atbt

1 October, 2015

Writing Progress 2015: The Road So Far…

My writing friend JB Rockwell did a post this month collecting her writing achievements for the year, which put me in the mind to pull up something similar.

We’re still got three months left in the year, including ever-important NaNoWriMo month, but it’s time to check in before the final rush.

Novels

ALL THE BROKEN THINGS Draft 3 (Jen Rewrite) A massive rewrite, entirely reshaping the book from its original form. Finished in January.
ALL THE BROKEN THINGS Draft 4 (Mike Rewrite). Another massive rewrite. Finished at the end of May.
ALL THE BROKEN THINGS Draft 5 (Rob Rewrite). Another massive, massive rewrite, hopefully the last big reshape this project will need. By this point I was sick to my back teeth of making huge changes, happy with how far the story had come, and ready to bring future edits down to a more manageable level. Finished in September.
TOTAL NEW WORDS WRITTEN SO FAR: 120,800

Writing is rewriting. At least, that seems to be the way my process works out. I always have a hard time viewing big rewrites as progress — as much as I pour time, effort and new words into it, it’s still bashing away at a project instead of sending it out into the world.

2015 has partially about me getting over this, and accepting massive redrafts as a part of my process. I enjoyed Deliah Dawson’s description of each draft as a new layer to the story, with each previous draft necessary to bring you closer and more familiar with the world.

This particular quote rings very true to how I work:

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

― Michael Crichton

And one more, from Non Pratt’s revision advice.

“Repeat after me: writing is rewriting and rewriting is rewarding.”

― Non Pratt

Short Stories

LEVIATHAN RISES story released in the Under the Waves anthology
BADASS UNICORNS story on sub

Works In Progress

HELLA FUN PROJECT Draft 1. This is the next big WIP, and my October project.
DIVIDE THE SKY Draft 5. Another massive rehaul, jazzing up tense and turning the story into what it was always supposed to be.
I’m hoping to do a speedy 6th draft of ALL THE BROKEN THINGS in October, and then send it off to two final readers in November. With a bit of luck, and one final polish, it should be good for querying by January. So excited for this, you have no idea.
A few other ideas and unfinished projects: DOGGONE PROJECT, LEVIATHAN RISES, a DRAGON TAMERS rewrite and a ton of other fun stuff.

So, things are looking good, and I’m well on track for my year goal of 150,000 words, but I’ve still got a lot of work left towards my 2015 goals. I’m still aiming for at least one new first draft out this year, and one novel on submission.

For reading this far, have a thank-you singalong.

31 May, 2015

A Rewrite Retrospective

I’ve been calling my current WIP project “editing”, which doesn’t do full justice to the scale of what I was doing. Draft #4 of my strange story about machines and monsters cut around 45,000 words from a 90,000 word draft, working fairly solidly from the 3rd of March to the 30th of June. AND NOW IT’S DONE. I’M FREEEEE.

It was a massive, massive rewrite, and here’s some things I learned from it.

Getting Started is Always the Hardest

This Twitter exchange says it better than I ever could:

It takes me 5 times longer to edit the first 50 pages than the rest of the book.

— Victoria Schwab (@veschwab) May 22, 2015

@veschwab I think a) because the first pages were when you were finding your feet during the writing so they need more correction and…

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 22, 2015

@veschwab b) because they’re when you’re first switching gears in terms of editing so they take more time to get used to it?

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 22, 2015

~ @veschwab Writing and editing are like running through a new house in the dark. With time, your eyes adjust and you run faster through. — Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) May 22, 2015

Looking back at my word-count and editing stats for the months, I can really see it in action, too: in between a lot of real-life stuff, the first 25% of the edit took me two months. After all that, the rush to 100% was break-neck speed by comparison.

Editing Burn-Out is REAL
(oh jeez it’s so real)

Let’s hope I never have to do two major rewrites of the same book in a row again. Switching gears for half a year is really rough going. I’m looking forward to getting back to drafting.

Accountability Matters

During tricky rewrites, I show up everywhere wanting to keep a pedantic track of my wordcount — I keep a daily wordcount and editing pagecount spreadsheet, I tell Twitter, I tell my writing friends by e-mail, I give updates to a writing forum, I do my Writing Wednesday posts and fiddle about with tracking bars on the blog.

I like being able to prove, in cold hard figures, that I’m not stuck in a rut. I’m moving closer to the end.

I kill all my procrastination demons with spreadsheets.

Perfectionism is the Mind Killer

I’m getting better at spotting when I’m just tooling with a story, wasting time trying to get it to the impossible “perfect” point, and need to just stop and send it out to people.

All in all, it’s been… weirdly fun, in the end. I was miserable in the first month of this rewrite, the slow start, but now I’m at the end I feel weirdly proud of the new-and-improved project. This will fade in time, but for now, I’m going to bask in it.

Now that I’ve finally got some free time, here’s what I’m going to do:

Send the story out to the lovely beta reader team.
Catch up on my reading
Catch up on two beta reading projects for very patient friends.
Tidy the living daylights out of my poor, neglected study.
Go to the cinema and see Mad Max!
Play some video games.
Start catching up on the TV backlog.
And, of course, start on the next shiny new project!

How are things going in your neck of the woods, readers? Writing anything? Reading anything? Watching Mad Max before me? Leave a comment and let me know!

11 November, 2014

Inktober Robots

After my last Inktober sketch dump, guess which daftie forgot to update with the rest of her Inktober sketches? THIS DAFTIE.

I didn’t get too far with Inktober because the house move kicked into high gear half-way through, but I got a couple of cool pieces out of it. My last sketches were from ALL THE BROKEN THINGS.

All in all, this was a really fun challenge that brought out some fun aspects of my style. I hope to get more art done before the end of the year.

annaatbt

This piece was an experient with lineless art. Pose is entirely from a piece by Cubewatermelon, I used her tutorial too.

This lady is Anna Macfarlane, a Scottish-Indian mecha engineer. Anna and her mum both have have CMT disease, but Anna wears a powered exoskeleton to help compensate for her failing legs. She likes all night anime marathons, late night cheese on toast, and taking down monsters.

atbtmanaha

This thing’s a Manaha mecha, a military scarecrow built to look and move like a big human. It draws the enemies attacks away from the other mechs in the fleet.

The “Red Skeleton” is still in the “uncanny valley” stage of robot design, with movements that are too fast, or too jerky, or both at once.

It was originally planned to be AI-controlled, but design flaws mean that it requires a single human pilot who wears it like a suit. A weird, fleshy suit with squishy artificial muscle lining. Manahas have guns built into their forearms, and occasionally carry bigass blast shields.

I did a massive detailed sketch for this, then decided I liked the simple silhouette better.

atbthound

A much quicker, messier piece to go with my Manaha — the HOWND doggie doombot. I really need to redraw this one in a more simple style like the Manaha, I haven’t quite got it down right yet.

With the cyan Celtic spirals off, the HOWND is armed and ready for quick, stealthy scouting missions in the dark. With lights on, it’s a fancy military showpiece that looks good out on parade.

It has guns on its hackles. I tried to draw them. I TRIED.