Thursday 31st August 2017

After yesterday’s various annoyances, I felt a bit better today.  I’m still missing my motivation and mojo but I felt being a bit more sociable today.
Just as well as tonight was the regular meeting of Cake Club.  Although, I’m thinking we might need to change its name to Carvery Club as we go and have a carvery, then don’t have room for cake, and take it home.  Except we even forgot to get cake, and I only remembered as I was pulling out of the car park.
It’s been really interesting to see the progression of Cake Club.  As the year has progressed you can see everyone levelling up and making progress.  For the most part, we’re eating and screaming with laughter, but we discuss a few things we’ve heard, swap industry gossip, have the occasional rant, and hold each other accountable.
For example, watching a few Youtube videos in the last week, I saw (and I can’t remember where – it may have been an early Joe Abercrombie or Patrick Rothfuss interview) how plot can be fixed but voice was the thing an author needed.  This might not have registered with me had I not watched another interview where basically the same thing was said.
I’ve always struggled with voice.  What is my voice?  How do I make it better?  As I’ve progressed, I’ve started to recognise it.  And I kinda understand what was being said in these interviews.  A great story sounds like it’s being read to you by one of those people who you could listen talk for hours.
Joe Abercrombie once said that whilst he writes in the 3rd person, the voice of his chapters matches the POV character.  Likewise, in Black as Knight, depending if our protagonist is in disguise or not, his voice actually changes.  I wondered if anyone would pick up on that but Kate said she’d noticed it.
To take our writing to the next level, we all need to be experimenting with voice.  I suggested writing a really boring scene with a number of different voices.  The weird thing is that when you get a good one it just pops.  I mean, in Black As Knight, there’s a slightly archaic 1st person present going on.  That should be impossible to write, and yet it just clicked for me and I find that incredibly easy.  I think that’s the sign of having found a good voice.
We also talked about a few other writers and how to best help them.  We plan to set up a book session in late September / early October for the person who asked me to mentor them so we can rip their novel apart.  We made jokes about Sith Apprentices.
And all this talk would be nice, and the fun would be memorable, but we’re seeing results from our hard work.  Sophie is quickly becoming THE fantasy map person.  Kate has her new novel that you can tell is going to be good simply by how excited she is about it.  And then I’ve got my edits done and sent off.
We always set a handful of tasks for ourselves.  This is to hold ourselves accountable plus ensure we maintain forward momentum.  I managed to complete a lot of mine due to sending the novel in.  So I’m on enforced rest, which means that my tasks for the next month are playing World of Warcraft, reading and catching up on some series.
The playing World of Warcraft is pretty easy at the moment.  With the new patch released this past week, I’ve got plenty to do in game, and it’s so nice to be able to play without feeling guilty.  I came home this evening and played a number of hours.
However, will I still feel as happy come the end of the month?  I suspect that within a couple of weeks I’ll be plotting out the changes to the sequel.  But for now, I’m enjoying the rest.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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