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Golden Age
On January 6th, 2007, I joined a Live Journal community called ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
novel_in_90. On June 1st of that same year, I began in earnest dedication to work on my first novel, which I completed on November 1st, 2007, and then posted a post about with great pride. It is called, simply, Chapter 1, and I have not looked at it twice from that day to this (though I have looked at it once. ;) ) The next day, I resumed work on the Hogwarts Story, which I subsequently finished on the 18th of December, and it also ended up the length of a novel.
Since then, I've noodled around on various stories. I wrote a bunch of a Changeling book before I got distracted and annoyed with how it was turning out. Then I wrote 15k that was supposed to be the lead in to a longer novel, but I wasn't enjoying it, so I cut ended it there.
On April 1st, 2008, I started work on another project, Mastermind, and was enjoying working on it very much, but there came a day - April the 15th, that I found I didn't have internet access (I was on my way to a work conference and had spent the night at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistress_sin's, I remember it very clearly) and I decided to work on a side project that had been formulating in my brain. I finished it as a short story a few days later, and posted it in my live journal.
Much to my amazement, that didn't stop my interest in working on that, and on the 11th of May, I acknowledged that Mastermind had been shelved, and the Golden Age story was now my primary project. I worked on it steadily until various events started to get in the way, and finally I couldn't muster any more energy, and stopped on September 17th, and began to despair of coming back to it.
I'd written little since then, but in late May, lots of talking withswan_tower convinced me that I'd waiting long enough. On June 18th, 2009, I resumed work on it.
Today, well over a year after I started it, I wrote those glorious words - THE END on the end of my third novel.
This novel is based on a table top GURPS game I played in from January, 2001 until May, 2005. Indeed, an early step in the writing process involved gaining the consent and input of many of the people who had been involved in that game whose characters, by necessity, were to appear in this book. In particular, my character had a close relationship withxaniquen's, and I knew it would be flat out impossible to write it without him, and he and I have traded e-mails, memories, and many conversations about it since then. He even wrote one of the chapters for me! So even though he's not likely reading this (he never checks LJ, though maybe he will if I tell him I wrote about finishing the novel!) I have to own - I could NEVER have done this without his help.
In brief, it's set in 1942 in the Golden Age of super heroes. No, Golden Age isn't actually the name of the book, any more than "Chapter 1" is really a name for the first book but, well, I had to call it something! There are two main/pov characters. One is Marie Johnson, a new face on the superhero scene (my character) and the other is John Smith, a little known hero. As Marie - pseudonym: Enigma - gets started, she and Smith - pseudonym: The Scout! - ended up working together a fair amount, and thus he ends up heavily involved when a demon - pseudonym: Zebulon Z (but he's British - so think Zed. ;) ) -takes an interest in her. The novel more or less relates all that unfolds as a result of that.
As with the Hogwarts story (which was also based on a game) there are some distinct perks to writing about something that "already happened," but on the other hand it has to be rethought and pieced together in a way that makes a good story. All those things that make sense because of a roll of a die, have to be made to make sense otherwise - or they have to be changed. This tale had the added difficulty of the amount of time it had been since this sessions were originally played - this plot line resolved in (I think) early 2003, which means that all of the parties involved have had a good long time to forget what happened.
The final word count was 205,299 words. In single spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font, that puts it at 336 pages.
So, what next? Well, I still want to finish the Mastermind story, and I've got some other stories that have been percolating, but before that...this is the first novel I've ever written that I would truly, genuinely like to get published. With that aim in mind did I secure the consent of the other players involved, and with that goal still firmly there, I will be printing out the manuscript (on as few pages as possible) and beginning the process of revising it. I had thought about doing so on the computer, but I think I will do a better job with a pen, even if the data entry will be a raging pain in my ass. I will be ripping it up and polishing and fixing, and preparing to make an ever bigger decision:
Do I try to sell it in it's current form - surely problematic, if only because of it's length - or do I change it? And if so, how do I change it? The leading contender for that is starting from the ground up, disassembling it, and reassembling the whole kit and kaboodle as a first person narrative young adult trilogy.
That'll be a big job.
So I'm not going to think about it any more right now.
Because oh, my fucking god, I finished the novel.
*insert maniacal laughter here*
That's it. Done. I have now written three books.
:)
novel_in_90. On June 1st of that same year, I began in earnest dedication to work on my first novel, which I completed on November 1st, 2007, and then posted a post about with great pride. It is called, simply, Chapter 1, and I have not looked at it twice from that day to this (though I have looked at it once. ;) ) The next day, I resumed work on the Hogwarts Story, which I subsequently finished on the 18th of December, and it also ended up the length of a novel.Since then, I've noodled around on various stories. I wrote a bunch of a Changeling book before I got distracted and annoyed with how it was turning out. Then I wrote 15k that was supposed to be the lead in to a longer novel, but I wasn't enjoying it, so I cut ended it there.
On April 1st, 2008, I started work on another project, Mastermind, and was enjoying working on it very much, but there came a day - April the 15th, that I found I didn't have internet access (I was on my way to a work conference and had spent the night at
mistress_sin's, I remember it very clearly) and I decided to work on a side project that had been formulating in my brain. I finished it as a short story a few days later, and posted it in my live journal.Much to my amazement, that didn't stop my interest in working on that, and on the 11th of May, I acknowledged that Mastermind had been shelved, and the Golden Age story was now my primary project. I worked on it steadily until various events started to get in the way, and finally I couldn't muster any more energy, and stopped on September 17th, and began to despair of coming back to it.
I'd written little since then, but in late May, lots of talking with
swan_tower convinced me that I'd waiting long enough. On June 18th, 2009, I resumed work on it.Today, well over a year after I started it, I wrote those glorious words - THE END on the end of my third novel.
This novel is based on a table top GURPS game I played in from January, 2001 until May, 2005. Indeed, an early step in the writing process involved gaining the consent and input of many of the people who had been involved in that game whose characters, by necessity, were to appear in this book. In particular, my character had a close relationship with
xaniquen's, and I knew it would be flat out impossible to write it without him, and he and I have traded e-mails, memories, and many conversations about it since then. He even wrote one of the chapters for me! So even though he's not likely reading this (he never checks LJ, though maybe he will if I tell him I wrote about finishing the novel!) I have to own - I could NEVER have done this without his help.In brief, it's set in 1942 in the Golden Age of super heroes. No, Golden Age isn't actually the name of the book, any more than "Chapter 1" is really a name for the first book but, well, I had to call it something! There are two main/pov characters. One is Marie Johnson, a new face on the superhero scene (my character) and the other is John Smith, a little known hero. As Marie - pseudonym: Enigma - gets started, she and Smith - pseudonym: The Scout! - ended up working together a fair amount, and thus he ends up heavily involved when a demon - pseudonym: Zebulon Z (but he's British - so think Zed. ;) ) -takes an interest in her. The novel more or less relates all that unfolds as a result of that.
As with the Hogwarts story (which was also based on a game) there are some distinct perks to writing about something that "already happened," but on the other hand it has to be rethought and pieced together in a way that makes a good story. All those things that make sense because of a roll of a die, have to be made to make sense otherwise - or they have to be changed. This tale had the added difficulty of the amount of time it had been since this sessions were originally played - this plot line resolved in (I think) early 2003, which means that all of the parties involved have had a good long time to forget what happened.
The final word count was 205,299 words. In single spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font, that puts it at 336 pages.
So, what next? Well, I still want to finish the Mastermind story, and I've got some other stories that have been percolating, but before that...this is the first novel I've ever written that I would truly, genuinely like to get published. With that aim in mind did I secure the consent of the other players involved, and with that goal still firmly there, I will be printing out the manuscript (on as few pages as possible) and beginning the process of revising it. I had thought about doing so on the computer, but I think I will do a better job with a pen, even if the data entry will be a raging pain in my ass. I will be ripping it up and polishing and fixing, and preparing to make an ever bigger decision:
Do I try to sell it in it's current form - surely problematic, if only because of it's length - or do I change it? And if so, how do I change it? The leading contender for that is starting from the ground up, disassembling it, and reassembling the whole kit and kaboodle as a first person narrative young adult trilogy.
That'll be a big job.
So I'm not going to think about it any more right now.
Because oh, my fucking god, I finished the novel.
*insert maniacal laughter here*
That's it. Done. I have now written three books.
:)
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Congrats, though! Take a break before you revise. Have some champagne or something. Give your poor brain (and hands!) a rest. ^_^
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And yeah, I did end up marathoning to the end - I stopped all other work and did nothing but write for two days straight - 27k words in 36 hours...I wanted to finish before Gencon. ;)
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I'm going to try to make us some treats for the road trip. If the grocery store is still open that is.
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