Category: On Writing

The Gang’s All Here

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I blame Stephen King.

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. 🙂

 

Time is Against Me Now

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

This always happens, damn it.  I give myself a reasonable, decent timeframe to finish the line edit for The Persistence of Memories, and something comes along and says “OH HEY You need to get this done first, there’s a couple of errands you also need to do outside the house, and oh, by the way, Day Jobbery has been busier than usual, so chances of you sneaking any writing in during the day is slim to nil.  Oh, and remember those blogs that you ignored all weekend because you were too busy shopping and doing housework, and watching the new X-Files episodes?”

Grumble grumble whine whine.

But you know, I’m not going to let it get to me.  This has happened enough times that the most I can do is work around it.  I’ve read too many blog writers and webcomic artists that have this same issue, and that’s all you can do:  soldier on the best way you can.  I say this, as it seems my original schedule has gone a bit wonky.  I’m pushing the release of The Persistence of Memories out a few more weeks, mainly because after this line edit is done, I’m going to need to give it another surgery.  It’s great as it is, but it’s still far too long at nearly 169k words.  That’s actually about 15k more than A Division of Souls.  The response to that book, by the way, has been quite positive, except for the words no writer really wants to hear: it’s too long.  And Book 3 is even longer than Book 2, which is not a good sign at all.

But!  But!  It’s a piece of art!  You’re supposed to savor the pace both when it’s fast and slow!  Why does no one understand my genius?

Heh.  Yeah, right.  More like, “….Oh.  Yeah.  Huh.  You’re right, that bit’s pretty sluggish.  I should definitely speed it up.”

The thing with self-publishing is that you’re going to see it, warts and all.  The original 150k version of ADoS is still out there as an e-book and a trade until I get around to re-editing that.  On the one hand, as a writer, I feel like a failure because I put the book out there well before it was completely ready, and now No One Will Ever Trust Me as an Author Ever Again.

On the other hand, I can just get back on the horse, fix what needs fixing, present it again, and move on.

Whatever works, kids.

 

Granted, I’m also giving myself quite a lot to do in the next six months.  Editing and revising books 2 and 3 in the trilogy, as well as writing Walk in Silence.  My original plan for WiS was to have it released in April, but due to the trilogy editing and re-editing, work has been embarrassingly slow on it (about 2 handwritten pages a day, which really isn’t much).  I’m thinking that one will end up being released during the fall semester.  I’m okay with that…as long as it’s done by some point this year.

And then, maybe, finally, I’ll be able to work on new stuff.  Maybe.

On Writing Longhand

Jon Chaisson1 Comment
image
Featuring the Pilot Metropolitan pen that A got me for Christmas. I haven’t used a nib pen in ages!

I’ve been writing and editing via my PC for so long that it still feels weird to be writing new things longhand.  The last major project I wrote longhand was The Phoenix Effect; the trilogy was written completely on the computer, using MS Write and MS Word.  I still have the 3″ floppies containing all the early .wri files, come to think of it.  I did do a lot of the world building and the brainstorming longhand, mostly on scrap paper from work (these were the Yankee Candle years), but the new words were all generated downstairs in the Belfry, tapping away on my PC.

Even later incomplete and/or trunked projects like Love Like Blood, Can’t Find My Way Home and Two Thousand and even the earlier versions of Walk in Silence were started or at least primarily written on the computer.  I liked working that way for varying reasons: I could chart my daily word count and my production in general; I could edit while writing when it was clear it was needed; I could open multiple documents for reference use and note taking; and peripherally, I could keep myself amused and entertained with my mp3 collection playing in the background.

Writing on the PC can be a great thing, and I still enjoy it, but over the years I’ve realized its limitations as well.  I have a penchant for distraction, whether it’s multiple games of FreeCell and Solitaire, futzing around with the tags and the arrangement of my mp3 collection, or the continued refreshing of my Twitter feed.  I’ve also been hiding myself in Spare Oom far too long.  And then there’s the fact that I already work from home, so I’m spending most of the day back there already, sitting on my duff for eight hours.  Spare Oom may not be a man cave, but over the years it began to feel like I was using it as a hideaway from the world.  It’s the one room in the apartment that has the best view (see the banner picture over at Walk in Silence), but I don’t look out that window nearly as much as I should.

 

Starting up my personal journal a few years back was my way of combating all this.  Its original purpose was to divert my kvetching habits from social media to paper and curtail them somewhat, and it worked almost immediately.  I also made it a habit to write its entries away from my desk.  For the last year or so I’ve been writing in it during my midmorning break, sitting on the loveseat across the room where I can glance out the window as well.  Much to my own surprise, I’ve kept it up consistently since then, skipping only weekends and vacations.

Early last year, when it was clear that I’d be wrapping up the trilogy project by year’s end, I started writing the new Mendaihu Universe story.  This was the first new story I’d be starting completely longhand, in a yellow-covered 3-subject spiral notebook I picked up at Target.  This too was kept up consistently until late last year when I put it aside to self-release the trilogy.  Once that project is finally wrapped, I’ll be able to pick it up again.  In the meantime, though, I’ve been starting new projects longhand, such as this latest version of Walk in Silence.  My return to artwork and renewed dedication to weekly poetry have finally torn me away from the PC as well.  In addition to that, I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to work more often on my laptop out in the living room (where I am currently typing this) if I need to use MS Word.  And yesterday afternoon during the two football playoff games I sat at the dining table, writing a few WiS pages.

I’d commented elsewhere that I don’t plan on turning myself into a Luddite writer; I just feel the need to change up the habits to keep everything fresh.  I can view using the PC as a positive work process rather than a distraction or a slog.  I’m not chained to it, and shouldn’t be.  When I was working on the trilogy back in the early ’00s, working on the PC was something I looked forward to as an evening process, maybe even as ‘going to the office’ for my writing career, and I kept that separate from the rest of my life.  Returning to longhand after so long is sort of a return to that.

I’m curious to see where it takes me next.

More Thoughts on Self-Publishing

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve been seeing a few articles here and there lately, both old and new, about the business of self-publishing.  They’ll come from both sides of the conversation.  Some say the field has never been more robust and user-friendly, so it’s worth checking out; others will admit that it’s a viable avenue, but hint that you’re probably better off building up patience and going pro.  [I usually avoid the oh god don’t do it, you’ll shoot yourself in the foot and will NEVER BE A LEGITIMATE WRITER EVER articles.  In fact I usually avoid any article that hints that Everything Is Ruined Forever.]

I’ll admit, it’s not for the weak, and it’s not for the Day Tripper either.  You’ve got to dedicate time, space, and money to it.  You’re doing most of the work yourself, or at least farming it out to freelancers, and that doesn’t come free.  You’re essentially producing, funding and recording your own album, in musical terms.

But that’s not to say that the non-writing part of it is like pulling teeth, especially if you’re going it completely alone like I am.  It’s career knowledge, and it will definitely come in handy down the road, even if you end up going pro and signing with a publisher and/or an agent.

Formatting can be a tricky bastard, both for e-books and physical books.  Both have their own idiosyncrasies that need to be ironed out and tamed before they should be sent out into the wild.  Editing is just as tricky; there’s a reason writers joke about reading their own work using their Editor Brain rather than their Writer Brain.  The cover may not be tricky to put together, but you certainly need to have an artist’s eye (and again, not the Writer Brain looking at it).   In essence, you’re looking at the same object from multiple and often conflicting angles.

As I’ve said here before, I haven’t been doing all the work on the Bridgetown Trilogy on my own because I don’t trust outsiders toying with my work (or worse, that I think I can do it so much better than the pros).  I’ve been doing it because I want to.  I want to learn how to do it, and how to do it right.  Okay, I admit, there’s a streak of selfishness there, that I enjoy being self-taught rather than shown how to do it, because that’s how I understand it more fully and completely.  But the point remains:  it can be done, if you’re willing to dedicate the time and faith to it.

After all, that’s the whole trick to writing, isn’t it?

 

Year-End: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

2015 was definitely a banner year for me.  One of my best writing years in a long time.

I trunked a majority of dead story ideas and created a number of new ones to work on in the future.  That was a big move for me; finally letting go of stories that no longer sang to me, and making the decision not to revive them.  That’s always a tough move for a writer, but it has to be done to clean house, so to speak, to make way for newer and more robust ideas.  By retiring many of these stories, I’ve given myself more room to focus on the new Mendaihu Universe story, as well as others not in that universe.

I was more consistent with my other creative endeavors that aren’t exactly for public consumption (yet):  writing daily journal entries, photography, poetry, artwork, and playing guitar.  Are these ever going to be shared elsewhere?  Who knows…I’m not aiming to be a semipro poet, artist, photographer or musician for the moment, as these are personal and not professional projects.  Things I do purely for selfish enjoyment.  I’m able to push myself and get better at them without having an expected plateau to hit.

I hit one of my highest goals of seeing the trilogy out in the wild by self-releasing A Division of Souls as an e-book (and soon to be available as a trade paperback).   I was also included in Uniquely North Quabbin, a collection of essays about the area of Massachusetts where I grew up.   The trilogy was an extremely long term project for me (spanning over a decade, technically over two), so releasing it has very much given me a sense of closure.  I can finally move on to new projects, both within the MU and elsewhere.

 

So what does 2016 hold for me?

On the professional end of things, I’ve already made the choice to have at least three books to be self-released next year:  the second and third book of the trilogy, The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light; and my memoir/music book Walk in Silence.  I’ve been working on all three since October, just after I released A Division of Souls, so I’m still on schedule to see these come to fruition.  TPoM should arrive early next year, WiS sometime late spring or early summer, and TBoL by autumn.

After that, my writing calendar will be disturbingly, frighteningly clear for the first time in ages.

Which means that I should look for another project to focus on.  If I’ve learned anything from the trilogy project, it’s that I now understand the level of dedication and focus I should give to my writing.  Whatever project comes next will be given that same amount of dedication and focus.

Do I have ideas?  Yes I do!  There’s the new Mendaihu Universe novel that’s currently on pause while I get its related novels out.  This one probably won’t see the public eye until 2017.  Then there’s the musical family idea (aka The Lidwells Story) that’s also on the backburner.  That one’s a compact standalone, and a very rough draft has already been written via my daily words earlier this year, so this one could very well be another quick turnaround.

But other than that?  It’s wide open.  I’m as curious as you are about what I’ll write next.

Speaking of daily words, I’m hoping to return to writing them via the 750 Words website in the new year, especially now that I’ll have more time for them.  This is where many of my recent ideas have arrived on the scene, so I think I’d be remiss in passing it up.  The key is to not be stressed out about it.  The point is not to ensure I write 750 or more words on a daily basis, but to exercise my imagination and have fun with it.

I haven’t updated my whiteboard schedule yet, but I usually end up doing that on January 1, so you’ll see that post tomorrow.  Oh!  And speaking of updates…I plan to have a much tighter and more frequent schedule here at Welcome to Bridgetown as well as Walk in Silence.  Maybe one or two posts a week for starters, but I’d like to expand on that later on.  I’d like to expand on the subjects I write about as well.  As much as I love talking about college radio or how I write, I’d like to investigate different avenues related to writing and music.  Different genres, different processes, that sort of thing.

Other than that, I’m going to revel in the fact that the road looks much clearer than it has in years.  I want 2016 to be the Year of New Things.  I’m really looking forward to where it takes me.

Post-Release: Remastered Edition

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

One aspect of writing and publishing (self, professional or otherwise) that doesn’t always get talked about is the subject of editions.  To tell the truth, it’s kind of a boring subject, not to mention it’s one that the writer and publisher doesn’t always want to talk about, for various reasons.  With professional publishing, the idea of a second edition is sometimes seen as a distant hope; the publishing house only goes into multiple editions once it’s seen that the book is a big seller, and that the original run of however-many copies has been accounted for.  This happens with much less frequency than one expects; this is also why writers are often super-paranoid about possible errors before it has its first print.

With the self-published writer, especially for one like myself that’s just starting out, one might not want to tell one and all, “Hey, I have a new edition of my book/e-book available!”, for the reason that it could be read as “hey, I just uploaded the latest version of my book, which doesn’t have bad formatting and other embarrassing mistakes!”  It’s better just upload the new version and just keep it on the QT, and hope no one noticed.

 

But new editions of your self-published e-book don’t necessarily have to be a bad, embarrassing thing.  Well — for the first edition of the physical book you should at least make sure that the formatting is tight and there’s no weird errors, but that’s another post entirely.  [This is the main reasons A Division of Souls is still e-book only at this time.  I’m about to start in with the Big Galley Fix starting today, so hopefully within the next few weeks it will finally be available at Amazon.]  But future uploaded versions of your already-released book doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

So many ellipses, so little time...
So many ellipses, so little time…

Upon finishing her reading of the ADoS galley, my wife stated that I have to go on a strict diet of NO ELLIPSES.  I will totally cop to using that punctuation WAY too much (that, em dashes, and italics), to the point that I’ve trained myself to cut them nearly 99% of the time in future editing projects.  The Persistence of Memories doesn’t have nearly as many as ADoS did, but I’ve managed to quash nearly all of them.  Most of them are hiding in dialogue, where I want the client to…well…you know…kind of avoid having to reveal something they need to reveal, but it can also slow down the flow considerably.  I’ve learned to use when and where necessary, and only then.

She also mentioned that, since it contains a large cast, some of which are mentioned early on but not mentioned again for some time.  I’d been on the fence on this one, to tell the truth.  Luckily, among all the notes and outtakes for the Mendaihu Universe is a solid dramatis personae that I can add before the main text.

The next edition of ADoS will contain a few formatting errors I missed (such as the Case of the Curiously Vanishing Pilcrow), some minor edits, a dramatis personae, as well as the deletion of a number of said ellipses.  The cover will remain the same for the e-book, but still want to toy around with the spine for the physical book, as I’m still not happy with it.

Will this lessen the worth of the book?  In terms of self-publishing: not entirely.  The mistake made here is the belief that once you have the book out there, for good or ill, it’s out in publish and any mistakes will be points off your credibility.  I made peace with that some time ago; I still find glaring formatting and editing errors in professionally published books, which just goes to prove we’re never dead-on perfect the first time out.  While it’s great to want your best work out there, focus on the story and the execution mostly, and do your best with the editing and formatting.  We readers will forgive you if your character’s name is spelled Rbfrit instead of Robert in exactly one place on page 276.  It happens.

Again with the music parallel:  you’re re-releasing your album because it’s been remastered, not because you hated your vocals on a few tracks and chose to completely rerecord them.  You’re reuploading the album because Jimmy hit a bum bass note on Track 8 and a quick ProTools edit made it go away.  In short, you’ve already uploaded some of your best work to date; you’re just making it even better this time out.  [And believe you me, there are some fans out there who will buy the ‘remastered’ version — and I’m talking books now, not music.  If they enjoy the story that much, they’ll have your back.]

So yes — don’t be afraid if you see a minor error in your self-published book.  Go right ahead and make those fixes and reupload the file to whatever platform you’re using.  It’s totally up to you if you want to make it publicly known that it’s a new edition, but don’t fear it.  Use it to your advantage.

On Religion and Spirituality in the Mendaihu Universe

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

One of my biggest worries when it comes to the Mendaihu Universe novels, to be honest, is that it would be taken as a ‘religious’ novel, or that it would be mistaken for a soapbox for my own ideas on spirituality.  Granted, the novels have a heavy amount of spirituality, belief and faith involved in the world building, so it might happen yet.

Thankfully my worries have been misplaced so far.

The whole idea of using spirituality in the MU is not to preach or to proselytize, but to imagine a reality in which a belief system, its tenets, miracles, and everything else is not only real, but a natural part of society.  Like the use of spiritual chakra energy as a source of power and strength in anime like Dragonball Z or Naruto, the enlightened people of the MU use their spirit energy for many useful things: innerspeak (clairaudience), physical sensing (clairsentience), reality seeing (claircognizance), and so on.  More to the point, these abilities are part and parcel of Meraladian life — innerspeak is the ‘silent half’ of the Anjshé language, where the intent is projected psychically while the words are spoken, for instance.  All these abilities are from ‘within’ — that is, their souls.  It’s a part of their life organically as well as spiritually.

That’s not to say that I’m ignoring zealotry and bigotry, of course.  There are characters from ADoS forward who use cultural bigotry, even if their reasoning for it is an innocent (to them) ‘you wouldn’t understand’.   The new as-yet-unnamed MU novel reveals a new generation of believers of the One of All Sacred who think of themselves as a special enlightened class personally chosen by their deity — something Denni Johnson would have been horrified to see.  There are those who are committed to their version of their belief, regardless as to whether it conforms to reality.

 

I will admit that the terrorism that we’ve witnessed in the past twenty years or so (including the past few days) has been a bit of an influence in this universe as well.  The Mendaihu and Shenaihu both contain extremists in their ranks (the kiralla and the nuhm’ndah, respectively), and both have their physical embodiments of such extremism.  But as with everything in this universe, nothing is ever black and white, good and evil, and the MU is no different.  There are gray areas, where the best of intentions lead to bad conclusions, and vice versa.  This is precisely why the Bridgetown Trilogy is not about good triumphing over evil, but about doing the right thing, despite overwhelming outside influence.  And this is also why I chose to paint both sides as fallible.  Both sides have had blood on their hands at some point in their histories.  Neither is without sin.

I’ll also admit I’ve been thinking about this since Friday, after the events that took place in Paris.  Understandably I was shocked by the terrorism that unfolded, but I was also equally as shocked by the white noise that followed in social media — the blaming of an entire religion (or all religion, for that matter), the puerile political taunting, the ‘how can you feel bad when [x] is happening elsewhere’ shaming, and the reactive surface emotions of revenge and vilification.  That white noise, thankfully, has receded somewhat over the weekend.  As they say, cooler heads prevail.  I also saw a beautiful outpouring of compassion and love coming from the same channels, and those are the voices that have remained as the others have begun to die away.

And this, by far, was the hardest part of writing the Bridgetown Trilogy:  trying to make the events of the novels a global spiritual and religious event, and not something that only the main characters are feeling.  I felt that it needed much more than just the population reacting like they were in a Michael Bay film, running away from explosions in glorious slo-mo.  I wanted a more realistic reaction:  This is really happening.  I’m angry/sad/terrified, but I’m not helpless.  I will either stay and fight (accept the personal awakening) or take flight and protect those I love (refuse a personal awakening).  The trick was to passively show these nameless background people reacting, even if it was in just a sentence or two.  The reader sees this three times in the first few chapters of ADoS:  via clairaudience when Nehalé performs the Awakening ritual and senses everyone’s reaction; offscreen, with Nick and Sheila mentioning the number of witnesses they’ve spoken with just after the ritual; and onscreen, when Poe passes a car on the highway on the way to the Crest and notices how eager its occupants are to get out of town.  I pepper these throughout the three books; just a mention or two to remind the reader that the rest of the world is out there, and they’ve been affected as well.

As a writer of fiction, I’m not going to claim my way is the best way to see reality, nor am I trying to push a message.  I’m merely telling a story and unfolding it the best and truest way I know how.  I can only hope that what the reader gets out of it is entertainment, and maybe something to think about as well.

Hidden Stories

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy, book 3 in the Imperial Radch series.
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, book 3 in the Imperial Radch series.

A. and I were talking about Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy last night (she’d read it the day it came out, I’m about three-quarters finished), specifically about how we really enjoyed the many and varying characters in the series. One thing that came up was that we were both fascinated by a specific twenty-year gap in the lead character’s history that happens early on in the first book (Ancillary Justice). What happened between the fade-out and the fade-in?  Where did she acquire the certain things she now owned?  Do we ever find out?  Is it important to the main story arc, or is it simply a passage of time between important moments?

I’ll tell you a writer’s secret:  us authors love doing that.

There are many and varied reasons for it.  Sometimes a rose is just a rose:  the character lived their life doing things that had no important bearing on the story. Maybe they just needed to lie low for a while.  Sometimes it’s a big secret: it’s a specific gap of time that the narrative will return to much later on, when it’s important to the story.  Sometimes we never find out exactly why.

Me?  I love doing it because it’s part of my world building process.  For me, it gives the character space to breathe in their own privacy for a bit.  In A Division of Souls, there’s a space of five years between the time Caren and Denni’s parents are killed in action and the present time of the book itself.  I did this for two reasons: for the two sisters to come to terms with what happened, and to show that the current events actually started manifesting themselves a lot earlier than anyone thought.

I call these gaps hidden stories.  The main arc doesn’t focus on these events, doesn’t need to.  But just the same, they’re part of the framework of the whole.  There’s usually a solid reason for this time gap (such as in Ancillary Justice, where Breq is basically keeping off someone’s radar), and it can be extremely useful and malleable.  This is where the writer can say “this is what happened between [Novel X] and [Novel Y].”  Another good example of that is the previous Naruto movie The Last, which takes place between the time gap between the final chapters of the series, 699 and 700.  We find that there’s a gap of time that we can use as a bit of a playground for new and/or related stories if we so choose to write them.

Which, of course, means that the seventy years between The Balance of Light and the new (and still untitled) Mendaihu Universe story is chock full of mystery!  A lot could happen in an average human life span.  I’ve given myself quite a bit of space for hidden stories in that stretch of time.

Maybe sometime down the road I’ll tell you a few. 🙂

Editing the Beast

Jon Chaisson2 Comments
It never ends... *sigh*
It never ends… *sigh*

I feel like I’ve been editing the trilogy for half my life, to tell you the truth.  Sure, I’ve revised and rewritten it multiple times over the last decade, but there are days when I wonder if I’ve hit or gone past the point of Needing to Let It Go.

Well, to be honest, that’s one of the reasons I sent A Division of Souls out into the world already.  I knew that I went as far as I could with that as a whole; it did not need any more revision or rewriting.  The first edition might still be full of piddly errors, of course — a formatting error or a typo — but that can be easily (and quickly!) rectified by fixing them and uploading the newer version.  This is why I’m doing a galley edit before I set the physical book out into the world…that one needs a bit more fiddly TLC than an ebook, and I don’t want to kludge it.

Am I flirting with danger, doing everything DIY and not hiring an editor?  Well, maybe I am.  I’m sure I could use more than a few extra eyes to find egregious errors and lapses in judgment.  I won’t say I’m a special snowflake who thinks he’s above editors and beta readers.  I’m sure I could use them more often.  Perhaps on future works I shall do so.

At the same time, though, I’ve committed myself to seeing just how far I can go without the extra help.  It’s not me being a cheapass to save money, or making myself out to be some kind of indiepub wunderkind…or being subconsciously afraid that I actually might suck as a writer, and that someone will tell me so to my face.  It’s me wanting to learn the entire process, from start to finish, both as a writer and as ‘producer’, as it were.  I want to understand how to write a successful story, but I also want to know how to edit my own work.  I want to know how to make an eye-catching cover.  I want to know how to format the novel to different platforms.  I want to know how to release it into the world.  I want to know how to promote myself and my work.  And I’m willing to dedicate time and brainspace for all that.

It’s been a very instructive and busy couple of months so far.  At last count, I’ve had nine downloads since it went live a month ago.  That’s pretty small, but it’s actually more than I expected at this point in time.  [No, really.  I was honestly expecting crickets.]  This is a huge learning curve for me, but I’ve been able to ride it and learn from it.

Onward and upward!

Is This the Future?

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

This morning I was listening to a compilation I’d made back in January of 1994 called Nocturne.  At that time I’d originally planned on completely rewriting the Infamous War Novel, re-envisioning it as a far-future SF novel, less as a Cold War-inspired story and more as a Future War one.  For inspiration I latched onto a lot of familiar genre tropes at that time –revisiting Blade Runner, reading space operas, picking up a lot of interesting anime, and so on — while at the same time briefly returning to my music collection as well, just as I had with the original.  This little gem from Sigue Sigue Sputnik, found on the back end of their sophomore album Dress for Excess, seemed to fit the post-apocalyptic mood of my story perfectly.

Granted, this too was an unfinished draft, for various reasons.  One was that I’d had trouble fleshing out the idea.  I knew I could do something with it, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.  [The other was that I was not in the best of places emotionally at the time.  Being broke and alone just out of college and working at jobs that had nothing to do with my college studies was probably a worse time for me than high school was, come to think of it.  Writing came to me, but in frustrating fits and starts.  There are a lot of trunked ideas from that era.]  Nonetheless, it sowed the seeds of another story, True Faith, which I started later that summer, and a much more successful writing career was finally born.

The compilation is just shy of 45 minutes long, taking up one side of a cassette — the other side was my 1989 compilation for Belief in Fate, another writing project dating back to high school.  I’m fascinated by the mix, as it’s definitely heavy on the atmospherics.  Starting off with Curve (“Faît Accompli”) and Inspiral Carpets (“Two Worlds Collide”) and ending with the above track, it’s a dark and somber affair.  I think what I was aiming for was a feeling of frustration and uselessness within a larger, less tolerating society, which my characters would fight to transcend through the course of the story.  That theme continued into True Faith to a degree.  In retrospect, it’s probably for the best that I trunked that story as well, because I was emotionally and mentally too close to it at the time.  I would start fresh in 1997 with The Phoenix Effect, and the rest is history.

It’s kind of interesting, comparing the original ideas of the early 90s with the present version of the Mendaihu Universe.  There are a few bits and pieces that have survived throughout the entire process — the Vigil group, for one — but the pessimism of the original is nowhere to be seen.  I see now (and I knew even then) that I was not only teaching myself how to write a novel correctly, but I was also using it as a cathartic release.  I’ve given myself a bunch of different avenues for those sorts of things, leaving the personal out of it for the most part.

Did I know that twenty years later I’d be happily married and living in a much larger city on the opposite coast, self-releasing the first of three novels that came out of all that?  Hell, back in 1994 I had no idea if I was going to make next month’s rent, let alone what my future would be.  Sure, I had dreams and ideas and a hazy optimism that I’d get there one day.  I knew it would be tough, but I was willing to work for it, however long it took. That was where I first fostered that stubborn commitment to keep going, despite it all.

And that’s why I’m content with this future me, why my reaction to seeing my book listed on e-book shopping sites has been one of a deep relief and happiness.  That stubborn will took me to this point, and that made all the difference.