The Final Process Challenge
So over the last couple of months I have been making some serious changes to my writing process. Whilst the old process certainly worked (it turned out a decent novel, didn’t it?) I realised that it wasn’t very efficient for what I want to achieve in the next couple of years. I was behind already because of leg-geddon and it appeared my old process wasn’t very resilient when things came along that threw spanners in the works.
When you are writing for yourself then taking years to craft a novel is acceptable. You can tinker and work at your own pace. When you want to be commercial as an author, taking years to produce a novel is not. I want to get to the stage where I can write two novels a year whilst still dealing with all the distractions life throws at you, and still maintaining some sort of life outside of writing. It’s a tall order, I know, and one that requires me to be a lot more organised.
The Trusted System
So day 1 of my productivity drive didn’t go too well and it was purely down to my ‘trusted system’. What’s a trusted system? Well it’s just a fancy way of saying ToDo list. Actually calling it a ToDo list is a little unfair. A traditional ToDo list is just that, a list. It’s two dimensional – words go across, items go down. What a trusted system is, and what will supposedly turn you into a productivity ninja (because these days they seem to have moved from the world of assassination and espionage to the world of business process) is a three-dimensional system that not only has a list of items but naturally allows the things that need to get done to come into focus.
Plot Process Complete
I think I have a plot.
As I’ve previously documented, in order to fix a plot problem with the novel I’ve had to do some serious updating to my writer toolbox to improve my plotting skills. And worried that this process might kill the fun out of writing a novel, I’ve tried it out on a brand new idea. The plan is that, if it works then I have a plotted novel sitting there ready for when I have time to write it.
Plot Progress
Plotting is taking a bit longer than I anticipated. I think my brain is naturally trying to put on the brakes. Ordinarily I would be writing by now and doing ‘extra’ plotting feels a bit weird. I was a bit worried at the start of the week that enthusiasm for the project seemed to be at a low and that it might be because this level of plotting kills it, but I think that it was just start of week blues or the heat as enthusiasm has increased since then.
What’s In A Name?
It took me a year to come up with Cassidy’s name. At one time she was going to be called, rather unoriginally, Angel until someone from my writer’s circle asked whether I was writing fan fiction based on the Joss Whedon show (well, she was hanging out with vampires!). I cursed myself and then spent a year trying to find the perfect name for this character.
Evil Plotting
As I’ve previously mentioned, I am currently trying out some new methods for plotting to solve an issue with the second act of the novel. I have a worry that the intensity I’m approaching it at might mean it takes all the fun out of the writing and kills the project for me. And I’m plotting out an entirely fresh novel as a test of the process, the idea being that if it works I’ll have a future novel sat there plotted ready to write one day in the future, and if it goes wrong, well at least I haven’t ruined my series.
Perhaps it’s procrastination, but at least it’s procrastination with a purpose.
Plotting About Plots
I’ve heard it said that each book presents its own challenges and for this one, I think I am going to remember it for the second act. I’ve written it twice now and both times, it is off, the first breaking the cannon of the universe, the second languishing in the passivity of the characters.
Normally when there are problems with the writing I strip it all back; I go with a notebook and pen to somewhere quiet, away from the internet, and write the scene by hand. But this time the problem is a little more serious.
Becoming Sir Christopher Wren
As a writer I’ve always had the sort of relationship with process that if it were a Facebook status would read “it’s complicated”.
You see, I honestly believe that any writer who doesn’t analyse what they do and try and understand with a view to improvement is never going to get anywhere. Arrogance is the quickest way to kill any career. But like many unpublished writers I spent a long time delving into “how to write” books and never felt like I got much out of them. I don’t think I was looking for a magic button but perhaps sometimes I needed to be told that the answer to my problem was “a lot of bloody hard work”. I think if I am honest I was trying to discover who I was as a writer. I’m not sure I entirely know now.
Misadventures In Discovery Writing
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.
Substance Abuse And The Creative Mind
I’ve not watched a lot of TV over the Xmas period – I’m even waiting to watch Doctor Who until I’ve got my new monitor set up – but one of the things that I did was a documentary on the late comedian, Bill Hicks.
I never got into the whole Bill Hicks thing when he was at the height of his popularity. Some friends were but it largely passed me by. I’m not sure whether I would have liked it had I been introduced to his comedy back then. In those days, there were very few comedians who made me laugh and it was only when friends kept riffing off Eddie Izzard that I discovered that comedian.
But you know, every so often a friend will post a Bill Hicks Youtube clip on Facebook and I’ll wonder whether humour now 20 years old would have appealed to a 20-year younger me. I can’t honestly call it.
Bill suffered with substance abuse and died tragically young of cancer, and it’s the abuse, rather than the comedy, that had me really interested in him.