A Dystopian Jane Eyre, with Cyborgs

I'm trying to work out what Inter Vivos is about, in prep for editing it and trying to pitch it to publishers and agents. I know what the story is, of course, but what are the themes I want to bring out? What is the central conflict and message? Perhaps when it's finished (draft 2b) and I read through it I'll have more of an idea. I'm kinda thinking it's a biopunk bildungsroman sort of story, and I think I might be treading on some new ground there a little bit (think Jane Eyre with cyborgs, and you get the idea).

Have started another short story - I'm starting to wonder whether this is productive procrastination - this time for an anthology that I'm hoping to get accepted for. Deadline is in September, so I figure, if I start now, then I'll hopefully be finished by then. My story is about pirates, which is a condition of the anthology, and I have created this wonderful grotesque female pirate - I'm thinking of Claire from Der Besuch Der Alten Dame with a bit of "Fevvers" from Nights at the Circus thrown in - this huge, repulsive, but larger than life woman as a very unconventional anti-heroine. Anyway, I'm trying to decide how (stylistically) to tell the story, but have made a crack at it anyway.

Starting short stories isn't the problem. Finishing them is. I do suffer from The Fear quite a lot; what if this promising story with these intriguing characters is made crap half way through by some stupid plot device I've thrown in? Urgh.

OK, will aim to finish off one short story by next Monday. Can she do it? Stay tuned to find out...

Post-NaNo Plan

Right, so this is my attempt at making myself a masterplan. Goal: Finish a book. Target Deadline: February 2009.

The thing is, now that I've crossed the hurdle of finishing a first draft of a novel not once but three times, the thing that scares the crap out of me most is the editing process. Or rather, revising what I've written to make it good enough to show to people whose opinions I actually care about. Inter Vivos is about 50,000 words long right now, and needs to be about 90,000. Dorcas is 50,000, but as it's a children's book, it doesn't need to be much longer.

Trying to revise a novel feels like trying to scale a huge mountain. And you reach a peak, and you feel good, but then you look up and there's still hundreds of miles to go to get to the top, and then you get vertigo and have to sit down for a while...

So, through the NaNoWriMo forums, I found this website: http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/one-pass-revision.html and reading it, it actually makes quite a lot of sense. So I'm going to give it a go. What's the worst that could happen, right? I think that at least if I have a guide, it won't feel like I'm climbing that mountain on my own, and if I get stuck, hopefully this will help me.

I'm also going to try to finish a short story I've been working on by Christmas, so I can start to send it to slush piles everywhere in the New Year.

This is the plan anyway. I need to do this, I really do need to be more disciplined and motivated. Wish me the best of luck!

The Festive Season

I am in good spirits right now (no, I'm not bathing in brandy), as it is almost Christmas and I have almost finished work for the holidays. I've got no plans really for the next few weeks, so I am really hoping to turn my attentions to my writing (and possibly learning my lines for Company) rather than sitting on the sofa watching endless TV.

There's a writing competition called 'Green and (un)pleasant Lands' that I am going to try hard to enter, for which I have to write a proposal of the story I want to write about English folklore for 31st December. I've been researching English myths today, and I'm trying to decide how to tackle my story - to contemporise something or to create my own myth about a place or a building. I'm still not sure, but when I start thinking about it, I start remembering Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and then start plagiarising that instead.

I keep forgetting about deadlines for competitions until the last minute. Wish I had a BlackBerry, that would be superb. I know it's still a little bit early, but one of my new year's resolutions is to be more organised and enter more stories into competitions, magazines, etc. 2007 IS going to be the year that I finish my novel too. I really need to stay motivated and keep writing. Hopefully 2007 will be a successful year.