Adrian FaulknerFantasy Author

Most people go into town to go shopping. On Saturday I appear to have used it as an excuse to clear my head and think about one of my writing projects (although I did get the new shoes I wanted for work as well as picking a book up in a charity shop I was about to pay full price for).

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about my novel Refugee. The book has been drafted and has sat dormant for a year whilst I work on other projects, but always in my mind.

It features a young protagonist, and whilst he isn’t the only one, the framework of the novel largely hangs around his character.

As some of you are aware, I’ve been writing my latest book using a discovery process. This is where you go into the project not knowing a whole lot about it, and find the plot and story as you write. I normally like to think on a book, let it ferment in my head for as much as a decade before coming out as something pretty much approaching a finished novel, where every character is known, pretty much every scene is visualised. However, whilst I have no end of ideas (I think I’m up to 19 books now), there’s no way I can spend a decade on each. If I want to be a commercial writer, I need to speed that process up and I genuinely believe that not only can I do that but feel if I get my process right, I reckon I could possibly get two books out a year (although there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to speed up and fine tune the editing process). And so I’ve been using the time Four Realms is sitting in piles waiting for people to say ‘yes’ (or ‘no’), to play around a bit, try different approaches to writing.

I took a netbook with me to SFX Weekender, and despite all the fun and merriment I still managed to get a thousand words a day done whilst there. I was really proud of that, felt dedicated to my craft, a “real” writer. Then I took an 8 hour journey home, had a day of sorting out major real-life issues the following day, got good news the day after that, and suddenly… I’ve not written anything on the novel for nearly a week. I know why it happened and feel there’s good reason but still… Gah!

Persistence is so important in this industry and something every writer fails at from time to time. I used to think that because sometimes I never got round to writing every day or procrastinated, that I wasn’t a real writer. But falling off the writing wagon happens, procrastination happens. It’s picking yourself up, dusting yourself down and getting back on that proverbial horse that matters (although why you’d be on the horse if you had a wagon is beyond me!).

Anyways, I need to go write!

Things have been pretty quiet on the blog mainly because I’ve been knuckling down and working. There’s nothing sexy or exciting about the vomit draft other than seeing the story come together, and that’s not something I can really share without ruining the book.

There was a depressing moment mid-week when I realised that I’d probably have furthered my career if I sat a little neater inside genre categories. But then I realised that I write fantasy as much for what I dislike about the genre as for what I love. And in creating my own cross-genre fantasy novels, I’m not trying to emulate anyone else. That’s got to be a good thing in the long run? It’s so easy to look at other authors and think “If I had done that, maybe…” but the world don’t work like that.

On a positive note, there seems to be genuine love for my 140 character novel pitches I give when asked on Twitter what I’m writing. It is the excitement about those that spur me on through those fleeting moments of despair. There’s definitely a large audience for my type of fantasy, I honestly believe that it’s actually quite commercial. But whether it is or isn’t, my latest novel won’t write itself and so I continue my process of discovery writing, hoping that this now 20,000 word flashback section won’t end up being cut when it comes to revision.

There’s more to being a writer than just writing these days. If you want to do it in some professional capacity (large or small) there’s a lot of business; whether that be promotion, dealing with agents and publishers, or just following the market. And then there’s that business of being able to take a look at your work objectively.

There’s a lot to be said for crit groups but I think as you develop as a writer, the criticism that you need changes. I’ve found the members of a group often outgrow each other as they hone their skills and follow their chosen paths. And as a result, crit groups can often provide diminishing returns.

So whilst the first draft work on Gods of the Old Frontier continues, I’m also starting to edit Refugee.

Refugee (or more likely ‘Refugees’ – I’m still undecided) is the tale of a family who become refugees in a fantasy world following the destruction of our own. It’s post-apocalyptic with fantasy imagery. It has a lot of twee fantasy stereotypes in it, mainly because this was born out of a challenge to see if I could write elves, fae and unicorns (almost no-one writes serious unicorn fiction any more!) and make it gritty. I think the pitch to myself was ‘Post-Apocalyptic fantasy with unicrons’.

The result is an almost nihilistic human drama along the lines of The Road, and you know… I think it works as a novel.

Gods continues to be an interesting process. If you’re not aware, this is the first book I’ve attempted to write where I’m discovering the story as I go. It’s a western fantasy with helicopters and spirit animals. There’s part of me that felt as if the ideas needed to ‘cook’ for another couple of years, but I have to say that the results so far have been interesting.

The book is going pretty well and most importantly, the voyage of discovery is entertaining me even when it takes me in directions I’d never previously thought of.

China Mieville is 11 days older than me. 11 days more in which he’s managed to write numerous successful novels, win loads of awards and become the poster boy of genre fiction. Even if I didn’t sleep in the next two weeks I’d never be able to beat that. If there was a scorecard labelled “Genre writer career”, he’d be miles ahead of me on points.

It’s very easy, as a writer, to look at the careers of others and compare. And it’s very easy for that green-eyed monster to raise its head.

I think if you never compare your career to another you’d be lieing. It’s part of human nature. No matter who you are, there are always other writers who have done more, achieved more, written greater stories. The trick is to realise that envy is one thing, jealousy is another.

Today, I lack focus. I have 101 ideas.

Today the world holds infinite possibilities; unfortunately infinite time does not come with it.

Today I want to create an anthology, start a fantasy fiction magazine, write an adventure game, put together a writer’s portfolio, write a comics script and do a few non-fiction articles. I have to keep telling myself that ideas are fine but I need to have priorities. So in the back of my mind I’m labelling these with a time commitment, with a view to picking off the low hanging fruit.

I’ve also been thinking of digging up a few old short stories, sprucing them up a bit and sending them out once again. It’s not the inevitable rejections that bother me, just the trying to find suitable markets for stories that don’t seem to sit nicely in genre boundaries and aren’t arty enough to fit those publications that like cross-genre. I just want to tell good stories.

But in the midst of all this indecision and big ideas I’m continuing work on Gods which continues to be an unusual experience. It’s carrying on in the background, almost half forgotten, and it’s still very much a story I’m not sure where it’s going. The word count is surprisingly high but I don’t think it waffles too much. This will still probably need a tighter edit than other things I’ve written but I’m enjoying the freedom of discovering where the story is taking me.

It’s typical when it comes to this time of year to look back, complain how shit the previous year has been and spout optimism for the one ahead.

In many ways 2011 was a difficult year for me. However, I wouldn’t say it was so much ‘shit’ as ‘challenging’. And for the most part, I think I managed to overcome those challenges. That makes it a successful year, right?