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January 23, 2008
Writer Rick Rants: January 23, 2008
So I've been trying out these different recurring titles for types of blog entries. There's the Media Glutton, which I've been using off and on for a while. And then there's Geek Bomb, which I used last week and plays on the bombo logo that Austin came up with for Geek Mafia and is my generally catch all for geeky stuff I think is cool. And then there's this new one, Writer Rick, which is how my friend Brian refers to me when I merit a mention in one of his restaurant reviews. I like that the alliteration is phonetic but not literal. A sort of Difference/Differance thing (to make an egregious Derrida reference that isn't even really apropos).
The plan is to talk about writing in these segments, particularly whatever writing I happen to be working on at the time. I've got a lot of different irons in the old word fire right now, so I'm jumping around quite a bit. I've fond this to be an excellent way to keep myself from ever finishing anything while still feeling productive. But it also keeps me from getting bored, so at least that's good. Seriously though, I really do think I need to focus a lot more and start finishing some of these projects off so I can clear my mind and my plate.
Which is why I started a brand new novel last week. Yeah, yeah, I know. But this one's an idea I've had kicking around for a while, and besides, it's for my MFA program! So it counts twice! It's both homework and a cool book I think I'll have no problem selling when it's done. Now of course it's way to early to say anything about it since it's jut in the outline stage, and that's one of the things I'm so excited about - for the first time ever I'll actually be getting feedback from someone (in this case my mentor for school, Jess) at such an early stage. Usually I don't show anything to anyone until I've completed a first draft. So this is going to be an interesting experience and, I hope, really useful.
I'm also working on finishing up an actual first draft of the privacy non-fiction book I've been doing with Steven Rambam all last year. Our game is at an end (finally!) and now comes the writing part. Luckily I've been writing as I went along, so I have a fair chunk of a first draft done, at least 75%. Still, it's hard shifting into non-fiction gear and trying to build back up some momentum on the project again from a writing perspective. I'm still not in a groove on it yet, but I'm getting there. Of course that's the problem with nonfiction for me - you've got to get all the facts right and put in details that tend to slow everything down. Still, it's going to be a really interesting book once it's all done, assuming I ever stop blogging and get back to writing it.
My Cthulhu-related novel is flitting around to various choice readers right now. It's an odd book that doesn't quite fit into the genre you would think it would, so it's interesting to see how people react to it. So far it's been mostly positive. I worked on it last semester for school and got some great feedback that resulted in some really useful (and pretty major) revisions that made it much stronger. It still needs at least one more serious pass, but I'm waiting to get more feedback from the current crop of readers (most of whom I don't know, which is exciting) before deciding exactly what kinds of changes are needed. I mean, I like it a lot as is, but there are ways that could make it maybe a little more accessible or compelling if I can figure out how to do them without destroying the point I was originally trying to make with the thing (I'm always trying to make a point).
And then there's Geek Mafia 3 (title still a secret). It's all outlined and I even wrote the first chapter a while back, and I plan to come back to it late this spring and get it done over the summer for hopefully another fall release. It's pretty cool I think, or at least the plot is pretty cool. I'm just assuming I can pull it off, although it's the most complicated plot I've tried yet, with the most moving parts, so it's definitely going to be a bit of a challenge, which is of course the whole point.
Posted by rdakan at January 23, 2008 09:38 AM