McMurdo Week 2

Three interesting things:

1. The main entrance of each building is marked by a large red light.  This is so people can find the doors during white-out conditions.
2. McMurdo station is located in the New Zealand claim.  Occasionally there is tension over this, such as when people on site misbehave on or near the Kiwi base and are dumb enough to post photos of this on the common drive.
3. The night-crew (MidRats) flip their time orientation.  They hang out in the coffee shop in the morning, and talk about getting to bed before midnight (noon).  Since the sun never sets, that works great for keeping their internal clocks on track.

Another World

Just finished my second week.  Still enjoying it, though at times this place is like another planet, both physically and culturally.  Spent my day off writing, revised 15 chapters of ZPF, and wrote this lovely blog article for you to enjoy.

The weather

The weather has remained warm, near or a little above freezing most of the week.  There was one cold spell where it snowed a little, and one morning where the wind was still, the sun shining bright and it really felt like spring (minus the budding plants).

We are under the ozone hole, and despite being at sea-level I burn in minutes without sunscreen.  I have even burnt inside our radome (as have some co-workers), which leads us to the conclusion that the membrane is transparent to UV.

Christmas and a shocking discovery
Christmas decorations are going up and people are getting in the holiday spirit.  However, I have made a shocking discovery:  South Pole Elves are evil.  Yes, they are stuffing Santa into a trash can.  The reindeer looked kind of mean too.

South Pole Elves -- not the nice kind

One of the big events for Christmas here was the Women’s Soiree which took place Saturday. This started out in the 90’s as a social event for the station’s few women who wanted to dress up and enjoy some wine and for some years men on station thought it was a women-only event despite open invitations (this is from the official history). Now the station population is about 60/40 men to women, with every job integrated, but the tradition of having women-only acts has continued.

It was described to me as talent show, but turned out to be a bit more involved, lasting over 3 hours with several exceptionally talented performers and nothing at all that was Gong-Show worthy (which is what I expected). The finale was a choreographed dance-off between the shuttle drivers and the Wasted Wrecked Jan-Hos (A team comprised of dancers from waste, recreation and janitorial).

Stage set up in galley

There also decorations on the streets and in the Galley, and even my door--my roommate is a regular down here and some of his friends did a drive-by decorating of our door.  Best of all, everyone gets two days off next week (yay!).

Long Duration Balloons
Another highlight was observing a long-duration balloon launch.  Nine miles out on the ice they have facility that launches very large balloons with a variety of instruments which ascend to high altitude and are carried around the pole by the prevailing winds which rotate around the pole in a very stable pattern during the summer.  Some of these balloons can remain aloft in excess of 90 days, and some carry huge instruments.  One I saw a lecture on carried a 2m optical telescope which has resolution rivaling space-based telescopes, at a fraction the cost.  From our work site we were able to watch it ascend throughout the day.

Unfortunately my camera lacked the zoom to really show much detail.  For a good part of the day it looked like a jellyfish undulating across the sky.

Stay warm northerners

Colorado Gold writer's conference

This weekend I attended the Colorado Gold writer’s conference put on by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Yes, practicing what I preach. Here are my thoughts on conferences:

• Attend at least one professional conference each year. The experience and contacts are well worth the time and expense. (check)
• Attend at least one fan convention each year--learn what your market is reading, talking about, tired of. (planned for October)

Colorado Gold was a great experience. Met a ton of interesting people, recharged the writing batteries, learned new tricks, picked up new books, added several new authors to the ‘must read’ list, and had the opportunity to pitch Zombie Proof Fence face-to-face.

The pitching fascinated me. There was both a formal pitch appointment, and informal pitching. In the appointment, I had ten minutes to catch the interest of an agent. There were editors on hand as well, but each attendee was permitted only one appointment and I chose an agent. The pitch went fine, far more low-key and conversational than I expected, and the agent asked to see more (wahoo).

The informal pitching involved talking to other attendees about the book. This gave me a rare opportunity to talk about the book, the characters, the world, why I chose the subject, and how I tackled the project. In my day-to-day life this almost never happens. This part surprised me because so many people were not only interested, but positively bubbling with enthusiasm.

My biggest surprise of the conference came when people I had not talked to started to approach me, asking about the book by name. A stranger knows the name of my book? And cares? Wow. The first time, I thought it was a fluke. But it happened again, and again. Buzz? Whoa. I hope (fingers crossed) that the buzz reached some of the industry people who were there.

Status - September 6th

Writing a lot, but most of my work has been on side projects. Mixed feelings about this. While it is fun, lets me try some new things, and builds up some marketing collateral for ZPF, it is slowing down production on Forbidden.

• Finished one ZPF spin off: Soma
• Worked on ZPF book 2 outline.
• Worked on ZPF spin off told from the dog’s POV.
• Reading up on graphic novel writing, illustration, etc.
• Submitted short stories that were collecting dust on the shelf.

This puts me about 2 weeks behind plan for Forbidden, but I am feeling productive.

Write-a-thon Day 9 --> The End

Worked at Coffee shop in am, library until pm

• Solid day -- very productive
• However, all the work was on projects other than forbidden:
• Rough draft of Soma -- short story in Zombie Proof Fence universe.
• Novel pre-work for 7-facts
• Extensive character sketches for 7-Facts
• Blogging
• Sketching for blog
• That added up to a solid 6320 words

 

Results: Success!

• 84.5 hours (beat goal by 4.5 hours)
• 36,632 words
• A bit low on the word count, but a lot of time was spent reading old material and organizing.
• Major progress on Forbidden, and did work on 5 other projects.

Write-a-thon Day 8

• Worked at the library
• Marked-up sections 3,4 and 5
• Finial analysis:

          > Throw away 40% (old Academy setting and related material)
          > Rewrite 25% (opening and several key character interactions)
          > Survives more or less intact 35 %

• Outlined first month at workhouse, though many details are sketchy.
• Added to introduction.
• 4239 words
• From here: back to the beginning to fill in gaps and make required updates.
• Sadly, tomorrow is the last writing day, then it is back to the hour or two each evening. Ahh, sweet productivity, how I will miss you.

Write-a-thon Days 5 & 6

Day 5:
Very distractible Day 5 -- went off on several side trips:

• Art, page design and game-design for the zombie blog
• Follow-up on submissions for ZPF
• Research on creative commons licensing for photos used on blog.

However, I did return to the work at hand and made good progress:

• Substantial clean up on Section2 (much of which becomes obsolete with move from Academy to Workhouse as principle setting).
• Continued clean p on Section1.
• 5000 words, but only 2000 were on Forbidden.

Day6: Plumbing day
Part of the deal for taking this week to write is that I would commit time to attend to household repairs. Focused on that today. Made 3 successful plumbing repairs, and left one sink disassembled until I get parts. Also did substantial yard work.

This resulted in minimal writing. A few hours, 2692 words.

Write-a-thon Day 4

Worked at the library. Stayed later than usual -- good focus today. Something that helped with focus: ate very little today, and did yoga in morning and evening.

• Read-through section 1, marking what needs fixed or re-written, deleted old/out of date material. Cut ~3000 words, made ~1000 words of notes.
• Read-through 50% of section 2.
• Outlined bridge scenes for section 1.
• Outlined new opening.
• Still in pre-writing phase. This is behind where I wanted to be -- wanted to be into drafting new material and revising by today.
• Wrote 2633 words.

Write-a-thon Days 2 & 3

Day 2 and 3 were good.


Day 2 -- worked at coffee shop

• Made tracking / management spreadsheet for this draft.

• Fine-tuned estimates -- estimating 150 - 190 hours for this draft.

• Worked on Snowflake (outlining method), and Synopsis

• Spent extra time working on ZPF artwork (this is a distraction as it was not part of this week’s plan).

• Wrote 2800 words



Day 3 -- worked at Museum of Nature and Science

• Awesome work environment. Best view of Denver, overlooking park with view of downtown & mountains. On-site food & drink. Mostly quite. Lot to look at during breaks. Only complaints: unsupervised children (loud/disruptive), and no public internet.

• Worked 7-facts short story. Spending time on this as it may grow into a novel.

• Made several updates to outline.

• Wrote 3422 words.

• Note: still in ‘pre-writing’ phase, no work done on manuscript yet.

Write-a-thon Day 1

Started write-a-thon with an average day, not terrible, not spectacular. Focused on pre-writing activities.
• Set up files for next draft.
• Started character dictionary.
• Reviewed all existing files.
• Wrote 2021 words -- all in brainstorming / outline.
• Have not touched the actual story yet.
• Sketched character designs for 4 zombies (for use in ZPF blog).
Non writing:

• 35 minutes cardio
• Installed new router (old one did not play nicely with Apple products).
• Ate 80% healthy.

Write-a-thon

At the start of a week-long writing spree. The plan is simple: write until I drop each day.

 

Had some trouble deciding what to focus on as I have just completed a long project and have not ramped up the next project.

 

Options are:

• Short story spree -- crank out ~5 short stories to polished form and submit.
• Start revision of YA Steampunk book
• Write rough draft of MG mystery
• Write rough draft of YA mystery

 

Each of these has appeal:

 

Short stories: I have not refreshed my list in a while, and I only have one pending publication in the queue, so I really should sell more shorts this year to keep my name work in front of people. I also have a serious idea backlog for short stories.

 

YA Steampunk: Rough draft is done. It’s a good story. Needs revised before anyone sees it. Completing this will give me two saleable books.

 

MG Mystery: Based on Doofus, this short book will be a fun Middle-Grade mystery. This too would give me a second book to sell, and I *might* be able to complete a draft during the write-a-thon.

 

YA Mystery: A new project. I have done a little exploratory writing with these characters and the setting (contemporary high school), but the outline is little more than a three page sketch and some character write ups. Would be fun, but unlikely to get through a draft.

Hurray!!!

Done with the 4th draft of ZPF. Trimmed it down to 90K and worked out the plot glitches pointed out by my beta readers. Now it moves into more intensive marketing.

Finished two weeks earlier than projected, so I have a little breathing room. Not sure what to focus on next. Could move right into cleanup of the steampunk book, could revise and submit some short stories, or I could try to bust out a draft of a middle-grade novel I outlined back in December.

Leaning toward the short stories as I haven’t had a new one come out in several months, but don’t have to decide this instant. I’ll think it over and see where I end up.

What I have been up to

Not blogging...

Went on social media hiatus, not blogging, twittering, or face booking. Nothing deliberate about it, just fell into an intensive writing period and did not make the time.

So here is what I have been working on:

Forbidden, a YA Steampunk novel set in Victorian London: Completed world building and wrote the rough draft. Draft came out to 106,000 words, with 102,000 in support files (outline, brainstorming, world building).

The draft came together nicely, but it will need substantial rework -- at the mid-point it shifted from an ‘academy for gifted boys’ setting, to a Dickensian workhouse setting, and the tone became darker and far more dystopian. With this rework, I expect to have a clean draft by the end of the year (ready for first readers, and possibly submissions).

Also writing a new draft of Zombie Proof Fence, a YA novel set 3 years after a zombie apocalypse. This draft is based on feedback from several very kind first readers, and is mostly fine-tuning and trimming.

Sadly between the novels and other commitments, I have not found time to work on short stories or to blog. However, I am through the intense drafting on Forbidden and into editing mode so you may be seeing more on the blog.

Status -- February 7th, 2010

Things are moving on the new book. Primarily working backstory, world building, character development and outline (45K in supporting files), with ~7K of scenes drafted.


Here's a taste -- some events leading up to the story:

Status -- January 16, 2010

Exciting news: Sold “The Identifier” to Psudopod -- the #1 horror podcast going right now. This short story is a personal favorite and I can’t wait to see what they do with it.

No major news on ZPF. I have gotten excellent feedback from beta readers, giving me several ideas to improve the book. No news from agents or editors, but that is a slow process. For now, ZPF is on the backburner (unless I get a call) and I am working a new project.

The new project has gone in an interesting direction. Around Christmas, I had thought I would the start the year writing a novel-length expansion of Doofus -- Young Billy solving the mystery of M.L.B. and finding his shoes. This would be a middle grade story (for 3rd-5th graders) running about 40K words. Then, as happened with ZPF, a completely random idea bloomed into an interesting idea that exploded into a mind-shattering, keep-me-awake-at-night brainstorm--the Cat 5 hurricane kind of brainstorm.

As a result, I have shelved Doofus, shelved another runner-up (about a gang of thieves posing as homeowners in suburbia), and gone to a steampunk story set in Victorian London.

Try this out:

FORBIDDEN: After investing a toy with the forbidden gift of life, Malthus, a tinker’s son, is drawn into a treacherous and secret world of machines, magic and spies in Victorian London.

This alternate past has a 3rd tier of society, the Enlightened Society, made of individuals gifted with Craft and/or Ken.

Craft is witchcraft/sorcery and is primarily found in women. Ken is an intuitive, seemingly mystical, understanding of machines which is primarily found in men. Craft is highly suspect (work of the devil and all) and in parts of the world it is forbidden. Ken is more accepted socially and is the engine driving a fast-forward leap in industry and steam/clockwork technology.

In the last couple weeks I have gone through character and world-building exercises, developed an outline, and researched the period and other steampunk works. The plan is to start the first draft on January 17th and see how far I can get by April (I expect to finish a rough draft). After that, I will shift back to ZPF and edit based on feedback received from Beta readers--though a phone call on ZPF could radically alter my priorities.

2009 Accomplishments:

Here is a look back at 2009. It was a good year for writing.

2009 Accomplishments:
- Finished a novel: Zombie Proof Fence
- Sent out first round of queries.
- Received requests for fulls.
- Waiting to hear back.
- Finished 9 short stories
- Sold 4 short stories
- Saw 2 short stories published (other 2 pending)
- Maintained a blog (over 20K words)
- Captured over 50 story ideas for future use (over 22K in undeveloped notes).

The Numbers:
- 956 hours writing
- 447,828 words written
- Monthly average = 37.3K words, 80 hours.
- Beat goal of 57 hours/month

So there you have it. How was your 2009?

2010 Goals Part 2

Here are my writing goals for next year, the “what I can do” sections have ideas that other writers may find useful. Achievability is crucial, so I have a plan to meet each goal. I have also looked at contingencies and challenge goals (because I am an overachiever).

Write another book, maybe 2

My goal as a part-time novelist is to write a book each year. The story at the forefront of my mind is a Middle Grade book, which will be very short (1/4 - 1/2 an adult book). Depending on what happens with ZOMBIE PROOF FENCE, I may have ~6 months available after writing the MG book. My challenge goal will therefore be to write a second book. Here is what I can do:

• Write every day. This is the most important step. At 500 words per day, a first draft emerges fairly quickly. At this rate, it will take 240 days to write first drafts of both books. This leaves some wiggle room for life, revisions, short stories and the like.
• Plan. Develop characters, story arc, know the ending, explore enough to KNOW the story closes in a satisfying way--all before starting the draft. This insures success.
• Measure progress. This helps keep me focused, and also shows me when I’m getting off track.
• Write first drafts. With so many things going on, expecting polished drafts is too much. If time permits, I will revise the new book(s), but realistically that may fall into 2011 as ZPF is the #1 priority this year.
• Share. Sharing outlines and early chapters with my local writers group does two things. First, it provides external deadlines. Second, it helps expose weaknesses in characters, world-building and voice. This feedback allows me to make course corrections early on, and results in a far more mature first draft.
• Re-evaluate after key life events. If ZPF sells, I will have a deadline for revision and need to focus on marketing. After the first book is done, my goals may shift. The unexpected could happen with family or work. After major life events, I will reevaluate to keep my goals achievable, yet challenging.

Write 6 New Short Stories

Short stories are fast--fast to write, to revise, and to sell. They improve writing skills quickly, they build self-confidence, they allow experimentation, and they help build an audience. I plan to keep this part of my writing going in 2010. Here’s how:

• Write every day. Déjà-vu because I wrote yesterday too.
• Capture ideas. You never know where a story will come from, so write down ideas, character sketches, dialogue, whatever--and keep those notes organized and indexed.
• Pace = 1 story per 2 months.
• Plan = 1 month to draft, 1 month to revise.
• Share. Shorts are good for writers group. Once polished, submit. The more work in the mail, the greater the odds of getting work published.
• Enjoy. A quick or experimental short story is a lot of fun and less stressful than the novel work. Short stories are good for taking a break, a change of pace, or a stress reliever.

Blog Weekly

Started blogging last year, but it was intermittent. Plan for this year is to blog at least once per week. The challenge goal is to blog twice per week. Here is what I can do:

• Write every day. Hmm. I’m seeing a trend.
• Post every Sunday. This is the most reliable day for getting things done (given my schedule).
• Write book reviews. Interesting content for readers, and good ‘fill’ for lean weeks.
• Write serial articles on writing. I know a lot about writing. Yay. Some of my trick and tips can help other writers so why not share? A structured series will be interesting to read on the blog, and I can write sections or themes more efficiently than random posts which improved the on-time delivery of content.

So there you have it. What are your goals, and what is your plan to achieve them?

Goals for 2010

Here are my writing goals for next year. Achievability is crucial, so I have a plan to meet each goal. I have also looked at contingencies and challenge goals (because I am an overachiever).

#1 -- Get my completed fiction published

Sell Zombie Proof Fence
Okay, so I might not have 100% control of this, but here is what I can do:

• Keep it in the hands of agents. If one set doesn’t take it on, query the next set.
  
• Put it in the hands of publishers. Simultaneous subs don’t fly with most publishers, so this is a serial process--one publisher at a time. One has a partial now. I have three more in the queue so if the first doesn’t like it, it goes to the next.
  
• Revise. Have good feedback on the lastest draft, and the MS is over-length for the target market. That means another draft. I hope to do this with the editorial inputs of a purchasing editor, or at least an agent, but it will see another draft this year.
  
• Advertise. Through blog, Twitter and Facebook, make sure people know it’s available. In 2009, these forums netted one Agent requesting full MS, and one publisher requesting a partial. So, yes, the web presence helps.

Sell short stories
This is an ongoing process. I had 4 short story sales last year, 2 of which were published, 2 still pending. To quantify this goal: Sell at least 4, at least 1 to a pro market. Here is what I can do:

• Submit existing stories. I have ~12 stories done. Keep them in the mail, and if one is rejected, submit to another market that same week (challenge goal: resubmit in 24 hours).
  
• Write new stories. Duh. New material, showing my best writing. These are the ones with a realistic chance of selling to a pro market (as most of my existing stories have already done those rounds).
  
• Advertise. Same as above, but the goal is more to generate traffic/sales for my publishers than to sell my work. I want people to read my fiction, and I want the publications I appear in to be successful and to benefit from publishing my work.

Summary of 2010 goals

Started listing goals this morning, thinking about why each goals mattered, and how I would achieve them. This resulted in pages of material--too much for a blog post.

Instead, here is a summary. I will follow with details about each of these as the rational for the goal, and the strategy to achieve it may be of interest.

2010 Goals:

• Sell Zombie Proof Fence
  
• Sell 4+ short stories. 1+ to pro markets
  
• Write another book
  
• Write 6+ short stories
  
• Blog weekly
  
• Help other aspiring authors

There you have it folks. My next few posts will delve into these in a little more detail.