Synopsis

Writing the synopsis of a 76,000 story in 300 words is a bastard.  As an unknown writer this is your one shot to impress the publisher.  If the synopsis reads as bollocks, will they even look at the manuscript?  Probably not.
Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself‘ keeps popping into my mind…without the, “Yo”s.
Using a, soon to be published, friend’s (Iris) synopsis as a reference I wrote my first draft last Friday.  Instantly scrapping it and writing a second on Saturday.  Unlike the novel, this is a laborious and zero-fun process.  I’ll stare at a sentence for 30 minutes trying to make sure it encompasses ALL of the novel.  Do I concentrate on character, format, spooky, psychological, mystery, period…in 300 words you can hardly scrape any of it.

Cover Letter

Well I haven’t started this although I have a friend’s (Iris) letter as a guide.  The fact I haven’t started doesn’t really have too much impact on the whole production as the end result is an empty page.  An empty page listing my awards, previous publications, life commitment to the art: Do I mention ‘Willie the White Lion’ that I wrote when I was 6, ‘Fenrole the first’ (a novel) when I was 11, ‘Mythtasy’ when I was 13 and all of the short stories that I wrote in the last twenty years (some of which are on this site)…probably not.

I joined FAWWA in a blatant move of trying to plump up the writing CV.  I’m a member, qualifications: I paid the $55!  What a star!

Editing

Well this is the success.  On my new Macbook Pro, I’m a lot slower than before, but I’m chiseling out better versions of the books chapters now.  I rewrote the ending to ‘The Protean Mind’ and fixed up the text a bit.  The Foreword also got an edit and I removed the footnote idea…debatable that choice still.  Through the writer’s group I’ve been attending I asked one of the other members (Dani) to have a read of the foreword and first chapter.  She was kind enough to send back editing notes and glowing praise.  I love both!

The other news at this stage is an opportunity with Hachette Publishing.  They are asking for unsolicited manuscript submissions, how long for, I’ll have to check.  But they would require the first chapter, a cover letter and a synopsis.  Whether I can be ready in time, we’ll have to see.  Still, I have to remind myself that this is the golden point of creativity; having a product and looking to see where it can be taken (or take me!)

Story Number 9: Absolution

Or should it be called indulgence.  I certainly took a lot longer over this one as I think I knew it was the end of the “fun” stuff.  From here it’s editing.  I don’t know how to edit.  Anyway, with the luxury of time on this one I managed to solidify the theme, I hope you’ll agree.  There was also a hell of a lot going on in life at the time so I found it very difficult to concentrate on the big picture.  I re-read this story countless times just to get the groove of the story.  I still don’t know if it came together as well as I’d hoped.

I’m definitely happy with several passages in the text.  My driving-mind is a great one for popping out poetic phrases and passages as I’m driving through the hills to work.  I tried to keep the tension of the action sequences going for longer in this story too.  This was with the view to tire the reader out (in a good way).  Hopefully, this means that you’ll end the book in the same way as Henry.  Looking for some peace.  It’s obvious, I think, what he chooses to do…but leaving it unsaid is an easy notion for the reader to put together.  Nothing challenging at all.

Songs are far less pop this time: ‘Like a Stone’, Audioslave.  ‘Sing for Absolution’, Muse and ‘How to disappear completely’, Radiohead.
No great surprises there, if you’ve read the text.  No real easter eggs in this one, I don’t think?  The unguarded moment “near quote” has nothing to do with any musical quote at all.  It’s just the way Henry said something.

Whether my readers are getting tired of this shit by now I’m not sure.  They certainly went quiet after #8.  Hopefully, that’s for all the right reasons…such as devastation and depression heheh.

I plan to go back and smarten the text up with some minor edits and then good old Dust has promised me a cover for the First Draft edition!!  Woohoo.  As something of a celebration I’m hoping it’s not too expensive to print 4-5 copies that other interested people could borrow.  Having a group read the collection as a novel might garner a different sort of feedback.

In the next month there are a couple of short courses at UWA on, “Show don’t Tell” which I hope will aid my future editing and then there’s one on “Getting Published” Yeah right!  We’ll see!!  By then the Writers Group will have met a few more times and I may have been able to get some feedback there too.  So I don’t know when the next post will be?  Maybe when the cover arrives?  Maybe when I have a First Draft copy? Maybe I’ll just take a break and then start writing the behind the scenes stuff or the 1940′s miscellaneous collection etc etc etc…

Just checked my first blog on the writing of the first draft.  I started on the 20th August and finished today the 6th April (Good Friday) I make that to be about 7 and a half months.  That I focussed on the project this long, stuns me…that I’m told I have 2 years of editing depresses me

Story Number 8: Medea’s Touch

Holy CRAP!!!  Did I just FINISH #8!?

I’m actually crying.  It was extraordinarily difficult!

I can’t write anything about it until my test readers have read it…just in case!!   I can’t believe it took eight days including planning and writing of the draft.  This has to be because whilst I’ve been writing the other seven stories I’ve been mentally constructing this story.  Like I said in an earlier post, this one felt like it was real….like it really happened.  I was just a reporter!!  What non-fiction!!!   I’ll read over it tomorrow and double check it’s all there.  What is going to be the reception for this one, FEK!

The biggest horror…and this one’s embarrassing: The song for this story was…oh god….Christina Perri, ‘Jar of hearts!!’
I’ll delete that later I’m sure.  Oh god, I feel like I’ve just created Twilight all over again.  Self-loathing here we come!  …ahh, this explains the tears!

Story Number 8: Medea’s Touch

I just had to pop a blog entry for today10th March 2012.  Only five days after the completion of the draft for ‘The Ersatz Script’ and I’m poised ready to start writing the next story.  The plan for it pretty much wrote itself.  In a frightening way, it’s seems like it wants to be written.  I’m experiencing that feeling like it’s just reporting on actual events like I had with several of the other tales.  I have the story in a very clear state with no complications but some nice “colours” (most of which I think many readers will miss) …but so what, it’s entertainment first and foremost, right.

My plan was to be finishing this story over Easter (Early April this year).  I hope to have the first words started today.  Let’s see how smoothly it goes.  On the current speed of progress I could be done inside a fortnight!  That would leave Easter to plan the finale!!

Chickens, eggs.

Story Number 7: The Ersatz Script.

Pens down, pass your notes to the left…fuck, I hope I did Ok!  This story was monstrous!!  Such a complicated web of sub-stories, misdirection, research and trying to keep it all in line with the long term story.  …whilst making it seem easy!

This was my first attempt at withholding information and allowing the reader to guess at the story plot.  Now we all love to do that right, but I also hate it when stories are intentionally vague just to appear intellectual.  Like the annoying kid in the playground, “I have a Secret.”
“Yeah, well I don’t give a shit until you give me sufficient hints!”

This story also had quite a number of new characters introduced, important characters, characters that had to do big stuff to the plot!  Other characters were important inclusions despite there being not much action for them now.  Dr Clark Bardsley is the big one here.  He’s got a role to play in the future, ‘Greysham behind the scenes series.”  A project for a million years from now…the project which is already writing itself in my head somewhere.  Aaaargh…no room!

Annoyingly so, the final two stories (I’m billing them as the big double episode feature at the end of the TV series) have also been writing themselves.  I keep getting, “Oh, cool idea!” moments and having to write them down in my notepad.  It’s like tantric literature, I don’t get to blow that load for another month or so!

Time frames on this story seemed endless.  I soooooo wanted this story in the bag.  So much so I fear I’ve rushed it a little at the end.  I usually find this is good for tempo though.  So even though I finished it today, I’m going to proof read the draft tomorrow before releasing it to my trusty reading group.  This story was actually finished in a whole day’s sitting from about 6500 words to 9700.  I collapsed on the couch in the middle…it really was exhausting!!

Sidestory: I was at the gym and ‘Nightmare’ by Brainbug came on.  It’s a dance instrumental from the 90′s.  I knew it was the soundtrack for creeping around at night in an orphanage so after webbing madly for it (thanks triple J hottest 100′s) I iTune-stored it and put it on repeat.  8 hours straight of that!  I got my $1.62′s worth already!

Easter Eggs: The cat’s name, the Dr’s name err err…other’s I don’t want to give away.  Someone even had their Easter egg withheld cos I don’t know if I know if I can trust ‘em …and didn’t I use that feeling for Henry, that feeling is real!!!

So I look towards Story 8!!!  Unbelievable, the end is nigh!!!  …I’ll over complicate it and descend into a pit of confusion I’m sure.  See you in 5 weeks time!

Story Number 6: The Butcher’s Tale

I completed the sixth story in my series of nine last night.  Writing the last third of a story really happens quickly, perhaps as most of these tales have a crescendo towards the end of them that requires for fast paced action.  Perhaps because I get into the vibe of them and the ideas flow a lot quicker; earlier in the story I’m carefully setting the groundwork.

Well this story has quite a few references in it to a particular “historical figure”.  I was disappointed not to be able to have the final clue slip into the story however, this may see the light of day if I complete the footnote feature of the story.  What’s the point of referencing real-life historical figures???  Well it’s so the author can have a giggle whilst writing…or so that the reader can spin out when they find out about something they didn’t know before .  It’s fun for us all.

Of course the main historical figure I reference is a creation of my own.  Apart from the volumes of editing I’ll need to complete to have a publisher even turn a page of my manuscript, now I’ve got to re-write my old short story to bring it up to scratch.  I really thought it was already scratch-worthy (isn’t a scratch a depression in something, therefore up to scratch implies the scratch is higher?  Or if you scratch build something then it’s just the prototype, the first draft…therefore, up to scratch should be a pretty shit quality.  I hope this arguement holds up when I’m begging for someone to put this into print!) amazing what a few years away can do for making my best bit of writing look like a turd.  Hopefully this means that when these stories look crap, I should be a lot better.

I have also started to leak the title of the book, “A Plague of Ladybirds”.  It feels ok to do this as the finishing line is so close.  So far the feedback has been good that the title is delicious.  I’ve also been told that the collective noun for ladybirds is a loveliness…I think that still makes it all work so well.  We shall see…

I noticed lots of sloppy habits coming out in this last story which again tweaks the anxieties over whether I’ll ever be able to get the stories edited up to a quality worth publishing.  Take any paragraph and give it half an hour – it pops out sooo much better!!!  But half an hour for EVERY paragraph!!!  Bloody hell!!  What have I created!

Anyway, TBT has lots more tips of the hat to the “real” Greysham.  Francis’ house can be found on Google maps – but I never knew it as a child.  The bonfire scene was fun and very nostalgic to write..lots of things from my childhood came to life like the boxes of Standard fireworks you could buy (not that I was ever old enough to be allowed!!)

So the excitement of doing number 7 is next and then the BIG finale: #8 and #9.  I’m almost nervous about writing them!!

P.S: As I’ve mentioned the song for Ersatz Script, the songs for Butcher’s Tale were: ‘Running up that Hill’ cover by Placebo and the ‘The Day I tried to Live’ by Soundgarden.

Story Number 5: Arch House

I completed the first draft of ‘Arch House’ today…mostly at work!  The writing of this one came in two parts, the pause in the middle was supplied a little by a sudden lack of confidence to go forward and a little by me working on Dust’s new site.  It’s entirely my fault I got distracted.  Up until then I’d been reasonably well disciplined with “writing nights” but it instantly became a great procrastination point to wander off into the world of webbing.

So this story is like a major milestone in the series.  It hooks in some nice elements from the past which will hopefully provide a few “Ohhhhhh!” moments and it lays down a heap of elements for the future.

The house this story is about is ACTUALLY a house I wandered around as a kid.  We all thought it was haunted then and inside it was broken down dusty and shit scary.  I think my cousin Helen was with me when we ventured in.  If you do a bit of hunting on Google maps, I won’t do it for you, one can actually find this house today!!  It’s been done up apparently and seems to be being lived in.  Little do these folk know what lies within!!!

During the writing of this story we received some sad news that one of my cousins in England had committed suicide.  His name was Roland.  As a tip of the hat to a cousin I certainly had a connection with, as he was part of our generation, but a guy that I didn’t really know, I named the missing boy, Roland.  It put some sadness into the boy’s plight as I wrote it…for me at least.

There’s a few science elements in this story which I didn’t want to get wrong/wanted to make interesting/still be cool.  I don’t know if they’re right yet.  Trying to get the exposition and the poetry combo-right is pretty difficult at times.  I’m a bit afraid of the editing process ahead…not only because of the size of the job but because I fear that instead of cutting it down, I’ll get more florid and adjective-ize up the series and wreck it!!

Hopefully, my test-reader-focus-group people will tell me when I suck!

Oh and the series has a name!!!  But should I say just yet…hmmmm I dunno!?  There is a story behind it involving my car and a sappy bush in the car park at work…that should be enough intrigue for now huh!?  I have also rejigged the running order and content of the stories so that there will only be nine stories in this first series.  Of course if it goes well, there’s bags of room between these stories for lots more Whittle and Redferne adventures…plus other character POV stories and the like.  I could write in this village for the rest of my days if I choose…

As I write this the original draft is stuck in between my work e-mail and my home e-mail (Bigpond has frozen up).  I made some editing changes already on a hardcopy and can’t send it out until I get the draft and do the alterations.  Bahhh delays…I’m busting to hear what people think of this one!

Story SIX….coming soon!!!

Completed story four today, ‘The Protean Mind’.

Fuck me…what an ordeal.  The first three stories felt like commentary on actual events and the next story I’m all excited about as well, but this one…it was tricky.  What also doesn’t help is that I’ve had a horrible ‘Panadeine Forte Resistant’ toothache throughout the writing of this story as well as doing a selection criteria for another job, I completed an intense three day training course last week AND I started a new senior role at work.

…I can see it being my best work in the end.

So I’m kinda glad this one is behind me.  It was also the first story I did two different plot lines for.  I think the one I chose is far superior, although it would have been nice to have some of the positive elements like Poppy and the lads having an enjoyable pint with the locals down at the pub.  But Whittle and Redferne ain’t about joyous times at the pub now is it?  Maybe later…

This story I formulated a questionnaire for my test readers too…I don’t know whether to dumb the story down or leave some of the subplots hanging, leaving the reader to join the dots.  I do hate it when movies join the dots for you too much.  Oh and on pet peeves this story has two of mine: Alien landscapes and dream sequences.  What the fuck was I thinking…?

Best work ever…

Ok – update time.  My PC shat itself…don’t all modern excuses start like this?  We got it fixed…sort of, what we got back was a wizz-bang CPU that refused to talk to the rest of the machine in a polite manner.  As a result, the graphics tablet, that Dust had given me on loan, completely turned its back on everything to do with my PC and will now only work at Dust’s house.  So no more digital art for me…until I’m rich and can afford a PC and a graphics tablet.

So I’m back to writing.  Writing is cheaper!!  Although this time I’ve decided to put in more of an effort…or is it that I’ve over complicated things, trying to paint the whole battle scene instead of rendering the captain’s medals really nicely?  Hmmm….  The consequence of this extra effort is that I’m not posting the stories here because I’m gunning to get them published.  Once that fails, they’ll be proudly displayed here amongst the other art-vomits I contribute…like Rimmer’s Diary compared to Napolean’s War Diaries.

So why write this pointless blog?  Its for me!  Yes, selfishly…it’s all about me.  I wanted to record my progress writing the project up!

The plan is to have a foreword introducing 10 short stories that contain an overall story arc.  The foreword was done on the weekend of the 20th/21st of August 2011 and I started the first story, ’Hide on the Head’, on the 22nd.  It seemed like quite an effort to get going at first but the weight of research I’d done sort of momentumised me forward (that’s a proper word!).  Since that time I have completed three stories titled:

1. Hide on the Head
2. God Spines
3. The Fusilier

I’ll endeavour to write a bit about each story once I’ve finished it so that it can serve as something as a kick in the pants for “future-me” who’s always got a bad attitude and needs the right motivation, a little bit of advice or even just a friendly word to remember what I did right.

The overall project has no name at this stage so I’ll uncreatively call it: ‘Whittle and Redferne’
If I were to be a true knob about it I’d call them the ‘Whittle and Redferne Chronicles’ or…”Journals’ or something self-important and cliched. 

As I begin this thread of blogs I’m starting the research for story four of the series.  I’m deciding between two existing story plots or even considering having a brainstorm and developing a few more.  The decision which one to go with will rely on how best I can squeeze the longitudinal plot points in.  I have a plot idea for a story called, ‘The Archhouse’ or something like that but I think this will be best as story five or six as it’s quite crucial to what happens later…also I’m a little scared of screwing the science up in it so the research is frightening!!

Thanks must go to Iris and Dust who are my Focus Group, test readers at this stage.  Their feedback has already been invaluable.  Plus a nod of the military cap to Justin who helped me figure out what the bloody hell a Fusilier is and where he might be on one day in January 1900.  Up, up, up the ziggurat, lickety split!!!