Nick Bryan

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Twenty Thirteen And All That

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So, happy new year! As you might notice, I’ve made some 2013 changes. As in, we’re now on Blogger (because Tumblr kept crashing), and the site has a new look. For anyone reading this on the RSS feed, why not go check out the new design?(And if you’re not yet on the RSS feed, why not subscribe? It’s easier than remembering to check the site. Previous subscribers should have come across.)

Anyway. Aside from a new look website, with added staring eyeball, what else is new?

Editorsomestow?

One big change, which I didn’t really plug on here much: I am now Editor of the Television @ The Digital Fix section! Yes, a promotion. I now get to write about whatever I want, or at least, whatever the TV channels dump in front of me. Also, if you desperately want to review TV for a website, get in touch.

Writers always welcome.In other news, I finished one novel, started another. I also have an array of short stories left over from my MA, which I am hoping to get out there soon.

Oh, and I moved out of South London to Walthamstow, home of East 17 and the dubious nickname “Awesomestow”. That might’ve been the biggest adjustment.

So, that was your new year news post. I might try and get the weekly writing posts going again next week, it seems a shame to have a new website with nothing on it except links to other websites. For now, hope you like the site, let me know if you spot a broken link. I have already spent quite a while trying to eliminate them, but Tumblr links are a tricky breed, they get everywhere.

Anyway. Hope the rest of you also had a fabulous new year, I know I did. May 2013 be good and joyful for us all.

NaNoWriMo 2012: The Halfway Point

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You may remember my blog post of a fortnight ago, where I unveiled my plans for NaNoWriMo 2012. Well, I’ve done some writing today, so have time to post a midway update. As I slap this up on the blog, at nearly-midnight on the fifteenth, NaNo is exactly halfway over.

So, how am I doing? How are you doing? How are our friends and families doing?

Quality Over Quantity – The Reality

As I said in the previous entry, I’ve been promising myself I’d slow my NaNo pace, accept a lower word count in exchange for a more considered plot, better prose and, y’know, actual themes and shit. Most previous years, I have made this vow and failed, allowing myself to be caught up in the competitive rush to 50K, and “won”.

Well readers, I’m proud to announce this sickening run of success and achievement is definitely over now. Unless I completely lock myself indoors for the remainder of the month, I’m not going to hit fifty thousand. But I am fairly pleased with what I’ve written so far, a mere fifteen thousand.

As the properly NaNo-brained of you already know, that is a fair way below the proper midway target of twenty-five thousand. But the writing itself doesn’t suck, I’m pleased. Still hoping to finish the first major segment of my novel, too.

How To Fail Gloriously

So, have I learnt anything, aside from accepting non-success?

To be honest, my main lesson was one I’d suspected from the start: for me at least, planning is key. I’m trying to produce something with themes, threads and an interesting plot, mostly to avoid having to ram them in later. These do not tend to appear by themselves.

Not that making it up as you go along, then going back and editing heavily once you’ve worked out what the book’s actually about, isn’t a valid approach – it’s just I’m a little tired of having to rewrite NaNo novels basically from scratch before I can read them without wanting to cry in a bin.

Maybe finishing that Creative Writing MA has left me with a new sense of quality control, who knows. Or I just spent enough time sobbing in skips whilst finishing my thesis. One or the other. (I got a merit in the MA, by the way. Which means graduation! Party time.)

Anyway, based on boring multiplication, I should finish out the month at around thirty thousand. Check back in early December to see whether I got anywhere near it.

All NaNo’s Eve – Belated NaNoWriMo Prep 2012

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I’ve been slack on blogging of late, due to moving house and devoting my typing time to working on the actual stories, rather than masturbatory writing about writing. (Also, September/October means a lot more TV reviews.) See the picture to the right for an illustration of my housemove, doubling as a metaphor for writer’s block.

But it’s nearly November, which means NaNoWriMo, and writing bloggers across the world breathe a sigh of glorious relief. Because, hey, no need to think of a topic for the next few weeks. Just start with NaNo and go from there!

And I’m not one to turn down easy inspiration, especially because it’s the 31st October (Happy Halloween!) and I haven’t done a shred of planning yet. Or even decided my exact approach. So, let’s talk about that. (This blog post totally isn’t an excuse to put off planning. Shut up.)

Length Vs Garbage

Last November, I decided to work on 50k worth of short stories, rather than add to my pile of unfinished novel drafts. It felt good at the time, although I haven’t yet finalised or sold any. Mostly because I’ve spent the bulk of this year finalising my novel from NaNo 2010.

So, this year, back to basics. After months punching and hacking at the same wall, I desperately want to feel the warm, damp flow of actual creativity again, so time for a new book. To be precise, a massive expansion of a story I wrote last November. See how everything’s connected?

Not for the first time, I’m aiming to focus on quality over quantity this year, and settle for less than the regulation 50k, if it means I produce better work. I’m pretty sure I’m a better writer thanks to the MA, so want to create something that doesn’t require rewriting from scratch later.

Of course, I may still get swept up in the competitive rush, produce 50k anyway, then delete the last fifth for being garbage. Again.

Planning Vs Pantsing

There’s been discussion in the NaNo community about planing lately, as you’d expect. In particular, planning vs “pantsing” – the art of making it up as you go along. (For more about pantsing, see this blog post on the NaNo London site. Contains no actual pants.)

There’s a lot of pantsing in NaNo, and I don’t just mean systematic American-style bullying. You’re writing at speed, the word quotas are terrifying, stopping for an evening to re-assess your plan means over 3,000 words tomorrow, so tempting to just power through.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen what happens when I power through. It leads to rambled, clunky sentences, endless funny-but-needless dialogue and characters enacting convoluted schemes instead of the obvious simple solution, which I was too hurried to realise. In short, all the things I’m trying to avoid. Pantsing may work for some, but I need a plan. It’s nearly midday on the last day of October and I don’t have one.

Gosh, I wonder what I’ll be doing this afternoon. Blogs will hopefully happen sporadically during the month, depending on level of panic, etc. London people, I will be attending at least some of the meets organised by the nice NaNo London folk (especially the All-Nighter, because it’s fun). Non-Londoners, I imagine it will be mentioned on my Twitter. And, y’know, those of you doing NaNo… how’s the planning going? Anyone else doing it in a rush this afternoon?

My Influences – Quantum & Woody by Christopher Priest & Mark Bright

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I imagine few have heard of Quantum & Woody, a comic book published in the 1990s (not a time known for great comics, I grant you) by Acclaim Comics. Q&W was pretty obscure even when coming out, and so it remains. It barely even exists on UK Amazon.

Nonetheless, that damn comic has been a huge influence on my stuff, in terms of both character and story structure. (In terms of actual prose, yes, I had to read some books.) So I’m going to talk about it a little.

Brief intro to concept (Quancept?)

Eric Henderson and Woodrew Van Chelton were childhood friends who drifted apart. They’re reunited when their fathers, who were working on a Mysterious Comic Book Science project together, die suddenly. Eric is now a serious man with a serious life, whereas Woody is a slacker whose band is going nowhere, but they try to investigate nonetheless, squabbling all the way. Inevitably, they are caught in a Mysterious Comic Book Science accident.

Thereafter, they have to meet up and touch wristbands every 24 hours, otherwise they both die, but in return, they get superpowers. Eric fancies himself as a proper superhero, and has the money to go through with it. Stuck near Eric thanks to the wristband dependency, Woody joins in to annoy him.

Buddy Superhero Goat Toilet Action

If this sounds like a mismatched buddy cop movie, only with superheroes… well, you’re not wrong. But it’s also a surprisingly subtle story about a long-standing friendship, the misdirected resentment between the two of them, along with the genuine affection beneath it. Oh, and the humour is mostly funny, in a broad sitcom kinda way.

The storyline where they switch bodies and have to face the prospect of peeing using each other’s genitalia is a watershed moment. It helps that Mark Bright, like all great comic artists, can do emotion and comic timing as well as people punching each other.

In retrospect, this series influenced me more than I even knew. My stories love thick-and-thin friendships, straight man/funny guy duos, out of sequence storytelling (seriously, “linear plot” is a dirty word in Q&W, especially early on), inane farm animal mascots (they had a goat, see image) and wry smartarse humour. Especially wry smartarse toilet humour.

Alas, the comic has been so lost in time that the odds of you reading it are quite small. If you know me in real life and are intrigued, I can dig out the four collected editions reprinting issues #1-16. For anyone else trying to track it down (good luck!) – get #1-16 and you’ll have a beginning, middle and end. Subsequent issues are also good, but the series was cancelled mid-storyline with #21, so you may experience frustration.

Speaking of Frustration

Writer Christopher Priest talks a little about Quantum & Woody here. He’s a very talented guy who’s worked on other good comics too (although Q&W will always be first in my heart), so it’s sad that he isn’t active in the field nowadays. A new company, Valiant, took possession of all character rights after Acclaim went bust, so maybe they could relaunch Q&W – if Priest is there, so am I. If he isn’t, I kinda feel the point is gone. And if they can get Bright back on art, even better.

This is the problem with following US comics not published by the big two, Marvel and DC. Even when they have superheroic elements in them. It’s a constant struggle for survival and they keep disappearing. But Quantum & Woody, even if it never returns or gets reprinted again, was a clever, warm, funny work, and I thought it deserved a note here. It was one of the first things I really took on board, and yes, I may view it with somewhat rosetinted glasses, but it’s still worthy of at least a look. Did anyone else read this? Just me?