Tag: writing process

Writing, writing, writing…

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

For a little change and a little challenge, I took on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. The background to taking that on comes from my day job workplace, a public library, where the youth team are working to encourage young writers to participate. I’m going to run a couple of workshops for in the Youth Space too.

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, held every November. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days. That works out around 1667 words a day. In any given month I write more than that so it’s manageable. This is the first time, though, that I’ve started a novel intentionally on the first of the month, targeting a finish by the last day. Mostly my novels come in around 60,000 words. Sometimes they spill over to 70,000, even 75,000.

NaNoWriMo is a funny thing, though. Signing up is cool and it’s nifty recording my word count each day as I progress toward that target. They have pep talks and encouragement, but sometimes miss the mark.

The first one I came received, from a well-published and award-winning writer talked about how “writing is hard”. Really? Sorry NaNoWriMo, that’s no pep talk. That sounds discouraging. I did read the whole of the ‘pep’ talk and it wasn’t really to my taste, wasn’t really talking to me.

I would have loved something about how writing is fun. It’s a blast. You’re making up stuff just for the heck of it. Because you can. I would suggest that if it’s hard you might be doing it wrong, or coming at it from the wrong approach. And if it’s not fun, go do something that is.

Last year I railed against an article in the Sunday Star Times* titled if “Writing is torture and you hate it, you might be a writer”. What is the deal out there with so many people writing about how tough writing is? Let’s encourage writers rather than put them off.

*[In previous years I also railed against the T&C of the SSTimes story contest which were a rights grab. I noticed this year that they’ve updated the terms to drop that grab. Good on them, finally. Sorry I didn’t notice this until the contest closed – I guess I’d become cynical about it over the years.]

On a lighter note, I am having a blast writing this novel. It’s fun and different and once it’s had a once-over and a copy-edit and a proof-read, it should be out sometime in the first half of next year.

 

Oh, yes, about next year. I’m looking at publishing a little less. Publishing ten novels (albiet one of them a short novel), a few novellas and numerous short stories this year has been good, but I still need to learn marketing better, and social media [talking about something that’s hard – try social media… oh, what, that’s easy? I wish I found it easy… it doesn’t come naturally to me, so I need to practice I guess šŸ™‚ ]. I do have three novels in various stages of preparation to be released through the first half of the year, likely to be February, April and June. Another focus next year will be collections – I have a whole lot of stories that I’ll gather together. Including all the Cole Wright shorts from this year. Considering the titleĀ No Lack of Courage. Cheesy? Corny? I don’t know. It’ll be nice to have them all together in a single book.

The last novel for this year will be the sixth in the Cole Wright thriller series, Zero Kills. It should be up for preorder soon. The cover it a little different from the original, but matches the story better. (cheeky me, I’ll reuse that original image on another book, maybe next year).

I’ll have another short story – “Junkyard Mornings” up for free in early December for a week or so. You know, marketing and promotion. Reader magnet or what have you.

Thanks for reading.

 

Writing Liquid Machine

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’m deep in the heart of writing Liquid Machine, the ninth book (though fifth in reading order) in the Karnish River Navigations series.

Mostly I think I wait until I’m done with a book before I post about it, but I’m having a blast writing this one, so I thought I just drop by here and give a little update.

A draft cover here, with main art by Ateliersommerland with the background by Bertrandb, both through Dreamstime. I am enjoying getting a relatively consistent look to the series now. I’m still learning design of course (yes I do my own covers), and feel like I’m improving little step by little step. Trying for a unified look, but still based on the original images.

Need a little more contrast in the text there – the dark red on the yellow aren’t doing it for me. Still, there’s time. Liquid Machine should be done soon, and once it’s edited and tinkered with, and the cover is finished, it should be out in the first quarter of next year.

Then, in keeping with the alphabetical titles there, the next one I’ll write will beĀ Rorqual Saitu or similar. Has anyone read T.J. Bass’s 1974 novelĀ The Godwhale? That’s my touchstone there. I love that novel and, without becoming fan fiction, the Karnish canals will have an android rorqual. Am I giving too much away, for a novel that’s not written yet and likely won’t be out for at least a year?

My story “Scour”, which appeared in the December 2016 issue of New Myths magazine, (free to read at the link) is set in the same world. Different characters, but the scour of the title is a relative of the upcoming rorqual novel.

Which leads me neatly into my next little topic here – short stories and novellas which fit into the worlds of my series.

I’ve been doing it a whole lot this year with my Cole Wright series, which I’ve been working on over the last few years. With each novel, I put out a short story too. It’s been real fun writing the stories with the character. Also a good taster if you want a quick read, and want to see if the character and style matches your taste – the stories are cheaper than a cup of coffee (depending where you get your coffee I guess).

Four novels – The Arrival, Measured Aggression, Hide Away, and Slow Burn, and four short stories “Dark Fields”, “Schedule Interruption”, “The Forest Doesn’t Care”, and “The Handler”.

See the Cole Wright page for details on them all.

The cool part of this is that I put the stories up here free to read in the early part of the month when there’s a novel coming out.

September sees book fiveĀ Scorpion Bait released, with “One Little Broken Leg” available free to read from about the fifth. Also available in print and as an ebook.

I guess that’s enough of a ramble from me for now. Go check out “Scour” at New Myths – it’s a little dated now, and I like to think I’ve improved as a writer in the meantime, but it’s a fun read. At least, I think so. Also, free to read.

Thanks for reading

Goldie Origins – Essay on Goldie in From Earth to the Stars

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My novella “Goldie” appeared in the January/February issue of Asimov’s. My copy finally arrived in the mail. Here’s me looking suitably geeky holding it. Yes, I guess I’m proud. Though the March/April issue is now on the bookstore shelves, the issue with Goldie is still available from Amazon.

I wrote a short essay for the Asimov’s blog on the background to writing the novella – Goldie Origins – and that’s up now on From Earth to the Stars (free to read), I think it would appeal to both writers and readers and while it doesn’t contain spoilers, I would suggest that as a background essay, you might want to read the story first.

Ten Years of Writing Every Day

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

On January 1st 2012 I gave myself the challenge to write every day. I’m a writer, after all, so that seems like nothing too challenging.

Over the years, though, despite writing lots, I would still miss some days, perhaps even some weeks. I doubt I missed a month, but maybe somewhere I did.

Still, I didn’t have that regular habit. Today, as I write this, December 31st 2021, marks the ten year milestone. 3653 days (by my calculations – I think there were three leap years in there, 2012, 2016 and 2020) of writing every day.

As part of the challenge, I recorded my word count. Some days I wrote not very much (156 words was, I think my lowest number), some days a little more (one day was over 8000 words), but most days sat somewhere north of 1000. Most years were somewhere over 500,000 words. This last year I set myself the additional goal of writing a minimum of 1600 words a day – and I hit that, for a total of 652,682 words (which is actually over 1700 words/day average – kind of what happens when you set the bar higher, I guess). Not bad. Still not quite up to real pulp speed.

One thing that kept it engaging was the thought that ‘it’s all practice’. Just practising getting better. Practising openings, practising characterization, practising the rule of threes (see what I did there?). With practice, I would hope to get better.

Along the way I’ve published a lot of my works indie – links to a lot of them are here on the website – and gone wide, so you can find me on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Smashwords and Apple.

The big sense that the practising was working, though, came when I started selling to the professional magazines – Asimov’s, Analog, Landfall, etc. Maybe I was getting better. Some writers get there real fast, but for me it’s been more of a matter staying the course. Submitting. Learning to write better. Submitting again. I still want to get better, of course. I have a bunch of courses lined up and a bunch of new goals.

The challenge continues. Writing every day. Aiming now to make it to 10,000 consecutive days. That would be something. But still, 3653 is something in itself.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year.

 

 

If writing is fun, go ahead and write

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

Year after year I railed against the Sunday Star Times short story contest for their clause in the T&C which is a simple rights-grab. I even contacted them directly, receiving a ‘thanks, we’ll consider that point next time’, and resulting in no change at all. I’ve given up discussing it, though, with the contest active, my posts from years back suddenly jump up into my stats list. I hope some of those people read it and consider what writers do – licence intellectual property – and reconsider any thoughts of entering the contest.

I won’t enter.

Now, that out of the way, I can rant about something else, in a way related.

Someone passed to me an article from the Sunday Star Times, from October 10 this year. It’s about one of the judges of the contest (shame on you for exploiting writers), and the headline is “If you hate writing and it’s torture, you might be a writer”

Connor HikingAh, no. There’s just so much wrong with that. If something’s torture, people, don’t do it. Go do something fun. For example, some members of my family love hiking. They go off on these fabulous trips and return weary and exhilarated and with collections of photos of some truly stunning sights. Snow, bush, views forever. I’m envious of some of those experiences. Look at Connor there, in the snow. Loving it.

But me hiking? For hours? In the rain, to reach the hut?

For me, that would be torture. So guess, what? I’m not a hiker. Guess what? When they go hiking, I stay home and write. I stay home and write because writing is a joy. Writing is fun. So I would revise that headline to be more like:

If you love writing and it’s a joy, you might be a writer.

There.

Three New Books

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I have three new books out since I last got around to posting here (I really should post more often, I’m sure, but you know, the pandemic seems to take up a lot of my headspace). Oh, and WordPress, wonderful as they are, have changed their system for writing posts – something very clever called “blocks” which I find exhausting and challenging to wrestle into shape. Ah well.

Anyway, on to the books:

The first book is the YA sci fi novel Pirates, which is the second novel in the Matti-Jay and Dub Adventures series (following Good Ship Hartford, from earlier this year). There will be a third book The Great Wall of Endemo, out later this year. And that will be followed by a fourth, Blast Crater on Endemo. That one will be out sometime next year because I still have to write it.

The second new release is One Degree Below Freezing, which is a kind of companion volume toĀ Landslide Country, which came out a couple of months ago. Both are collections of my contemporary or even literary stories.Ā One Degree Below Freezing is due out on September 20th.

TheĀ  third isĀ Hunting Shellot, another science fiction adventure novel. “Cody Wexland polices the galaxy…” That releases on October 20th. Available for preorder now. I’ll do another post closer to that date (assuming I can wrestle WordPress into shape).

All three books are priced at $5.99 for ebook and between $8.99 and $18.99 for print (One Degree Below Freezing is slim and Hunting Shellot is bigger).Ā 

I may have mentioned earlier about a loss of momentum with writing. This started when I was traveling last year, which is kind of to be expected, with limited time to get words down, but it continued after. And then, as you’ve likely heard, there was a pandemic, which I struggled to wrap my head around, and so the writing still didn’t pick up. I was lucky to hit a thousand words a day (when you’ve been averaging over 1500, that’s a noticeable drop). And that was with the writing of posts for ProWritersWriting.com included in the count.

I’m happy to say that things have ramped themselves up once more. Better than before. I’m back to hitting more like 1600 – 1700 words a day, just on the fiction.

What happened? Well, that’s a longer tale for another post, but the precis is that I’m having another go at writing thrillers with one of those take-no-prisoners action hero drifters. It might be derivative, it might be corny, but the key for me is that I’m having fun. I write to entertain myself, and I wonder if through the trip I lost track of that and ended up writing for some other reason (who knows what?). Now, I’m back to having fun. I’m thinking next year might be the year of the thriller, as I start releasing these books. I’m lousy at marketing, but maybe some readers will find them and be as entertained in the reading as I have been in the writing of them.

Thanks for reading.

Landslide Country – new story in Landfall

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

LandfallThose who know my writing will have noticed that mostly I write Science Fiction. At times I dally with Fantasy, though I’m not then a real heroic fantasy kind of writer, with dragons and swords and wizards hurling wonderful spells around. Sometimes my Science Fiction has elements of Fantasy (as in there’s no scientific reason this is happeningā€¦). I write thrillers too, on occasion.

Sometimes I also dabble with literary fiction. I have a couple of literary novels out, and numerous stories. Over recent years I’ve had a few stories published in Landfall, New Zealand’s premier literary journal, and I’m pleased to have another in the current issue.

landfall contents“Landslide Country” evolved from an exploration of pacing and setting. One of those ones where the setting is almost another character (though of course, that’s up to the reader to determine, rather than the writer). One of the editors noted that things seemed to happen in slow motion, which was cool, something I’d tried to achieve: a micro-focus on detail, while maintaining the tension and arc.

There’s quite a line up of great writers in the issue. I’m humbled to be in such great company.

Landfall is available from booksellers and through subscription. Many New Zealand libraries have subscriptions, so you can find it on the shelves there.

_____

Not sure that anyone might be interested, but mostly when I write I’m not sure where the story is going to go. At least in that moment when I’m sitting down to type in those first few words.

Mostly it ends up as science fiction, but the process is no different for literary. It’s all just words on the page. The story in my head coming out so that hopefully the reader gets the same story in their head.

I like to think that I bring the same level of craft to all my work, whether literary or more commercial.

The Quiet Year

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

 

 

I haven’t posted for a little while here. I’m looking at various things about why that might be. Few enough of you read this anyway (I like to think you’re a select group), that likely you don’t miss me when I’m gone. That’s fine, there are many many worthy blogs worth reading, and this one is more about my stream of thought, or else trying to sell you my books.

About that last one, that’s another thing I’m looking at; that my books sell few copies. There are some very obvious ones, such as the only place I mention that they’re for sale is here, that I don’t have a mailing list, I don’t send out for reviews, some of my covers are pretty lousy, as are some of my blurbs, and, yes, some of those early books are probably pretty lame too.

If I want to sell books I need to up my game. I’m competing in a very big competition here and there are many people way smarter than me at the contest.

So, I’m having a quieter year. Fewer publications, fewer blog posts here, fewer submissions. Perhaps it’s just a regathering of energy.

I am still writing about as much. Fifteen hundred words a day on average. And I have taken on writing a weekly blog post for the Professional Writers Writing site, which takes up some writing time. I would also say writing for that is giving me some reflection time too.

I’m writing there for other writers, about things that I see as good ways to pursue writing and publishing. I don’t know it all, by a long shot, but over the years I figure that I’ve learned some things that might help others along the road.

I am also making sketchy plans. Mostly for how I’m going to get this volume of work out to the public in a way that might garner me more than a few readers here and there. I am a slow learner, I guess, in terms of how to attract readers, but I figure I’ll get there.
One way is writing better books. And I’m feeling confident that my books are getting better. When I reflect on my early indie books – things like Rotations or The Tunnel – I really see the apprenticeship things I was doing. But also books from last year – The Map Maker of Morgenfeld or Raven Rising – still feel like steps along the way.
And I have so much more to learn.

A second good thing about participating in the Pro Writers Writing site is that there’s a collective camaraderie happening there (some might say, as my father used to mutter, ‘little more than a mutual admiration society’). I guess that being around other writers has got to be good, right?

You bet.

So yes, a quiet year. Tinkering away on big plans for next year. More books from my series. Maybe a new series. Maybe some new standalone books.

We’ll see.

Oh, speaking of standalone, I must say how much I enjoyed Alan Dean Foster’s novel Relic (not an affiliate link). Foster has been around for a long while now and I’ve read many of his books, both the media tie-ins and from his Commonwealth series, and others. For me this was a real treat. Clever, affecting and powerful. I recommend it.

One thing I am working on is the sequel to my middle-grade SF adventure novel Blue Defender. Red Alliance should be out in a month or two. I will update here when that happens.

 

I’ll be contributing a weekly post on Professional Writers Writing

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

cropped-RJS-logo-1100x190I’m honored to have been invited by writer Harvey Stanbrough to join a group of Professional Writers in contributing to a daily blog post on aspects of the writing life.
Along with five other writers, I’ll write a weekly post on the trials and thrills of being a writer. As well as the six regulars, there’s a small group of others who will rotate posting on a Sunday.

Pro Writers Writing Blog

Now, I kind of feel like I ought to be holding my hand up for having imposter syndrome. I do have numerous professional publications to my name, but I’m still working to figure out how to actually do this writing thing for my livelihood. There are many out there so much more qualified than I to talk about being a professional writer.
Still, I hope that my posts might offer some pointers for younger writers still coming along. Perhaps even for some readers who might like some insights into my writing process.

My posts go out each Monday (effectively Tuesday here in New Zealand). You can read them here.

The other writers and days are:

And the Sunday crew will be:

It’s been fun writing the first few of the blogs (trying to make sure I’m ahead). I find myself writing differently to the way I do here. In a way I feel like I’m finding out my own writing process as I write about it.

Anyway, please stop by the site if you feel so inclined. There are free email subscriptions ready to go if that’s your thing too.

False starts and new beginnings

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Blue Defender CoverWriting about a work in progress again here. Maybe that’s going to be my new thing for a while.

I’ve started work on Red Alliance, the sequel to Blue Defender. I got about seven or eight pages in, a couple of thousand words and into the second chapter, and wasn’t feeling it. It felt like hard work. Like I was trying too hard. Trying to get everything covered. After all, it’s a sequel; need to cover all that old ground in a general way. It got lumbering and dull.

Missing an important element there.

Story.

So, I started off again. Started with the story. Not with the old story, but with the new. Those critical details started working their way in piece by piece. And now it’s starting to feel like it’s taking on a life of its own.

That’s good.

For me, anyway. Because now it’s fun to write, rather than being an obligation.
And if something’s fun for me to write, I’m guessing it will be fun for readers to read.