1. We've had two beautiful early-summer days, on Friday and Saturday, all warm and green and sunny. Sadly, the weather gods noticed, and now they have turned their baleful eyes upon us. It's raining again.
2. The word 'sassy' is now officially banned from the English language. Please don't use it anymore.
3. My novel still will not end. 85k and counting. No more dragons either.
Tell me three Sunday things.
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It takes me forever to get my characters anywhere these days.
For example, it's just taken me almost 8,000 words to crash my airship. This would be okay if I was writing Fat FantasyTM, but this is supposed to be a kids' book. There was a time when 8,000 words would have been a substantial proportion of one of my books.
Now I've dropped my characters in the middle of the Martian wilderness, hundreds of miles from where they're supposed to be, and I have no idea how they're going to get where they're going. Nor how many words it's going to take to get them there.
One day, I expect to write a novel in which no one manages to get anywhere at all. ;)
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At the beginning of the month, I set myself the target to write 20,000 words on my current novel (the provisionally-entitled 'Dragons of Mars') by my birthday, today.
I'm pleased to announce that I passed that target yesterday, a day early.
Here are the totals, as of right now:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
I don't know whether I'll get anymore done today or not. It's my birthday, and we have plans! The good thing is that I'm right at the beginning of an exciting, extended action scene, so it should be fairly easy to get going on it again.
I haven't decided whether to set another target like that, lacking any more birthdays in the next month, but it was incredibly helpful for my writing to have the target. I haven't been this productive for a long time. In many ways, the 20k in 20 days target was more helpful than a 1k a day target, which is what I'd done before, because some days you just have to stop and plot out what happens next, and other days you can do way more, and there's no guilt if you fall behind one day. It's also a manageable target. Even I can keep going for twenty days.
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I'm having a great birthday so far. Maya and Steph bought me a stonking new iPod to replace the one I left in Florida. This new one has 80GB of storage, which takes all our music with plenty left to spare. I'm thinking of buying some TV shows and using the iPod to store them, seeing it has far more space than my iBook.
They also bought me some gorgeous, luxurious vegan truffles. You'd be proud of me. I haven't started them yet...
Later on, Steph is taking me to Mumtaz, our favourite restaurant, and we'll probably stop by a cafe too.
Right, now I'm off to stroke my iPod some more...
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Okay, I've never done this kind of journal entry before, but quite a few of you do, so I figured I'd give it a go.
This is an extract from the Work In Progress. In fact, it's part of what I wrote this morning. So, with the usual disclaimers about this being complete first draft, lots of things going to change before it's done, etc., etc., here we go.
All you need to know (well, you probably don't need to know, but what the hell) is that the year is 1816 and we're on Mars. It's a kids/YA novel, and this is about 2/3 of the way through.
Dragons of Mars - Extract
I woke to the touch of someone’s hand on my forehead. I let out a groan, and the hand was snatched back.
My head hurt. My face hurt. My neck hurt. Even one of my arms hurt.
I forced my eyes open, then immediately regretted it. The light was too bright for my head.
“You’re alive!”
I squeezed my eyes into focus. Putty was leaning over me, looking worried.
I nodded, very slowly. Through dry lips, I said, “What happened?”
“Oh.” Putty sat back on her heels. “Well, Dr Blood kept going on about his rocks and how one of them had been chipped when Cousin Charlie knocked them off the table, and then I tried to tell them about how the photon emission globes worked, because they’re really interesting and quite clever, but no one was listening, and--”
“I mean to me,” I croaked. “What happened to me?”
Putty’s face fell. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear about the photon emission globes?” She looked around. “What happened to you?”
“Help me to a chair,” I managed.
Putty grabbed my painful arm.
“Other one!”
She released me. “You’re a complete mess, Edward.”
“I was attacked,” I said.
“Oh.”
Together, we managed to get a chair upright and me into it. My legs were still shaky, but things were slowly coming into focus.
“Where’s Charlie?” I asked.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. I was telling everyone about the photon emission globes--except they weren’t listening--and then Charlie said he thought you’d been gone too long, and would I go and look for you. Only--” she frowned “--I think he might just have been trying to get me to stop talking and go away.” She looked up at me. “He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
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I'm guessing that that makes no sense at all out of context, but...
Here are the target updates:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
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We’ve started watching children’s television.
No, this isn’t a sign that we’ve finally regressed all the way back to being ten years old. It’s just that... really, apart from Torchwood, there’s absolutely nothing worth watching on adult TV at the moment.
And we’ve had a revelation: some of the most exciting, creative and imaginative television is children’s television. Seriously. No doubt there’s a load of crap out there, but there is also one piece of sheer genius.
I’m talking about Raven (also see this). If you don’t know what Raven is, the conceit is that Raven, a magician, is training children to become the ultimate warrior, to fight the big bad/dark lord at the end. They have to perform various challenges--balance across a high bar up in the trees, fire a catapult at a floating platform, dodge swinging boulders while crossing a bridge, and so on--competing against each other, gathering golden rings and trying not to lose their lives. The theme, obviously, is high fantasy. The kids are all dressed up in pseudo-Medieval outfits and Raven himself is dressed in a cloak of black feathers.
There are great fantasy special effects, and, almost the best part, Raven talks in that Tolkien-derived high-fantasy speak that you feel guilty enjoying but love nonetheless: “Warriors! Behold the blasted mountain. It is an awesome sight, is it not? And a terrifying one. [...] This passage under the mountain is known to only a few, and fewer still dare enter it, but enter it you must [...] Quickly, my friends, the mountain has sensed our presence.” The mountain in this scene, of course, is completely CGI, but you’d never guess it from the way the kids react. It’s all done utterly seriously, and the kids are completely into it. There's no postmodern, ironic sneering here. Nobody is ashamed of any of it. In fact, the kids are the best part of the show. They are totally buying into it. They’ve all been given fantasy names, and their own standards. They are the kinds of kids that we all would have wanted to be.
Folks, this is where fantasy really is. This is the kind of thing we all wish we could get away with writing, if we had the chance. It’s creative, fun, unselfconscious and utterly involving. I only wish I’d discovered it before.
And now let's compare it with another kids’ show that really doesn’t work. It’s a show that is trying to do the same thing, but which just doesn’t get it. This is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It's kind of a J K Rowling-themed show. The premise is that a bunch of kids are competing to learn magic so they can become The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Off they go to an old country manor, dress in Harry Potter-style robes, and learn magic. Should be fantastic, right?
Except it’s not. It’s not fantastic because the makers have turned it into a kids’ version of Big Brother (the reality TV show) or Pop Idol/American Idol. They’ve managed to recruit the most egotistical, obnoxious, vain and self-obsessed bunch of kids you could imagine. Ones who misbehave to get attention, who smirk and who whine horribly that they don’t get to wear their stylish clothes and spend hours on their hair. These are exactly the same kind of jerks you get on Big Brother, desperately showing off, shouting me-me-me. Yuck. There’s not a single one of them I could sympathise with. And their whining and showing off is what the show focuses on, not the magic or the competition.
Compare this to the kids on Raven who are sincere, determined and totally buying into the game. Those are the kids I want to write for. They’re not--at least on the show--self-conscious or egotistical. They are open and genuine and creative. If I could get a job writing for Raven, I think I’d be in Heaven.
If you get a chance to watch Raven (no idea if you can get it on BBC America) and you’re a kids’ writer, you should. These are your audience, and they’re ready to believe.
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It’s been a while since a writing update, so here we go:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
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Okay, so I let the updates slip a little bit, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. More on that later, though.
I've started watching a TV show called 'Extreme Dreams with Ben Fogle'. Ben Fogle appears to be an ex-military guy who is into taking on extreme challenges. In this series, he's trekking across the Sahara desert in Syria with a bunch of apparently random people. It's a kind of interesting concept for a reality TV show, and Fogle's enthusiasm and dire warnings of danger give it a fun edge.
But, but, but...
I'm really not interested in the whiny teacher. I'm not interested in the personality-free model. I'm not interested in the man trying to 'prove himself a hero' to his son (who is way too young to care about anything other than the fact that his dad has disappeared off to wander across a rocky desert, I should imagine).
What I'd really like to hear more about are the Syrian bearers and guides who we occasionally catch a glimpse of just on the edge of the camera, who are doing the same trek without the benefit of all the high-tech gear the British people are using and whose names we never even find out. And, when one of the Syrians is stung by a scorpion, it might have been nicer to have spent just a little bit of time talking to him rather than focusing on the teacher flapping around and having a panic attack. We are told the Syrian doesn't die, but no one seems to much care, and all they can talk about is what it would mean to the expedition if one of the British people got stung.
It's as though we can't possibly relate if we don't have people of our own nationality in the constant centre of frame. We have to have people 'just like us' if we're going to relate. You get the same thing in movies and books, the insertion of 'one of us' so that we can, supposedly, deal with the subject. Personally, I think that's insulting to viewers and readers. Not only could I be interested in the Syrian guides and their lives, I think they'd make a hell of a lot more interesting viewing than the whiny teacher.
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I've just started reading Ancient Appetites by Oisin McGann. I'll say one thing for McGann: he does seriously kick-ass action scenes. And another thing: he's got a wildly inventive imagination. I've only got through the prologue so far, but I'm hooked.
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On to the the writing. Well, I got ahead of schedule, then I fell a bit behind, but now I'm back ahead again. I think I've got through the toughest part--the transition to the new section of the book--and things are moving swiftly again. I figure I'm still on target for the 20k words by the 20th.
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
Of course, the chances of this coming in at 75k words diminishes by the day. But that's what second drafts are for, right? Right?
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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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Well, here we are.
After thirty-two thousand and some words, I've finally reached the part of the novel that was going to happen in chapter 2. Admittedly, the novel works way better with the events happening at this stage than it would have done if they had taken place at another point, but... I am kind of scared about how long this novel is going to be. And it's supposed only to be the first book in a series. And there haven't been any dragons yet.
Here are the exciting progress meters!
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
Man, I rock!
Ahem.
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In other news, I understand that many Americans have some kind of election today.
We don't. We have pancakes*. It's Shrove Tuesday. Hooray.
* For those of you who are American, British pancakes are about half-way between what you call pancakes and crepes.
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Down in the valley this morning, where the wild garlic is just sprouting (too early), Maya met a beautiful golden-haired dog. I'm not sure what breed he was. He looked a bit like a border collie in shape, but his fur was a uniform light-gold, like a lighter version of a retriever. Whatever he was, he and Maya hit it off immediately. They played in circles, dancing around each other, and doing gentle chasing. Maya loves other dogs, but she's a little bit nervous. Whether that's because her bad shoulder makes it a bit hard for her to manoeuvre or simply because she doesn't meet enough other dogs off-leash, I don't know, but when she does meet one she can play with, she's in heaven. Even after she and the other dog had to go their other ways (reluctantly), she raced around me in circles, full of exuberance. It's wonderful to see her so happy.
This evening, we were watching a nature documentary about white wolves in the north of Canada. When they started howling, I don't think I've ever seen Maya look so curious. She tilted her head backwards and forwards, trying to work out what they were saying. In the end, I'm not sure she was completely keen on their message--either that or she knew they were summoning each other back together--, because she headed up onto the couch to join her own pack and cuddled there for the rest of the evening.
Sometimes I think I spend too much time doing other things--chores, surfing, day-to-day stuff--and don't pay enough attention to Maya. Today reminded me why I should give her more time.
A gratuitous photo of Maya:
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
They've escaped from the baddies, but they still need to (accidentally) destroy the steampunk-y machine. Still not sure how they're going to manage that.
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Last night, and a bit this morning, we had snow. This is not that unusual for most of you, but it's the first snow we've had in Leeds this winter, which is a little pathetic. It didn't last long, and it wasn't deep (to say the least) but Steph managed to get out there with Maya before it melted and took a few photos. Here's Maya wondering why the flowers have come out while there's still snow:
In a fit of boredom last night, we watched an episode of the British SF show 'Primeval'. Dear Heaven! It really was bad. So, if you were in a shopping mall, at night, just the four of you, and it was infested with velociraptors, would you:
a) make sure you were all armed, stick together, and keep an eye out, or,
b) leave two people unarmed, send the unarmed members to wander around alone, leave the unconscious person lying alone on the floor at the other end of the mall, and lay down your weapons out of reach?
Or perhaps you'd send in some trained soldiers, rather than an inept bunch of morons, led by a professor.
Here's a comic strip including velociraptors:
In fact, the show was kind of fun, in a totally moronic way. It was made by people who have obviously seen Buffy and Torchwood, but hadn't actually realised what made those shows work. To enjoy it, you have to be able to completely turn off your natural reaction to characters who act stupidly to allow action and plot to happen, or you have to enjoy shouting at the screen. We went for the latter. We may watch it again, but only if we're in the right mood.
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
February 20th target:
Tomorrow, I have to figure out how they're going to escape from the baddies, sabotage the machine and accidentally destroy the house. Watch this space.
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First up, I've sold a reprint of "Uncle Vernon's Lie" to the new podcast zine, clonepod. This is very cool! Clonepod is fronted by three middle-school students, and I love that they're being so active in promoting short science fiction and fantasy. This is what the field really needs. So, I'm really happy that I'm going to get podcast there.
Uncle Vernon's Lie was first published in Realms of Fantasy in 2006, and last year it was reprinted online in Serendipity (read Uncle Vernon's Lie here). With a podcast, I reckon I've got all the media pretty much covered (unless someone wants to make a movie out of it...)
At the moment it looks like it'll be podcast in March, so not too long to wait!
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My birthday is on 20th February (hooray!), and I've decided to use it as a target. My aim is to write 1,000 words a day on the current 'Dragons of Mars' novel (that's probably not the title it's going to keep, due to the lack of dragons so far) every day until my birthday. That should give me a nice 20k words in less than three weeks.
I doubt I'll actually write 1,000 a day, but I'm hoping that'll be the average. No doubt I'll do fewer on my work days and more on my days off. So, because I've finally figured out how to do these little progress meters that everyone else has been doing (look at the source code! (then add an ALT attribute, cos it ain't valid otherwise...)), I'm going to use one of these. In fact, I'm going to do two. One for the novel as a whole and one for the immediate target.
'Dragons of Mars' progress:
Target 1 progress:
Okay, that's not the best start for the target, but the day's not over yet... :)
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