thePowerFactory » Journal

2013

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:07:00 +0100

So I managed half of my writing objectives for 2012.

I set out to finish a series of books that should collectively arrive at least 150 thousand words. I wrote a little over my target, but still have a few chapters to go before the first drafts are finished. So I both succeeded and failed. Incidentally, this is the most I have ever written in a year, my previous ‘record’ was just half this.

Length is not all. There must be a decent story in there. That is another matter. I am ‘in’ the story at the moment, and it is difficult to know at this stage whether it works. And this is just a first draft. My plans are to finish the last chapters, then put the ms aside. Having just spent about 15 months working on it I have no distance from the project. I need to do something else and then come back to it anew.

When I do come back I will comb through the story, add in pieces where I have just typed XXX or [DESC], check dates and names, and generally make sure everything is as consistant as possible. Then I will put it away again. Again, this will probably take me about 3 months, and after that time with my nose in details, it will be difficult to see the wood for the trees.

The next combing through the pages will be to determine the rhythm and development of the story. This will probably entain culling chapters, writing new ones, changing elements, making sure surprise and suspense work as I intend.

At this point, I expect the book[s] will be over 220 thousand words. So, after another pause, I will come in and prune. Reduce. Hack out soggy and sagging parts. Get the book back down to about 180 thousand words.

All these phases will probably take me all of 2013. Only then will I be ready to send it off to beta readers.

Looks like I’ve got a busy year ahead. Hope that you do, too.

The End of the Year Report

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:06:00 +0100

Although I haven’t posted much here, it has been a busy year. Last year I finished my latest book, and diddled with another for about six months before setting that one aside as it wasn’t going anywhere fast.

In September 2011 I started planning a new story. I worked on that plan for about 4 months, and then, in January started the next book in earnest. It currently stands at just short of 150000 words for the first [rough] draft and I am in the thralls of the last few chapters. When that is finished I will set it aside and start planning the next one.

Also this year I revised “Black as Snow” completely rewriting a few passages and correcting hundreds of typos. I then created a nice new e-book edition. I also selected and revised a number of short stories from my short story project into one book. These are both awaiting the time to finish the covers, and then I’ll make them available for download, and probably to buy on some platforms. In passing, the unrevised edition of “Black as Snow” has now been downloaded more than 2760 times and that makes me sort of happy.

I have a refreshed version of this site planned for when I can bring the e-books out… some time next year.

So arrangements for next year are already conspiring to take what little free time I do have: revise the latest [unnamed ms.]; plan and write the next book; finish the book covers; get the books out into the wild; redo the site…

Maybe I will even try to blog more regularly next year as well as I feel that I have been neglecting that a little.

Now it’s back to transcribing texts from my notebook, then school — for the rest of the week — and then… surviving the christmas holidays!

All the best to all, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. See you next year.

Long time, no see...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:11:00 +0100

Looking back, the last journal entry was just before the birth of Yoghurt-Moghurt. Wow. Quite a lot has happened since then…

For a start Yoghurt-Moghurt — we no longer call her that, by the way — is now 18 months old, toddling and chatting and trying to put on her brothers pyjamas by herself [don’t ask]. I have changed jobs, moving into teaching fulltime [a great experience, and something that I should have done earlier]. The Wombat — Yoghurt-Moghurt’s brother — had a nasty accident over the summer and lost his front teeth, but there doesn’t seem to be lasting harm, and he’ll be followed closely until his adult teeth pop through and everyone is reassred that all is definitively okay.

On the writing front, things has slowed down. Teaching and having two small children to care for means that I don’t get a lot of time. I did finish another novel [that I’m currently re-editing as I’m still not happy with it]. I took up another novel that I’d started years ago, but decided that this wasn’t going to be the time. While the story is fun, the pacing is off, and quite a few things that I thought were original ten years ago have now appeared all over the place, so I can’t really move on unless I think I’ve got something to bring to that space. The first chapter however is more or less standalone, so I might put it online here.

As I get annoyed commuting, I planned out a new novel from September to December. While there are still some details to be worked out, I’ve started on it, and it will probably be my major [personal] project for 2012.

And quite recently a couple of things came along that brought me no little pleasure. First of all, Black as Snow got picked up and tweeted about by a site that points out free ebooks. This brought a swell of visitors and downloads — over 600 since Christmas — so now downloads on that little story have gone over 1000. The second thing was much more surprising. Some time back I was contacted by Yoza, a South African site that makes short stories available over cellphones for teens there. As my short stories here are available under a Creative Commons licence, they asked permission to use and adapt Perfect Teeth. The other day while flipping through my stats and analytics I stumbled on it. Wow. Not only that but kids who read these stories had taken the time to comment. That was a real heartwarmer. For information, The Yoza Project — and I’m quoting here — “The Yoza Project, originally known as m4Lit (mobile phones for literacy), set out to explore the viability of using mobile phones to support reading and writing by youth in South Africa (SA). If mobile phones proved to be a legitimate alternative and complement to printed literature then their potential for increasing youth literacy practices of reading and writing in SA, and indeed the developing world, would be significant. Most developing countries are book-poor and mobile phone-rich, after all.” See About the Yoza Project. The project was founded by the Shuttleworth Foundation which you may have heard about as Mark Shuttleworth is also the founder of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.

More will be coming in 2012, but until then, my best wishes to all…

Postponement

Mon, 03 May 2010 23:30:00 +0100

Tomorrow morning we — the Lovely One, and myself — will set off for the maternity clinic. Yoghurt-Moghurt was due on Sunday according to the Hospital’s calculations. We think she’s due at the end of the week, but we’re no experts, we were only there at the conception, so who are we to know? Yoghurt-Moghurt, as far as we can ascertain, is quite comfortable where she is, and in no hurry.

All this then boils down to the fact that the Hospital staff have decided that birth will be induced tomorrow. While the Lovely One has to arrive at 8:30, in all probability, she will be kept waiting for about 4 hours while they treat a backlog of other ladies dropping babies in all the available labour rooms. It happens like that. Especially when they tell you to come early having eaten only a light breakfast. And, following the miscarriage, we’re a bit wary, and inclined to blindly follow all the instructions that Hospital staff give us. To the letter. So far they haven’t pushed their luck and had us practise ballroom dancing, or worse. Although they did suggest making love as means of ‘naturally’ inducing childbirth. [And believe me, it doesn’t work.]

But… and here it comes. I will be postponing this week’s story. For the most irrational reasons. Here’s why.

It is a yucky story. It is my worse one of the series. Not in the writing as I’m not sure that I’m a good impartial judge of that. But in the subject matter. And for some weird, superstitious reason, and just in case anything does go amiss, ‘cos, you know, that’s life. We know, we’ve scraped up against that a couple of times already: first for the Wombat; and then before Yoghurt-Moghurt came along. Just in case, I don’t want that story up and out there. It’s that sort of story.

That’s it.

Let’s get tomorrow over with. Let me cuddle Yoghurt-Moghurt, and reassure the Lovely One, and then I’ll see about posting the story.

See you then.

I’m sorry

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:23:00 +0100

Here’s a new post after a few month’s absence. And, from a certain point of view, worse than that as I’d promised to be back earlier. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say, and try to explain what’s going on.

For those still following my short story project the good news is that I will be publishing the last three stories in the coming weeks. I’ll dedicate a later post to analysing the project in more detail. But first, what’s been going on?

Well, all was going reasonably well. I even negotiated with my full-time job to take Fridays off in order to advance on my writing. I managed to keep to my objective of writing a story a week, with a couple of stories in reserve to cover rough patches. But then things got complicated. First of all, I took up a teaching job. That put paid to my Fridays. In fact, factoring in the preparation and the corrections, I pretty much lost most of my evenings.

Then, the Lovely One being pregnant with our second child, and the Wombat needing more and more time and attention, my energy level suddenly seemed to go negative.

In January I did start writing again, but I no longer had the time to type up the stories. Plus the fact that the first story I started back then had to be abandoned as it wasn’t going anywhere. Ironically the story was about a couple of travellers lost in the snow. And I got lost in the story. Come March, I had the current stories ready, but was just too tired to get things into form and online. I even stopped tweeting [and following my fellow tweeters].

Let’s just say that this was a form of over-extending oneself, of burnout, of general exhaustion.

Now, I’m taking some days off to be with the Lovely One in the days leading up to the birth, and look after the Wombat. This means I have a little more time, so, I have decided, I should finish things off, as they stand, while I still can.

So, from this week on, there will be new stories.

And, again, I’m sorry for my silence.

Time out

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:14:00 +0100

I have decided to put my short story project on hiatus until January. Things are already busy for me, and they will become even more so in the coming weeks. I have exhausted my supply of advance stories — in fact I’m racing to finish tomorrow’s story — and if I don’t stop I’ll be gambling that I can finish a story a week on an even tighter schedule. Not possible.

But I’d also like to take this occasion to look back on the project. And to see if it’s possible to draw any conclusions.

For a start, since starting in May, I have published over 67000 words here. As that is also the rough size of the novel that I’m currently editing, that means, by my own personal yardstick, that this project currently weighs about a novel. I’m quite proud of that achievement. That’s not to say I have written 22 masterpieces, far from it I think in my despondent moments, but I have shown myself that by getting down and working I can produce something. Some of the stories are decent. Some are in severe need of polish and different degrees of rewriting. Some are better forgotten. Oh well, can’t win them all.

The second positive thing for me with this experiment is that a previous novel Black As Snow has now been downloaded over 150 times. That may seem a ridiculously small number and it probably is. But that is 150 times more than if it wasn’t available here. Perhaps one or two of those downloaders even read it, and perhaps, just maybe, someone liked it. So that’s another win.

Now, quite frankly, I need to charge my batteries. I need to prepare my lessons, I need to re-build a reserve of stories, I need to breathe a little. I’d even like — if I can find the time — to go back and rewrite some of these. But for that I need time.

So — except if I dig out an old story to post at Chrimblemass — I’ll be back in January. See you then. And why don’t you bring a friend with you next time.

Search Terms

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:58:00 +0100

From time to time I like to read through the things that people type into search engines and that bring them along to this site. This is the current list… [My comments in square brackets.]

free reads
short short stories online
free short stories
free zombie short stories online
freereads
my short story in 200 words [looks like someone trying to do hisherits homework online]
spooky stories for teens
“his trainers stink” [yep, that they do!]
“it rained” a short story
book about boy who breaks into school
boy hangs himself from tree in greenwood
children’s online responsibilities short stories
depth smiling of dog of police under earth [this I cannot fathom…]
drive carefully,there’s a computer looking at you
explosion charred “white suit”
free french stories online
free online stories boys first time
free reads short stories
free short spooky stories
free short stories on time capsule
free short stories online
free short story
free short story in illustrations [no illustrations as yet…]
free simple french stories online
free spooky short stories
free spooky stories
free stories online
fur hospital story [???]
house in the wood spooky stories
make short story online free
off road kids buggies [bet this person was disappointed]
reggae drive careful
short stories online prison [no! reading liberates!]
short story about under the greenwood tree
stories on fur [‘on’ or ‘about’?]
teen spooky short stories
trees in the greenwood
what id the ending of night train [what id indeed?]
writing spooky stories

Here’s to the next few month’s weird selection then.

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:52:00 +0100

A wonderful initiative. List of free online novels.

Book? or Films?

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:18:00 +0100

When faced with an adaptation of a book into a film there are generally two sorts of reactions. There are those who say, The book was much better. And then there are those who say, What book?

Both, in their own way are correct.

A film is a different creature entirely to a book. While the book may be a starting point, it is just that. A visual story is not told in the same way as a written one. In a book, one can have a cast of hundreds, thousands, millions. One can have the sets and locations limited only by the writer’s needs and imagination. A film has a cast and a budget. Both necessarily limited.

But a book is not just the writer’s imagination. It exists in the special place where the writer’s and the reader’s imaginations meet. You may be frustrated by the adaptation because, while perfectly valid, the director’s vision is not yours. It may be richer, or poorer. Or just different.

Writing short fiction — or at least, attempting to write and learn at the same time as I am doing — has lessons to be learned from both answers.

First of all, a few words about how I have approached this project. I resolved to publish a story a week, and try to keep it up for a year. Just to see. That doesn’t mean I write a story a week. I started with a small — 4 or 5 — reserve of stories. Each story takes a different time to put together. The quickest so far has been about 2 days. The longest, about three weeks. Most do take about a week, although that is probably because I wind them up, or I try to, after about 5 days of writing.

These stories are necessarily first drafts. Rewriting and editing could easily take just as long, if not longer. And I don’t have that time. This could also cause me to reject a story in some cases. So that goes out of the window. I can’t afford to abandon a story as that would put me off my schedule. So I have decided — arbitrarily — that all stories started will be finished. And in order. And my rules state that I cannot set a story aside for later.

I write in pencil in my notebook. I will quite often re-read the previous day’s writing before continuing. Quite naturally, this helps me get back into the mood of what I’m writing. The pencil allows me to quickly rub out and change a word here, reorder a phrase there. At the weekend I type up the week’s story. In most cases, I wrote that story about a month ago. As I type, I will clean up, change a little something here and there. But these are brush strokes. I have no time to change the structure, or make major changes. To that extent I consider these first drafts.

I have decided that with short fiction, it is even more important that the story immediately grabs the reader in some way. It must draw both of us very quickly to its heart, then move on to a resolution [of sorts… yes, I do allow myself open-ended stories]. I sometimes start in my head with a first line, or the idea for a story and then play with it, still in my head, until I find the best way into that story. Only then do I start writing.

Sometimes I see the short story as a form of note, or sketch for a longer piece. That might be my intention before I start, or it might happen on the way. ‘Warning Call’ is clearly in this category. I’d rather like to know what happens to that phone — and those people — after the short story ends.

Quite often character names will initially be a squiggle, or a couple of letters. Then I will go back later and give them a name as they take form. I will also tend to use rather ordinary names. You see, I don’t have time to develop particular traits in 2 - 3000 words, my typical lengths. Unless those traits are the essence of the story. Yet I don’t want my characters to be cardboard. They need a detail that makes them real. [An aside: I was delighted when someone very close to me burst out laughing while reading ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’. Naturally I asked what had tickled her fancy. The mother, when she says “Finish up and you can have your pudding.” Just a detail, but it had struck home. I was proud of that.] I also don’t describe the characters, trying to let their words and actions form them, unless something in their appearance of character is necessary for the story — John was a skinny kid with a tuft of hair that was always falling over his forehead, the way he peered up from behind that give an impression of shyness, of hiding. Nothing could be further from the truth… I count that the reader will fill out the empty canvas, bringing in memories, ideas, depth, and background that will make the story more real for her.

I don’t have time for diversions either. Thanks to the nature of the stories, I can lead the reader a little astray, or appear to set things off on one path, then with a twist, land where I wanted to go. That is in the nature of the contract between writer and reader. This is what happens in ‘Fur’ for example. The reader twigs quite early that Julian is a werewolf. Hopefully before the narrator does. It would be a disappointment however if Julian were responsible for the violence. The twist must come from that.

So all the facts must be present and available in the story. This also avoids ‘cheating’ — the vampire is crushed by a grand piano falling out of nowhere at the end of the story, yet nothing in the story up to then leads you to expect that. That is not only cheating, it is most frustrating.

There is something that I admire in contemporary American Action Cinema, and something that I have tried to apply here. That is the ability to quickly sketch in the protagonists characters in the opening scene. You ‘fall’ straight into the story, but in that opening scene, you quickly take in feelings and hopes, conflicts and motivations, unconsciously as you follow the initial action. The same close reader remarked on the story ‘Warning Call’ that everything hinged on the parents trusting their son when he told them to get out of the house. I explained that I had tried to ‘plant’ a series of touches prior to that that explained that trust: helping the father clean up after the party, the fact that the party was in house, the fact that cigarettes smoked at the party although by an older person on the back porch didn’t cause conflict… That there was enough trust in that house that they didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep. I might have failed. But I did try to plant the clues, sketch in the background.

And that brings me back to the difference I propose between books and films. I hope that the rough sketches I give you expand and fill out the space in your mind to take on a larger, more grander form.

Am I succeeding? Am I failing? That’s for you to say. Please let me know.

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:58:00 +0100

Can’t wait. Where the Wild Things Are

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:57:00 +0100

Simple. Fun. Album Covers

On Typing...

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:00:00 +0100

Each story that I publish here is written out in longhand — a propelling pencil in a notebook to be exact. Then it is typed up over the weekend, ready to be sent out online the coming Thursday. Typing takes an average of four hours, but this depends on the length of the story [and my degree of fatigue].

The obvious question is: Why not type directly and save time?

It is a question that I have already asked myself.

Small netbooks are cheap and getting cheaper. I’m sure there must be one with a decent keyboard for a decent price. As I’m a believer in Text Editors and not Word Processors, I don’t even have a need for fancy software [read: the monolithic MS Word]. So, it is surely possible to find something cheap enough, yet powerful enough, and, all the while, small enough to allow me to type in the Métro.

My writing process has developed over time. I have tried to work on books and stories directly on the home computer [this one is a MacBook Pro, called prozilla]. And it doesn’t work. It’s not a question of tools. And yes, before you suggest one, I have tried dozens of them. It’s a question of my mental process.

Writing about 500 words a day in two batches of 250 words suits me fine. I can sit down, read back, change a word or two, expand or strike out a phrase, and this micro-editing gets me back into the story. Then I scribble away, occasionally getting a dig in the back or in the ribs when the carriage fills up, but otherwise I’m away and in the flow.

Somehow I can’t duplicate this on the screen. I also quite like having my crossings-out and additions [my pentimento], right there on the page in all their mucky glory. It allows me to backtrack and follow my previous thoughts. Sometimes when I’m typing up the text, I will in fact go back and mix and match different versions. I also leave small notes to myself. I draw a squiggle under a passage that doesn’t satisfy me, or note [sp?] for a spelling query, or [rep] if I think I’m repeating something, knowing that I can catch these when I type the story up. This allows me to get on with the writing before the train pulls up in my station and I have to get out.

I’m quite aware that I could find software that allows me all of these tics and quirks, possibly more even. But my system isn’t broke. Why learn a new one to replicate something that works for me already.

So, while the Wombat still needs a nap at weekends, I’m here, at the table, typing up my stories.

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:17:00 +0100

Saved by the bell?

Butterflies

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:08:00 +0100

So it was the week I was at home with the Wombat at the end of August, and I remember the moment quite clearly. I was by the window in the kitchen, I just turned away and the most marvellous short story came to me all-ready cooked, as it were. All I had to do was write in down.

I was busy in the middle of another story and I have a rule of one story at a time, so I just put it aside, mentally like, saying to myself, I’ll work on it as soon as I’ve finished this one. I’ve done it before with no problems.

This time then, I promptly forget everything.

Everything that is, except the feeling that it was a wonderful story and needed to be told. Like waking up in the morning and knowing you have dreamed and it was a most satisfying dream… and it’s hovering around in the grey depths and just won’t come forward and be recounted. Frankly it’s worse than the word on the tip of your tongue feeling, it’s more like déjà vu mixed with nostalgia, with the added blur of the morning after the night before.

Quite gone.

I’ve since purchased a block of small index cards about 3”x5”, and now jot down strange ideas, openings, one-liners and fleeting scraps of character on them. Pinning them down like butterflies.

But that perfect story still hasn’t come back.

Probably never will.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:38:00 +0100

Call for YA authors to get their books into the hands of blind kids, yay! ~ via bb