The Next One

On the one hand, I feel like I'm sitting a lot more on my next project ("story" sounds too informal, and "book" is just too conceited) much more than I ever have in the past. But on the other hand, this is kind of my first time starting out in this position. In the past, for one, I've been like a third of the way into the next novel by the time I finish the one before, while when I finished Sylv Vol II I was a handful of chapters into several and still dancing between them; and for another, I've always started them while in full-time education. I did technically start my current project while in university, but again, only a handful of chapters and ideas - now I'm really "starting" it, working full-time and putting real concerted effort into this blog and promotion of my books. It was different for Sylv Vol II, but in a different different way: that was preparing the next installment for a waiting (small) fanbase; this is something totally unrelated.

I used to get the hype and motivation to keep writing by getting chapter-by-chapter feedback from a very small community of other writers and fans on deviantART. For Sylv, it was by discussing character development and plot progress with people who already knew him and his story, or by posting meta on this blog. So to get the hype for my current project (in my own motivation more than anything), I keep wanting to talk about it... but I don't.

It's not like I have an excited fanbase of thousands who are waiting for any hint or announcement on this blog. There are a handful of people who know vaguely what I'm working on - character archetypes, vague worldbuilding, loose plot summaries - and I'm sure there are more who would be excited to know, but there's both a crossover and a distinction between those groups that I struggle to define. And I'm not totally sure where to take it. It's way too early to start promotion or make a release date announcement - what's the timeline supposed to be for that stuff? For me, it's like... a few months. But everyone important to me will already know loooong in advance what the story actually is and everything cool or shocking or funny that happens in it. How much do I reveal now? What can I mention in funny posts about how different it is to write than Sylvestus? Do I drop character names in blog posts? Do I start releasing art?

That's another weird thing. This is the deepest I've gotten into a project without doing any art for it. A huge part of it is definitely skill deficiency and anxiety: it's been a long time since I've done art properly and on a regular schedule; and the setting of this story is so different from my artistic strengths that I freeze up when I try to go about it. But I have been saying recently that I want to get back into my art more, so maybe this is the opportunity to push my boundaries and develop my skills. But part of it is also definitely that I'm a reeaaall attention-slut when it comes to my art. I don't get internet-hype because my art isn't nearly good enough, so I have to rely on friend-hype, and... well, no-one really knows any of these characters or their story yet. Why would they care? Of course, in reality, my friends are great and would hype me up no matter what, and would probably get excited if they had some cool art to check out, but when I'm sitting in front of my laptop with GIMP open and my tablet sitting in my lap for half an hour without drawing a single line, it's the anxiety that's winning the logic battle there. Man, it doesn't even have a title yet, still. And what will the motif be? As I complained to a friend recently, I've been doing Sylv promo so long I don't even remember how to make a poster or banner that isn't "parchment, line drawing, faint cursive, blood splatters, serif black text". I already did eyes, feathers, skulls, and moths for my covers, the f*ck else is there?

So I'm slowly forming a plan. I'm going to talk a little about The Next One in this post, I'm going to make an effort to create some art for it in the next few months, and then I'll make the official announcement much, much closer to the uhh... release date.

As I mentioned, this project doesn't have a title yet, but it has been referred to on this blog and in my personal life as City, City Novel, [Untitled City Novel], or various permutations therein. Any posts about it from hereon out will be tagged as city. It has five perspective characters, which, I am discovering, is a lot to go to from one (Dying Ember has three but it's been a long time since I wrote Dying Ember), and presents its own new challenges. As you might have guessed, its main - actually, its only - setting is a city. It's sci-fi. It's crime. It's not a murder mystery, but there are both murders and mysteries in it. It's very queer etc etc, but frankly I'm getting sick of the "judging books' merits by how many diversity boxes they check and ignoring every other aspect of quality" trend.

As for everything else? You'll have to piece that together from all the posts about it in the next few months-to-years, until the official announcement, eh?

[Image ID: a photo of Griffin McElroy from the My Brother, My Brother and Me TV show, a mid-30s white man with glasses, short brown hair, and a white shirt. He has an electronic screen in front of him displaying the text ".. you know ;)" in red, and is holding his finger to his lips while looking into the camera with a coy smirk. End ID]

30/90

I feel like a few years ago, tick, tick... BOOM! (oh wow i'm only going to type that once) would have become my obsession, in the same way Hamilton did in its hayday. Heyday? Anywayday-

It has a lot of things in similar, which makes sense given LMM's involvement, and those similarities - mainly in its message, its sense of urgency - are part of what brought me so close to Hamilton at the time. I was living it up in sixth form, excelling academically, thriving with a group of friends I adored, and writing my little heart out with the first draft of what would become Sylvestus. I was going through some terrible sh*t, but I still look back on that time fondly. Ahh, nostalgia. But something I really miss is... how driven I was. Write like you're running out of time, that was the mantra of those two years - writing for passion, revising, studying, all of them, I did with a fervour I had felt for most of my teen years but never quite so strongly, and have felt only in comparatively muffled, sporadic bursts since.

I didn't super click with tick, tick... BOOM! (i lied) when I watched it a few weeks ago - I enjoyed it, but it didn't lodge right in the brain like Hamilton did. But to be honest, musicals don't tend to for me. I'm... not that huge of a musicals person. I dunno. I'm fairly neutral on them beyond a few phases of the usuals.

But I have been listening to the soundtrack on loop the past week, and it's really starting to dig right into that psyche, and I think I'm getting why. For those who haven't seen it and don't mind spoilers - it's a film about Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent, before he wrote Rent. Specifically, it's about the week before his 30th birthday and the first workshop for the musical he's written, Superbia, which he's certain isgoing to be his break into the industry and eternal call to fame. He feels like this will be his last chance to be successful because of the impending deadline a 30th birthday brings and how much time and love he's put into Superbia.

The workshop goes well, but he has to move on from Superbia to continue his career and eventually finish Rent and have the legacy we know today. His agent affectionately reminds him that the heartbreak of abandoning projects you've poured years and hours and lifetimes into because they're never going to be The One is part of being a creative.

Yeah, it hit home.

I was considering naming this post 25/22 to make it more personal, but it doesn't have quite the same effect (too many syllables), plus to be honest, I'm not especially stressed about turning 25 in the year 2022 in the same way Jonathan is about turning 30 in 1990. But it... definitely still rings true for me in other parts.

Stop the clock

Take time out

 

I'm trying.

Can you be optimistic?

You're no longer the ingénue.

 

Man, was I ever?

Cages or wings,

which do you prefer?

Ask the birds

 

When I was young, I was so desperate and driven to write. I was determined to be the youngest person to ever x, or the best to ever y - I knew I had a talent, a gift, and I was going to blow the world away. When I finished writing The Red Prince, I was certain that this was it, I had done it. It was going to change the world.

It was pretty rubbish and had no deep significance at all. It took me a long time and a lot of heartbreak to move on and start writing something else. After I finished Seeking and Dying Ember, I felt like... like I'd done what I needed to with them. I'd written them, I'd published them, I'd shared them, it was time to move on.

It was different when I finished Sylv. I was terrified to lose him. I felt like there was so much more but I didn't know where it was.

I still don't. I don't know what I want.

The time is flying

and everything is dying

Thought by now I'd have

a dog, a kid, a wife

 

I want to settle down and be stable and not constantly be stressed about money, I want a house I can stay in for more than a year and can paint and put shelves up in, I want to save up for a nice sofa and to buy new bedding without feeling guilty because my five year-old bedding is technically still usable even if it's a little faded and yellow, I want to be a stay-at-home dad, I want to walk a dog twice a day, I want stability, I want a life.

I want to study for a living, I want to discover new things, I want to be out in nature learning and teaching, I want to make a difference, I want to save a species, I want to tackle climate change, I want to save the world, I want to work with animals, I want to be active every day and excel at something and enjoy what I do.

I want my stories to reach a million eyes and a million hearts, to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, to have fanbases, to be adapted, to be discussed and hated and adored, to be someone's comfort book, to inspire someone else to write, to touch more people than I'll ever meet.

I read a short story once, about a fae who could see the want in people reaching out, could take it like a hand and guide them away into nothingness; it warned about wanting too badly, about yearning for something you weren't and not being grateful for what you were. I recognised the feeling it described because I felt it so strongly every day. I think I've been afraid to want too loudly since I read it. I try not to want, to yearn or to desire or to long, but instead to plan and schedule and work - but it's hard when you won't let yourself acknowledge what it is you want to work for.

Johnny has no guide

Johnny can't decide

Can he settle down

and still not drown?

 

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I've wasted another evening watching TV, I've wasted another week putting off writing, I've wasted another year in a job I like well enough but that doesn't fit any of my goals. I could work harder or try for a higher-earning job where I make even less of a difference and care about it less, and begin to save money to achieve Life Plan A, but I can't quite bring myself to sell out like that. It's literally like, the villain of every story about a creative person. I could give up on the proverbial a dog a kid a wife for another few years and live off the skin of my teeth with no time for writing doing a course in something I really care about and am passionate for and work towards Life Plan B, but I can't quite bring myself to go back to that. I already served my time as a p*ss-poor student, I'm tired of that life. I could continue as I am now but shift my priorities and actually try to get Sylvestus or another of my books into the mainstream and actually work towards Life Plan C, but... well, why not?

I don't know.

Is it fear of rejection? Is it avoidance anxiety? Is it all the practical considerations - "publishers never accept a first novel over 100,000 words, the publishing industry will force you to sell out, mainstream publishers won't let you keep those aspects of your story, blah blah blah"? Or is it a bigger, deeper, vaguer fear, unnamed and all-encompassing?

 

I don't know. But this week I ordered a bulk bunch of copies of both volumes of Sylvestus to try and get distributed and sold in local bookshops where I live, the first significant (and even then, barely anything really) financial investment I've made in my writing in years. I plan to do a run of flyers and business cards soon - again, I used to do those for Seeking, never really got any instant feedback from it, never even bothered since then. I'm prioritising writing itself and Getting It Done again.

Fear or love baby,

don't say the answer

Actions speak louder than words

 

I can't promise that This Will Be It. It takes a lot to acknowledge your deepest anxieties and take action on them. But it's a step, eh? I'll try not to wait til the week of my 30th birthday, at least.

Shadows and Values

Another few months, another long hiatus, another swathe of the same excuses: no time, no inspiration, no energy. I want to blame time most of all, because there are weeks when I have no time to breathe it seems, let alone write novels and posts about novels; or energy, because after two weeks where I haven't so much as had half an hour to just sit and watch some TV or play a game, sometimes you need to just take a nap in that half-hour you do have; or inspiration, cos it's not like I'm burning with it at the moment.

But I know the truth is that recently it's just been... my values. Not that they're in the wrong place, but they aren't in this place.

It's easy to get bogged down in... all of it. I work like, a regular full-time amount, but it's been sapping my energy to spend on other stuff, which is why I'm dropping down to four days a week after Christmas. I go to the gym or swim four times a week, which is only four hours out of 168, but it's still a big commitment, y'know. I run D&D once a fortnight and each session takes a few hours to plan, and more brain energy outside of that to come up with the fun stuff; I play most weeks on top of that which is a few more hours; I go out to board game nights or date nights or walks in the park or to see movies; until recently, I had a partner to give my time and energy to.

I could have carved more time for writing, by telling him more firmly that I wanted to write tonight and wouldn't be watching Grey's Anatomy today. I could have saved my energy for writing, by cancelling gym one evening a week. I could have generated more inspiration, by dropping D&D and using my crucial creative brain space for writing instead.

But I haven't been doing any of that. And it sounds like I'm whining, but... I do love all of those things.

Thinking about my writing and this blog makes me feel like a shadow, and I think that's made me realise that my values right now aren't exactly where I want them to be. I don't know - ironically, it's something work has been big on lately. My line manager told me to move a meeting, even though it inconvenienced her, because I off-handedly mentioned I'd have to cancel my ritualised Monday evening gym session, and she could tell that it was important to me. It's for the same reason that I asked them to drop me back down to four days a week: I'm doing my best on every front right now, but my best isn't what I want it to be. I talked about wanting more time to rest or relax, wanting to be able to do things I love on weekends and clean and run errands and see people and still have energy for work on Monday morning, and that's all true - but it's an example of a shift in my whole values.

And another example is that I want to start writing again.

I miss Sylv. I miss him so much. Writing hasn't been the same since I finished him. Finishing a novel always leaves a hole in my life, and I'll take a break and fill the hole with D&D or partying or art or a new relationship, and then eventually, there'll be another hole, and writing will fill it. I don't really like that analogy, because my whole thing is about accepting the empty space inside you and not trying to fill it, but... I don't know.

I miss Sylv. I'm burned out. I balance my life as best I can. I want to write again. I don't want to stop doing anything I'm doing right now. I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm happy where I am. I want to be somewhere else.

I'm a shadow at the moment.

I'm trying.

I'll start writing again.