5 Pm on a Sunday and the sky is bright. The rain threat has passed and I find myself on the porch writing away. This is the Tennessee life I live on occasion. I strike a rough balance between tending farm, making improvements, hanging with family, and work in. These four components don’t include the hour or so I spend playing pokemon TCG, but it does sum up the life out here.
It is better out here. Sure, I worked my butt off and still failed to hit the required steps, but I’m building towards a better strategy in all things. My life is a series of edits and improvements–much like this novel that I’m about sick of. Once, I was told that if your first novel is a failure then you are a failed novelist forever. Might as well find a pen name for hopes of a second chance. I don’t know how much truth there is in that line of thinking, but I do know that I’ve grown increasingly uncertain of a future writing tie-in novels. If I want to get it–really get in there and get a name in the industry–I’m going to need to hit the convention circuit and make a few new friends and allies. I have made no effort to do so and will not until this novel is done and I have another book lined up in the pipeline.
It isn’t even about being bored with the material. It is, as the Lady Talis says, about trying to do too much with the material I am working with. I need to slow it down–take on one core character and write the hell out of that character. I can do that. I have the framework for such a story and I plan to use it should I write another book for this line.
That part feels to be in jeopardy, because the edit notes argue that I am such an awful writer that an AI directed by monkeys ought to crank out better material. I don’t have access to a monkey, so I don’t get to test that theory completely. What I intend to do next is write an independent story–sci-fi but not shadowrun and not action-adventure. I’m diving into the Justice Engine for real. I want to get it to an agent before its too late–before the concepts become yesterday’s news.