Tag: writing

Things Are Coming Along A Bit

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The House Comes Along A Bit

I spent most of today organising some storage in the basement of the new place, putting together some shelves I bought a few days ago. Good shelves, too—we bought one a year or so ago so we knew what we were getting. They’re metal, and each shelf can hold up to three hundred and fifty pounds. The only problem is that each shelf is basically made of wire, so to finish up I bought some quarter-inch sanded plywood to lay on top. That was all finished up just a little while ago, so now we have five racks ready to take stuff from the basement in the old place. Tomorrow I begin moving things over.

In other house news, we bought some used furniture from a charity thrift store: a big hutch, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a dresser, a small cabinet and a two-seater sofa that was in such great shape that it was just too good to let pass. Most of the stuff is in the garage and once the flooring is in place on the ground floor we can move it into position.

The Writing Comes Along A Bit

NOT as much as I hoped it would, but I managed a couple of hundred words on Gunn & Bohemia II—the most I’ve managed in the last few weeks, what with everything else going on. Going forward the plan is to reserve some writing time every day, even if it’s only half an hour. Some progress is much better than no progress at all; no progress makes me twitchy and irritable, and being able write even just a few dozen words makes a big difference.

I also got a little bit of news from my publisher. A few weeks ago I sent them the first few thousand words from The Artemisia Chronicle, which is a full-length novel I wrote a while back and put to one side, to see if they might be interested. Well, it took a while because they’ve been really busy getting Terra Mechanica and then Tomorrow Wendell (a novel by RM Ridley) out of the door, but I got an email the other day saying they were interested. Next step on that is for me to fill in a submission form, which (with all the house and day job business going on) I haven’t had time to get to. Soon, though.

Vaping Update

SINCE the post about vaping a few weeks ago I’ve been continuing on with using the Vuse, with good results; I still get the urge to burn a real cigarette, especially when I’m feeling a bit stressed, but I’m averaging something like three real ones a day. Some days I’ll smoke four, and a couple of days I managed to get through with only two. And I’m very happy to report that last week I went one whole day without a single cigarette. I feel really good about that.

Terra Mechanica Release and Afterthoughts

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The Release Party

THE party went really well, I thought. Although I was pretty tired from a day (a whole week, in truth) of working on our new house, I was able to keep up with the Facebook traffic, and I had great fun to the point where my half-hour question/answer/contest session was over before I knew it. The other authors did a fine job, and the joint was jumping for the almost four hours I was online. (I had to bail out a little early, unfortunately, but going back over the Facebook page it looks like things stayed lively.)

Now, I would be remiss to write this without the shameless plug for the book. It’s available for Kindle, Nook, and in paperback (and keep an eye open for other formats such as Kobo).

A Question That Intrigued Me

ONE question that came up during the party: What I want to know is how do you write such intriguing female characters?

My answer to that is, I really just don’t know. It’s not something I give conscious thought to as I’m writing—I just write the characters’ actions and dialogue in a way that’s right for that person, in line with how I see them in my mind. But the question bugged me all day yesterday, and I got to thinking about it while I was working on the house. I think I might have an answer.

I’ve never thought of women as being “like men, only less.” For me, women are “like men, but a bit different in some ways.” I think it’s daft not to acknowledge that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. And I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone if I suggest that women think about things in a different way. Not a wrong way, or an inferior way—just different. I suspect that’s a biological difference.

And women—on average—tend to be more expressive when it comes to emotions. In my view, men can be just as emotional, but we tend to keep things inside more, the result being that women might seem weak in that regard, in the same way that men who wear their hearts on their sleeves often seem weak to the macho men. I tend to think this is more from cultural pressures than biological imperatives.

The point is, I don’t think of women as property, or skivvies, or as some kind of appendage dependent on men. Psychologically, mentally, women are in general at least as strong as men. They can be just as determined, just as assertive, and more. And that, I think, comes across when I write the words and actions and thoughts of my female characters.

Is that the answer? I don’t know for certain, but I do know I’ll continue to write my characters—male and female—in the same way, because honestly I don’t know any other way to write them. I’d have a hard time writing female characters that had no substance to them, mere shadows cast by the light of men, dependent and submissive. Some of my readers might be old enough to remember a certain series of science-fiction/fantasy books that began in the sixties and is still, unfortunately, going strong; books that objectify women and portray them as enjoying or even needing to be treated that way. I made the mistake of reading one once.  I’m not about to mention it by name because while I’m not in favour of censorship, I think misogynistic tripe like that should be marginalised and forgotten in this, the twenty-first century. I can’t imagine myself writing anything like that.

The House Move

THINGS are coming on, if slowly. We can’t begin moving our stuff in until the floors are done (we’re having the carpet in the living room replaced with hardwood, and getting new carpet in a couple of the other rooms because what’s there is pretty old). In the meantime I took most of last week off so that I could do some other work—painting the garage and porch, fixing door handles and locks, cleaning the carpet in the basement rooms, and a bunch of other little things. I have shelves to put up in the basement, and I’ll be doing some of that this evening (and mowing the grass again). Once that’s done we can begin moving some things in; stuff we don’t use often, that’s currently in the basement in the old place. Then, at last, it’ll begin to feel as if we’re making some real progress.

Until next time, gentle reader . . .

We Bought A House . . .

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

. . . which is why I’ve been so lax on the writing, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and google-plussing (are these even words?) front over the last few days. Since we closed the deal and got the keys last Friday, it’s been all hands to the pumps—mowing grass, cleaning, painting, and doing some small fix-ups like fixing a broken door handle and getting the sprinklers working. So this is just a brief note while I sip the last of my coffee before I head back to the new place and carry on painting the porch. But I’m planning on being a bit more active on the Twitter front at least, while I do some more odd-jobbing. There might even be photos! Follow @PeteFordWriter as I take on the second coat, and maybe even scrub the garage floor. Go on, you know you want to.

You’re Invited to a Book Launch Party!

~ petefordwriter ~ 1 Comment

Mark it on your calendar: May 31 is publication day for Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology! There’s going to be a Facebook party and the authors of all the stories in the book (including yours truly) will be there to chat and answer questions. Sign up for the party now, and say I sent you: CLICK HERE

TerraMechanica

Friction

~ petefordwriter ~ 2 Comments

Why is it that we writers have problems explaining to others that we’re trying to write? Why is it that other people just don’t understand? I think I might have an answer. Take a look at this:

Priorities

On the left, we have a list of important things around us in daily life—for example, Day Job, Food, Coffee, and (of course) Writing. And they’re arranged here in the order many writers would agree with. The most important things are at  the top, so Writing is just below the Day Job (marginally more important because it pays for the stuff you need to write—computer and software, or a typewriter, or pens and paper, or parchment and quills; they all cost cash), and dealing with a burning house is more important than that—if only because a burned-out house means you have to write in your local Starbucks, which might not be too comfortable (their appalling choice of ambient music being a real concentration killer, and all that).

So-called “Normal” people, of course, have their priorities all screwed up, as can be seen from the line on the right. To them, Food is more important than Coffee, for example. But the real problem for us is that Writing is way, way down on their list of priorities. Yes, this means that to non-writers, Food is more important than Writing. Hard to believe, I know, but then these Normal People are a weird bunch. (Note that the Day Job is at a slightly lower priority for the Normal Person; that’s because your Day Job is not as important to them as their Day Job.)

As we writers know, Normal People think we have the same priorities they do (strange, but apparently true). And this is where we get a problem. The bigger the difference between a Writer’s priority for something, and a Normal Person’s priority for that same thing, the more Friction there is. And as you can see from the diagram, there is a big difference in the priorities for Writing. We writers put it up high, where it belongs. Normal People put it lower than scrubbing out a trash can.

And this is why Normal People just don’t get us. You’re writing, and other people can see you’re writing. You’re doing real work, and it takes focus, and getting into and staying in The Zone means no distractions. But a Normal Person looks at you and sees someone messing about, not doing anything vital. And there are trash cans that need scrubbing. Cue the Friction.

Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia II: The British Empire Strikes Back

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Just a short update, to let my regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Ealing) know that I’m very close to starting writing—yes, actual writing—on GB2. (Just joking about the title; other than GB2 it doesn’t even have a working title at this moment.)

Kindle, or No?

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I thought I was being so clever, having an Android tablet. After all, why buy a Nook AND and a Kindle, when you can buy one device and download the Nook and Kindle apps (and Kobo, and Diesel, and a bunch of others) for free?

20140414_110340

Well, in hindsight it really wasn’t that great an idea. Your mileage may vary on this, but for me it turned out that every time I felt like reading (to be more accurate, whenever I got time to read, which hasn’t been that often recently), I would pick up the tablet only to find that the battery was flat. Even just sitting there not being used, the battery only lasts a couple of days—and actually using it to read, you get a few hours at most before having to plug in the charger. Hardly what you’d call convenient.

And so a couple of weeks ago I went down to the basement and dusted off my Nook Simple Touch. It had been sitting there for months, and yet still had enough charge in the battery to be able to use it. It’s back in daily use, and I’d forgotten just how great it is to be able to read every day and not have to worry about charging it more often than once a fortnight.

In any case, how many different e-readers accounts do I really need? I have Nook and Kindle accounts; I also set up a Kobo account, but I never used it. At this moment I don’t need more. So right now I have the Nook, and I have the tablet I can use for Kindle books (unfortunately there are quite a few books available for Nook that you can’t get for Kindle, and vice-versa, hence the need for both). And the tablet’s battery is dead again, so I can’t read Kindle books until the tablet’s charged, which takes a couple of hours.

So, the question: should I buy a Kindle to solve that problem? I see the basic model is down to about $70, which isn’t bad at all. So I’ll definitely be giving that some thought.

On the Writing front . . .

Some status on the various projects:

  • The Voyage of Valerie McGrath: This went for final approval a couple of weeks ago. No word back on any changes, and the anthology will be on shelves fairly soon now. I imagine I and the other short story authors will receive an ARC for final proofing before it goes to press, and that’ll give us all a chance to check each other’s work for last-minute mistakes (and it’ll be fun to read their stories, too—I’m looking forward to that).
  • Gunn & Bohemia II: Great news to report here—I finished the timeline and sent it off to my content editor a few days ago. Subject to her comments and requests for changes, that means I should be able to start actually writing the first draft within the next few days, or a couple of weeks at most. Which means, if all goes well, I could have a completed ‘script before September. Don’t hold me to that, though—I’ll be writing and editing at the same time, and that’s not something I’ve done before. I don’t know how it’s going to work switching back and forth. Still, it means the first draft will need less work to get into publishable shape (Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia took months, because the draft I submitted needed a lot of editing work).
  • Top Secret Writing Project #1: Well, it’s not really that much of a secret now. I have a full-length first draft I wrote the year before last, and I’ve been editing it as a background project. Two chapters done, twenty-eight to go. It’s a sort of gothic/sci-fi/steampunk mix inspired by ideas from Gormenghast and Dark City and one or two other things. Fellow author Craig Hallam got a sneak preview of the first chapter way back and was kind enough to critique it.
  • Top Secret Writing Project #2: Another story that’s been sitting in the pile for a while. This one is another steampunk story but with a twist (don’t ask; I don’t want to spoil the surprise). I have half a first draft, and the plan is to edit what I have so far then continue on through the existing storyboard and get it finished. But that is most definitely at the bottom of the stack, and won’t see any work done on it until I’m done with TSWP#1.

Enough for now. Time to settle down for some telly, I think. Until next time . . .

Writing For Dummies

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I’ve been re-reading a book I first read a very long time ago: Pavane, by Keith Roberts.

When I first read it, I was a reader and I took in the story, which I remember well. (It’s set in a Britain of 1968 in which history has taken a very different course from our own. In this alternate history Queen Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588, leading to the Catholic Church dominating Europe and bringing about a new dark age. In this 1968 Britain there is no electricity, there are no phones, and steam powers pretty much everything.)

Now I’m reading it from the perspective of a writer. And I’m learning something about writing in the process.

Here is a short passage to illustrate a point:

At three in the afternoon the engine sheds were already gloomy with the coming night. Light, blue and vague, filtered through the long strips of the skylights, showing the roof ties stark like angular metal bones. Beneath, the locomotives waited brooding, hulks twice the height of a man, their canopies brushing the rafters. The light gleamed in dull spindle shapes, here from the strappings of a boiler, there from the starred boss of a flywheel. The massive road wheels stood in pools of shadow.

This isn’t just writing; this is poetry. The locomotives weren’t just sitting in a shed—they waited, brooding. The light doesn’t just come in through the skylights, it filters in and gleams in dull spindle shapes. People talk about painting with words; if this isn’t a concrete example, I don’t know what is.

Worries I Can’t Mention

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I didn’t get around to writing a post last weekend, because something happened the Thursday before that really had my wife and I worried, and kept us worried right through the weekend and into the early part of last week. And while I know you’re dying to know what that was, I can’t say. Not yet. Expect a post dedicated to that story sometime in the future. All will be revealed.

For now, though, I am able to report that things on the day-job front have settled down significantly in the last week. The Inherited Project From Hell is up and running in a production environment, and should soon be completely live (if you’re into river boating in the north-western states, you might even brush up against it indirectly). The other projects seem to be well under control.

What of writing work? Well, GB2 has had little progress made (last week’s worries meant I wasn’t able to focus on writing work at all—I spent much of the time playing computer games to take my mind off things). The plan is to get a couple of hours in on that over this weekend. The Voyage of Valerie McGrath has cleared line editing and gone to final approval. And the Top Secret Writing Project has had nothing done to it at all.

And so the plans for today: get some tea, and spend a little while on the GB2 timeline. Time to get to it. Until next time . . .

It Is What It Is

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My regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Brentford) will know that last week at work, I was finishing up some major bug fixing. Well, things didn’t go quite as easily as I’d hoped. As things worked out, more problems were found, and it all ended up with me working through Friday (which was supposed to be a day off). I’d like to be able to say that everything works now—but that would probably be the kiss of death. I’m not making any such assumptions. Tomorrow is Presidents’ Day (aka George Washington’s birthday) which is a government holiday, so I do at least get one well-earned extra day before I have to get back to it. Tuesday, then, I’ll have a better idea of where things stand.

What of things on the writing front?

GB2

As I mentioned a while back, work on the sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia has been put to one side for a little while. I made some notes about a couple of ideas for how to wrap things up at the end, and that’s about it. I’ll be getting back to that after doing what needs to be done on . . .

The Voyage of Valerie McGrath

This is the short story for Xchyler Publishing’s Around The World In 80 Days anthology, which will be out in the spring. (By the way, that was just the name and theme of the anthology contest itself; the real title hasn’t been decided yet.) I got notes back from my editor on a few points needing some work, and I’ll be getting into that shortly (when I’ve finished this post and got some coffee in front of me).

Last but not least . . .

The Top Secret Writing Project

Or rather, it was a secret, but no longer. In 2012 I finished the first draft of a novel, and it’s been sitting in the shadows since then. A couple of weeks ago I decided I’d really like to knock it into publishable shape and get it submitted, so I dusted it off ready to get started into it. This is going to be very much a background task—the first priority right now is Valerie McGrath, then GB2 will be the focus. Reading it back through, though, there’s some pretty good stuff in there. The ending is flat and needs work, and there are quite a few scenes in there that will need to be rewritten, but on the whole it’s a good start. I’ll be working on this when I have spare minutes and there’s nothing pressing on the higher-priority jobs.

And so . . . time for that coffee I mentioned, and then I’ll be editing Valerie McGrath. Until next time . . .