Some various updates from the Misery and/or my brain, however those divide.
The third in my series of blogs about abandoned novels. This one involves a ship and wizards.
This year I’ve had difficulty getting to grips with writing a new series. I’ve written about 100k worth of false starts, not including 50k of a story that I’ve since abandoned. I couldn’t work out what was wrong with me: all I had to do was come up with a world, some people with swords, some conflicts and that was it, right? But nothing ever felt quite right.
This week I worked it out.
So, I guess this doesn’t have much to do with writing. It’s about life and mental health. Just a bit of personal honesty, maybe.
So here’s the second of the books that I started working on but ultimately abandoned. This one features a female protagonist and is written in third person. Below, I provide my reasoning as to why this didn’t ultimately work as the first chapter of a book.
Not every idea comes to fruition. Sometimes it’s not the right time, sometimes it just doesn’t pan out the way that you want it to. Since they do nothing but sit unread on my hard drive, I have decided to share some of these abandoned opening chapters from projects that I’ve toyed with over the last year (easily 100k words worth). I figured that they may be of interest to other writers, and might prove a good point for discussion of how opening chapters can feel like they’re working.
Just a quick update to say that CROWFALL, the third book in The Raven’s Mark series, is finished and with my publishers. I expect that I’ll get it back the week before Christmas (it seems to be a tradition) to do the edits, but for now, I’m done writing about Galharrow and the gang.
The problem with ‘writing advice’ is that it’s like trying to advise someone on how to be funny in social situations. If you know funny people, when you compare them they’re funny in different ways. The methods that they use to arrive at their humour are different, and their jokes are different. When it comes to writing, if you try to think up even the most basic rule – “Write things!” then at times, even that falls down. So I can’t really give great writing advice, nor do I have any idea what it would be. What I can tell you are some things that have helped me to progress in the craft.
You’ve finished your manuscript.
You’ve edited, re-edited, edited until you know every line by heart.
It’s fine, it’s ready.
You send it out.
And then comes the first rejection slip.
