Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 16

The Writing Life: The Pudding has been Proofed.

Hello folks, more time has passed than expected once again. Between blog posts I mean. The standard flow of time has otherwise been maintained, at least in my vicinty, as far as I can tell. Observational bias and all that.

Anyway, updates. The Long Road to publication continues. Strangely enough my proofreads turned into another one-last-edit-no-this-time-I-mean-it! experience. Which was completed a couple of weeks ago. The final proof has been returned to me now, with some corrections for me to work through. That will be done this week. As people always say in their acknowledgements page, any and all mistakes that remain in the published text are mine and mine alone. My most profound thanks go to the friends, readers, editors, and proofers who have helped me get this far!

Proofing round 3 will of course be me checking the formatting on the book. There is always more proofing, right up to the moment you press “Publish” and be damned. However, I think I have crossed the Rubicon of diminishing returns at long last, and no more editorial activity is required or desired. This story has at last been mentally set aside as an active topic, and I have engaged with new and old projects instead to keep the creative fires burning – projects that I’ll discuss in future blogs.

What remains for The Killer and The Dead is the business of becoming a book from a manuscript. Decisions remain to be made, and marketing and advertising should be done, which I freely admit I shall not do enough of, in common with many authors who do not do as much as they perhaps should to promote themselves or their brand. I am currently okay with that, as two books is a beginning, not a brand, and I’m prepared to be patient, having experienced the high of first book publication and then the realization that my book is just one of millions, and that finding an audience is probably harder than writing the book in the first place. The writing, while difficult in places, is still preferable to me than the act of courting an audience, so in pride and timidity I shall languish in obscurity. I am at ease with this, for now. There shall come a day when I am not, and hopefully by then it will not be too late for me to finally work harder on the business side of books!

The SPFBO I mentioned in my last entry has reached its climax, so go here to see the final standings. Congratulations to Justin Lee Anderson and The Lost War! Looks like it was a nailbiter at the finish!

The Writing Life: SPFBO 2020 and an update or three.

Good evening, whatever timezone you may be in.

Quick updates: Proofing run one is done. I have made some minor corrections based on feedback, and then, jaunting down a word-search rabbit hole, I noticed a thing. I’m fixing the thing, (and it is a small thing) before proofing run two begins. I have finalised the book’s blurb. The appendices are go, and I have written (many many versions later) a small connecting letter that introduces the apprentice’s reports and provides a necessary space between them and the main text. My recommendation would be to finish the book, take a beat, or a day, even a week, and then go back to read the reports. That way the story and its ending has a chance to settle before you read any fictional analysis of it. My two cents there. Or: binge away and blast on through – the choice is yours!

So that’s good.

In the spirit of burying the lede I get to paragraph four before exhorting any among you who are avid readers of fantasy literature to check out the ten worthy finalists in this year’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) competition. You can find them here. On Facebook you can see the discussion around these books and the other two hundred and ninety entrants here. SPFBO represents a treasured opportunity for often unknown writers to put themselves in front of an audience, at the low low cost of being judged, publicly. But hey, if you’re writing for the public you can’t sweat a little public discussion, right? The quality is excellent, and the judges well read and experienced. By the time you get to the final ten, you have a good crop of stories, authors, viewpoints to choose from.

So, if you are a reader, want to try something new, to give the unexpected a chance, then go and have a look at the novels on offer, and if one sounds intriguing, give it a go. You might find your new favourite in there. All are available on amazon, so you can peek inside for free and get a feel for each and every one if you wish, see what tickles your fancy. On social media the call frequently goes out to support independent creators of content. New or undiscovered writers, especially the self-published, are, in my highly biased opinion, the ultimate independent content creators. I ask you to go and give them some love, and maybe some small amounts of cash, and you’ll get a whole lot back in return – new worlds, people, and adventures to share. What a grand bargain that is.

I’ll see you all in SPFBO 2021.

The Writing Life: Missed Updates

No blogs since August? I knew it had been a while, but it is a surprise to see so much time has elapsed, when almost every weekend I have considered writing an update. You know, I finished the verbal read-through, I finished the resolution of my last notes (hahahaha!) on continuity, I finished a proof read and discovered, not continuity errors exactly, more a question that had never occurred to me before, and once the question is asked, well, it has to be answered. Then I finished answering that question, and a couple of side fixes that popped up along the way. Heck, I also wrote and edited up seven appendices which may or may not appear at the end of the book, or perhaps here as digital canon. I’m leaning toward book, with more examples appearing here, but we’ll see.

So now I’m finished with editing. Really. This time two years ago I thought I was in with an outside chance of publishing by the end of the year. Then I decided to have “a quick look” at the book and “tidy up” anything that struck me as being a little clumsy or rushed, as I had, with my editor’s help, blasted through the writing process that year. Obviously my quick look turned into a lengthly overhaul, mostly of the small stuff, nuts and bolts tightening, linguistic tweaks to smooth out the prose. (And continuity, continuity, continuity, of character, event, theme.) I must stress this has nothing to do with the great work my editor did – he was following my direction, and did an excellent job for me – I just changed the plan after we were done. Writers: fickle swine. Anyway, my overhaul did eventually lead to every page, every paragraph, almost every sentence being revisited. Funny how a book can look so much the same after having had so much done to it, but I know the difference, and I know where I made a thousand small improvements.

Was it worth it? I have no idea, and just laughed at that. It is what it is, I could do no other. I’m satisfied with it now, plus I have edited myself into surrender/exhaustion. A good thing, I think, but nothing I ever want to do again. My next book will be an experiment in maintaining no GAF and barrelling through to the end and hurling the story at the world before I start second guessing anything. Rough and ready will be the name of the game. I’m hoping to have learned enough over the past two books to keep the third one in pretty good technical shape. I have it started already, and possess a burgeoning set of notes and yet more ideas floating around in my head to be fleshed out as I write – which I am hugely looking forward to. We shall see how it goes – but that’s the point of experiments, isn’t it?

So here we are: proofing time has arrived. The book is out to proof reader #1, then on to #2 and #3 in due course. Then formatting which leads to guess what? Me reading the entire book again, to proof the formatting, and make sure it does not introduce any errors. Last time out I caught a handful of things even then. How many times have I read this book from start to finish? Formally? Many tens of times. Trawling back and forth checking for continuity or cutting down on excessive repetitions? Hundreds of times easily, probably thousands given some word searches.

Was that too much? I didn’t think it too many. But it will be up to you, the readers to decide. I look forward to that day – I can’t put a date to it, but wheels are now in motion that will end the creation of the book, and usher in the business of production. I will keep you updated.

The Writing Life: The Power of the Spoken Word

This is an update.

After losing/significantly depleting my GAF as previously described, I decided to do my usual (i.e. done once before) final step of reading my book out loud to myself as a way to interrogate each sentence and catch egregious typos.

This is now done. Yay. I fixed some sentences here and there, a paragraph or two, and felt glad to have done the work. Genuine improvements were made.

The problem is I discovered not one, but two significant (but not book-breaking) issues that somehow slid by me in the previous I am now guessing hundreds of times I have worked my way through this manuscript. That is not an exaggeration, oh how I wish it were. There are some 70 odd minor notes to deal with in addition, but maybe half of them are allied or involved with the two major issues I identified.

So I’m going to make fixes. But I can’t lie – making fixes at this late stage, even if they are valid and necessary, is a PITA. It puts an ache in my soul. Because I want to be done, but can’t be. I have to move the protagonist’s brother’s house. Have to. Because where he is now makes a mockery of his motivation, and who he is. I did not realise it until I read the words aloud. The meanings didn’t change, the context did not change, but reading it aloud made different bells ring in my mind, and I realised that there was a problem. Other readers did not catch it. My editor did not catch it. Reading aloud, to myself, caught it.

It is an easy(ish) fix. Hopefully I will execute it tomorrow. But it is just one more thing, one more swing at a tree I’ve been trying to fell for years, and seems to have developed an iron core.

The other issue is also resolvable, but it is like a lace spread throughout the text, touched on here and there, never obvious, just some background detail that yelled at me when I spoke it aloud, and told me I had to fix it in many places across 390 pages of double spaced text. Fix and leave no new inconsistencies. Anywhere.

Argh.

But I will persevere. The changes needed are necessary to make an antagonist more unique and powerful, and will also help to inform and enrich the societies of both the living and the dead in the book. What I have now is a shade too simplistic (done as a writer’s shorthand in the first draft and never gone back to later, I now suspect, not addressed when larger structural and thematic issues were to the forefront, but now visible), and could create awkward questions in the reader’s mind – and why risk that? So I have to fix it. That means multiple small changes, and then another read-through once I’m done to make sure everything now hangs correctly. A-rgh again.

No doubt then I’ll spot something else.

This is why, dear readers, some authors take years to release their next book. It isn’t because they’re blowing off their audience, it’s because they care about them. And perhaps because they are discovering they are a little OCD. Or a lot OCD. I never imagined I’d care that much about details when I fantasised about being a writer when I was twelve. Now I’m consumed by them. I hope this is not a case of wood for trees, or shrubs for grass, at this stage, but I trust myself on this, because these are details that add depth and resonance to the world, that line up with my larger plan for that universe, which I have spent a long time putting together. I have trust in what my spoken word revealed to me.

If you write, and do not read your book, painstakingly word for word to yourself, I strongly advise you to do so. You may be surprised and grateful at what you find, and can correct, through that process.

I cannot wait to continue writing The Red Palace, and publishing what will be a proofed first draft, because I want to capture the initial energy of creation, and see how it is received. The liberation of it will be intense. The recriminations afterwards… I’ll have to deal with. My fellow writers out there will understand what I’m talking about!

I will update further as I draw closer to concluding my work on The Killer and The Dead. (I’ve had great ideas for a couple of the appendices/apprentice’s reports!) I thank you for your patience. Stay safe, and keep reading and writing!

 

 

The Writing Life: Losing my GAF

I have recently been watching booktube videos addressed to authors: readers expressing their opinions on what they do and do not like in fantasy, what they would like to see in new books, and what just won’t cut it anymore.

Of course these are just opinions, and if an author tried to satisfy every desire expressed, their book would most likely be slated for trying to be all things to all people, and not daring enough. Or not daring enough in the right places.

I don’t believe you can “win” with readers by trying to pander, by trying to follow a formula laid out by others. That discussion could be a whole other blog entry.

So what to do?

Write your story. Write it your way, as well as you can, in your voice, and hope it hits the artistic and perhaps popular mark. That is my terribly non-commercial take. My next book is years too late to be excitingly new in its grim-darkness, so all I can hope to do is execute remarkably well, and present a character, a setting, and a voice that people may find powerful and intriguing. I think I’ve done that, to be honest, but acknowledge I’m far too close to it to tell.

I may be having an existential crisis. I think, while endlessly trying to edit The Killer and The Dead, I’ve also been trying to answer (again) the question of why I do this, why I think it’s worth it, what I’m trying to achieve, and why do I think I can? Hearing about readers’ wish-lists, and then contemplating how what I’m completely committed to releasing both hits and misses their various professed opinions is, if not depressing exactly, then perhaps a little frustrating. But I’m not changing anything now. I know a lot of great writers, writers far more talented than myself, languish in obscurity. I know that is my likely fate, as I can’t even tell if I have produced something of the necessary calibre – the only way to find out is to release it, and discover how readers react, what they find in it, if they think it has qualities worth lauding. So why do I continue?

It’s not because I must, though I’ve said something similar in the past. It’s also not because I want to, as sometimes I’m ambivalent, but I still stick myself in this chair and plod on. I think it’s because I’m in the process, and I’ve come too far to quit now, I just have to see it through to the end. But that doesn’t answer my questions really. Perhaps nothing can. Is it simple ego? To put my dent in the universe? (Not fond of that phrase, but I used it anyway.) I know enough geology and cosmology to know we’re just dust in the wind, be it atmospheric or solar, and any impact I could make with my writing is likely to be fleeting. As I said: existential crisis. I think it is an occupational hazard for writers. Especially when the time draws near to release your latest creation into the world. I just want to put my best effort in, my ideas, emotion, what talent I possess, and hammer away at the coalface, blinded by dust, and hope that something glorious can emerge, even as I know that the likely result of hammering at a coalface is to find myself waist deep in chunks of coal, tired, and with more coalface waiting for me.

So why do I do it? Why do I plan on doing it again? Why do I want to write at least two more books in completely different styles? What am I trying to train myself to be able to produce? Do I have an end goal?

I have no idea. The future is uncertain, and I can only do what I can in the time I have. This is what I have in me now, so I shall do it, though more slowly, because I am truly tired. When I am done, perhaps I shall have an answer or two: that would be nice. If not – maybe I’ll find them in the next one. I go on.

But I’m almost done. I hit my editing wall, and can no more. I have exhausted myself, and must lay down tools soon.

Edit: I wrote most of that at the end of May. I was involved in a car crash in early June, and it granted me some clarity. I wasn’t badly hurt as far as I can tell – some whiplash – but could have been, and it made me realize (again) I’m wasting precious time. I have decided to be finished now, and am tidying up two things – the use of the word ‘shadow’ and making a decision on the colour of some masonry. And yes, those are ridiculous things to be worrying about at this late stage, but I’d noted them when I had more GAF present, and so I will complete those tasks I set myself when I had more energy and patience. After that I will proof, and doubtless notice more horrid errors, but my GAF is significantly depleted now, which I regard as a good thing, so unless it is plot or character breaking, I’m ready to let word choices and the odd sentence slide. Then formatting and the rest of the business of putting a book together will have to be done, but the artifact itself will be mercifully complete.

I have already started writing a new story, not the one I planned on writing next, something fresh I came up with one Sunday afternoon last month as a challenge to myself. I currently DGAF what people will think of it, I’m just going to write it and punch it out there with much less fussing than the first two books, and see how it goes. We’ll see how long I can maintain that attitude! Let’s call it another experiment, which it is, I’ve wanted to do something like this for quite a while. Working title? The Red Palace. There will be deaths.

The Writing Life: Ain’t No Way But The Hard Way

So it has been a while. I was going to call this Breaking the Silence II, but I decided to share this song with you instead. When I am in the guts of a pool match, and I or my team are a long way behind, I think of that song, and dig in to tough it out. If you don’t give up, amazing things can happen. After overcoming a huge deficit to record an improbable win listening to that song is a lot of fun!

I’m trying to make this a 30 minute blog after my last 30 minute fiction. (I failed, this has taken over an hour what with adding links and testing them etc.)

Since last I wrote a blog, my book was eliminated from the SPFBO. It stung, of course, but there can be only one from 300, and this time it wasn’t mine. Maybe next year. If I get The Killer and The Dead finished in time. I exhort you to check out the final 10 here, the score board is almost complete, the winner almost chosen! I invite you to peruse the top 10 and perhaps pick one for your next fantasy read. I offer my congratulations to all the finalists, and again, my thanks to Mark Lawrence,  the judges, and my fellow writers for making the experience such a positive one.

Yes, I’m still editing. I’m still cleaning dusty tables with chopsticks, one prepositional phrase at a time. I once read a blog by Brent Weeks where he talked about editing and he mentioned “another 11 or 12 revisions” as being required. I can now attest that 11 or 12 is very easy to do. (I’ve now skimmed it again – he doesn’t mention a number, but does hammer home the point of how many times you need to revisit your work.) I have lost track of the number of times I have gone from prologue to epilogue picking through plot points, structures, characters, themes, sentences. And every time I find something new. I still smile, I still get occasionally giddy at what I see, but more often I’m just thinking, working through problems, word choices, echoes, frequencies, trying to balance the colours of the word tapestry I have created.

Could I have overdone it? Can you erase your own voice, crush the life out of your writing? Maybe. My book is full of maybes. But each pass has brought me a moment of certainty – that there I have made a significant improvement, or that at last I have noticed a missing element in a scene, caught a misplaced tense, fixed a wobbly element of continuity that had for so long eluded my eye. As long as that happens it seems each pass was worth it.

So for me there is no road but the long road, and no way but the hard way when it comes to slowly wrestling my words into shape. I am reconciled to it. I think I am close, but I’ve thought that before.

Stay safe out there, keep those masks on, keep washing those hands, keep your distance and help the vulnerable among us survive another season. And that vulnerable one could be any of us, as for all the talk of risk categories it has been shown that anyone can find themselves unexpectedly in a lot of trouble, and their light could be lost to us. The nurse in me asks that you all join in the effort to let that happen to as few more people as possible.

Ain’t no way but the hard way out of a lot of things. We’ve got to get used to it, and push on through. The tide will turn.

Why I Write Fantasy: 30 Minute Fiction Edition

Okay, I have a stopwatch, and I’m not afraid to use it. I’m going to give myself 30 minutes, no more or less, and I will stop when the alarm goes off and post the result. Check out this post to get some background on the piece I shall be presenting to you.

Ok, time to grab a cup of tea, gather some stray thoughts, and be ready to write to the accompaniment of Catch the Rainbow and Mistreated by Rainbow,  off the classic On Stage album. I have a ton of other live recordings by that band, but occasionally you just have to go back to the originals you loved first. And those two songs back-to-back clock in at just under 30 minutes so I’ll have an idea where I am as I write in terms of time. Yep, the 70s, when rock songs did not end easily!

So here we have it: the first apprentice’s report on the prisoner’s tale as described in my upcoming book The Killer and The Dead. Whatever form it takes, it won’t yet be canon!

___________________________________________________________________________________________

“Damn it, the incantation didn’t… oh, it’s working! Excellent! How do I clear this off the page? Nevermind now, I’ll clean this up later. I bet I’m the first to make the speaking sprite work, haha!

“Master, you have commanded us to write an analysis of the story told by the wretch Stahl, a story he admits, and evidence strongly suggests that you forced from him, and influenced, even to his choice of words at times. I will not try to parse the web of lies, truth and intention in this report, I will leave that to the more gullible of my fellow apprentices, they can get tied in metaphysical knots over which words are his, which yours, and whether or not his supposed struggles against your will were real or feigned. Further I do not intend to interrogate your motive in presenting us this untutored clod clothed in darkness so we could not see him or even read his aura, had we the skill, which of course I possess. (Too boastful? Why not – I am proving my worth – cut this part later!)

“No, my intention is to look at what we know to be true, not why you present it to us through that medium. A wizard must cut to the truth of things, and to become a Power as you have, is to succeed in seeing past distractions. Ever our enemies seek to confound us, only the subtlest of minds can survive.

“So what is true? The Mire is real, a filth ridden shanty town on the edge of Aranvail, your rightful seat. The recent Blood Moon happened. I have it on good authority (for I have developed my own contacts in the city as you once advised us to do) that a red comet was seen streaking over the city streets the night before the Blood Moon, which corroborates, perhaps, one aspect of the killer’s tale. (Why choose a killer? What does a slayer of men, with knives, have to offer us? Cut this. Stop wandering!) The living dead in their dismal houses are real. The Doznaki and their mortal relatives in the councils of Aranvail are undoubtedly real, and rivals to your power in the city. There is certainly some sort of agreement between the living and the dead, an apportionment of rights and dominion. Is that what you seek to educate us about? The limits of this house of undead wizards, so that we may know best how to combat them in your name when the inevitable conflict comes? Is that time soon? Too many questions, be assertive, not a whining child. Ugh! Cut cut cut!

“What else? Mire denizens are the lowest the city has to offer, their lives forfeit as food for the dead residing in the crumbling Necropolis their slum lies around. But is their society as complex as the killer claims? Can so many spies and agents of alien powers all infest such a rathole? If so why? What thing of importance is hidden amidst all that decay? Does the story hint at it? More questions. I need to craft answers!

“What is true is that momentous events did happen, and somehow this man may be involved. He saw the dead in their power, perhaps, if he is to be believed, found ways to hurt some, ally with others. His crudeness does not allow me to think he lied there, he is not capable of such subterfuge. Pah! I do not want to waste my words on him, but on the real concerns of this tale – who in the Mire are the tools of your rivals and enemies, who can we find and eliminate, and what can we learn from the confused web of the mortuary worker’s words that can be of use against them and the dead? Are there allies we can use? This Radiant mentioned sounded a fearsome warrior, and what of her enemy, the Lion? His tomb could be verified I am sure, from the description given. Perhaps, if you would grant me the honour, I could lead a covert team into the Mire, to see how much of this tale is true, and how the powers are now positioned in the aftermath of that most bloody night.

“Oh enough of this, this sprite may be more trouble than it is worth! A quill and ink, and some deliberation is needed! What’s that? Who seeks to spy on me? I sense your crude attempt, begone!”

Why I Write Fantasy: To be Stymied by a Power Outage.

All right then, so I’m going to have a go at belting out something that might approach an idea I’ve been toying with: to write fictional commentaries on my next novel, The Killer and The Dead.

Now before you decide I have disappeared entirely up my own fundament, TKATD is structured as a first person narrative with a framing device of a prisoner being forced to tell the story of what he did before being captured, and why he thinks he ended up in the chair he finds himself in at the opening of the tale. Furthermore, his story, being told into darkness, is being listened to by an unknown number of apprentices, who are instructed by their master that they must write reports based on the story the prisoner, and that the worst three reports will result in their writers being culled, whatever that may mean.

Of course, the final products will be appendices, therefore placed after the action of the book, so can be fruitfully riddled with spoilers. Indeed, half the point is to show the same events within the book looked at through multiple lenses. Well maybe not half, but it does feel like an interesting avenue to explore.

So, the plan is to write a non-spoilery version of one of those reports, or at least perhaps the apprentice’s rough draft – their life may depend upon this piece of writing, so I’d imagine they would look to polish it up!

And this is where the power went out last night. Or rather, my screen died, flickered, flickered, flickered, really died at the start of the previous paragraph. I sat in darkness and waited. No joy. Gave up, went to bed by kindlelight.

Tonight. I pinkie swear.

 

The Writing Life: Sunday Night Notification – free book giveaway!

Hello everyone,

So yes, the Thursday rapid fire writing attempt did not happen – work and pool league (one I’d forgotten about) got in the way. Maybe tomorrow – I’d like to try writing a fictional report off the cuff and see what comes out. (I’ll explain more tomorrow, honest!)

So today is just a brief notification that if you want to get your hands on an ebook copy of The Thief and The Demon, then this week is the week to do it! I am giving away free ebook copies from Monday the 15th of July to Friday 19th of July!

Hope you all had a great weekend, and that this work week to come is not unduly taxing.

Happy reading!

The Writing Life: Random Thoughts on a Tuesday

Good evening.

30 minute dash.

Someday, if you own a car old enough, you too may experience the joy of locking your car with the keys still in the ignition, and the engine running. That’s what I get for owning a 1999 vehicle, and wanting to beat a dude in a red shirt into Jimmy John’s for a sandwich.

Editing software: it’s great, but just finds more things to fix. But beware, not all fixes are genuine. Trust your instincts, folks.

Yes, I’m still editing The Killer and The Dead. I’m getting closer, honest.

SPFBO has been fun so far. I’ve read a lot of the “Look inside” sections of my fellow entrants, and have been very impressed/intimidated by the talent on display! Being Scottish I am convinced my book is in a Group of Death. (This is because I’m old enough to remember Scotland going to the World Cup, and inevitably ending up in one.)  Just like everybody else in the competition really, because there are no easy groups in SPFBO. Once again, best of luck to all my fellow writers.

I’m still debating appendices for TKATD. Perhaps on a 30 minute dash tomorrow I should try writing one. Hmm, pool league. Maybe not. Thursday. I’ll blog it out in rough-and-ready glory.

The dude in the red shirt got his sandwich before me.

How did jobs operate before email? Did people circulate through offices delivering memos on square pieces of paper with the word MEMO stencilled along one edge?

I think dark and stormy nights should be reclaimed for literature. And passive sentences.

Ok, let’s call it 20 minute dash, with pauses. I feel the need to brush my teeth and then hit the hay. I have changed my role at work recently, (part of the reason I have been blogging less in recent months has been work related) and tomorrow promises to be an interesting day.

I just finished The Hound of The Baskervilles, and am lunch breaking my way through The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I need more Moriarty. I’m not optimistic I’ll get him. After this I’ll take a break from the Victorians. (I read Moby Dick and The Idiot recently. Loved them both. Did Moby Dick have a dark and stormy night somewhere? The language in that book was just so much fun!)

That’s it. Ciao.