Victory, Dagnammit.

I've been trying to write a script. It's about politics and secrets, and may end up being a bit like a thriller, but also probably not. (All praise me, King of Synopses.) When I was hammering out the concept initially, I deliberately chose a quirky format. I figured that having constraints would require me to be more imaginative when I came to writing.

Having set these rules, I then found that I had very few available ways to give the script an interesting cold open. And I wanted it to have an interesting cold open. This has basically been vexing me for a month, with the feeling that the whole script is up in the air until I come up with a good idea.

And I think I just solved it.

I shall now engage smug mode. Do excuse me.

Final Scores (Back from the Cabin)

Well I got some of it wrong. Although Lawrence and I most likely had gone out for tonic water, we managed to magically return from this trip to the shops with KFC. Which rather sounds like us. No doubt absorbing vast quantities of fried chicken was entirely essential to the creative process. Also, after the many hours of talking and thinking, I was typing up all of these notes with Lawrence crashed out unconscious on my floor. It's these charming little details that I forget.

The above did not occur.

Good weekend, all told. It managed to be both productive and very fun, and we managed to see some other friends in and around all the writing.


Some Facts & Figures:

90,000 - Words at current count (I was previously a bit off, apparently).
2,000 - New words written by me over the weekend.
5,000 - Words transcribed by Lawrence from various notebooks/napkins/pieces of human skin.
∞ - Very useful and important decisions and clarifications regarding the novel.
31st December 2012 - The date by which we will have a first draft. This will happen.
125 - Days in which we have to complete the above feat.
800-1000 - Approximate words we'll need to be writing per day (each) to achieve this.
Murray Gold - Composer of this weekend's Writing Music of choice.
4 - Disrupting intruders Lovely friends who we saw for dinner.
16 - Cups of Tea/Coffee.
4 - Glasses of wine.
5 - Pints of ale.
12 - G&Ts (with lime - so yay, vitamins).
Bombay Sapphire - Writer's Gin of Choice.


And no, I don't drink this much when writing alone. It wouldn't be sustainabible.

(Hic).

Off to the Cabin in the Woods

It is a source of deep sadness that I do not have an actual cabin. Picture by  Kathy Jennings 

Figuratively.

One of the projects I'm working on at the moment is a series of fantasy novels. It's a joint project with my friend Lawrence (my best old buddy old pal); it's all planned out, with a detailed breakdown for the first volume and a rough outline for a series arc. We refer to it as Sundered, so that'll probably do for a non-spoilery* codeword.

Work on Sundered has been pretty stalled of late, through a combination of us both working and being easily distracted. Him, probably by the magical and mystical powers of girlfriend lady-parts. Me, by the trying to write 12 other things. Also by normal human interaction, by procrastination, and by a general need to imbibe large quantities of Genre television.

(Look, new episodes of Breaking Bad are important, dammit).

So with this extended Bank Holiday weekend we are shutting ourselves away in a Mind Cabin. This is like Sherlock's Mind Palace, only less impressive. It also bears a distinct resemblance to my house. But we'll be writing in it. See the similarity?

Ahem.

There will be many words written and much progress shall be made. If I keep saying this it will eventually become true.

*

Sundered was first dreamt up whilst  Lawrence and I were at Oxford together. (I suddenly hate to think just how many past enterprises could be introduced with that sentence. The list probably includes a number of highly prized tech firms, half a dozen shadow cabinets and the odd war.) We got drunk one evening and started talking about fantasy books - what we loved about them, what we hated. The usual hubris of twenty-somethings who're convinced they can do it much better, really easily, if only someone only gave them the chance.

So we decided, like you do, to write a book.

There was a lot of talk about tropes in fantasy we wanted to avoid, and wanting a weird world concept. It needed to not be post-Tolkien hackery, that was a baseline. No orcs, no elves, no magic from wands and speaking a bit of cod-latin. It also needed to be coherent, properly thought through. There would be none of the obvious inconsistencies that seem to plague fantasy books. A big interesting world in which we could do mature things. And if we could ever draw  a favourable comparison to Steven Erikson... then yes, our cups would runneth over and we just might start jumping up and down excitedly like the Erikson fanboys we are.

Steven Erikson (aka God). If we end up writing a 200,000 word fantasy novel and it is dreadful, blame him.

I remember being struck by a slightly crazy notion for a fantasy universe and pitching it to Lawrence. This got us both fairly excited, and proved such fertile ground that we basically talked about it for the next four or five hours. A big chunk of this conversation occurred walking down Holywell St and Broad St in Oxford from where we were living to a Newsagents. I have a sneaking suspicion we had run out of tonic water (we're both obsessive G&T drinkers). Knowing Lawrence he probably bought Haribo (because sugar helps the creative process, dontcha know).

Before I went to bed I typed up a lot of notes, the following morning I typed up many more. I believe I named it Sundered.doc, sent it to Lawrence, and that same file has been pinging back and forth through the internet ever since.

*

Co-op writing is bloody odd really. At times it's great, because I have a half-formed idea, get stuck, send it to Lawrence and a few weeks later I get a fleshed out version with a load of extra cool ideas stuffed in. Apparently the subconscious will work on a problem that's puzzling you whilst you go away and do other things, so sometimes you can come back to a problem and solve it straight away. A co-author can be a bit like that sometimes. I.e. They're amazing.

That said, we disagree over really unimportant things. Our most recent argument boiled down to:

"I think [character] would be very good at Poker."
"No no no. He'd be quite good at Poker."
"But look at his character! He'd definitely be very good."
"No. Definitely not. Look at chapter 4..."

The rest of the time we seem to think in a reasonably symbiotic fashion. Thank God.

*

Anyway, this extended weekend is all about a writers' retreat. I thought it might be interesting to note down words written, number of cups of coffee consumed, and such like. So that will appear... at some point. I'll also ask Lawrence if he remembers how we dreamt the whole thing up and see if his story is wildly different.

I think the current story file is at about 35,000 words. I'm about to add another 15,000 and Lawrence says he has similar. Which takes it to about 65,000 and about a third done. There will be much progress by the next post.

There will.

--------------------

* - Get me. Worrying about spoilers in an unfinished, uncommissioned, unpublished book. I'm nothing if not hopeful.