Scheming into 2011 (Part Deux)

Back in January 2011, I posted this blog entry on my plans for the first half of 2011. They were, in summary:

– Submit Brutal Light to another publisher
– Submit True Places to another publisher
– Submit Onyx Fire to a publisher
– Outline my next novel (either Minions or the sequel to Brutal Light) and get started on writing it
– Write a new short story
– Rework an old short story into saleable form
– Submit my short story Fabulous Beasts to a publisher
– Worldbuild for an as-yet-unnamed dark fantasy/sf environment

Now that six months has passed, I thought I’d revisit this and see how I did. First and foremost, of course, I did submit Brutal Light to another publisher, and they accepted it for publication. This of course made my brain spin, and threw me onto a new track altogether for writing plans. (Well, that and some personal circumstances that have nothing to do with this.)

While I did manage to submit Onyx Fire to a publisher, I never got around to sending True Places anywhere. In fact, I’ve decided to shelve True Places entirely for the time being. There’s just too much I’m dissatisfied with in it, beginning with how it’s about a third longer than it needs to be. One of these days I’ll take it off the rack and retool it, but not now.

I have started outlining the sequel to Brutal Light (tentatively titled Starless Midnight), much as I said I would. I started the ‘new short story’ indicated above, but have not yet gotten far with it, and I’ve neither retooled the old short story, nor have I submitted Fabulous Beasts anywhere.

Why not? Well, aside from my personal circumstances and being thrown for a happy loop by having Brutal Light accepted for publication, I’ve been at work learning the business end of writing. I’ve expanded and polished the material on this website. I’ve taken a seminar on self-promotion for writers (the publisher does some, but other bits fall to me) and outlined some rough plans for what to do as publication day (12/1/11) approaches. I’ve expanded my contacts on the various social media platforms (and yes, I’m gonna be on Google Ploosh, very soon now). I’ve cut or modified some things I had going on that threatened to compete with what precious time I have available to write. In short, I’ve been at work re-orienting my head from being a writer hoping to get his book published the first time to a writer aiming to get published again and again.

That said, I’m ready to list some tentative goals for the second half of 2011:

– Editing Brutal Light into its final form for publication–once I have an editor assigned to my book, this will be my top priority until it’s done
– Finish outlining Starless Midnight, then write and write and write and write…
– Finish two new short stories – one the story I started back in January, the other a new one for a recently announced anthology
– Submit Onyx Fire to another publisher (should the one that has it now reject it)
– Continue networking and making publicity plans for Brutal Light, and then following through on those plans (something that will take more of my time as December approaches)

I’m looking forward to an amazing (and hectic) second half of the year!

30 Days of Writing #12: Best Job of Worldbuilding?

12) In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

I’ve in the past not been a disciplined worldbuilder, preferring to feel my way along as I write and see what falls out of my head over nailing things down ahead of time. This has sometimes worked well–in Brutal Light, my answer to this question–but oftentimes it has come back around to bite me, forcing significant additional revision time. I’m working on changing that in my upcoming projects–the short story sequence set in a remote jungle location on what may or may not be another world, for instance, is something I’m very aware I have to put a lot of extra pre-writing worldbuilding effort into. My next novel project, Minions, will also require some considerable forethought, though more of it will be left to ‘discovery.’

That said, I don’t think Brutal Light would have been as strong a novel if I’d tried to get things lined up right at the start. Some projects are just like that. In this case, it was the end result of years of thinking about stories like it, and iterations of working on previous attempts at novels and even some of my Superguy material. It had spent so much time incubating that, had I tried anything like formal worldbuilding, I might never have stopped, and might never have gotten around to writing the actual book.

Scheming into 2011

Looks like we’ve made it mostly intact into 2011. Hope everything went well for you and yours over the last couple weeks — it certainly did for me and mine. I thought I’d take a break this week from the ’30 Days of Writing’ series to talk about my writing plans for the first half of 2011.

I’m aiming to produce a couple new short stories — one all new, and currently under way, and one a full-scale breakdown-and-rewrite of an old one I think can be made saleable. Additionally, I’m determined to produce a detailed outline for Minions, my next novel. (Well, unless Brutal Light finds a publisher, in which case I’ll switch gears and start on the sequel to that one.)

I’m also working on worldbuilding for what I hope will be a long series of fantasy/horror short stories and novelettes and novellas, set in a lush and bizarre world populated by… but that would be telling. I’ve been sloppy in the past when it comes to worldbuilding, I’ll admit — I’ve always preferred to write, see what falls out of my head, and adjust my story to fit it in. But for this particular series to work, I’ve got to nail some things down, or at least come up with a sketch of what these things, and the nail, might look like. I’m quite looking forward to playing in this sandbox.

As far as established works go, I’ll be submitting True Places to another publisher, and see if I can find a home for the short story Fabulous Beasts as well. Plus I need to find somewhere to submit Onyx Fire, and maybe Brutal Light if it gets rejected by the publisher that has it now. You might think this doesn’t belong in a ‘goals’ post, but I’ve been lazy about keeping my momentum with submissions in the past, and that’s got to change.

Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you updated as to how these plans are going. Hope 2011 rocks, for all of us and ours.