Melanie Edmonds's Blog, page 39

Featured post: New Digital Storytelling

I’ve been featured on a digital writing blog! How cool is that?

New Digital Storytelling is a blog that examines the emerging, developing world of electronic word-art, collecting examples from all over the internet. I’m flattered and happy to be a part of it!

Thanks to Bryan for asking me to contribute. Here’s to hoping I can do more of this going forward.

Apocalypse Blog Book 2 now available!

After many months and much struggling to find time to work on it, the Apocalypse Blog Book 2: Rising is now available as an ebook! Huzzah!

The ebook is an extended version from the original blog, with lots of new content to enjoy. Plus, the guest writers that wrote posts for the blog kindly gave their permission for me to reproduce their work in the ebook!

The ebook is currently up on Smashwords and Amazon; it will roll out to other stores (such as Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo) over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to everyone who helped this come together. Here's hoping that Book 3 will be out soon too!

Editing the Apocalypse Blog

Over the past month, I took a hiatus from writing Starwalker and turned my attention to editing the Apocalypse Blog instead. The past four weeks have been focussed on getting the remainder of the adventure ready to be released as ebooks.

It was long overdue. I had hoped to chip away at the task while I wrote the current web serial. I had hoped to release books 2 and 3 months ago. Like many good intentions lately, that just didn't happen. Sometimes, keeping up with Starwalker was enough to keep me run off my feet! And then a new project reared its head and demanded to be written…

When it came to editing it, I found it was difficult to do it piecemeal. I may have written it that way, but when I think about putting the story into ebooks, a more consolidated view helped greatly.

It was the first time I had read the story through, end to end. There was never any time when I was writing it – I had to stay focussed on what was happening in the story at that moment – and when it was finished, I needed to put it down for a while and step back. By the time I was ready to look at it again, I was already hip-deep in the next project and time was, once again, an issue.

An inter-book hiatus in Starwalker was, therefore, the perfect time to get some editing done. I put all my current projects on hold and devoted the entire month to editing. It wasn't much of a rest (whoops!) but the change was refreshing.

My intention with converting the Apocalypse Blog into ebooks was to tidy it up and release it largely as it stands. No big restructures or reworking of the plot. No big changes. Just a quick edit and proof, and then release it into the wild.

If I'm honest, I was nervous about what I would find in editing. Writing it the way I did – writing, editing, and posting every day, and moving immediately on to the next post – was frenetic and fun, but there wasn't a lot of scope for fact-checking. Self-editing is always tricky, especially when it's so hard on the heels of the writing. I couldn't help but wonder if the Apocalypse Blog was full of errors, inconsistencies, repetition, and lazy writing.

On the whole, I'm pleased to say that my fears were unfounded. It wasn't perfect, but minor typos aside, there weren't any big problems. It seems that my self-editing isn't as bad as it could have been.

Which isn't to say that I didn't change things. Some of the negative feedback I received about the Apocalypse Blog was that there wasn't enough 'showing', and there were places where I had glossed over or summarised events rather than writing them out. Part of it was efficiency, and part of it was focus: there sometimes just wasn't time or space to do everything! However, these were easy to fix up in editing, where I can spend the time to fill it out and I'm not constrained by limited post lengths.

Preparing it for ebook release also allowed me to combine multiple posts, where an event was split over several days' posts due to the sheer size of it. That was tricky in itself; in the third book in particular, a couple of sequences of posts had to be completely reorganised, and I wound up with a couple of gaps that I had to write new posts for.

So, there's a lot of new material going into the ebooks. Many posts have been expanded and there's a couple of whole new ones. I lost count of how many words were being added, but it's probably over 10,000 words bigger than it used to be. Phew! No wonder it took me a month to edit it all.

Books 2 and 3 are currently in proofing (I have a lovely beta-reader helping me out with that, for all the mistakes that I can't see myself). The covers are ready to go (many thanks to Beth for her fast work on those!). I should be able to release the rest of the Apocalypse Blog over the next couple of weeks!

In the meantime, Starwalker is back. Time to get my tail in gear and focus on that again!

Reflections on Starwalker Book 2

As noted on the hiatus notice on Starwalker, the end of Book 2 marks several milestones for the story. Two years; two books; just over 200,000 words!

It's bewildering when I think of it in those terms. I can't believe it has been two years already! Averaging a book a year is pretty good, though, especially with everything else I have going on lately (I'm working on another novel in tandem with writing Starwalker, and I have a couple of other projects in the works too), not to mention my ever-questionable health.

(Warning: spoilers ahead!)

When I started Starwalker, I didn't have any 'books' planned. I had a set of rough chapters laid out, which turned into phases that the story is moving through. It wasn't until I approached the first 100,000-word mark that the shape of the books started to make itself known. Since then, I've been able to plot the story in slightly more purposed arcs, while still keeping true to my original plans. (The storyline isn't set in stone, but there are a few definite things I want to do with it!)

The first book wound up being about the identity of the Starwalker: the 'who' behind the ship's tweaked AI. She had a lot of discovery to do, and a lot of decisions to make about the kind of 'person' she wants to be (inasmuch as that term applies to her!).

The second book delves more into the notion of ownership (and, by extension, loyalty). As a ship that has been designed, commissioned, built, supplied, and paid for by  a company, just what is her position in the world? How much autonomy does and can she have?

Several things come up that make Starry question her priorities, and loyalty to the company might turn out to be more trouble than it's worth. But what right does she have to break free of them?

It's a fun subject. I didn't go into the legal side of it too heavily, because the Starwalker is largely acting outside the law at the best of times, but when it does come up, I'm sure the term 'slave' will be bandied about. I do love some complications!

This is a tricky subject and there was a lot of ground to cover. I was almost to the end when I realised that I wasn't going to get everything that I wanted to into the story arc:  it was heading for an ending-point and there wasn't any way to squeeze in one particular element that I wanted to do. (This plot-point will go in Book 3 now.) This is one of the pitfalls of writing on the fly like I do!

I'm usually pretty good at steering things where I want them to go. I had to get the ship back to Earth's solar system to make the end of the book work, and that was a challenge in itself! I did a lot of shuffling of pieces in my head to make that happen, but it meant that they couldn't get to that one last place to finish off the Ownership story completely (Dyne, for those keeping track).

It's one of those things that I'll fix up in editing, I think! On the whole, I'm pleased with how it all came out, and where the story is going.

I also love the reactions I've had on the twist at the end: they were exactly what I was going for! The Starwalker universe is expanding and my poor little ship is going to have to sprint to keep up. This is something that I've had in mind for most of the time I've been writing it and it was so much fun to finally get to write it in there.

It's funny to think that I've been waiting two years to write some of this stuff! And there's so much more to go yet. I'm two-thirds of the way through my original plot plan, and about to launch into Book 3. I'm not sure what to call it yet: the preliminary name is Repercussions, though I was also tossing up Responsibility for a while.

(Okay, spoilers done.)

Well, I've had almost a month off Starwalker, and it has been good to catch my breath. Soon, I'll be starting the first bit of Book 3. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, here's a bit of concept art of the Starwalker. I'm having some artwork done and this a sneak peek of a coloured sketch. You should have heard me squee when I received this! Hopefully, more coming soon:

 

Concept art for Starwalker

Still alive!

I can't believe that it has been so long since I updated this blog. I'm so sorry! It has been months, and whenever I think of it in those terms, my brain says, "Months? Nah, it can't be… oh, it is. Damn."

Every time I have thought about writing something for this blog lately, I've had the desire and intention to write a post but the time has just slipped away from me. Even now, I'm writing this on the train on the way home, taking a break from writing actual fiction.

So, what have I been up to? It has been a packed, crazy few months. Let's see if I can summarise my recent journeys in fiction and writing, and catch up to now.

November was NaNoWriMo, as it always is for me. Not just because of the challenge itself, but also because I'm a Municipal Liaison for this region. That means: prowling the forum with encouragement and aid for my faithful, madly-typing wrimos; organising and running events all over the city; putting together prizes and competitions; working full time at my day job; and, oh, writing a novel.

NaNo 2011 was a weird one. Usually, our numbers swell progressively from year to year, as word of the madness spreads and more lemmings leap off the novelling cliff into the wordcrafting updrafts. 2011, though, saw our event attendance drop, which worried my co-ML and me at first. We did everything we could think of to spread the word and it did pick up through the month (usually, it drops off!). Overall, we were really happy with how it went. We met a pile of new friends and had a blast, and we've got stacks of ideas to make NaNo 2012 bigger and better yet.

I managed to slide over the 50,000-word line without much problem, too! Despite everything that was going on, the writing came easily and quickly for me. I can't say how much of a relief that was!

I used half of the NaNo wordcount target to finish off the second book of Starwalker, which has just finished posting (phew!). It was great to get ahead of the curve for a change!

Once that was drafted, I moved on to a project that has been tickling in the back of my brain for a while now. It's a novel (rather than a serial), it's steampunk, there are kinda-sorta vampires (I struggle to take 'straight' vampires seriously), and the central protagonist is a librarian. It's possibly the first in a trilogy, as it links in with another story that I've been toying with for ages, though I'm still working out how they play together in the sandpit. I'm having lots of fun with it, though.

The end of NaNo was a relief: I was glad to put it to bed, but sad too. It's a wild ride and I'm always more than ready for a rest when it's done! A lot of December was spent recovering, as well as catching up on my day job, madly preparing for the more mundane events (like Christmas), and attempting to keep up a little momentum on my writing.

The two projects I worked on through NaNo have kept me busy since November ended. When I haven't been editing and polishing Starwalker for posting, I've been writing the steampunk. The latter is up to 70,000 words and still going strong; there's quite a long way to go there yet. I'm hoping I'm over the halfway point, but I don't like to restrict myself; we'll see where it goes.

Now that Book 2 of Starwalker has finished (more on that in another post soon!), I've decided to take a bit of a break before delving into Book 3. There is a third project that I've been struggling to get to, so I've decided to dedicate February to making a dent in it: editing the Apocalypse Blog for ebook release.

I'm up to the second book (of the main trilogy; that is, not counting the prequel). It's over 100,000 words now and it'll be even bigger by the time I'm finished. I'm hoping to get through all of Book 2 in the next month, so both of my other projects are on hiatus until 29th February.

It's a bit of a gamble. The most dangerous thing for my writing is for me to take a break, because I find it so difficult to pick up a project mid-way through after I've put it down. That's one reason why web serials work so well for me: they have additional pressure for me to keep the momentum up; and having people reading and waiting for the end pushes me to get there. So, Starwalker readers, don't fear: I'll pick that story up again. Getting back into the steampunk will be harder, though.

It will be worth it. I really want to get more of the Apocalypse Blog out (I've been getting emails asking me when more of it is going to be released in ebooks!). I want to get all three books edited and polished, and maybe look at doing a set of short stories related to it (I have plans for that somewhere). The short stories will depend on my other commitments once the ebooks are out of the way, though.

I'm certainly not short on plans. There's so much I want to do! Starwalker and related spin-offs (I'm not going to say now just how many kernels of ideas there are already growing in the Starwalker universe). AB ebooks and spin-offs. The steampunk series.

Well, fingers crossed, I'll get to it all before too long. Life, health, and work permitting!

I'm still battling with my health on a daily basis. Stress at the day job coupled with a general decline of my energy levels makes summoning up the creative juices so much harder these days (that's why I am finally writing this blog post, because I'm not quite feeling up to thinking about story this afternoon).

We've got a big deadline at work coming up in April, and I think things are going to be rocky for me until that passes. Such is the fun of being a team leader. I'm hoping that things will improve after then, but I'm becoming more and more sure that I'd really like more of my mental energy focussed on my creative writing. It's where my heart lives, and I have so little energy to go around these days. Those who know me know that I have a habit of picking up responsibilities, though, and I don't know how easy letting go will be. I guess we'll see about that.

In the meantime, I hope to not let it hold me back. I've had CFS for years now and I'm not putting my life on hold in the hopes it'll get better soon. Push through and carry on, as always.

I have an ambitious year ahead of me: AB ebook releases; Book 3 of Starwalker; submitting the steampunk for publication; more NaNo organisation. It's entirely possible that I'll be arranging a writer's retreat weekend for this November, too. It'll be hard work but so worth it!

I'm still here; I'm still writing. It's hard going right now but I'll get there. Here's to aiming high!

Creative Writing Group dates for 2012

I've just had confirmation of my writing group's dates for next year! The Brisbane Square Library is an awesome venue: right in the centre of the city, with loads of room for everyone and friendly staff.

Better yet: I was able to get all of the dates that I asked for! I haven't had to shuffle any of them around. How fantastic is that? So now the group is regularly on the second Friday of every month, like clockwork. (Coincidentally, I'm writing a steampunk thing at the moment that involves a lot of clockwork. Fun!)

Now those are set, I can work out the monthly write-in dates and we're set for the year! Whoo!

I've added the dates for next year to the Creative Writing Group page. Check there for updates, or feel free to add yourself to the update list if you want reminders of when the meetings are!

Hope to see you there. :)

Garbage in, garbage out

Or, why writers shouldn't read Twilight

Anyone familiar with software development or computer programming will be familiar with the 'garbage in, garbage out' principle (you get the same quality of material out that you feed in). Until the Digital Writer's Conference, I hadn't heard this term applied to writing before.

In Christy Dena's address, she said that writers should keep this in mind too. The quality of writing  that you expose yourself to will affect the writing that you produce.

It's not as simple as that, but the theory is sound. It's a fact that the style and quality of what you read can affect how and what you write, from phrasing to mood to literary quirks. It's not a bad thing in itself, but if you're reading crap, then that's likely to influence what you're producing.

I believe that writers should always strive to improve their skills and craft, and should read as much as possible. Absorbing tips and tricks from high-quality writing is good and can lead to a honing of your style. Learning what is bad or wrong in writing is valuable too; that's how we learn what not to do. But we should be careful that reading second-rate material doesn't drag us down!

Definitely worth bearing in mind. Support good writing and let it support you. The next time you think about picking up a trashy novel, do what's good for your writing: make it something worthwhile!

Prizes and plans

It has been another busy weekend here, gathering all the bits we need for the big NaNoWriMo Kick-Off Party. The KOP is next Sunday and there was a lot to do!

Yesterday was spent building the party bags we'll be giving away at the party, with Jordan_Lee and the lovely Sarah. I'm still waiting for the official NaNo stickers to arrive, so we couldn't complete the bags, but at least the rest of the packs have been put together now.

We took stock of all the stuff we have for the party, and it's looking good. With three sets of prizes to organise, plus the party bags and hipster PDAs, there are a lot of things to keep track of.

Today, my co-ML and I were driving around, collecting up most of the outstanding pieces of our KOP puzzle.

First stop was Roma Street Parklands, where the party will be held, to check the scavenger hunt clues. It's lucky that we did, as lots had changed since the scouting mission that Jordan_Lee and I did a couple of months ago! The hunt has been adjusted and will now hopefully all make sense.

Next up was the Coffee Club at Milton, which is where we camp out through November. They treat us well, letting us spread out in the back of the restaurant and wire up dozens of laptops for our write-ins. We also spend piles of money there on coffee, food, and drink, so they do pretty well too! They've given us $150 in vouchers to give away, so a big thanks to them.

Third stop of the day was Avid Reader bookstore, to pick up a book from Trent Jamieson. He had kindly offered to donate a copy of his latest book, Roil (which is great, btw!), and threw in a copy of Managing Death as well. Fantastic! We now have a healthy pile of autographed books to give away, dominated by Trent.

Heavily laden with goodies, Jordan_Lee and I headed into Office Works on the way home, to pick up some last bits to fill out the prize packs.

Phew. So it's been a hectic day. Just a few more bits to sort out over this week and we're all set.

In between all of that, I've been writing out notecards for the new story that has been scrabbling around in my brain all week. It's steampunk and it's supernatural, and that's all I'm saying right now. But if I get the second book of Starwalker finished during NaNo, I'll be starting on that.

Can't wait. I'm exhausted, I have a million things running around in my brain, but I'm buzzed and eager to get going.

Ooo, and the All Blacks just won the Rugby World Cup. Whoo!

Writing, talking, absorbing

The writing events are coming thick and fast lately! And it's only going to get worse (or better, depending on your perspective) for me as November gets bigger in the windscreen.

The weekend was packed full of writing events, rather like last month's weekend of writing and awesomeness but with less birthday celebrations. Once again, the Creative Writing Group meeting coordinated with other events. This time, however, there were a lot more than two festivals competing for attention!

I managed to get to two of the festivals on offer. These were the Emerging Writers' Festival – specifically, the Digital Writers' Conference that was held as part of the EWF – and the Write Around Moreton Bay: Readers and Writers Festival. Big thanks to the lovely Elle, who gifted her Digital Writers' Conference ticket to me.

Both days were jam-packed, fun, and informative. I had a great time, met interesting people, and caught up with some familiar faces. I also got to hang out with a good friend, so it was all good!

Today, I've got pages of notes that I have to write up into coherent blog posts, a Starwalker post to finish (as I was sick last week and didn't manage to get it up), and some formatting of ebooks to do. Looks like taking the day off work to rest hasn't led to a lot of resting! But I'm feeling well enough to get started, so might as well get to it. Onwards!

Digital revolution

There has been a lot of attention lately on the digital revolution of textual content, and this was the subject of a talk at this year's Brisbane Writer's Festival. As someone who is getting increasingly involved in e-publishing of various stripes, I was interested in what professionals in the writing industry had to say on the subject.

Overall, I would say that the talk was a big disappointment. There was a lot of doom-and-gloom, nay-saying, and general bleakness with regard to the future of writing as a business as text is increasingly delivered digitally. I walked out feeling incredibly negative about the whole thing, which is not the best message to leave an audience with.

I don't disagree with most of what was said by the speakers, but I don't believe that the talk was representative of the 'digital revolution'* or digital writing markets.

Most of the problem with the talk was the selection of the speakers. They were involved in literary publications, publishing, and journalism. In other words, they were involved in the areas of the business most likely to be hit hard by a move towards digital media. There was no representation of fiction writers or indie publishers, or anyone else who might offer a different perspective on this 'revolution'*.

So, given that the talk was slanted in a particular direction, what did they have to say about the current climate for writers and publishers?

Publishers

The increase of the digital market is hurting publishers – namely, the big ones. According to one statistic given in the talk, traditional publishers are finding that their paper book (cutely known as 'p-book', I'm told) sales are going down faster than their ebook sales are going up. This is, naturally, a cause for concern.

Interestingly, however, traditional publishers' profits are still going up. They are not losing money due to the digital markets or their overall sales going down. And yet the atmosphere among the publishers is one of doom and panic.

This suggests a couple of things to me:

Traditional publishers do not know how to optimise the digital market yet, and don't have the appropriate business models in place. Basically, they need to catch up with the times and figure out how to make it work.
If their profits are going up while their sale volumes are going down, that means that they're taking a bigger chunk out of the digital sales than they are out of the paper sales. This means that the cost savings of digital over paper books are not being passed on to the authors, and the authors are probably getting crappy royalties. (That's what it looks like – I'd love to be wrong about this!)

The move from physical to digital media does mean a big change for traditional publishers, and I don't know how agile they are being in this transition. From the things I'm hearing, their agility is elephantine!

Newspapers and Journalism

Newspapers are moving into the digital world and away from paper publications. The cost of printing newspapers is increasingly being seen as prohibitive, and it is believed that once the baby-boomers die off, the culture of reading newspapers in paper form will go with them.

It's hard to know if these two things are true. I suspect that the second point is probably right: generations X and Y don't have the same newspaper-reading habits that the older generations have. The culture is simply not the same, and moving away from it towards instant digital gratification.

The first point is, I believe, a misnomer. There are plenty of papers around who publish at a loss, compared to the money they receive from sales of the paper, and there are many free papers on offer. This is not a new phenomonon. So how do they survive? Pure sales revenue is not how they make their money; advertising revenue is where their profit lives. Like Facebook, they can afford to give their product away for free because their real customers are the advertisers.

The same is true for online content: there are lots of ways to monetise content without charging the reader for it. Newspapers are moving towards this model. However, in the process, there seems to be other changes happening.

A problem that was mentioned several times through the talk is the perceived cheapness of digital content. This perception is across the board; it's not just readers, but vendors and publishers as well. No-one wants to pay much for it, because it is seen as quick and easy to deliver, and often of a lower quality than paper-published content. (Note: this is a common perception, not my opinion.)

This means that 'serious journalism' is at risk. Where (traditional) newspapers have journalists on staff and are willing to pay them for several weeks or even months' worth of investigation for a particular piece, the belief is that digital newspapers won't support this. They will pay for the content by the word (or similar length-based currency), not for the time it took to create it. Serious in-depth journalism will be too expensive to support, which means it will become impossible to make a living this way.

That is, without public help. In the talk, analogies were drawn between the digital revolution and the introduction of radio and television. In order to maintain material of quality and 'cultural value' in an increasingly commercial landscape, public (government) support was required. Hence, the BBC was born (or ABC, depending on where you are). It was suggested that the same will need to be done for journalism. (Doesn't the BBC already have a serious news site? Isn't this already catered-for to a degree? Questions I wish there had been time to ask!)

Whether there is government-funded papers or not, the business of journalism is changing. Digital content writers are already out there making money from this, and they will tell you how much the market is changing every day. One of the speakers at the talk mentioned that making a living from writing (meaning: journalism or non-fiction articles) will become impossible. Serious journalism will move into the hobbyist's realm, and they'll all have to get day jobs to put food on the table.

This sounds familiar. That's because it's the lot of 90% of fiction writers – only the very biggest sellers can afford to live off what they make from their books alone. It makes me sad to think that other types of writing might be sliding into the 'hobby' zone when I'd like to see the opposite become reality.

Literary Magazines

Literary publications in the digital realm have problems with the same cause as journalists: digital content and publication is seen to be cheap and easy, and so no-one is willing to put the same kind of money into it as they are for a paper publication. For literary magazines, which rely largely on donations and grants, this means that funding can be cut if they move online; apparently, they don't 'need' as much money as they did pre-digital! Some publications have already lost funding in this way.

I guess this means that publishers of literary content are being forced to find other revenue streams to support their work. Is this good for the industry? It's hard to say. It opens up a few questions:

Is there enough money to pay for quality editing?
Will literary fiction suffer by being commercialised?
Will literary publications be forced to close?

The opinions at the talk seemed to be centred on the need for public (that is, government) support for the arts to ensure that quality, culturally-important material is still produced and published for the world to see.

Libraries

This is an interesting subject. Libraries are being forced to change by the move towards digital media, and it will be interesting to see exactly what that means in the long run.

Will the perception of 'digital=cheap' hurt them too? Will it lead to a reduction in funding for libraries? I hope not, as in this case, it could be particularly counter-intuitive. For libraries to keep stocks of digital media, they will need servers, archives, back-up systems, IT maintenance, and the power to keep it all running.  Or might libraries become more centralised and 'virtual'? Is that a good or bad thing?

Quality

One of the concerns that was raised in the talk was about the quality of digital content. The truth is that it is cheap and easy to publish online, especially if you forego professional aspects of writing. Namely: editing, formatting, and design.

In paper publications, editors and publishers are the gatekeepers of quality (and from many of the books I've read, they're not that good at ensuring error-free text, either: I've been tempted to take to more than one book with a red pen and send it back to the publisher). In digital publications, there do not have to be any gatekeepers at all; that is both the appeal and drawback of the digital realm. So how is quality ensured?

Honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I think that writers should take pride in their work and go to the effort to make sure that it is correct and professional, especially if they are charging money for it. I go to pains to edit and proof the work I offer for free, because quality matters to me. I'm also aware that not everyone cares about it as much as I do.

 

It's a lot to think about, and going over it again leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't believe that the 'digital revolution' is as drastic or doom-laden as some would like to believe. Things are changing and the publishing industry as a whole needs to move with it. Old roles will change, and new ones will open up.

I believe that writers have a lot of opportunities in front of them right now. It's not easy to find your way through the morass of information and speculation being thrown around, but I don't think it's as dire or as shiny as the various parties would like us to believe. There will always be writing; let's embrace the new ways of delivering it to people and keep pushing forward.

* I put these words in quotes because, while they're being bandied about at the moment, they always sound melodramatic to me. I haven't seen anyone launching at paper with digital pitchforks yet. Perhaps that's next month!