First parse: the post

g'day gentle reader 

One of my characters, after a difficult encounter, sarcastically says "That went well." I feel the same way about my attempt to blog the process of writing book three in the trilogy.

I did warn - the blog might suffer to achieve my writing targets. It did. My last (delayed) post of cobbled together snips from my facebook page is a good example of "That went well - not."

Enough with the wailing & gnashing of teeth 

Where am I? The last couple of months since finishing (besides futzing) I've been sorting a decade of associated material

It's like the unseen bulk of an iceberg ~ the resulting trilogy is just the tip

Many directories shown have sub-directories. The names (obviously) reflect the contents

In the process I found I had multiple copies of nearly every file sometimes saved only minutes apart. I'm a hoarder and I don't trust computers; I save everything.

Even culled, sorted and assembled as at left, it's a lot of material. Why so much?

  I'm writing SF 

SF writer's start from scratch: size rotation, axial tilt, number of moons if any, ratio of land to ocean, age of planet, existing flora, fauna, and sentient life (Terra Nullius is a great concept but unlikely for any human colonisable planet) All these extra factors have to be taken into account while I edit.

For example: I have several maps of my world so that my distances and directions are accurate and I can develop realistic weather patterns based on its geography.  

For  'real world'  fiction, this is all done. 

It's called an Atlas. 

 

Hence the time spent sorting the plethora of collected material before serious editing. (I've also complied a heap of interesting stats on the work but that's another post.)

For those who've been following there have been several changes in story direction, characters, locations, props etc over the decade plus it took to write, though i have to admit a lot of them were done in the last year while writing book three. (post kidney transplant - brain function normalised) 

Most recently I've done the first full parse through the entire trilogy riping out the artificial chapter divisions in favour of a scenic route. [I work in Word and use outline extensively.] The results in parsing are: 

1. I've deleted all prologues and interludes. They were all from Hedley's POV. (An awakened colonist  managing the planet for the AI.) I've decide on a different approach for him and for the prologues.

2. Book Two is now in 3 parts which buggers the carefully designed pattern I started with but as always, the needs of the story trump the designs of the author.

I now have the 560,000 words spread over 1300 scenes. Time to justify the need for each scene then reorganise what's left.

until my next post 'ooroo  

RoB

Finished - where to now?

The Prologue

This post was drafted ages ago but not posted. Why is a mystery. I guess I was just emerging from the mind-numbing blank time after finishing the trilogy as noted below.   
 

gday gentle reader/s 

The problem with finishing a big project that took a long time is where to now?  In writing the problem is exacerbated by the fact that finishing is a relative term. Ive had several of them: finishing Bk1 Feb 2000, Bk2 aug 2010 and the Bk3 last week aug 2011. 

All dates refer only to finishing the first draft. Book 1 has gone through three, losing 30,000 words in the process. Book 2 its hard to say with all the stops, starts and backtracking - the original start is now in the middle of the book - a real dog's breakfast. Book 3 is the only one written from start to end with only superficial editing.

This how finishing went on my Face book page. Towards the end I was writing furiously with no time to blog.

5/8/11

word target reached 11:18 Friday 5/8/11 ~ 17 days ahead of schedule  180,000 words in 50 weeks - yaaaah!

finishing the book 3 itself is close and might just get done in the next 17 days

20/8/11

I've just started work on the last scene, of the last chapter, of the last book of my thrilogy (Freudian slip or wishful thinking?) begun Sep 1995. ( that date is true but misleading, the work has been intermittent as I will blog when the whole damn thing is truly really actually finished - excluding the editing)

The blog promised above has been a long time coming. when i stopped writing the trilogy I stopped writing. Almost a month went by until I appeared drunk in charge of a keyboard.

10/9/11

Iam in a delightfil state of imnebriation 

deamn fingeres

this is waht happen when you have nothing to do you waste your face on life book.

And eventually to this  attempt to rationalise what was happening to me

16/9/11 

I, like nature, abhor the vacuum left after finishing the trilogy. Ten plus years with a single focus leaves a whacking great hole that the editing (absolutely necessary) and a new project don’t seem to fill. I feel lost. I fill the time with trivial pursuits. like this.

This drew a few comments from fellow strugglers-with-the-muse. to which I eventually replied  

26/9/11 

what I am doing is reshaping the chaotic sprawling tome/s into something resembling a story - Severne's tits - the contradictions, misdirections, blind alleys, bad science, and crap sentences are as numerous as stars ...

just completed my "master character sheet" which shows the trilogy has 141 named characters

Now its all done it has to be edited. 

ooroo

too late - the end is nigh

gday gentle readers

And here below is just how nigh it is as of 17/7/11, on time and on budget, or writely speaking I look like meeting my deadline.  

There are several things about this that please me, I have succeeded in pushing myself to meet the weekly target for a whole a year now. One push resulted my best daily count of 1600 words. In fact most of the 17 days > 1000 words have been in the last couple of months, partly because I could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, partly because its winter and I can't get out in the afternoons, partly because I have simply got faster from doing it (almost) daily for 12 months and partly because the pace of the story is accelerating as my grand plan comes together.  

The one thing that doesn't please me is that the task of blogging the process has failed - way too intermittent I did say the writing would come first. I will however try to do better with the editing (coming soon to a blog near you.)

The cull from my  monitoring spreadsheet estimates 34 chapters at completion but that won't happen. The story will finished when everything that needs to happen, happens and I can already see it will go longer. 

 

So long as I have 180,000 before 22/8/11 I'll be satisfied. As the cull from another part of the spreadsheet shows the 1st 386 words of Arch's Chapter 1 were done 22/8/10  

When I say the end is nigh I mean in comparison to when I started in 1995 (though it hasn't been a continuous journey) there is still the edit while I look for and agent to help get it published.  

The problem is I seriously wonder if it will ever happen. While I was plugging away the world changed. That wonderful disaster, the Internet, took off 

I recently found a reprint (re-e-print?) of one of my flash fictions in an unlikely place.  It was first published in Antipodean last century (1999) reeprinted here(2009). Now I'm not complaining I'm pleased someone found it of value but as said on facebook ...

I'm concerned about my future earning potential as author. Bookshops are collapsing in the face of online sales, E-books are coming on strong and piracy is rife. 

my trilogy adds up to 7Mb

I have friend who downloaded 26,000 books in one shot some of which were current on his shelves and it was 'free' - in the sense that he didn't have to pay for it. I would be hard pressed to read 26,000 books in my lifetime yet it will fit on a 16Gb pen drive. Words, it seems, are cheap financially and in terms of  digital storage.

It seems no matter how you originally publish, once some has it they can scan it, copy it or type it, and make it readily available over the net for free. Why - because they can.  

Im old: pre-TV, pre-PC, pre-Internet. The wired generation, who have embraced the Internet generated idea that everything should be free, is here NOW. Regardless of copyright the gap between first publication and freely available is closing so although ..

My end is nigh - I may be too late. 

That remains to seen

ooroo