Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 257

on writing speed

Image credit BBC. 

I received a few questions about writing speed lately, since I can usually do a rough draft in a month.

Typically, when I’m trying to write something new, I’ll do 3,000 to 4,000 words a day, more if possible. It doesn’t always happen – sometimes other stuff just takes priority, and there are things more important than writing (I missed a couple days last week because of said priorities) – but I do it whenever possible. And sometimes I surprise myself – if I’m tired and want to finish for the day, if I push a little further, sometimes I can go farther than I planned. Like on yesterday, I thought I would only write 4,000 words of GHOST IN THE PACT and then play Pillars Of Eternity, but I kept going and pushed to 7,000 words.

Now, that might sound impressive, but it just takes practice to write that fast, and I know people who can write a lot faster. I’ve written something like 50 novels at this point, and it’s a lot easier to write quickly on the 50th novel than on the 1st!

So, how did I learn to write that fast?

Basically, I failed into it.

I think it took me five or six tries to finish a novel for the first time. The first time I actually finished a novel, I started it in January, and I managed to finish it finally in August. I insisted on doing a thousand words a day, and it finally turned into this 330,000 word monstrosity. (This is when I learned the value of outlining thoroughly in advance.) When I wrote DEMONSOULED, I started it in August and finished it in December.

Originally I stuck with 1,000 words a day, but when I wrote SOUL OF SERPENTS in 2011 I upped it to 1,500 words a day, and started the book in May and finished it in mid-July. As it turns out, having people actively waiting for the next book is an excellent motivator to write! In 2012 I pushed up to 2,000 words a day. By the time 2013 rolled around, I hit my stride and dialed it up to 3,000 words a day, and have tried to stick to it ever since.

So I think it just takes practice, just like acquiring any other skill.

That said, finishing the first novel feels like an immense hurdle. It’s THE BOOK, and you think a lot about finishing THE BOOK or worrying about being unable to do so. I suppose the first time doing anything, whether writing a book or running a 5k or asking someone out on a date or driving a car or whatever, the first time is just the hardest. The trick is, of course, is that once THE BOOK is done, you write the next one, and the next one, and keep going. Every time you learn new tricks, and get a little better and a little faster.

Now, during this process, a lot of people realize that writing’s not for them. That’s fine – we all have different strengths. Or people realize they detest the business side of writing, whether in traditional publishing or self-publishing. That’s also fine – I stopped writing novels in 2010 because I had lost all respect for traditional publishing (I was going to focus on my Linux website), but fortunately I found out about the Kindle in 2011, and I took to the business of self-publishing very well. Not everyone does. I used to be baffled why certain writers didn’t self-publish, but then I realized they couldn’t – they were either unwilling or simply unable to learn the skills required, just as I didn’t want to master the networking necessary to succeed in traditional publishing.

But if you do realize that writing is for you, and you don’t mind the business side of it, and you do stick with it, eventually it does get easier.

-JM

car maintenance and writing

It seems that whenever I’m sitting in the waiting room of the local mechanic, I’m always working on either a CLOAK GAMES or a GHOSTS book. (For some reason, medical waiting rooms are always FROSTBORN books.)

But! That’s the advantage of being a writer. Many jobs you have to be in the office (or job site) to do. I have a $200 netbook I can take anywhere, and I can use that to write anywhere.

So I got 2,000 words of GHOST IN THE PACT written while waiting to find out how much I would owe the mechanic.

-JM

GHOST IN THE PACT progress update

My goal was to get to 60,000 words of GHOST IN THE PACT by Easter, and I’m pleased to report that I got to 62,000 words.

13 chapters down, 13 to go! Halfway there.

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN now available in paperback!

It took me two years, but FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN is finally available in print! Links below.

FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN ISBN-10: 1530300290 / ISBN-13: 978-1530300297

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and CreateSpace.

-JM

a short GHOST IN THE PACT excerpt

We haven’t had any excerpts from GHOST IN THE PACT yet, so let’s fix that!

“What are you thinking?” said Caina.

He blinked at her. “You don’t know?”

She smiled a little. “I’m not the one with water sorcery.”

“That lets me sense emotions,” said Kylon. “Not read minds. You’re the one who can read minds.”

She grinned, as she often did when he teased her. “I cannot read minds.”

“You can,” said Kylon. “You already know what I’m thinking. You’ll say something like ‘by the angle of your frown and the kind of dust on your boots, I deduce that you just came from the Cyrican Bazaar, and therefore ate sausage rolls for breakfast, and…’”

“I do not,” said Caina, “talk like that.”

He stared at her.

“Sometimes,” she conceded.

-JM

Where did the stormdancers in THE GHOSTS come from?

Yesterday on Facebook I mentioned that the historical Greek Fire employed by the Byzantine Empire was the inspiration for the Alchemists’ Hellfire in GHOST EXILE, so someone asked where I had gotten the idea for the stormdancers.

Now that is a long story.

The original inspiration was wuxia movies like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and HERO, movies that feature their protagonists performing physically impossible martial arts, usually explained by the heroes’ devotion to a secret school of sword fighting or virtuous discipline.

Now, a Very Long Time ago, I saw a call for submissions for an anthology of Asian-themed fantasy stories, so I wrote a story about a wuxia-style warrior trying to free a prince from a clan of shadow-wielding ninjas.* As an explanation for the warrior’s powers, I came up with the “stormdancer”, who used elemental magic of air to go faster and elemental magic of water to become stronger. I actually sold the story, but the company publishing the anthology went under and mutated into one of those scam places selling overrated editorial services, so that was that.

After that, a Slightly Less Long Time Ago, I saw another anthology for “fortress” themed short stories, so I wrote THE FALL OF KYRACE.  I’d already thought up Kyrace as sort of an ancient Greece/Atlantis type setting, and I imported the stormdancer concept into the story. (In the story, the stormdancer Rykon and the stormsinger Agia are Kylon’s distant ancestors.) The story was rejected for that anthology, and by then I was becoming thoroughly disgusted with traditional publishing (this was well before the Kindle), so I never bothered trying to sell the story anywhere else.

But! Jump forward a couple of years to 2011, and the Kindle and ebooks came along, and I was looking at continuing a second series since I realized I couldn’t write just DEMONSOULED books. Since I had already written three GHOSTS books at that point, it seemed logical to continue that series. I needed a villain for what would become GHOST IN THE STORM, and so I thought of the Kyracians. THE FALL OF KYRACE explained the enmity between the Empire and the Kyracians, and so I thought up Andromache as the main villain of the book, with Kylon as sort of her thuggish enforcer.

Except Kylon turned out to be more honorable than I had originally envisioned, and he and his sister Andromache were not the main villains of the story after all – Sicarion and the Moroaica were. And Caina and Kylon clearly clicked, so reader demand brought him back, and here we are.

So I suppose it’s appropriate that Kylon is still around thirteen books later – I started thinking about the ideas that would become the stormdancers and hence his character a long time ago.

-JM

*Yes, I am aware that wuxia is Chinese and ninjas are Japanese.

SWORDS AGAINST DEATH by Fritz Leiber

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I’ve been trying to read more classic science fiction and fantasy over the last year.  This was hard in the previous decade because so much of it was out of print, but thanks to the rise of ebooks, much more of it is available, including the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were apparently classic characters, but I never got around to reading them because they were out of print. But, thanks to Open Road Media, they’re available as ebooks.

I read SWORDS & DEVILTRY, the origin stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and thought it only indifferent. However, the sequel SWORDS AGAINST DEATH when Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser met in ill-omened Lankhmar, was much better.

It’s a frame story, consisting of a string of interconnected short stories as the exuberant barbarian Fafhrd and the sardonic Gray Mouser contest against various foes both wizardly and mundane. The short stories are only loosely interconnected, but the overarching theme concerns Fafhrd and the Gray Mouse attempting to come to terms with the deaths of their love interests, leading up to their quest to steal the mask of Death himself (hence, Swords Against Death).

I think my favorite stories were the ones with the Howling Tower, Fafhrd and the Mouser’s duel with the Thieves’ Guild, and the mysterious store where the incredible bargains are a bit…sharper…than they appear. Recommended.

-JM

Caina’s Adventuring Party

As I finished up Chapter 2 of GHOST IN THE PACT, it occurred to me that the core group of GHOST EXILE characters would translate very well to a D&D adventuring party.

Caina: Fighter / Thief (and after GHOST IN THE SEAL, the valikarion template, which applies permanent True Sight, Mind Blank, and Detect Magic abilities)

Kylon: Fighter / Mage (with bonus Detect Outsider ability)

Morgant: Fighter / Assassin

Nasser: Fighter

Laertes: Fighter

Annarah: Cleric / Mage

Claudia: Mage

Nerina: Thief (with specialization in Find Traps and Open Locks)

Azaces: Fighter

Malcolm: Fighter

The core group of villains, alas, would not be quite so balanced.

Callatas: Epic-level archmage

Kalgri: Fighter / Assassin (with nagataaru infestation template)

Cassander: Archmage

Ricimer: Mage (with nagataaru infestation template)

Erghulan Amirasku: Fighter

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST paperback now available!

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST is now available in paperback! My third paperback book of 2016.

That also makes CLOAK GAMES my first series to be entirely available in paperback. Hopefully I can catch up some of the others this year.

-JM

GHOST IN THE PACT now underway

Today I started GHOST IN THE PACT, the eight book of GHOST EXILE, and the seventeenth GHOSTS book overall.

What will GHOST IN THE PACT be about? That’s easy!

The events of GHOST IN THE THRONE were the lightning bolt.

GHOST IN THE PACT will be about the thunderclap.

-JM