Day 61

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

01 Feb 2016

Made it past the 50K word mark!

As per my earlier goal-setting efforts, this marks the launch of my writing/author’s platform as well as the definitely-over-halfway mark.

And by launch, I mean baby steps towards developing a plan and setting up an online presence.

I was all excited to start sharing content, but then took a step back and decided it would be in my - and everyone else’s - best interest to develop a marketing plan and take things slow.

Also moving away from sharing the first draft in the immediate future, partly on the advice of my wonderfully talented musician friend Rebel, and partly because I keep having ideas that require significant updates/rewrites, and it wouldn’t be fair to share the story with huge inconsistencies and zero cleanup.

Most specifically, the idea of using masks and a more comprehensive burka-type uniform to play up the contrast between the Tower obsessive control (no skin! no touch! no identity! no individualism!), the party scene (masked faces but bare skin, all about self expression and feeling) and the Streets (? masked for environmental safety?), as well as the contrast between Silver/Itri in his seeming vulnerability.

So that’s going to impact a lot of the early, and ongoing, descriptions and interactions. I’d like to go back and dig in a little deeper into the underground party scene too, show horror, excess, art, wonder in a more compelling way.

It would make the most sense to see it through Cole’s eyes, but at this point she hasn’t spent much time conscious down there, and can be thought of as an unreliable narrator. Maybe more switching of viewpoints between Cole/Cadence/Victoire? Or setting up stronger characterization down there for someone like the other Morris sister, zeroing in on her experience?

Since I’ve finished my major consulting project and have (in theory) more time, I’m planning to set aside afternoon work/2nd hour work for rewrites so I can continue first drafts in the mornings/first hour and keep moving towards an end point.

Realizing that a lot of opportunities in the UK are sailing by based on my current timeline of a late Spring entry - will end up competing with students for low-level jobs if I go the lifestyle instead of career route once I get there…

But first things first; get a move on with the book, build a platform, hopefully head towards monetizing my writing not too long past when the EI runs out.

Just looked at the end of last week, when I passed the 50K mark, and both of the major works I’ve focused on in the past (YA adventure/fantasy and hard kids fantasy/faery story) have manuscripts of almost 50K, so what I’m hoping to do is launch a platform and advertise a weekly release schedule of a short or single chapter of an original work, and then bounce between the YA and the kids story as a serial-release, with teaser (dream-death) chapter-stories and maybe the odd chapter from this main work, with the intent of sacrificing quality/editing and saleability of the YA and kids stories in favour of releasing fast, entertaining material.

If all goes (miraculously) well, maybe they will make it to publication one day, but in the meantime, I’m willing to sacrifice past work to launch present efforts. Who knows; the world could hate this story and love one of the previous, more childish efforts (but please love at least one of them!)

Since I think it’ll take a while to build a plan, build a site, and launch the platform, hopefully I can dig into an effective schedule (sure haven’t today…) and cycle between first draft, rewrites, ancillary works rewrites/edits and platform development.

Getting close; getting scary!

Tuesday

Start time: 12:00 pm

Location: couch/living room

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