Just finished the rewrite of The Merchant’s Legacy. Turned a 7400 word rough draft into 10700 words. Quite happy with the way it turned out.
Next trick is the extensive editing needed for it, and the other recently completed short story, Future Portents, and then I can make the available to read, hopefully in a few days.
And then comes a long list of other things that need doing. But one thing at a time
As I have mentioned before I’m something of a procrastinator when it comes to writing, and I don’t really set goals or plot out things properly, which adds to that problem.
When it comes to writing I’ve always been a bit of a seat-of-pantser, just having a vague idea and going with it. Oddly, this stands in stark contrast with how I go about world building, in which I do a lot of planning.
I think I’ve realised that though I may write as a pantser, I am in reality a plotter and that is why I don’t get as much done as I should. I’m changing that, and as a result am making some progress – I’ve known the plots of most of the short stories I’ve written in the last few months and have been able to churn out quite a few and, while I haven’t done much written work on Tears of the Mountain yet I am confident given how much of the plot I have already figured out.
I have also read a post by Merrilee Faber on her blog recently, talking about the techniques of writing and the setting of goals. It certainly did nail the problem I’ve had for most of the year – my goals have been far too long term and made of vague generalities; ie write a novel.
What I should have been doing was setting smaller, more concrete goals, but more of them. And so I shall.
The post itself is here and is worth a read, whether you are a panster or a plotter.
Over the past three days I have had a rather productive spurt, clocking up almost 10,000 words. 5000 of those were yesterday. Haven’t managed to be so productive in, well, quite some time.
All of yesterday and art of the day before were spent on doing the rewrite of Future Portents and in the process I turned a 3700 word rough draft into 5700 words.
It will require editing (and more editing still – no matter how many times I seem to go over things with a fine tooth comb spelling and grammar errors always seen to get by me) and will require some rewording in spots. The end will need a bit more of a go over as well; I like how it is, but feel I could word it better.
Not sure when it will be going up yet to read. Hopefully not too long. Parts, particularly the end, may not immediately make much sense yet, as it is a bit of foreshadowing of things to come in later stories/events.
Next on the list to rewrite is The Merchant’s Legacy. The rough draft of that is 7400 words, so it may take a few days to do the rewrite.
As I have mentioned before, I’ve been putting the Pure Escapism short stories up on Smashwords as well as being able to download them directly from here.
Recently Smashwords have added a top 100 category, showing the 100 most downloaded stories on the site. Of those 100, 84 are free – hardly surprising really. Nothing of mine is in there yet, but with time perhaps..
There was also another category – top 25 most viewed authors. I was more than a little surprised to spot that, at the time of this posting, I had made the list at #21 for the last 30 days. It was a bizarre feeling to see it there. Admittedly it may be because I split the volumes up into their individual stories and so to read them all you need to download them four times instead of one.
Nevertheless, it does mean that people are downloading them. And hopefully enjoying them as well.
So there I was working away on The Merchant’s Legacy short story, and right at the end I added to a conversation between Nhaqosa and Kythias, a character who is destined to appear in In Fire, the novel plotted for that world.
And then a curious thing happened. The comments, meant simply as a couple of throw away lines to help explain Nhaqosa’s character, tied in perfectly to help explain why Kythias does what he does in In Fire. I’m not actually going to say what that is, because it is meant to be a mystery and a surprise.
When i saw how perfectly the ideas dovetailed together when I hadn’t even planned it, I sat back and just went ‘wow – this works.’ It was a good feeling.
Time for bed, and a decent days work done. All up hit around 3700 words done, though I could have done better.
In addition to finishing the rough draft for The Merchant’s Legacy as mentioned earlier, I finished the equally rough draft for The Gift, the prequel/pilot story to The Tears of the Mountain.
So far it totals around 7300 words of very rough, basic writing. The rewrite will take some effort, but it should easily double in length, if not more.
Looking forward to starting the rewrite of it, and the other two short stories for Pure Escapism and making them available before too long.
At some stage I plan on redoing the whole blog, including expounding a bit more on the background to the stories and how they all fit in together.
To start off with I am going to do a series of post tracking through the time line as it stands now for the world of Sharael. No exact dates are going to be given, as none have been fully finalised.
They will also be done from the point of view of the Maedari, the people whom most of the stories revolve around.
The first one relates to the time before man, the Age of Myth, as told by Professor Halir, son of Aenir, in his treatise The Ages of Man.
The Age of Myth
In the time before man, in the distant past, there was the Age of Myth; a time undreamed of, when the world was young and fertile and rich in life.
There dwelt in those times the Earthborn, that is the ancestors of the Arduq and the Lifeborn, the Dragons. And they did did prosper and their cities were like unto jewels across the verdant lands of Sharael.
Yet to all things comes an end and war came to the fair lands from beyond the world, and the Powers of the Otherworlds did struggle for dominion.
Yet did the Earthborn and Lifeborn raise heroic challenge, but such were the powers arrayed against them that they were brought low and the fair lands marred and broken, and the remnants of those that lived upon it were scattered.
Thus was Sharael reborn into the harsh and desolate world that we know and the Arduq were left a diminished people and the Dragons remained a shadow of whom they were, seldom seen by any.
Yet their lingered in the world relics of these ancient battles, creatures from the Otherworlds, foul and fierce, to haunt the days of the coming of man.
The ages wheeled and past and within time the lands recovered enough that once more life could return, and thus it did, with the coming of the younger races, from where none could tell.
And thus ended the Age of Myths, the accounts of its days forgotten and it was no more, and history past into the Age of Stone.
I didn’t get a whole lot of writing writing done over the weekend, but I’m not too concerned because i did get a bit of background writing done, working out details that should have been done some time ago.
One of my main flaws is keeping all the details floating around in my head without really committing them down. The other one is lack of any real planning – I just write going on what is in my head.
Not exactly the best method. So when I actually did a plot synopsis for Winter Wolves it resulted in an actually finished story. One that is likely to be put aside and forgotten, but a finished one none the less.
Which just goes to prove I need to change my methods.
So over the weekend I sat down and wrote out all the plot points I had in my head and now have an outline, if only so far in point form. It is still basic, and needs expanding on and the order worked on, but it is there. One of the points simply reads ‘Party crosses desert following journal’. Nothing about what is written in the journal and how it helps them yet, just a simple note.
I’ve got an old cork board kicking around, and I’m thinking of getting some notepaper and using it for a plotting board, to really nail this plot down.
Ah, but that was not all that happened. I also worked on mapping. Maps seem an integral part of fantasy now – its rather rare to find fantasy books without a map in them.
I must admit to drawing maps myself all the time, and many times I have started one for the part of the world I’m writing in, but always keep doing major renovations on it. It never quite worked.
Oh, in the stories, I knew roughly where things lay in relation to each other and a vague sense of locations, but I could never nail it down properly. Part of that has to do with knowing too much about tectonics, the ways climate and winds work, rain shadows and deserts and the like – I always kept seeing something that just didn’t make sense.
But finally I got down something over the weekend that looks decent, everything fits in roughly where it should (though I may need to make a few minor modifications to stories here and there) and doesn’t offend too many rules of nature. It still will require a bit more tweaking, but it is close now, and has even clarified a few things for me.
But that wasn’t the end of things.
I also have a rough working timeline, for the first time ever it seems. Still finalising matters, but it spans four thousand years, from the time spoken of in The Cahuac Cycle, when the stone age began to give way to the bronze age, through to the events of The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings.
More to add to it, but the various stories written, and planned, and various other events are pinned down roughly.
There are also events that predate this history, the Age of Myth, but they predate the humans and other new races and the exact dates for them are rather vague, so they are remaining separate for now.
All in all though, I’m rather happy how things turned out. With that done I’m on a bit of a high and can eagerly return to the actual writing for the rest of the week.
Thought I should do a post updating the various projects, where they currently stand and where they are hopefully headed.
The novel with the working title of Tears of the Mountain has been commenced, with 9K written of the first rough draft. Currently the rough draft is on a short pause as a proper plot and outline are worked on.
The prequel pilot novella, nominally called The Gift has been started, only around 4K done on it so far, but the story plot has been figured out. Aiming for 15-20K in length, it is intended to get a feel for the world, sort of like a pilot to a TV show does.
Pure Escapism is still coming along – need to finish off one draft and then edit it and a second draft to finish off the third volume. Hopefully this month, but certainly for next month.
For the contents of it, I have ideas for a number more short stories for a couple more volumes still. After that, while there will be plenty of one off stories, they will be fleshed out with ongoing series of stories which will, in theory, explore a number of different themes.
Cara’s Choice is going to be the only serial of them, an ongoing story told in episodes as they are released. It is an urban fantasy – nothing too out of the ordinary about it, except vampires will never ever be the good guys.
Of the core world of writing there are two main series, both from the earlier parts of history, but there will be other stories spread around in other time periods as well. I’ve had fun writing the myths of Aracan Hobgoblins in The Cahauc Cycle and so they will keep coming, and in time I may delve into myths of other cultures. The other series is planned to be The Book of Deeds, which relates the deeds of great Maedari Kings and Heroes during the bronze age of the world.
The series that I am calling The Primal Tales revolves around Braega and the lizardman Tudhala. There is plans for another character to join up soon. These stories aim to be wild and primal in nature, revolving around ruins, primeval creatures and the like. For these I have drawn inspiration in part from the Conan stories by Robert E Howard.
The other main series is those dealing with Nhaqosa the minotaur, which go by the name A Wanderer’s Tale. These are trending towards a more dark nature, and the world he finds himself in is more brutal and gritty in nature.
I have also been pondering on whether to write more about the sarcastic android Ray and his luckless master Brian in a sci-fi series, trying for a more humourous group of stories. May be fun to try something a bit more radical than the norm for me.
That is the plan at least – next step is to get it working.
I must admit that I have no problems beginning novels – I have ideas spilling out all the time – but where I do fall down is ending them. While I am for ever starting new ones, the fact I finished a rough draft earlier in the year was something of an oddity.
Holly Lisle wrote an article called How to Start a Novel and in it is discussed what is really my main mistake – lack of planning.
I think I will have to pause momentarily with Tears of the Mountain (after having made it 9K in already) and go through and plan it properly, make sure that it is all there in front of me – world, characters, conflict, theme, the works.
I am not without things to do in the meantime – working on more stuff for Pure Escapism, the ‘prequel’ pilot for Tears of the Mountain and various other tasks that need doing.
Mist and Shadows 