Saturday, November 13, 2004

A programming note

Over at Creativity, my redheaded step-child of a blog. An experiment:

I'm debating writing a book online. A little each day, posting it here as I write. I know Stephen King did something like it, writing and selling a chapter at a time. I'll have to think about it.

More to come . . .

[. . .]

I'm thinking of time constraints. No, this is not a non sequitur. See my post below. I write novels of about 150,000-175,000 words. It might take a year to get it all out here. Ah well, something more to think about . . .

[. . .]

Okay, this is the way it's gonna be. I'm gonna post a section - a 'scene' if you will - when I write it. It might drag on a while (months to a year) but hopefully my writing skills will keep you interested. Comments always welcome. I'll probably be starting in the next week or two and I'll post a firm date when I have my outline together.

Background: This will be the tenth book in a series of 14. Unlike the others I've written, I know how this one's gotta end. Generally, I start with a concept and see where my characters take it. I've already got an idea how it's gonna go - I've been working on it for about 5 years - but I have yet to be happy about the results. I'm turning to this 'public writing' deal out of desperation. I'm willing to try anything at this point to get this one done.

The problem is - and I have to be vague so as not to give anything away - that in the world I've created, a tipping point is reached on many levels. Now, my writing involves many aspects - political, social, military, economic - that conspire to shape this world, and there are a few things I have yet to resolve in a concise, succinct manner. All my other attempts have been over 200,000 words and that's a bit too long. Tom Clancy can get away with it, I can't.

A word about editing. Don't break my balls about typos. I use MS Word to write, and I was gonna use it to write and then cut and paste here, but that won't work out too well, too time consuming to go back and redo all the italics and formatting for this (CSS/HTML) platform. I'll probably miss a few things, even though I have a spell checker. This spell check doesn't know shit about grammar and homonyms.

So, with that said, tally ho. I'll let you know when the balloon goes up.

Note: If you want to see what my writing's all about, go here.


Now, as regular readers of this blog know, I've refrained from hawking my books here. This is not the forum and I'm not starting now. This is purely an invitation to our readers to get a look at my creative processes. I won't be bothering you folks coming here for political diatribe, and the foodies who wait, salivating, for Gordon's next post about something to eat. I'll post a link in the sidebar once I get started for those who might be interested. Now, back to your regularly scheduled ranting and raving.

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