The Process of Progress
(Or RoW80 Check In for February 27th)
Between July and November of 2010 I wrote 11K words on Luck for Hire. I worked on Model Species in November and took December off. In January, I joined A Round of Words in 80 Days and made a goal to add 50K to Luck in 80 days. 10K every two weeks. The best laid schemes of mice and men…
Every book has a slightly different process. Generally, Eric knows the nature of the end of the book when we start. With Pas de Chat, he knew the steps to get there with little diversion. With Divine Fire, the exact ending was fairly elusive and only fell into place after Eric mulled it over for years. The nature of Luck for Hire is such that we left a lot of plot avenues open. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Who are the ambiguously gray guys? Eric knew the ending, more or less, but the journey was full of paths to take.
Of course, the more I wrote, the fewer paths could be left open. Halfway through RoW80, we had hit the major plot points of Luck for Hire. I had added about 27K words (33K minus rewritten materials). Decent progress for a month and a half. The last two weeks have been spent in inspection and rewriting. This is the hard part. The fatiguing part. What layers need to be added? Where are the weaknesses?
We decided to link up a few of the characters, giving Aleister and Dana a past relationship and Aleister and the LVPD a present one. We’re going to add to the Las Vegas section of the book and hopefully do more to pit Aleister against Howell. Eric’s rewriting a few scenes in a more direct way than he’s done in the past, which is exciting. And I have epigraphs to write. The thought is to augment some chapters with news stories about the events. Having not one journalistic bone in my body, I’m not raring to write these, but it’s work that needs to be done. On Monday, I’ll start on my next 10K goal.
Visit other RoW80 participants:
the layers can be hard sometimes – keep smiling
Writing journalism pieces can be a pain in the backside (I did media/journalism at uni for three years alongside my creative writing diploma before going into IT/multimedia), but there are plenty of books out there to help hone your craft (mostly it just involves keeping it as concise as possible, concentrating on the bare bones of who, what, when, where, why and how, as well as the ‘inverted pyramid’ structure: Most important facts at the top, less important in lower paragraphs so that if an editor cuts some of the later paragraphs out, the important info is still retained).
Anyway, enough academic ranting… Writing a book with another person sounds like it would be interesting, but you seem to be doing it quite well. I think if I tried to write a book with someone else, I’d end up driving my collaborator to drink, or at least into a psych ward haha Yeah, I get a bit territorial with my creative endeavours…