quote:Welcome to this week's Novel Support Group. Anyone can join. If you're new, tell us a bit about who you are and what project you are working on. Feel free to update the NSG Work in Progress thread with your current projects. Although we can report on any number of things, here is a list of suggestions (suggestions welcomed).
What were your goals last week and did you accomplish them? Describe what you worked on. Set goals for next week. Did you learn something during this week?
Here is a list of things that you can do each week as we work on our novels (suggestions welcomed).
Writing on a novel Characterization World Building Relevant research
=-=-=-=-= Sorry to be a bit late this week. Internet's been spotty, for some reason.
As for me:
Last Week's Goals:
MAILING LIST: Realistically, nothing is going to happen on this for at least the next two weeks. See BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING below. No change here.
DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. Nothing here, either.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Begin final revisions. My goal is to have this at a point where I can put it up for pre-order by the first. This doesn't have to mean done, but it does mean I have to have a really good idea of when I'll have it done. Yes! I'm half-way through the revision.
BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Pause for final revisions to BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING. Easy one.
MAILING LIST: Realistically, nothing is going to happen on this for at least the next two weeks. See BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING below.
DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Continue with the final revisions. Determine do-able publication date, and get this up for pre-order. Update back matter for published works, starting with those that will be part of the May the Fourth (be with you) promotion.
BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Pause for final revisions to BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING.
posted
Been doing a lot of finger-tapping this week while rereading chapter three and four in my new novel.
It's not that the chapters are bad, as Jay would probably say, there full of the tricks of the trade.
They have within them what will keep a certain type of reader interested, mainly, youthful, modern-age, reader, with no attention span. They have appeal, to the primal basics, of a social media generation.
But-
I find myself disturbed by if I'm really saying anything in those two chapter's, or if I have already surrendered to write in order to sell books. I do this all the time in my articles because the goal is to sell papers or promote online sales.
But when I was reading through what my second protag. was actually doing in time and space, her actions and thoughts seemed meaningless. As if I had dumbed her down to have a broader appeal. It's been eating at me.
In my head I have been rewriting her, building a new arc, trying to give her more substance.
But-
At the same time, every new sentence I write in my head for her takes something away from that easy mass appeal.
The question becomes, do I want page turning or thought-provoking, or is there a way to have both? I'm not sure there is.
It's easy to understand the problem, we live in a time where a piano cat video can get 10 million hits but a chemical weapon attack in Syria only gets 100k.
People want an escape, not reality, not thought-provoking. Not until they, themselves, have crossed paths with something that makes them stop and open their eyes. Then their tastes change. Then they look for something with more substance.
So the next question becomes: Do I write for the million hits crowd or the hundred K group? Right now the novel stands as something in between.
or
should I write how I want to write even though that may mean less appeal, less sales, which often means, book suicide.
-that is the question, dear Horatio.
W.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - Hamlet, act 3, scene 1
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posted
How would you want to look back on your writing in 30 or 40 years?
Would you feel that you had sold out by trying to write to please the millions, or would you feel you had wasted your time by writing how you wanted?
For myself, having to live with myself, I'd choose to write what I cared about, what meant something to me.
Those who write to appeal to the millions are sometimes called "hacks" because what they produce may not be worth much in the overall scheme of things.
Remember what else it says in Hamlet? About being true to yourself?
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posted
The bane of arts and artists, appeal to the masses, the critical, the self, and one's own muse is my uncharted course.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by walexander: Polonius: This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Hamlet stabs him when caught hiding behind a curtain. Probably should have heeded his own advice.
Yes, the source of the advice is less than admirable, but I try to follow good advice regardless of the source.
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posted
I found inspiration in a strange place today to rewrite those chapters, I was drifting through soundtracks today for something to listen to and hit Ennio Morricone dollar trilogy themes, but they led me to the main theme to the movie, The Mission. I have a weak spot for watching/listening to orchestras play beautiful music.
And like magic, all of a sudden I could see a far better scene for my character, it appeared right before my eyes, having nothing to do with the movie the music was written for, but I could just see it as clear as day, as if it had been there all along, what I had been waiting for. Poof, and there it was.
It ran like a movie in my head and I couldn't type it out fast enough. So magnificent is the human imagination. Too bad we have to often wait for the muse to strike. It's such a wonderful feeling when it does, and such a hollow feeling when it doesn't.
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