I.H. Laking's Blog, page 4

The Inbetweeners: My Experience With Post-Novel Fatigue.

I never thought this would happen.

Six weeks have passed since I signed off on my novel series. In my mind, I figured that I’d just walk away, and move onto my next project. I already have a storyline plotted out for another Inspector Ambrose story.

But strangely, I’ve found myself stuck. It’s not a confidence thing, or writer’s block. It’s not even the fact that I’ve started a new day job. The best way I can describe my current experience is a period of quiet settling down – an inbetweener period, if you will. It’s as if the fatigue of pushing so hard to finish this story I had to tell has finally caught on with me.

So, a few things have been running through my mind during this period. I’ve thought about stories from the world beyond the Empire. I’ve mulled over Inspector Ambrose’s journey, and where he’ll go next, and I’ve been looking into the next steps in terms of getting my novels published. As I’ve tried to get going on the next thing, I’ve found myself losing focus, and struggling to even put pen to paper for planning purposes.

The hardest thing about this period, however, has been the listless feeling as I’ve tried to gather my thoughts and redirect my creative energy. It’s been tough, but at the same time, I think it’s necessary to give your mind time to unwind from the intensity of writing for so long. Rest isn’t easy to settle into, but as I’m coming out of this period of downtime, I’m feeling hopeful for the future.

So where to from here? Well, today I’ve decided to finally leap into actually writing the next Inspector Ambrose novella I’ve been planning for about a year. It’s gonna be a wild ride, but I’m looking forward to shaking off my fatigue and getting back into writing again.

Inspector Ambrose is on his way.

Novel Writing 15: The End of the Road.

It all ended so fast.

DONE! Today, at 17:20PM, I finished my trilogy here under the dome the @Library_Vic reading room.

Novel Writing 14: Overtime.

75,000 words.

Overnight I officially hit a new word count milestone, marking my third novel as my longest yet – and with around twelve chapters to go (by my approximation), there’s no sign of things letting up anytime soon. Current estimates put me in around the 100,000 word mark(!) before editing.

Considering that I was wondering about splitting this novel in half at one stage, I’ve done well to pull it back, and on balance, I feel great about how things are going.

In fact, I feel fantastic.

There’s a point in time when I’m writing that I get into a groove, and the story just flows. Currently, I’m right there: all the pieces of the various plots are coming together, and I’m ready to drive the story home. It’s taken a little longer to get to a conclusion than I expected, but it’s been well worth the time taken.

So here’s to overtime, and the completion of this epic adventure!

Novel Writing 13: The Home Stretch.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been running for a long time.

It was almost a year to the day that I started writing my first novel. Since then, I’ve written over 210,000 words.

Scarily, that means I’m now in the home stretch.

Bringing everything together at the end of this trilogy has been about as challenging as I figured it would be. There are multiple strands to tie together in order to bring a sense of completion to this tale, which started out small, but has ended up epic in a wonderful way.

At this point in the writing process, I’m finding my pre-work to be invaluable. I’m often looking back to my synopsis, maps, and details that I’ve written about specific relationships and histories in order to keep the story on the right track. I’ve even mocked up a zoomed-in map of Traville, the Empire’s capital, in order to keep a track of what’s happening where – and it’s proving extremely useful!

I’m hoping to finish the first draft of the final book this week – it’s sitting around the 65,000 word mark, with plenty still to go down before the glorious conclusion! So it’s back to writing for me, right after I finish the AMA I’m doing on Reddit at the moment!

Tough Days Come, Tough Days Go: A Reflection.

Today was a tough day.

Like many of you reading this, I work a job in order to keep the lights on. I’ve been writing for over two years now, and in my current state, don’t earn enough from my novella series to write full time. So, as part of my ongoing quest to keep food on the table, I’ve been job hunting recently. That’s what got me down today, but let me back things up for a moment.

One thing that I’ve always been open about is my struggle with depression. I talk frankly about depression because I want other people to be encouraged that you can get through it, regardless of where you’re at.

My worst struggles with depression were during my teenage years and my early twenties, when I went through the most difficult phase of my life and was particularly directionless. One constant through all my times of feeling down has been great people who’ve been there for me as I’ve struggled – not judging, just supporting me as I figured things out.

These days, it’s rare for me to have a really bad day of feeling down, but today I was particularly knocked off guard by a job interview where I felt my faith (I’m a Christian, another thing I’m quite open about) was on trial by one member of the panel that was interviewing me.

After feeling quite confronted during the morning interview, I found myself really struggling, and as I settled in to write later on I felt as flat as I’ve ever been, with a lack of hope clawing at my mind, as I questioned why I’d been hauled over the coals for my beliefs (I trained to be a Minister a long time back).

My afternoon sped by into the evening, where all I wanted to do was waste the hours away until bed. But after all that, I’ve found myself here, writing an extraordinarily different reflection for you all. The reason I do this is that i’ve come home, talked it out with my wife, watched a bit of TV, and had a meal. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started to feel a bit lighter; the spark returned. And as I’m sitting here, I feeling a million times better as a result of keeping going.

So if you’re reading this and you’re feeling down, or if you know someone who’s struggling with depression, I want to encourage you today: you can get through it. Things do get better. I’m not saying that I live in a perfect, zen-like state, but I have found that tough days come, and tough days go – just make sure you’re there for the next sunrise, and never lose hope.

That’s it for today – for those are interested, I’m 50,000 words in on the final novel, and about to go do some more writing.

The Right Result: A New Short Story.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Today, I’m pleased to share my latest short story with you – conscious that I haven’t posted a lot of new work of late, with my continuing focus on my novel drafts.

The Right Result is a short story I’ve entered in the NYC Midnight short story competition. As such, there were specific criteria: the story had to be under 2,500 words, be in the fantasy genre (yay!), and feature a day trader and a night school.

I’m fairly happy with the result; I had to write and edit the piece within an eight day period, and thanks to some excellent beta readers, I was able to fine-tune it a bit before the submission deadline.

Without further ado, here it is: The Right Result.

Novel Writing 12: My Plotting & Pacing Process.

I’m now over 25,000 words into the first draft of my latest novel. As things continue to come together, I’ve been thinking about the techniques I use to bring my plot together and keep it punchy.

Before I started writing my current trilogy, I sat down and worked through a series of world-building exercises, which helped me to create the topography and setting of the Empire. My Inspector Ambrose stories were a chance to explore the Empire’s capital, Traville, but now I had to spread my wings and look around the far corners of the world I was creating.

On top of the setting, I had to think about the characters I was writing about. What did they want? Why were they in the story? The way characters think directs the action, so this part took a significant chunk of time, making sure I had a solid understanding of who was in the story, as well as the world they lived in.

All that work has paid off as I’ve written, because I can refer back to my map, notes, and understanding of what does and doesn’t work in the Empire. So Step 1 is to do your pre-work. By making sure you know the world you’re writing about, you’ll avoid shattering the faith of readers when your protagonist gets into an entirely illogical situation.

After the pre-work, Step 2 is to write a rough synopsis. I go through and write the whole story in one big blab. It’s simply a long series of paragraphs detailing the rough way I see things playing out, and who’s going to be affected by each situation. I then jot down chapter titles to give myself an idea of roughly how long I’ll spend on each scene. Normally, I’ll have several crucial scenes in mind that I can see being the pinnacle of the story. There may even be a couple of these scenes; in the second book of this trilogy, I had one scene in mind, and it took me about 65,000 words to get to it.

Finally, the last step is actually part of the writing process proper. Step 3 is to check that pacing stays snappy. Now, J. K. Rowling does this really well in the Harry Potter series. She doesn’t let things die down; with a swift sentence, Rowling moves the action into the next scene. Now in my current story, I’ve managed to double the amount of chapters I thought I’d need to get to my current point in the storyline. I’m not too worried at the moment, because I think it’s important to let a story flow as it needs to; you can always go back and trim later.

So there you have it; the three steps I use to develop my plot and keep pacing in check. As my writing continues to roll on, I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Thanks for dropping by!

Novel Writing 11: A New Story Takes Shape.

And so it rolls on.

I’m now 20,000 words into my third novel – and that number feels like its come out of nowhere. About ten months ago, I started writing my first novel proper, after much preparation. I ran quite hard to complete the first draft for each of the two novels within a few months each, and then did some intense refining to allow them to get into beta reading fairly quickly.

Now I’m well into the third novel, I’m finding it’s taking on a life of its own, just like the previous stories. Each novel had a rhythm to it, which sets it apart from the last. I’m glad that I’ve taken time to plan each novel in a different style as well, since they’ve all needed their own tweaks in terms of story and character development.

For now, it’s back to writing for me, as I aim to keep this writing train on track.

 

What’s Next? A Lesson from David Bowie & Anna Wintour.

“Ok, what’s next?”

A few months ago, I had the privilege of visiting David Bowie Is, an exhibition that catalogued the life and career of David Bowie. With his passing yesterday, I’ve found myself reflecting on a man who had an enormous impact on pop culture over five decades, and in particular, Bowie’s refusal to stay still.

It’s cliche to say that David Bowie refused to be put in a box. Looking through his career at the exhibition, I was amazed by Bowie’s contributions to movies, art, music, and fashion – from his involvement with Jim Henson in Labyrinth, to his collaboration with a young Alexander McQueen, Bowie was always a step ahead. So what is it that enabled him to defy expectations so easily? He made a simple, ongoing choice.

David Bowie refused to settle. It would have been easy for Bowie to fall into a pop icon role and end up touring the lucrative greatest-hits circuit, playing to older fans; but he never let himself get pinned down. He moved, he innovated, and he pushed himself to keep growing. The ultimate example was when Bowie retired the iconic Ziggy Stardust live in concert, without even his band knowing the announcement was coming.

With those kind of unexpected choices, David Bowie never let himself become a has-been. And let’s face it, we’re all afraid of losing our mojo. Personally, I started writing detective stories because I wanted to stretch myself. The challenge I’m taking from David Bowie’s life is to never rest on my laurels; that’s why the novels I’m releasing this year will be different from my previous work, and I’ll challenge myself to keep changing and adapting as time goes on.

I want to leave you with a quote from one of David Bowie’s biggest fans, Anna Wintour. In The September Issue, Ms Wintour has just finished overseeing the release of the Vogue September issue. She looks at the finished mockup, gives a satisfied nod of her head, then moves it to the side. Rather than resting on her success, she pushes the old mockup to the side and says three words, which are a challenge to all of us:

“Ok, what’s next?”

I’m sure David Bowie would be asking the same thing.

Revisiting an Old Classic.

Well, maybe it’s not quite a classic, but it’s where I started.

Yesterday I finished reformatting my original steampunk mystery novella, What Went Wrong With Mrs Milliard’s Mech? Editing the novella was an enlightening experience to say the least, one that was spurred on by a review I received on Amazon almost a year ago, which used my novella to complain about the death of the English language.

When I first read the review, I was mortified, and a touch defensive. I assumed the author was just venting and a little grumpy. I did a scan through my work, and found a few errors, which I fixed. Feeling I had dealt with the issue, I moved on. But underneath my attempts to quickly solve the issue, I found niggling doubt was needling away at me. I put off going back to see how my writing really was for the longest time. In truth, a large part of me was afraid – I didn’t want to cringe at my early work again, and find this reviewer’s assessment to be accurate.

But with the new year arriving, I finally plucked up the courage to stop writing new material, and started reading my old work.

And I discovered that the reviewer was right. Here are some of the key things I picked up:

I wrote my novella in block paragraphs: This was the first thing that struck me. During my initial scan of the manuscript I found myself thinking “where’s the dialogue?” …and then I would find it, stuffed into the middle of a massive text block.

Oh, the pain.

I spent several hours just breaking the text up and making it easier to read. This led me to my next thought.

People have been incredibly gracious in their reviews: Seriously. Mrs Milliard’s Mech has a 3.5 star rating overall. I feel like I was in la-la land thinking that was justified. Now that I’ve made the book more readable, I feel that rating is about right.

The story comes to a close abruptly: This was something people pointed out me, and I agree with them now. Despite this, I’ve made a controversial decision: I’m not going to smooth this out. I want my work, which is free to download and enjoy, to represent exactly where I was at when I wrote it. I pulled the novella together over a weekend, and published it not long after, with a great naivety as to what that would mean; other people scrutinising my efforts.

I know the decision to not extend the story at this moment might mean a few less people download my other novellas, but that’s my decision. The story isn’t perfect, but it’s a perfect representation of an author starting out on their writing journey.

Which brings me to my final point.

The quality of my writing has dramatically improved: That’s the biggest thing I’m taking away from my formatting work. I certainly enjoyed my writing style overall in my novella, but with two years of experience under my belt now, I know I’m continuing to improve every day. You can even see the improvements from my first detective novella to my last, to be fair – and as I write my current series of novels, I’m confident they’re a much better representation of the story I’m trying to tell.

So that’s it. The reformatted work is now up on Amazon, and you can download it if you’re so inclined. It’s certainly better than it was. If you’d like to see part of the original manuscript, you can check it out here. My next step is to reformat The Vanishing Villa, and The Murder at Mansfield Manor, even though everything within me just wants to keep writing new material.

Thank you for your ongoing support everyone, and have a fantastic new year.