Delayed

Hey. I just finished the audio edit of chapter 1 for my NaNoWriMo podcast but it’s late and I haven’t had a chance to listen through the whole thing.

And so with further embarrassment I am going to delay the podcast until later today/tomorrow, being Monday.

Apologies.

Editing

Those of you swinging by now, expecting the podcast, I’m afraid I have to admit that I am still editing it.

I don’t mean textual editing – I finished that on time – but actually editing the audio file. This is taking a smidge longer than anticipated. I’ll post it, somewhere, as soon as I can.

Apologies. *shuffles away embarrassed*

 

Brinkmanship

I am typing this on a train so apologies if the odd typo slips in.

Things have been quiet as the abject terror of what I’d foolishly said I would do settled in. Also, I actually did Stuff this week. In between I’ve been planning, tearing up plans and then planning again.

It’s been fun.

Sometime around Wednesday (shockingly late, I know) a novel poked the first signs of it’s existence into the world. By last night I had clawed back enough word count to still be in this thing (NaNoWriMo). I was right at the brink though, I need to watch this or I could fall too far behind.

I can confirm/remind you that the first podcast will go up Sunday.

In news that will come as no surprise to anyone who has been in my vicinity when I actually write, I have already deviated from the outline. That’s OK. The outline is to help if I get stuck, not a stick to beat myself with – never really been my thing, y’know.

Anyway, I still need to get into five figures by Sunday night and so I’ll leave you for now.

A quick update

I haven’t had the most auspicious start: three days in and I still haven’t written a word.

On the positive side I have a premise, an outline (chapter level), character descriptions (principles), a backstory and a title (Eleurethia). I will break words either later on or in the morning.

Now I have a title and a rough idea what the story looks like I will knock out a blurb sometime tomorrow for posting Thursday. I’d love to get it live sooner but I am at a concert tomorrow night and will need any spare time pre-work to get my wordcount going.

Remember the first part (in whatever state) goes live Sunday.

Mad

Alright folks, as I said the other day I will be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

It was a hard decision because my other projects haven’t run to time this year and so the story I was going to use, being an SF tale, is not ready to go. Mainly this is owing to the amount of research required to do the thing justice from a science and setting perspective.

I digress.

I didn’t really want to just try to do the month for its own sake because when I tried this in 2007 I woefully failed. I need extra heat to keep going. I’m also a bit of a tinkerer who is keen to try different methods of writing novels and it seemed to me that these two things weren’t incompatible.

Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Produce using (or attempting to use) a story design method, an urban fantasy of at least 50,000 words.
2. I must hit 50,000 words by November 30th and the whole story must be finished by 20th December.
3. It must be research light (based on current knowledge or my own world building).
4. I will have a tip jar of some description that will, during the month of November, go to a charity of my choosing. (NB – More to follow on this in subsequent posts).
5. Starting on Sunday 8th I will begin podcasting the story as I go.

Yes, you heard me right: I am going to podcast the draft as I go. Not the sound of me typing as I inadvertently made it sound like when explaining the concept to a friend, but me actually reading the story. Why?

I haven’t excluded the chance that I have actually lost it but that’s not the actual reason. There is a certain, screwy, kind of logic going on here:

1. I want to experiment with producing a more reader ready first draft by doing planning up front rather than producing a draft 0 as I have done in the past.
2. I am doing NaNoWriMo for fun rather than trying to advance my writing career and so I want a way to prevent myself endlessly tinkering. Broadcasting it provides a way of closing the door on the story.
3. Although I’m doing it for fun I do want people to experience the story and I’m not confident that I can proof and typeset this kind of volume at the frequency required to get it out in text (print or online) as I go. By reading it out loud I will pick up the errors as I go – in fact this is how I line edit; all I’m doing is recording it and editing out the mistakes.
4. I want to see what the results are of adopting a serialised approach to writing as novelists often did in the Victorian period and as comic writers frequently do today. How will the results differ when I can’t go back and add in things I think of half way through the draft? Is it freeing or constraining?
5. I enjoy reading out loud and don’t get a chance to do it very often.

Mainly I’m doing it for fun.

So that’s the plan. Beyond this I haven’t done a huge amount yet: I know it’s an urban fantasy, I know where the story is set, I have a faint idea of a plot, I have some twists planned and I have a small but growing menagerie of creatures.

From here on in I’ll be blogging as I go, albeit short posts, about where I’m at and I dare say my twitter feed will be an eye opener: http://www.twitter.com/neilbeynon

I hope you’ll listen.

Minor update

It’s been quiet round here because:

a) work is a little bit mental.

b) I am in a frantic push to finish The Scarred God

c) In a fit of sheer lunacy I have decided to do NaNoWriMo this year, with a slight difference in approach to my previous attempt and have been planning for that.

More information will follow as I attempt to shamelessly drum up interest for my experiment/blogged insanity…

Other brave adventurers…

I see my friend GLP is also braving the direct-to-audience model.

Having a copy of Future Bristol I can assure you “What would Nicholas Cage do?” is indeed worth a donation in order to read and in this case I am clearly a little biased but hey: that’s what friends are for. However, you don’t have to take my word for it: Gareth’s first novel is out next year, he has been published in Interzone more than once and kicked arse in their readers’ poll for best short story in 2007.

Go on: you know you want to.

PS – There is a degree of cross over between our sites and so this is aimed at readers who don’t know GLP’s work. I’m assuming the rest of you already know about this…

Story Acceptance

I am delighted to shamelessly plug myself by letting you know that my story “The Room” will appear in the Valentine’s Day issue of Tales Of the Moonlit Path. This story was written some time ago and given a final tweak at last year’s Arvon course and I am thrilled it’s found a home.

While I’m at it: a quick reminder that my story “Crunch” will be appearing this year in the Autumn (and final) issue of Ballista.

Hal’s Experiment

I though I’d draw your attention, if I may, to Hal Duncan’s experiment over at Notes From The Geek Show.

Hal is experimenting with sidestepping the traditional route to market (via publisher) and going straight to the audience. Hal will publish Scruffian’s Stamp (a teaser is on the post linked to above) if he recieves donations amounting to $150 and if he doesn’t reach that amount all donors (horrible word but I’m in a hurry) will receive a PDF version.

The publishing model being tried is not news because plenty of people have tried this and usually this is met by a roll of the eyes and a comment about the standards of self-publishing…

See: you’re doing it right now…

No, not you lot who know who Hal is, the other lot. (And yes: I know you’re now a rather small group, I’m working on the stats issue.)…

I digress.

The point I am making in a very long winded way, is that the experiment is of interest because Hal has already achieved that writerly milestone of editorial validation, having published two books via a mainstream publisher, the cubist fantasies Vellum and Ink respectively. I can’t speak for Ink (it’s still on my shelf – I try to prolong the anticipation with sequals) but Vellum really is very impressive: ambitious in scope and executed with flare.

For this reason I’m both interested to see how Hal gets on with this approach and would urge you to donate.*

I’ve set my stall out as an admirer of Hal’s work before, and a review of Vellum will probably appear in the next few weeks, but I’d also encourage you to pick up copies of his books. You won’t regret it.

* As I will be when the dayjob ponies up next month.

Updatery

Thought I’d best pop in and say hello.

I’ve been a bit snowed under of late. Since the return from the holiday I’ve been trialing an improved way of working that consolidates some of the experiments from the first half of the year and puts the writing over and above certain things like the blog. It doesn’t mean the blog won’t be updated but that it might be a little less frequent than it has been at points in the past. I hope to get up to three posts a week minimum at some point but this does relay on me having enough weekend time to write the posts up front rather than as I go.

On the writing front I’m pleased to report things are going well. I have been – touch wood – writing regularly again for a month and this is evidenced by the fact I am sixty percent of the way through the final draft of The Scarred God. I also have a couple of short stories now going through the draft progress. I will let you know about the changes I made to get back on track once I’m sure they’ve stuck. I really don’t want to jinx it at this point.

On the submissions front I have been woefully slack. I have one story still under consideration but most of the rest of my inventory is lying forlorn on my hard drive. I need to get on this. They are doing no one any good where they are at the moment. I shall be getting on this very soon.

Other than that life is fairly mundane. After the first part of the year, I’m fine with that.

How are you?