Date: 2008-02-07 17:08 Subject: Writing about travel, and my website Security: Public Tags: novel, website, writing, writing about travel

On Tuesday, I finished part one of my novel with a stonking great climax and lots of fun. Of course, finishing one part means having to start the next. It's like running a race then having to haul yourself back off the ground to run another. Inevitably, that means my word-rate for the last two days has dropped, as I've had to sit back and start to plan out part two of the book in more detail (the previous detail was: they travel from place A to B, with some action and adventure in the process, which probably isn't enough planning).

Part two is, essentially, going to be travel. I need to get them from where they've spent the first section and take them to where the book will end, hundreds of miles away (and where we might finally discover the dragons). Shifting location when you've firmly established yourself in one place is a bit risky. For example, I absolutely love Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels (is there anyone who doesn't?), but the bits I find least interesting are where they are travelling from one country to another, particularly the travel to China and then back again from China. These sections feel a little too much like a travelogue to me. On the other hand, the travel to South Africa in book 4 works fantastically. This is because there's much more of an urgent, driving issue in book 4. The dragons are dying, and there is only a limited time to find the cure.

Travel has to have something to drive it, something that gives it an arc of its own. It can't just be: see place 1, see place 2, see place 3 and so on. So, that's the kind of stuff I'm trying to work out. How to advance the plot, to drive the characters and to give it structure and meaning. Hopefully, I've found a way.

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I've also been thinking about how to improve my website (http://www.patricksamphire.com). I'm pretty happy with the top banners and imagery. I'm happy with the footers. The main navigation is okay (although I'm going to change it). But I've never liked the body of the website, the bit with the actual text in. It doesn't make good use of space and it doesn't look that great. So, I'm going to restructure and redesign it, as well as tweak the other parts. And while I'm at it, I'm going to clean up the code a bit, as it was rather a rush job when I first did it. Not that it doesn't work or that it isn't valid, but it could be neater and more efficient.

Designing websites is never a quick job for me. I'm not naturally artistic, and I'm certainly not naturally a designer. So I tend to go slowly and do a lot of trial and error. I think I know what I want to do with it, but that may change as I go on. We shall see!

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Annnnnnnnd... the accountability meters:

'Dragons of Mars' progress:



February 20th target:



I have, with much sadness and trepidation, increased the total target length of the novel to 75,000 words, because it just wasn't going to come in at 65k. Not sure if I'll keep it to 75k, but I'm going to try damned hard!

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