Nick Bryan

writing

I AM NOT A NUMBER (but my novel editing progress is and I can’t stop looking at it)

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This week, threatened as recently as last week, I launched into the third draft of my constantly-in-progress novel. This is the phase where I trawl through the entire text of the book, picking at individual words and trying to get it to the stage where I’m willing to share it with my elite team of beta readers.

ASIDE: If you want to join said elite team, email me and volunteer, or contact me using any other method available to you. All viable humans considered, especially those able to read a book in 1-2 months and provide feedback more detailed than “Yeah, it was okay.” Beta reading likely to commence in early-to-mid June.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I launched into the editing process, and quickly settled on a method. For more details on said method and its implications for my location, read on…

Editalactus – Mincer Of Words

In a bid to give the words a thorough beating, my “third pass” will actually consist of three passes – one in the cafe with music on, picking at the language and doing any final bits of continuity straightening necessary. After that, I read the whole thing out – yes, with my voice at full volume – which usually serves to find clunky phrasings and stupid repeated words.

Last of all, I run this version through the Hemingway web app, which I think I’ve mentioned here before. This provides one last suggestion of overlong clunky sentences, letting me snip a few more chunks away.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I have nearly a hundred thousand words to feed through this mincer, and in the last week, I’ve managed a third of the novel. Not bad. Probably helps that I’ve spent three whole days in that time doing almost nothing else.

With this in mind, I might be on track to finish by the end of the month, then I can get some opinions and work out how much more work is needed. Must admit, I’ve already found myself eyeing up some bigger changes to the first third, but I’m tempted to let a few other people read it first. Be good to finally get a wider view on this thing rather than keep picking and picking.

Sit still, you idiot.

The down-side of the above-described editing process: I can’t do all of it in the cafe. Specifically, the part where I read out the text to myself. Doesn’t really work in public, people give you odd looks.

For a year or so now, I’ve basically done all my writing in the same Walthamstow cafe. Working at home just hasn’t been productive for me, I’m too prone to wandering off and procrastinating. But I’ve had to force myself through it this time, and although there are still a few hours that got lost in the whirl of talking to myself, the job is getting done.

Maybe one day, I’ll be able to work at home when I don’t have to. Might save me a few quid on coffee, at least.

So yeah, it’s getting done. When I laid out the target of finishing this edit by the end of May, I thought I was being self-punishingly optimistic, but perhaps not? We’ll see if this progress continues in subsequent weeks, I suppose.

WRITEBLOG EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

You may note I’ve stopped numbering my blogs about writing, as there was more or less no point. Sorry to anyone upset by this. I’m a slave to public approval, so feel free to argue the case for numbering in the comments…

Is it me or is there a COMPLETED SECOND draft in here? (WriteBlog #24)

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Unfortunately, the pun in the title doesn’t really work, as that kind of draft is spelt draught. But enough self-sabotage.

This week, on Wednesday to be precise, I completed the second draft of the novel I’ve been blogging about for ages. So yeah, hit my self-imposed deadline of the end of April by about six hours, go team. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s time to show it to publishing professionals, or indeed other humans at all, but it is a major chunk of work finished, and I’m going to number it as second draft anyway, simply because it gives me a feeling of progress.

So what exactly do I mean by second draft? And what’s next if not showing it to others? Time now for a little pause-and-take-stock in the editing process.

“It’s like running a comb through the forest.”

The second draft, as I’m defining it, involves going through the entire first draft text and trying to turn it into a coherent item, which you could conceivably go through from beginning to end and understand. I’m not saying every detail will be correct or the writing will be beautiful – in fact, that definitely isn’t true – but I have a thing that resembles a story.

More excitingly, it more or less resembles the story I wanted to tell when I started this whole process.In practise, this involved re-ordering or re-writing a lot of scenes, jamming new segments into them, not to mention the heartbreaking deletion of bits which no longer work. My deleted offcuts folder for this project is a terrifying 43,924 words – a lot of work to accept that you may never use.

(Well, there’s one whole deleted chapter which may find a home in some future related project, as I still like it, but the story has shifted and left the poor thing homeless. But aside from that, yup, it’s all being launched into the void to die.)

But at least it sounds like I’ve done something. Plenty of new writing, interesting thoughts about old work, gratifying sense of creation. The best editing experience I’ve yet had. I won’t be showing the first or second drafts to anyone, but one definitely advances the other.So, what’s next?

“It’s like fighting off an ant invasion using a sledgehammer.”

Well, the detailed editing, which I call the third draft because, again, it’s nice to feel like you’re achieving something. The bit where I go through the text in a finer fashion, potentially more than once, trying to get all the sentences to look and sound nice, spot the details which contradict each other, ruthlessly eliminate words like actually and finally which I use every five minutes and are never fucking worth it.

In short, yes, this is the fiddly part many non-writers assume I’m doing when I first start editing. If only.It also includes the always-entertaining section where I read the whole thing out loud to myself, alone in my house, hoping to spot awkward sentence construction and over-used words. The current manuscript is only 94,000 words so hopefully that won’t take too many thousands of hours.

I still live in hope this won’t be a huge chore. The last editing section was surprisingly pleasant, as it was still writing basically, but this really is word-by-word text examination. I’m going to try and push through it relatively quickly to avoid that being too much of a problem – in my dreams, I’m finished by the end of May. In reality, the end of June might be more realistic.

And then. Well, then we really are ready for other people to read the thing. And I’m sure I’ll talk about that when the time comes.

Tune in next week to find out how much/little of a boring task this third drafting really is. And then come back the week after that to see me change my mind.

2048 – Ideally this would be my review score… (WriteBlog #20)

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When last we met, I was having some massive writing days, but also worrying that I was maiming my ability to function in a basic human way. I was also developing a growing addiction to 2048, the stupid tile-matching number puzzle which has managed to somehow bypass my usual instinctive avoidance of timesink phone games.

Not content with pouring hours into the Doctor Who version on my computer, I have now downloaded the actual app for my phone. It has not improved matters. But anyway, this isn’t meant to be a weekly blog where I moan about my latest procrastination discovery (although that by far one of the biggest challenges I face in my authorial life, sadly) – how’s the actual work going, Nick?

Old Father Time

As you probably know, I turned 30 this Tuesday just gone. You can read my thoughts on the actual milestone here if you’re so inclined, but in writing terms, it… had surprisingly little impact. I rarely work much on weekends anyway, so the only day of hard labour I really lost was the Tuesday itself. Got back into the novel editing with reasonable fervour by this afternoon, having completed my weekly Hobson & Choi tasks.

That’s still going, basically. I’ll probably hit the two thirds mark in a week’s time, and then we move into a slightly different phase and I’ll discuss that when it happens.

For now, though, I had a bit of chat about my novel at writing group last night, extending beyond the scene I read out at the time and out to the rest of the story. That was great fun, even though not every single comment was mega-positive and I have some stuff to think about. Helpfully, I’m still at the early stage of authorship when I’m slightly excited by anyone reading my work and expressing thoughts about it as if it’s a serious piece of story. I love every one of my Hobson & Choi reviews on Web Fiction Guide, even the not-glowing ones. (So feel free to add one. Ahem.)

Maybe one day I’ll be published, read my 1-star reviews and despair, but for now, yes please. Relatedly, someone reviewed the “Hero’s Best Friend” anthology I recently appeared in on Goodreads, and described my story as “Good story, but not a favorite”. Amazing novelty value, I don’t even give a shit about the but. I may have it framed. You can find more details of those anthologies in this post here, if that has enticed you to go buy.

Stop Touching Me, Please

So, that was the keen writery part, let’s now talk about my fuckton of recent procrastination. The big problem with 2048 is this: now I’ve become okayish at it, each game lasts about half an hour. So even though I don’t have twenty-game marathon sessions, it still eats up a chunk of time whenever I reach for my phone to have a couple of goes. I may inflict forced cold turkey on myself soon.

Oh, and I’ve decided to keep my Marvel Unlimited subscription going, because it’s an amazing service in terms of value for money, but having that amount of comics at my fingertips at all times is not good for getting other stuff done. Luckily, I can’t really use it when away from the house, so going to my usual cafe pretty much kills that, even if it has taken me a bit longer to actually get out of the house to go there lately. 2048 is on my phone, so there’s no escape.

Anyway, it’s now 11PM, so this is definitely a time when it’s okay to unwind with a few casual Marvel Comics. We seem to be thoroughly back to business as usual after the birthday. So, yes, that does mean I will stop talking about it on Twitter. I know you’ll all be relieved.

Novel Editing – Snake eats itself, then spits self back out and says “Yick!” (WriteBlog #19)

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I started these WriteBlogs back in October, mostly as a way of creating imagined mass peer-pressure and encouraging me to finish my damn novel edits. Since then, they’ve gone through a range of topics, including thoughts on comics writing and moaning about my near-misses with writer’s block.

Well, this week we came full circle, as I got back into the novel edits hard, and ended up working on the very chapters I was blogging about when I first started the whole cycle. And then… well, I deleted a lot of them. This writing shit is brutal.

To be fair, a lot of this mass word genocide was in line with what I said I’d do – my new Chapter 12 is my previous Chapter 10, and as a result, a huge amount of it needed to be deleted to get it to fit its new place in sequence. I just hadn’t quite anticipated how much purging there would need to be – all of the twelfth chapter is more or less gone.

I managed to bring forward a couple of scenes from Chapter 15 (the rest of which no longer exists) to ease my burden, but the rest I wrote from scratch. And yes, this does make Chapters 13-14 a little awkward.

It’s not all grim news though – the new Chapter 10 I wrote during that last round of shuffling was excellent. Liked that a lot. Also, one particular scene in Chapter 11 might be one of my favourite things I’ve ever written in terms of comedy. I laughed until people in the cafe glared.

Yes, laughing at your own jokes is a bit lame, but they were lines I wrote five or six months ago, so basically completely new.Anyway, the point being: the editing is back on, and it’s proving brutal (more than I expected), but it is happening, which is good. I’ve had serious trouble identifying and making big changes in the past, so it’s a massive relief to see it start coming naturally.

Ow My Face

After writing from about 10AM-6PM for two days running (with a break for lunch), I was feeling pretty smug about my achievements, but also mentally dead inside. I spent the whole of Tuesday night playing this Doctor Who 2048 game – not only is it a complete waste of time, I didn’t even get beyond the Ninth Doctor.(I just played another twenty minutes after opening it up to paste the link in here, and only got to the Eighth Doctor. Dear God, I’m receding.)

Then on Wednesday, I went to writing group and lost the will to think fairly early on. Too much caffeine, then some alcohol, then a trance. There’s some adage about candles burning at both ends or snakes eating their own tail here, isn’t there?

Still: on Thursday night, I write this blog post which is clearly amazing, so there’s still hope.

Truth be told, part of me is tempted to say Fuck it! and continue just because I’m getting so much work done, but that would probably be stupid. Eventually the candle flames out or the snake finds itself eating its own teeth, and then you’re screwed.

Plus: it is my thirtieth birthday next Tuesday, and real-life people may expect me not to spend it ignoring them and typing. But I imagine you’ll hear about that on here/Twitter in the next few days, so I’ll spare you for now.

Bursting The Pipes – Man Writes Story (WriteBlog #18)

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Two weeks ago, I spent the best part of seven days bashing my head against the same short story brief, before concluding that I simply didn’t have the right idea. So, last week, I went off to write other things, only to be distracted by the plumbing in our house going wrong.

This week, at last, I got my shit together. A nice man came over and rearranged our pipework (only sounds dirty) so we can have both hot water and heating at the same time. Meanwhile, I went to multiple cafes, battered the keys of my poor netbook within an inch of their lives and seem to have produced, at long last… stuff.

Splash Bang Wallop

I’d love to take sole credit for my recent breakthrough on the stuck short story, but the kick was actually provided by Alastair JR Ball, good friend and fellow writing chap. Once he made a handy suggestion about setting, the rest of it dropped into place like Tetris blocks.

And so I took myself to various cafes for the best part of 1.5 days, drank enough tea to keep five regular English people going and hammered out the first six thousand words of the probably-about-eight-thousand-word piece. If you’re curious exactly what it is, there are more hinty-details on tomorrow’s Hobson & Choi Podcast.

Suffice to say, you’ll hopefully get the chance to read it in the near future, but it is pretty cool. And funny. And sweary. And maybe at times a bit harsh, but aren’t all the good things? Just me?

Hemingway, Man

One last point, as just talking about myself typing isn’t amazing blog-fodder: I’ve been using the web-app Hemingway to edit some of my old work, during breaks from tapping out the new story. It suggests various ways to smooth out and improve text phrasing, attempts to spotlight long sentences and adverbs, etc.

Now, it isn’t flawless and I’m by no means advocating blindly implementing every change it suggests. Sometimes long sentences are long for a reason, and it also has a fun habit of marking any word ending in -ly as an adverb for destruction.

Still, Hemingway proves a useful broad tool for finding spaces where I can use a stronger, less rambling phrasing, so I’m recommending it anyway. Worth a look.

And now, I’ve got another few bits of work to run through that site, and then the remainder of this story to tap out. Fare ye well.

TWO new stories by me in Seventh Star Press anthologies!

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It’s been a while since I had any new fiction out there except for regular Hobson & Choi updates, but the wait is over. Pleasant genre-merchants Seventh Star Press have included my stories in two (yes, two) of their upcoming anthologies. They’ve done cover reveals at their own blog in the last few days, we’re definitely all public now, so let’s talk about it a bit.

First up, in the Hero’s Best Friend anthology, I have a story called The Violet Curse. The theme of the book is animal companions – all manner of hero-helping creatures from cute internet-ready cats to that armoured lion thingy on the cover. Find out more here.

My specific piece is about a loyal dog who wants nothing more than to help its owner – the resident fantasy hero – but discovers she might be a crucial part of his undoing instead, thanks to a pesky purple magic spell. Bummer, right?

And you can now buy Hero’s Best Friend in electronic format in the following places by clicking on their respective links:Amazon US – Amazon UK – Nook US

Elsewhere, in A Chimerical World: Tales Of The Unseelie Court, there are some evil fairies about. Note that this is a two-book set of anthologies, with the good section of the fey appearing in Tales Of The Seelie Court, but I am only in the Unseelie volume. This is because I am a terrible person. Full details of both books right over here.

My story is called The Fool And His Money and is thoroughly contemporary. You know how that economic crash happened recently, and everyone explained it as “Well, they thought there was all this money, but it didn’t really exist”? It turns out there’s a fairy-based explanation for that…

And you can now buy A Chimerical World: Tales of the Unseelie Court in electronic format in the following places by clicking on their respective links:Amazon US – Amazon UK – Nook US

Both books should be available for print ordering a week after that – rest assured I will be posting the links up when that happens. In the meantime, if you want a brief preview from the actual text of both stories, I intend to put out such a thing on the new mailing list soon, so definitely subscribe to that, either in the blog sidebar or by clicking on this link right here.

Woo! Publication again! Twice! Pretty excited by this, guys. Now, back to angsting over my editing/synopsis/choice of socks…