Forced to refocus

Earlier this year I tried to finish 'Other Intelligent Life' but couldn't. Later I realised this was because I had not finished revisions on Ghost Kiss and this was subconsciously distracting me.

I think my false start on Commune might be the result of a similar situation. While I'm excited to get started on it, the (smarter) guy running the show behind the scenes thinks I have several other projects that should take priority. What's the point of writing another novel if I have Truck Me and half a dozen worthwhile short stories still in various stages of (in)completion? My mind runs predominantly on one track and trying to envisage plot for Commune while also rewriting three other things is just impossible. I need to clear my workspace – ie, get all my short stories and novels in their best, submittable shape - and then devote my energies to the new novel. It's not going anywhere, and it's a period piece (of sorts) so it's not like it has a use-by date.

So ... nose to the editing grindstone.

Commune building begins

Well, I couldn't help myself. The first 1,500 words of Commune came into existence this morning. As usual, I kicked off with a lots of exposition – I seem to need to 'explain' the characters to myself before the narrative can get underway properly. Considering the basic outline in my head has four major characters and a crapload of minor ones, that's some serious exposition. Usually I end up cutting out the passages of 'telling' in the first draft, but I've decided to cut them out at the start this time and just leaving them floating at the top of the document in case I need to remind myself of character names, traits or motivation.

I can't see any way this isn't going to be a long novel – 150,000 words is my minimum estimate. It's equal parts exciting and overwhelming.

My girlfriend is busy with uni stuff tonight, so I plan on making as many changes to Truck Me as I can before my eyes fall out and force me to my bed.

**ADDENDUM**

As I was coming home on the train, I started thinking about how best to tackle Commune and suddenly things began to escalate. New situations and characters started to suggest themselves, and as I rode this imagination wave, I realised I have no idea at all how to resolve it. Now, I try not to plot things too much, because it takes all the fun out of writing for me, but I can't go into this blindly with no 'working climax' so to speak. I'm going to let it turn over in my head for as long as it needs to and concentrate on other things for now. Disappointing ... but it would have been more disappointing to make this discovery with 200 pages under my belt, I suppose.

Oh, and apparently Aurealis has officially changed hands and the new publishers don't know who has been replied to and who hasn't. I just received an email apologising for not sending a response to 'Displeasures of the Flesh' and suggesting I resend it. Hmmm. Just teething problems, one hopes. Or is it a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

First read complete

Thanks to some unexpected downtime at work, I've completed my first read through of Truck Me this morning. I can confidently say it's the best novel I've written (even though I still hold Ghost Kiss in high regard). I didn't rush the ending for once, and I think it shows. It feels complete, satisfying. The majority of the necessary plot changes are minor, fiddly additions and rearrangements rather than entire passage rewrites.

I'm up in the air about whether to start Commune or focus on coming up with good endings for 'Adam Marked 1' and 'Displeasures of the Flesh'. The scribbled-on 'Recipe for Nostalgia' also gives me a reproachful look from time to time, asking if I'm ever going to honour my word and get it into shape. Oh, and then there's Poison, a novel that a small Queensland publisher almost took on a couple of years back. With a rewrite and a few added chapters, I think that could have potental as well.

So many projects, so little time! Feel free to email me, Macmillan UK. Really.

The bitter end

Got that long-awaited response from Aurealis today, and as you can guess from the subdued subject line it wasn't an acceptance. However, the reader's comment on 'Displeasures of the Flesh' was actually quite helpful. S/he pointed out that the ending was kind of disconnected from the rest of the narrative, and subconsciously I think I knew that already. It's amazing how hard it is to acknowledge that quiet, niggling but ultimately sage internal voice until an objective reader seconds its notions.

'Displeasures' is now going on the pile with 'Adam Marked 1' as a terrific story idea that needs a terrific ending.

Read through 110 of 147 pages of Truck Me. A few more inconsistencies have cropped up (the age of the protagonist's car, how much money he has in his wallet, and what day it is among them – the latter being one of my worst bugbears in every book I've ever written) but overall it's still pretty clean and has a pleasingly smooth flow of language and well-drawn characters. The more I read, the more I'm convinced an Aussie publisher will take it on if I can just get some sample chapters in front of an editor.

The Grand (and slow) Old Harlot

Yep, Aurealis drops another notch in my estimation. Last weekend's query about the status of my story has been resoundingly ignored. Again. From memory it took three weeks to get an acknowledgment of receipt, though, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

In brighter news, I'm 62 pages into my first read-through of Truck Me and can report that I'm very happy with it so far. Some nice writing (if I do say so myself) and I've only encountered one or two inconsistencies in plot. Suprisingly, I think it's the dialogue that's going to need most attention. It seems to have taken me a while to decide how one of my main characters should speak and behave. But aside from that, I think Truck Me is going to require much less work than Ghost Kiss did.

A weekend of nothing happening on the acceptance/publication front has also stilled my over-enthusiam and brought me back down to earth. And I've gotta say, the feeling of it under my feet is reassuring. Breathing rarefied air is intoxicating in short bursts, but too much of it brings on paranoia and anxiety. (Unless of course you're a professional author, in which case you can safely live at such altitudes.)

Getting ahead of myself

Ever since my acceptance for Back Roads I've found myself fantasising about having a real book contract, even writing for a living. I've always had these fantasies, but there's a lack of control about them now that I don't like. I feel like some sort of conceited rock climber who doesn't know his ropes are made from shoddy materials and are fraying with each metre he ascends.

In other words, I feel like I'm setting myself up for a fall when the raft of rejections comes gushing into my inbox.

Letting it grow out

Heavenly crapcakes, 'The Barber' is finally complete - all 16 pages and 8,894 words of it. Talk about your blowouts. I thought it would be a simple little story, maybe 4,000 words at the very most, but it just kept on keeping on. It's turned out to be one of the longest stories I've ever written, at least in terms of page count (it's heavy on dialogue and short sentences).

In novel news ... I might be getting aroused over nothing here, but I was reading a message board devoted to Macmillan's New Writer scheme today and discovered that in a couple of cases, rejections occurred very swiftly - a week, sometimes even days after the submission. (They have had mine a month.) Now, I qualify this by saying that the submissions in question were made back in 2005, when the New Writer imprint was a fledging venture and perhaps not receiving all that many manuscripts. However, it has given me some hope. It's another two weeks before the stated minimum response time (6 weeks) so I'm probably getting well ahead of myself. Nonetheless ... one can dream, can't one? It's all an unsigned writer has.

New idea

No, not the biggest selling weekly magazine for women in Australia, but a thing that has sprung up in my brain. And it may well result in the writing of a new novel. I'm going to let it simmer for a few more weeks until I get some other projects out of the way, but I already have the working title (Commune), genre (sci-fi/horror) and the main characters in place.

Failed to mention yesterday that I sent off a 600 word piece called 'From The Vampire Film Review' to Blade, Blood & Thruster, which publishes humorous and satirical SF/horror/fantasy. I got the idea for 'FTVFR' while on the toilet (an inordinate number of my ideas come to me there – Sigmund Freud would have had a field day) and hammered it out in about an hour. Not only was it a joyously spur-of-the-moment thing, it combined my experience as a film writer with my love of vampire lore and disdain for those who don't like Jackass. 'FTVFR' is nothing if not original.

Work on 'The Barber' continues. Three short scenes are still to be written. I suspect it has a certain literary quality that very few of my stories do - which may explain why I have so often felt disorientated during its composition. It puts me in mind of Stephen King's recent tendency towards 'mainstream' stories (an impudent comparison if ever there was one!).

Road to success!

Found out at 11:15pm last night that 1018 Press has accepted 'Trouble with the Locals' for Back Roads #3 (must be my lucky number!) which is due out in December (must be my lucky month!). I think this is the most gratifying publication yet - not only because it's proof that the harder you work the luckier you get, but because 1018 Press appears to set very high standards.

They offered me the option of $10 or a contributor copy, so I picked the latter (as it would probably cost that much to get a mag shipped out here anyway).

Somehow three credits is the charm ... I almost feel like a legitimate writer now.

Cop der woids

Quite unexpectedly, 'The Barber' (working title) has reached 11 pages and still has three scenes still to be written. I'm estimating somewhere around the 15-16 page mark at this stage. However, I can tell already that it's puffy and contains many unnecessary passages of description that will be excised in the second draft. Is it any good? Honestly, I'm not feeling confident in it - and that's the first time I've felt that way about a short story in a long time. Still, as SK has observed, sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like you're doing nothing but shovelling shit uphill.

Scattershot

Anyone reading this blog must think I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder the way I flit from idea to idea and project to project. I'm afraid I must fortify this impression – yesterday I sent off 'Trouble With The Locals' to a dark fiction magazine called Back Roads, a title published by 1018 Press.

After adding a few hundred words to 'The Barber', I took a break. Sipping coffee and letting my mind wander, I happened to think of 'Trouble With The Locals' – which I like even though no one else seems to – and opened it up. I spent the next two hours re-editing it on screen. Pleased with the revisions, I made a search for someplace good to send it. My first attempt was fruitless, but then I searched again the following day, refining the criteria. Back Roads popped up, almost as though I was destined to find it – 'Trouble With The Locals' involves a track that runs off a back road!

No news good or bad in the response department. On the weekend I also commenced a John Wyndham read-a-thon, which will take in The Chrysalids, Trouble With Lichen and a collection of his short stories. Many years ago I read The Midwich Cuckoos and Day of the Triffids, both of which I loved. But finding his lesser known works has been tricky – especially since with a mortgage, purchasing books is an inaffordable luxury. However, I accompanied my girlfriend to a university library (she needed to borrow some textbooks) and hit the Wyndham jackpot.

A cut above

I got half an idea for a short story the other night and then sort of bullied it into being this morning. I've written about 1,500 words of it so far and it has the working title of 'The Barber' (no relation to Sweeney Todd). I'm not sure it's going to fit any particular market - in fact I have a feeling it might never see public release unless I publish a book of short stories one day. But I like the idea, even if it's a bit predictable. It's sort of a character study with a fantasy twist. In style and form, it reminds me of a horror yarn I wrote a couple of years called 'Time of Death'.

Alternate ending

After giving it a right royal drafting, I've decided the ending to another story I wrote about 18 months ago, 'Adam Marked 1', doesn't work at all. Not even a little bit. The only option seems to be to cut the 1,000 words of the climax and come up with something completely different. At this point, I have no idea what that might be. It was originally intended for an anthology called Robots and Time, but kind of petered out halfway through it's composition and I ended up missing the deadline. A while later I came up with the shite ending that it currently has.

Struck down with the palsy the other day (okay, it's a cold I got from being drunk in the freezing night air with only a thin jacket on) so progress has been rather slow. I had a great idea for a story, but alcohol claimed that too. My only consolation is the other times I've had ideas while drunk and remembered them, they haven't seemed anywhere near as inspired the next day. Nonetheless it's frustrating and I think I might lay off the booze again for a while. Being healthy and clear-headed is much more fun.

Invasion completed

Finished 'Other Intelligent Life' this morning. Came out to about 4,600 words. I'm feeling fairly positive about it and once it's in it's best shape I'm sure it's something Andromeda will allow through to the third round and then reject. Is that bitterness or jadedness?

Whatever the case, I have effectively 'cleared my desk' of current unfinished projects. I don't have any pressing story ideas, so I'm thinking my next task should be to rewrite a story I think has real merit, 'Recipe For Nostalgia'. I got some extremely useful feedback from Cat Sparks (of Agog) who pointed out that the female character behaved in a completely unbelievable fashion. I have a clear idea of how to both fix this and tighten the story considerably. (It's one of the longest short stories I've ever written, running to about 14 Word pages, so some shortening will certainly do it some good.) I must have written it nearly three years ago now, so revisiting it will be interesting.

No news on the acceptance/rejection front. Aurealis is due to get back to me very soon. I intend to query in a couple of weeks if they don't send a response.