to do list

Rinse and repeat

christianellingsen ,

Before it’s too late and we’re in the first full week of January, a brief post to say Happy New Year.

Despite crossing that arbitrary line in the temporal sand (and this time into a new decade) it seems, geo-politically and environmentally at least, things will continue in a similar vein to last year for a time. Let’s hope the rest of the year heads in a better direction.

I hope the new Roaring Twenties are off to a good start for you or at least there’s positive things on the horizon.

As noted here, my annual To Do List is a repeat of last year’s, but with a good chance of bringing some of it to a conclusion.

That was 2019

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It’s that time of year when I take a look back at what I thought I was going to do in 2019 and say “Well, that didn’t happen.”

Looking back at what I intended to do is frustrating. On the surface it looks like I’ve done little to nothing. In truth, though I may not have ticked off much from the “To Do List”, I need to remind myself what I said on 1 January:

…plans never work. Plans can be too binding, make you think you have to do things in a particular way and to a particular timetable, and make what you have achieved seem like a failure just because it wasn’t in the plan. Better to have a direction of travel, something that allows for changes and for detours, for side quests and unexpected challenges. So let’s say this is the direction I’m heading in, and I’ll get there given the right amount of time.

And although I may not have finished much on the list, I have moved in the right direction and the time left to when it will be completed is shorter.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

Well, part of that happened. I’ve edited it. But, I’m continuing to edit it – I’m on the fifth draft. As I said here:

The good news is that it’s a lot closer to being out in the world, to the point where I’m so tempted to turnaround and say it will definitely be out next year. The problem is that I’ve been burnt by my own expectations twice now, so all I’m going to do is keep it vague and say it’s ‘coming soon’ with no clear definition of what soon really means.

I hate doing it (not being able to get this out into the world as quickly as I want and not being able to say when it will actually appear).

It sucks.

It [INSERT MORE SWEAR WORDS OF CHOICE] sucks.

I’m not sure I’ve got anything more to add at this time, other than to say it’s closer still. I’m enjoying it (which makes working on it fun and worthwhile and keeps me motivated to finish it, even if the amount of time it is taking is a source of frustration). Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it too when you have the chance to read it. When that will be though, I’m still not quite in a place to commit without the risk of getting burnt again.

There’re some scenes from the novel that I’ve excised, at least one of which I may well post to my blog at some point. It’s inconsequential to the story – hence it getting cut – but there’s a little anecdote in the scene about the Ranters and their attempts to secure a chance to vote that I want to share.

Edit a novella.

Aka The Signal (working title), the sequel to the novelette The City Between the Books.

In the gaps between rounds of editing The Theatre of Shadows (ToS), I’ve been working on this. Given that it’s a quarter of the length of ToS, despite being lower on the priority scale, it could find itself finished and ready to publish before ToS.

Edit Tales From Vasini II.

The two stories that will make up Tales From Vasini II have a (current) combined length of about 64,000 words and I haven’t touched a word of them thanks to editing ToS and The Signal, which have a (current) combined length of around 230,000 words.

Given that ToS needs to see the light of day before these, then editing Tales From Vasini II is low down on my priority list and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Pity, as I want to get stuck back into them. They’re somewhat different to the other Vasini-based stories as they take place entirely outside of the confines of the city and it was great exploring the wider world of the setting and see what happens beyond Vasini’s rain-drenched streets.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

The Vasini Chronicles III has actually been outlined in rough, as mentioned here and here. It won’t get written for a while.

Write Tales From Vasini III.

This will be three novellas set in the lead up to The Vasini Chronicles III. They’re all outlined. I started writing the first of the novellas back in March. I’m coming up to being about half way through the first draft, as I’m only getting to write scraps around editing ToS.

And writing this post is now getting me down with the simple scale of the backlog that has formed. I so want to be moving forward with all of these stories, I want to be telling them to myself and then putting them out in the world for you and others to read, but…but I only have the time to work on one thing and that one thing, now, has to be ToS. I need to keep reminding myself what I said at the start: things are moving, I’m heading in the right direction and it will get done, every page, every paragraph, every word written or edited takes me one step closer to the end. In time it will appear and then everything else will follow. It will happen…It will.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

I was working on this at the beginning of the year. It still needs work. It will continue to need work until ToS is off my plate.

Read at least 48 books and cut down my backlog of unread books to less than 270.

Well, I managed to do this. Kind of. 50 books read, although a lot of them were short and/or graphic novels. I finally got round to reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman, almost certainly my favourite of the books I read this year.

My backlog of unread books, though, sits at 286. That’s, admittedly, 28 books less than at the start of the year, but that means I broke my self-imposed rule of only buying three new books by some margin.

I did manage to do another review on Goodreads, doubling the total number of reviews I’ve written to two.

Blog more.

Technically, I succeeded. I only wrote six blog posts in 2018, this year I managed a grant total of 11 (including this one). Granted, several of them were holding messages rather than proper blogs, but, given the general lack of completing other things, lets call this a success and quickly move on.

And in terms of moving on, in 11 days time it will be 2020. My annual To Do List will look very much like the one for this year, almost identical in fact. But, despite appearances to the contrary, I do need to remind myself that things have moved on. Even if the big final goals have not been achieved, I’ve moved in the right direction along the path – I’ve taken a lot of the tiny steps that need to be taken to get to the end. Just not all of them quite yet.

Here’s hoping that 2020 will bring some closure to some of the above and maybe the chance to start on some new paths.

Best wishes for the holidays to all of you. May the end of the year bring you rest, goodwill and good times with those you want to be with. And may the New Year take you further along your own paths towards where you want or need to be.

A stranger holding message

christianellingsen ,

When I wrote this holding message back on 1 January, it had just been announced that Stranger Things season 3 was due to be released on 4 July. I guess I’m watching that rather than writing a blog post. I hope I enjoy it.

Despite growing up near a not so secret government installation (the Atomic Weapons Establishment) in the 1980s and playing D&D, I never did get to battle strange Lovecraftian entities, which I’m both glad about and a little put out by.

A little way in the right direction

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We’re now over three months in to 2019, so time to check how far along I am with my To Do List.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

Back when I made my To Do List, The Theatre of Shadows was sitting in a virtual draw while others took a look at it, with the thought that I might start work on the next draft in February. In actuality I’ve only just started on the latest draft. I’m a little way in, but what I’ve gone through so far is looking better than I thought it would, which is promising. More importantly, I’m enjoying it.

Assuming there aren’t any surprises on the way, The Silver Mask should have it’s sequel out in the world by the end of the year.

Given that I may refer to it a bit, I’m just going to call The Theatre of Shadows ToS for the rest of the post. Hope you don’t mind.

Edit a novella.

I had thought that I’d get round to editing The Signal (working title) at some point before I got to ToS. That didn’t happen. It’ll sit in the virtual draw a little longer — until I’ve finished the next draft of ToS at least — based on feedback I’ve received, hopefully there shouldn’t be too much to get it into shape for publishing.

Edit Tales From Vasini II.

According to my To Do List, I was planning on editing this at the same time as ToS, but that’s been put on hold. I don’t want to distract myself from work on ToS and I know there’ll be a lot of wok to do on the two novellas that make up Tales From Vasini II, so they can wait for a bit.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

I’ve outlined the third Vasini Chronicles novel. There’s still some more in-depth outlining (and maybe a bit more research to do). Given that I need to work on ToS and that I need to write Tales From Vasini III first, I won’t be getting to this anytime soon.

Write Tales From Vasini III.

I’ve started writing it. I’m only a few thousands words into the first of the three novellas that will make up the book, but I’m already enjoying being with the main character and writing something new about Vasini, which makes the writing easier. (You could ask why the hell you’d write something you didn’t enjoy writing, but that doesn’t seem to be the way the writing compulsion works at times — there’s a difference between wanting to tell and enjoying a story and the process of actually writing it.)

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

This was what was delaying work on ToS.

The draft is done. It’ll go to someone to look and sense check some of the changes I made, then it’ll have to wait in line for its next draft.

I’m missing it already.

Read at least 48 books and cut down my backlog of unread books to less than 270.

According to Goodreads, I’ve read 18 out 48 books, which isn’t bad going. Unfortunately my backlog is still at 306 books. It should be down to 296, but between presents and me buying more books, I seem to be maintaining the status quo with the size of my To Be Read pile.

One thing that may help is that I’m planning to read/play my collection of Lone Wolf adventure game books over the next few months (you can read about my attempts to complete the set over the past twenty years here – as an update to that blog, I’ve managed to get my hands on Book Seventeen, so I’ll be reading Books One to Eighteen). That alone will drop my backlog to 289 books.

Blog more.

With this post I’ve managed to exceed the six blog posts I made last year. I had intended to blog at least once a fortnight. Based on that, I’ve missed two posts. But, much like everything else, although I may not be quite as far along as I would hope (we are, as species, always far too optimistic with what we think we can achieve with the time we have, that’s why all those public infrastructure projects run late and go over budget), I am at least going in the right directions. In another few months I’ll be a few more steps along, a few months after that a few more steps, and I’ll keep on going until I get to where I need to be.

Outlines and Edits II: More Outlines, More Edits

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Phew. I managed to blog this time. It was kind of inevitable that I was going to miss a blog after setting myself a blogging schedule, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t be so early in the year and only after four posts.

Oh dear.

Anyway…where was I…

Ah, yes…I was editing a supernatural noir and outlining The Vasini Chronicles III and Tales From Vasini III. 

I still am, although very close to finishing both.

On the supernatural noir side, I should finish editing the latest draft in the next week or two. I had thought I was a lot further in to the edit, but in the past couple of days, I’ve admitted to myself that I really need to cut back one character’s presence in the story. It’s going to be painful. I really like the character and in many ways they bring a great additional perspective on the story. The problem is they’re not who the story is about and as interesting as that perspective can be, it isn’t essential and just gets in the way at a vital part of the story. They won’t disappear completely, but they won’t be playing quite as prominent role in the later stages of the novel. Once I’ve recovered from that I’ll be switching my attention to editing The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II. 

The rough outlines for all three of the Tales From Vasini III novellas and The Vasini Chronicles III are done. I’m mostly finished with the more in-depth outlining of the first novella in an attempt to avoid any notes that just say ‘They find a clue’. Once that’s done, I’ll start writing. The outlines for the other novellas and The Vasini Chronicles III will get a little more work on them as I write and get a better grasp on the first novella.

Until next time.

The steps so far

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It’s 31 January, the date by which if I’d made resolutions they’d have fallen by the wayside and if I’d made plans I’d already be down on myself for failing to reach some arbitrary deadline. Instead, as stated here, I’m trying to think more in terms of a direction of travel, giving myself the opportunity to celebrate what I’ve achieved rather than berating myself for what’s been left undone.

And, though I may not be far along (after all, we’re less than 9% of the way through the year), there has been progress:

  • Goodreads tells me, I’ve read seven books so far (and am four books ahead of schedule, assuming I’m to read 48 books this year). Although they are all books I started off reading last year or graphic novels.
  • I’m well into outlining The Vasini Chronciles III and Tales From Vasini III. The initial phase is putting together a broad outline on index cards (completed for Tales From Vasini III and about half way there for The Vasini Chronicles III) and then I’ll move on to fleshing out those notes and then onto writing an actual draft.
  • I’m a little over half way through editing a long supernatural noir novel.
  • I’ve had some feedback on The Theatre of Shadows (The Vasini Chronciles II) and will start editing it again once the current draft of the supernatural noir is complete.
  • And, so far, I’ve kept up with my attempts to blog more.

All in all, a reasonable start to the year.

I’m heading this way

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Happy New Year.

We’ve crossed that arbitrary line in the temporal sands once more. Time to stop contemplating the past twelve months and to start planning for the coming year. So here’s my annual To Do List. Much of it is the same as last year’s, but with the cunning twist that some more of it might get finished by 31 December this year. Here’s hoping at least.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

This is the top priority for the year. It’s currently sat in a virtual draw while others read it. Maybe around February, I’ll take it out and start work on the next draft. I’ll then push through so it’s in a point to publish in the second half of the year. All being well.

Edit a novella.

This is The Signal (working title), the sequel to the novelette The City Between the Books. I hope to get around to editing this just before I start back on The Theatre of Shadows. Given its shorter length compared to everything else – around 44,000 words – it shouldn’t take as long to edit it to the point where it can be published.

Edit Tales From Vasini II.

The two stories that will make up Tales From Vasini II have a (current) combined length of about 64,000 words. The plan is to start editing this while working on the next draft of The Theatre of Shadows. We’ll see how long that plan lasts. Should the plan go better than planned (unlikely given the nature of plans), the stretch goal would be to publish it by the end of the year. I suspect, in truth, it will be 2020 before it’s published.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

Come tomorrow, I’ll start work in earnest on outlining the third Vasini Chronicles book in more depth. When I start writing the first draft proper will depend on what happens with the next thing on my To Do List.

Write Tales From Vasini III.

I believe this will be three stories set in the lead up to The Vasini Chronicles III. I’ll be outlining them in depth alongside The Vasini Chronicles III and then I’ll launch into writing the first draft.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

This is the third To Do List this has appeared on. The difference this year is that I’m working on it and will be until I pick up The Theatre of Shadows again. I’m hoping (there’s a lot of hope in this To Do List) to get the next draft completed in that time and then I may be in a better position to think about how and when I’ll publish it.

Read at least 48 books and cut down my backlog of unread books to less than 270.

I’d expected to read only 36 books last year and ended up reading 60. I’m not convinced I’ll hit 60 books again (especially given the list of things to do this year), but 48 seems reasonable (although, as always, it will depend on the length). Given that my continued aim is to cut down my backlog of unread books (currently 314 books) – always a challenge given it keeps on getting topped up with new books – I’m also hoping (there’s that word again) to reduce the backlog to less than 270. That means to achieve both parts, I’ll have to read at least 45 books that are already on my bookshelf and only buy three new books.

Last year saw me write my first review on Goodreads. Although, I’m not going to make it habit, I will try to write a few more reviews this year.

Blog more

I managed to write a grand total of six blog posts last year, most of which were updates on my 2018 To Do List. I’m not the most prolific blog writer, but that was pretty rubbish. So I’m going to try to blog a little more often. I’ve set myself a little timetable that should mean I’ll post at least once every two weeks. To try to make me keep to this, I’ve started to write a number of holding posts that will be set to go out automatically as a threat to myself to write the proper posts. Let’s see if it works.

 

So that’s the plan for the year. But lets not call it a plan. As I try to remember, plans never work. Plans can be too binding, make you think you have to do things in a particular way and to a particular timetable, and make what you have achieved seem like a failure just because it wasn’t in the plan. Better to have a direction of travel, something that allows for changes and for detours, for side quests and unexpected challenges. So let’s say this is the direction I’m heading in, and I’ll get there given the right amount of time.

Anyway, all the best for your next set of 365 days.

That was 2018

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We’re very nearly at the end of 2018, so time to wrap up the year’s to do list and try not to despair at the things left undone.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

At the beginning of the year I said:

It’s written. I’ll likely wrap up the second draft in January. It will then be a year of more and more drafts until it’s in a shape I’m happy to publish. The hope is to publish it by the end of the year, but there’s a chance that it may be early 2019 instead.

Hope is a wonderful thing until it meets messy reality. The editing continues. As I mentioned back at the beginning of November, it’s currently out with others who will take a look at it before I work on the next draft. It won’t be early 2019, but it will be published as early as possible next year.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

This was the one thing on my 2017 list that I failed to do, so it’s back on the list to do this year. Maybe as things progress with The Theatre of Shadows, I’ll be able to invest more time in this.

This is a supernatural noir novel that had been floating around in my mind since I was 17.

I was kind of expecting to fail to do anything with it again this year. Turns out I was wrong. Although it had to wait until the last few months, I’ve finally managed to turn my attention to editing. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed the characters and story. Hopefully, hopefully, I can get some more work done on it and it might even end up being in a place to be published. One can hope.

Write and edit the next Tales From Vasini.

I’ve written one of the novellas that will make up the next Tales From Vasini book, there’s one more to write before I can start editing and then publishing it.

It’s taken longer than I’d hoped, but I finally finished writing the first draft of the second story for Tales From Vasini II today.

I won’t say too much about it at the moment, other than that one story is based in the Outbounds – the not-so-safe farm belt around Vasini – and the other one (the one I just finished) is set within the Wildlands between the city-states, the wild and dangerous lands, filled with the ruins of the civilization of those who worshipped the deities.

Finish writing and then edit a novella.

I’m currently working on a non-Vasini related novella. Fingers crossed, I’ll finish it around the end of January. Then onto editing it and deciding how and when to publish it.

This is the sequel to The City Between the Books currently under the working title of The Signal (it will likely change titles, possibly more than once, between now and publication). I’ve done some editing on it. There’s some more to do. It will appear at some point. Probably sooner than other things on this list.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

So after I’ve finished the novella I’m currently working on and the second novella for the next Tales From Vasini book, it’s back to writing The Vasini Chronicles.

Although I never got to actually writing The Vasini Chronicles III, I have been doing research in preparation for both The Vasini Chronicles III and Tales From Vasini III. Come the New Year (or maybe a little bit sooner), I’ll start outlining the both of them in more depth, so hopefully I’ll actually start writing it in a few months time. It’ll be the Tales From Vasini III stories up first as they’ll be set before The Vasini Chronicles III.

Read at least 36 books and cut down my backlog of unread books (now at over 340 books).

Last year I originally planned to read 26 books, by the end of the year I’d read 62. However, only 24 of them were after my daughter was born. Based on this, I should be able to get through 48 books. However, given there a few 800+ page books amongst those I’m planning to read, I’m going to aim for 36. This may still be quite ambitious. It does mean that, based on this target, it will take me 10 years to get through my backlog (as it stands).

I ended up declaring 60 on Goodreads with another eight read that I didn’t list on Goodreads. That’s less than last year but more than the 2016. I even managed to get round to writing my first review on Goodreads, something that I may do more of (although I doubt it will become a habit).

The better news is that my backlog is now down to 308 books. I may get through the entire lot in another five years or so.

The highlights have been Saga Volumes 8 & 9. With Saga now on hiatus, though, I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to reading most this year.

Time to rest and let things go ready for the New Year and a fresh resolve, even if the 2019 To Do list isn’t as fresh and new as I’d hope.

Happy holidays. I hope 2018 has treated you well and you’ve managed to do everything you wanted.

Still here, still writing, still doing things

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Wow, this is only my fifth blog post of the year and my first since June. I’m not the most prolific blogger anyway, but it’s about a fifth of the posts I made last year. I suspect, in part, the difference is that last year I was publishing A Divided River and, therefore, had a bit more to talk about and this year has been heads down working on The Theatre of Shadows and other things. That and time has been more precious and writing and editing novels and novellas has taken priority over the blog.

So on that note it’s time for a little update on my 2018 To Do List.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

The editing continues. I recently finished the third draft. I’m taking a break from it for a bit while others have a read of it. Once I have their thoughts, there’ll be a fourth draft.

As mentioned here, despite my hopes this does mean it won’t be published until next year.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

My break from The Theatre of Shadows does mean I get to spend some time editing my long supernatural noir novel. After I’ve done another draft on this I’m going to put some thought into how I want to publish it.

It’s proven easy to slip back into it after such a long gap. But given that it’s been floating around in my head since I was 17, it is a very old friend and it shouldn’t be that surprising it’s so easy to pick up where I left off.

Write and edit the next Tales From Vasini

As reported back in April, I’ve finished the first of the two novellas for the next Tales From Vasini book. I’m now coming to the end of the first draft of the second story (as I also mentioned in April, work was slow going on that story and has continued to move slower than I’d hoped). Both stories will sit in a draw (well, on my laptop at least) for a little while then I’ll start work on editing them.

Finish writing and then edit a novella.

The non-Vasini novella I was working on at the beginning of the year – a sequel to The City Between the Books – has gone through an edit. I’ll be asking some people to look at it before I start on the next draft.

Between this novella, Tales From Vasini II, the supernatural noir novel and The Theatre of Shadows it could mean that after not publishing anything for the past year, 2019 could see the beginning of a run of publishing if all of the books are completed as (fingers very firmly crossed) they seem like they may be.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

This won’t be happening this year, or at least not the actual writing.

Given everything else that I’ve been working on and that the second Tales From Vasini II story is taking longer than expected to complete, I’ll likely only get through some more research and start to flesh out the plot ahead of the New Year. Added to that, I’m almost certain that I’ll write an associated story (Tales From Vasini III) before starting writing The Vasini Chronicles III.

Read at least 36 books and cut down my backlog of unread books (now at over 340 books).

Done. According to Goodreads I’ve read 48 books so far this year. My backlog of unread books is now down to 316 books. Unlike writing, my reading doesn’t seem to have been impacted so much by time constraints, possibly, in part, because where as I can read while brushing my teeth, I’m not sure the results would be so good if I attempted to write with a toothbrush in one hand and toothpaste dripping from my mouth.

Saga Volumes 8 & 9 have been my favourites so far this year. Riverwind – The Plainsman has been the biggest disappointment. It was another attempt, after Tanis – The Shadow Years and Flint the King last year, to indulge my nostalgia for the Dragonlance novels. As with Tanis, for me much of the novel didn’t really embody the setting of the Dragonlance novels (although maybe they do and my memory of the Dragonlance Chronicles is too warped by time to make a fair comparison). Despite this, I still seem to want to indulge my nostalgia, so no doubt I’ll be reading another Dragonlance novel at some point in the future. Fingers crossed it hits the mark.