The Post-Mortem’s Post-Mortem

I’ve wanted to write a post-mortem for finishing the rough draft of my novel–I have, in fact, started it a couple of times–but it has not proven useful, I think because the whole project only had one lingering after effect: The knowledge that I can in fact write a whole novel.

I learned that writing is my raison d’etre; when I got into it, writing was all I wanted. As I wrote in one of my failed post-mortems: “From June to September, I was alive. [...] I would write until I was shaking with hunger or bleary-eyed from fatigue, I read more, my life felt calmer and more focused than it ever has. Never before have I been so consumed to finish something.”

So that has set in stone my graduate studies. I’m working to apply to MFA programs, because I need it, I need that time and that structure to write more. This novel was amazing, but it was a fluke. I will never have the time to write something like it again, more than likely. Getting an MFA will allow this kind of time, and it will guide my reading, and so on.

I’m also determined to read more. A common piece of advice for writers is to read; I read a fair amount in college, but it was exclusively required reading. This introduced me to my true reading love, continental lit, which I need to get back into. I also need to read more science fiction, considering that will probably be my bread and butter in the future. I have read an embarrassingly small amount of science fiction, limited to a Philip K Dick, a whole lot of Star Trek novels, and that’s about all I can remember. I read a fair amount of fantasy, too, as a youth (Tolkein, Jordan, Goodkind, Dragonlance).

This is ridiculous, and I fear coming off as a poseur when I say I write sci-fi. I need to fix this immediately. Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, more Dick, Bradbury. I’ve relied too long on a childhood of Star Trek episodes and books.

In this vein, I read half of Stephen King’s On Writing this past Friday to gain some insights for when I begin editing my novel tomorrow. He backed up some knowledge I’m already working with–eliminate all but the most necessary adverbs–and reiterated the “read, read, read” mantra. He made some claims I’ve scoffed at before–kill your darlings, second draft equals first draft minus ten percent–and I suppose I need to take this more seriously. Dress down dialog attribution seems like reasonable, professional advice. Make sure backstory is revealed deftly. Character motivation has to be believable. Coherence, recurring elements, theme, description.

I have a feeling I’m going to learn more from the editing process than from the writing process.

Race for the Prize

The most unfortunate thing about writing a novel — at least, writing your first novel — is that I have no idea how quality is oscillating, chapter to chapter. But I suppose and hope that doesn’t matter at this point. Quality will be achieved when I spend months slowly editing the manuscript, chiseling and whittling it into a lean chunk of prose.

My novel, which is quickly becoming an actual novel (with luck and a little coffee, it’ll be 200+ pages by this time next week), started out as a meager effort to write something longer than 5000 words. I have started and abandoned many, many novels and screenplays in my short time, and when I began this project I had no reason to believe it would turn out any different. I anticipated getting through 60 pages and then moving back into shorter prose as the idea lost traction, or my energy flagged.

Those things haven’t happened this time around. Maybe months of writing have managed to prepare me for completing something of substance. Maybe I’m finally taking this seriously. All I know is that every day, every day I’m writing or every day I’m taking a break, every single day I feel a deep compulsion to continue, to continue until I am done. A deep-rooted fire to just keep plugging away on this project. At times the writing is slow and hard, and at times the writing is fast and easy. But whenever I stop writing, when I walk away for an hour or two to relax and eat dinner, a knot builds in stomach, a little voice screams in my head, “finish it!”

I suppose this is the feeling most writers feel — most writers who manage to put together a novel. Because while in the past I’ve wanted to write a novel, I’ve never felt like I need to write a novel. I feel that way every day now. A need to write this novel, and more. An inscrutable desire to let my voice be heard or at least recorded. Even if it is never published, even if I never get a publisher to buy any of my work, one day a curious great grandchild can root through my old files and pull out a dusty manuscript that says “EE, by Samuel X. Brase. (c) 2009.” And maybe my work will inspire the creative fire inside them, and they will be hell-bent to complete something of value, personal or otherwise.

Again, I repeat myself: This novel began as a meager effort to write something longer than 20 pages. After a few weeks of planning and thinking, it morphed into a pop-culture experiment: How many subtle or overt references can I shove into my work, how many sources can I pull inspiration from, and create something separate, something unique and yet tied to contemporary culture? A nineteenth century writing philosophy to focus on internal character rumination, a twentieth century approach to symbols and meaning, a twenty-first century taste for pacing and plots. So many strands adding up hopefully to a larger whole, a text that projects forward by looking backwards.

I have a lot of personal hopes for the text; I want it to work as a whole, achieving all the different facets I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I am confident in my ability to execute but realistic as to my experience. Many weeks ago, EE became my longest fiction work, and now it is blazing into the wild unknown. With a bit more than half the novel done, I know I can finish it. I do not know if it will be worth much when done, but either way I will have finished it. And I will know I can finish something of this magnitude. And I will know that if I did it once, I can do it again.

And when I do it again, my writing will almost surely be the better for this experience. The only way to get experience is to do the work. So here I am, doing the work. Logging the hours. Getting the experience. Nothing in my life has been this thrilling, this exciting, this different.

Thank you, Great Recession, for taking my job. For giving me the one resource I needed: time. For demanding I give this a real shot, a real chance, for giving me the time so I would have no excuses but my own shortcomings. So far I am proving that I am up to the task. But we’re only through five innings. We got four more to play.

The Fall Classic

Working on a long, more substantial post, where I begin to outline books that might come after the first volume of EE.

Speaking of EE, had a great writing today, got down about eight pages in six hours. I feel pumped, I could keep writing, but I need to do something else for a couple hours or my eyes’ll bleed.

I’ve had good writing days before (the day when I wrote the last 19 pages of Scary Bells comes to mind), but I’ve never felt as exhilarated as I do today. I feel completely empowered by this novel, so in control of writing as I never have before. I have 123 pages of a novel written, I have an outline for the rest of the novel, I feel like I could sit and just finish it right now.

Of course that’s impossible — eyes, bleeding, etc. But I looked at it this way. I’m estimating the novel to be about 300 pages long, which leaves 177 pages unwritten. If I could write 7 pages a day, a little less than I did today, it would take me just TWENTY-FIVE days to finish this novel. If I put my mind to this, I could have a whole draft by October, an entire novel written in four months. I’m no Stendhal but that’s damn fast.

No project has ever seemed so possible to me, nay, probable. Every page I complete raises the stakes, raises the chances that this novel will be complete some day. I almost want to stay unemployed until I have the whole draft. At this rate, I’ll barely have to make an effort for that to happen.

This is the writer’s high. 25 days, huh? There are 22 business days in September. Throw in a couple weekend days and the rest of August, subtract some lazy days, and bam. Novel done. Complete.

Who knows if it’ll be any good but it’ll fucking be done.

All right, Sam. Are you really going to do this?

I think you are.

October 1. By the time the baseball playoffs start, you’ll have a complete draft. Keep applying for jobs, but keep writing. I can see it.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Caravan

The gauntlet I threw down a few weeks ago is being met. The first third of the novel, Act I, is written in rough form, clocking in just shy of 30,000 words. Some of the writing is pretty shaky, but that’s what happens when I pound it out in 7 weeks. I’ve done some editing, but more needs to be done. Still, I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far; I’ve never gotten this far on a single writing project. The most exciting part is I know what it takes to write 100 pages now: doing that a couple more times and finishing this book out doesn’t daunt me in the least.

The second act is well planned, I can see finishing it by my birthday (Sept 21). My concerns lie with the third act, of which I have only a few ideas about. I have a number of action sequences imagined, but no established tension, no big reveals. My worry is that the second act is so loaded that there’s nothing left for the finale.

Let’s take a look here. I can’t spoil a ton because the plot is all I got, but…. Okay, so I broke down the major actions for the rest of the novel and there are three of them. I think my problem stems from the lack of a fourth major action; without it, one act would be very heavy in comparison to the other. I need to figure out a fourth action, probably a smaller one, like an initial skirmish between the two sides.

(Three hours later) And I’m back. I decided that instead of a contrived fourth action, I’ll simply amplify the first action beat in the second act and move some of the others around. I have a very rough (very, very, very rough) outline of the second and third acts, which I think will work better. It spreads some of the major actions from the second act into the third and elucidates on some events I hadn’t fully thought out.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and elaborate on this basic outline I have created while inebriated. If it gels, fantastic. I expect it to. There is ample room for the character development that is necessary, and ample room for exciting moments.

God this novel is going to be great.

If I can pull it off.

The gauntlet I threw down a few weeks ago is being met. The first third of the novel, Act I, is written in rough form, clocking in just shy of 30,000 words. Some of the writing is pretty shaky, but that’s what happens when I pound it out in 7 weeks. I’ve done some editing, but more needs to be done. Still, I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished thus far; I’ve never gotten this far on a single writing project. The most exciting part is I know what it takes to write 100 pages now: doing that a couple more times and finishing this book out doesn’t daunt me in the least.

The second act is well planned, I can see finishing it by my birthday (Sept 21). My concerns lie with the third act, of which I have only a few ideas about. I have a number of action sequences imagined, but no established tension, no big reveals. My worry is that the second act is so loaded that there’s nothing left for the finale.

Let’s take a look here. I can’t spoil a ton because the plot is all I got, but…. Okay, so I broke down the major actions for the rest of the novel and there are three of them. I think my problem stems from the lack of a fourth major action; without it, one act would be very heavy in comparison to the other. I need to figure out a fourth action, probably a smaller one, like an initial skirmish between the two sides.

(Three hours later) And I’m back. I decided that instead of a contrived fourth action, I’ll simply amplify the first action beat in the second act and move some of the others around. I have a very rough (very, very, very rough) outline of the second and third acts, which I think will work better. It spreads some of the major actions from the second act into the third and elucidates on some events I hadn’t fully thought out.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and elaborate on this basic outline I have created while inebriated. If it gels, fantastic. I expect it to. There is ample room for the character development that is necessary, and ample room for exciting moments.

God this novel is going to be great.

If I can pull it off.

New Plans

The novella. Well, novel. I have about 60 pages and I can’t deny that the plan is for about 300 pages. That’s not a novella, that’s a novel.

We’ll call it EE for now. In brief, the idea is that five strangers meet after discovering portals from our world to another. They explore this other planet and the alien ruins contained thereon. The twist? When they’re on this alien planet, tentatively Planet X, they have been reverted to young teenagers. Oh, and — they’ll constantly be competing with a group of “lost boys” who have declared themselves the protectors of the new planet.

The reasons I decided to start a new project are many:

1. With a clean slate, I can practice keeping the scope simple.
2. As a result, this will be much easier to write than Doveiron.
3. I don’t want to write Doveiron as my first novel, I want to learn from other projects.
4. I’m tired of writing short stories for now; while the ones I’ve written flit from market to market, I will work on this.
5. The project also allows me to put to work a number of theories I’ve been formulating about popular stories.

My idea, as it is coming together (I currently have 17,000 words), feels like a cup of cold water thrown on the face — sigh, I should probably not pitch it that way. The reader is plunged almost immediately into a new world that neither they nor our main characters understand, and the journey of discovery is shared by all.

The heart of the story is simple. I want to put friendship and rivalries under a lens, I want to romanticize exploration, I want to hook lots of people with a fun story and make them smile. Doveiron is a bit of a preachy novel, painting the dark picture of corporate ownership, impotent politics, brutality, etc. EE is about hope and dreams, candy and flowers, butterflies and perriwinkle. No, of course there’s an underbelly — every story needs a nadir — but I’m working to keep the vision narrow.

A lot of my writing is done for me and me only; if other people like it, that’s great. EE is definitely for me, but I’m also writing it with a definite audience in mind. I realize that if I want to be a professional writer, I’m going to have to understand how the writing is sold as well. Who the audience is, what the marketing could be like, plans for further books, etc. To get published, the more you know about how your story can be sold, the better your chances are. If a publisher finds my story and likes it but wants to know if there will be other books, I can tell them right now that we can sign a contract for four more books with the same characters and places.

Everything about the EE project makes me excited for its possibility. I started it about a month ago and I have a fifth of the first draft. I could have the whole draft done by the new year. By this time next summer, I could have a well-edited, slick machine of a mainstream-friendly novel. I think I will set that goal for myself. Have at least a second draft, something I can be proud of, by June 1, 2010. It’ll require a lot of continual effort, but I think the end result could be amazing. I really do. And I’d have it done before I’m 26.

Then it’ll be time to find an agent.

Taking the Scenic Route

You may ask yourself why I’ve stopped posting here.

I haven’t quit on this project, far from it. I’m still convinced this is my best idea for a science fiction franchise, and I love so much about it. I’m focusing right now on other projects though; my short story work has taken priority. I like the idea of developing my writing through many smaller projects. By the process of rejection and acceptance with various editors, my style will develop into something that is marketable, something that is unique and captivating. I’m convinced that writing short stories right now is the best way to begin any writing career that I might (or might not) have.

This project sits with me every day though. I think about it at least ten times a day, running themes and events and characters through my head, like there’s some sort of committee up there who takes a new look at the material every day. I’m constantly reevaluating the status of characters, the prominence of certain institutions, and so forth.

One of the things that has really been nagging me is how to portray futuristic combat. Specifically, I want the story to have a number of gritty firefights. I don’t think the future of combat is overwhelming force however; that worked in the world wars, failed in Vietnam, and has been replaced in Afghanistan and Iraq. Current combat is focused on units, on specialized tactics and operations. The smaller, more efficient the unit, the better. So envision many battles where a small force, of 5 to 10 people, are seiging a spaceship or building.

This idea works on a couple of levels for me. One, I portray what I believe to be realistic future combat. Not Star Wars, where there are waves and waves of cloned robots, but syncopated and veteran units similar to Navy Seals or whatnot. Two, this allows me to fully flesh out the characters of most people in the fights. If I focus on one main unit of 7 people, over the course of a novel or two you would get to know them very well. Then one of them dies and you’re heartbroken — but such is the epic space opera.

I have not decided at all how to portray combat between spaceships, or if I even want to. We’ll see on that.

The instability and fractious nature of religion is another thing that I’ve decided I need to study in this series. The religious storyline, which runs concurrent with the political rebellion, features the rise of a peaceful spiritual leader, his abdication, and the succession of a more tyrannical figure. As this occurs in the background of the battlefield, we’ll see various characters begin to take sides. They’ve all chosen their political side by the second novel or so, either supporting the revolution or the Empire, but they certainly won’t all agree on religion. Some will support the first leader, some will support the second leader, some will support neither. These fractures will create tension, rebellious splinters, and hopefully at some point tie into my message of peaceful coexistance.

There are other topics that have entered my thoughts recently — how to portray potential lightspeed travel, how to discuss my feelings on the importance of food (it brings people together when almost everything else would divide us), and how I want to dismantle our obsession with teleology — but these are less fleshed out.

I want to work on this series slowly, however. I feel so strongly about the Doveiron series that I feel I must work on other projects first. I’m not the next JK Rowling or George Lucas. Yet. I will write short stories as they come to me, I will work on my new novella-length project, and let Doveiron simmer. It is such a big idea, such immense world creation, and the relevance of the main themes (drugs, political hegemony, religion) are not going away any time soon. I am sure that this tactic is for the good.

So this blog will study the gestation and eventual creation of my series. You will hear about my short stories. And that novella project? That’s for tomorrow.

Short Journeys

Let’s take a break from all this novel talk. The novel is great but I’m not JK Rowling and I won’t sell novel #1 immediately. If I get anywhere, it’s going to be from cutting my teeth on the short story circuit.

So I have six short stories that I’m pretty confident in; one of them still needs editing before I’ll feel comfortable sending it out. I have two other stories that require a shit ton of editing / almost aren’t even worth the time that would be spent. I have one story that’s very short and pretty boring and generally not right for any publication.

Thus, five stories are out at any given point, getting rejected regularly. I picked a poor time to start sending stories out; a lot of journals close shop for the summer and have no need for new stories. But whatever, I’m getting used to the process and maybe one will go through.

The current story I’m writing is designed for a journal with the theme of “journeys.” My original idea was about an anti-social man on a very slow elevator ride being cajoled into sociability by a friendly woman. Even the description sounds boring. I wrote about half of the story and couldn’t bear it anymore. The structure is good (a short new section for every floor), and the title is nice, but that idea is just a snoozefest. The characters are good though. I’m thinking about injecting some magical realism into it; perhaps every floor they stop at is weirder than the last, until the elevator ejects them into a tree or something. Still not grabbing me. Maybe I should just table this story for now.

Another theme I want to write about for a journal is “shortcuts.” I’ve had a couple simple ideas for this theme. One is of a boy who discovers a new keyboard shortcut that opens some kind of portal up in his computer. Another is about a house that has a simple passage to another part of the world. Like, a house suburban Colorado has a passage to China or something. They’re both kind of basic ideas. The second one is better. This story would be more of a sketch, as the max words is 2000.

All right, did some cleaning, revised the idea for the elevator story. The first two floors are basically the same, but as they ascend, things become more and more off — plants growing on floors, power flickering, so on. Our main character refuses to reveal what he is seeing to the other two people until they reach the roof and he is forced to confront reality (that their city was destroyed long ago and he has been delusional since).

Not an amazing proposition but it’ll get the story done. I’ll have to keep the fantasy down and the surreality up. Shouldn’t be too tough. The shortcut story can be a little more fantastical as the journal tends towards experimental material. So I can play up the fantasy instead of the surreal when it comes to having a passage to another part of the world in your basement.

There we go, this has been useful. Onwards and upwards.

Foundation: Structure and Voice

When I started the first draft last August, I assumed a structure that was rather convoluted. There was a bit of messy constant encapsulation. I imagined the story being told by Ira Glass through first-person anecdotes, a collage of futuristic history. When I describe it like that I still get excited. A collage of futuristic history? I’d read that book every day of my life. Why hasn’t someone written it yet?

It didn’t work. Not when I tried it, anyhow. There’s probably a way to perfect that method, and I’d like to save it for a simpler story someday. This novel is way too big, too complex to be told in such a disjointed manner. I should probably cop to one piece of information; I don’t exactly intend for this to be one novel. Word on the street tells me that it’s easier to sell a series to a publisher and I’m more than fine doing that. The way I’ve planned this series is as a number of shorter books, each maybe 300 pages, but the lengths are of course up for change.

The arc that I laid out last week has action for six books. Each book has three parts, where the action is progressed on a variety of fronts. Politics, war, religion, economics, so forth. I see it as episodic, so that the public can easily digest such a big story. In time I will revise the main arc, perhaps par it down to five books or expand to seven. Who knows. But the point is that I have a franchise in my mind’s eye. A franchise that wouldn’t have to end when the series concludes.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I’m trying to say is this project will be long. Very long. My plan is to write the first book, establish in detail the full arc of the series, and begin shopping it out. Books are as much an art as they are a business. To walk that line requires a vast amount of egoism and determination. We’ll see if I have enough of either. Well, I probably have the go.

So the Ira Glass voice didn’t work for me. Which is a fucking problem because I have 45 pages written that way.

I’m now thinking about having the whole story told by one old man, recounting the whole adventure. Must I have encapsulation though? Why do I insist on having someone tell this story? Why can’t I just have multiple narrators? And all right, I just re-read part of Chapter 4 and I love the American Life inspiried narration. I am torn.

What if I merge the two ideas? Keeping some of the inter-textuality (like news reports) but then simply roll into a first person narrative when done with them. I can afford to drop the Ira Glass narrator I think, the omniscient narrator, and simply use multiple first person recounts as I go. This lets me drop the boring paragraphs of explanation. I can’t believe I even wrote this stuff. I’ll give this reformation a go soon.

Leave it to me to say, when I began this entry, that I’d leave the convoluted method at home for this novel, only to reneg on that about six paragraphs later.

Foundation: Scope

The scope of this project is huge. I’m getting cold feet regarding the scope; not overall, but at least initially. Let’s look at the arcs I laid out last week, hmm? In the first book, I introduce probably 80% of the main characters, at least two secretive groups, a fake economy, a fake empire and rebellion, and an entirely new galaxy for readers to wrap their heads around.

So I don’t know, you tell me — is that too much?

No poll necessary; the answer is yes. That’s too much. That kind of scope is acceptable from the third book and on, maybe even the end of the second book. The less I dunk the reader into, the more mystery is created, the more desire to stick around for the entirety of the series. I need to trim it down. I need R2D2 in the desert, Bilbo Baggins and his magic ring, the Dursley’s and their family-embarrassment of Potters.

An introduction to mystery where you don’t even realize you’re curious until it’s too far, far too late. You’ve bought everyone in your family a copy.

I think the initial skirmish on Nasirryah, between Ellis, Old Spy, and Vizol would meet this requirement. We meet two of our charming main characters — old man Ellis and the neophyte Spy — plus the mysterious Vizol, who will change sides frequently. In fact, this initial action introduces two of the prevading mysteries of the story: is Vizol good or evil, and what exactly is Yehidah? Instead of switching to Leone, Ferry, and Lane, I think I’ll stay with those three characters for a good while, anywhere from 100 to 300 pages. That’ll give us a good grounding in the galaxy.

We’ll take it from there. At a certain point, for this story to be told properly, the scope is going to blow up. But I can give the readers at least one book of narrow view.

Update 1: While it seems that Star Wars is the primary source of inspiration for this story, I would argue that there is no singular inspiration. Star Wars is a great story, but focused on a handful of major events. The entire original trilogy is built around two battles. I think that, realistically, New Hope and Empire would be one written book. Or, as two separate books, they would have a lot of additional scenes and battles.

As I have expressed many times, I want to write an epic story, but I also want to play around in this universe that I’m creating. That’s really where the episodic idea of my storytelling would fit, but we’ll see if that ever happens.

Foundation: The End of the Story, pt. 3

If I’m going to go the “different realities” ending, I need to figure out the different strands that be left diffuse upon conclusion. The destruction of the universe is an easy ending, the stakes are automatically high. But if the universe isn’t being destroyed, I need to make sure my stakes are high enough.

Is it bad that I’m this lost with the end of my novel? I have such a clear vision of the world of the story, of the things I want to tell, but when it comes to the final payoff, I feel so confused. I guess that’s at least partly because I know it has to be good; it has to inspire replayability, as it were.

Okay. How do I want to leave this galaxy? Do I want the Doveirons to still be in charge? No, they should be out of power. Do I want any other house to be in charge? No, I want the “house” system removed. That’s endgame number one, a fundamental change in the government and economy. No more monopoly by a handful of elite houses. This is good, I have something finally. Character’s endings will rely on circumstance, I’m not even going to begin to arc those out yet.

Next. Do I want the invaders to win their war? No. But I don’t want them wiped out; perhaps they establish a colony in our galaxy. Are they aliens? Or humans? I wanted to make them human until Battlestar kind of ruined that idea. It might be more pragmatic if they’re aliens. The symbolism is a bit easier. So okay, they’ll be aliens. Not grotesque but whatever. Perhaps they’re a collective of different aliens?

Hmmmm. That’s interesting. A little Federation-y, but I could make it different enough…. I like this, I think I want to use this idea. One of the principal mysteries of the novel could be where this invading force came from and why they’re invading. For a long time we’ll assume they’re simply an aggressive conquering force. But eventually we’ll learn that they banded together after their own galaxies began crumbling. Their method of conquering is an attempt to extract the strongest and most resourceful people into their herd, so once the current galaxy they’re in does fall, the best people from that galaxy come with them and they move on, finding a new galaxy that is at risk of falling to… dark matter, or something like that. So one of the big revelations of the novel is the invading force’s true purpose; this reveals the endgame mystery box, that the human’s galaxy is at risk of collapsing.

Sub-plot note: It would be interesting if one small group of our main characters sides early with the invading force. We won’t know it at the time, but this group who joins them has been told their true purpose. We think this group has turned “bad” but late in the game we find out they’ve been “good” all along.

Sub-plot note: I like the idea of one help of the invading force staying in our galaxy once it is stabilized, and one half leaving to ‘help’ other galaxies.

That’s two good end points resolved. For now, until I waffle again. Whatever, it’s progress! I hope. I just wrote out a basic arc for the whole plot, and it looks good as a rough outline, though I’m concerned about the lack of presence both the dead houses (Sandmason and Evremond) have. That’ll need to be fixed.

And what will happen to the Sandmasons and Evremonds? Obviously their houses don’t hold any official power, so the dissolution of the house system doesn’t really affect them. It might be nice if Vizol & Jackson join the force who will go to other galaxies… with a better plan than culling the weak, of course.