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September 14, 2007

TIME MACHINES REPAIRED Delivered to Publisher

I've just sent the MS for the new book to Publisher Brian. It finally came in at 95,000 words (which is probably a little high for what he wants), which is the same length ORBITAL BURN and ECLIPSE were when I sent them in, lo these many years ago.

Tomorrow will be the 15th of September: that will be five months to the day since I started this book, on the 15th of April. Five months is pretty good going. The thing that surprised me again and again, as I went along, was how few problems I had with it. There were times when I got stuck, but not for long. A weekend's break was usually sufficient to give me a clue to how to get going again. The number of days' work I had to junk was also quite low, probably no more than about six days (maybe 7000 words total). This is all, to me, so amazing as to be historic! I'm so used to having major thrashing difficulties and struggles with The Damn Book (whichever one it happens to be), that when one goes so smoothly, it's suspicious. What's going on? Is it really a stinking dud in a smooth package that fooled me; or is something surprising going on? Have I gotten better at this mad caper? I guess about this time next year, and possibly even sooner than that, I'll find out.

To the question of: how did you do it? And even, what's the secret to writing a novel in five months? It's like this...

From initial idea to starting work on Page 1 of the MS took about three months. During that time I sat here most days and thrashed about with ideas for (a) how the time travel part of the proceedings would work, and (b) how the murder would work, and (c) how (a) and (b) would complicate each other. This took quite a bit of thinking about, and came out about 30-40 pages of notes, which, once it was done, I never referred to again.

My publisher wanted the book done by August 31, as I've said here before. Even in the contract he sent me, it said that most clearly. I managed to get an extension (just like a uni student with a late assignment), since the reasons I was going to be late involved family problems and illness. Otherwise, I just sat down each weekday with the understanding that I would produce at least 1000 words. Since I was wracked with self-doubt prior to starting this book, and had all kinds of worries about it, including whether I could actually manage it, 1000 words seemed like a modest goal to reach every day. It's only about two and a half manuscript pages (single-spaced), or three pages of printed text. Things are pretty bad if you can't do a measly 1000 words each day. I set aside a specific time of day (3pm-4pm), too, to, er, keep me regular. As the MS went along, I started doing a bit more later in the evenings, sometimes a lot more. All the same, the goal was always at least 1000 words per weekday. Weekends off.

You might be thinking that the life of a writer is pretty sweet if you only work one hour a day or so. I would say, Um, what? One hour? No. Yes, you're sitting at the keyboard for at least one hour per day, banging the flippers at the keys, watching the text appear as if by magic. The rest of the day, though, no matter what else you're doing--and I do mean that in all senses--there's a department of your mind constantly churning away, thinking of how it's all going, what should happen next, whether anything that's come before needs going over before you proceed to the next bit, and so on. People who know me would see me staring off into space here and there during lulls in conversation. "What are you thinking about?" they ask.

"Book," I say. As the project goes along, it takes up more and more of the available space in my head. Before long it feels like the only thing going on in there. "Book". The whole thing in my head at once, and under constant examination, inspection, consideration, assessment, and brainstorming. And always, always, the question at the tip of my brain: "What happens next?"

Some writers--including some absolutely first-rate writers whose work I admire a great deal--work from increasingly detailed outlines. These outlines sketch in everything that happens in the story, from beginning to end. They are remarkable creations, and remarkable writers who use them. And you can't argue against them: they do mean the writer wastes a lot less time on failed projects, false starts, and all the rest. I can relate to this: I've lost loads of time due to failed projects, etc. I try to compensate by harvesting dud projects for "spare parts", like stripping an old car for parts I can then re-use in later projects. This book I've just finished is full of parts I've recycled from other projects, as well as shiny new things.

I don't do outlines. I've tried it, found it very helpful, especially on those days when you sit there at the keyboard, and you've got nothing. Just you and the insertion point, blinking away. Writers with outlines always know where the story is going next. Naturally, in the middle of things, you get wild brainstorms that change everything: such writers just change the outline accordingly, and carry on. CJ Cherryh, for example, starts with a very sketchy idea and slowly fills in the gaps, imposing more and more detail and connective tissue, until in the end the outline turns into the final manuscript, just by filling in details. She's a remarkable author, and you can't argue with her prodigious output, either.

But it's not me. I don't know why. For some reason, having an outline makes me feel like I'm no longer interested in the story. All the good stuff is already figured out, discovered, written down, and I'm left feeling all, "...meh" about the whole thing. I don't use outlines (I do use lots of notes, though), so there are plenty (indeed most) days when I sit down with no clues at all what will happen next. It's exciting, and interesting, and provides pretty good results, mostly--and you can fix up problems that arise later in editing, anyway. Yes, I waste a lot of time. Since I finished work on HYDROGEN STEEL, I've tried and failed several times, to produce a decent book. One book, the ill-fated UMBRA project last year, I actually finished before deciding it stunk. Another, a project that had many names but I thought of it as THE FAR UPTIME, got to 82,000 words before I realised it was fatally flawed (bad problem in the premise I hadn't previously noticed, and which crippled the entire thing). All attempts to revive, rewrite, etc, also failed at various points. This is bad, I know. Really bad. And frustrating? You have no idea.

THE FAR UPTIME was going to be a book about time-travel, about a guy who developed through circuitous means the ability to bop about in time without need for an actual time machine. It was all in his head: some nifty tech rewrote chunks of his brain to make this possible. It also made it possible for him to travel in space this way. That part was always fine. It was other details of the backdrop that caused problems. What I'm trying to get to here, though, is that this new book is the time-travel book I've wanted to write all along. Even if it subsequently turns out to be rubbish (and this could happen), it's got a serious itch out of my system. It's like, years and years ago, when I had a terrible itch to write a STAR TREK: TNG novel. I wrote the book, went pretty well, and afterwards I never felt that same urge again. Got it out of my system. Same thing here.

And yet, this book is cunningly designed to allow the possibility of further adventures for the detective hero, Spider Webb. He personally really hopes not, to be honest. He hates all this time travel crap, just like he hates having to fix broken time machines. It pisses him off, but it's what he's stuck with, thanks to something that happened in his past. We'll see what the future holds, so to speak.

Posted by adrian at September 14, 2007 08:09 PM

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Posted by: Cheyenne at September 16, 2007 04:39 PM

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