Tag: cold streets (page 8 of 9)

Writer Report: The Inevitable Grind

Gears

As we recover from the recent stress of moving, the dayjob workload ramps up, and everything else competes for what attention I have left, it can be difficult to keep in mind that writing can and should be the foremost area of my interests. I don’t attend university for 4 years to design advertisements, after all. I did it, at first, to teach others about stories, and then decided I’d be happier telling stories myself. And some of the stories I’ve told since then have gone over pretty well.

Sales of Cold Iron have been very slow. I feel I need to do more promotional work, as nobody else is going to do it for me, and that means getting more people to review it, sending out more tweets, talking it up in person to people, and so on. I guess my reluctance to do so comes from the fact that I hate annoying people. I know how it feels to me when I get annoyed by someone talking at length about something of interest to them to the exclusion of all other subjects, and the last thing I want to do is inflict that on others. But I guess I need to suck it up and deal with it if I want to move copies of the book.

Progress on Cold Streets is, unfortunately, also slow. I’ve tried to unstick myself a couple of times in the last few weeks with moderate success. I’m not writing in the huge chunks I need to meet my end-of-year deadline, at least not yet. Time is running out for me and I really want to get another novella out there. I can’t get this thing to pick up if I don’t write, dammit!

Between some historical insights and inspiration from the likes of Martin and Kay, ideas keep rolling around in the back of my mind for attention regarding Godslayer. As much as good chunks of the plot are unlikely to change in their basic structure, so much of Acradea will be different in this new story that these ideas (which tend to crop up after I go to bed and the lights are out) will need to be laid out and sorted so I don’t get tripped up when I start writing the damn thing in earnest next year. Maybe it’s time to buy Scrivener and start cork-boarding things? The jury is out on that one.

More on this as things develop. And if you get annoyed when I start tweeting every day about Cold Iron and its sequels, I apologize.

Writer Report: Forward Motion

Courtesy allthingshealing.com

Preparations for the move are ramping up. Q4 is looming on the horizon at the dayjob. I have a dozen things to do between now and next weekend, and smack dab in the middle of all of that is jury duty.

Compared to these things, progress on Cold Streets feels absolutely glacial.

There is progress, however. Slowly but surely, I’m closing in on the heart of the story. Just as much as I want my villains to be more than flat stereotypes, the main crux of the story is about more than just a supernatural murder. I’m not quite at the point where I feel I can take the plot completely off the rails for the sake of building to a climax; rather, I want there to be motivations and background and conflicts that range beyond the superficial. What I don’t want is for the readers coming back for more of what Cold Iron delivered to feel disappointed.

That could be part of what’s holding me back – that fear. Fear of letting people down. It’s idiotic, of course; I should just write as much as I can as fast as I can so I finish my shit. Those are the rules, right? Right.

Yet I make excuses related to distractions and fatigue and a bunch of other stuff. I really need to cram it when it comes to that. Sure, I may be better equipped to sequester myself after the move (seriously, the layout of the current place ensures about zero privacy) and help is on the way in various forms, but right now, I need to try and cut down what I can to focus on the words.

While any forward motion is good motion, more of it would be fantastic.

Writer Report: Busy Busy Bee

Let’s take a quick look at where things stand in various non-dayjob areas right now.

Cold Streets

I’m beginning to think my “end of 2012” prediction for this novella might have been too ambitious. That, or I simply need to make more time to write. I have the outline laid out and a decent handle on how things should proceed from point to point, I just need to sit down and make myself do it. It’s all about discipline, and I need to do it more to myself even after long-ass frustrating commutes at the end of long-ass hectic days.

Untitled Fiasco playset

I’ve realized there’s a great deal of storytelling potential in the collaborative role-playing game Fiasco and I have an idea or two for a playset of my own. I’ve been looking at a couple of the others (Alpha Complex, Saturday Night ’78), just to make sure I’m not repeating too much that’s been done before. Not aware of what Fiasco is? No problem, Wil Wheaton’s gotcha covered.

Extra Life

Still no donations to this year’s campaign. That sucks. I still feel I should go through with the marathon anyway, at least get it started, but it’s disheartening to say the least. I’ll do a post-mortem next week either way, try and figure out what, if anything, I’ve done or am doing wrong.

Magic: the Gathering

With everything else going on I’ve actually been playing a bit less Magic in the past week. In person, anyway. I’m inclined to throw together a cheap deck for the upcoming Gameday, as there’s a whole pre-ordered box of Gatecrash on the line, but we’ll see what happens. More important stuff needs to be addressed. Meantime, I went in for some of the pre-release events online, and the result has been the ability to self-sustain some drafting for the time being. It’s good practice, if nothing else.

Boring Real-Life Stuff

My wife and I are moving! Yesterday I donated a ton of books to my local library, and I have bags upon bags of clothing, blankets, and towels set aside for the Salvation Army. There’s a metric fuckton of crap in my basement I’m straight-up throwing away; much of it I haven’t even looked at in the three years since I moved in here. The new digs are pretty and spacious, right across the street from a golf course of all things, and much closer to the dayjob. Between the balcony with a decent view of the outside world, plenty of room for a writing desk separate from major distractions, and the shorter commute, I’m hoping this will help me get into and maintain a writerly state of mind more often. I’ll have to find a closer venue for Friday Night Magic, but them’s the brakes.

Writer Report: Back in the Saddle

Deadline Clock, courtesy monkeyc

The last couple weeks have been brutal.

Burning midnight oil. Working on the weekends. Generally busting my ass. And none of it while working on Cold Streets. It’s been all about the dayjob.

On one level, I don’t mind so much. I’ve been there a year, and it remains a vital and worthwhile place to work. I have fantastic co-workers, a good and supportive boss, great pay and benefits, and work that’s up my alley as a developer. I’m problem-solving every bit as much as I’m tweaking and doing back-and-forth with a project manager or a client. It’s a pretty solid gig.

On the other hand, I know I’m behind in meeting my writing goals. I wanted to finish Cold Streets by the end of this year, and to do that I now have to really kick into a higher gear. I think part of the reason I’ve been held up is a touch of reluctance towards approaching it, knowing that as the world within the story expands, the more supernatural elements will come into play, and I don’t want them to overwhelm the tight pacing and balanced character dynamics I strove to maintain in Cold Iron.

I just need to write through it, I think. Time is running out, and there’s still a story to tell. The increase in supernatural aspects comes with a raising of the stakes. Our heroes need to meet and interact with the new villain, and peripheral players from the first story need to be fleshed out. None of it is going to write itself, and the only way to write is to write.

So tonight & Sunday, writing is most assuredly happening. Saturday is a day off for Magic. Because Return to Ravnica is stupid amounts of fun.

Writer Report: Bring On The Bad Guy

Courtesy DEG

I’m a sucker for a good villain.

By ‘good’ I don’t just mean extravagant malevolence. Ming the Merciless is a fun character, but he doesn’t have a lot of depth to him. Remember, villains are people too. They have backgrounds, motivations, allegiances, and secrets just like anybody else does. Leave that out of your story and you risk losing audience members to disbelief.

It’s one of the things I didn’t get quite right in Cold Iron. The ultimate villain did not get a great deal of time. His motivations are somewhat shallow and his villainy is, for the most part, superficial. Being a mystery on one level, I did try to keep the identity of the villain somewhat ambiguous, but the trade-off meant I couldn’t spend too much time expanding upon him. I don’t think the story necessarily suffers because of this, but it is a criticism I agree with.

Approaching Cold Streets, I knew a new villain would be appearing, and I am taking the time to draw him out as a character before he engages in truly villainous behavior. I think people need to understand his mindset and motivation in order for me to illustrate why he, and others like him, are dangerous. But I also want to ensure he’s fleshed out as a person. He has specific reasons for doing what he does, and his own way of approaching his challenges, things he will and will not do to get what he wants, and so on. He’s not solely motivated “for the evulz”… he’s a person, and I need to convey that.

I hope to get a bit further with the draft over the weekend, but I will have dayjob work to do so we’ll have to see how things shake out.

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