Beware Greeks Bearing Spaceships

NaNoWriMo is here again and I'm getting geared up for another 30-day mental marathon. This year I'm returning to SF with an adaptation of the Anabasis. I've wanted to do a military SF version of this classic greek military expedition gone horribly wrong for a very long time--now I've got my chance.

Since 50,000 words is basically half of a real novel, I've got a bit of a jump start on the project. I'm writing everything up to the war between Cyrus and Artaxerxes, saving the big action scenes for November 1 so I can start with a bang. Some might feel this is a violation of at least the spirit of NaNoWriMo, but when I get to the end of NaNoWriMo, I'd like to actually reach the end of the novel and 50k just doesn't cut it.

When I was just a kid in grade school, I would often find myself with a half-dozen volumes of The World Book encyclopedia spread across the living room floor open to some subject or other. At one point I made it through to the "X"s where I found an entry for Xenophon and this picture—

—entitled: Xenophon Gave Thanks to the Gods as his “Ten Thousand” Finished Their Long Retreat to the Bosporus.”

I can't say precisely what it was about this picture that so capture my imagination, but after reading about Xenophon and the “March of the Ten Thousand” I would—even years later—bore people with a passionate recounting of those historical events. I know others have done a SF version, but all the ones I know about involve some military force crashing on a planet and having to march around to some sort of spaceport or something. This version will be the first (that I know of) that takes place entirely in space.

The interesting thing about the writing so far is that I've got so many words written and yet all the politics leading up to the initial war is just a tiny fragment of Xenophon's account. It seems strange that such a minor part of his account should be so rich in potential conflict.

At least it doesn't look like I'll run out of material before Nov. 30. The real trick will be injecting the personal transformation of the main character into the story which might be hinted at, but certainly isn't addressed in Xenophon's text.

Done! ...mostly

This is what 134,761 words looks like--the result of NaNoWriMo '07 & '08 and a little bit more. I just finished formatting it, photoshopping a new cover and uploading everything to Amazon's POD. Hopefully it'll get verified soon and I can use the free proof coupon before it expires.

I'm looking forward to working on something different for '09, but the truth is this still isn't the end of the story. I resolve the most immediate conflict in part one, but the over-arching conflict is still left largely unresolved. I had hoped to do it all in one book, but what I have now is already ambitious enough. I'm sure I could do part two in a fraction of part one's length, the question is whether I can fit it into a the existing book or stretch it into a second full-length novel.

Either way, around October, expect to hear about a far future science fiction space opera based on the work of an ancient greek.

One Proof down...One To Go

I haven't blogged on blogspot in months, for which I entirely blame facebook. Fortunately, unlike last year, that doesn't mean I have stopped writing. In fact I've written pretty much non-stop since then except for a break in March and part of April where I had to do some editing, formatting and some graphic art work to take advantage of my free proof from Amazon. (Which I won from completing NaNoWriMo in 2007.)

I was fully prepared to be disappointed by the free proof copy, but I was pleasantly surprised. The quality of the print and binding surprised me. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have a standard paperback book size, but I was quite happy with the quality of what they produced.

Now I just have to finish the thing to take advantage of the free proof for NaNoWriMo 2008. My current word count is 126,805 and, judging by my outline, I have another 12 or 14-thousand to go to finish the story and I only have until the end of the month to take advantage of the Amazon deal. (Can you say PRESSURE?)

Getting my life back

I've often said that NaNoWriMo is something like a mental marathon. Having never actually run a marathon, this is all conjecture, but it does take a tremendous amount of single-mindedness and mental endurance to crank out nearly 2,000 words a day for 30 days.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the relief one feels when it ends is nearly as great (I imagine) as ending a marathon. This is the reason why, though I had told myself I would finish my novel over the summer last year, I somehow never got around to it and so I've had to put my SF novel off again. In fact, now that I've put in another 50,000 words into it and somehow only reached the second of the three main climaxes of the story, I'm getting a little concerned.

Though December has killed my word count (last I looked it was 1/4th November's average--I'm afaid to look now). I am, however, determined to finish this thing once and for all. In fact since the crew at NaNoWriMo have worked out a deal with Amazon's POD publisher to give winner's free proofs of their stories (only good for six months) I have some incentive to finish the thing. I just have some hard decisions to make about how far I'm going to take this thing, to say nothing of a month's worth of messages in my inbox and all these friends requests coming into my facebook page...

Go! Go! Go

Just a quick post. Things have been going very well so far this year. I checked my logs and by last night I was 1,124 words over where I was last year. In fact I've not failed to meet goal yet (averaging nearly 2,000 words a day so far) whereas last year I'd already had one day where I'd failed to make goal and was averaging about 160 words a day less.

Maybe, despite all the editing I've done over the last year, I've learned to turn the internal editor off and just write this year. I think having a more detailed outline has certainly helped as I no longer have to stop and ask myself what happens next. Of course I still have that nagging fear that I'll run out of outline before I run out of story again this year, but I guess I'll burn that bridge when I get there. :)

One interesting thing I've discovered is that when I'm nearing the end of a scene, but still haven't made goal for the night, but I'm close enough that I don't want to start the next one, I am forced to be creative. At least a couple of times now, it's forced me to dig deeper and discover aspects of characters and their relationships that I hadn't suspected until I decided I needed "something more" before I was done with the scene. I'll sometimes do this sort of thing in revision, but it's been a nice surprise to be able to unearth this stuff while I'm frantically sprinting toward my goal for the day. I'll have to spend more time thinking about this...when I have time to think.

Ready! Set! Wait For It!...

Ok, I'm going slightly mad waiting. I REALLY want to write but I'm making myself hold off until November. I've drawn up a list of about 60 scenes which is about 1/3 longer than last year so I shouldn't have to scramble too much for ideas when it comes time to write. (I hope.)

I'm a little concerned about the scope of the story though. I've already dumped 50k into it last year and I expect anywhere from 50-80k yet to go before the story is done. I tried really hard not to pad it with unnecessary stuff, so it's even possible it will grow when I get to the editing stage. I'm afraid it may be a little large for a first-published (hopefully) novel.

My big fear, other than the usual disasters such as hard drive/computer failures, holidays and families and who knows what else might be lurking next month, is that I've got this not so little web design contract on the side that has been delayed and delayed and though I had hoped to finish it by the end of this month, probably isn't going to be finished. My coding partner may get stuck with the brunt of the load in Nov., which is going to sabotage his attempts again at nano.

Speaking of my cousin, he found a local supply of shrimp chips! I first had these when my aunt brought them back from Japan when I was in kindergarten. I last had them 15 or 20 years ago when I lived in California. I missed them and I still love to watch them puff up as they cook just as much as I did when I was a kid.

Preparing for the 10th Anniversary of NaNoWriMo

So many things to blog about...and so little time to do so. I finally finished the latest version of my author's site http://ja.partridge.com. I've got the CMS set up for a site where I plan to post all my setting information, but that won't go live until after NaNoWriMo

Speaking of nanowrimo, I'm very excited about participating this year. (I'm already starting to annoy my wife talking about it.) I'm also a little more worried this year. I'm planning on doing part 2 of the story I began last year, but I'm firmly stuck in the muddy middle of the story and I'm not sure which route I want to take to get me from the beginning to the ending. It's an ambitious story so pacing is already going to be an issue. Based on my work last year, I'm going to need somewhere between 50 to 75 scenes. So far I've got about 20 planned, then the rest just kind of fades into a blur. But, then, that's what's nanowrimo is about, isn't it? Just forcing you to gut out the word count and discover all kinds of things inside of you that you didn't know was there. That and just getting writers off their lazy butts.

Several weeks back I printed out all of my completed short stories (and the 1 novella) and ran them through a final (re)edit to get them ready to send out for their final rounds of submissions. I'm planning on running them through all the few remaining professional markets for short fiction, then I'll probably do something with them online. I like to do my final edits in hard copy (because I think I catch more stuff that way), so though I've finished nearly all of them, I still have to type in the changes.

Other than work, kids and the general distractions of life, I've done a little reading. One was a best-selling fantasy author who shall go nameless. I got about 5 or 6 chapters into it before realizing I had read it once before nearly 10 years ago. Even considering that it was a freshman work, the writing was appalling. The whole thing was all passive verbs, tons of over-writing and general cruft, not just one but two cliche openings because the first couldn't possibly motivate such a lame character.... It thoroughly depressed me, because if this guy could not only get published but go on to have a best-selling career, then something other than writing is the key factor in this business.

Speaking of reading old works, I borrowed a copy of Watchmen from a friend. Seeing the trailer for the movie, made me want to go back and re-read it. It was just as good as I remembered from all those years ago. I hope they can get the legal issues worked out, because I really want to see it, though it will be curious to see how they are able to adapt such a deep character-rich story for the big screen. All that being said, these photos of "Rorschach" picketing Fox studios for holding the movie up made me laugh.

I finally got around to reading The Road. I should say at the outset, that I'm a guy who likes post-apocalyptic stories. That is probably the only reason I finished this relentlessly oppressive book. I'm not saying it's bad. It's actually quite captivating despite some real flaws. The premise is completely unconvincing. (This from a guy who will happily suspend disbelief for any Romero-style zombie movie.) Plot-wise, I think it would have made an awesome short story. As a novel, it was a little thin. The characters are thin as well (both literally and literarily :) but their relationship and the father's obsessive will to survive do keep you engaged in the story. I almost didn't get into it because of an inexplicable lack of quotation marks and other punctuation and at least a few times where the author blatantly shifted from third to first person POV, but it is still a very worthwhile read. It is not divided up into chapters, but many of the scenes are short so I found myself gobbling one after the other like popcorn. I would highly recommend it to anyone and encourage those who fear they can't handle the bleak and unrelenting oppression by saying the book has a surprising and strangely optimistic conclusion that is really quite touching.