Now, let me take myself back down that peg, and a couple more for good measure, by saying that I am 207 words behind my average daily goal. And considering I started keeping track on February 18th, that is almost 2.5 months worth of 200 words a day, or… 15,000 words.
Next, on to the actual point of the post: Change. I’m almost 14,000 words into a story that I’m fairly happy with so far (and I’m not quitting on yet!) but I’m contemplating a change that would move the whole time line of the story back 40-50 years. If this were my Space Opera “The Nine Mothers” then 40-50 years would be nothing since the entire universe there is a complete fabrication. But HtGG is set in the “near-future” – currently 100 years in the future.
If we compare 2008 to 1908, obviously a lot has changed, but really, the biggest societal change that I see is the invention of TV. And Hear the Grass Grow is more about society than science (at least I hope it is). So now the real point of the post: I don’t want to have to make up some fresh, new idea about what technology is going to be like 100 years from now. I want to dabble in that a bit, because it’s fun, but the story is more about the characters and how their lives are affected by the events that take place in the story, more than how the technology of the time has changed, or how that new technology affects them.
I believe it’s a good thing that I’m writing my story/novella/novel/whatever in this manner, because most of the guidelines for submission to SFF magazines specify that they prefer character-driven stories.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to create worlds that are completely different from (yet somehow so similar to) our own; I want to dream up fascinating new technology; I want to be innovative. I just don’t think this is the story in which I want to – and perhaps can not – do that.
And from the standpoint of a still-aspiring author, having gleaned what knowledge and wisdom I can from the actually-published authors whom I read on a daily basis, changing it is good. I think the general advice goes: You’re most likely going to end up rewriting most of what you’re currently writing anyway. So if a key set piece or setting date needs changing, it’s better to do it at 14,000 words than at 50,000 words. Now, back to contemplating my spreadsheet with the new dates…
And yes, the comment about TV is meant to be somewhat inflammatory, but also thought-provoking, and perhaps even comment-worthy.
This putting Book One online for free thing works out really well for me, since I started reading the series with Book Two aka Bloodlines. And since I have yet to start Book Four (of Nine), I won’t have to rewind through seven books to catch the beginning of the whole thing. It’s even available as an audiobook! Downloading that right now…
Free offer expires May 13, 2008 (the day the last book of the series comes out).
The Friday Five is something that started as the Friday Fifteen over on my other blog. I just happened to have five things today that I feel are worth posting.
1. Mark Terry talks about Book Advances, which basically says what John Scalzi had already told me (and many others) via his blog: Writers (fiction writers) don’t make Money (with a capital M) unless they get lucky. And I’ve already accepted that fact. But I do find that it’s nice to occasionally check in with Reality.
3. Jeff VanDermeer recommends The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter. I actually already had it on my Amazon Wishlist, but I went ahead and changed the priority to Highest. For $9.60 I should probably just order it, but I’m going to see if I can get my next Amazon gift card from MyPoints before I do that.
1. Count the number of characters in an average, mid-paragraph line (BTW, this all assumes a monospaced font. If you’re using a proportional font, the number of characters can vary immensely, throwing off the numbers and word count).
2. Divide by six. This is the number of words per line.
3. Count the number of lines on a page. (This includes any # for blank lines.)
4. Multiply #2 by #3 to get the number of words per page.
5. Multiply by the number of full pages (plus any fractional pages), to get the total number of words.
6. Round the number to the nearest hundred. Authors tend to round up; editors round down. This is the number you put on the front page of the manuscript.
I’ve got 21,000 words. There’s a lot of white space in the manuscript.
5. Lynn Viehl has a new Novel Crash Test Dummies writing manual. While Lynn writes what I believe are mostly paranormal romance books, she has published 38 books in the past 8 years, so she’s definitely doing something right. Most of her advice seems like it can be applied to writing in general, and the innuendo keeps things interesting.
That does explain why the commercials have been seen on more than one channel. And yes, you can see the TV in at least one of the YouTube videos. I applaud LG for their creativity, but really, how many people are going to buy this TV who otherwise would not have? And how many people are going to be so upset at the hoax that they don’t buy the TV or any other LG products?
How is it that the only information I can find on this is actually on the show’s website? That just doesn’t seem normal.
I mean, part of me is saying it’s a fairly transparent experiment with “non-marketing.” I.e., seeing how many people will watch the (alleged) mini-series without promoting outside of 30 second ads (on ABC, I think). The web site doesn’t even say what channel it’s on, so I was tempted to think that it might be a web-only thing, but the address definitely ends in “.tv”. Of course, with the apparent active obfuscation of evidence of the existence of the show, it could be that the .tv is just another red herring, and perhaps it really is going to be a web-only show.
The other part (I guess you’d call it a half, then) of me thinks that David Nutter has had enough of “normal” TV shows after launching Millennium, Roswell, Dark Angel, Smallville, Without a Trace, Supernatural, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I guess we’ll just have to do as he says in the clearly staged interview on the site and “watch closely.”
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In the near future, a government intelligence agent uses her position within The Agency to search for her brother while also fighting an organization whose technology is years ahead of anyone else on Earth.
