My writing efforts for August.

I have finally made time to write my monthly blog post about my fiction writing efforts for the previous month. I have been extremely busy writing, editing, critiquing and being sick. Yep, my ulcerative colitis has come back at the wrong time, but when is a good time for it?

Fiction Writing.

I continued writing my novel, adding another 8549 words. I am very close to the end of the first draft, so it was with great reluctance that I stopped to write a short story I had committed to finish by the end of August.

I started the short story on the 17^th of August, hoping to finish it before attending the Melbourne Writers Festival at the end of the month. At the end of August, I had written 5,582 words of it and it still was nowhere near finished. The story is for a Christmas anthology created by members of the Australian Writer’s Forum.

So all up, I wrote 14,031 words for the month, which is not quite the average of 500 words a day I am aiming for. I met my quota of 500 words a day on only 23 days. I have now written about 129,000 words of the novel.

Critiquing.

I critiqued another story for critters.org, and then I committed to critiquing a whole novel on critters. Fortunately, the writer writes a lot briefer manuscripts than I do, with it being 66,000 words. By the end of the month, I had critiqued the first six chapters, about 10,000 words.

Reading.

I finished reading the very good classic, I am Legend by Richard Matheson. It is one of the original apocalyptic novels. In it, a virus decimates the population leaving one lone survivor to battle vampire like creatures. It was made into at least two films, one of the same title and the much better The Omega Man. The novel is very different from both films. Although written 60 years ago, the novel still cracks a punch. I then started reading Dust, the third book in Hugh Howey’s apocalyptic Wool series.

Melbourne Writers Festival.

I went to the festival for the third year in a row. The only science fiction author I saw on a panel kept on apologising for his book being science fiction, so I did not buy it. I learnt a bit from a panel with the editors of Peter Carey and Jonathan Franzen (I’ve read a number of both author’s books.) Best author talk I went to by mistake. The festival organisers changed the venue without telling me, but my ticket still got me in to see Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). He was there promoting a novel for adults called We are Pirates, and with a title like that, I just had to buy it. Overall, the festival was not as good as the two previous years. I hope to write more on it in upcoming posts. 

Divine Writing.

I had one non-fiction article published on Divine this month, about a casting call for an Australian web-series Aliens Vs Crips, where four people with disabilities try to survive an alien invasion.

My Writing Efforts in July.

I am starting to feel a bit more like a writer who is actually doing more than dreaming about becoming a novelist. July has been my best writing month this year, as shown in the graph opposite. I wrote 17,127 words of my novel in the month, an average of 552 words per day. And I reached my target of 500 words or more on all but two days of the month. Unfortunately, that means that once I met the quota I did not usually write much more. The most words I wrote in a day was 821.

I have now written about 120,000 words of the novel. I had hoped to have the first draft finished this month, but my characters continue to resist making the inevitable decision to abandon their search and get to the climax. They’re not as bad as climate change deniers though. At the moment they are having an argument and the pro keep-on-searching characters are making a lot of sense, too much sense for them to just quit looking.

My characters obviously don’t care that I have committed to write a short story for a Christmas collection that needs to have the first draft done by the end of August. So it looks like after this week I might have to stop the novel writing for a couple of weeks and get onto the short story. This bothers me as I am so close to the end of the novel, I just want to get its first draft finished. But at least I have a good idea for the story.

Critiquing.

Once again I critiqued four stories for critters.org this month. The stories I critiqued were mostly by beginning writers, so my critiques were longish, two were over 1200 words. I finally finished a critique of a story for the Australian Writers Forum that was delayed by technology problems in June.

Reading.

I read a bit more this month. I finished reading Amnesia by Peter Carey. It’s not his best novel, but it was still a good read, with a great central character. He was a journalist/writer secreted away from the law as he writes a biography of a woman who created a computer virus that released thousands of asylum seekers from their prisons. It’s a premise that suggests a thriller, but the book is more about finding out how her life motivated her to release the virus. I hope to get around to writing a review of it for this blog later this month.

I am currently reading a science-fiction classic in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. A book that was turned into the classic science-fiction movie The Omega Man and the not so good recent movie with the same title as the book.

Non-Fiction.

Yeah, I know these updates should be only about my fiction writing endeavours, but I have to plug my Divine articles whenever I get the chance. I have a new article up on Divine that is all about a fascinating exhibition on the human mind I had a look at why I was down in Melbourne a few months ago. I really recommend the permanent exhibition and my article about it.

My writing efforts in June.

I wrote more words of my novel in June than May, even though I started using Facebook again. I had a rule of not logging on to Facebook until I had written at least 500 words. So on some days I did not even logon to it. But I developed the habit of stopping writing not long after I hit the 500 word mark, so I could play on Facebook. On 26 days during the month I achieved my goal of 500 words, only on two days did I do more than 600 words. My best day was 1089 words. All up, I wrote 15,488 words for the month. An average of 516 words a day.

I have written about 102,000 words of the novel, and I about halfway through the fifth and final part. I had hoped to have finished the first draft by now, but I have decided to expand the final part. The decision to do that came about because previously I have read novels with characters on a physical journey arriving at their destination and then the novel suddenly ends, with a disappointed me wanting them to explore their destination more thoroughly. So I have decided not to disappoint a reader like me by doing the exploring.

I had pictured the novel as a stand-alone, but ideas for a sequel set 20 years later keep on popping into my head, so there will be a sequel. But first, I have to re-draft this manuscript. Before that I want to write a short story for a Christmas anthology that is being put together by one of my writing groups. A first draft is required by end of August. Now I just have to come up with an idea. 

Critiquing.

Once again, I critiqued a story a week for critters.org during June. I read a story from a writer on the Australian Writers Forum, intending to critique it, when technology problems intervened: my internet was slowing down and dropping out. I am still not sure what caused the problem even though I was reasonably systematic about trying to fix it. First, I replaced the splitter, that didn’t work, then I replaced the long telephone cable with a shorter one, the web dropped out just after I connected it. Then I bought a new top of the range router/wifi thingy, as my router was about seven years old and the wifi about five. But the new router/wifi would not even connect to Westnet/iinet, my ISP.  I rang them, and spent two hours on the phone, it still didn’t work. They said they would try a few things and asked me to keep my old router and wifi connected. They said they would ring back in two hours or so. Two and a half hours later I got impatient and re-connected the new router/wifi. It worked. Five days later and it has not dropped out and is slightly faster than what it was before it slowed. iinet did ring back the next day, 26 hours later. They said they had fiddled with things, but I am none the wiser as to whether my new router/wifi is more stable, or something they did made my connection more stable.

Reading.

I did not do much reading during June as I was too tired at night. Fortunately, that tiredness has receded in the past week or so, no idea why. I am about two thirds of the way through Amnesia, Peter Carey’s very enjoyable romp through 20^th century Australian politics and history. It’s narrator is a very committed writer who is using an old portable typewriter to type even though he burnt his fingers trying to retrieve a manuscript thrown into a fire by its pissed-off subject.

Hopefully some of his commitment will rub off on me, enabling me to finish the first draft of my current manuscript in July.

A Review of Steve Amsterdam's What the Family Needed

 I enjoyed Steve Amsterdam’s award winning apocalyptic, climate change novel Things We Didn’t See Coming, so I was quick to purchase a copy of What the Family Needed. Calling Things We Didn’t See Coming a novel might be bit of a misnomer as it is a collection of short novellas. But they all feature the same character and are told in chronological order. Amsterdam uses the same technique with What the Family Needed, but this time each story is told from the viewpoint of a different character. 

What the Family Needed begins with teenagers Giordana and Ben arriving at their Aunty Natalie’s house with their mother Ruth. Once again their mother has deserted her husband. Giordana is looking forward to the normalcy of her Aunts family’s stable life, but she has not factored in the fantasies of their son Alek.

Gordiana feels her mother does not care about her opinion of her father, and that she is taken for granted by her mother. It’s like she is invisible. While being entertained by one of Alek’s made-up fantasy games he asks her to choose: invisibility or flight? She chooses invisibility. Minutes later she wishes she could sneak down stairs and listen to what her mum is saying about her dad, and she suddenly becomes invisible.

Ben, Ruth, Natalie, cousin Sasha, Uncle Peter, and Alek all tell stories of their own. The stories are in a chronological order so they don’t overlap or show an incident from a different viewpoint.

Ben’s story starts a few years after Giordana’s. He is unemployed and full of regret for marrying and having a baby too young.  He wants to be free.  Guess which super ability he gets.

Ruth is a nurse who wants to make the lives of her patients and families as comfortable as possible, if only they would tell her what they really wanted.

Sasha has never been able to form a long-term relationship. He would do anything to get his lover to return his love.

Natalie is busy, too busy to help and fix her delusional son Alek, if only she was more efficient.

Peter just wants his family to stay stable and for nothing to change.

They each acquire a super ability, but their abilities have mixed results.

The novel is written in a wry tone. Most readers will identify with the desires of the characters: wouldn’t it be nice to find out what people are saying when you are not around, or to flee a boring life, or if nothing ever changed.

The novel ends with Alek’s story. It is clear from the start of the novel that he is the catalyst for the gaining of super abilities by his relatives and other members of his family. I was very keen to find out how and why. Alek’s story offers surface answers but not the bottom of the iceberg answers I was looking for. I felt a bit dudded, disappointed. 

Things We Didn’t See Coming had a sense of urgency about it. It has a demand that we change, and a character that changes to suit the environment. While What the Family Needed shows that change can be hard to cope with, even when magic intervenes. In the end, it says be careful what you wish for because the change might not be worth it. It is a gentle novel, perhaps too gentle.