Johan De Ronin

Can LW still get at this?

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

First book of the Twin Worlds was released to my editor yesterday. Basically, I ripped out the last third of it. A 100 page epilogue isn’t. I’ll use that material elsewhere. It’s too much world building stuff to lose.

Depending on what I get back from my editor, this is really close to actually getting shopped around.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

No, it’s not senility; it’s overload. I am trying to make these updates at least once per week and that means that I have to make time for them. What, a schedule; who needs a schedule? I’m tabling the structure Idea I had on the 14^th in favor of completing already committed work first. Ergo, that project is now on hold.

The current elephant in the room is the first Twin Worlds book, L’Eclaireur. Since I have decided to submit to agents; I have to convert it from pre-press to proper manuscript form. I actually have to do this with all five of my books. This is actually a good-thing™ as it forces me into line-by-line edits. But, that’s grueling work.

L’Eclaireur is actually over sized. It’s also got a huge epilog/denouement. Not only does it contain spoilers for the rest of the series but it’s as dry as reading Tolkien’s Silmarillion. It needs to be cut much closer too its climax and the rest spread and expanded over later books.

Working full-time at home, independent of other input, has a danger; one of over-work and over-commitment. The resultant of which is; spinning wheels and not getting anything actually done. Five books in various stages of not-done and none of them really ready to be submitted is the inevitable and predictable result. 

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

At risk of taking on too much again, I had this interesting idea. My wife and I have been spending since xmas watching Stargate:Atlantis, we now have all five seasons. This sparked the idea.

Going back; The latest book, Twin Worlds:Huntress is actually a pilot novel for a Space Opera series, a spin-off of the Twin Worlds series of novels. The problem, and the reason that Space Opera isn’t published much anymore, is that Space Opera tends to be short, 55K-80K words. This is far less than the current minimum of 100K words required by modern publishers.

The problem is in how to present the stories: The idea is to make the subsequent stories into anthologies that are episodes in a season and bind them into a single volume.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

NaNoWriMo did me one huge favor. It taught me; Do NOT edit a story before it is complete!

The definition of ‘complete’: The story is complete when it has a beginning, middle, and end and not before.

NaNoWriMo, due to time constraints, forced me to drive on with the story until I had completed it. It was only after NaNoWriMo was completed that I began to bog down because I wanted to go back and edit bits, to fill them out. … WRONG! You don’t do that until AFTER the story is complete. Otherwise, how do you know, definitively, what to edit?

I have a total of 5 books, in various stages of progress and only two of them are complete stories; the one I did for NaNoWriMo and my first one! Most of the rest are missing various bits, mostly endings and some middle bits. Other than the two I just mentioned, none of them are even to first rough draft stage. I am going back to fix this problem before I begin editing the now completed book.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

But it was about a week’s worth of downtime for all of my websites. The website were fine but the Database server developed a glitch. Unfortunately, it was just as I was finishing the final chapters on my book and that took precedence. Those were finished last night and backups were made (Yay!).

I have now officially finished the first draft of the current book. It is; 341 pages at 104K words. Now is the time to put it on ice for a few weeks and catch up on other tasks while it ferments and I get some psychological distance from it before I start the editing process.

One of the upcoming tasks is to get all these book projects on my subversion server

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

My wife and I will not attend TGIO:Lausanne tonight.

I just made this decision while standing out on my balcony watching the snow come down. My thermometer has never made it over -1C all day. While we could probably get there, getting home would be problematic. I was reminded of the storm just past and how rapidly it built up a 32cm snow pile on my balcony table.

My wife also reminded me that she has to get home from work, in Lancy. Tuesday, it took her three hours to get home and the busses in Geneva were actually stopped that evening and the following morning. This storm is promising to be just as fierce as the last one. Ergo, getting stranded in Lausanne is a real possibility.

Prudence dictates that it would behoove me to simply stay home rather than take the risk.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

I cleared the last day with 70,271 words towards the new book. So far, it is an acceptable 1^st draft and I am working rapidly up to the climax. As is usual for Space Opera, it is a massive battle.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

That is for my compatriots back in the states.

I just collected the Win for NaNoWriMo!

I was cranking out more than 4K per day and still averaging over two (No, the book isn’t finished yet). But now life can go back to normal, for a while.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.

I just cruised past the 50K word mark seven days ahead of the target. I can’t even verify my win until the 25th

However, I have hit the mark. Now, mad backups

4300 words today.

Mirrored from Johan De Ronin.