The Incredible Life of Billy Brown - 1,500 Words

This is a project I started a few months ago, before I separated my writing blog from my media blog.  It was actually my NaNoWriMo project, but that didn't get very far.  I've since learned that NaNo isn't exactly my cup of tea.  I'm already struggling to write every day, something you've already noticed I don't really do, given my lack of daily updates.  I guess it's foolish to think that suddenly applying external pressure against an internal problem isn't working too well for me.  I need to learn how to write that much just because I want to, not because I'm being told to by a contest.

It helps that I've been making steps towards understanding my writing process a lot more.  It helps when I have the ending planned first, even if it isn't in incredible detail, and having planning sessions before actually sitting down to write really helps.  In fact, planning right before I start to write helps the most.  It's really all about getting myself in the creative mood. 

That being said, this current project is something that I thought of after learning a bit about the effect faster than light travel has on time.  The basic idea is that the titular character is kidnapped by aliens and forced into slavery for years.  He puts together a plan to escape, but has to deal with greedy slaver aliens, crash landing on uncivilized planets, and oddly out of place homages to other works of science fiction.  The latter will probably be short, given that I haven't exactly immersed myself in science fiction before.

The idea is one that I haven't been playing around with in my head for years, and as such is the perfect project for me to practice my craft.  I don't have ridiculous expectations for it, and it hasn't gone through several plots.  My word goal for this one is around 50,000 words or so.  Possibly more.  I intend to hit the average for YA books.  But I'm not going to just write until I hit that word goal.  It's just an estimation, I already have the basic ending planned.  I'll have to go flesh it out as I go along, but it helps, as I learned with Dragon's Egg, to have the ending at least in mind.

I did actually start work on this before Dragon's Egg, but put it on hold after I realized that I had to focus on getting Dragon's Egg done first.  Which was good, because Dragon's Egg is much shorter than any YA novel out there, and made for a good first real finished book.  Sure it isn't as impressive as finishing a full length book, but you gotta start somewhere.  And after I kept abandoning books I needed this.  Now I can confidently say I finished a book, I finished an entire narrative, and I can move on to my next, longer project.

After I finish with Billy Brown I intend to pick up my Epic Heroes idea again.  That one will definitely be a series, though Billy Brown has series potential.  Maybe one day I'll find myself back at Avalon Locke.  Who knows though, chances are I might find it cliche once I'm good enough to get published.  It would probably help once I get all the scattered ideas gathered together into one overall planning file.  It's not that what I had planned was bad, but the book just wasn't coming together and wasn't living up to my expectations.  Not to mention that I don't have the experience I need to actually plot out and write an entire series.  When I divide my attention across several books, bad things happen. 

Still, it is my first baby, and I want to do something with it.  I think the ideas I had for it weren't too bad, I just need to make sure that everything is concrete in my mind and I can get myself to write the entire series in one go.  I think that would help me the most, if I consider the entire story as one book, and then write it as such.  Not to mention it helps to have the entire thing done, that way the publishers know for a fact that the series won't just fizzle out and die after they contract me. 

Either way, organization is the key.  I'm not the most organized person, so I need to pay close attention to it and create a planning system that works for me.  I've actually learned a few things at LTUE this weekend, and have decided to keep myself from having giant planning documents that make it hard for me to read them.  I need to find a way to make myself want to keep coming back to my notes.  Which unfortunately means I'll have to spend more time working on them, and less time doing straight writing, but once I get my system going it will make things a lot easier than me.

Writing a book is intimidating, and just jumping into it is even more intimidating.  Some people like to discovery write, but I've since learned that bad things happen when I try it.  Sometimes I come up with some good scenes, but the overall story suffers.  Not to mention that it is a lot less intimidating to scribble down some notes about the plot and then develop those than trying to juggle plot, character, description and dialogue all at once.  I've long since abandoned my method of writing scripts for my book before writing the prose.  It did work, but normally once you get in the right mood writing good prose and dialogue happens at basically the same time.

I've been rambling for long enough, but that's what this blog is for, to give updates about my current and future projects and to record my musings about writing in general.  Maybe one day I'll write something important, and maybe someone will learn something from my experience.  That would be my biggest dream, not only to become a professional writer, but to also help teach the next creative generation. 

Well, expect future updates on Sundays from now on.  I think it would be a bit much to write something here every time that I write on my book.  If I'm going to be writing I might as well add some more word count to my project.  I just hope I can keep track of how much I write during the week.  So instead of several shorter updates with me having little more to say than how I'm doing on my project, and nothing else, expect longer posts once a week.  Should be fun.  Maybe one day I'll actually be someone people care about to read their stuff.  Maybe people will come to my blog and look at the first entries, years in the past then.  Boy, are you future fans in for a surprise when you see how bad I write in your past. 

Just keep in mind that I like to keep the tone of this blog conversational and informal (which means I won't have to edit my language before posting), then we can still be friends.

Dragon's Egg: 3,351 Words

I'm really bad at updating this when I write something.  Or I'm really bad at writing.  You decide.  Either way, I'm going to try and make a habit of updating this blog every Sunday, with a total word count for the week.  Hopefully this won't be completely depressing.

I decided to do my best to finish this book today.  And Hallelujah I did it!  This marks the first officially completed book I've ever written.  Yes it isn't the longest book out there, but it's middlegrade and those tend to be on the shorter side anyway. 

Technically I have finished one book before this, but it wasn't one I'm proud of, and the ending was just me giving up on it.  So as far as the Derek Bown Canon is concerned, The Dragon's Egg stands as my first completed novel.  Or novella... 

Well, either way this is an exciting night.  I'm sure as I go to edit this book I won't be so smug about it as I am now.  But for now I'll just relish the high I'm getting off of finishing this book.  Now I can buy my ticket for world fantasy, now that I have something to show editors and agents.

Dragon's Egg: 2,189 Words

Well, I wrote 2,189 words today.  While I may not be writing as often as I'd like, at least I'm getting a decent amount written when I do write.  I'm a little under 3,000 words away from my word goal for this book.  Well, my second word goal.  Originally it was going to be 30,000 words, but then I decided to save on printing cost I'd cut it down to 20,000 (that and it would take less time to finish it).  Though I am close to the word count goal it will probably be a bit longer than I anticipated.  We're close to the final showdown, an event I imagine will take a little longer than another 3,000 words.

So we're close, very close.  Then I'll just have to proof read it, and make a few changes so that it's ready to take to the printer.

Well, here's hoping I finish it either tomorrow, or sometime this weekend.