The Writing Project

I decided it was high time that I said a bit more about my current writing project than the hints that I've been dropping on Twitter. This is prompted a bit by what I see other writers saying about their own works-in-progress, but mostly by a tweet from Craig Hallam* (@craighallam84) who said...

"I know I do it as well, now and again, but I'm really sick of having a feed full of adverts. Why don't people talk about their writing more?"

So I'm hoping to be able to find a little time every so often, maybe once a week, to bring you, gentle reader, an update on where things are.

First, I should point out that this project (which has a working title that will not be mentioned because it's pretty meaningless) is in no way related to my earlier book, Pavonis. It's not a sequel, and where the steampunkness - or not - of Pavonis was open to question, this new project is definitely not steampunk.

Enough about that, then.

It's a story about a place - a city, in fact, probably about the size of Greater London. It's a place of stone and cobbles, of fog and rain, of winding streets and dark alleys and canals and bridges. And this place is also one of assassins and royalty and scientists and mystics. It was inspired by many things: books like Gormenghast and Captive Universe, films like Dark City and even TV shows like Babylon 5. Not that I've taken plot elements from those; what I'm aiming for is an atmosphere that I have in mind, and the story developed from that starting point.

In this place are several major characters whose destinies are intertwined, although they're not aware of it (yet; the connections between them will become apparent as the story unfolds). As far as structure is concerned, I'm trying an approach that anyone who's read Stand On Zanzibar or A Game Of Thrones will be familiar with; each "chapter" is a slice of the story as seen from the point of view of one character. Third-person, of course; doing that kind of thing in the first person would be pretty horrible for the reader. (First person worked for Pavonis although in hindsight I've wondered if I should have done it differently. Well, it's too late to worry about that now.) This fits in beautifully with the way I developed the storyboard, and it's making the actual writing a breeze. (Don't ask me why that's true; my process for writing Pavonis was quite different and parts of it were really hard to write, and I think the process itself was part of the reason for that.)

As to how it's coming along, then: it's up to about 23,000 words, with my first-draft target being in the neighbourhood of 100,000 words. At this point I've introduced all those major characters and established the central storylines. The princess is on her way, with her guardian in tow; the assassin is trying to unravel a secret; the psychopathic prince is about to make his move. Other things are happening, too, but I don't want to give away the farm just yet.

The writing itself is coming along nicely, thanks to that process I mentioned earlier, although finding times when I can really take a run at it and get some momentum is hard; I find a few minutes here and there between tasks at the office, and I've also pretty much dedicated my lunch breaks to writing. Writing at home in the evenings is tough because by the time I can get to it I'm often too tired to focus well. Weekend mornings is a good time, and I can often get quite a bit done those days. All that said, I'm actually pretty pleased with progress so far.

That's enough for now. As I said, I'll try to post updates as and when. Until next time...

* Craig is the author of Not Before Bed and his new book Greaveburn is due out August 20. I found out recently that Greaveburn was also influenced by Gormenghast; that's a coincidence, honest.