Steve McHugh's Blog: Steve McHugh - Writer, page 32

Tagged

There’s this game going round the blogging word called tagged. Someone posts a blog with 11 questions and answers and then tags 11 people to come up with answers to another 11 questions and link back to the original blog.

Originally I thought I wouldn’t take part as I had a lot to do. But last week’s Tagger Tammy E. A. Crosby gave such good questions that I couldn’t help but take part.

So without further ado, here are the 11 questions she posted along with my answers.

1. You’re dead. What’s the one accomplishment you wished you’d achieved before you died?

I wish I’d found the cure for whatever I’d died of.

2. You find out you’re a witch, what’s the first spell you want to cast?

Like a female witch? If I find out I’m a hot female witch, I’m probably going to be a while before I get round to casting any spells. Just sayin’.

3. You’re the next contestant on Survivior. You can only take one material item with you (aside from pictures of loved ones etc), what item can you not live without?

My Macbook Pro. I can use it to write, and if anyone annoys me, use it to bludgeon them to death. That is the point of Survivor… right?

My Precious.

4. You’re stranded on a desert island with someone of the same sex. You’re lonely, they’re hot. Do you consider experimenting?

I think I’d be too busy trying to figure out how to get off the damn island.

5. You could pick one of your favourite foods to be non fattening, what would it be?

Bacon! Everything tastes better with bacon. (Well not everything, but bacon is still awesome.)

6. Your fairy godmother shows up, she says she can give you one special skill to help  you succeed in life, what do you ask for?

Telepathy. I’m pretty certain I could succeed in anything if I could read everyone’s mind whenever I liked.

7. If you could choose to be immortal, would you?

Do I get a sword and have to be the only one? Because that sounds like a lot of work. And if you don’t, then it would get really dull, really quickly.

But at least I could probably manage a Scottish accent.

8. The devil appears to you. Says he’ll give you anything you ask for at all in exchange for your soul. Would you do it? If so what would you ask for?

No, I kinda like my soul where it is. Be nice to have a chat with him though, bet he plays a mean guitar solo. Probably listens to Sabbath.

If you play War Pigs backwards, you can hear the Devil ask you if you haven't got anything better to do with your time.

9. You’re told you’re being shipped off to another planet to populate it because your genes are just that outstanding. You can only take a famous person with you to be your mate, who do you request?

As my wife reads these, I’m just going to move right along and say nothing. Nope, not me, I wouldn’t take anyone. Hi Honey. Love you. *cough*

10. Your spouse cheats on you. There are no kids involved. What do you do to get some revenge on the cheating spouse?

I leave her. No revenge required. Revenge leads to hatred, and hatred to the dark side, it does.

11. You are caught up in the middle of a bank robbery. During the robbery some cash falls and lands close to you. Do you slide it into your pocket, or leave it?

I’d leave it, not out of some altruistic response, but because knowing my luck it would be the ink pack.

I’m going to take a break from the posting it to 11 people as most of them would have already had this sent to them. But if anyone is interested in taking part. Here’s 11 more questions—feel free to post the answers on your blog or in the comments section below.

You can spend one day in your partner’s body, able to read all his/her thoughts, etc. Would you do it?

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your 16-year-old self?

You can go on a date with one currently living famous person, who?

If you could travel to any time in history, where would you go and why?

What skills do you possess that would help you survive a zombie apocalypse?

You can be any comic book superhero – Who would you be?

If you could choose any one book to be made into a movie, what would it be?

You’re at the concert for your favourite band. They ask you to get on stage with them. Who are the band, would you do it, and what would you do on stage (sing, play instrument)?

You could live out the story from any one book. What book would it be?

What’s your favourite movie vampire?

You can become any supernatural creature, which one would you become?

March Madness

Seeing how Crimes Against Magic will launch mid-April, I want to get the second book finished before then. Or at the very least, I want it in a readable way so that I can send it off to my hugely talented writing partners (Michelle Muto and D.B Reynolds) who’ll go through it with a big red pen.

I took part in, and finished, Nano last year. It was a long slog in places, but an enjoyable one in a sadistic sort of way. The only problem was that after I finished, I had a lot to do on CAM and the second book (Born of Hatred) became a little relegated.

A few weeks ago my writing partners informed me that they’re going to do a sort of March Nano. It’s not exactly Nano, there’s no 50k achievement to do, but each of us have our own word count we want to hit. Mine’s about 30k.

Things didn’t really start well. Life got in the way of actual work and I managed about 3k in 7 days. But now I seem to be on track. 3k in 2 days is a much better amount, and it’s gaining steam once again. Hopefully by the end of March Born of Hatred will be finished, or at least that draft will be and then I’ll be getting Crimes Against Magic finalised for release.

So, that’s it for this week. Another short one I’m afraid, but I really do need to get BoH finished, and sort out the promotion stuff for CAM. But next week should be something more substantial. Probably.

Cover

It’s going to be a short one this week, mostly because I’m trying to finish book 2 before the end of March (or at least get the draft and edits done) as well as get Crimes Against Magic ready.

I actually had a whole piece ready about what software I use to aid me in my writing, I’ll probably post it next week. In the meantime. I’ve got something a bit more exciting to share.

After weeks of waiting, I’m finally ready to reveal the cover to Crimes Against Magic, created by my very talented friend Eamon O’Donoghue.

It feels almost weird that my cover is right there. Weird but very, very cool.

March of Ideas

Everyone occasionally has that thought where something pops into their head and they think, “Hey that would make a good movie/tv show/advert/book etc.” Most people then file that idea in a big box marked Imagination’s Home and forget all about it, moving on with their lives or promising that one day they’ll finally write the story/screenplay they always wanted to.

I typed "Gothic Chest" into Google. That was my first mistake. I wish very much that there are things I could un-see.

I’m not sure if the same is for all writers, but for me, I don’t get that luxury of filing things away for future use. I get to think about the idea, to ponder and shape it until it becomes something I can work with. For the most part I love this part of my brain—it’s what allows me to shape my words and worlds into something I can almost feel.

And then there’s the other times.

At the moment, apart from editing CAM, I’ve been writing the second book in the series. Unfortunately my imagination doesn’t seem to care about this at all, because a few weeks ago I got an idea for a story. It was only a glimmer at the time—a tiny fragment of something I thought was quite cool. Over the past two weeks, the idea has tried to muscle its way into my thoughts at every conceivable moment. This includes when I’m working on actually finishing the book I’m meant to be writing.

It happens quite often with me, I’ll be in the middle of one thing and my imagination wants me to do something else. My imagination, you see, is a small puppy that needs constant attention less it start driving me bloody insane. The last time I gave in, it resulted in pages and pages of notes about a second series of books staring someone just coming into their abilities. And the time before that it was a fantasy story.

You trying saying no to this face!

My imagination won’t let it go, so for the passed two weeks I’ve tried to give it the time it clearly craves. And I think the end results will be quite good. It’s certainly not something I ever thought I was going to write, although it will require a lot of research. There’s only one problem; it’s in the same series as CAM, but much further down the line, which means I’ll have my brain telling me to hurry up and write it for the next few years.

The weird thing is, no matter how much I wish my imagination would let me finish what I’m trying to do, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I love that it forces me to think about ideas outside of what I’m currently involved in. I love that it challenges me. But still, sometimes it’d be nice to have a switch so that I could only concentrate on what I need to get finished. Only sometimes though.

On another matter, I got to see the first draft of the cover for Crimes Against Magic. I was considering showing everyone, but I think I’d rather wait until it’s finished before unveiling it. But it’ll be soon. Very soon. And it’ll be totally worth the wait.

The Editing

There hasn’t been a blog for a few weeks as I’ve been sick, but I’m all better now so let’s continue with something that all writers have to go through. Editing.

There are very few people who enjoy editing their books. Mostly because it means having to switch off the little voice inside your head that says, “No don’t delete that sentence, it’s so funny and clever, why do you hate me? No don’t do it, I… noooooooooo.”

But once you’ve melted your creativity into a large puddle of goo, you need to set about making your story better.

It's a bit like this, but less delicious.

At the moment, I’m preparing Crimes Against Magic to get published in April, and that means editing. Over and over again.

I’m very lucky in that I have a lot of excellent friends who took their time to go through the book with a fine-tooth comb and point out all of my failings. Any plot point which doesn’t make sense, or spelling which looked like it was written by an orang-utan. They’re an excellent group, and they offer some very good suggestions.

To be fair, the orang-utan probably has a better grasp on spelling than I do.

The problem with having a group of people reading your work is that you very quickly realise you can’t please everyone. One person won’t like a prologue, another won’t like a flashback or a fight scene or a whole character. You can’t make your work universally loved. It’s never going to happen. And that’s something you, as a writer, need to realise as quickly as possible. That’s why you should always write the book for you. Write something you want to read. Everyone else is a bonus.

So, once you’ve gotten passed the portions of the book that you don’t want to change, it’s down to the nitty-gritty. Unnecessary sentences, words and grammar that don’t need to be there or are just wrong. No one is going to have a perfect book first time, in fact I’ve been through Crimes Against Magic a number of times and I still pick up the occasional word that shouldn’t be there, or piece of incorrect formatting.

So, now the book is in a way that I’m happy with. But the edits don’t stop. Next I’m going to read it out loud, mostly because you can catch all kinds of problems with it by doing so, especially speech that doesn’t sound right. And when I’ve done that… well, hopefully it’ll be finished for good, although I’m sure I’ll want to check it again, just to make sure.

At some point I’ll have to stop though, otherwise I’m just editing for the sake of it and not actually doing anything productive.  Besides I’ve got book 2 I need to get finished and unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to write itself.