Fri, 16 May 2003
Moments of realisation
I've spent most of the week not getting to grips with the next
novel. It needs to be finished by December, but it's a lot
bigger than "Glasshouse" -- target length is not more than
200,000 words -- and I wrote the first three chapters back in
January/February. So I've been trying to pick them up and
figure out why I feel uneasy about them in between succumbing
to a bad cold.
The moment of realisation: say you've got three alternating plot threads
set in different parallel universes (like me). If you kick off the
novel with alternating chapters, and #1 consists of a head-butt and #2
is a knee in the goolies, it is a bad idea for #3 to be a Vicar's tea
party. I speak metaphorically -- describing the tone, not the content,
for no goolies are kneed or heads butted -- but chapter #3 is
limp.
(Got to fix that. Heh. Where did I leave my anti-RSI gloves
...?)
Oh yeah. In other news, my agent read and really liked "Glasshouse".
So I guess it will probably be my next SF novel after "The
Iron Sunrise" (which is now on an editor's desk at Ace,
slouching towards its publishing epiphany some time next
summer), and I'm one relieved scribbler. It's always
hard to tell if what feels like a mad creative fit is genuine
mad creativity or just arrant self-obsessive nonsense, but
it sounds like I didn't completely lose touch with reality
last month.
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