I have been progressing like wild fire on Pirates. While this is undoudoutably A Good ThingTM I should have been working on Died, or at least, that was my intention. And Juliet is awaiting another revision.
While I don’t believe in inspiration—just hard work. I can’t really feel up to adandoning a good creative streak when the ideas flow on and on. Perhaps inspiration favours the prepared notebook?
I have spent most of this weekend working on Pirates. I have developed (that is, I have written out as notes) around half of it and I am quite happy with it so far.
A mysterious new character has appeared, a couple of minor objects have taken on a degree of importance that I hadn’t even begun to suspect when I started. I have abandoned the five-different-narrators structure (interesting, but didn’t really bring anything that a single POV couldn’t handle), and everything is more simple. Have even integrated the first chapter into the single POV in a manner that suits me fine (even if it is corny). I now need to get some names together to get a handle on some of these people. It is also fun in that the original ‘central’ character is still here, but has slipped into a secondary position, one of the others—and I just added him because I needed help in one scene or two—has become central in his place.
I have also found an application—like an outliner—that allows me to write up passages, add stuff, move scenes around etc. Most important, it can be configured to back up as plain text. Really important that. I have no wish to put any of my work into a closed, proprietary format. (Can you imagine having a novel stuck inside a DRM protected version of MS Word? Or just as bad, in a version of MS Word to which your subscription has expired? I think that both of these are worse than having a disk crash and losing the work. In that case, you know that it is gone and lost and that you only have yourself to blame for not making a good backup. But having the file right there on your hard drive and not being able to read it without paying the Microsoft tax…)
Anyway, I am testdriving MacJournal and will say what I think about it even if my use is probably non-standard.
And this one:
Ramples (also known as Landlubbies) and the Welkin (Skyfolk) have coexisted for centuries. However, in recent times relations between the two have grown distended and difficult. While the Lubbies seem hell bent on messing everything up in their end of the world, or it appears this way to the Welkin, the Skyfolk haven’t exactly been wasting their time; ever since the savage assasination of their last King and the subsequent and mysterious disappearance of his twin sons and heirs the Kingdom has been in turmoil. Even between the Welkin, antagonism is growing as some remain faithful to their vision of the traditional way of life, while others set sail for new horizons (and are not against a little buccaneering on the way).
Unaware of these events, even as they take place just above his head, Detective Inspector McHarry is called on to investigate the disturbing disappearance of one, two and then three young children. The subsequent investigation and chase will lead him, accompanied by his unfortunate assistant, through the countryside around the industrial town of Mouldburton, and then off into the hills and crags of Wales where the last of the Welkin cling to their place in the clouds.
There he will pursue, and be pursued by, pirates as well as (at least up to now) what he had always considered as mythical beasts, before the lost children are brought back home. And, as you have probably guessed, the adventures are not without consequences to the pretenders to the Old Throne.
This is a story where Jonathan Swift, R.L.Stevenson along with J.M.Barrie are all called in to assist with the telling; where the action spans centuries and continents not only in their breadth but also in dizzying heights; where magic and piratry all come together and you may finally understand why your parents insisted that you finish eating your fish…
I finished my latest runthrough on Juliet last week. I think that I have all the plot mechanics ironed out now; things that were too vague are definately clearer. But I am still not satisfied with the manuscript. I tried reading parts out loud and immediately heard problems of rythmn and structure. Small argh. These are moments when I think that dictation software is a good idea. (I know it isn’t, this is just shifting the problem elsewhere.) So a new rewrite is due.
This week I set out to continue Died. And got hijacked. Two new chapters for Pirates appeared. Just like that. (Just the plot, not the writing… would it be so easy…). What really happened was I was thinking about different plot mechanics and twists and these prequel scenes appeared. Prequel in that they take place before what was previously Chapter One. This is annoying as I had decided on a particular structure. This is not annoying in that they are good and interesting and solve a lot of later problems. It just means that I must go back and cross out the structure idea.
(I might as well explain the structure idea: Pirates is in 5 parts—seems like a good structure, and fits the plot—each part was to be narrated by a different person from the book, in that it would be his/her POV in play there. Except the new prequel chapters can’t be narrated by the person who should do Part One. He cannot, cannot be there. Impossible. Shucks. It was a nice idea. Medium-sized argh.)
