Eight days a Week

Five books a year! Why? ‘Cos it’s an O b s s e s s i o n!!! Obsession! Madness. Just see Hugh Howeys message for how interesting life has to be if you want to ‘be a writer’ – and maybe make enough money to put food in the cupboard (or pay medical bills, or chemist bills, or vet bills, or update computer equipment, or get a printer that works without magic tricks, etc. etc. etc.)

I will write five books a year – that’s books in novel type that can be put out in paperback. Three down (Blood List [neo-noir], Speculations of a Dark Nature [shorts in spec fic] and now [fantasy, YA] The Narrung Sagas Book I – The Journey of Shadow). Two more to get out before the end of the year.

One I’ve got up as a pre-release – Unknown Sins. YA, Science fiction with a tickle (not that sort of tickle!) of romance. First, second, third, fourth drafts and revisions complete – and then I didn’t like the end and deleted 50% of the novel. Yep – did it again. It’s getting to be a habit.

I write up an outline, do a plan, write up scenes and scene sequences, put up this bit and that bit, play and play, then sit down and write my bloody socks off until the first draft is complete. At this stage, it’s a very rough piece of work, but it’s complete in terms of what i outlined and planned.

Then – the most important bit – I leave it alone, in hibernation I suppose, while I work on another project (The Third Moment [contemp sci-fi, urban fantasy, YA]). A big project, so the first one can be put on the back burner and do its thing in isolation, no disturbance or finessing stuff.

By the time I get the new project to the stage of the first project and go back, lift it out and dust it off, I can see with fresh (I won’t say clear eyes – blurrinesss comes from being a writer who works 12-16 hours a day, 8 days a week, and hasn’t had a holiday in – loss of memory here – 7 or 8 years, and that was a weekend) perspective. And sometimes it doesn’t look too good. Sometimes, it needs a fairly solid kick in the pants. The idea may be good, the construct or concept may be okay – but sometimes I need to re-read and re-cut and burn and blast and cut and slice until it becomes a more ‘enjoyable’ story. Something I would be happy to read (yes, I am a reader first – always I write to enjoy what I read).

And it starts all over again. Edit, review, redraft. Cut, polish, cut the bit just polished (a bit that was great words, but not part of the story, perhaps).

My number one rule (no, probably about No. 101 rule) – don’t do a ProofRead until the story is whole and complete and enjoyable. It is a waste of time to work on finessing a line or a word or a sentence (etc.) if it’s only going into the ‘delete’ button because it shouldn’t have been there in the first place (what a waste of time to proofread as you write – please just write first).

I have learned to be extremely frugal so I can do this. I have taught my other half to be extremely frugal so I can have an on-hand dabbler in the research field, and someone to yell at when it doesn’t go well, and someone to support when necessary. We have learned to be frugal, but now we have a problem.

Even being extremely frugal isn’t going to cut it in Australia. Our government wants to destroy the industry. For real. It keeps getting beaten down, and they keep putting it back on the table.

I’d like it if the people considering these issues were artists (and preferably the ones who have had to learn to live frugally) so they could put in the concept of our obsessive 8-day week to be who we need to be.

Please. Don’t let them do this.