Category: Diary Page 2 of 47

(October 19 – 25)

I had an idea for a new story, quite a timey-wimey one, so I’ve been doing some work on that this week. In fact it was so timey-wimey that I needed a special plotting session just to get the timeline for various events laid out. It was fun, but definitely made my brain hurt. And while I now have a sequence of events, I still don’t know what order I’m going to tell them in. In other words, I don’t yet have a plot.

In lesser news, my horror story did not get picked up by the magazine I sent it off to. I have, however, been thinking a lot about the Slightly Odd Tales project (and the possible podcast offshoot). Consequently I decided to publish the story on Medium (and to continue publishing select stories on Medium).

You can read it here.

(October 12 – 18)

The rewrite of the science fiction story is going well, but I’m still not convinced that it’s doing the trick. It may be necessary to ‘put it in the drawer’ for a while so I can review it with fresh eyes a few weeks or months down the track.

I have plenty of other stuff to be working on in the meantime …

(October 5 – 11)

I have gone back to the science-fiction short story—this one seems to be my real passion project for the moment. Unfortunately something’s still not quite working with it. Normally I’d let it go, but I know there’s a really good story in there somewhere and I’m determined to get it right.

In this minor rewrite I’ve done some more work on the main character. While she started out as a fairly strong and cocky character, I’ve opted to play more on the psychology of the particular situation she’s stuck in; as such there are a few more cracks to play with. 

I’m still thinking a lot of Winston Smith, from my recent reading of Nineteen Eighty Four, and how leading characters can often be the ones plagued with doubt and who ask all the questions.

I’m also doing my usual polish of the language, trying to bring the mood and visuals of the story more to the fore.

Finally there’s some restructuring required. Without giving anything away, there’s a thing that happens at the end which is somewhat undermined by another thing that happens earlier. Unfortunately this earlier thing wraps around an event that is kind of fundamental to the story. I’ve been running various alternatives around in my head, but I won’t truly know which one works until I write it into the story. (The end, incidentally, is non-negotiable: it’s pretty much the whole point of the story).

(September 28 – October 4)

Because I’m not nearly unfocused enough already, I’ve started on a new story. It’s a cool conceit though: a writer friend and I are attempting to write a story each based around the same title and basic premise, and then we’ll see what we each came up with. I’ve got a decent idea, but it’s taking time to properly form. Hoping that if I get started on it, the rest will slowly fall into place.

(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.