)

Posted by Anne at 8:14 AM | Permalink

This morning I decided that if my WiP wasn't going to be a standalone, I really ought to sketch out the whole series before I go any further! After some thought I decided that, whilst trilogies are a bit predicable, I'm not ready to go as far as JKR or Robert Jordan, so I'm planning on "Secret Theatre" being a tetralogy (with another similar-sized series set a century or so later).

Continue reading "Gang of Four" »

Posted by Anne at 4:23 PM | Permalink

I've just finished reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch, and I have to say it's pretty damned good. I've tried to avoid spoilers in the following review, concentrating instead on Lynch's writing...

Continue reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" »

Posted by Anne at 7:27 PM | Permalink

After much soul-searching, I've decided to put my 2YN project on hold and carry on with PW revisions. I really like the story, but I know that to break into the UK market I need to write the very best book possible, and I can't do that if I keep stopping to work on something else.

In preparation I've ordered some recent historical fantasy so I can size up the competition. Luckily it all seems to concentrate on the 19th century, so at least I still have a niche to myself...

Posted by Anne at 7:07 PM | Permalink

Start of a new month, and I really want to catch up on my other project, "Gate of Bone". The trouble is, my head has been so firmly stuck in the late sixteenth-century that it's proving really hard. I'm also daunted at the prospect of writing a YA novel - it's going to be hard to rein in my elliptical expositionary style in favour of something that is intelligible to readers with a relatively limited experience of the wider world.

It's fortunate, I think, that I'll be on holiday (in Scotland) the week after next and thus will miss a CWIL meeting. I can - in theory, at least - forget all about "Powderkeg Walk" for nearly a month, since my fellow writers won't be critiquing the next chapter until the 27th.

So, away with all my books on Elizabethan London - I need to be reading about Ancient Greece and Rome!

Posted by Anne at 8:34 AM | Permalink

This week I've been busy at work and not written much, so it's ironic that I've also just discovered a podcast for fiction writers called "I Should Be Writing", by SF writer and Lulu.tv podcast producer Mur Lafferty. It's great for listening to on the bus on days when it's too crowded for me to get out my Alphasmart. And anyone who uses Londo Mollari from Babylon 5 as their example of a great tragic character gets the thumbs-up from me!

Posted by Anne at 6:23 PM | Permalink

Writing historical fiction is proving quite a challenge. No longer can I just invent a place or fact when I need it - everything must be researched! The upside is that real-world details can add richness to a scene and suggest incidents without the need for inspiration :)

Continue reading "Getting it right" »

Posted by Anne at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today I got an email from Barbara Large at the University of Winchester, confirming that it was my ticket that was drawn. I have to post it off to her as final confirmation, so I've taken a photo of it with my conference badge (right), just to be on the safe side! Note the spooky similarity between my delegate number and the ticket number...

The news will be posted on the conference website, and I have to write a short blurb to say how pleased I am and what the conference means to me. Hey, I'm a writer - how hard can it be?

Posted by Anne at 6:59 PM | Permalink

Having hoped to be all fired up by the conference, I now find myself just the opposite - the anti-climactic feeling is making me feel less like writing than ever. Spent the day copying stuff from my computer and PDA onto the Treo and generally procrastinating.

I won't even attempt to dignify it with the name "writer's block"; this is just plain idleness! The dreary weather isn't helping, of course. This week we've had thunderstorms and torrential rain, and all I can think about is the fact that my allotment is hopelessly overgrown and there's no chance of clearing it until we've had some sunshine to dry out the grass :(

Posted by Anne at 6:13 PM | Permalink

Managed to get a little writing done today despite having my shiny new Treo to play with. Only 500 words, and frankly I'm not convinced the scene is adding anything to the story, but right now any writing is better than nowt. I met Richard in CB2 for lunch and had intended to stay there, but I felt restless and had to go into town to buy a new SIM card for the Treo before I could settle. I wanted a tariff that has good data charges so that getting my email on the Treo doesn't cost a fortune, and T-Mobile's Pay As You Go charges are capped at £1 a day.

After I'd done that I was able to settle down at Cafe Nerro (now thankfully smoke-free) and do some writing. Stayed in town until the CWIL meeting, where my new prologue was critiqued. The concensus was that there was some excellent description but it wasn't exciting enough. I guess I was just feeling too down to write something gripping - will have to fix that in the next draft!

Posted by Anne at 10:21 PM | Permalink

Those words always remind me of Frankie Howerd in "Up Pompeii"! However I decided that my book needs a prologue rather than a new first chapter, because I can't easily justify my protagonist being present for the 'inciting incident'. Since the reader has a tendency to latch onto the first character mentioned, I'm hoping that calling it a prologue will signal that this scene isn't part of the main story. Well, we'll see. At least it's kicked off my writing week with a solid 870 words. I've uploaded it to the CWIL website for critique on Thursday - having a deadline has definitely helped my productivity!

Posted by Anne at 3:31 PM | Permalink

The weekend is over. After a frantic 48 hours, I'm back home, exhausted but still elated...

Continue reading "Winchester, Day 3" »

Posted by Anne at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Woke at my usual early hour after a rather sleepless night, thanks to the thinness of the walls in the halls of residence, noisy doors and a rattling hot water pipe...

Onward and upward, though. And downward, and upward again - a campus on the side of a 1-in-3 hill is tough on the legs as well as the brain!

Continue reading "Winchester, Day 2" »

Posted by Anne at 11:59 PM | Permalink

First day of the conference, and things have gone pretty well so far. Two appointments with agents, dinner, and an evening workshop left my brain buzzing and sleep seemingly far away...

Continue reading "Winchester, Day 1" »

Posted by Anne at 11:51 PM | Permalink

I've decided to use the upcoming release of the Foleo to spur me during these lethargic summer months, otherwise I'll get no writing done!

The plan is to reach the 50,000 word mark on the second draft of "Powderkeg Walk" before I allow myself to buy a Foleo. I'm aiming to get that done by the end of August if possible, otherwise by the end of September. The hardest part is going to be nailing Act One - once I have that sorted, the rest should flow fairly easily, I think (fingers crossed!).

Posted by Anne at 7:12 AM | Permalink

I spent yesterday evening reading "Ancient Inventions", as research for 2YN. Having read a section describing Arnold Toynbee's speculations about what might have happened if Alexander hadn't died so young (a world-spanning Greek empire criss-crossed by railway lines, with Buddhism as its main religion!), I am now convinced that there will be steam locomotives in my sandalpunk world. Now I just have to resist the urge to adopt Toynbee's ideas wholesale and make this world alternate history like "Secret Theatre"!

Posted by Anne at 7:06 AM | Permalink

Catching up on May's 2YN assignments proved easier than I thought. Luckily they were for areas of world-building that I can lift straight from my knowledge of Greek and Roman culture, so there wasn't much thought or research required.

One element I've decided to include from previous stalled projects is that of a world with no horses or equivalent riding beasts. It's an idea that's intrigued me for a while, and also gives my slave-owning society an incentive to develop sandalpunk steam technology for use in transportation :)

Posted by Anne at 6:18 AM | Permalink

Last night I printed out and packaged up my submissions for the conference - one for my workshop tutor Sally Spedding and another for agent James Wills. They'll go in the post today, in plenty of time for the conference deadline.

For the rest of this month I'm going to focus on 2YN, to keep my mind off fretting about the conference!

Posted by Anne at 6:13 AM | Permalink

With no choice but to jolly well get on with it, I finally got my chapter and synopsis done today. The synopsis just needed updating to the new alternate history setting, and the chapter wasn't so hard after all. For one thing, I've shortened it by a scene.

Continue reading "Nose to the grindstone" »

Posted by Anne at 5:46 PM | Permalink

My plan to start a critique group has already attracted one person, who is writing not-quite-steampunk historical SF - cool!

Posted by Anne at 6:33 AM | Permalink

Six weeks ago I decided to look for an online critique group to complement the feedback I get from CWIL, and settled on a group on FM that looked promising. We exchanged work samples and did a critique swap, but after much deliberation they decided not to invite me to join. It's no biggie - there was rather more dark fantasy & horror in the members' work than I'm entirely comfortable with - but it does mean that now I have to start the whole darned process all over again!

In the absence of any other suitable groups on FM, I've decided to start my own. I want to make the genre remit a bit wider than the usual SF&F-only group, but keep out the darker stuff. Well, I can but try...

Posted by Anne at 6:22 PM | Permalink

I really should be working on my synopsis and chapter this weekend, but I really can't summon the enthusiasm. I feel like I've already edited the chapter so many times, I don't know what else to do with it. Instead I've been hanging in out on Absolute Write all weekend, reading about some of the dreadful scam artists who prey on naive writers. It's like a traffic accident - just ghastly, but you can't quite tear your eyes away. I'm just glad I've been on the inside of the industry (albeit non-fiction) and have a better idea of how it all works.

Posted by Anne at 4:39 PM | Permalink

Didn't get a single writing-related thing done today as I had a particularly busy day at work. One of our team members is leaving at the end of the month, and another is off indefinitely with RSI, so I'm having to take up the slack. Spent the entire day at the keyboard with minimal breaks, so my right arm was aching by the time I left :(

Hence I made myself stay away from the keyboard until bedtime, and then only checked my email. Nothing urgent had turned up, so I put the laptop away again...

Posted by Anne at 7:29 AM | Permalink

This site now has a wiki, which I am using for my world-building. I'm trying to avoid major spoilers, since these are public pages - they're more like an online version of the appendices that are so popular in fantasy :)

Posted by Anne at 5:11 PM | Permalink

This week I've been browsing back issues of Vision ezine and trying not to be too impatient to see my first article published. I found some useful articles on writing synopses and outlines by trawling through the index, but whilst doing this I spotted a familiar name - a pseudonym that I was using about five years ago. Coincidence? No. Identity theft? Nope. It was me.

I had written and submitted the article soon after joining Forward Motion, but since it came out only a month before I got married, I suppose I was too distracted to pay much attention. Whilst a great many things happened in 2003 that I would be glad to forget, now I'm wondering how many more good things I've forgotten... *sigh*

Posted by Anne at 6:12 AM | Permalink

The programme for the Winchester Writers' Conference came yesterday, so now I have the task of trying to decide which courses and talks to sign up for. Regrettably there are no specialist SF&F agents attending, unlike last year (most of them are of the "strictly no fantasy" variety), but maybe that's a good thing - I'm not ready to query yet, so if someone did show real interest, I'd feel under enormous pressure to get the manuscript finished PDQ.

Continue reading "Decisions, decisions" »

Posted by Anne at 7:18 AM | Permalink

My draft query letter finally made it onto the Crap-o-meter website and didn't get shredded (does the dance of joy) :D

OK, so I only got 4 comments, but maybe that's because it wasn't bad enough to spark a bitch-fest. "Too long" was the main criticism, but that can easily be fixed. Overall I'm pretty damned pleased.

Now I just have to get the thing finished...

Posted by Anne at 7:09 AM | Permalink

Despite having signed up for the Word Count Marathon on FM, I've written zilch this weekend :(

Right now I'm blaming it on the New Moon. Although there's a lot of research that disproves the common belief that the moon - especially when full - affects human behaviour, there are a few studies that seem to suggest that depression increases around the new moon, especially for women. Since most studies don't appear to separate their subjects by gender, it's possible that a difference in the sexes could be masking the effect. Food for thought...

Posted by Anne at 6:32 AM | Permalink

Phew! I've finished the character assignments for 2YN already - they weren't as complicated as I'd feared - so I've been looking ahead to the world-building section. I spotted that for the first assignment we have to decide how we're going to organize our notes - one thing I enjoy doing!

One suggestion is to use a PDA, but having lent both my Palm Tungsten T3 (now dead) and LifeDrive to my husband, my only Palm-powered device is the Alphasmart. It may have been ideal for NaNoWriMo, but the screen is a bit dark for other uses and it's hardly pocket-sized, so I've decided to go for a very basic Palm PDA to complement the Alphasmart. It's a Z22 - an inexpensive, no-frills model that should make an ideal electronic jotting pad. I've ordered it from Amazon and it should arrive on Tuesday morning, which gives me a few days to check it's working and install the software I need. I want to get my character notes copied into HanDBase, as well as setting up BrainForest for world-building and outlining. And of course I have to install a Mac OS X theme, because the Z22 looks decidedly Apple-esque :)

Posted by Anne at 6:52 PM | Permalink

I got my contract and payment through today for an article I submitted to Vision ezine - my first paid publication in a long time! The article, "Net Benefit", is about web hosting options for writers, and should be out in the May/June edition.

Posted by Anne at 11:52 AM | Permalink

After doing the first four 2YN assignments, I have changed my mind about the story I want to write. I was going to do a light-hearted historical fantasy set in 18th-century Bristol/Bath, but now that I'm reading "Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell", I feel that would just be setting myself up for comparison with Susanna Clarke - and there's no doubt I'd come away the loser :(

Instead I've begun a new project, set in the same world as "Powderkeg Walk" but around 2000 years previously. This gives me the opportunity to use some of my sandalpunk material from an abandoned project, as well as some fantastical elements that don't really fit into the "Secret Theatre" setting as it currently stands. I'll have to redo my 2YN assignments, but this is my last opportunity to change, so I'm seizing it with both hands!

Posted by Anne at 7:48 AM | Permalink

I've just signed up for the 2YN (Two Year Novel) Course on Forward Motion. I first thought about it when I saw the adverts for the accompanying book on the site, then when I found out that it had to be a completely new project - not even set in an existing world - I decided to concentrate on my NaNoWriMo revisions.

However, a post on the FM forums made me think that maybe I need another setting as a backup, in case my Secret Theatre books don't sell. And the pace of the course is fairly leisurely, so hopefully I can fit it in around revising "Powderkeg Walk". Finally, the course is once a year only, so if I don't start it now I'll have to wait until late December to sign up for the 2008/9 course :(

Posted by Anne at 4:26 PM | Permalink

Now that the Christmas chaos and piano anticipation are out of the way, it's time to get on with editing "Powderkeg Walk". First job will be to finish the revision of Chapter 1 to submit for critique, then another look at the revised outline. I also still haven't done my character list and city map (mea culpa!), so those need doing as well.

Posted by Anne at 3:33 PM | Permalink

I've signed up for the December Challenge on Forward Motion, which is aimed at encouraging participants to finish off any loose ends for the year.

Continue reading "Loose Ends" »

Posted by Anne at 1:37 PM | Permalink

Still plugging away! The writing is still pretty difficult at times, I have to admit. Having an outline may mean you're never at a loss as to what to write, but summoning the enthusiasm to write a scene when you already know what's going to happen can really hard. I have to say it's worth it, though, because sometimes new ideas occur to me whilst writing which are better than the original outline. They don't have to be outrageous enough to substantially alter the plot - in fact I'd rather they weren't! - but they can add a new twist or spice up a dull scene, which is never a bad thing.

For example, as a result of an on-the-fly twist in my latest problem scene, I had a really productive day (for a weekday) - 2806 words, taking me up to 36179, which is nearly 1200 ahead of schedule!

Posted by Anne at 10:25 PM | Permalink

Broke the 25k barrier on the 15th, bang on schedule, but my triumph was short-lived. Yesterday was the first day ever that I wrote not a single word...

Continue reading "Day 16 - Laptop Reconstruction" »

Posted by Anne at 7:37 AM | Permalink

On the recommendation of a member of Forward Motion, I've bought a copy of "The Marshall Plan for Novel-Writing", which aims to help beginners to outline and write a novel that will sell :) I'm using it to outline my NaNoWriMo story thoroughly so I can concentrate on the actual writing, but I want to leave some gaps so that I can still invent stuff on the fly - otherwise it will be boring to write, and thus to read!

Continue reading "The Marshall Plan" »

Posted by Anne at 1:19 PM | Permalink

Not only did my Dana arrive on schedule (well done, Portable Technology!), but the iPod turned up in the post as well. Two toys to play with this evening - I shan't know which one to start on!

No, that's not true. One of them is an "it just works" Apple product, the other is a complex device requiring careful setup and choosing of options - bit of a no-brainer for a geek like me ;)

Posted by Anne at 11:48 AM | Permalink

The heatwave continues and indeed worsens - the BBC are predicting a maximum of 36C today! I shall try to put some thought into resuming writing, but mostly I shall be worrying about how the chickens are coping with the heat...

Posted by Anne at 7:20 AM | Permalink

I've been exceedingly lazy this weekend and not done any writing, nor even any typing drills. I started with good intentions on Saturday afternoon, trying to come up with a good surname for my main characters, and got distracted by a genealogy site. I then spent the rest of Saturday and the whole of Sunday tracing my ancestors through the UK census records online. It's totally addictive - so far I've identified four sets of my great-great-great-grandparents, going back as far as 1790!

Posted by Anne at 6:16 AM | Permalink

One of my favourite quotations on the subject of writing is by David Michael Kaplan, in "Rewriting: A Creative Approach to Writing Fiction". He says:

"To make a silk purse from a sow's ear, first you need a sow's ear."

This first rough draft is definitely a sow's ear!

Continue reading "Sow's Ear" »

Posted by Anne at 7:46 AM | Permalink

Well, I've finally got to do some writing at last! I haven't done any outlining at all this time; I just want to try out my new character idea and see how it goes. I'm also writing in longhand rather than on the computer; that way I can't so easily be tempted to prematurely submit a sample to the writing group.

Yesterday was too hot to think, never mind write, so I only managed a couple of lines, but this morning I wrote a couple of exercise-book pages (probably 300 words or so), which is a start :)

Posted by Anne at 8:01 AM | Permalink

Over the last couple of weeks I've taken advantage of my semi-computerless state to spend a lot a time thinking about what I'm going to write. As a result I've decided to make a significant change to my main character and see if that helps to inspire me.

Continue reading "Change of direction" »

Posted by Anne at 5:57 PM | Permalink

The MacBook is on its way (allegedly in Amsterdam being handed over to the European courier), and I have covered most of the home row in Dvorak now. Admittedly I'm finding it a bit difficult to concentrate on the drills with a couple of kittens running round the room! I've also gone back to posting on Forward Motion, Holly Lisle's writers' forum, as by spooky coincidence they are doing a Dvorak challenge this June!

Posted by Anne at 7:44 AM | Permalink

Following my Dvorak investigation yesterday, I loaded a file onto my Palm which would allow me to change the layout of my BT keyboard to Dvorak. I don't know if it was this file, or a BT bug reported on other OS5 units, but this morning my LifeDrive went into an infinite reboot loop, and the only way out was to hard reset it :(

As a result I have lost what little I wrote on the Palm this week - mainly some character mini-biographies - so now I'm having to rewrite them from memory. Anyone would think that the universe is trying to prevent me from getting this novel written!

Posted by Anne at 3:41 PM | Permalink

As I'm about to settle down to a serious bout of writing - and because I am trying to follow the advice in "Way of the Cheetah" - I thought I'd better sort out some dedicated space to work in. Also, my bookshelf fell off the wall a couple of mornings ago(!), so I needed a new home for all my writing books - and a proper backup plan, since my iBook was nearly a victim of the collapse :(

Continue reading "Writing space" »

Posted by Anne at 6:19 PM | Permalink

I've just bought an ebook called "The Way of the Cheetah", by Lynn Viehl. It's a book of productivity tips for writers which I hope will help get me off to a flying start with my re-draft. My plan is to do some final preparation work this weekend, and start on the narrative by Monday at the latest!

Posted by Anne at 7:24 PM | Permalink

I'm making a serious effort to finish the novel I'm reading at the moment so that I can concentrate on writing. It's a good book - the final part of the Rai-Kirah Trilogy, by Carol Berg - but I find it distracting to be reading one story whilst writing another.

Continue reading "Reading vs Writing" »

Posted by Anne at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Two months ago I said in my blog I was feeling inspired but was going to put the previous draft aside and try a completely new plot. Unfortunately inspiration was so badly lacking that I haven't written anything since :(

However, some more "percolation" time seems to have been beneficial, so on with the show!

Continue reading "Let's try again, shall we?" »

Posted by Anne at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Despite my best intentions last week, I really haven't written anything so far :( To make matters worse, I finally picked up a paperback I bought ages ago and have been unable to put it down.

Continue reading "Reading" »

Posted by Anne at 3:50 PM | Permalink

After my post-Christmas "sabbatical", the story ideas are finally starting to bubble up, so I'm going to put my conlangs on the backburner and make another stab at writing...

Continue reading "Back in the saddle" »

Posted by Anne at 12:38 PM | Permalink

After last night's CWIL meeting I'm starting to feel increasingly keen on working on my novel series. Partly it's guit, because the number of submissions to the group has decreased recently, but there's also the demands of my competitive streak - Rebecca's new book is shaping up really well, and I refuse to be outdone!

More objectively, I also think I've had a sufficient break from my own work that I can reassess it without going into a panic :)

Posted by Anne at 12:58 PM | Permalink

I just realised yesterday that I haven't made any blog entries in almost a month!

The truth is I haven't been writing :( Instead I've been mulling over all the feedback I've had so far from my fellow writers, and trying to work out what the hell is really going on in my plot! Then December loomed and a zillion and one things to get done before Christmas (making mincemeat for mince pies, choosing and ordering a gas fire so we can be cozy this winter, etc). Eventually I decided that I was way too busy to concentrate on writing, so I've started on a side-project. It's related to my fictional world but not writing as such, so it gets its own section of the blog...

Posted by Anne at 5:34 AM | Permalink

After spending the weekend resting, my subconscious seems to be ready to tackle the revision process. It helped that a useful book arrived from Amazon yesterday; "Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes" by Raymond Obstfeld. It covers some of the real nuts-and-bolts of the craft; I read several chapters straight off, and within minutes of lying down to sleep I found myself visualising exactly what I needed to do to improve the opening scene of my current draft. I shall definitely be adding this one to my 'recommended' list!

Posted by Anne at 2:06 PM | Permalink

I'm still getting over my virus and thus not writing a great deal; also, I've had more feedback from the group which has given me food for thought. Hence, I have decided to concentrate on revising Act One for a while, and so there will be no word-count updates until I have finished this stage.

Posted by Anne at 3:48 PM | Permalink

I'm enjoying writing the more "low-life" scenes required of my new take on events, though I still keep getting distracted by research.

Daily progress: 886 words

Running total: 26,940 words

Posted by Anne at 7:49 PM | Permalink

Had to attend a friends' baby's christening - long day, much wine, no writing :(

Daily progress: 0 words

Running total: 26,054 words

Posted by Anne at 6:09 PM | Permalink

Starting to get into the new perspective on my characters :)

Daily progress: 971 words

Running total: 26,054 words

Posted by Anne at 6:25 PM | Permalink

Started writing (albeit slowly), but got increasingly frustrated by the behaviour of my optical mouse, which seems to be sending multiple 'click' signals even when I am careful to click the button only once. I decided to try a trackball, which has the advantage of not needing to be moved around, so I can sit it on my lap tray next to the iBook. Rather than order online and wait several days for a delivery, I popped into town and bought one, but then got distracted by browsing the bookshops. Ended up buying a DVD of "Twelfth Night" and a book on "Playgoing in Shakespeare's London" as well!

Daily progress: 85 words :(

Running total: 25,083 words

Posted by Anne at 6:16 PM | Permalink

Not much time to write today, as it's the CWIL anniversary curry this evening (4 years and going strong!). Managed a few words this morning, but feel like I'm going down with a cold :(

Daily progress: 211 words

Running total: 24,998 words

Posted by Anne at 8:03 AM | Permalink

Now that I've looked over my draft of Act One, I'm beginning to realise it needs some more work in order to establish a strong enough foundation for the rest of the novel. I have therefore started writing some alternative scenes that I hope will spark new conflicts and interactions between the characters.

Daily progress: 707 words

Running total: 24,787 words

Posted by Anne at 6:54 PM | Permalink

No manuscript progress again today - still trying to sort out a modus operandi for organising my scenes.

See yesterday for figures!

Posted by Anne at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Spent my writing time thinking through some possible plot changes, so no actual manuscript progress today.

Daily progress: 0 words

Running total: 24,080 words

Posted by Anne at 10:48 PM | Permalink

Weirdly, having given myself permission to jump ahead, I now feel inspired to write the intervening chapters and explore the characters' relationships. Oh well...

Daily progress: 2287 words

Running total: 24,080

Posted by Anne at 8:36 PM | Permalink

My plan seems to have worked - freed from worrying about how to complete Act One within the alloted space, I was able to write the final chapter of that section and make a start on Act Two.

Daily progress: 2622 words

Running total: 21,793 words

Posted by Anne at 5:32 PM | Permalink

Only a tiny amount of progress again yesterday :( Partly this is because I'm having trouble getting into a good routine now I'm back at work, but I'm also getting a bit anxious about the pace of the draft. I had planned to have the first act end about one-fifth the way into the novel, i.e. at around 20,000 words, but I've written over 19,000 and the end is nowhere in sight!

So, I've printed out what I've written so far, to discourage myself from making further revisions and 'fiddling' (as well as being a useful backup in case of computer failure!). Now, with encouragement from "Re-writing: A Creative Approach to Writing Fiction" I'm going to skip ahead to Act Two and leave revision of Act One until after the manuscript is complete.

Daily progress: 166 words

Running total: 19,171 words

Posted by Anne at 10:47 AM | Permalink

Made limited progress today, as the scene I was writing was not working out. I had to delete and rewrite a fair chunk of it, so my progress overall was not as much as my actual quantity of writing :( However I did get some good feedback from the writing group, which has helped to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of the first draft.

Daily progress: 171 words

Running total: 19,005 words

Posted by Anne at 10:27 PM | Permalink

Writing ground to a halt again whilst I sorted out my fictional calendar - conspiracies require such careful timing!

Daily progress: 0 words (too busy making notes)

Running total: 18, 834 words

Posted by Anne at 9:09 PM | Permalink

Managed to exceed my minimum target today, despite barely an hour's writing time, fitted in between work and domestic commitments :)

Daily progress: 651 words

Running total: 18,834

Posted by Anne at 9:54 PM | Permalink

Still caught up in plot difficulties, plus back to work after my fortnight's holiday - no actual writing of narrative as such, and I'm none too happy with what I wrote yesterday :(

Daily progress: 0 words

Running total: 18,183 words

Posted by Anne at 9:58 PM | Permalink

Got caught up in domestic issues and also bogged down in plot problems, so didn't quite hit my minimum target today.

Daily progress: 476 words

Running total: 18,183 words

Posted by Anne at 9:55 PM | Permalink

Only modestly productive today - finished off a couple of mostly-written chapters and made a start on a new one. Didn't do any writing this afternoon as we took advantage of the sunny weather to buy some bulbs and plant them.

Daily progress: 834 words

Running total: 17,191 words

Posted by Anne at 6:26 PM |