Write what you don't know

Tim Stretton has recently been keeping quite a detailed record of his wranglings with embarking on writing a new historical fiction. What I've ben interested in is his reading matter. He is digging into his genre, in an effort to find out more about his chosen period, sure, but also as they're the type of books he likes to read.

As close observers may know, I am in the throes of writing an SF novel (am about halfway through the first draft, and have a very able advisor for the more technical elements of the book), but my science fiction reading, especially in recent years, has been pretty limited, and what I have read, outside of Interzone, I've found pretty dull (Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear...) I never have really been a big SF reader, more fantasy. I've never read Asimov, or Zelazny. What gives me hope is I remember reading some while ago that Neil Gaiman always wanted to be a science fiction writer, as that was what he loved, but ended up writing fantasy.

Part of this new book is set in post-almost apocalyptic Britain where I'm on firmer ground--thank you 2000AD et al--but the other section is set in a, for want of a more appropriate phrase, virtual reality.

Outside of Neuromancer, I'm not much of a cyberpunk. I toyed with the idea of reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and also gave Charles Stross' Halting State a go recently, but these books are built, really, around gaming, which is something that, obviously others have done already, and also doesn't interest me much. But, perhaps more to the point, I find them a little intimidating. They make me wonder if I can really pull this off.

Accountants have all the fun

I've just come over all Tim Stretton for the work in progress and had some 'fun' with spreadsheets. With a little help from Wikipedia and the Met Office, I've written an annual temperature scale for the next 150 years to add to my detailed seventy six year time-line.

What kind of writer are you?

Over on the Macmillan New Writers blog, erstwhile fantasy author Tim Stretton deliberates over his immediate writing future following the rejection of his latest novel, The Last Free City, by Macmillan and explains, following discussions with editor Will Atkins, that it's now more likely he'll follow an historical fiction tack (The Last Free City and its published predecessor The Dog of the North owe as much, if not more--as Tim admits--to historical military fiction as they do to fantasy, so this makes sense. Probably painful sense, but sense nonetheless. And didn’t I start this post with a very long sentence? More of those to come below. Tim seems inspired by the opportunities opened up by reconsidering his primary genre.

I, on the other hand—like Aliya—have been dabbling with speculative fiction for a number of years now, but also write ‘literary fiction’ (I hesitate to prefix that with the word commercial, as no one’s bought it). I have a novel, sent to the aforementioned Will at Macmillan, that I strongly believe in. (A revamped version of the original is with him now, hoping against hope that he finds a willing pair of hands to take the manuscript from him and kindle it into life, rather than turn it into kindling.) I’ve embarked on a subsequent novel, working a similar seam that, if by whatever chance that first book is picked up, shows I’m attempting to build on its relatively distinctive blend of literary romance and criminal underworld shenanigans.

In the meantime, the co-written contemporary science fantasy Aliya and I wrote together winged its way off to a likely looking agent, along with a sampler from a post-apocalyptic SF novel I’m working on. No, the agent says to the co-written piece, but, hang-on maybe, says the same agent of the SF novel-in-waiting.

So I’ve now made the decision to try and be two writers at once. I’m always working on far too many projects at once anyway, and trying to steer away for new ventures. Now it appears finally--thankfully--those various projects have converged into two very distinct strands. And furthermore, I’ve discovered something very welcome. I’m getting much better at research. I appear to have found a happy medium between learning trivia and writing none of it down, and gaining genuine knowledge about a topic I’m working on and being able to improve my writing in response to that knowledge.

If we were still on LiveJournal, that bouncy little icon at the bottom of the post would be saying ‘:) positive’.

Something for the weekend

Not quite as classy Aliya's barnet, but it's a start, Tim.