Author: Justin Page 6 of 65

(Sept 21 – 27)

Funny story this week: I received a rejection for a story that I didn’t even recall submitting! Perhaps I’ve been a bit more efficient at the submissions this year than I realised.

Otherwise, this is clearly the part of the year where my writing motivation takes the biggest hit. Again, I’ve managed several hundred words on the science fiction story and have more or less wrapped up the first draft; but it’s been in 200-300 words chunks instead of 500-600. As always, I’ll take what I can give. Some words is better than no words. Unless they’re those particular words.

I did have a moment of revelation regarding the science fiction story. One of my likely weaknesses as a writer is that my main characters can sometimes be relatively bland (this happens when they’re there to have things happen to them, rather than when they’re there to make things happen). Sometimes it’s just the nature of the story I want to tell, but it always means there’s a better story hidden away in there waiting to be told.I haven’t quite nailed the main character in my science fiction story. She started off spiky and independent, but then the story pushed her in a different direction. I’m now pondering making her a bit more eccentric and unpredictable. It feels like the right direction to go, but I can tell this one’s going to take a few more drafts to get right. This is the problem with having a plot that’s already leading towards a defined conclusion: it’s rarely the characters who are doing the driving …

(September 14 – 20)

Managed a few more hundred words on the science fiction story this week, but took a break over the weekend to tidy up a slightly older story. It’s one that’s already had a few edits, but the [dis]advantage of coming back to a story after several months have passed is that you see all the minor flaws and blemishes right away.

In this instance most of the work was in getting the language to flow a bit more smoothly, but I also excised a two-paragraph chunk that was clearly getting in the way (in fact, it so obviously clogged things up that I’m amazed it survived this long).

Anyway, the fresh draft was done and submitted off to a magazine. I don’t fancy my chances too greatly, but it’s always good to have a story or two in play—and it would be super cool if this particular publication picked it up.

(September 7 – 13)

It’s been another deeply average writing week, but the good news is that the new short story is starting to find its shape. It’s proven a relatively complex beast to (mentally) plot out. Given that it’s the offspring of three separate story ideas this is hardly surprising. I’ve had the basic story worked out for a while, but the right tone has eluded me.

In a moment of inspiration over the weekend I realised that it needed to be told in the first person: it needed to be more about the main character’s experience, as opposed to being a direct observation of them. So I sat down with my first scene, and rewrote it … and the damn thing stayed in third person. I hadn’t changed it dramatically, but I’d changed enough—it’s now more of a direct POV type narration—but when I reread it again and considered changing it to first person again, I realised that it was working the way it was.

It’s one of those instances of the story finding its own way, and my job as writer is to stay out of the way as much as possible.

I only hope the story continues to find its way for me, so I can get on and get it written.

Learned from …

This week I watched Mortal Engines, the infamous cinematic bomb from 2018. While it definitely wasn’t essential viewing, it wasn’t bad and I find myself perplexed that it did so badly. I think its biggest flaw was to take itself too seriously—we’re talking about a story based around the concept of mobile cities that attack each other like tanks (London being one of these cities). Something like this needs to be present with a bit of a wink of the eye, but this was altogether too earnest.

There were also some minor character issues; most egregiously, a supporting character getting a big payoff battle with the main villain near the climax that has in no way been earned or telegraphed. I suspect they were aiming for Ben Kenobi battling Darth Vader in a New Hope, but it came across a bit more as though Han Solo had randomly decided to take on Vader instead.

(Aug 31 – Sept 6)

I’ve taken a bit of an unscheduled break from the writing this week. Although I have, in fact, done at least some writing every day this week, it’s been with minimal motivation.

Having wrapped up the rewrite of my older story last week, I’m now at that all-too familiar limbo between projects. I have the novel to return to and the new short story to continue with, but I still don’t have a clear idea where either of those need to go, which makes it hard to move them forward.

I’ve also not been sleeping well, which never helps: when I lose sleep, my brain goes fuzzy, and the energy (and focus) to sit and write is the first thing out of the window. It’s an annual event for me: the seasons are shifting here, trapped between winter and spring, and my body just can’t seem to regulate its temperature during the dark hours. I go to sleep cold, I wake up warm, and the restlessness produces all manner of surreal dreams.

(August 24 – 30)

Wrapped up a ten-day stretch of revisiting yet another old story this week. This is one I’ve already revisited once before, but somehow haven’t been able to get right—which is frustrating because I know there’s a good story in there.

This was another interesting editing process—a nip and tuck here, a lift and shift there. 

However, there were two things that changed significantly during this rewrite. The story in question is probably one of the most descriptive that I’ve ever written, but on rereading it I noticed that there were some sections that fell a little flat in comparison (most notably, the opening of the story!). So I’ve gone through and really pushed the prose to its limit. The story is not about language, but there is a subtext about communication which probably makes the wordiness an appropriate stylistic choice.

The other change was to the main character. In the original version of the story, he has a bit of a secret agenda. During this rewrite, it began to seem rather superfluous so plucked out those threads. I find this interesting because it slightly changes the dynamic of the story, but in an entirely non-destructive way. It’s almost as if it never needed to be there in the first place …

Perhaps the part of the process I’m most proud of is the two huge chunks I cut out that really slowed things down. It’s never easy to excise words that you’ve slaved over, but it’s always satisfying to step away, with your knife dropping fresh prose, and see that you’ve done the right thing.

(August 17- 23)

So it turns out that all the work on the ‘cave’ short story was worth it, as I found out this week that it’s being published by Kyanite Press. This is tremendously exciting: two stories published in one year, and both being projects that were written specifically for the eventual publishers. In fact, both of these stories are the first ones that have been picked up through submission (my previous credits are due to publishers stumbling across my self-published tales and making an offer).

While I’m under no illusions that this means I’m suddenly going to get everything published from now on, it may well encourage me to focus more on writing for specific submissions rather than just writing what comes into my head (although the two are not mutually exclusive, of course).

November update: don’t get too excited: Kyanite Press sadly ended up closing shop before this anthology could be released.

(August 10 – 16)

The writing continues to be a struggle this week. I effectively have three separate projects to work on, but I can’t seem to get my head properly stuck into any of them. Pretty sure the problem here is having three things to divide my attention, instead of just one to focus on. The trick is trying to figure out which one is demanding the loudest to be written, but they all seem to be on a par at the moment.

My three projects are:

• A new short story, as mentioned last week;
• Restructuring the penultimate chapter of the novel (the lot was a little lacking in oomph, so I’ve added some new bits – and I still need to finish the damn thing too)
• Writing the final chapter of the novel (for which I’ve, insanely, decided to try something new and ambitious).

I’ve started on each of these, but I seem to keep flitting back and forth instead of getting properly stuck in. Will I end up picking just one? Which project will be the lucky candidate? Tune in next week to find out!

Or, maybe, not …

One good thing

One of my potential projects (the ‘new short story’) is starting to follow an interesting path this week. I’ve had this idea for a long while about a character who remains in their tiny apartment on the understanding that this is the only way to remain safe from a deadly plague. Yes, this has taken on a lot more resonance over the last few months!

The story then started to evolve around the idea that maybe the plague was long gone and is being co-opted as a means of keeping citizens under state control. While that was a fun idea last year, I’m not very comfortable writing it this year as I don’t want to give even the remotest shred of fictional credibility to people who are genuinely claiming that Covid is some sort of conspiracy.

But some of the ideas remained (and I won’t give them all away here) and began to take on an eeries sort of prescience when I started reading Nineteen Eighty Four this week (the Elderbeast is reading it for school, so I thought I’d join him). I’ve not read it before, and I’m only familiar with the broad concepts, but it turned out be exactly the sort of background reading I needed to help solidify some of the ideas in this story. Some of them proved to be quite uncanny: for instance, I was going to include TV screens in the main character’s apartment; and the character would maintain a suspicion that maybe they were also being used to observe her. Of course, it turns out there is something exactly like this in Nineteen Eighty Four.

I should add that my story is nothing like Nineteen Eighty Four, but it seems like the novel will be the perfect background reading to help me knock this one into the right shape.

(August 3 – 9)

It’s proving to be a very underwhelming writing week. Lots of oversleeping and missing my morning writing shift, lots of staring at screens. I’ve been plotting and planning the new short story. It’s one of those frustrating ones that’s there in my head, but I’m struggling to translate it into words. 

Also, the ideal plot structure has been evading me a little: I know what needs to happen in the story, just not the order in which they happen. I tried a little reverse plotting (starting at the end of the story and working backwards) which seems to have helped. The next problem is the style: should it be short and punchy? Wordy and descriptive? Slightly obscure with an unreliable narrator?

This one may require a little trial and error.

(July 27 – August 2)

I’ve had an idea for a new short story—which is not ideal, given I should really be focusing on finishing off the novel. It’s quite a compelling one though. It started off—sometime last year, in fact—as an interesting idea that didn’t have a compelling story attached. During the last week I stumbled across a different angle for it, one that finally got me quite interested in telling this story. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have an ending. Well, I did have an ending but not one that was really enough of a payoff for the reader. Then, one night, the ending suddenly dropped into place—this time, one that really makes the rest of the story worth it. I actually got so excited by this idea that it kept me awake for a while thinking about it.

Now I just have to figure out how to write it.

And when.

And if …

(July 20 – 26)

Lots of work this week on the ‘cave’ story, which I actually managed to finish off and submit in time for that July 31 deadline. I did extensive editing, which was quite instructive. A lot of it turned out to involve switching between passive and active voices, and shifting tenses. I suspect a little homework in those shadowy grammatical areas might help me get some of these things right the first time around.

That said, writing is fluid, and part of the reason I enjoy editing is seeing how much the meaning and impact of a line can change just through altering a few words, or changing the order of sentences around.