Tagged: Grandson of Science Novel

Science Series Editing Complete!

The astute Skelleyverse blog reader will have read last week’s post about constructing a preliminary plot rainbow for the Ghost Novels and surmised that we are done editing the Science Series. Good surmising! We did finish, right at the end of January.

Grandson of Science Novel came in 5,200 words lighter than where it started, which is about a chapter’s worth of words. Maybe a chapter and a half. We didn’t remove any large chunks of prose, and (unlike the middle book in this series) we didn’t even need to rearrange anything. We tell the same amazing tale, just more efficiently.

Our year of editing is over. It’s time to put away our flensing knives and sandpaper and turn our attention to a new project. And honestly? We’re relieved. Editing is hard work.

A coauthor isn’t just a writing partner, but an editing partner, too.

The (Too) Many-Worlds Hypothesis

Lately, we’re dividing our time between three fictional worlds (four if you count consensus reality). We’re brainstorming about the Ghost Novels, editing one of the Science Novels, and getting critique feedback about one of the Music Novels.

Back when we started this writing partnership, one of our policies was to avoid splitting our focus like this. We would dwell in one fictional universe at a time. Of course, that was a lot easier to stick to when we only had the one. Our concern, theoretical as it might have been, was that we’d waste too much mental energy switching between worlds. But you know what? It’s not been that hard, really.

A couple of years ago, we felt we had to bend our rules in order to accomplish our goals. It made us nervous, and there was a little bit of a learning curve. But like playing an instrument, or speaking a language, or anything else, it’s a trainable skill. We can do, now, exactly what we assumed wouldn’t work: hold three story worlds in our heads at the same time, and keep them straight.

As we flit about our various universes, we stay together. The critique notes about the Music Novel, we look at together and discuss. When it’s time to do Science Novel edits, we both knuckle down for that. Brainstorming about ghosties is a team sport. We find we can do just about anything as long as we’re doing it together. Probably the only time we’ve sent Kent off to one universe while Jen visited another is when there was cover artwork involved. (And, that worked just fine too. But we prefer to stay in sync.)

A writing partner is someone who’ll straddle three icebergs with you and help you not fall in.

Here’s the Plan (2021 Edition)

Ah, the smell of a fresh new year. So crisp, so clean, so innocent!

Over the course of several recent dog-walking excursions, Kent and Jen developed their master plan for 2021. The first item on the agenda is finishing the edits on Grandson of Science Novel. We had originally hoped to wrap it up in 2020, but that didn’t quite happen, so we’ll take a couple of weeks now and knock it out.

As the dust settles from that, we’ll decamp to the Auxiliary Writing Cave and dig in on plotting our new Ghost Series. We have a bazillion notes — some in longhand, some electronic. Once those have been wrangled into order, we’ll start at the beginning and flesh the whole thing out. This will likely take quite some time, since it’s looking like it’s going to be a 4-book series (quadrilogy? tetralogy?). Somehow, this is the first time we’ve planned an entire series at once and we want to make sure we do it right. The Auxiliary Writing Cave has comfy furniture and a fireplace (and a hidden bookcase), and is the perfect place to enjoy a hot beverage, with or without alcohol, so we’re quite excited about it.

After the plotting we have a split in the flowchart. If we’re feeling excited and energized about all things ghostly, we’ll jump in and start writing the first book in the series. On the other hand, if we feel a little wrung out, and like the batteries need some time to recharge, we’ll switch gears and edit Sibling of Music Novel.

If there’s still time left in the year after that, we’ll do whichever task we skipped in the last step.

And in our copious free time, we’ll start to figure out the next big concept to fill the void when the Ghost Series is done.

That plan should keep us quite happily occupied all year, but it could all go out the window. Our agent is shopping two novels for us, and when a publisher bites there will probably be one or two things they’d like us to do. A little upheaval for a good cause? Sign us up!

Hindsight is 2020

Every January we like to make a writing plan for the year, and when December rolls around we reread it and laugh. Except not this year. Somehow our 2020 prediction was pretty spot-on. We planned to quickly finish up the first draft of Sibling of Music Novel, and we did. We planned to spend the rest of the year editing our various other first drafts, and we did. We perhaps didn’t get quite as far as we expected, but we’re close. I guess the pandemic was good for something.

The other thing we hoped to do was get a good start on brainstorming our Ghost Series, and we even managed to do that despite a near total lack of road trips. Generally we use car time for lengthy conversations about our works-in-progress (it’s not like there’s much else to do), but this year lockdown kept us home. Lucky for us we have a couple of fuzzy roommates who insist on daily walks, and don’t care what we talk about while we’re doing it. We logged many many miles on the streets of our neighborhood, and have many many notes about ghosts and the humans who love them. Or is it fear?

As this year limps to a close we’ve started talking about our goals for next year. We’ll share our plans with you in January when they’re more solidified.

So many people struggled this year with loneliness and boredom. We’re so thankful that we have each other and this all-consuming pastime we can share. Our writing projects kept us sane and busy and fulfilled, and they brought us a lot of joy in a really shitty time. Things are finally looking promising for the world. The vaccine is coming. The new administration is coming. Just a few more months until the world starts to get back to normal. We might not mind too much being cooped up in our Writing Cave, but we’re really looking forward to that.

Looking Back at 2020 aka The Darkest Timeline

We here at SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises are ready for 2020 to be over. So ready, in fact, that we’re starting our year-end review now, a couple of weeks early. Who’s with us?

Remember the Beforetimes? When there were things worth celebrating? We started 2020 on quite a high note. Renovations wrapped up on the Auxiliary Writing Cave, complete with hidden bookshelf. We wrapped up the first draft of Sibling of Music Novel. We were planning a trip to Romania and Hungary. Things were looking so rosy.

We spent February rereading our Music Series, and practicing the mystical art of placing chapter breaks and perfecting pacing.

In March we lamented our missed vacation (spoiler alert: still on hold), explored how many reminders readers need versus how many they appreciate, and debated the difference between villains and monsters. In 2020, Covid is the main monster. There are many, many villains.

By April we’d started actually editing the third Music Novel, the biggest bad boy who ever bad-boyed. First we made it bigger, then we made it smaller. It was a whole thing, and we got quite philosophical about the whole process.

May brought more editing, and a cryptically described disagreement between the two of us. So cryptic that we don’t actually recall what we were at loggerheads over. Which is a good sign for our partnership, both marriage-wise and coauthor-wise.

No summer vacation for us! In June we just took innumerable walks around the neighborhood with the dogs, using the time to dig into our next project. It has the incredibly creative working title “Ghost Series.” You’ll never guess what it’s about.

By July, we were done with both Son of Music Novel, and the minor touchups we wanted to give Sibling of Music Novel. And we watched Hamilton.

The rereading and editing of the Science Novels started in August. Kent’s voice got quite a workout, because when we wasn’t reading the trilogy aloud, we were still talking about the Ghost Series on our daily walks. We wrapped up the month discussing how much of a character’s backstory an author should know.

It seems we didn’t have a lot to say about editing the second Science Novel in September, because all of our posts are about how excited we are about brainstorming the Ghost Series. We did spare a few minutes to talk about the joys and wonders of a good Goose Wrench.

Fittingly, October was also a time to talk about our ghosts. We even had a spooky encounter on one of our nighttime walks. We updated our writing prompt generator, and dealt with a minor case of burnout.

November had Jen finishing her edits on Son of Science Novel and starting in on Grandson. Kent followed not too far behind. We had Quarantine Thanksgiving without our kids, and engaged in a little bit of self-promotion.

Which brings us up to the present day. Kent is getting his geek on, drawing a cutaway view of a major setting in Son of Science Novel (standard floor plans are for chumps!), while he lets Jen get a little further ahead in her edits of Grandson. He’ll soon have to put his shiny toys away and pick up his flensing tools.

Looking back over this past year, we were surprised to see nary an update to our chain story’s Dramatis Personae, so look for that sometime soonish.

2020 was certainly not the year we wanted it to be, but it wasn’t all bad. Even spending all day together every day since mid-February, Kent and Jen still actively enjoy each other’s company. May you be as lucky in your choice of spouse and/or writing partner.

Sweat Equity

When we extended the Science Novel into a trilogy, we wrote books two and three all in one big push. These are not small books, and by the time we wrapped up the last one we were completely drained. Recalling those last couple of weeks is unpleasant, because we felt so burned out.

It’s possible that we’re slow learners, because we are now doing the edits on those same books all in one big push. (Maybe. We might break it up.)

Considering that we know we were not at our best when this writing was done, we had some worries about what we’d find when we returned to it. Jack Torrance staring out at us? But, it’s really good. There are no telltales in the prose to indicate that the author was on mile 26 of a marathon.

There is, of course, editing to be done. We aren’t suggesting that total burnout is the secret to flawless prose composition. But there were no obvious placeholders or even scenes that felt sketched-in. It’s all fully fleshed out, the events are in the correct order, the pacing is good, the tension rises to the finale, and there are plenty of sparkly sentences. We’re really quite pleased.

And in a year like 2020, it’s really nice to have something work out better than expected. A writing partner is someone who will celebrate the little victories with you.

The Big, Giant Science-Trilogy Reread

Book one of our Science trilogy is in a fairly polished state. It’s been through our critique group and some beta readers and has had a couple of editing passes.

Books two and three, on the other hand, are still basically first drafts. Our next project will be to edit them into shape. So, first things first: we need to cram that entire three-book saga into our heads. This epic read-through is a little more than halfway done, and Kent’s voice is still holding up pretty well.

What’s neat is that we’ve been away from this story world long enough that there are lots of little rediscoveries for us in the text. They’re mostly fun little reminders of how good it is, but there are also some opportunities for improvement. It really is proving to us the value of letting something rest before you try to edit it. The awesome and the not-quite-awesome both just leap out in a way that they can’t when it’s too fresh.

A writing partner is someone who will read 1500 pages out loud to you.

2020 Vision

As we sit here in the Writing Cave, planning out our next writing moves, it’s becoming clear that 2020 might be a year that very little actual writing gets done.

We set January 31 as the deadline for Sibling of Music Novel, a target which seems easily reachable. There are two scenes in progress, and five more after that waiting to be written. Easy peasy. After a small champagne toast, the rest of the month will be spent going back through the manuscript and filling in the placeholders, fixing things we changed our minds about halfway through, and addressing all the other little fiddly things that we know need attention. It will still technically be a first draft, but it will be a pretty clean one. That’s how we like ’em.

To celebrate the completion of the Music Trilogy we’ll pop open the BIG bottle of champagne.

As of February 1 (assuming all goes according to plan) we will have four completed novels that are in need of major edits. For the past few years we’ve concentrated heavily on the writing side of the equation, and now it’s time to turn that around and get some things polished up and gorgeous.

We have two Music Novels and two Science Novels to edit, and we have yet to decide what order we’re going to do them in. On the one hand, we’re pretty immersed in the Music story world at the moment, so it makes sense to stick with that. On the other hand, Sibling needs some time to rest before we can effectively edit it, so it makes sense to switch our attention to the Science story world. Plus that’s the one that our critique group is looking at right now. But the Music Novel is the one our agent is shopping around, so maybe we should stay focused on that?

Around and around we go.

Wherever we decide to start, each novel will go through several stages of editing, and will rest in between.

And in the background we’ll still be tinkering with ideas for the Ghost Series. Jen is a little concerned about what our workflow will look like if we finish up everything else before we start on the ghosts. At various stages of our process we find it helpful to switch our attention to a different project to let our batteries recharge. What will happen if we don’t have anything else to turn our attention to? Kent is a little concerned about having an ever-increasing pile of first drafts that never get readied for publication, and he points out that there will inevitably be projects after the Ghost Series, so when we need a break we can figure out what the next one will be and work on that.

These best laid plans might all fly out the window when our agent sells Music Novel, because then we’ll have plenty of distractions, what with selling the movie rights, and going on all the talk shows, and hobnobbing with celebrities, and buying yachts and all that.

Happy 2020 to all of you!

Toodles, 2019!

At the dawn of 2019, we predicted that we would write Sibling of Music Novel this year, and we did! Almost all of it! We also predicted that we would probably move on to work on another project after we finished, and that is where our prophetic faculties let us down. Even though we didn’t complete a novel this year, we’re very happy with where things stand. It was a busy year.

In January we were betwixt and between. Kent was putting the finishing touches on Grandson of Science Novel while Jen tackled the outline for Sibling of Music Novel. We didn’t start composing the new novel until almost the end of February.

Our time in March was divided between writing the Music book and discussing our next project, the Ghost Series.

We were steaming right along in April, writing song lyrics for inclusion in the novel, and researching many diverse topics to round out our characters.

The merry month of May on the blog was dedicated to a deep-dive recap of events in our chain story. In the background we were still writing the novel (when we weren’t visiting the Arctic Circle or The Village), and things ran smoothly until June. That’s when we started encountering bottlenecks. And of course the mandatory fretting about word count reared its head.

In July we talked in depth about Stubs, and shared our template. In August we drank Red Bull. For research. The effects have mostly worn off by now.

We crossed the 100,000 word line with Sibling in September, with no end in sight. So of course we fretted a little harder about what the final word count will be. Then we spent a little bit of early October in NYC for some hands-on research and to meet our agent, and we batted around the idea of setting a deadline.

In November we got a good idea of how much work is left, and admitted that we were unlikely to be done by the end of the year.

Now it’s December again. When our house isn’t full of guests we’re making great progress. Despite that, Sibling of Music Novel will not be done by the 31st. It was more important to us to spend time with our kids than to lock ourselves away in the writing cave and stress about a deadline. We don’t want to be totally laissez-faire about things, though, so we’ve set January 31 as our completion date.

Next week we’ll talk about our plans for the new year. And the new decade.

Happy New Year!

The Next Chapter

This week we tackled the last of the items on our To Do list relating to the Science Novels. We’re ready to plunge into writing Sibling of Music Novel, and didn’t want a bunch of tiny tasks swarming around us like gnats.

Kent whipped up a nice batch of epigraphs for the third novel, while Jen divided said novel into chapters so that he’d know how many he needed. (Answer: 28) Additionally she gave the chapters names.

We’ve mentioned before that Jen is our resident namer, and it’s a job she really enjoys. There was no chance that Kent was going to get his grubby paws on this task. Don’t get all riled up in his defense, though. Jen does ask for his opinion, and he has veto power.

During composition, we tend to give the scenes that we write goofy or overly spoiler-filled titles. They’re full of inside jokes and terrible puns. In short they would make egregious chapter titles. Would you read a book with chapters called “long day at the business factory”, or “emotionpalooza” or “merrily merrily merrily merrily” or “poopin’ in a bag” ? Of course not.

For the Science Novels, the actual chapter titles all relate to places in the stories. It was easy to come up with a couple dozen of those for the first book. As we moved through the series it got more difficult, largely because we don’t want to just repeat all the same place names from book to book. The thinking cap got a good workout, and in the end we came up with a nice, evocative batch of about 70 names, to cover all three books in the series. Now the whole series has proper chapters, with names and epigraphs and everything.

Having a writing partner means always having someone to share an inside joke with, even if it won’t make a good chapter title.