Thought I should make at least one post in September. Basically, I have just a little over a month left to complete the second draft of the novel by my self-imposed deadline (Oct. 31st!), all the while juggling my law school responsibilities at the same time. As a result, the going is . . . well, going to be tough, so I'm instituting an official blogging communications blackout until Oct. 31st or the 2nd draft is in hand, whichever may come first.
Here's hoping it's the latter--and peace until then.
Showing posts with label Novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Novel. Show all posts
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wordmeter & Tamir
Read: Lynn Flewelling, The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, & The Oracle's Queen
Reading: Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows
Redraft: Chapter . . . 4 of 32 (There's a reason for this. See below.)
After two years, it's officially back:
The blue bar represents the number of words in my novel that have passed from first to second draft. The current word count represents the first three chapter's worth. The second number was the final word count of the first draft--without a doubt, the word count will shift as I bring the book from first to second draft.
(Incidentally, if you look at the picture of my desk in the last post, you'll see a large stack of paper on the shelf beside the laptop, bound by three very large rings. That's the manuscript as it was at the time.)
Between the last post and this one, I actually worked my way into the beginning of the new Chapter 5, but quickly fell into a quagmire. The set up I'd used in the first draft was holey to begin with, but I'd sloshed through it simply to get to the good parts, and also to get the bloody thing finished. With the redraft, it's time to pay the piper, and had to bash my head against the first bit of writer's block I've had since starting the redraft. It seems that my abilities have grown a bit since the last time the block and I met, because it only waylaid my progress for a single evening. The price of my solution, however, was rewriting much of my redraft, starting with middle of Chapter 2, and the whole of Chapters 3 and 4. I put the final period mark on the new Chapter 3 this weekend, and work had me occupied until this evening, so I'll set pen to paper (OK, fingers to keyboard) tonight. I'll post another wordmeter once Chapter 4 is squared away again.
As I've mentioned before, my goal is to have a second draft complete by this October, so I write a fresh 50,000 words' worth of the second book as a part of NaNoWriMo 2008 in November. Law school, work, and other non-noveling responsibilities be damned. I'm adding another goal to the pile, however: by the end of Summer 2009 (which will include the bar exam, happy happy joy joy), I'll have the first book in as good a shape as I can manage myself, and then it'll be time to call upon my early readers. (You know who you are; and if you want to be, just drop me a line.)
I've told only one other person so far, but these books are a part of a currently three- to four-book series, with two prequel novels also planned. Each will be stand-alone (though truth be told, for what I envision the 3rd book to be, that may not be easy), so hopefully, if I can get any one of the group published, the others will have a fighting chance as well.
Reading: Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows
Redraft: Chapter . . . 4 of 32 (There's a reason for this. See below.)
After two years, it's officially back:
13474 / 139570
The blue bar represents the number of words in my novel that have passed from first to second draft. The current word count represents the first three chapter's worth. The second number was the final word count of the first draft--without a doubt, the word count will shift as I bring the book from first to second draft.
(Incidentally, if you look at the picture of my desk in the last post, you'll see a large stack of paper on the shelf beside the laptop, bound by three very large rings. That's the manuscript as it was at the time.)
Between the last post and this one, I actually worked my way into the beginning of the new Chapter 5, but quickly fell into a quagmire. The set up I'd used in the first draft was holey to begin with, but I'd sloshed through it simply to get to the good parts, and also to get the bloody thing finished. With the redraft, it's time to pay the piper, and had to bash my head against the first bit of writer's block I've had since starting the redraft. It seems that my abilities have grown a bit since the last time the block and I met, because it only waylaid my progress for a single evening. The price of my solution, however, was rewriting much of my redraft, starting with middle of Chapter 2, and the whole of Chapters 3 and 4. I put the final period mark on the new Chapter 3 this weekend, and work had me occupied until this evening, so I'll set pen to paper (OK, fingers to keyboard) tonight. I'll post another wordmeter once Chapter 4 is squared away again.
As I've mentioned before, my goal is to have a second draft complete by this October, so I write a fresh 50,000 words' worth of the second book as a part of NaNoWriMo 2008 in November. Law school, work, and other non-noveling responsibilities be damned. I'm adding another goal to the pile, however: by the end of Summer 2009 (which will include the bar exam, happy happy joy joy), I'll have the first book in as good a shape as I can manage myself, and then it'll be time to call upon my early readers. (You know who you are; and if you want to be, just drop me a line.)
I've told only one other person so far, but these books are a part of a currently three- to four-book series, with two prequel novels also planned. Each will be stand-alone (though truth be told, for what I envision the 3rd book to be, that may not be easy), so hopefully, if I can get any one of the group published, the others will have a fighting chance as well.
*
After I vowed to reread a bunch of the best books that I read last year, I went back and read a book that I bought in 2006 but never got around to: The Bone Doll's Twin, by Lynn Flewelling. Three days later, I'd gone back to the bookstore, and finished the following two books in the "Tamir Triad," Hidden Warrior and The Oracle's Queen.
Bone Doll finds Flewelling at a transitional phase in her writing prowess, I think. The first few chapters are passable, interesting, with a well-fleshed out milieu, but lack the polished prose that I've come to expect of first-tier speculative fiction. By the middle of the book, she seems to find her stride, and, though I picked up the book with the intent of redeeming myself for my Mistborn binge and learning Stephen King's lesson about reading both in big gulps and little sips, I couldn't put the book down, and rocketed to buy the other two books the moment the store opened. Reading the other books back to back, it was an exhausting but transcendent experience, highly recommended to anyone, fantasy fan or otherwise.
The premise is an interesting one: "For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Erius, a usurper king, claimed his young half sister's throne. Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala's ancient rival Penimar drains the country's lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line has become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line--and from Illior's faithful, who spread the Oracle's words to a doubting populace.
"As noblewomen young and old perish mysterious, the king's nephew--his sister's only child--grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess's daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny. Only Tobin's noble father, two wizards of Illior, and an outlawed forest witch know the truth. Only they can protect young Tobin from a king's wrath, a mother's madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother's demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder . . ."
The trilogy sees Tobin-cum-Tamir grow from a frightened, isolated boy to the warrior queen she was destined to be, and is filled with memorable and wonderfully rounded characters. But the interaction between Tamir and Ki, the low-born knight's son chosen as her companion, is where the story truly shines. As boys they are the fastest friends, brothers in all but blood, but once her true self is revealed, the nature of their relationship necessarily changes along with it. A beautifully written tale, the only thing I can really cite against it is that the first book ends without real resolution, almost necessitating the purchase of the following book or two.
There is much I can learn from Flewelling, so she now joins the pantheon of other authors whose works serve as much-needed lighthouses for me as I navigate my own work to its intended port of call. Because I still haven't had enough, I'm working through her Nightrunner series, which is thankfully set in the same world as the Tamir trilogy, though several centuries later. I'm currently on the first book, and have two more to tide me over until the fourth is released at the end of this month. After that (or in the interim between third book and fourth), I've broken down and purchased the first book of Rober Jordan's The Wheel of Time epic, The Eye of the World, and have queued George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series as well.
Bone Doll finds Flewelling at a transitional phase in her writing prowess, I think. The first few chapters are passable, interesting, with a well-fleshed out milieu, but lack the polished prose that I've come to expect of first-tier speculative fiction. By the middle of the book, she seems to find her stride, and, though I picked up the book with the intent of redeeming myself for my Mistborn binge and learning Stephen King's lesson about reading both in big gulps and little sips, I couldn't put the book down, and rocketed to buy the other two books the moment the store opened. Reading the other books back to back, it was an exhausting but transcendent experience, highly recommended to anyone, fantasy fan or otherwise.
The premise is an interesting one: "For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Erius, a usurper king, claimed his young half sister's throne. Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala's ancient rival Penimar drains the country's lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line has become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line--and from Illior's faithful, who spread the Oracle's words to a doubting populace.
"As noblewomen young and old perish mysterious, the king's nephew--his sister's only child--grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess's daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny. Only Tobin's noble father, two wizards of Illior, and an outlawed forest witch know the truth. Only they can protect young Tobin from a king's wrath, a mother's madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother's demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder . . ."
The trilogy sees Tobin-cum-Tamir grow from a frightened, isolated boy to the warrior queen she was destined to be, and is filled with memorable and wonderfully rounded characters. But the interaction between Tamir and Ki, the low-born knight's son chosen as her companion, is where the story truly shines. As boys they are the fastest friends, brothers in all but blood, but once her true self is revealed, the nature of their relationship necessarily changes along with it. A beautifully written tale, the only thing I can really cite against it is that the first book ends without real resolution, almost necessitating the purchase of the following book or two.
There is much I can learn from Flewelling, so she now joins the pantheon of other authors whose works serve as much-needed lighthouses for me as I navigate my own work to its intended port of call. Because I still haven't had enough, I'm working through her Nightrunner series, which is thankfully set in the same world as the Tamir trilogy, though several centuries later. I'm currently on the first book, and have two more to tide me over until the fourth is released at the end of this month. After that (or in the interim between third book and fourth), I've broken down and purchased the first book of Rober Jordan's The Wheel of Time epic, The Eye of the World, and have queued George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series as well.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Wii, Mistborn, Revisions, NaNoWriMo
Read: Mistborn & The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii)
Redrafting: Chapter 3 of 32
In the latest demonstration of the fact that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the luckiest member of my family, my mom won a Nintendo Wii at a school raffle last week. And, in a demonstration of the fact that it is good to have said luckier family members, that Wii is now a fixture in my room. (The living room TV has no AV ports to spare. Mine, as luck would have it, does.)
I inaugurated the Wii with the one exclusive game that I've had my eye on for quite some time: No More Heroes, by Ubisoft. It's an action game with some interesting gameplay mechanics, a semi-otaku main character, and major style points for presentation. It also is one of the few games for Nintendo's hardware to sport a MA-17 rating.
Top all that off with the fact that it was on sale at Gamestop for $29.99, and you end up with quite a nice deal.
Not that I've been able to play much of it this week.
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii)
Redrafting: Chapter 3 of 32
In the latest demonstration of the fact that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the luckiest member of my family, my mom won a Nintendo Wii at a school raffle last week. And, in a demonstration of the fact that it is good to have said luckier family members, that Wii is now a fixture in my room. (The living room TV has no AV ports to spare. Mine, as luck would have it, does.)
I inaugurated the Wii with the one exclusive game that I've had my eye on for quite some time: No More Heroes, by Ubisoft. It's an action game with some interesting gameplay mechanics, a semi-otaku main character, and major style points for presentation. It also is one of the few games for Nintendo's hardware to sport a MA-17 rating.
Top all that off with the fact that it was on sale at Gamestop for $29.99, and you end up with quite a nice deal.
Not that I've been able to play much of it this week.
*
Instead, I picked up Mistborn from where I dropped it (read: lost it) in my room about two years ago. It was the second book by the precocious Brandon Sanderson, a new power in the Fantasy industry whose debut novel Elantris impressed me mightily. While Elantris was a stand-alone novel, Mistborn was heralded as the first in a trilogy, which I looked forward to, especially since my first novel is essentially part of what may end up as a tetralogy or quintology. Sanderson has a strong grasp of character and plot, but what impressed me the most was his ability to create a tightly woven milieu with its own internal logic and cohesion. Since the beginning, my weakest attribute as a writer has been setting, in which milieu plays an integral part, especially in speculative fiction. Studying at the feet of masters has been one of the greatest sources of improvement for me, so reading Sanderson's latest works have been a wonderful crash course on the subject.
Of course, I never read a novel for didactic quality alone.
His novels are also just plain fun. The plots are fresh and largely unpredictable (a positive aspect for me, since I can generally predict the plot of any given hour-long TV drama within the first 20 minutes), but nevertheless inevitable in a way that satisfies the reader. He can turn a phrase when he wants to, but he doesn't have quite so lyrical a grasp of language as some of the others I turn to for a good read.
In any event, I finished Mistborn over the weekend, and then, realizing from the copyright that it had been published in 2006, wondered if the second book in the series had already been released.
It had. In 2007.
So I rushed down to Borders (Barnes and Noble didn't have any copies; the paperback is due out in June 3) and grabbed a copy (when it comes to a really good book, who can wait for Amazon.com's free shipping?), and read it in just about a day. Which, in retrospect, was a bad thing, since the third and final book in the trilogy isn't due for release until October 14th.
Rationing was never my strong suit.
But, on the bright side, a strong influx of good narrative prose often gets the creative juices flowing on my part, so I've broken through the "revising" part of my redraft and have started working on the substantive, well, redrafting--that is, throwing out crap chapters and rewriting them from scratch. In the process of writing the first draft, I knew that the initial chapters would need some serious attention in the redrafting stage, but I ignored the whinny voice in my head because my goal was to have a completed (read: crap) draft come hell or high water. Now that I've got that, it's time to get a completed (read: passable) redraft for possible first reader feedback. (Possible, because if I still feel that the redraft isn't up to snuff, then it'll face a redraft of its own.)
I've also set the tentative goal of having the redraft of the novel completed by the end of summer, or at least before November, which is the traditional NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Lunatic wordsmith that I am, I've decided to draft at least the first 50,000 words of the second novel in the series as my part of the NaNoWriMo frenzy. (There are numerous sound industry arguments against writing the sequel to a novel that has yet to--and, therefore, likely will not--be published. To those arguments, I say: I have to do what I have to do, and if that means writing out a multi-book story arc to its conclusion before moving on to another, perhaps more marketable stand-alone, then so be it. Besides, one of my goals as a writer is to never publish a novel that requires the reader to be familiar with my previous work. I seek--and only time will tell if I can be consistent on this count--to have every book in a series work as a stand-alone novel in its own right, even if some of these "stand alones" may end up with something of a cliffhanger ending.)
And yes, my NaNoWriMo participation will take place during my 3L year at law school. If nothing else, law school drills time management and multitasking into your brain like few other graduate schools, so I don't think I've bitten off more than I can chew.
Well, that's enough blogging for one week. Back to the redraft.
Of course, I never read a novel for didactic quality alone.
His novels are also just plain fun. The plots are fresh and largely unpredictable (a positive aspect for me, since I can generally predict the plot of any given hour-long TV drama within the first 20 minutes), but nevertheless inevitable in a way that satisfies the reader. He can turn a phrase when he wants to, but he doesn't have quite so lyrical a grasp of language as some of the others I turn to for a good read.
In any event, I finished Mistborn over the weekend, and then, realizing from the copyright that it had been published in 2006, wondered if the second book in the series had already been released.
It had. In 2007.
So I rushed down to Borders (Barnes and Noble didn't have any copies; the paperback is due out in June 3) and grabbed a copy (when it comes to a really good book, who can wait for Amazon.com's free shipping?), and read it in just about a day. Which, in retrospect, was a bad thing, since the third and final book in the trilogy isn't due for release until October 14th.
Rationing was never my strong suit.
*
But, on the bright side, a strong influx of good narrative prose often gets the creative juices flowing on my part, so I've broken through the "revising" part of my redraft and have started working on the substantive, well, redrafting--that is, throwing out crap chapters and rewriting them from scratch. In the process of writing the first draft, I knew that the initial chapters would need some serious attention in the redrafting stage, but I ignored the whinny voice in my head because my goal was to have a completed (read: crap) draft come hell or high water. Now that I've got that, it's time to get a completed (read: passable) redraft for possible first reader feedback. (Possible, because if I still feel that the redraft isn't up to snuff, then it'll face a redraft of its own.)
I've also set the tentative goal of having the redraft of the novel completed by the end of summer, or at least before November, which is the traditional NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Lunatic wordsmith that I am, I've decided to draft at least the first 50,000 words of the second novel in the series as my part of the NaNoWriMo frenzy. (There are numerous sound industry arguments against writing the sequel to a novel that has yet to--and, therefore, likely will not--be published. To those arguments, I say: I have to do what I have to do, and if that means writing out a multi-book story arc to its conclusion before moving on to another, perhaps more marketable stand-alone, then so be it. Besides, one of my goals as a writer is to never publish a novel that requires the reader to be familiar with my previous work. I seek--and only time will tell if I can be consistent on this count--to have every book in a series work as a stand-alone novel in its own right, even if some of these "stand alones" may end up with something of a cliffhanger ending.)
And yes, my NaNoWriMo participation will take place during my 3L year at law school. If nothing else, law school drills time management and multitasking into your brain like few other graduate schools, so I don't think I've bitten off more than I can chew.
Well, that's enough blogging for one week. Back to the redraft.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Three Down, Fiction For July
Reread: Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
Watched: Cook Like A Chef - Georges Laurier - Vegetarian Mains
Exams: 3/4
Three exams down (the in-class ones). Only the Civ Pro take-home--the veritable grudge match--remains. Then I attempt to write on to law review (emphasis on attempt), and then--and only then--does summer truly begin.
Oh, I really should get off my duff and find and secure a pro-bono op pronto, but I'm waiting till after the last exam.
Watched: Cook Like A Chef - Georges Laurier - Vegetarian Mains
Exams: 3/4
Three exams down (the in-class ones). Only the Civ Pro take-home--the veritable grudge match--remains. Then I attempt to write on to law review (emphasis on attempt), and then--and only then--does summer truly begin.
Oh, I really should get off my duff and find and secure a pro-bono op pronto, but I'm waiting till after the last exam.
*
Earlier last week I realized that both Jasper Fforde's First Among Sequels (I actually preferred War of the Words as a title myself, though I'm sure the new one more closely reflects the plot) and J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are both due within a week of each other in the U.S.: the 21st for Potter and the 24th for Sequels. I'm tempted to do the same thing I did for Something Rotten--bypass the U.S. lead time and grab the UK version (available July 5th!), but only wish that Rowling's seventh was due out earlier in her home country too (that would make the shipping go down smoother).
And, to give myself some motivation, I've decided to deadline my 1st round of substantive revisions to the novel to July 1st. I'm thinking a total of three substantive rewrites, and at least as many general run-throughs before I knock on my first-readers' doors for a once-over. (Those I've asked in advance--お楽しみに。。。かも。)
~TJN
Earlier last week I realized that both Jasper Fforde's First Among Sequels (I actually preferred War of the Words as a title myself, though I'm sure the new one more closely reflects the plot) and J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are both due within a week of each other in the U.S.: the 21st for Potter and the 24th for Sequels. I'm tempted to do the same thing I did for Something Rotten--bypass the U.S. lead time and grab the UK version (available July 5th!), but only wish that Rowling's seventh was due out earlier in her home country too (that would make the shipping go down smoother).
And, to give myself some motivation, I've decided to deadline my 1st round of substantive revisions to the novel to July 1st. I'm thinking a total of three substantive rewrites, and at least as many general run-throughs before I knock on my first-readers' doors for a once-over. (Those I've asked in advance--お楽しみに。。。かも。)
~TJN
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