September 17, 2013
Draft Two of the new book is DONE. Prolonged immersion in the writing bathysphere has produced its customary effect…
…but I will be sure to shake off my torpor and egg fragments in time for THIS:
It’s the inaugural Wood Green Literary Festival, to which I’ve been invited for a panel discussion on the subject of Monsters, Ghouls and Things That Go Bump in the Night. Visit the Festival’s website for all the juicy details or follow it on Twitter.
See you there?
July 26, 2013
Let me introduce you to one of the stars of my current book. Not the owl; the guitar.
It’s a Fender Jaguar. This one’s new. Part of the reason I got it was to celebrate the fact that I’m now as sure as I can be that two guitars like it are definitely going to be in the book – together with all the other main elements that were in the book’s first working draft.
The second draft is due in mid-September. There’s plenty of work to be done, but that work is of a clarifying, refining nature – not the major surgery I was worried about. That’s a big deal for me. As my somewhat inarticulate post when I finished it implied, I was excited about the first working draft. The book had survived its darkest hour and was now starting to look like the book I want it to be. What I didn’t know was whether anyone else would want to read it.
I now have fantastic, inspiring comments and notes from the book’s first test readers: HUGE thanks here to Laura, Jack, Adrian and James. I now also have the notes and comments – and the backing and enthusiasm – of my editor, the redoubtable Ruth of Random House Children’s Books UK.
Before our meeting at the start of this month the last time Ruth and I spoke about the book was in Autumn 2011, in a pub in London’s West End. At the end of a long, arm-waving speech from me about bands, space travel, utopias, cowboys and giant squid Ruth nodded and said, ‘Sounds like you’re enjoying yourself. Show me when it’s done.’ For nearly two years afterwards those words were the only clue I had as to whether the book I wanted to write might be something Ruth wants to publish.
It is. And it’s going to have Fender Jaguars in, and everything. I am happy.
Back to work. 😀
Sam
July 5, 2013
Lately, while gathering up what needs to be done to my current book, I’ve been engaged in one of my favourite bits of the whole writing process – researching things that might be relevant to my next.
Areas I read up on for my current book included cochlear implants, radical politics and marine biology. I found that the less I knew about each subject to begin with, the more satisfying it was to research it.
As anyone who knows what I look like will confirm, the subject I’m researching now is one about which I know nothing whatsoever. 😀
May 23, 2013
Sometimes I have to print out a book to prove to myself that, at last, it exists.
It does. Another person (her name starts with L) has read it now, and everything. HEE HEE HEE HEE.
April 5, 2013
Perhaps it happens to every writer – if so, my contemporaries seem to keep it quiet – but I’ve spent most of the last fortnight feeling like this:
This is from one of my very favourite books about writing – The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey. I reached the state described above at the same point I seem to reach it in almost all my writing projects – while reading a complete draft for the very first time.
The gulf between what I set out to achieve and what’s there in the book right now is vast and howling. In my previous project I had to conclude that a similar gulf was uncrossable. The possibility, which had to be faced and considered, that I might have to make the same decision again made me feel like howling, myself.
I’m past that now.
The book is looking the worst it’s ever going to look – which means, in theory at least, that from now on everything I do to it will be an improvement. Better yet, now is when I get to make the biggest and most powerful changes. Now, with something to work with, I can make this book work.
A heartfelt, inadequate THANK YOU to the people I love for helping me to get through this again.
This cheered me up too:
It’s My Name is O, just published in Swedish. A hearty Hej! to anyone who reads it. 😀
Sam
March 6, 2013
Two years, a couple of thousand pages of notes and a current total just shy of one hundred and sixty thousand words of story: as of yesterday afternoon I am out of my writing bathysphere because Draft Zero of the New Book is DONE.
As part of my plan to get used to being back on Earth – and restore at least some of the distance and objectivity I’ll need to convert this beast into a functioning First Draft – over the coming weeks I’m doing a bunch of school visits.
Today’s return to Ken Stimpson Community School was a blast: three sessions full of excellent and inspiring young people. Burlington Danes Academy, The City of London Academy and The Ridgeway School and Sixth Form College are all currently quaking at the imminent prospect of further scenes of electrified-baboon-style gesticulation and grinning much like those in this slideshow:
BTW: If you, reading this, are interested in having me come and visit your school or library or bookshop, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via my Contact An Author Page.
Meanwhile the simple fact that the biggest and most ambitious story I’ve written so far now exists in full outside my brain for the very first time is making me giddy. Excuse me while I stick my head back in this bucket of cold water.
MWAHAHAHAblblblblbl. ;D
Sam
February 12, 2013
1. Write the exact book that you yourself would be thrilled to read.
2. It is not going to come easily, by itself, without thought or effort.
3. It is not going to come whole and perfect first time. Expecting first time perfection only reduces the chance that anything will come at all. Duh.
4. Using wordcount as your only proof of progress – let alone as justification or otherwise for your existence – is always, always a mistake.
5. Frustration is the worst kind of prevarication. Other kinds only waste time; frustration can also destroy you.
6. See 1.
This week on TBM: Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima .
February 2, 2013
Deep dive mode engaged. The list of things I need to write before I have a complete draft of my new book at last is now less than half a page long. I might feel better if the list didn’t essentially consist of the climax and what happens after, but that’s how these things go. ;p
Meanwhile on Trapped By Monsters I’ve just posted something I’ve been mulling for a while about an icon of British SF: Dare to Dream.
January 18, 2013
A thunderous THANK YOU! to my amazing friend Katie WebSphinx who, in between running her own business and bringing up two small kids while imminently expecting a third, has somehow found the time to come through with some fabulous new updates to my websites.
On the Fun Stuff page for this very site for My Name is O you’ll now find a Guestbook where you can leave messages for me if you like. You’ll also find the gloriously gloomy new page that Katie has created as a more permanent home for the short story I serialised free on Trapped By Monsters last year, Family – complete with all of Laura Trinder‘s aptly ominous artwork.
MEANWHILE: Some animal magic for you this week on TBM, with Bryan Talbot‘s Grandville – and Catzilla. 😀
January 2, 2013
On New Year’s Eve, inspired by the recent foolishness with Mayans and Joseph D’Lacey’s wonderful short story of the same name, I cooked this:
It’s an Armageddon Fish Pie.
Imagining a thrown-away future and the end of the universe was one of the easier bits of writing The Black Tattoo. Imagining a thrilling, positive, beautiful future and writing it into my next book has been much harder. But I’m getting there.
Happy New Year. Dream big.
Sam
