So, the first novel is done and has moved into marketing. Do I stop? Or do I continue to write?
There’s no question in my mind!
I find writing to be a marvelous experience. To take an idea, frame it as a story, create interesting characters, fill it with tension and compelling language. What a challenge! Every day, I spend some time at my laptop doing this. Sometimes, I’m envisioning something new: an idea in bulletized form, a character with his/her own life challenges, a newly imagined world. Other times, I’m creating bones: outlining a plot, writing thoughts for how it might go, writing the character background that you never usually see (but check below). Still other times, I’m actually writing, putting words on the screen to flesh out those bones. Then, finally, I’m going back to re-read and edit, to find the things that could be stronger, to take out extraneous words and paragraphs (sometimes even chapters), to manufacture those wonderful turns of phrase that will let you fly with me through the clouds to the future worlds. (Like that little turn of phrase.)
An example of bones, from my notes about Not Like Us. I wrote all of the following and more before writing Zofia into a single scene. I wanted to know who she was!
Zofia Dobrunik: who is she? (co-protagonist, Lazarite)
– tall (177cm – 5’ 10”) and well-proportioned with waist-length black hair, grey eyes
– Age 26, born 390 AT
– Grew up in lower castes
– Good at programming in school
– Completed secondary tech school in 409 AT, age 19
– Immediately Assigned as implant tech
– Groomed by unknown highly-place woman at State, who connected her with Yitzak, joined discussion group, age 21
– Invited to Lazarites group a few months later
– First trip to Tileus age 24 as message carrier
– Second trip to Tileus age 26 buying weapons
– Implant maintenance tech (software only) wears yellow
– Revolutionary trying to overthrow Solity
– Part of a small cell, only knows five others, leader is Yitzak Goren
– speech mannerism: flippant, insouciant, frequently joking – but rock solid when it comes to her political beliefs
– Likes sports analogies
One of the most exciting times for me is when a new idea strikes me while in the middle of writing a scene. I change my concept in mid-sentence, possibly go back to another chapter to set it up, then the words flow that I’ve never planned. The story takes me away from myself into places that are as exciting to me as I hope they will be to the reader. I’ll put one or two thousand works onto the page hardly without breathing, then sit back and marvel at what just happened.
So yes, I continue to write. Watch for the anthology Tales of Verdant in the next few months, and the sequel to Not Like Us by the end of the year.
Doc Honour
February 2023
Doc Honour Books 