Ready, Set, WRITE! - Week Four

Ready, Set, WRITE! is a summer writing challenge hosted by Erin L. Funk, Alison Miller, Katy Upperman, Jaime Morrow and Elodie Nowodazkij as a way to encourage participants to get going on their projects and to help keep us accountable.  We share brief updates every Monday so as not to interrupt writing time with blogging.  You can find out more here or check out others' updates over at the hosts' blogs.

1. How I did on last week’s goal(s)

More misses than hits, to sum up.  I succeeded in writing over 3,000 words (3,142), but it's still nowhere near my upper target of 5k.  I haven't finished G for Gabrys yet because the story has decided to grow.  And I am not halfway through chapter 7 of RoK because Gabrys's story decided to grow (but I am maybe a third of the way through it).

2. My goal(s) for this week

Continue (still) to aim for between 3,000 and 5,000 words.  Actually make a concerted effort to finish G for Gabrys (which should make things interesting).  And work a little on chapter 7 of RoK while I'm at it.

Fun thing to throw into the mix: try to finish The Ace of Skulls by Chris Wooding, because I've been putting off reading it for ages—it's the last book in a series I don't want to end!

3. A favorite line from my story OR a word or phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised

Ardashir dismissed his concerns with a simple gesture.  “Nonsense.  If I cannot show I can provide for you before our wedding, how could you have any faith I would after it?”

It was a reasonable concern, but it did nothing for the gnawing twisting of Gabrys’s stomach.  It was a very beautiful suite, there was no denying it, littered with thick rugs and low tables on which sat bowls of ripe fruits, with fine curtains separating each room and more than enough gilding on every available surface to make Gabrys’s head spin.  From this suite alone, it looked as though Ardashir was not just capable of providing for him, but for the subjects of both their countries combined.

That was the whole point, Gabrys supposed.

4. The biggest challenge I faced this week

Keeping myself on track.  I began to struggle on Wednesday and got nothing written at all on Thursday which I'm really not happy with.  I've also struggled with procrastination, particularly the bad habit of browsing when I should be writing or aimlessly checking for nonexistent emails, but I splashed out on the promo (pro) bundle of Cold Turkey which lets me block apps as well as websites and that's been working quite well so far.

5. Something I love about my WIP

That it keeps growing, mostly without me.  It was supposed to be a 500 nothing-thing for the A-Z Challenge but it seems to have developed itself when I wasn't looking.

Snippets and WiPpets

So I've been kind of badly behaved this week*.  Though I've not written anything I've still rewarded myself for it.  Well... not rewarded, exactly, and not exactly for that, but the upshot is, to distract myself from the fact words mostly seem like a forlorn hope I've treated myself.

I've wanted a Playstation Vita for a while, despite not being the biggest fan of Sony as a company and having never owned any kind of Playstation in the past.  It wasn't the price of the console or the games that put me off either, but the extortionate cost of the proprietary memory cards.  But since the price of them doesn't look to be changing much, now seemed as good a time as any.

As a result, I find myself with a surprisingly nice handheld console, more games for it than I had a week after buying my 3DS, and something to retreat into when my brain wants to escape.  In short, I'm enjoying it a lot.

It's also been a good week stationery-wise.  I saw this calligraphy / stamp set when I ordered the games and couldn't resist.  The box is very attractive and I'm not going to say no to another nib, dip pen and bottle of ink.  The paper base comes out and it has a velvet inner so I'm probably going to keep my other pen and nibs in there as well.

Today also heralds the arrival of my new Lamy Al-Star in Copperorange (their name for it, not mine) along with two extra nibs (one F black, one calligraphy) and a bottle of Ocean Blue J. Herbin 1670 ink with actual gold flakes.  I'd intended to use it with dip nibs but I might just look at the pretty bottle instead...

And when I say I've not written anything, that's not entirely true.  The Vita, its memory card and a wired Xbox 360 controller (not for my Xbox, ironically enough, but my PC) were all dispatched from Amazon on the same day, but in three separate packages (bear with me).  Last month K. S. Norton wrote something about "the what-if scenes of life".  I don't really get them in relation to family life, but I do get random story snippets that relate to absolutely nothing, and as such I usually ignore them.  This time, however, faced with the sudden, abrupt idea that it'd be incredibly embarrassing to mess up and deliver each item separately, I did my best to pin it down.  At around 1am.  ...It may not entirely make sense but hey, for once I actually managed to write something.  And you're getting it right here, or I'll end up forgetting all about it.

He stared down at the package in his hands.  One package.  One last package and his round would be done.  But why did it have to be here?  Of all the places...

Nothing for it.  Heart in his mouth, he knocked on the door.

Wide eyes greeted him.  Wide brown eyes and a tentative smile.  "Yes?  Can I help you... again?"

He proffered the package, squinting against the expected tirade.  "Your delivery, sir.  Your last delivery." 

The expected tirade didn't materialise.  When he looked up, the tentative smile had become a full-blown grin.  "My third one today.  I am lucky.  Or... did you just not arrange your deliveries properly?" 

He again cursed his stupidity for telling his coworker about the handsome young man on his round who always opened the door with such cheerfulness.  "I..." 

The man leaned in to take the package and simply didn't move from there.  His breath tickled his lips.  "Or would it just be easier to give you my phone number?" 

His heart skipped a beat; he didn't let go of the box.  "I could... warn you about deliveries beforehand..." 

The grin widened.  "How about you warn me of the delivery I really want.  Say yourself, at six o'clock?" 

Phrased like that, how could he refuse?  After all, he'd always been told the customer was always right...

And that's not even today's WiP.

Oh, and there was a very short exchange between Fayth and RQ too, but you'd have to ask nicely for that one.

* I've started to notice that my weeks no longer run from Monday to Sunday, but from Wednesday to Wednesday...  Don't know whether to be amused or worried.

WiPpet Wednesday

First off, WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's fantastic idea, a blog hop where participants post sections of their works in progress and relate it to the date.  You can read the other posts (which are always brilliant) and take part yourself over here.

What with The Rose Queen not being originally intended to be my main canon, so to speak, I've run into a bit of a problem.  There's the snippet I want to post, which makes no sense without context you didn't get, and there's the context, which is from the first chapter and thus isn't in chronological order.

In the end, since it explains both what was going on with RQ when Fayth arrived as well as just why he's so lost the second he leaves the habitat again, we're flicking back to Chapter One.  Sorry about that.  Normal(ish) service will be resumed next week.

Since it's the 18th February 2015, this is 1+8 for a total of 9 paragraphs and has a profanity and content warning.  Fayth has just arrived on the ship and is trying to blend in with the crew while he finds his way toward the habitat, though not all the crew seem worth blending in with.

It was a fucking rabbit warren.  He’d expected neat, straight corridors that mirrored the rigid, austere lines of the ship, but no.  Someone had decided that twists and turns were the way to go, and just when he thought he was heading towards the habitat he realised he was off in completely the wrong direction for the fifth or sixth time.  For all of its massive size, the giant dome seemed to be the last place they wanted anyone to go, and it had taken him an embarrassing twenty minutes to reach this conclusion while spectacularly failing to reach the dome itself.  In desperation he swung around a corner into the crew quarters, and straight into a group of men huddled around a single small screen.

“Sorry,” Fayth said, as nonchalantly as possible despite his pounding heart.  Shit, worst possible timing; all it’d take was one person to notice he’d never been there before...

The expected anger never materialised.  It was all the injured party could do to lift his eyes from the screen.  “No problem, mate.”

Fayth shrugged and resumed padding down the corridor while the men resumed their conversation.  “I always figured ‘Ice Queen’ was a better name,” one said, snorting back a laugh, “but shit, looks like I was way off the mark there.”

Pausing ostensibly to look at a overstuffed noticeboard, Fayth suddenly found their inane conversation the most interesting thing in the universe.

“No kidding.”  The second whistled appreciatively, never taking his eyes from the flickering display.  “Certainly opened up for him.”

“They’re not speaking now, but it’s not stopping everyone else having a go,” the first said.  “Maybe even you’ve got a chance.”

“Chance?”  The third said, licking his lips.  “From what I hear, all you gotta do is ask and you’ll receive.”

“Ask?”  This time the first speaker’s laugh was ugly; Fayth crushed the urge to stride over and punch him.  “I don’t remember saying anything about asking.”

Procrastination Station: Melody's Escape

Shocking!  I finally managed to find some time to sit, re-familiarise myself with the game and record some footage!

What's the game?

Today's Procrastination Station timesink is Melody's Escape a music-based indie platformer.  It's currently listed as an "Early Access Game" but in the developer's words it's "almost feature-complete and is in a very stable state."  There's no demo available.

When it came up on my recommended list on Steam I was intrigued by the gameplay videos, particularly as at the time Sixteen was my sole computer and there was no demo available for me to try and see if it'd work.  It was cheap enough (£6.99), however, that I felt inclined to take a punt on it nonetheless.

I then had to turn most of the settings off.  It ran, yes, but it was slow and jerky until almost all the settings were off or lowered (such as the background affected by the music, the rain in the walking sections etc.), then it ran nicely.  With the exception of the hair dynamics.  That didn't go so well; it actually slowed the game down more with it off, but on didn't seem to make a difference.  The irony is, once you play the game you don't miss the fancy effects you've turned off, because your attention is solely focused on hitting the next button.  Since I've been playing it on Echo with all the fancy effects on again, I've still not noticed them.

Honestly, watching the video I recorded above is the first time I've actually paid attention to anything in the game beyond hitting the next key.  I didn't realise, watching it back, just how fast it seems--it doesn't feel as fast when you're playing as it looks when you're watching.

There are several different difficulty settings, from Relaxing, through Medium and Intense (which is what I'm playing) to Overload.  Relaxing has everything tied to one button per section whether they're slides, jumps or the floating rings; Medium has both rings and directions in matching colours, so up is both a jump and an up on the ring.  Intense has everything split into two sections, so WASD keys control movement and the arrows keys control the rings, or vice versa, depending on your preference--mine is set for my faulty brain.  Overload is...  huh.  I personally can't keep up with Overload.

There's also a custom setting to design your own style of level and an autoplay if you just want to watch.  (Wish I'd remembered that was there before I sat and played the song myself.)

Note, though: it's possibly not best to start out with Relaxing and move through the difficulties.  Each step up has a learning curve that can be frustrating if you don't persevere with it, and persevering can feel more like work than play to start with.

And what have I actually learned about my characters by procrastinating with this game?

A surprisingly large amount actually.  For me, this kind of game is best played without engaging the brain, because if I think about the oncoming colours and directions I'm guaranteed to press the wrong button entirely.  Accordingly, that makes it perfect for rooting out plot problems while listening to songs that inspire the stories, or in some cases realising which songs make perfect character themes (and then playing them to death).

I managed to work out some of the early kinks of Corliss's appearance in The Rose Queen by playing a lot of Machinae Supremacy as well as giving myself a boost to get a move on with a scene between RQ and Fayth by playing Celldweller's Heart On.  (Yes, it is likely pretty much what you're thinking.  Yes it suits them perfectly.)  It's also helped somewhat with Dust & Ash through a zen-like playthrough of two albums by The Pierces--though it's not helped with actually plotting the bloody thing--and it let me scrape my brain clean during the early stages of The Reconstruction of Kirill.  (What do you mean I'm still in the early stages now?  Shush.)

Will it help for anyone else?  I have no idea, but if you're one of those people who can only play rhythm and dance games by not thinking about what you're doing rather than focusing on the upcoming moves, then it's a nice way to relax and think about other things at the same time.  Choose a setting, pick your song or set your playlist, and off you go.  Just... try not to get too engrossed so you forget to write.  Or competitive.  Just because there's no centralised scoreboard doesn't stop you from wanting to get a Perfect rating or two or three or four...

Procrastination Station: Beat Hazard

A confession that'll come as absolutely no surprise to anyone ever: I procrastinate.  A lot.  If there's something I'm supposed to be doing (like writing), it's guaranteed I'll be doing anything else instead while thinking about it, because thinking about what I'm not doing is almost the same as doing it, right?

Well, not exactly...  Though not exactly not, either.  Doesn't sound like it makes sense, doesn't it?  Bear with me, here.

I have a deep love for rhythm-based video games.  Not ones that use pre-recorded tracks (though those aren't too bad either), but ones that generate gameplay from the user's own music collection.  My favourite method of procrastination is to set up songs I usually write to in these games and indulge in something that allows me to not think about what I'm doing while letting my subconscious wander around in the music and fix whichever issue is bothering me at the time.

It sounds ridiculous, but it's remarkably helpful.  Except for the keeping me from writing bit, but you can't have everything.

What's the game?

Today's Procrastination Station example is Beat Hazard, a music-based indie shoot-em-up that handily (or dangerously) also has a demo available.

Apologies for 4:3 screen resolution.  It mildly horrified a guy from my ISP too when he saw it.

I'm not actually a fan of shmups at all.  I grew up playing them, sure: it was the 80s/90s, there was a plethora of them available.  But the gameplay never caught my attention.  They were just timekillers and, when playing, there was always that inevitable moment you picked up something that was supposed to be an upgrade only to find the "upgrade" downgraded your hard-fought-for weaponry into something that was supposed to be more powerful but functionally useless for the stage you were on--

--Yes, as you can see, I harbour grudges against ancient gameplay mechanics.

Luckily, Beat Hazard doesn't do that.  You have two sets of powerups: volume and power.  You gain them by killing enemies or destroying asteroids and they increase the breadth and power of your attacks (big surprise).  If you die you lose them all, but your carcass also contains the remains of some of your former glory so the only time you're likely to feel powerless is at the very start--and after you've played the game for a while and unlocked some perks with the cash that also appears when you wreak your gloriously retina-burning destruction, you can even start out fairly powerfully.

The default game is enjoyable, addictive even, but gets a little boring after a few hours.  Luckily (or unluckily?) there are two DLC packs available, which expand the game so much with new enemies, bosses and modes it feels almost totally new.  I bought both after maybe a couple of hours' play.

And what have I actually learned about my characters by procrastinating with this game?

Sod all on existing projects, actually, other than a vague relief that slipspace is brightly coloured in The Rose Queen, and the realisation that gunfire is probably the same sorts of colours--though it's hit and miss whether we'll see that, what with Fayth being pretty pacifistic for a thief...

I did, however, accidentally spawn two new characters, Aneirin and Rheon, who wandered into my head while I was playing and pretty much said, "new sci-fi characters reporting for duty, sir".  So I got something out of it alright: the realisation I have more people I need to do something with.

Oh joy.

WiPpet Wednesday: The Reconstruction of Kirill

I will freely admit that I have a problem with knuckling down and finishing things.  I've somehow ended up with several projects on the go at once, some of which should really be a lot further on than they are, and I'm one of those downright useless people who freezes when they realise this.

Panicking gets me absolutely nothing, of course, except a headache.  So instead I decided to give myself another challenge, and hopefully one that I do a lot more frequently than my Pinup Boy Sundays: WiPpet Wednesdays, created by K. L. Schwengel.  I've seen Nicole Nally do some in the past and thought they looked both fun and interesting (or at least, she makes them look that way!), so after a little deliberation I've signed up.

This handily dovetails with the fact that, having hit a small impasse at the end of the chapter of the Rose Queen I'm working on and done no planning on Dust & Ash, I'm going to resume working on The Reconstruction of Kirill.

Since it's the 7th January, and WiPpet Wednesday excerpts should be related to the day and month--and I don't feel the equal to even basic maths lately--I'm going to share the first seven paragraphs from the first chapter of TRoK:

The clash of blades rang out as sunlight streamed through the massive arched windows.  Kirill stumbled back from a jab that almost perforated his gut, flicking his rapier down in a clumsy attempt to deflect the sword darting towards him.  He succeeded but he was on the back foot, his muscles burning; one misstep, one false move, and—

The tip of the blade pressed against his chest, dangerously close to his heart.  “I win.”

“That’s the third time now,” he murmured with a smile, batting the needle-sharp point away and ignoring the flare of pain in his wrist.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll ever be as good at it as you are.”

“If you’re going to finish that sentence by insisting I stop teaching you,” Niko said, sliding the rapier into its sheath and smoothing down his rumpled shirt, “then you already know what the answer is.”

Kirill stretched his arms above his head and arched his back, basking in the way the afternoon sun inscribed distorted, criss-crossed arcs over the polished wooden floor and heated it beneath his bare feet.  What had once been Niko’s kitchen and a bunch of makeshift storerooms had been transformed into a massive dining room, huge windows dominating the back wall and leading onto the patio.  There was really only one thing missing.  “When are you going to put tables and chairs in here?”

“Why would I do that?”  Niko grinned.  “Waste a perfectly good room like this on waiting for the few occasions a year I can bring myself to put up with company?  I thought you knew me better than that.”

Kirill returned the grin, only to fumble his sword down as Niko’s weapon flashed out from the sheath again.  “Wait, I’m not ready!”

 You can find other WiPets from other authors in the directory and sign up there too.

Post-NaNo 2014: Now What? (Give Me Something To Do)

The thing with finishing NaNoWriMo is that there's weird sense of nothingness.  I know my story isn't finished but, for once this month (...not counting the start of it...) I'd like a little bit of a break.  The oddest thing, though, is that although every year I promise I'll finish my story afterwards and never do, this year I think I really might.  I'd like to know what actually happens, for a start, and in this case I'm only finding that out when I write.

It's been an up-and-down month, as I think my progress chart makes abundantly clear:

I didn't have a great start.  I actually thought I'd fail to finish for the first time in eleven years.  And then seeing some of the incredible word counts coming from some of the habitual overachievers kicked me up the arse -- though the last day was nuts because I'd really wanted to at least break 100k.  I finished up by writing 10,018 words yesterday to manage it.

My final total is 101,606 words (it seemed a nice round place to stop) and I'm now about 2/3 of the way through the story.  It needs heavy editing, I rambled a lot (you'd never guess, right?) and there are a lot of sex scenes in it because I worked on the theory that if I got bored or felt like I was slowing, then it was probably time to write one, but it's been fun so far.

You can probably figure out the way it's going from this Wordle image...

But like I said, I hit December 1 and this weird sense of inertia slips over me.  I want to write but I'm mentally exhausted -- and I've got Sunset Overdrive and Dragon Age: Inquisition waiting for me -- and, to make it all worse, it's Cyber Monday today.

Last year I prepped Three Graces as an ebook (with a downright awful first cover) and did a (very) limited release for Cyber Monday.  I think it got something like 15 downloads.  This year I'd wanted to do something else but since NaNo has been eating my brain so very badly I completely lost track of time until I started getting emails about Black Friday.  So I find myself on Cyber Monday with a cover for The Fair Automaton and a mostly-completed ebook, but here's the thing...

I don't like releasing short stories as single ebooks.  I mean, it's 5,000 words.  That's kinda small -- not that it felt it when I had to handwrite the damn thing.  I'd prefer to release at least three in a book at once, preferably five, and am only slightly hindered by the fact I have two with a third sitting in my head going "look at meeeeee" very quietly.  So I have nothing.  I am empty-handed on this most scifi-sounding of shopping 'holidays'.

So, instead, if you comment with two names and a situation, or a location, or anything you'd like a short story or flash-fic about, I'll write it for you.

It's not much, I know; I'm expecting a resounding silence, but I'd like to try anyway.  Smut, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, I'll give it a go.

The Writer's Blog Tour

Not too long ago, the ever-lovely Nicole Nally asked me if I'd like to take part in a Writer's Blog Tour questionnaire she'd been tagged in, and I thought, what the hell, it sounds like fun.

And then I kind of forgot about it, but now she's posted her entry and that serves as a remarkably good reminder.

What Am I Currently Working On?

I've got several projects on the go, all in various states of disrepair—and then there the ones I should have on the go, but am apparently trying to avoid by trying to avoid working on other things instead.

Gratuitous Kir nudity is always fun

I guess, most pertinently, there's The Reconstruction of Kirill, the sequel to The Destruction of Kirill, which takes place in Gascony, which, in my steampunk universe, is a separate country from France.  I've just started chapter 5 and life is becoming rapidly terrible for the unfortunate hero (again).  It's all plotted out so there's nothing keeping me from writing it except the fact that it's all plotted out.  I had this problem with its predecessor too.

On that note, there's a short novella I'm supposed to be writing about Kirill and Niko's first Christmas as a couple, but that one's quite slow going....  Does so far involve sugar plums and smut though.

There's also The Rose Queen, a scifi about a man who's hired to steal a very quiet, shut-in young lady and discovers that if the information in the file is sparse, it's probably best not to make assumptions...  It's actually in marginally better shape than Reconstruction as I'm on chapter 6, but unlike Reconstruction it's not plotted out and suffers somewhat from the fact I was incredibly 'flu-ey when I started writing it.  It... needs some significant work, let's put it that way, but I think it has promise.

I'm supposed to be detailing the writing process of Dust & Ash for this blog, but it's safe to say there's not actually been that much progress to detail.  I discovered that it didn't feel inclined towards being plotted meticulously out like Destruction was so I've found myself starting chapter 4 and feeling a bit lost.  It needs even more work than Rose Queen does, or at least a spark of sudden plotting inspiration.

I should also have nearly finished with Three Graces: Spectrum now, but it's safe to say I've done absolutely sod-all on that in ages.  I reread the existing pieces and I've figured out why I got suddenly and abruptly stuck on it ('Black' and 'White' are in the wrong order, of all the stupid things) but I've yet to sit down and finish it.  I think I'm worried that how I write now is actually worse than how I wrote then (true, not actually just paranoia), so I keep putting it off.

And on the subject of putting it off...  I've been prodding a story called Chime lately because I feel incredibly bad about not even finishing chapter 3, but as I started it in 2011 I think we may be waiting some time for that...

And finally, I write occasional stories about a genetically modified dokkalfa (dark elf) and his co-worker / lover / ever-ready irritant human who work for a shadowy, semi-governmental British , which can be found both on this blog and on the Radial: Unravel tab up top there.  I love those dorky boys so I can never keep away from them for too long.  They're a comfort blanket.

How Does My Work Differ From Others In My Genre?

I honestly couldn't tell you...  I don't stick well to one particular genre—I write fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk (though I guess that's a derivative of one or the other, or both, aforementioned genres) and contemporary sci-fantasy—and as a 'genre', the m/m one is pretty colossal.  There's probably a ton of people who write the same kind of stuff I do, and I've just not met them yet.  Although I'd say perhaps my work differs in that other people actually have a knack for finishing it...

Though again, if they were just like me and didn't, we'd never know, would we?

Why Do I Write What I Do?

To be honest, I have no idea.  I've just always written like this, usually in the same genres.  Way (way) back in school, if ever there was a question in an exam that was just a single word, it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd write fiction for it.

For my A-Level English Language & Literature exams (that's a mouthful) there was one such prompt, which of course meant that I needed to write about two demons having thinly-veiled metaphorical sex in a dreamworld, that left one stabbed to a tree... and it was only a thinly-veiled metaphor because I wasn't too sure how well gay demon sex would go down (hah) with the examiners.  I kind of wish I'd written it explicitly now, just to see what would happen.

That was a depressingly long amount of time ago, and I'm still writing in the same genre, so I think we're stuck with one another now.  (And the demons; I still have those characters too.  I miss them but don't need another project right now.  So, guess what I'll no doubt be doing next week...)

So basically...  The short answer is: I can't help it.  The characters and events appear in my head, so I write them.

How Does My Writing Process Work?

It varies depending on the project is the short answer.  The long answer is that I actually am not quite sure, because of the fact it varies between projects.  Some projects seem to lend themselves to being plotted out chapter by chapter while others seem to demand being flown by the seat of the pants, and a few like to straddle the line between them without ever managing to put a foot in either camp.

A lot start out like the image to the left: a stream-of-consciousness set of notes that helps me sketch out ideas and work out who's doing what and where.  These all go in one notebook and I use different coloured inks to keep the stories separate.

If they're lucky, they then end up like the picture on the right: a series of key scenes.  In this case, the red ones were the ones I thought of before I started plotting Destruction out, and the green ones were ones I'd thought of during the plotting process.  I'm not entirely sure why I decided to to it that way, but it made sense at the time.  (Disclaimer: this might as well be my battle cry and will probably end up on my gravestone.)

Also, might include spoilers so on the off chance you actually want to read The Destruction of Kirill proceed carefully and possibly avoid the stuff in green.

Once I've got the scenes in non-specific order, I can figure out where it is I want them to go, hence the purple numbers beside it.  The actual plotting is always done in purple (I'm on my second atyouSpica Lavender pen) because somehow it just feels right.  And if it feels right I'm not going to argue with it.

When I've got those basics, I can either skip straight to the plotting, or I can make a detour via beats/breakdowns which is (in my case) when I break down the plot into a string of events.  I use a two-column method because I can then use the second column for relevant notes, cute ideas etc. that link directly to the first, left-hand, beat.

To the left is the start of Reconstruction (so no actual spoilers), complete with little note about the the room Kirill and Niko are sparring in and an addition to a section from the second chapter.  Some pages have nothing in this column, others have five or six notes.

Then, once that's done, I can move on to the actual plotting.  In my case, it's a scene-by-scene stream of text, all in the aforementioned lavender pen (which actually ran out halfway through the plotting of Reconstruction as a dodgy kind of portent), which expands on the breakdown until it fills out approximately a chapter.  Again, if you want to read Reconstruction you might want to not look at the right-hand image too closely as it possibly contains spoilers, coming quite near the end.  It was when I'd just replaced the pen, so it's in a stronger colour than pretty much everything before then.

Once I've got that, I'm all set to write.  The one problem with this approach is that you can feel like you've already written it so it can take away the desire to rewrite it.  On the other hand, you have a very clear roadmap of where you're going so, unlike writing by the seat of your pants, you're unlikely to get stuck unless your characters suddenly and wildly deviate from the plot (which is always possible, admittedly).

Obviously, when it comes to thinks like Rose Queen, it all starts and ends with the first step.  Everything else is crammed into my head—so if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, that'll be where it stays.  If you're worried about the possibility of sudden death, plotting might be the best way to go.

I Tag...

As the adorable Nicole tagged me (and you can read her four answers over at her blog: http://nicolenally.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/the-writers-blog-tour/), I choose to pass the baton on to Danni and Windi.

Danni has a degree in Writing Contemporary Fiction from Southampton Solent University, writes fanfiction and is a fiend at NaNoWriMo (my description, not hers, but anyone who writes 55,000 words in 18 days is a fiend).  She likes shiny things, has an impressive collection of notebooks that I am just a little big jealous of, and is a Fountain Pen Enabler—mostly by encouraging everyone around her to buy them.  You can find her stationery-based blog entries at: http://fourwordsfourworlds.wordpress.com/category/danni/.

Windi is another stationery addict and the owner of some very beautiful handwriting.  She has a lot of varied interests and tends to gravitate to new things often, but her love of Matt Damon and Jack Davenport will never die.  She also likes shiny things and notebooks, and is a very sweet and enthusiastic personality who is currently finishing up a novel.  You can find her various blog entries on a variety of themes here: http://windismusings.wordpress.com/.

The Destruction of Kirill

In seven days' time, my first m/m romance novella The Destruction of Kirill comes out.  It's been a bit of a fraught endeavour and at one point I thought I'd never get it done, so I can't quite believe it's almost here!

It's been an interesting, albeit rocky experience: it's the first story I've ever plotted out in its entirety—which both almost killed it and is the only reason it's finished—and working on the cover necessitated buying a new PC to save my laptop from certain doom, but after everything it's done.

I became very attached to Kirill and Niko while I worked on this, and I really hope that readers will too!

The Destruction of Kirill will be out on the 15th July 2014, and you can preorder copies on Kobo US and Kobo UK, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, iTunes US and iTunes UK.  Other retailers will become available after the release date.

As a thank you for preorders, there's a special edition copy available at All Romance Ebooks that comes with an exclusive bonus chapter.

Synopsis

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Born in the workhouse and moulded into an obedient slave, Kirill expected his life to be simple: serve his wealthy owners until they grew bored and sold him, repeating the process again and again until the day he died. He never wanted his master's precious only son to take an unhealthy interest in him, and he didn't expect one single horrifying summer's day to plunge his life into ruin.

Now he has to adjust to another kind of life: one with a man who never wanted to own a slave and has no use for the one he now possesses. But just when Kirill thinks he's finally found normality it all comes crashing down again—and worse, this time it's all his own fault.

Hauled into a world of chaos and destruction by a charming stranger, Kirill struggles to manoeuvre his way without letting both his past and his grief overwhelm him, but is his rescuer all that he seems, or has Kirill walked from one hell straight into another?

Excerpt

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Reuben Gamble was two years older than Kirill. He’d heard about the handsome only son of his master and mistress, naturally—always in glowing terms—but had never met him. School and university kept that illustrious young man from home, and even when he’d visited Kirill had never set eyes on him. He’d been too busy working to pay attention. 

Only when Reuben returned in disgrace did Kirill learn the master’s son had been employed for two years after university—not that it seemed he’d been too occupied with work. The servants discussed it at length; with his room just off the kitchen, Kirill couldn’t help but hear the late-night gossip even when he tried not to listen. The tales mostly centred around rumours of debauchery and drunkenness, gambling, late-night carousing and no-shows at work, all of which led to Reuben’s expulsion amid a cloud of debt. All was retold in such salacious detail Kirill wasn’t sure any of it was accurate. Not only did he not want to listen, but all the gossip made him nervous. The less he knew about his master and mistress, and by extension their offspring, the better.

Despite Reuben’s return to the fold, however, life carried on as normal. Kirill helped with the added washing and ensured one extra room was spotless every morning while the family was busy. The most he saw of the master’s son was the occasional glimpse; with his eyes kept down and every hour not spent at his mistress’s side focused on work, that was all Kirill was ever likely to see.

Everything was as it should be. Until it wasn’t.

At midsummer the tweeny left abruptly, her stomach rounder than Kirill remember it being a month ago, and her choked sobs stabbed at his heart. She’d matured into a pretty seventeen-year-old, promoted from between-maid to housemaid while remaining friendly and cheerful; although she’d ceased chatting with him once he’d recovered, she still threw him the occasional sweet smile and once in a while hid food in his room to compensate for his sole meal being after the first sweep of cleaning in the morning. In return he tried to take on some of her work to make life easier for her, and hoped she never noticed.

Even for a naïve slave it was easy to guess what had happened, but he’d never thought of her as the careless type. She never made eyes at the other servants. Perhaps it was a village boy she’d met on her one day off a week. She’d cared for him once, he’d wanted to do the same. He hadn’t loved her—he wasn’t sure a slave was even capable of an emotion like that—but there was an odd protectiveness he couldn’t help and her departure left a crushing pain in his chest. She’d been cast out and there was nothing he could do for her.

No one else was hired in her stead. Some of her tasks fell to Kirill, others to the tweeny that suddenly assumed her role: a girl who’d never expected such hasty advancement and was ill at ease with it. The extra work wasn’t as bad as Kirill had secretly feared and his guilty attempts to eavesdrop on what might have happened to its previous owner were fruitless. Sullen normality returned, punctuated only by low whispers of gossip he couldn’t catch and the times he lay awake at night hoping for her safety.

Two weeks after the maid’s dismissal, Kirill was cleaning an upstairs hallway that connected the spare rooms when footsteps filled the air and sent his heart crawling into his throat. It didn’t matter that he knew he did a good job, he was still terrified that one day the master or mistress would find fault. He didn’t even know why, beyond half-suppressed workhouse memories of what happened when he did things wrong, but it was enough to make him strive for perfection.

His grip tightened on the cloth and he threw himself more fully, if that was possible, into buffing the mahogany dado into a shine as the footsteps grew louder and a shadow passed over him—and instead of moving on, came to a standstill. “What are you doing?” 

Kirill thought his heart would fail entirely. “Cleaning, sir,” he addressed the rail, polishing so hard he felt the muscles of his arm stand proud.

“And you enjoy that, do you?” The voice was both familiar and not, amusement colouring the warm tones.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m not in the wall. Face me when you speak to me.”

The laughter in the voice was irrelevant, it was clearly an order. Kirill turned slowly, keeping his eyes down. “Yes, sir.”

The voice wore expensive shoes. He remembered cleaning them only hours before, one of the day’s first tasks. “Aren’t you a little too handsome to be doing this menial work?”

“No, sir.” His hands twitched; he resisted the urge to cover his scars.

There was a snort of amusement. “I’m telling you that you are.” Two fingers pressed under his chin. “Raise your head.” 

As much to escape the fingers digging into his skin as in response to the command, Kirill did so.

With a sharp tsk, the hand gripped his chin more firmly. “Open your damn eyes.”

He’d been taught it was only respectful to shut them rather than stare openly at his master, but an order was an order. Nervously, he opened them.

Reuben Gamble gave him a brilliant smile. “That’s much better, isn’t it?” The hand relinquished his chin and brushed away the flash of white hair that fell over his forehead. “This came from the accident? But only the front...” The fingers moved to smooth the black strands over his ear instead. “Will you tell me about it?”

This was the most uniquely frightening situation he’d ever been in. Only his mistress ever asked him friendly questions and he knew the answers he was expected to give, but being addressed so informally by the owner’s son—and expected to answer for himself? He could barely breathe. Stepping sideways with a gesture to the door beside him, he tried to deflect the question: “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir. I’d hate for you to waste your time talking to me—”

Two hands squeezed his shoulders. Suddenly the wall was against his back, the dado hard against his spine; the hands slid down his arms to settle on his hips. “I’d much prefer you stay here.” In one step Reuben was only a hair’s breadth away, each word tickling Kirill’s nose. “I’ve been fascinated by you for a while now. My mother’s always had impeccable taste.”

The hands on his hips slid down to gently cup his buttocks. Kirill flinched as they dragged him fractionally closer, just close enough for the older man’s interest in him to become evident. His voice came out as little more than a whisper. “S—sir, what are you doing?”

His backside was released, only for the hands to shift upwards again: one to his chest, just above his heart, and the other to slide between their bodies and stroke the front of his trousers.

With a terrified squeak he twisted away, freed through sheer dumb luck than real intention. Leaving his equipment where it lay and without daring to look back, Kirill fled his master’s son and bolted down the stairs.

There was no sign of Reuben when he crept back, heart in his mouth, to pick up where he’d left off; he’d never before realised relief had a taste.

Writing Dust & Ash: Starting The Process

The other night, I wondered 'aloud' on Twitter whether anyone would be interested in following the creation of a book, from first flailing ideas to an actual finished product, bearing in mind that I am about as far from a proper, professional author as you can get.

One person liked the idea, so guess what?  I'm doing it.

Not just because Danni was interested (though it is a big part of it—no one wants to work on something no one's interested in) but also because it's something I might learn from the experience of and—fingers crossed—help keep me focused.

The project I'm going to be working on is one that crashed into my head a couple of days ago out of nowhere (I suspect it got lost en route to someone actually competent's imagination) and, in my case, the 'working on' bit of the process usually comes after characters with names decide they're going to infest me.  Sometimes even when they don't have names.

And 'names' is exactly where this all started, so it's where I'll start.

The Initial Idea

One thing I have in common with a lot of other writers is a notebook I use to jot down names that have either come to me out the blue, or I've seen somewhere and liked, or that might not even be names at all but could be worked into one.  They either sit on the page and wait until they're needed, or they randomly attach themselves to characters: for instance, Kirill wasn't supposed to be called Kirill, but once the name was attached nothing else seemed to work until I stuck with it.  In this case, I'd jotted down two names a couple of months ago: Dust and Ash.

So far, so generic.  At the time, I looked at it and thought, "I bet they investigate supernatural crimes in modern fantasy or something," and promptly forgot all about it.

I was working when suddenly I realised, apropos of nothing, that Dust was a twin and his brother was called Echo.  Echo had been born second, was a little smaller, a little quieter, and followed his brother everywhere.

And then I realised that Echo didn't follow his brother everywhere; he'd led the way once.  Echo was dead.

Refining The Idea

It's not much, but it's a place to start.  Now I've got the kernel of an idea, I've got questions I can ask: why is Echo dead?  How does Dust feel?  How does Ash, Dust's best friend, take it?  What genre is it?

For me, this is the part where I start to work out the plot.  Life is significantly easier when the plot appears first because you can sit down and start to work out the kinks almost immediately, but in this case I've still got a lot of work to do before I can get to that point—like find the plot.

For me, this involves asking more and more questions and writing down everything in another notebook.  Being me, I have different pens and inks for different stories at this stage: it's handy if you use one notebook for every idea.  I don't do it all in one go—I can't, it doesn't all pour straight out of my head, although damn I wish it did—so I write what I can and go away and do something else, and if something else comes to me, whether it's a question, an answer or a random idea, I scribble it down.

Music Helps

No, really.  I'm not kidding.  Sometimes, something in a song can spark an idea I might not have otherwise had, or made me realise something much quicker than I would have without it.  I usually construct playlists for stories I'm working on, which is partly a procrastination exercise (my favourite hobby), and partly because while I might not actually hear it while I'm writing, as I tend to tune it out, it helps keep the outside world from encroaching—always handy when you share an office with a parrot—and feels like it helps keep me focused.

In this case, I'd heard a song on the radio in the supermarket earlier and I couldn't get it out my head, so I looked it up on YouTube.

While listening to the lyrics, I realised something important: Echo's body might be dead, but Echo himself is not.  This gives me the genre: fantasy of some flavour.  And if Echo's soul is somewhere else, then it means someone has done this to him, which gives me the shadow of a villain—and a lot more questions.

And for no apparent reason, I can see a tea shop / café, which gives me something to think about for world building: what kind of fantasy world needs a tea shop?  Probably a fairly affluent one with good trade links and plenty of social time; now I can start to work out where Dush, Echo and Ash live.

This is about as far as I've got.  I still need to work out who the villain is and what he gained from doing what he did, what Dush and Ash are going to do about it, and an actual plot (always a good idea, right?), but it's a starting point.

Next time, I'll talk about plotting and, hopefully, I'll be able to start working on this in earnest.

Adventures With The IRS - Receiving An EIN

As I'm in the preliminary stages of preparing for my first "proper" ebook release I realised that I needed to stop faffing around and (finally) apply for an EIN from the US Internal Revenue Service.

The thing is, I'm terrible with phones.  Anything that involves calling people I will try to put off time and again.  It's hard to believe that I was actually a legal secretary once upon a time (well, four or five years ago) and therefore had to field calls all the time.

As a result, it's been pointed out to me that with the amount of time I've now spent avoiding calling the IRS, I could have just faxed them the relevant form and had the EIN...  so, with that in mind, I loaded up Skype with £10 credit, sat in my office, steeled myself and gave them a call.

Whereon, having selected option "1" from the automated system... I promptly ended up on hold.  Their opening hours are 6am to 11pm EST so I was actually ringing around 10am, pretty much when other people finally screw up the courage to ring about tax issues, but I was only on hold for about 6 minutes, which was impressive.  If I'd been ringing the UK version I'm pretty sure it would have been significantly longer than that.

When my call was answered, I'm not entirely sure I made myself clear straight out the gate (I'm really out of practice with phones...) but once we got past my stupidity and he identified the fact that I'm clearly an idiot he spelled everything out for me and made it all significantly less scary.  We went through the form SS4, which I'd already filled out in Acrobat (you can download both it and its help file here), and I discovered that I am apparently unable to phrase the letter "D" (it's the Midlands English accent), which made life difficult as my address contains a few of the little blighters... but about ten minutes later he gave me my EIN and also answered my question on whether I have to file a 0 amount to the IRS for tax purposes (the answer is no, you just file taxes in your own country as normal).

So I'd like to extend a huge thank you to the lovely Mr. Witt, should he ever see this (and hopefully I've got his name right; I'm terrible when I panic), because he spelled my name properly, he made the whole process easy, quick and painless, and he also made me laugh (intentionally).

If you're putting off getting your EIN because it seems daunting, or because calling the US is a frightening and potentially expensive experience, don't.  It's a super-easy process, especially if you've already completed your SS4, you get your number straight away over the phone with a confirmation posted to you, and the best part?

As I called using Skype, a 15-minute phone call cost me 35p.

Efficient and affordable.

The Rose Queen

I used to take part in NaNoMangO, a twice-yearly comics event in the vein of NaNoWriMo, only instead of 50,000 words in a month the object was to draw 30 pages.  I very rarely finished NNMO, mind.  My best was to complete 30 pages of two projects in the month; one of my worst is probably The Rose Queen in 2010, where I managed—drumroll please—

—two pages!

The problem was, aside from the fact that I decided to not only sketch it, but line and colour it (bad idea), that beyond the faintest outline of the story I had no idea what was happening.  I knew it involved a man boarding a ship to steal the Rose Queen, and he didn't exactly know what the Rose Queen was.  It would turn out to be a woman.

That's it.  That's all I had.  The whole premise, and both characters names, was based around a newsreader's vocal stumble and something I misread.   It's no wonder I only got to two pages.

In a fit of procrastination driven by a bout of something that could be a cold, or could be 'flu (shush), I sat in the conservatory that was, for once, fairly warm, and felt sorry for myself rather than write.

The next thing I knew, the Rose Queen was a man instead of a woman.

And a whole new world of questions suddenly opened up, ones that hadn't existed four years ago, and I could (can) barely keep up with them.

There are a lot more now

This is odd for me.  Normally a story starts to grow in my head, and I ignore it until I'm ready to do something with it.  This one has crashed headlong through the ceiling and is giving me funny looks.

The oddest thing has to be the characters.  I had a vague idea about and a 3D version of Admiral Fayth, and a 3D version of the female Rose Queen that I've since lost (I think it's on another computer), but no grasp of their personalities.  Now, with RQ's sex change he's developed a personality—and a strong sense of sarcasm—and, even odder, he and Fayth are getting along so well that I've got unsolicited sex scenes floating around in my imagination.

I'm starting to think I need to imagine a bucket of cold water.

So now my question is: wait until I know what's going on, or start writing and pray it comes to me?  And more to the point, will these boys actually let me wait?

As a bonus, here is RQ dressed up... or down? for Easter.  He wasn't particularly amused about it.

Who says procrastination is always a bad thing?

Musical Interludes

Many writers are happy writing in silence; I'm not one of them.  I tune it out while I'm writing and couldn't tell you exactly which song I was listening to at any given time, but music creates a white noise for me that blocks out all surrounding distractions.

The side effect is that some bands and singers will become irrevocably stuck on certain stories.

Currently I'm listening to a lot of Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, because only when I'd just finished The First Steampunk Novella (yep, still untitled) did I realise how perfectly his singing and the songs fit the story.  (The downside was that Barnacled Warship prompted a whole sequel...)  The side effect is that now, whenever I hear them, I'm transported back to Niko and Kirill's world and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

The same goes for The Killers, whose Day and Age album became synonymous with a story called Chime that (big surprise) is unfinished, but I do intend to complete one day; I listened to the CD in my car not too long ago and almost immediately found myself immersed in the plot again.  Three Graces is similar but not quite so specific, evoked by The Naked and Famous and The New Pornographers--and apparently a very similar theme with band-names.

It's even less specific with Unravel.  It's songs here and there that, left alone, provide a brief flash of nostalgia but when put together into a playlist--an exercise I did for a challenge last year--bring back memories of things that people who don't actually exist did.  It's a peculiar feeling, but between the experience of selecting songs that most accurately fit the characters and the arranging of them into a playlist, I felt like I'd learned a little bit more about my boys and their story.

Has anyone else created a playlist for their stories and, if so, how did you find the challenge?  Enlightening or frustrating--and did it spark any fresh ideas?

The Promised Handwritten Blog Post - It's National Stationery Month Soon...

Click to make it larger if necessary!

For more information, check out National Stationery Week's site and their Twitter @NatStatWeek -- and maybe consider joining me in writing something?  Please?

The first small victory of 2014

I started using HabitRPG a while ago.  If you're not familiar with it, it's a site and app that lets you set daily goals, habits to encourage (or discourage) and things to do, all framed as an RPG with experience and gold rewarded for completing tasks and health taken away for failing.

I'm terrible at sticking to things.  I don't have the attention span for it, so approaching it as a game with rewards is actually doing wonders.

One thing that it's proving particularly useful for is the To-Do section: mine is full of writing targets that, if I see every day, I can't escape so easily.  They range from the unlikely (completing the second arc of Three Graces, which has been sat doing nothing for two years due to my own stupidity--no, seriously), to the possibly-probable (finishing both Radial AUs), to the downright laughable but depressingly necessary (naming the steampunk universe, because Unnamed Steampunk is never catchy).

It also included two perfectly reachable ones: finish the Unnamed Steampunk (see?) novella I started last year, and rewrite it.  I'd intended to finish it last year but got unaccountably stuck on the last chapter, the part that should have been the easiest of the whole story.  I stared and prodded and rewrote, I even edited bits of it, but it resolutely refused to crystallise in my mind.  I could not wrap my mind around this one last bit.

And there was this perfectly reachable To-Do sitting there laughing at me.  It's embarrassing, being taunted by an orange box on a website.  But there it was, perfectly smug in the knowledge that it was reachable and I was just failing to reach it.

Funny how the brain works, isn't it?  Even funnier is that, in writing "Doors Should Creak", I solved my own problem.  By writing a point in Niko and Kirill's life where they were comfortable enough to have sex and clearly had been for some time, it made it much easier to write Kirill's tentative first steps towards confidence in Niko and their fledgling relationship.  Suddenly, over the course of two days, I could check off my Habit of writing 200 words (a small but manageable goal for someone who's so easily distracted) and I finished the story.

It's now on my Kindle, where I can be taunted by the weird chapter spacing and the fact it needs heavy revision, but it's done.

Considering my atrocious track record with actually completing projects, it feels weird and incredible, but I finally got to check off my first To-Do and complete my first project of 2014.

Anyone else using HabitRPG or cracked that first To-Do of the year?

How Do You Prefer To Read Fiction Online?

How do you prefer to read original fiction?  It's a bit of a random question, made slightly more so by the fact I was halfway around Tesco when I thought of it--which goes to show just how much of my shopping is done on autopilot.

But the more I thought about it (still shopping on autopilot), the more I found myself curious.  I think it was mostly because I was itching to finish up and get home so I could read a short story by a webcomic author I like, but that in turn reminded me that said story is hosted on their SmackJeeves page which has the irritating habit of checking I'm a legal adult too often for my liking--although I suppose having an account might help.  (The story is for the very gorgeous m/m webcomic Devoto: Music In Hell, by the way, and the short story is here.)

I'm way over being a legal adult, for the record.  I don't even get IDed in stores when buying alcohol any more, which makes me sadder than it ought.

That, in turn, made me think about how Dreamwidth displays stories on mobile devices--as I've been using my Nexus 7 to fact-check existing Unravel AU stories with my NaNoWriMo project--and (by this point at the frozens section) I got to wondering about whether people prefer to read stories on blogs like this, on separate sites like Wordpress, Tumblr, Dreamwidth etc., or on their mobile device separately, where they might be able to carry it around with them to, say, read while loitering by the freezers staring blankly at Christmas frozens.

How do you prefer to read original fiction online?
	In a Blogger / Wordpress post
	On Livejournal / Dreamwidth
	On Tumblr
	On Archive Of Our Own (AO3)
	On a different third party site
	As an ePub for convenience
	As a MOBI for convenience
	Some other format / site (please comment)
pollcode.com free polls

I'm one of those irritating people who loves asking obscure questions, so I really do appreciate and love answers.  Basically, I'd love to hear from you.  If I've not listed a way that you use / prefer, please tell me.  Whether it makes an immediate difference to how I post is another matter--I'm notoriously lazy, I'm afraid--but I'm definitely interested to find out and it probably will help me (and maybe other people, who knows?) decide how to approach things in the future.

Also, if you have any opinions on colour schemes for online fiction, I'd find those interesting too.  Black text on white background?  White text on black background?  Something that's neither of those on something else that's neither of those?  It's more for personal curiosity, but again it might come in handy somewhere down the line.

Only slightly tangentially I might have some more stories done eventually, for that minority that reads them; yesterday I clocked over 50,000 words in NaNoWriMo and menial chores around the house may have helped me figure out how to finish the story.  That and a challenge to write more in general may actually yield online fiction...

At some point.

I Had An Epiphany (but don't worry, I cleaned up afterwards)

I did say that I expected to get over my disappointment in myself and my story.  It just took a little longer than I expected.

Well, no, that's not entirely the case.  It's still there, chewing away at my heart.  But I remembered something important.

I'm not intending to show anyone this story so that feeling can sod right off.  Following on from one of the posts I linked to before, it's my story and I'll write what I damn well like, even if it is atrocious.  I can always edit later, I can pretty it up and fix the awkward phrasing.

But I can't do any of that if I don't finish it.

And on that note, since no one else is going to see it, I realised something else--I don't have to censor myself as much as I have.  I'm not sure why I was, honestly.  Some peculiar in-built sense of... decorum?  Gods only know.  But it's quite liberating to know I can now go back to some earlier scenes and make them smuttier.

Or, as I referred to it on Twitter earlier, "racier" (a sure sign I'm getting old).

What brought about this little revelation, other than moping around and whinging for a couple of days?  Nothing complicated, just that after changing my icon I wanted a new background for my Twitter page, so I decided to make a more relevant one using my main character, Kirill.  After I'd finished working on it and loaded it, I thought he looked lonely, so I reworked it to include Niko, Kir's love interest.  Working on that and thinking about their relationship gave me the kick up the arse I needed to miss writing them.

Bit of an odd thing to drag me to my senses, I guess.  Well, it was that and the sex scenes I won't be able to write if I don't get cracking, because it turns out that Niko has taken quite a liking to Kir...

Anyway, isn't the point to have fun, above anything else?  I'm not going to let someone else spoil or take away my fun--especially not when in the future it gets to involve some light bondage and ridiculously cute conversations smack in the middle of sex...

*fans self*

If you'll excuse me, I've got a project to finish.

Don't Let Accusatory 'Advice' Put You Off, Editing Exists For A Reason

On Friday, having reached my unofficial word count target for the day, I was faffing around (yes that is a technical term) on Twitter when out of idle curiosity I clicked on one of the many 'advice for writers' tweets that crop up on my timeline.  I mean, it's always good to learn, right?

Except it wasn't advice, per se.  The general tone of it was more along the lines of "if you do this, then you are an appalling writer and should stop bothering everyone right now".

I looked at that post.  And then I looked at my WIP, which for a few different reasons--most notably that chunks of it were quite hard to write and sometimes writing anything is better than writing nothing--has a few examples of that post in it, and my first and overwhelming thought was: "so I'm wasting my time writing this shit.  I should never be allowed near a keyboard again."

I stared at the WIP that until then I'd actually enjoyed working on and was quite looking forward to writing two characters meeting for the first time, and I stared at it for a bit longer...  and then I closed it, watched most of an episode of Being Human (the one where Annie and George rescue Mitchell from the funeral parlour, if you're interested*) and went to bed feeling like I should spend the next day trying to find something else to do for a hobby.

Considering that I have the attention span of a mayfly I'd hoped, just a little, that when I woke up the next morning I'd have forgotten how I felt and could get on with writing.  Except that I couldn't.  I prodded the keys for a bit and thought, "stop wasting your time," and opened Chrome instead.  After all, I've done NaNoWriMo for ten years now and I've never finished any of those, so what's one more unfinished piece of shite that won't ever see the light of day?

While I was faffing (still a technical term) on Twitter I saw two tweets linking to blog posts come up in quick succession.  One was Clare Davidson's Writing Without Compromise which, although not directly relating to how I felt, is a fantastic post about how sticking to what you want to write is much better for your sanity than trying to write what you think someone else expects of you.  The other was one of Steve Poling's excellent advice posts (the one that caught my eye was about Cardboard Cutout characters), which mix in humour and anecdotes with their food for thought.  More importantly, his advice is never accusatory or makes you feel worthless; if anything, it inspires you to try new ideas or things you might not have thought of.

Something that crops up on my Twitter timeline now and again is the paraphrased quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent".  Stupidly, I gave that article consent and I suspect it'll probably be a while before I can look at my WIP and my plan and not feel the urge to cry.

Don't make the mistake I did.  Different approaches are for different people and if you find 'advice' that's more interested in making you feel bad than inspiring you to improve, ignore it.  Mentally tell the author exactly what you think of them.  Close the page.  Just don't give it permission to put you off.  Even if, like me, you write for fun not profit, because the characters in your head are restless and writing calms them down, and the finished result isn't ever likely to be seen by anyone...

Everyone can improve, yes, but there is a reason editing exists.  Write as badly as you want in your first draft, so long as you write--you can't improve on nonexistence.  And don't hurt yourself reading anything that rubbishes your work and takes away your enjoyment of writing for a smidge of advice.

You're worth a lot more than that.

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* Favourite quote: "Who wants some of my chair?!" as said by George, brandishing one at a vampire.  Perhaps that's what I should've yelled at that post and just got on with writing, eh?

I'm Due That Kick, Consider It A Present

Last week I talked about how we're all allowed to write crap, and in fact writing crap is preferable to writing nothing.

I also--foolishly in hindsight--said that if I hadn't written 5,000 words or more in a week, said people were free to hunt me down and give me a kick.  (Please don't kick me too hard.)

I wrote around 1,200 words, and then started replaying Dragon Age 2.  I have edited several lines several times however (yes I know...), and at least did make a couple of things a bit clearer.  My main character is not in the best situation ever at this point in the story and my brain, my fingers or my heart (I'm not sure which, it might be all three) is/are rebelling at what is going to happen.

Kirill's life is about to become difficult and although things will get better afterwards, I'm stuck at my last line: "Everything was as it should be."  Something in my head illogically insists that if I leave it there, the bad stuff won't happen.  Of course, if I leave it there the good stuff won't happen either and my main character will be trapped in an awful limbo, believing something terrible has happened to the man he's fallen in love with without anything ever being proved or disproved.

Which, I think we can all agree, is a Bad Thing.

And, although I have no direct evidence to show for it, I'm starting to feel more confident in the relationship between Kirill and Niko.  An important part to my characters for me--although it may sound a bit odd--is how they interact in my head when I'm not thinking much about them; for instance, Alex and Milos have a near-constant stream of bickering that occasionally leads to sex that crops up at the strangest times.  For quite a while I'd had absolutely nothing from Kirill and Niko, which was concerning.  And then I accidentally wrote fluffy almost-smut based on nothing more than a scene prompt and realised that actually they do get along.  And then an actual sex-scene occurred in my head--I've not gotten around to writing it down yet--and suddenly I'm feeling a lot happier about the whole thing.

But at least my Dragon Age replay has been going quite well...  In some ways I can consider it research, because at some point last year I started hearing my character Alex's voice as Gideon Emery's (the voice of Fenris).  Make it slightly softer and more Midlands-English and it's a perfect fit for him, so I'm topping up my memories.

See?  It's not all bad.

(As an aside, I'm 30 today.  So at least for today I hope I have an excuse for not writing!)