Back from Tasmania – Have some Parkour!

Well, just got back from a five day trip to Tasmania to train some Parkour. I went down with Josh, the vice-president of the Australian Parkour Association, and met up with a lot of awesome locals who showed us around the spots of Hobart.

I grabbed a bit of footage while I was down; it was difficult, given that my camera can only hold 3 mins of footage at a time. So I had to shoot what I could and empty it out each night. This is pretty much all I got. For anyone wondering, I’m the guy usually wearing camo pants and white shoes, oft-times with my shirt off or wearing a white hoodie. Josh has an awesome bandanna and eats sandwiches while balancing, and the kid with the death-abs is Benge, who is uber-talented. All in all, an awesome trip.

Now, back to the writing!

Burned Out

It’s been a tough month.

I basically set myself the goal of completely revising Weathermen before the beginning of University on March 3rd. I started editing on paper about Jan 4th and began rewriting based on those notes on Jan 14th, and at first I was going alright – blasting through four pages a day minimum, no hassles. Some days I managed eight, or ten. Those were good times.

But I’m now realising the value of pacing myself. Halfway through chapter five, the writing has never been harder. A lot of this “edit” had boiled down to “rewrite from scratch”, which means I’ve essentially busted out 70,000 words in the space of 37 days (and another 50,000 to go). For a professional author that might be average, but I’m struggling. I’m sick of staring at a computer screen. I’m sick of carrying this folder around. It seems to get heavier through the day, like Frodo’s goddamn ring.

Come on Ruz! Perservere! Less than 100 pages to go!

The problem with writing Science Fiction…

…is the SCIENCE.

When you’re writing for an audience who can pick apart all your future tech, things start getting hairy. You have to be meticulous. Unfortunately, I’m not meticulous. I bust out words and think later.

I studied Engineering for a year and a half before quitting university in Canberra and starting afresh in Melbourne with a much more interesting degree, and not very much of what I learned has stuck with me. Looking over a cheat-sheet I wrote up for a test yesterday was completely bewildering. I’m happy enough to remember how to calculate compound interest; load bearing stresses and the like can go get fucked.

So I hit a point in my editing a few days back where I realised I was stuck on science. Things I had written in the first draft – things that are VITAL to the story – simply weren’t possible. Ever. Sure, there are aspects I can fake by just saying “Hey, it’s the future! Future things happen!” but there is no way a can of beans is going to survive for two thousand years. No way at all.

So.

I put in a call to a good friend of mine in Canberra; the man that got me into Engineering in the first place, and who has just concluded his PhD in some obscure field involving a four-rotor helicopter design (I’ve seen his thesis. It’s ever so pretty). And, after a good afternoon of work, we’ve nutted out the problem. It means major parts of Weathermen will be changed, but I think I can manage the workarounds. And in the end, you won’t be left reading the story and bitching about the oxide collapse of aluminium.

The question for anyone who comments: when you write, and you hit a sticky problem, where do you turn? A knowledgeable friend? Wikipedia? Or do you just give logic the finger?

50 Word Fiction

After reading David Rochester’s blog and being totally bowled over by some of his 50 word fiction pieces, I’ve decided to give them a go again. They’re damn good practice for only writing what needs to be written. Very simple concept: try and contain a story (character, setting, plot) within 50 words (as opposed to just busting out a snippet of a scene).

I’m going to be doing these pretty regularly. Any feedback you have is massively appreciated. Just to allay any confusion, these are completely unrelated.

— — —

They say there are complications. They look at him like he’s dirty and touch him with gloved hands. He didn’t ask for this. He hates them. Nobody answers his questions. Is he an animal to them?
They need to learn to respect. He knows a guy who knows a guy.

Closing time. Kate lifts the dirty saucer and there it is. Cold plastic. The raised lettering feels alien under her fingers. Hologram twinkles in the café lights. Mastercard.
She glances around as she palms it, slips it into her apron pocket. Heart tight as a drum. Nobody sees. She hopes.

“Will you kill him?”
“Yeah,” I say. It’s a bluff. I don’t even know how to load the thing.
Weber wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You should make him beg.”
“Yeah.” The gun shakes in my grip. This is stupid. It was only a grand. “Yeah.”

She sees the spark jump from socket to finger and has time enough to feel fear. The stepladder tips over. Her head slaps the floor with a hollow sound.
People crowd around. They’re blocking the light. Her lungs hitch and burn. I’m drowning in air, she realises. That’s not fair.

Linda watches him replace the book on the shelf. His knuckles are hairy. He smiles a perfect smile and looks into her eyes like he knows her.
It’s just like the movies.
That night she lays her glasses on the bedside table and reaches down under the covers and imagines.

Old bones. Old eyes. It’s hard to watch the road. Things blur by so fast. The headlights catch cat’s eyes. At night, the road is a landing strip.
Seventy years of dying slowly. He can’t walk up stairs, but he can slam the accelerator. His hands come off the wheel.

She imagines she can feel the cold through her suit, but she can’t. All in the head. The sun breaks over distant mountains. It looks different in this atmosphere. Crisper.
She takes the first step. Red dust drifts slowly around her boots. The prints will remain after she is dead.

The customer in the blue suit thrusts a knife at John’s face. He squeals and twists away. The man’s eyes are calm. Light catches the blade. “All the money. Now.”
He opens the register and hands the cash over. As the man runs out John realises he has an erection.

Sirens. He looks out the window. The street below is smothered in shadow. He looks up. His pants fill with hot urine.
The sky is blocked by rippling metal. Lights. Hatches and vents and portholes. The floor is humming through his shoes. “Too soon,” he says, and everything goes white.

It has been so long, sitting in the darkness. Months. The manacles chafe. She can’t remember her name anymore.
Something squeals in the basement. Echoes hurt. There is no light. The door is locked and sealed. Nothing gets out. The concrete is so cold.
When will he just kill her?

And Chapter 4 is done and dusted.

The 2nd draft rolls on! Three chapters left to go (unfortunately, 5 and 7 are the longest, probably around 25,000 words each. Jesus Christ.)

So yeah. Another snippet after the cut. Happy Valentines Day, folks!

The Percentages of Editing

I got curious just then and compared the word counts on my first and second drafts of Weathermen (chapters 1-3 only). See, I read in Stephen King’s “On Writing” that he usually cuts around 10% in his 2nd drafts as he weeds out all the useless bits and pieces. 10% seemed a pretty good percentage to aim for.

So, Chapters 1, 2 and 3, first draft: 65,000 words.

Chapters 1, 2 and 3, 2nd draft: 51,000 words.

That’s a cut of 21.5%. Which is… well, significant. It’s a fair chunk of words. What pleases me is that I think I’ve managed to say more with those 51k words than the original 65k. The characters are more developed, there are MORE scenes, yet the narrative moves so much faster. That’s gotta count for something.

At this rate, the entire 2nd draft should clock in at just under 100k, as opposed to the original 135k. 100,000 words is a nice round number. It’s a number that a man can look at and go “Hrm. That’s a damn fine number. That’s a number you tell your wife and be proud of.”

So. Question, as always. Has anyone here edited a manuscript through several drafts, and if so, how did your wordcount change through each? Did it go up or down, and did you feel happy with the changes?

Weathermen 2nd Draft – Chapter 3 Down

Yes indeed. The third of seven chapters is down, which makes for about 120 typed pages of revision in less than a month. I can’t help but be happy with that. 140 to go! The goal is to get it all done and sent out to folks for a read-over by the end of March, which isn’t unachievable by any means. After that…

1) 3rd draft by July (I think one more round of cutting chaff and adding pizazz will help)

2) Final edits by November (There can never be enough fine tuning, ya?)

3) Off to publishers before Christmas (Goddamn, which publishers? Do I hunt for an agent? What the hell do I do?)

And then I get to start it all again. The dream continues.

Click behind the cut for a snippet of Chapter 3

Sleepers Almanac 4 Launch

On Wednesday night I was invited to the to the launch of Sleepers Almanac 4, where I got to drink a reasonable amount of beer and catch up with some good folk.

Wait, wait, you say. Sleepers whut?

The Sleepers Almanac is a yearly publication that collects some of the best short fiction of Australia. It’s significant because it’s produced by a very small team running on the smell of an oily rag, and also because it’s one of the few publications actually aimed at unknown authors. There are as many (or more) first-time authors as big-names in the collection, and that’s pretty damn significant.

The book itself is of a very high standard. It’s well produced, well designed, and shiny out the wazooh. Whereas most indie fiction publications are content to look student-produced, the Sleepers Almanac is really pushing the boundaries. Supporting it isn’t just important, it’s goddamn vital.

Cruising the hall was a who’s-who of awesome folk. I met up with bsjezz for the first time, who was published in the latest Sleepers. I hear he’s writing a novel now, which is damn exciting. I wager a tenner that it’ll be about birds. I also, by pure chance, ran into Linus, the writer/artist behind The Uni Bin. If you go to university in Australia, chances are you’ve read his comics. He’s a very smart fella; discussing the future of Australian comics in the light of webcomic success, new media and the immersion offered by film was damn interesting.

So. The moral of this post?

1 ) Local fiction publications are important.

2) There are interesting people at launch parties.

So, the question I have for anyone that reads this: What’s your local fiction mag/annual? If you’re a writer and you don’t know it, then you need to get looking, because they’ll be the ones that support your career when you start out, and the ones that will remember your name when you’re working towards success. They are the lifeblood of the industry.

Second question, if anyone gets this far: Have you submitted to that local mag? If not, why not?

The Dustbowl

Following up on my dream, I’ve been looking into the American Midwest Dustbowl. This image especially terrifies me, for the same reasons I hate dark water:

How would you escape that? What’s hiding inside?

Now, as to the actual purpose of the post: does anyone know of any science fiction or horror set in the Dustbowl? The only literature I can think of is Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which isn’t quite what I’m looking for.

Hopefully this research will give me something new to post in the coming weeks.