Staring down into the waters of steampunk
Jan. 31st, 2010 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anthimeriaI haven't dived in yet, but the water looks fine.
My Skywatch outline has been returned to me, and I have been tweaking it for several days, mostly fixing the beginning and the end (I've noticed a trend). I'm not entirely sure about either of the scenes I added, so I'm going to set the outline aside for a few days and then come back, see if time lends perspective. Actually writing the book might be the best way to tell at this point. I'm (still) almost there.
Moxie, the book I want to write after Skywatch (give or take sequels to Skywatch or The Novel), is also slowly coming together, in that way where I have enough of an idea of the hero and the villain that I can start worldbuilding around the stories I want to tell. Moxie'll be a while in the making, though, I think. Sort of a fallback while I'm waiting for The Novel to come back and if I'm stuck on Skywatch.
Really, I should also be working on the outline for The Novel's sequel. The sequel is a little odd for me, though, since it's a different animal than The Novel in a lot of ways. The Novel is a coming of age, journey story, tried-and-true classic western storytelling. The Sequel (yes, I intend to call it that at least until The Novel has a title. It annoys me more than it annoys you, believe me) has a journey in it, but Fiona and Owen are journeying in an army instead of alone, so their companions for the journey will be the secondary characters rather than the people they meet along the way (though there will be a number of reappearances from the first book, since the army takes the same route backward). This means, to my joy, I can have an ensemble cast, but it also means I can't remove Owen and Fiona from any given situation. And the ensemble is going to be made up largely of people who dislike them, for reasons that have to do with consequences from book one that don't actually belong in book one. If that makes sense.
It is nice to have all the worldbuilding done for a novel for the first time, but it's also been so long since I did the worldbuilding (and since I'm also in the building stages of a steampunk series and a superhero series) that sometimes I have to remind myself of the world's cultures and physical realities.
Since I'm in something of a limbo right now, I've also been poking at my short stories. There are a few anthologies I want to submit to in the next couple of months, and I'd like to buckle down on submitting any and every short story I think is ready, if only to increase my chances of having a sale by the time I'm querying agents.
One of the stories I'm working on is on draft xiii (13). This is a personal record.
It's a troublesome little story, but I like the concept enough to keep working on it. It's been on and off my desk for almost two years now, which is about how long it takes me to make a short story acceptable (not that I've had an acceptance anywhere yet). If one counts research and worldbuilding I've been working on The Novel six months longer, but if we mark from start of draft, this story is about four months older.
Wandering back around to the subject of steampunk (I think this is my longest just-about-me post--some of the WindyCon posts might be longer, but I'm not sure), I've been reading and watching whatever I can get my hands on via libraries and netflix. Cherie Priest's book Boneshaker was very good, though it took me a week and a half to get through the first two hundred pages, I read the second in about two hours. Definitely a book worth sticking with. The Otomo anime Steamboy was also rollicking fun, and the background art is gorgeous. Reading the subtitles, watching the movie and oogling the background was kinda difficult at one in the morning, but worth the trouble.
I also found the '60s tv show The Wild, Wild West, which is black and white and ridiculous but pretty fun, too. I also had a geek-out moment in the very first episode, because I'd seen Sherlock Holmes (which is kinda steampunk-y) that day and there's a shot in the movie that's identical to a shot in the pilot, down to the design of the sleeve-gun.
My Skywatch outline has been returned to me, and I have been tweaking it for several days, mostly fixing the beginning and the end (I've noticed a trend). I'm not entirely sure about either of the scenes I added, so I'm going to set the outline aside for a few days and then come back, see if time lends perspective. Actually writing the book might be the best way to tell at this point. I'm (still) almost there.
Moxie, the book I want to write after Skywatch (give or take sequels to Skywatch or The Novel), is also slowly coming together, in that way where I have enough of an idea of the hero and the villain that I can start worldbuilding around the stories I want to tell. Moxie'll be a while in the making, though, I think. Sort of a fallback while I'm waiting for The Novel to come back and if I'm stuck on Skywatch.
Really, I should also be working on the outline for The Novel's sequel. The sequel is a little odd for me, though, since it's a different animal than The Novel in a lot of ways. The Novel is a coming of age, journey story, tried-and-true classic western storytelling. The Sequel (yes, I intend to call it that at least until The Novel has a title. It annoys me more than it annoys you, believe me) has a journey in it, but Fiona and Owen are journeying in an army instead of alone, so their companions for the journey will be the secondary characters rather than the people they meet along the way (though there will be a number of reappearances from the first book, since the army takes the same route backward). This means, to my joy, I can have an ensemble cast, but it also means I can't remove Owen and Fiona from any given situation. And the ensemble is going to be made up largely of people who dislike them, for reasons that have to do with consequences from book one that don't actually belong in book one. If that makes sense.
It is nice to have all the worldbuilding done for a novel for the first time, but it's also been so long since I did the worldbuilding (and since I'm also in the building stages of a steampunk series and a superhero series) that sometimes I have to remind myself of the world's cultures and physical realities.
Since I'm in something of a limbo right now, I've also been poking at my short stories. There are a few anthologies I want to submit to in the next couple of months, and I'd like to buckle down on submitting any and every short story I think is ready, if only to increase my chances of having a sale by the time I'm querying agents.
One of the stories I'm working on is on draft xiii (13). This is a personal record.
It's a troublesome little story, but I like the concept enough to keep working on it. It's been on and off my desk for almost two years now, which is about how long it takes me to make a short story acceptable (not that I've had an acceptance anywhere yet). If one counts research and worldbuilding I've been working on The Novel six months longer, but if we mark from start of draft, this story is about four months older.
Wandering back around to the subject of steampunk (I think this is my longest just-about-me post--some of the WindyCon posts might be longer, but I'm not sure), I've been reading and watching whatever I can get my hands on via libraries and netflix. Cherie Priest's book Boneshaker was very good, though it took me a week and a half to get through the first two hundred pages, I read the second in about two hours. Definitely a book worth sticking with. The Otomo anime Steamboy was also rollicking fun, and the background art is gorgeous. Reading the subtitles, watching the movie and oogling the background was kinda difficult at one in the morning, but worth the trouble.
I also found the '60s tv show The Wild, Wild West, which is black and white and ridiculous but pretty fun, too. I also had a geek-out moment in the very first episode, because I'd seen Sherlock Holmes (which is kinda steampunk-y) that day and there's a shot in the movie that's identical to a shot in the pilot, down to the design of the sleeve-gun.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-07 02:45 am (UTC)...And then you're going to need a series title too. Crap.
Is Moxie a superhero novel? Moxie sounds like a fantastic superhero name to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-08 07:13 am (UTC)Yeah, giant sheets of butcher paper, color-coding and possibly calling everyone we know for title suggestions is called for at this point. It's getting really confusing calling it The Novel when I'm also working on another novel at the same time. Thank God Skywatch has a name.
Please tell me a duology doesn't need a series title. Or, if it does, that I can call it the "Unicorn and Her Boy" duology.
Moxie is indeed a superhero novel! Probably it will be a series. I actually have this whole impossible plan in my head where the covers are designed like comic book covers, with the series title up top, MOXIE, and the story arc (or book) name underneath: The Identity Thief. My prospective villain is a shapeshifter. I have no control over that AT ALL, but it's still fun to imagine.
It's actually funny--I've been waiting to use the name "Moxie" for a superhero for almost seven years now, but never found the story she belonged with. Then, entirely separately, I decided to poke at this story idea and went to my names list to see if I could find one that fit, and Moxie insisted that this was her story. It was a little odd, but defintely neat.