Kate MacDowell

I've just discovered the work of Kate MacDowell. She's amazing. She sculpts incredibly detailed animal, vegetable and human forms in porcelain, all twisted together in disturbing, beautiful ways. See for yourself...

I really hope I can get to one of her exhibits at some point. I'd love to see this stuff up close. Click the link up there, because there's loads more at her website. Enjoy.

Plotting

I've spent the last couple of days playing with Holly Lisle's Notecarding plotting technique. I've never plotted a novel before (which I think I mentioned last time I updated), because the task has always seemed pretty daunting. I don't know why but in the past I've always felt much more comfortable just sitting down and writing, without knowing where I was going.

Of course, every time I try that I write myself into a corner or get bored and the project stalls and dies. That's why this time I decided to do things differently.

Stacks of scenes sorted by character.

Scenes starting to be moved into some kind of order.

Even with lists of scenes I found that I struggled to form a cohesive plot at this stage. In Holly's examples she writes quite specific scenes - "Frisco -- playing with the Ouija board alone, runs into the ghost of Annabelle, who tries to seduce him to her cause." for example. This probably comes from experience, and knowing what kind of story she wanted to write, and the benefit of it being an example not a real exercise in plotting. My scenes turned out to be a lot more vague, and the scenes for each character didn't really take into account the other characters.

At that point I felt like giving up and just writing it the way I normally would, but I decided to stick with it. I've added another stage into the process for myself. I took a notebook and wrote the text from the first index card at the top of the page, then expanded it into a proper synopsis of that scene over the rest of the page. I've done this for all of the scenes that I decided to use - and more of them got cut at this point, because through doing this I found the plot falling into place. I could even feel the story falling into a proper 3 Act structure, which was nice.

The joy of this is also that I've been able to go back and leave notes for myself as things in the plot crop up - things like Show that Rhod has a history of blood-letting here, ready for Scene 23. The kind of thing that you end up having to do when you're banging out a first draft and you find you need to rewrite several thousand words to make things work. Hopefully I can avoid that now - I can write each scene/chapter from the page of notes, not having to worry about inconsistencies with what comes later. In theory.

At this stage I'm sitting at the end of Act 2 having run out of scene cards. I think I'll do the exercise again, keeping the story in mind while I come up with more scenes for each character, and see what happens. Then I can start writing the thing, and hopefully this one will get finished. Fingers crossed!

Starting work

I woke up with a line of description in my head, and a setting, and some worldbuild-y information. I've scribbled them down, and now I need to figure out how to turn this little scrap of idea into a novel.

I've written novels before. Two of them (one rubbish, one in need of a lot of editing before anybody can see it). But I've also tried and failed a lot more times than that, because I don't plot and I run out of ideas. So this time I'm going to try plotting the damn thing first. I just don't know how.

Any suggestions?

Primus!

Primus have announced their first UK tour in 14 years, and I've got a ticket :D

I actually can't wait. I've been a fan ever since I first saw the video for Shake Hands With Beef, and I've never had a chance to see them live. If you don't know them, they're probably most famous for the South Park theme tune.

Here's them performing Shake Hands... Everything about this is amazing. Excited. Hurry up, July.

The Alchemist & The Executioness

 I love novellas. I think they're my favourite length to read; longer than a short story but not so long that they get clogged up with subplots and needless characters. I love a good novel, but something about novellas resonates with me. I also like the fact that it's a lot easier to read them in one sitting than a novel.

I was pretty excited when Subterranean Press announced a pair of novellas by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell; I hadn't read any of their work at the time (though I knew I should; Bacigalupi won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and Buckell is a NYT Bestseller) but I love the idea of two writers playing in the same world and the concept sounded cool. That, and Subterranean produce gorgeous books.

Here's what Subterranean say about them;

"Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors’ roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more— until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins choked by bramble forest. Monuments to people who loved magic too much.

In paired novellas, award-winning authors Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi explore a shared world where magic is forbidden and its use is rewarded with the axe. A world of glittering memories and a desperate present, where everyone uses a little magic, and someone else always pays the price."

Sounds cool, right?


I got them today and I've read them already. They are, indeed, very cool. I preferred Bacigalupi's The Alchemist to The Executioness; Buckell's story felt a little rushed and glossed over in places, like it was a novel-length idea squeezed into a novella, whereas Bacigalupi's worked brilliantly. I couldn't really get into The Windup Girl when I started it last week, but I'll have to give it another go. His writing here is great. The world-building the two of them have done is awesome as well; I really hope they write more about this place, because I'm intrigued and I really like the idea of the bramble.


So yeah. Buy them. Read them. Well worth it.


Now I just have to wait for the second Gunpowder novella by Joe Hill and I'll be happy.

Gary Moore

I was gutted to hear about the death of Gary Moore. I haven't listened to his music in a long time, but it was a large part of my growing up.

I always tell people that my favourite smell is the smell of ironing, because when I was a kid and I'd play in the back garden during summer my mum used to stand in the kitchen with the door open doing the ironing, and the smell instantly takes me back to that. What I remembered yesterday was that the only thing I remember her listening to then was Empty Rooms, and that song brings back the same memories.

I performed The Loner as one of my solo pieces for GCSE music, years ago, and I've always loved it. So here you go. RIP Gary Moore.

York

This post is overdue. Last weekend I went to York with Vicky. It was a very last-minute trip, and it was great fun.

First we went to the Jorvik Viking Centre. It didn't smell as bad as when we were kids, and its been done up a bit, but that didn't stop it being tacky goodness. They've also got this...

That's the skeleton of a Roman Gladiator dug up in York. They've also got a collection of battle-wounded bones, but I didn't get any.good photos.

After that we went to the York Dungeon, where I was cured of the bubonic plague and Vicky was tortured with various implements. We also burned a witch (she turned me into a newt*).

Next on the list was Yorkminster.

I don't think I need to talk about how amazing and beautiful that building is. I didn't manage to find the Green Man, but my ticket is valid for the next 12 months (as are the tickets for the Dungeon and the Viking Centre...)

After that we pretty much ran out of time, so we went back to our hotel. I'll let the photos do the talking...

 

That's right. Our hotel was a train. 'nuff said.

*I got better.