Hello, dreamers. Let’s get started.

It’s been a strange, difficult year. But with autumn here at last, I recently resolved to make this my last “sorry I’ve been away” post. Put simply, I need to be past that. The time has come for me to live here. With everything going on right now, there’s never been a better time for it. I’m working from home, and will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve never been les busy with work. Now is the time. So this is it. I’m here, and I’m not going away this time.

So here’s what I’ll be working on this week:

The Pioneer Era

With October approaching, I plan to devote the coming month to a number of outstanding projects, most notably the inevitable second installment of The Pioneer Era, and the series on the whole.

I’ve had nearly a year to reflect on my lackluster first attempt at the next novel. And over time, I’ve come to realize my greatest flaw was an overall lack of vision. I have a fairly clear idea of my path moving forward, but in some spots the details are blurry. The most notable of these is the next book. The novel, which I’m currently calling The Pioneer Era, is intended as a transitional novel, taking place between the settlement of Phecda 9 and the eventual Pioneer Wars. As such, the novel will be unlike anything I’ve written previously, featuring time jumps, major setting changes, etc. It’s going to be tedious. Honestly, I’d rather not do it. But the fact is, this novel has to be written for the others to work.

There are a lot of things I need to do differently this time around. But it all starts with planning. I’d originally planned to get back to writing the novel (from scratch) this month. But now, I’ve decided to instead put off my start date to NaNoWriMo, and instead focus on fleshing out my concept and outline. It needs a lot of work. During NaNoWriMo last year, I went in without a clear idea of where I was heading. Ultimately I found myself rudderless, writing a meandering mess of a story that kept taking more and more ridiculous turns. I can’t recall whether it was Nina being found frozen in space by her long-lost ex boyfriend or Rand and his companions getting into an Old West-style shootout over primitive hominins on a planet that exported apples, but somewhere along the line I realized I couldn’t keep going. I lost interest, grew disheartened. And though I technically completed NaNoWriMo, it was hard to look at 80,000+ words of directionless nonsense and feel I’d accomplished anything.

And so, what should have been a subsequent month of conclusion and editing turned into a grim December post mortem. Upon reflection, I determined that most of what I’d written prior to NaNoWriMo, including original passages that had been rewritten over the course of November, was likely salvageable. Afterward, however…

There were high points to writing DotP last year, to be sure. And even after NaNoWriMo began and the wheels came off, I still laid down some awesome passages and chapters I’m very proud of. But at this point, I’ve come to realize enough of the book is senseless trash that it would benefit from a complete rewrite. As was the case when I finally sat down to write The Pioneers, I feel that while parts of the story are worth saving, most of it needs to be tossed. I will certainly reserve the original story in its entirety. I’ll be able to refer back to it if I need a guide for the early chapters, and in some areas where I don’t feel I can write it better than I did before, I can always just cut and paste back into the story. But in instances of such narrative instability, I feel the best approach is to simply start over. And I truly believe this will result in a vastly superior novel.

Oh, and speaking of The Pioneers…

The Pioneers

After much hemming and hawing, the time has come to begin querying my finest work to date. The Pioneers is as ready as it will ever be.

Early this week, I finished what I hope will be my final editing pass on the story. Yet again, I made substantial changes, removing vestigial remnants of omitted subplots. That plus some tightening finally got me down below the 120k threshold, which was a significant milestone. In publishing, I’ve come to find that 120k represents a hard ceiling; most agents won’t even look at a novel that clocks in north of that, which places a novel like mine (which previously stood at over 123k) at a serious disadvantage. Mind you, The Pioneers is still on the long side. And there’s a part of me that still feels I could cut more, tighten the wording more. But right now I’m trying to resist the urge to mess with a good thing too much.

My next step will be a final read-through. For the first time in a while, I’ll be reading my novel as a reader, and likely enlisting a few of my beta readers to provide an outside perspective. I’d like to make sure the changes I’ve made work. After that, the real work begins: query letter and synopses. I remain deeply insecure regarding my query letter, and feel yet another complete rethink is in order. Luckily, a writer friend of mine gave me yet another fresh perspective and new approaches to try out. I also need to buckle down and write out my synopses. It is my hope that reading through the entire novel once more will not only inform my writing of the sequel but also aid in the synopsis process.

I hope that my focus on planning, rather than writing, The Pioneer Era this month will give me the opportunity to do what needs to be done. Currently, my plan is to begin querying on November 1st.

Short Fiction

Been a while, hasn’t it? After having neglected my short fiction for far too long, I plan to get back at it this October.

For several years now, I’ve conducted my writing on an annual cycle. Generally, I spend the late summer working on my current major project (novel), and of course continue that project in November for NaNoWriMo. September has, in the past, been reserved for Pitch Wars prep. That has left October as sort of a “gap month”, which I devote to short fiction.

While my time with Pitch Wars has ended (at least for now), due to my need to plan out The Pioneer Era and my focus on prepping to query The Pioneers, I have nonetheless decided to spent October on short fiction. I have a number of outstanding projects, some of which have languished for years now. Perhaps the first step will be to review those outstanding projects, and determine whether or not some of them even can (or should) still be completed. Most, thankfully, can, and I’m looking forward to sharing at least a few of them here, with my readers.

As part of my month of short fiction, I also plan to return to my daily sketches, starting tomorrow. If I’m to finally make The Pioneer Era work, I must first get back into shape; “stretch out”, as it were.

Other Projects

The work of an aspiring writer is never done. For years, I’ve wanted to branch out and try new things, hoping to grow my platform or perhaps find a new way to monetize what I do. Before, I’ve never had the time. Now, amid the pandemic, like most everyone else I’ve time in abundance. All I’m short on is excuses.

Over the coming months I plan to explore a number of ideas. I’d like to look into what’s necessary to become a freelance writer (and indeed whether such a thing is even possible for someone without an MFA). I plan to revisit a long-standing idea to self-publish either an anthology or a novel. And, at my girlfriend’s urging, I plan to look into the idea of a new podcast (possibly paired with a blog) devoted to relaying science news to busy millennials without the time to read articles.

It’s gonna be a busy week, dreamers. But I’m ready for this. So read on, and dare to dream. – MK