The decision to pull out of a writing project is a strange one. It’s never a knee-jerk reaction. More often than not, it’s a laborious, emotional, drawn out process. All kinds of questions arise, whether it’s worth soldiering on or cutting losses. The feeling of frustration and irritation due to wasted time. And even the relief (and the guilt of feeling such, despite the decision) when the deadline is no longer hanging over the writer.
I say this now, as I seem to be on the fence on a current long-term project at this time (don’t worry, it’s not Mendaihu Universe related). I won’t go into detail just yet, as I’m still debating on what move I’ll take, but suffice it to say, the end result is different than what I’d expected it to be. It’s starting to feel less like a publishable book and more of a private ‘vanity’ book…something that would appeal to me, but probably not to too many others. Will I finish it? I most likely will, given that I’m close to the end of the initial rough draft anyway. I just may not self-publish it.
It’s a tough decision, and one I’m not taking lightly. It’s not exactly frustrating that it may take this direction…just that it feels weird, signing off something that had potential at one point.
Hey there, everyone! Lots of movement here in Spare Oom. The Day Job has been keeping me busy, though I’ve been sneaking a few minutes here and there to edit.
At this point, it looks like the release of The Persistence of Memories will more than likely be end of March rather than February…I do apologize for the delay, but this edit run is taking a bit longer than expected. I’m still about a quarter of the way through, but I’m making good headway. I’m giving myself a bit more of a buffer so I can do the formatting and the cover, and so I can release both the e-book and the physical version at the same time.
I’ll have more to blog about my editing processes to date, but that will be after everything is done. Yay, future blog posts! And thank you for your patience, as always! I promise, it’ll be worth the wait. This one’s still my favorite of the three.
But seriously, I’ve been taking extra steps to make sure I get all this work done on time and with minimal distraction. I’m still utilizing the habit of closing down all web browsers when I’m not using them for something important (like checking my word choice against the Merriam-Webster website). I’m even doing this during the day when I’m editing during slow moments, as you can see from the above picture. Making good on my plan to scale back on my internet usage in general has worked out just fine. I’m more productive and less distracted.* Once I post this, I’ll be closing down the browsers again.
* – Okay, I may have returned to my FreeCell playing habits, but the trade-off is worth it. A five-minute game is a lot better than a half hour of Twitter.
Oh — and if you’re curious, here’s the wallpaper I currently have. I took this out Spare Oom window with my nice camera during a rather spectacular sunset late last year.
Oh, hey there! I’ll be scarce the next couple of weeks as I kick my own ass trying to get The Persistence of Memories out and (relatively) on time by end of month. I’m making serious headway on this last Evil Red Pen No Seriously This Is the Final Line Edit, cleaning it up so y’all will enjoy it when it’s released.
Okay, actually I blame my ex from ’94 for handing me a copy of The Stand while we were working on True Faith, but the point remains: I blame Stephen King for introducing me to the Large Ensemble novel. I read a wide assortment of his novels in 1993-95, intrigued by his style and his characterizations, and it was The Stand that grabbed me the most. I’m extremely picky when it comes to stories with End of the World themes (they don’t bother me, I just have very little interest in them), but this one fascinated me, because it was such a sprawling piece of work. A doorstop. And the edition I read was the expanded version that had just been released. And I loved it. Still do…specifically that version.
I loved the idea of a large ensemble in a novel, because I was fascinated by how each character’s life intertwined with the others, even if they never met face to face. I loved the idea of each character’s unique development and evolution throughout the course of the novel. I especially like how each evolution had a specific role within the main plot, whether it was a large role or a small one.
That’s one of the reasons the Mendaihu Universe novels are always an ensemble affair. Like the purging and repopulating of the human race in The Stand, I wanted to show that the awakening and ascension of spirits in the Universe weren’t merely relegated to the main characters, but to everyone in the world. Not that future MU stories will also have a large cast; I already have some ideas focusing on a minimal number of characters that we may see down the road, and I’m quite sure I’ll have a Tales from the ARU sequence soon enough.
Writing large ensembles is tricky work, because you need to be a really good note-taker, or at least have it down really solid in your head. Switching from one POV to another is simple enough; you just need to pay attention when you do it. More often than not I kept with a single main POV character throughout an entire chapter to keep it simple — and in the process I got to play with that character’s evolution within that length of time. And on a higher level, I had to make sure the main plot kept moving. It was quite the juggling act, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
I know a lot of people who aren’t big on ensemble casts, or doorstop novels for that matter. They prefer a slimmer cast (and a slimmer spine!) in their books. Shorter, more concise stories, ones that don’t meander or take forever. Events that affect a small group rather than the entire planet. I tend to switch between the two; one of my favorite novels is Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which essentially has two main characters and about six secondary characters, and the plot mainly focuses on how the house affects the characters. And on the other hand, I also love Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto manga, which spanned 700 chapters and has an incredible array of main, secondary and tertiary characters who all have unique personalities and play an important part in the overall plot.
I say all this because I know that some readers may find the Bridgetown Trilogy a bit long; A Division of Souls is nearly 150k words, which is quite long even for a genre novel. This made me think about playing with convention, maybe taking the opposite approach that the 1994 edition of The Stand took: what if I created an abridged version of the trilogy, and leave it up to the reader to choose which version they’d like to buy or download? I’m totally fine with taking that step, because I learned from Douglas Adams: there’s always more than one way to tell a story. I could conceivably edit out some minor characters and leave out a few scenes here and there and still have the same story.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I’m refusing to listen to reason by whinging that severely edited versions of the books lead to them being less than pieces of art. Yesterday I bought a copy of one of my favorite 90s movies, Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World. The original 1991 version Warner Bros released is around two hours long; the director’s cut, which I picked up, is 288 minutes — that’s over four and a half hours long. I get that Hollywood needed a much shorter movie. I was fascinated when I watched the first twenty minutes and noticed something: at the 20 minute mark in the Hollywood version, the main female character (Claire) meets the main male character (Trevor/Sam). In the director’s cut, they haven’t even met yet, let alone Claire getting to the destination where they meet. There are number of short establishing shots, bridging scenes, and emotional moments that are there to show how the world looks and behaves in this fictional 1999. Each version tells the story: one is crisp and concise, the other is slow and deliberate. Both work the way they’re supposed to, and both are enjoyable to watch.
And like any director’s cut of any movie, there are going to be fans and detractors. Some audiences hate long films. Others love the idea of an ‘alternate’ version of their favorite movie. This is where I started thinking: why not alternate versions of my novels? Am I willing to spend all that extra time playing around with different versions of my stories? Am I dithering in wanting it both ways? And realistically, would anyone really care either way? Well, some of those questions really don’t matter all that much in reality. I’m not looking for Hugo nominations here.* I’m not looking for scores of fans; I’m just looking for readers who’ll have fun reading my universe, whichever version they so choose.
* — Yes, as a matter of fact, A Division of Souls can be nominated for a Hugo! Go ahead and nominate if you want, I’m cool with that. 🙂
Welcome to Bridgetown 