My grant year is officially over, as at midnight last night.
As you may have noticed, throughout the year I was tweeting about Skin Deep, as well as blogging, keeping track of my research, taking photos etc.
I've pulled it all together in this Storify.
Take a look here: http://storify.com/garykemble/grant-year-writing-skin-deep
(I haven't embedded it because I don't like the way it keeps expanding on the home page).
Of all my 'grant year' goals, the one that I've probably failed at most is the weekly blog!
I can live with that.
I don't actually have too much to report, but I feared that with Christmas almost upon us, I'd need to get a blog post in or else leave it all hanging with my last post, which was 'beginning to polish the second draft'.
Here's where I'm at: I finished polishing the second draft. The book is now out with readers. I've even had some feedback. But I haven't looked at it in depth -- what I'd like to do is wait until it's all in and then take a couple of days off work (annual leave -- all the grant money is gone!) read through the comments and figure out what I need to do for the third (and hopefully final) draft.
I haven't been idle in the meantime. Well, not totally idle. I've written an article for Writing Queensland (the magazine of the Queensland Writers Centre) about my grant year. This will appear early next year.
I've also started working on a Storify of my grant year, which pulls together all my tweets, blog posts and photos from the year. It's a work in progress. If you like you can check it out here.
This is also part of the process for my acquittal. It's not part of the formal process, but it's part of getting my head around what I'm going to write in my acquittal. And I'd really like to do a good job with my acquittal because, as I've said before (and will say over and over again) I'm extremely grateful to the Australia Council for investing in my project.
I've just started polishing the second draft, I'll probably end up changing enough to call it a third draft. :)
The break has been longer than intended, for a range of mostly boring reasons. But looking on the bright side, the extended break will give me a bit more perspective. Just 20 pages in, I've already noticed this. I thought the first 50 pages were pretty solid, but already I've found quite a few typos and clumsy language.
Which brings me to my next point. I don't know what it's like for other writers trying to 'break through' but I find I vacillate between frenzied terror brought on by the fear that I'm missing opportunities ALL THE TIME and lethargy/apathy, thinking that there's no way I'm going to 'make it'.
Somewhere is the sweet spot, where I get my best work done and manage to not make irrational decisions that may damage my real opportunities.
I've been thinking about submitting Skin Deep to the Pac Mac Manuscript Monday, but I want to make sure I send them something that represents the best writing I'm capable. At the back of my mind is the frenzied terror guy, screaming that they could close subs AT ANY MINUTE... but I'm trying not to listen to him. If I send them something crap, it will do more harm than good, right?
However, at the other end of the scale is the guy that's telling me there's no point subbing anything, anytime -- because I suck. So, at some point, you have to make the decision that it's as good as it's going to get, and then send it out. Because if you don't send it out, they can't say 'yes'!
I'm still fairly happy with what I've achieved this year. The schedule has slipped a bit. But I'm still hoping to have something halfway decent in the hands of my beta readers in time for Christmas holidays.
Well, I didn't get into the Hachette MS Development program. They had 260 applications, and from those chose 10 to take part.
I have to admit, it knocked me around for an hour or so. But I've bounced back well. I think in part because of this article by Tobias Buckell, where he talks about 'milestones' and 'goals'.
Milestones are things you’d like to have happen to you. Selling a story. Selling a novel. Getting nominated for an award. Winning an award.
Goals are things you can actually achieve. Finishing writing a story. Writing a certain number of words. Writing a certain kind of story.
And...
Early on in my career I hit upon a method of focusing and rewarding only the activities that I could control. I knew I wanted to sell a story, but that it was a random pellet. So I focused on writing and submitting stories. No one could stop me from that. I celebrated every 100 rejections (with champagne and nice food and a little mini-celebration) I got as proof that I was laying down the right actions toward hopefully getting a story sold.
So, even though the rejection was initially painful, I'm still on track to reach my goal -- to have a polished MS by the end of the year.
Where do I go from here?
At the moment I'm in the process of printing out the second draft to send back to the editor and also to an early beta reader.
After that, I need to polish, and then send to a couple of other beta readers.
Then a further run-through of the MS to incorporate feedback.
And then I just have to sell the damn thing!
The other thing that's helped me keep my chin up is attending the Emerging Writers Festival yesterday.
I got to catch up with writer/editor friends, and the festival itself resulted in some interesting ideas/opportunities.
I used to be very much seat of the pants but I generally like to have an idea of how the story ends these days.
I had too many experiences where I had 2/3 of a story but couldn’t finish it. And for novels—I definitely plan. Even though pretty much everything ends up changing.
I think you’ve got to have a plan, but be flexible.
That’s how it is for me, anyway!
Well, kinda. I think it was Trent Jamieson who said that the rewriting is finished when you run out of time. So, I think I would like to rewrite the epilogue, if I have time.
I've been really slack with my updates on the blog. Apologies for that. The reality is that there hasn't been a hell of a lot of news. I've been slowly plodding along with what I'm calling my 'continuity sweep' of the second draft. I rearranged so much, structurally, that I needed to go back and make sure that it all made sense.
And it did, pretty much. There's one thing that's niggling me, so I think that means that it's still not quite right. But I feel like if I had to send it off to the Hachette thing tomorrow, I'd feel okay about it. And I'll only have to send it off to the Hachette thing if I get shortlisted. Which, obviously, I hope will happen.
So, from here. I'll probably give myself a night off tomorrow. (I'll most likely still be writing, but just not working on Skin Deep). I've had some ideas for the follow-up book. One of which, bizarrely enough, came from my daughter. She said that she'd seen mandarin skin on the nature strip outside the house. She said maybe it's a burgular.
It got me thinking about a guy who's under some kind of magic spell and the mandarin is some sort of hypnotic prompt. He's out there, watching, quietly eating his mandarin. I don't know. If Skin Deep is anything to go by, by the time it reaches the book, it will bear no resemblance!
Anyway, next steps are to send the second draft to a couple of people who have offered to be early beta readers (if there is such a thing) and also the editor, who has kindly agreed to have another look.
And then hopefully, if I can iron out this final problem, it will just be a text edit and it will be good to go to the second round of beta readers.
Woohoo!
Tunnel vision is what I wished I had. It's what I'm aiming for. Not quite achieving.
I've been working on some prep work for the ABC's '9/11 Remembered' coverage. It has been really engrossing work. It has also affected me emotionally. Reading first-hand accounts of people who were in New York City and Washington DC on 9/11. Also reading some background published in the years after 2001. Like 'the jumpers', which I'd somehow forgotten about (or maybe blocked from my memory).
Towards the end of last week I was feeling a bit freaked out. I decided that I probably need to vent, by writing a short story. Which I can't do at the moment because I need to stay focussed. Now that the grant is over, I don't have that safety net that allowed me to follow (writing-related) diversions. The only time I have is in the evenings, after the kids are asleep, and maybe a bit of time on the weekends.
There are things I'd like to do. I'd like to enter another manuscript into Pan Mac's Manuscript Monday.
I need to critique the last act of a friend's manuscript.
I've also got a growing urge to start work on a totally unrelated MS. This thing would be deadly to get into. It's alt-history, set in the 80s, and would require a lot of research.
It's probably the worst possible thing I could do at the moment.
Sounds like I'm having a whinge! I know pretty much all writers face the same issue, daily. Finding time to write. And dealing with the fact that no matter how much time they can find, it's never enough!
Anyway, that's where I am. Now, back to work on the 2nd draft.
This is a momentous day -- it marks the last of my official 'grant days'. I still owe the grant some time (from where I was on a grant day but then ended up having to look after sick kids etc), but in terms of actual grant money, it's all gone.
Do I regret taking three days a fortnight? Do I wish I could have a 'do over' and take a block of three months? Not really. I think the project gained something from having day-to-day stuff filtering into it. It took longer but I realised that although I thought I'd 'planned it out' the planning was only fairly superficial, and I needed that time to work through some of those issues.
And I still am working through some of those issues! The past fortnight I've been working on Skin Deep all day, every day (save for a few days where the kids were sick). At the start of the year, I wanted to have something structurally sound by this point. I'm not quite there, but over the past two weeks I've been working with the editor to resolve some structural issues, and I think that the book will be better for it.
At the moment it's... well, you know when you set to tidying study/junk room. One thing leads to another and you find yourself, in the middle of the day, with a room with all the cupboards empty. Piles of rubbish near the door. Stuff you want to keep but aren't sure where to put it in another pile. Books stacked up beside the bookcase in the rough order you want them. You know that eventually things are going to work out. You know pretty much exactly where you want everything to go. But in that moment, standing in the middle of the room that looks like a bomb has hit it, it's a little bit daunting.
That's where I am now.
I think that at the start of the fortnight I had a manuscript that was okay, structurally. But what I have now has the potential to be so much better. It's going to take me a bit of time to get there, but I'm confident I will get there.
I realise that this isn't the most efficient way of writing. But I've learnt lessons along the way and I've also learnt things about my book that I wouldn't have if I'd written it faster. There are happy accidents that occur when you decide to rip out a storyline, or merge two characters, or keep the core of a scene but change the setting. Ideas collide in ways you never would have thought of.
I'm still aiming to have something structurally sound by early October. Something that's worth sending to beta readers by early November at the latest.
Still working on the second draft. Focussing on two structural issues this run-through: merging two characters and also restructuring the opening of the book, which has flow-on effects. I'm also noting any loose ends that need tying up (there's a few of them).
Due to the restructuring, I've had to write some 'pick-up scenes'. I'm taking that term from film-making, where it refers to scenes that are shot after principal photography has finished.
One of them is a back story, and it got me thinking of that old Donald Rumseld quote:
[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
Writing one of these scenes made me realise how little I knew about the subject matter. Luckily I had some great reference books at hand.
At this point my goal is to have a second draft done by early October. And then, depending on the quality of that draft, send to beta readers that same month.
Still confident that I can have something polished by the end of the year.
I've also been thinking more about the follow-up book, which is tentatively titled 'Dark Matter'.
I met with... I'm tempted to say 'my editor' but I better not because I'm not paying her anything (yet)... I met with a friend who's doing WEP out at UQ. She had kindly offered to do a structural edit on Skin Deep and this week we met for the first time since I handed over the MS.
It was quite daunting, giving Skin Deep to someone to read, knowing how rough it was. We had a great discussion and between us have come up with some concrete ideas on how to make Skin Deep a better read. It was so good having someone who is intimate with Skin Deep, to bounce ideas off (and also to have an outside perspective on it). I don't know how keen Claudine will be after the 1000th email starting with 'What do you think of...'
Since then I've been beavering away on fixing some pacing problems in the opening chapters and also merging two characters. It's quite complex work. You shift a chapter and then of course there are multiple flow-on effects. It's challenging but also rewarding. I was saying to my wife that (and I don't know if this is all writers or just me) sometimes you know that something needs to be changed but the tendency is to try and avoid it, and tell yourself it's okay. I don't know if this is just laziness or what! But when you finally bite the bullet and start making the changes, it's really invigorating seeing it all come together.
I'm swapping chapters with a writer friend of mine, which will be great because we're both aiming to have our second draft finished by early October (in case we make the cut for the Hachette MS Development program). So that should help me stay on target to have something polished by the end of the year.
If I don't make the cut, my plan is to give the MS to two or three 'beta readers', with a view to having a polished MS ready for agents/publishers by the end of the year.
It feels so good to be back in the saddle.
I went to State Library on Friday, to do some research on the back story. Nothing major. I just needed to have a look at some archive stuff from 2008 and see what was happening in the news then.
I spent a good ten minutes beforehand, out the front of State Library where the buses stop, crying my eyes out. I don't know if I mentioned it here, but Mum got to read the first draft of Skin Deep before she died. She liked it, but she found it hard to follow all the characters. Which was a really astute observation, because I'd also arrived at the same conclusion. There are too many characters who don't really do much. So Mum was my first beta reader. :)
To be fair, the dearth in activity hasn't been all down to Mum. I lost some writing days before she died because the kids were sick. So I've deferred those writing days. It's tricky, because obviously with a grant you don't get 'sick days' or 'personal leave' days. I have to make up those days from my annual leave. But because I've gone part-time, the annual leave doesn't accrue as quickly.
Right, I'll stop whinging now.
Yes, I've had a break. And now I'm fired up. Not just for Skin Deep but all the next projects. I can see three, possibly four, Harry Hendrick books. And there's also a sf story set in Reagan America.
Looking through the microfiche was really interesting. I haven't done that since working on 4157 a few years back. Yes, you can look up news stories via database search. But if you're looking for the general feel of the time, nothing beats microfiche.
The downside with microfiche is that, I don't know if this is everyone, or just me, but I get motion sickness from watching the pages scroll through! (I get the same thing when I was Prezi presentations).
But it was worthwhile. I'd forgotten some of the things that happened, even though it was only three years ago.
I've also got another project I'm working on. I've been sworn to secrecy. All I can say is, watch this space!
I'm still working through my 50 pages plus synopsis for Hachette. Each time I do a read through I find more things to fix or tweak. Each time I do a read through I find it harder to maintain focus. I think because it's such a short segment of text, after a while you start thinking, 'yeah, yeah, I've read this a thousand times'. But then when you really focus and think, does this really work? I know what it says, I know what it means, but will someone coming fresh to it understand? That's when I find new things to fix.
The research has been very low-key but also necessary and rewarding. It's the sort of thing I could have done before I started writing, but then again I had so much information buzzing around my head when I started writing, it probably wouldn't have sunk in. I've been looking at investigative journalism. I watched 'The Moonlight State' and I'm reading Phil Dickie's The Road to Fitzgerald.
Both look at corruption in Queensland in the 1970s and 80s. Dickie's book has been particularly useful from the point of view of seeing how small pieces of information are pulled together to reveal a bigger picture. Car rego numbers, lease information, information about companies and who owns them. Each piece of information, on its own, doesn't mean much. But put them all together and you can bring down a government.
The Road to Fitzgerald is a great read. Highly recommended.
And it's important for Skin Deep because in the first draft, Harry just sort of gets this information and doesn't really do much and then all of a sudden he's got this massive story. Part of his journey should be to rediscover his passion for journalism and to play a more active role in his own narrative. It sounds pretty obvious, right? But often these details can get lost in a first draft.
Okay, so I'm not talking multiverse because, let's face it, that's a cop-out.
And I'm not talking Back to the Future/Primer either because... well... physics isn't my strong point but you can't create matter, right? If the concepts of Primer worked, they could've just used the machine to duplicate bars of gold bullion, in the same way the machine duplicated people.
I travel two weeks into the future. So during that two weeks, I effectively disappear (think I just contradicted myself, but go with me, okay?). In the future, I drop my wallet in the lab.
I travel back in time, to just after the moment I left.
Is my wallet in the future? When that moment arrives, will my wallet reappear?
(Can someone lend me $50? I can pay you back in a fortnight)
I'm still working on my first 50 pages plus synopsis. The way I tackle it is to do a run-through of the first 50 pages, then the synopsis, then go back to the first 50 pages. I find this gives me a 'mini-break' and I spot new things to fix each time.
I've also given the first 50 pages to a writer friend (in exchange for 50 pages of his novel) and we swapped critiques this week. It's really interesting seeing how other people interpret your work. Something that you intended a certain way can be read in an altogether different context. Critiquing other people's work is good also because through it you learn to read your own work in a more detached way. (That's the theory, anyway).
Caught up with another writing colleague this week and we swapped notes. It's good having that bit of extra time in the week to do things like this. There's this idea that writers are lonely beings who do it all by themselves. The reality is that, while no-one holds your hand while you write, it's important to have a network of other writers to talk to.
Have been playing around with Scrivener to output copies of my manuscript for the editor and my Mum. Mum's copy I was aiming to make it look like a book and it was pretty cool seeing my words in a book-ish font/layout. Hopefully Mum will be around for the proper book version, but that's not the most likely outcome, unfortunately.
I've started copy editing the first 50 pages for the Hachette Manuscript Development Program.
It has been a fairly quiet week, to be honest -- the calm before the storm, no doubt.
Wow. Somehow I missed week 17's post entirely, and week 18's is a couple of days late.
Must've lost track of time in the race to the finish line.
Finished the first draft. Well, sort of. It's never really that easy, is it? As soon as I'd 'finished' I knew that there were at least two things that needed to be changed before I send it off for the structural edit. Both relate to tattoos. Specifically the first two tattoos (so of course references to them are littered throughout the MS!).
There was an African component to the first two tattoos, because initially I was going to feature the Kihebo massacre as one of the 'flashbacks'. But probably two-thirds of the way through the MS I realised that it was just going to complicate things, since the bulk of the back story relates to stuff that happened in Afghanistan.
So, I still have to go back and change some of that stuff, and then over to the editor it goes.
It's exciting. This is also a dangerous time for me. Well, not dangerous in the sense of the dangers that my protagonists face. You know, bullets, bashings, death. But there's a danger that I'll rest on my laurels and not keep the momentum going.
I didn't get my word count this week. But I just checked my overall stats and I'm 15,000 words in the black so I'm not going to kick myself too hard. The thing is, I've plotted out (roughly) the final act, so I know what I need to write. Just having trouble getting there. My wife hypothesised that maybe I'm scared of finishing the first draft. And I think she's right. Because I know from past experience that that's where the hard graft really starts! How about you, anyone else out there scared of finishing first drafts.
I think I mentioned earlier that a friend/colleague has offered to do a structural edit. Which is great, but I've got to figure out the best way to spend my time while she's working on it. I don't want to spend time copy editing on chunks that may end up on the 'cutting room floor'. So, I think what I'll do is research to flesh out the description/characters in my second go-through. And also spend some time plotting the second book.
I'm going to pitch Skin Deep as the first book in a series, so I need to have the second book at least plotted out. I probably need to start writing it too. And I've got some ideas that I find as exciting as the premise behind Skin Deep. So I need to capitalise on that enthusiasm (you know, the enthusiasm for the next book, that you always get when you're mired in the current book!).
The other breakthrough that came this week was the name for my fictional outlaw bikie gang. I'm not going to lay it out there just yet because I want to think it through a bit more. But it's tough-sounding, it's not even an actual word, but it's based on a military word (which fits the bill, because a lot of the early bikie gangs were formed by veterans returning from WWII -- Hell's Angels is a classic example of this).
The name is important because the gang features in book two.
I went up to Gin Gin to help my Mum out early this week, and then on Friday I had to postpone my writing day because it was a pupil-free day for the kids.
My wife took the kids out this afternoon, so I just scraped through with my 5,000 target.
I didn't set the world on fire in terms of writing, but I did lots of thinking and planning this week about the 3rd act. I had a vague idea of what was going to happen but when confronted with the start of act three, I didn't know what to write!
I'm ahead on my word count so if I have time I might write a couple of alternative endings.
There are some interesting links in my delicious skindeep tag.
Macabre: A Journey Through Australia's Darkest Fears is an important book. Editors Angela Challis and Marty Young set themselves an interesting and uneasy task - to showcase Australia's long history of dark fiction publishing, contrasting that with new output from today's established and emerging writers from the horror genre. They succeeded by avoiding the risk of aiming for whatever might have been popular or attractive in horror's many sub-genre's at the time they selected the included works, while showing deep, nay loving, respect for truly Australian tales from our past.
Big congratulations to Angela and Marty, and everyone who contributed!
My friend Gary Kemble came up with this idea and it’s a good one. Now that I’ve finally made my short ebook about writing fight scenes available, Gary suggested I run a written fight scene competition here on my blog. He actually said: “You should host a fight-writing kumite on your blog. Best 500-word fight scene wins… something? That’d be fun!”
I reckon that would be fun. So it begins here.
