That is to say: the first draft of The Copper Promise, all four parts, is finished.
I am drinking wine now, toasting Wydrin, Frith and Sebastian, and looking forward to beating the whole unwieldy thing into shape with the editing stick.
*snoopy dance*
Time for a quick update from Admin5000!
So, the last Copper Promise post was a few weeks ago now and I think I was on Chapter Three of part four, which I had yet to give a firm title too. Well, a month later and I’m on Chapter 25 and part four appears to have morphed into Upon the Ashen Blade, which hopefully means I am making progress – quite a lot for me actually, as I seem to have finally developed a system of writing in small bursts that has boosted my word count. Hurrah for that!
I’m into the endgame now. There will be perhaps another two chapters (the endings always take longer than I expect them to, so take this with a healthy pinch of salt) and the first draft of The Copper Promise, in its entirety, will be complete. At which point I will probably crawl into a dark room and hide under a pillow for a while, making small uncertain noises as I contemplate the editing job that must take place.
This book has turned into a monster. Wydrin would probably find that hilarious, the moo.
In other news, isn’t Avatar: The Last Airbender amazing? I’m aware that I am horribly late to the party on this one, but we’ve just started watching series 2 and I’m a bit in love with it. The writing is great and utterly persuasive (how much do I adore Zuko already? It’s ridiculous), the world building and mythology is top notch, and the animation, which benefits from a lovely clean anime style and healthy dollops of slapstick, is just an absolute pleasure. New favourite thing!
We'll publish you and everything!
It'll be ace!
Go go go!
So, how much sauce do you like with your fiction?
I’ve been thinking about this lately, partly due to the marvellous Sam Sykes talking about romance on his blog, and partly because it’s a question that will inevitably come up when you’re writing most types of books.
I am not a huge fan of romantic fiction, by which I mean actual wild horses and possibly even hot things driven under my fingernails would need to be involved before I actually read any. This is, obviously, due to my own tastes and predilections, and no reflection on romantic fiction or even rom coms or what-have-you, it’s just the way I am. I sometimes wonder if this was because the only books that weren’t mine in the house where I grew up were often Mills & Boon, and I was still at that stage where the sight of a bloke with his muscles bulging out of a torn shirt was firmly in the “Eeew, stinky boys” category.
I suspect my other problem with it is, particularly in regard to films, the female character is so often a) the only girl in it, and b) only there to be the love interest. You see, as soon as a woman turns up in some films, you instantly know that she’s going to be getting off with the main character at some point and boom, half the plot is immediately obvious. No surprises for you, young lady! I hate that sort of thing.
However, having said all that, I like a sprinkling of the lovey dovey stuff, I do. Love is, after all, often the biggest and most significant emotion we feel in our human lives, and to have that missing from stories would make no sense at all. It’s who we are, of course it should be there. The question is, how much?
One of the things that interests me as a writer is the flirtatious relationship, the sort where there is a definite attraction and significant looks are exchanged, but no one is quite sure where they stand. I’m thinking here of Mulder and Scully, and even Niles and Daphne, or, you know, Moonlighting. I always enjoy those sorts of relationships because there is always conflict. I enjoy less those sorts of romances where the main characters meet and instantly fall in love (Legend by David Gemmell is the example I’m thinking of, although I should make it clear I loved that book – not for reasons of romance, mind). When the two characters have arguments, fights, saucy looks, uncomfortable-situations-where-they-might-have-to-spend-the-night-together-in-a-damp-cave, then it’s always interesting.
But what happens then? Do we want it resolved? And how much… resolution… do we want to see? I distinctly remember losing some of my passion for the X-Files when it was fairly obvious that they did in fact love each other, and general opinion is that Frasier jumped the shark when Niles and Daphne got married. Not everyone will feel this way, of course, but I wonder if anything is quite as much fun once the conflict is removed. Sex scenes are a tricky subject too, particularly in books – again, it’s an important part of human life and certainly needs to be in fiction, but once the pants are on the floor and the chandelier has been firmly rattled, where do we go from there? What else is there to anticipate?
I’d love to know what people think about this. Do you love the lovey-dovey, or do you prefer a seasoning of it? Does sex in a book ramp up your investment in a character to another level? Or do you go for the quick snog and lovers-torn-asunder type of deal? Tell me!
Just a quick note to point you in the direction of Dark Fiction Magazine, where you can now listen to four stories from the excellent Pandemonium anthology, Stories of the Smoke. The collection is jammed packed with excellent brain fodder so putting this episode together was a genuine pleasure; I strongly recommend reading every single little bit of it.
Writers and their egos, aye? I mean, blimey. Yowza. We’ve got ‘em, all right.
There have been a few flare ups online recently, a few megaton drama disturbances in the force set off, shall we say, by a writer’s ego. There was the very recent self-publishing hoo-ha featuring the author now referred to in our household simply as 92K (a drama that has probably actively harmed the profiles of all self-published writers, so thanks for that). And there was the infamous blog post by Christopher Priest concerning the Clarke Awards; say what you like about him, but Mr Priest clearly isn’t burdened with a howling lack of confidence in his own abilities (I loved The Prestige, didn’t love the blog post so much, mainly because it was a bit rude, and the need to be polite at all times is written in big bold letters on my British DNA).
Self-belief is good, I think. It’s important even. There are times, of course, when it tips over into a slightly obnoxious belief that you can do no wrong, but I suspect you need a strong core of self-belief just to keep going with writing; the road is long, and the set-backs are many.
Which worries me sometimes. Where others have self-belief, I have doubt. Lots of it. You know, I think I’m pretty good, and I’m proud to have earned compliments from readers and writers I admire for my work. But I doubt everything I write (I’m doubting this right now), I agonize over every line, even continually reassessing the current project to make sure I’m not thundering off in the wrong direction. This doubt, this lack of confidence, can make writing very hard sometimes, because the sense that I might be writing a load of old gibbering rubbish is always there. And maybe it would be easier if I just believed that every word dripped from my pen was glittery deep fried genius. It probably stems partly from shyness, a general dislike of blowing ones own trumpet, and partly from feeling that super over-confidence is unsightly and rude (that British DNA again).
The writers I most admire are not, I believe, towering ego monsters. Writers like Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith, and John Connolly are always gracious, witty, wise. They are extraordinary writers, which I am sure they are aware of, but always you sense that their feet are planted safely on the ground somewhere, and there is no danger of any heads disappearing up buttholes. I admire writers who behave with grace and charm, and twitter is gratifyingly full of them (you only need to scan the list of people I follow to find a ton of them). Terry Pratchett, who I sense probably doesn’t suffer fools gladly, radiates kindness and wisdom, and at no point can I imagine any of these writers having a hissy fit online or banging on about how everyone else is wrong.
Perhaps my discomfort with writers who are utterly convinced of their own genius is my own problem, and perhaps I need pump up my own ego, but there is a kind of wisdom, I think, and even a joy, in knowing that you haven’t quite learned everything yet.
