Tag Archives: sword and sorcery

Editing, Slack Off Saturday

Writing is ReReReReReReWriting: An Agony

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I have a long weekend, so I’ve taken it upon myself to rewrite a novella I wrote last October. That was the weekend some of you remember when I decided I was going to write a 100 page novella in 100 hours. (That’s 100 hours straight, counting time for note-taking, eating, walking the dog, pulling out my hair, shoving it back in the follicles because I really can’t afford to lose more, coping with the sudden ability to smell colours, and all of the other wonderful things that accompany the task of writing 25,000 words in a four-day weekend. Yes, of course I’m thinking of doing this again. Why do you ask?) It’s been hanging around since then, mocking me with its two well-rounded characters and a bunch of paper dolls, an awesome and explosive beginning, a weak and arbitrary ending, taunting me with the fact that I know how to fix it, now, and could actually fix it, if I, you know, sat down to write the bloody thing. So, this weekend, I decided I was going to buckle down and get as close to a final draft as I could on this damn thing so I could either submit it for publication or do something to free it into the wide, wide world, because it sure needs to get out of my head.

Alright, in other words I just spent ten minutes taking a break from writing so I could write about how hard writing is. Yes, I’m definitely in the colour-smelling stage of my word-induced insanity. In fact, I’m considering naming them. This shirt I’m wearing is a lovely shade of Bob, which smells like anxiety and imagination.

On the bright side, I have nearly three of ten chapters written and rewritten. I had to go back and rewrite a few sections, but I feel like this story young Ms Agata (a teenage girl on a wagon train through a rural medieval country, along with her Uncle, her foster cousin, and a few friends) is finally coming together. Because that’s what rewriting is. My Muse runs up from her basement study with a handful of papers and says, ‘CJ! You HAVE to listen to this!!!’ And I do, writing down everything she says for posterity. But she’s a storyteller, not a writer. And much like how your Mom edits your Dad’s stories (or vice-versa) so people who weren’t there can actually understand them, I have to go through and write out a new version of things, a translation, if you will, for those of you who don’t live in my head. And if I can tell this story in such a way that it resonates with something you yourself think about, I’ve done my job.

See? I came here to talk about how writing sucks, and I convinced myself otherwise. Yay editorializing.

Y’all have an awesome weekend. Wish me luck. And yes, there will be a new story on Thursday.

Book Recommendations, Book Reviews

Novella Review: Lair of the White Ape

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Signore Davide Mana is a paleontologist and author in Torino, Italia who blogs over at Karavansara. A half-year ago, he discovered my rather hagiographic essay about Sword and Sorcery over at Way Too Fantasy, somehow thought it was interesting, and told me that he had a Sword and Sorcery novella up of his own. At the time I think one of my biggest complaints about it was that it ended. Thankfully, he wrote a second part, and it is just as engrossing and entertaining as the first one was. If anything, the prose is a little tighter and the suspense sharper, though neither one of those things were exactly problems in the first part.

BIAS ALERT:  I love novellas… they are perhaps my favourite form of fiction. Stories like these, however, are why I like them. They are long enough to really dig into the characters and the setting, but not so long that you’re committed for days or even weeks. Especially in the realms of Sword-and-Sorcery and Adventure, I prefer these good long tales over novels. They seem to be of the length that your war buddy would tell over a long night of drinking at the tavern, not so long that he has to keep coming back to the story over and over.

I recommend this for anyone who likes quality Sword-and-Sorcery and those who miss the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser as much as I do. The artwork may be a little off, but really, there is not much else I can say to critique the book. Amongst the things I really like is the fact that it’s set in the classic Roman world, and not the generic Western-Europe-Vague-Mideval-Setting-with-Inscrutable-Middle-East-off-the-Edge-of-the-Map that most S&S (or even High Fantasy) novels take place in. I’m looking forward to a new one. Four of Five stars.

Lair of the White Ape (amazon.com link)

52 Story Project, Fiction, Writing

Notes From the Front: the 96 Hour Novel

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Yes, yes, I took an extra day on it. Still, I think writing a full short novel… 25,000ish words, a hundred pages… in a four-day weekend is something that I can be happy about.

Trust me, I wasn’t happy about it Saturday afternoon, and I can’t discuss how I felt Sunday without adding some sort of plug-in to WordPress that will randomly cuss every sentence. But by Monday, I was forging on ahead and writing at a 20 page per day rate. That’s about two and a half times my normal rate, and the effect it had on my creative brain (wringing it dry, breaking it down, and leaving nothing but the story intact) is something that has to be seen to be believed. Though, I think my next project will be a 100-hour short novel… perhaps I’ll try that back to back during NaNoWriMo since my hero, Agata, claims she has more stories to tell me.

Tuesday evening I had an interesting bit of exhilaration. I’d not opened my copy on my desktop since Sunday morning, and when I looked at it I realised I’d written 50 pages in a little over two days. It made me feel dizzy for a moment.

Anyway, my report is that everyone should try this once, and I myself am going to try it again in a few weeks. I wouldn’t write a literary novel this way, and perhaps not even one of my beloved surreal horror stories, but for something that proceeds at a frenetic pace (the action in this story, tentatively called “Agata and the Broken Train,” takes place over the course of four days) it’s a perfect method. I’m also curious to see what happens to this in rewrite… will I trim it to an under-90-pages length and streamline it, or will one of the characters/ plotlines jump out and demand equal treatment, adding on another ten, or twenty, or fifty pages, even as I tighten and refine what I’ve written?

If anyone’s interested in reading, well, probably not my rough, but my first clean copy, let me know… it will be prepared in a week or two. As for my other stories, I’m still more or less on track for my story-a-week project, and I’ll be putting the first refined story, up here next week for your edification and enjoyment.

52 Story Project, Fiction, Writing

The 72 Hour Novel: Day One

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Well, by 14 or 15.00 today I had given up, freaked out, gone to take a nap with a horrible headache, and convinced myself that all was lost. Then I got up from the nap, made black-bean chilli since I realised I hadn’t eaten in well over a day (probably the source of my headache), and went from feeling like a failure at 5000 agonizing words to hitting 7K and saying “That’s enough.” Then I pushed ahead to hit 8K/ 30 pages in less than 24 hours. So even if I don’t hit my goal of writing a short novel (23-25K/ 80-100 pages) in three days, I think I figured out how I’ll be able to do it the next time I try. (And honestly, I’m worried that even if I do hit my word/ page goal by Monday Midnight, I’ll not be done with the story. One of my slippery good/ villain characters is more deep than I thought, and my main character is really having a lot of fun telling me her story. So, I’ll check in tomorrow night, and I’ll still be posting on Twitter with the #72hournovel hashtag.

Random observances:

Writing is physically draining enough when you don’t dash around the dining room, your patio, and your kitchen re-enacting an epic fight from your Sword and Sorcery novel. Today, I also learned that it’s a good thing I don’t write erotica.

When you try to force a character into a box she doesn’t want to fit into, she will rebel. Much like fitting a person into a category she doesn’t want to fit into. The difference is:  I can erase the character. I think that actually makes it harder to deal with.

Magic in most fantasy novels is glowing, mystical, and beneficent, or dark, chilling, and malignant. It has crisp edges and direct lines of attack. When a man is hit with a spell, he dies or is turned into a toad or whatever curse is laid upon him. But I’m a veteran. I’ve seen Fireballs, and Magic Missiles, and Called Lightning. I’ve seen especially what they leave behind. There are no crisp lines and magical effects in combat.

52 Story Project, Fiction, Writing

The 72 Hour Novel

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So, I’ve been on track so far with my goal to write 50 stories in 52 weeks. (2 for 2… that’s a start, I think…) However, this next story is a little longer. A teenage girl from the same world as my current serial at Way Too Fantasy stopped by my head and convinced me to tell a story about what happened to her and her family while she was travelling with her Uncle’s wagon train to a busy port in the north. Seemed like a simple story so I agreed… and then I realised it was going to take me 80-100 pages to tell the damn thing.

No worries… I have Friday to Monday off this week, and I’ve always wanted to see if I could write a novel in a weekend. Well, a short novel. Michael Moorcock, and some of the other great prolific pulp writers did it. And since this is Sword and Sorcery, I think it may lend itself to this type of frenzied composition. We’ll see. It could just wind up a flaming heap of triceratops dung.

Today I spent outlining (I never outline, but it seemed necessary for this) and sketching and procrastinating, but it’s midnight. The witching hour. I have my snacks (apples and Doritos and caramels) and the first of what I suspect will be many pots of espresso (I have a 6-cup stovetop Moka pot, the kind they use in Italy… also, I don’t drink coffee much). I’ll be tweeting irregular updates @bovisrex and, if I remember, using the hashtag #72hournovel. I might also use #DiversityinSFF since my heroine is overweight, a minority, young, and not the typical swordsmaiden from these types of stories… i.e., no chainmail pushup bra and plate mail cameltoe. She wasn’t taught how to fight by an Uncle, or a boyfriend, or a brother whom she must now avenge… she grew up in a rough-and-tumble farming community and learned to fight with what she had. If she survives, she’ll get better.

On that last note, if anyone reading this can think of ways a 16-year old scrapper can ‘MacGuyver’ weapons and armour that she can use on her quest, hit me up here or on Twitter. By tomorrow, I might need a hand.

Alright, it’s five after midnight and I’ve procrastinated enough.