A New Project Underway
I'm delighted to say that, galvanised partly by the "find your story by telling it" advice in Stephen Koch's book, I have started work (by which I mean writing rather than thinking) on my latest novel.
Provisionally entitled The Last Free City, it's set in the same world as Dragonchaser and The Dog of the North. I've been at work on it sporadically for much of the week and have about 5,500 words down. In truth, it seems at this stage absolutely terrible, but I remember identical feelings at this point during every previous novel I've written. I have faith in the process, and I'm sure I will come to love it as the story ripens. I'm pleased with a couple of passages, and the protagonist's character is becoming sharper as I write. He doesn't start the book as a very admirable person, which is excellent: nothing is worse than a vanilla hero.
So what's it about? You tell me, at this stage: money, power, corruption, sex and other trivialities are my best guesses. Oh, and poetry...
More on this in due course--although at this stage, perhaps not too much more...
I'm delighted to say that, galvanised partly by the "find your story by telling it" advice in Stephen Koch's book, I have started work (by which I mean writing rather than thinking) on my latest novel.
Provisionally entitled The Last Free City, it's set in the same world as Dragonchaser and The Dog of the North. I've been at work on it sporadically for much of the week and have about 5,500 words down. In truth, it seems at this stage absolutely terrible, but I remember identical feelings at this point during every previous novel I've written. I have faith in the process, and I'm sure I will come to love it as the story ripens. I'm pleased with a couple of passages, and the protagonist's character is becoming sharper as I write. He doesn't start the book as a very admirable person, which is excellent: nothing is worse than a vanilla hero.
So what's it about? You tell me, at this stage: money, power, corruption, sex and other trivialities are my best guesses. Oh, and poetry...
More on this in due course--although at this stage, perhaps not too much more...
6 comments:
I usually get that quesy feeling you're talking about around 30,000 words. At 5,500 words, I'm still pretty sure I'm a genius.
You system seems better. Why not get it out of the way early?
Go Tim! I think mine are crap all the way through. I like the sound of your system.
It starts early on..it doesn't necessarily finish quickly.
Generally once I've got a good sense of the characters I'm OK.
This one's worrying because I've done so much pre-planning that I'm getting agitated that I've not foreshadowed it all by now. On the plus side, though, I'm not beating myself up that it's crap. It can always be fixed in revision, right?
Haven't you come across those flaws that couldn't be fixed if you revised them until the sun exploded?
Or is that just me?
If you take the definition of "revise" to incorporate "rewriting from scratch", most things can be fixed...
Go for it Tim!
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