Can I ask some of the more-pro-than-Is in here how they do it? I’ve got a bloody manuscript, but every time I look at the darn thing for editing (and I wrote it a while ago and have forgotten what it’s about), I groan and find something else to do?
The story is comming along well and i can prety much use an unacurate dailog as the alternative part of my history goes back to the napoleonic wars not ending when they did and dragging on for a century. so the wars that happen are soewhat different.
an example would be that a lot of the british military traditions from the 19th century are slightly updated. Naval officers wear swords ect
I’m working on:
A fantasy parody – A group of bold adventurers get tricked into undertaking a quest of … rather mundain preportions. The weak, the lame, the stupid and the easilly fooled… and the rather powerful necromancer who ends up stuck with them.
A Mickey Spelian parody – Jack Black… Tall, strong, goodlooking… IQ slightly lower than room temperature in siberia with a gay half pygmy half irish sidekick who wans to get into his pants.
A Lovecraft esque horror story based off of some stranger religious texts I’ve read.
A hard sci-fi novel – I’ve created 8 different spacefaring races from genomic material on up… Still working on making societies for the last 2 races.
Anothe scifi story a tie-in to a particular video game
A contempory suspense story dealing with virology
A near future corperate warfare story
nothing is really past 100 pages or so 
I’ve been working on a fantasy novel for a few years now. I wandered into world-building and I haven’t found my way out yet 
.
I keep changing when the story starts, and I’m still not sure what the point of the story should be. I don’t necessarily believe I must have an ending in mind as I write, but it might help if I did.
I have three stories that started out as short stories and have gradually gotten so long that they’ve gotta be called novels now. None of them are anywhere close to being ready to be published, but I love working on them, and that’s all that’s important right now.
-Lil
Desire. I want it bad enough to do it.
On third draft of overly long novel, starting in 1968 with the first landing on the moon by a pair of 19 year olds who work for a secret agency. They find a starship, and it goes on from there. I have three more books in the series plotted.
I’m in a writing critique group, which drives me on. It’s depressing how much better it gets with each draft. After this, one more quick revision then off to find a publisher.
. . . Am I the only one here working on non-fiction?
I’m writing a children’s story about small sheep.
I’ve gathered lots of binders filled with information for two books on mythology (to go with the one already published). I have to buckle down and write the Book Proposals, because I know what I want to do and how, but I’ve been busy with a change of jobs and writing articles.
I’ve got, lessee…
Two non-fiction childrens books in final stages of editing (both chapter books)
about 8 fiction picture books in various stages of editing and rewriting
One Fantasy novel in heavens-knows-how-many-pages/words, with some holes in the plot, no idea without review whether it is worth pursuing.
One Young Adult fantasy novel that started well but has paused without an ending.
One NF Pregnant/Parenting book in initial stages of development (this one is my ‘driving’ ms, the one that keeps bugging me to write it)
Two articles for a magazine ready for submission.
And one whole story submitted, and rejected with a nicely printed form letter. Hey, at least it was not rejected with a badly photocopied one!
IMHO, if you are struggling with facing editing, getting a critique group helps some - it is useful to start with the spark from someone else’s opinion sometimes. And it doesn’t hurt your writing skills, either (YMMV). But you’ve got to want it enough to be willing to review other people’s writing to get ideas on your own writing. As noted by DA, if you want it, you do it. If you don’t want it enough, you don’t. It almost has to be at the compulsion level for me to edit, even though I like editing. Creating the first time is fun, editing is WORK. If it were easy, we’d all be published already.
I’m not writing a book, but I’m putting together a book of my cartoons.
I’m working on a biography of Jacob Riis (YA). I sent the first draft to my editor in September and I haven’t heard a thing from her yet. Lord knows I understand how overworked editors are, but still…
I have two manuscripts of children’s fiction which are “finished” (I don’t think books are ever really “finished”–authors and editors just get tired of looking at them and finally send them to the presses).
One is fantasy novel about a young boy who gets enlisted by a group of remarkably foolish Gnomes to help them win their war against a second group of remarkably foolish Gnomes; it’s meant to be wry and satirical (think “Roald Dahl-ish”). It also has something of an anti-war slant to it, which unfortunately makes it very much out of tune with our times (I wrote the first draft back in Summer 2000, back before all went to hell.)
The other manuscript is a collection of stories about a young girl and her animal friends and the “Adventures” they have. I wrote it as an homage to Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I doubt it’s up to that level of achievement–what is?–but the stories have some of that flavor.
I also have a couple of other short story and novel ideas “on the table” though they’re not even beyond the half-of-first-draft stage.
Congratulations to all of you who keep plugging away at the writing and editing. I’ve had a terrible time retaining motivation, especially because I’ve had a miserable time trying to get some decent feedback on my work. It’s tough to keep going unless you have someone nudging you forward; you should be proud of continuing to make the effort.
Good luck to everyone on their projects.
Yow! That’s got to be a hard one to research! I read his memoirs a few years ago—seems to have been a nice guy, with a sense of humor. Was he? Did you have a hard time tracking down who owns photo publication rights?
Actually not that hard to research–his early papers are at the Library of Congress, and his later papers are right here in the NYPL. (Of course, some of them being in Danish is a bit of a problem.) But to be honest, a YA biography doesn’t call for the kind of original, in depth research you do for your kind of bio. The whole thing’s only 150 pages.
Riis was apparently a real sweetheart–everyone who met him loved him. He had some racist attitudes, though, that were pretty common in his time but rather hard to explain to a modern 12-year-old.
I’m very lucky about photo rights–my publisher (Oxford) takes care of it all for me. I’m not sure why; here at Viking we make the authors do it. But I’m not going to argue.
I hate you. Haaate. Or as Zsa Zsa Gabor would say, “I hay dot Kvinn.”
—Eve (who spent nearly $3,000 on photo publication rights for her last book)
They take care of the index, too. Nyah.
(On the other hand, YA nonfiction has no glamor.)
Hunh??!!!
This ain’t Oxford University Press, is it? (I don’t think they have a YA division). OUP made me do all my own photos an permissions. And I had to do my own index.
If it is OUP, tell me who your editor is!
It is OUP, which does have a children’s division. I would guess, however, that this division operates on a different financial basis from the scholarly division, since it has a very different market. It does mostly educational series for the school and library market. Believe me, I’m not going to make any money out of my books!