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Richard Watt

Category Archives: Shore Leave

It’s been a bit quiet around here…

Posted on February 4, 2018 by Richard

Being a kind of ‘what I’ve been up to’ post:

Avid readers of this blog (that’ll be me, pretty much) might be wondering what, exactly, I’ve been doing these past couple of years.  There was a book, then another one seemed to be reaching some kind of readiness, then – nothing.

The answer, as so often in life, is that there has been no one thing which has pushed me off schedule; life just got in the way – any writer will recognise that.  Since last we met (barring a couple of posts down there which I’ve imported from my Tumblr pages), Shore Leave seemed to be more or less done, so why, you may ask, hasn’t it emerged into the world?  Well, it’s a little complicated.

Shore Leave update:

It’s done, and I’m almost happy with it.  The trouble is, there’s a lot of meaning packed into that ‘almost’.  A couple of years ago, I had the marvellous Bryan Tomasovich do a developmental edit on it, and he was enormously helpful, pointing out the areas where work was needed, (and being encouragingly kind about the rest of it) – I thought about it for a while, and then several things happened at once: we moved from Prince George to Victoria, there were all the usual things which go along with that process – new house, new job, new school for Conor, and the book sat on the back burner for a bit.

There are those who, on reading that, will exclaim that I should have just got on with it any way, but there was another problem.

The more I thought about Shore Leave and Bryan’s comments, the more I realised that it needed a more substantial rewrite than at first appeared.  This would mean effectively a second complete ground-up reconstruction, as the key weakness is that a minor character needs to become much more the antagonist of the story – this will work, it will make it all stronger, and ‘ll be happy about it when it’s done, it’s just that…

It’s just that, having lived in my head for so long, I had no more mental energy to give another reworking of the story.  It will rise again, and be better for this process, but as a way of easing me back into writing, it’s a non-starter.

So, what now?

I have played about with the website (you might have noticed); in doing so, I hit upon the idea of refreshing the 50 Musical Memories to make them more interactive (and to fix many of the broken links), so I’m doing that, and I’m working on importing another two music-based projects which I’ve posted in other places over the years (I looked at ‘Rediscovering Rush’ yesterday, it’s about 60,000 words as it stands; it’ll take a while) – both of those will get rewrites as I go, and will appear on here as categories for those who are interested.

What about writing books?

I’m doing that, too.  While Shore Leave sits there maturing, I’m actively writing two other stories, tentatively entitled A Little Bird Told Me and The Tip Run – both have a plot, a structure, and some substantive writing behind them; the former is taking shape more quickly than the latter; I’ll be focusing on them just as soon as I get all the other stuff tidied away.

There’s also a vague idea forming which looks like it might have a bit more of a science fiction concept; it’s a great concept, but I can’t fit a story into it just yet.  I’ll get there, though.

 

So, I’m not being idle; I am suffering a little from the whole ‘too many things to choose from’ problem, but I’m getting there.  I’m setting myself a target of posting in here at least once a week – but I’ve said that before…

Posted in Shore Leave, Tangents | Tags: #amediting, #amwriting, #ShoreLeave, #thepublishingworld, #WorkInProgress |

Back in action

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Richard

After much soul-searching, the beginning of Shore Leave finally has been rewritten. Of course, it has caused all manner of problems for the story down the road, and there will be harder days than this ahead while I try to untangle everything, but it’s back in motion, and I honestly wondered if I’d ever get this beast back on the road.

Posted in Shore Leave, Work in Progress |

The joy of drafts

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Richard

Second (technically third) draft done – structurally, it’s fairly sound, needs some plot tweaking and a lot of careful reading. Next draft will be following input form actual readers, and I hope will involve more recrafting than just writing everything out from scratch.

Posted in Shore Leave |

Progress Report

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Richard

Draft 2 is now up over 17,000 words. This is definite progress. I’ve now come to the crucial point, what Larry Brooks calls the First Plot Point (I think it should have capitals).

I want to write it today, but my brain is fried, and I’ll rush it and need to rewrite it. Which is kind of the point of the draft, I know, but I’ve been thinking about this point for weeks now, and I still don’t know what it will be like until I start writing it. Everything up to this point is pretty darned good, though I say so myself, although bits of this afternoon’s work are already rewriting themselves in my head.

So the answer is – stop now. Write the key scene as soon as I have sufficient time and mental energy, and go back out into the world, see what it looks like.

Maybe even reintroduce myself to all those people who also live in my house and see if I can help with dinner…

It’s been a solid afternoon’s work.

Posted in Shore Leave |

A draft is still a draft

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Richard

I’m 7500 words into draft 2, and…

And I’ve maybe reused about 200 from draft 1.  Fixing up the structure has changed the story so dramatically that I’m basically starting from scratch.  After an initial moment or two of despondency (“you mean I’m going to have to write it all out again?”), I’m actually really happy with the way it’s going.  All that foreshadowing I was going to have to bodge in to the start because the ending has changed is now seamlessly in place.  Also, I’m doing some intriguing things with tense and voice which I think are going to work – and won’t be too hard to fix if they don’t work.

Not worrying about detail, just blasting through getting it all down on paper again.  Then, I’ll start the second second draft (it makes sense to me)

Anyway, your sneak preview consists of one line:

“Dr. Goldman introduced David to the idea of being worried, and he thinks he understands it – it is what happens to him when he does not know what will happen in the future.”

What – me worry?

Posted in Shore Leave |

All Change

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Richard

So, yesterday I sat down and began to apply all that I’ve learned in the last few weeks to what is still, at the moment, called Shore Leave.  Here’s what I know now:

It’s going to be a radically different story to the one I envisaged.  In draft 1, some stuff happens, but not enough of it, and various things don’t happen which need to.

I finally figured out the biggest problem, which is that while the relationship between Character 1 and Character 2 remains opaque to them, it is clear to the reader.  The reader needs to be as confused as everyone else, so they want to find out.

It read more like a memoir than anything else.  It needs to read like a novel.

There is at least four chapters’ worth of stuff – really good stuff – in a two-page afterthought written as a letter, which I shoehorned in to the end as a kind of deus ex machina.  To be fair, I did know this already; it was something I hadn’t even thought of when I began to write the first draft, but it’s now vividly clear to me what needs to happen with it.

And finally, I need to get going with it.  So many ideas in my head now…

Posted in Shore Leave |

In the dark…

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Richard

Amazing how much more writing was getting done when the internet was down!

Question: how do I keep myself from overdoing the research? I had a quick question about a character’s job which has turned into some detailed reading on WW2 shipyards….

Posted in Shore Leave |

Winter is icumen in

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Richard

I have classical music on one screen (currently listening to Gabriel Prokiofiev’s Violin Concerto) and on the other one, I’m busy setting things up and figuring out how to attack the second draft. Following #WDNWC14 it’s going to be significantly different to draft 1 – probably the thing to do is just get on with it, but I have new toys to play with…

Posted in Shore Leave | Tags: #WDNWC14 |

Richard Watt

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