new year's resolutions for 2010

1. Graduate.
2. Start a publishing masters course.
3. Query THE INFERNAL FAMILY.
4. Revise IRONBANE.
5. Finish the first draft of DREAD MACHINE.
6. Panic less.

2009 writing year in review

I feel like a humiliating failure, so it’s surprising to look back on everything I’ve done in the last twelve months and say: 2009 has been a kickass writing year.

A year ago I was desperate. I hadn’t finished a novel in two and a half years. I’d put eighteen months, many bitter tears and at least 50k into my third novel, then titled EMPIRE OF HEAVEN, by the time I realised it was irreparably broken. Real writers knocked out a novel a year: I was a loser, a poser and a failure. I had a month’s Easter holiday in March, and if I couldn’t finish my novel in an entire month of writing full-time, I might as well give up.

Happily for my continued self-esteem, I ripped out the genre, setting and antagonist, rewired with new stuff, hammered out about 30k in less than a fortnight and finished what was recognisably THE INFERNAL FAMILY at the beginning of April. Narrow escape there.

Since my writing career consists of short bursts of writing interspersed with long stretches of doom, I spent the next six months ripping my hair out over revisions. I also wrote a query that everyone loved, workshopped the first chapter until it begged for mercy, and worked on my sweet and well-behaved epic fantasy IRONBANE. But mainly I whined a lot.

As Nanowrimo bore down on me like a freight train, I scrabbled to get a beta draft of THE INFERNAL FAMILY done and out to beta readers. I think I emailed it out with shaking hands at one minute to midnight on the last day of October. I even made the tiramisu of glory, my long-promised reward! Then I kicked Nanowrimo’s ass: hammering out over 75,000 words, finishing IRONBANE and kicking off my YA urban fantasy, DREAD MACHINE.

This story would threaten to have a happy ending were it not for realising that everything I’ve written needs to be insulted, ripped up and then burned.

So I guess I ended the year exactly where I started: swimming in a lake of despair near Mount Doom. Except this year I’m two first drafts, a second draft and a query to the good. I call that a win. :)

teaser tuesday

Still pretty burned about the novel from hell, so I'd like to post a teaser from a story that still excites me. This is part of the climax of my epic fantasy IRONBANE. Protagonist Anjen, better known as Ironbane, is a forty-something war criminal with a walking stick and a master plan.

(Here be violence and swearing.)

*

The Winter King stumbled toward her, still melting. It towered over her. "Sss." Snow steamed beneath its feet. Its white cloak smouldered, and curled up and blackened at the edges, and finally caught fire; the fire rose around it like a halo.

Anjen licked her lips. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth, her bruised mouth stung, but she dragged out words. "You forgot something."

"Sss!" the Winter King hissed, burning, and drew its sword of black ice. Around it the Court of Winter smouldered and burned and died.

"Go ahead," Anjen croaked, smiling more and more through the pain. "Kill me. If you can."

She found she didn't care all that much. She'd done her duty: she'd faced the Winter King and beaten it and kept her pride, for all that it tried to scare her and shame her into submission. Dying didn’t matter any more.

The Winter King took two lurching steps.

Anjen reached for something the Winterknight had discarded in its death throes. It was a stupid clumsy thing she normally had no need for, and yet when she curled her fingers round the hilt the iron weight of Valiant in her hands reassured her. Pain pulsed through her in time with her heartbeat. She stiffened her spine and forced herself to her feet, ignoring the creaking of her beaten body.

She braced her feet squarely in the snow. It would be over one way or another in a single exchange. If she moved, she'd fall. If she ran, she’d die. She had to stand and face it.

"What you forgot," Anjen told it, lifting Valiant's point, the distant starlight dancing pale on the iron blade, "is that I'm fucking Ironbane."

The Winter King staggered toward her on fire. Its burning cloak stuck to it and melted it. The flames curled around it brightly, making a second, hotter crown, and when it snarled the flames escaped from its open mouth and burst through its eye sockets.

It lifted the black sword high above its head.

Fuck that. Anjen jammed the point of Valiant up into its belly.

*

Other teasers: Karla, Lia, Raven, Lavender, Becca, Amna, Angie

radio silence

I wrote off my novel. Bad investment, fit only for the trunk, no point throwing good time after bad. Right now I don't even want to see that pile of trash again.

So if I spend another week hiding in my room, watching TV marathons and feeling miserable, please forgive me. At the moment I can't remember why I ever enjoyed writing.

nanowrimo roundup: tastes like victory

So - I finished Nanowrimo.

November is known and feared by writers as National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to write 50,000 words during the thirty days of November. It's the month your caffeine and/or sugar intake spikes as you stay up until 4am every night cranking out wordcount: a month in which your life is ruled by the inexorable march of the target line on your wordcount graph.

Some smart friends of mine introduced me to Nanowrimo back in 2004. Nothing is more useful to a beginning writer than a track record of finishing novels, and I finished my first one on the 21st of November 2004, less than a week after I turned sixteen. Had to trunk that novel (and the next), and I crashed out of most of the following Nanowrimos, but I've had a ton of fun and met a truckload of people through Nanowrimo - starting with my dearly beloved writing group. So I scrambled to finish and send out my beta draft of THE INFERNAL FAMILY, dug out my stalled-at-30k epic fantasy IRONBANE, and hit the trail on the 1st of November.

On the fourteenth night I finished Nanowrimo, and on the fifteenth I finished my novel. So I'm distressingly smug right now, and also grateful to:

• All the friends who cheered me on, especially the Bristol and Bath Nanowrimo team who kindly tolerated my gloating at the write-ins.
• Auburn, who kicked my ass with her massive wordcounts, taunted me when I fell behind and took my eleventh-hour victory with grace.
• My wonderful betas, such as Amy Bai, who sent me brilliant feedback during the most insanely busy month of the year for writers.
  

And a final roundup with lots of lovely numbers:

• Hit 50,000 words on day 14.
  
• Total wordcount on day 15 = 53166 ...
  
• ... of which 27294 words were written between day 11 and day 15.
• Total wordcount for the entire novel = 86680.
• Daily average = 3544.

I've pictured my wordcount graph here for your amusement. Blue line is daily wordcount, yellow line is cumulative target, red line is running total.

The pretty colours in my wordcount graph are suggesting to me that I've built up a lot of momentum that it would be a shame if I wasted. So I plan to start a project that's been waiting patiently for over a year for me to find time and confidence - my YA urban fantasy, DREAD MACHINE. I have time, I have confidence, and I also have a secret weapon: the twifties. I know I'll be in good hands as I flail around with my first YA novel.

I can only hope that my fifth novel will be as easy as my fourth. :)

congratulations!

Congratulations to the amazing Kody Keplinger, teenage novelist and twiftie, who just sold film rights to her YA debut novel The Duff! :D

robert jordan and brandon sanderson - the gathering storm

The Gathering Storm is the twelfth in the Wheel of Time series, part written by Robert Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson after his death.

Let me preface this review by saying that I'm a Wheel of Time hater of the vitriolic kind. Back in the day, when I was young and uncritical, I burned through the entire series and loved it from the beginning. Unfortunately, I started to develop critical reading skills right around the time that the series took a dive into terribleness. I was seriously burned on the tenth book, Crossroads of Twilight, and became an outright hater. I hated the padding, the repetition, the ridiculous excess of minor characters. Hated the plotlines that took four books to resolve. Hated having to use the Wheel of Time Concordance to keep up. Most of all, I hated the disappointment - I hated that a series I'd loved so much had become a travesty.

I had moderate hopes that Brandon Sanderson would turn it around with The Gathering Storm, but when I read the first chapter, Tears from Steel (available to members of Tor.com), I was horrified. It was exactly as I'd feared: Nothing happened. Six thousand words of throat-clearing, incorporating only (a) scenery description, (b) recap of the previous novels, and (c) the protagonist doing nothing. So I promised myself I was done with The Wheel of Time.

Well, I take it back.

The Gathering Storm is not perfect. The opening chapters in particular suffer from the classic Wheel of Time problems. Several storylines seem completely unnecessary, although Mat "where did my plot go" Cauthon has the benefit of being hilarious. (I don't remember him being this funny.)

But as the book progresses you get more and more crowning moments of awesome. There are scenes I've been waiting forever to read, which were every bit as badass as I expected, and scenes that hit me totally out of the blue. A huge amount of ground is covered plot-wise, especially focusing on Rand and Egwene. If you were to say, "All this time, I've really been looking forward to ..." odds are that scene is in The Gathering Storm.

Some moments made me laugh. A lot made me wince. A few made me go "Holy sh**!" This is a really freaking dark book, and Rand in particular hits the rockiest of rock bottoms, kicking the dog with such enthusiasm that he crosses the moral event horizon. He's armed with damn near absolute power, and he's not even trying to control it any more: he blows people and entire settlements away with breathtaking callousness, and his endgame plan is horrific, leading to many heart-stopping scenes of win.

Stuff happens. And it's awesome.

Verdict = 4 out of 5 stars. Against all the odds, The Gathering Storm is a genuinely good novel - good enough that I'm planning to buy the hardcover for my mother. I'm back on board the Wheel of Time train, ready to pull into Last Battle station. :D