Tag: XIII

Pros and cons

What’s that? The banner up there? Oh yeah, I see it too now you mention it. There’s a good reason for that little clicky graphic, however, because it neatly (ahem) brings me to a little bit of news. Your least humble servant, Mr Poll, will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton later this year. Hallowe’en weekend, to be precise.

Obviously I’m not going for the weather.

This will be my first convention so there’s nothing quite like jumping in at the deep end. Four (count ’em) days of author Q&As, book signings, readings, panel discussions, book launches, schmoozing and, most importantly, drinking. These are the good bits.

The bad? Well, my credit card will require mouth-to-mouth once the hotel and bar bills have been settled, and there is the somewhat terrifying fact that I’ve never done anything like this before. On top of that there is a significant risk that I’ll be suitably starstruck to need rushing from the venue on a hospital trolley.

Basically pick any favourite sci-fi / fantasy / horror author of yours and he or she is likely to be there. Okay, smartarse, pick one that’s alive. Except for him. Yeah, she’s not going to be there either. Keep going. Ah, he is, though! No really. Go to the member’s list and see for yourself: http://www.wfc2013.org/membership01.html

In fact, if you navigate to the P’s you’ll see a famous name I’m sure you’ll recognise. About two-thirds down the page. That’s right, Sarah Pinborough will be there too.

(And, just this second, Joe Hill as well. Crikey!)

I must admit, up until around a month ago the thought of attending a conference never occurred to me. I saw the adverts here and there, but nothing sparked in my noggin. I thought that, come Hallowe’en, I’d be too busy trying to get Title Withheld under people’s noses.

Then it hit me. Not only would there be a significant number of top-drawer genre authors in attendance, but also a sprinkling of publishers and agents. You never know, some of them may be receptive to a quick pitch after a dozen gins.

After that little lightning bolt I couldn’t hit PayPal quick enough.

The giddy high must have continued for a day or two because I then applied for a reading slot and to moderate a panel discussion on self-publishing. This, you must understand, would be at a conference that strongly favours the bound word, and with me as unaccustomed to public speaking as I am. Wish me luck on that one!

It’s a pity that it overlaps the start of NaNoWriMo 2013. Would anyone grass me up if I did three or four days’ writing in advance? I won’t tell if you won’t. 😉

So what else is new? Well, with the first draft complete and boxed up in a time capsule until Good Friday, I’ve spent a little time working on the next steps, chiefly in the areas of quality control and promotion.

Following a quick exchange of emails with John Jarrold, fellow WFC attendee and agent to such horror heavyweights as Ramsey Campbell and Adam Nevill, he seems happy to run my manuscript through a line edit, which, given his huge expertise, is excellent news. I’ll have a second draft to do battle with his red pen at the end of May. I also got a really good response from the regulars of Cemetery Dance’s forum when I broached the subject of test readings, which was very heartening.

I’ve also been getting busy with my GIMP and Inkscape, chiefly to create a book cover for CreateSpace, and advertisements for assorted publications. I’ll expand on these in separate posts as Mr Poll plays the numbers game. If you have a budding horror author in your circle of friends you may want to point them to my next post.

In short, it’s all coming together swimmingly, and I haven’t even gotten to the bit I’m dying to reach – the big reveal!

Stay tuned, folks. And if you’re also attending WFC 2013 leave a message, or find me on the SFF Chronicles / Cemetery Dance forums.

Laters, ‘taters.

First draft: so long, and thanks for The End!

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way, shall we?

It has taken, by my reckoning, 11 weeks of fairly intensive writing, but after stringing together 102,750 words I have finally completed the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel. I make that around 360-370 pages of a regular paperback in old money.

Lucian Poll's First Draft Feeling
That completed first draft feeling!

And, boy, do I feel all the better for it. You don’t believe me? Well, take a look for yourself…

It’s like I’ve undergone an exorcism, albeit one where the priest hands me the demon in a lovely bottle as a keepsake.

The overriding sensation is one of relief that I have finally gotten this story out of my head and onto paper, but, of course, the job is only really half done.

Few writers, if any, get things right first time. Those that do are liars. Hemingway, ever the writer’s go-to guy for memorable quotes, once declared that “The first draft of anything is shit.” There is, if you will forgive the pun, a ring of truth to that.

If, as it happens, you are a literary wunderkind that can get everything right first time, like some Anthony Trollope incarnate, then bully for you. For the rest of us mere mortals the first draft of a novel is going to be prone to all sorts of stuff guaranteed to make the writer’s skin crawl.

Such embarrassment doesn’t necessarily stop at typos, stilted dialogue and clunky prose, however. In a first draft you may find that you’ve dragged out an action sequence for too long, or you have scenes that seemed like a good idea at the time but no longer fit into the overall story, or you might find certain characters acting out of… erm… character. You may find that your authorial voice changes between the start and the end, or that your writing style relies too much on a phrase or sentence structure that jars the more it is noticed.

These latter problems can only really be hit upon by following a simple, albeit counterintuitive rule.

When it comes to redrafting a work it is often said that you should first put it away for a month or two and do something else in the meantime. (Stephen King is a great proponent of this approach in his book, ‘On Writing’.) That way your brain can recharge and give you the necessary distance to revisit the work with a more critical eye. You can then pick up the piece and read it in one go, making it easier to detect its weaknesses.

So that’s the plan. Doing nothing is going to be hard, though, as I’m itching to improve the story now, dammit, and I have a list of things that need beefing up or tightening. On the other hand, being a lazy bastard of some standing (but mainly sitting), doing nothing does have its charms.

Arm = twisted.

As there has been some slippage I have had to rejig my schedule of Things To Do. Easter weekend now marks the start of the second draft, which I hope to complete by the end of May. That then gives me 3 1/2 months to get a professional opinion on the manuscript, as well as placing it under the noses of a few test readers. Save for any massive failures in the story, I should then be able to knock out a final draft ready for Friday 13th September 2013.

In the meantime I’ll get busy with Inkscape and GIMP. There’s the new banner up top, for example, to tease you with. Next up is the rear cover (for the print-on-demand version I’ll put through CreateSpace) and adverts for possible placement in magazines or on flyers.

Oh, and there’s always another story to write!

Onwards!