Friday 30 March 2012

A Pantone teacup and storm therein.

I've been 1st  draft editing, then 1st edit editing, last night I went as far as a 1st edit edit, I think that’s enough for now, no really. Put down the iPad and sleep.
No, don’t comment on an authors Facebook page, no don’t play any more ‘Where’s my water’ on your phone, sleep damn you!


I wonder if writers (conscious effort made not to self-inflatingly include the phrase ‘other writers’ as I’m clearly not in that fraternity) have an edit limit? How many edits do you stop at before realising the manuscript is completely different… Well I promise that I will stop at 1st edit editing from now on, otherwise I may end up driving myself a little insane.

Progress update à Three 40k shorts are now complete, I’ve yet to do the synopsis as I already loathe them, thus far I’ve only seen them as a necessary evil that drains creative juices. I wonder whether they are less required when you hit the ‘big time’. Hmm.

Anyway before the 10th of April I aim to have all three edited, all three synopsised and have chosen my WHAM sample text for the submissions department. After that? Well, in keeping with the self imposed quota I’ve set myself I’ll probably pick another thread to tug from my brain and develop it. That’s really where my copyright infringing title comes in.

So in order to keep things rather formulaic and keep a semi-regular method to my forays into writing I’ve begun compiling an ‘ideas list’. That is literally as it sounds. It’s a rather short 2 page document at the moment, stored and accessible online that contains ideas that might have arisen during everyday situations or daydreaming that I’ve felt worth keeping. Unformed nuggets or snippets of an eventually fully formed idea. There are some (in my eyes) absolute winners in there so I’m not even going to give a second example of one, sorry. I try to add whatever may strike me as being particularly poignant or expandable. Some as far as I know aren’t too far from the canonical lines that I try to keep within. Some I simply don’t know whether they have been attempted at all, reading a recent blog by Aaron-Dembski Bowden I’m reassured that the fluff nazi’s will indicate whether they should not be.

Link the meandering thread of thought to the damn title then Mark, come on.

Ah yes sorry. Its early, I’m tired due to editing edits. My tea is hot and brewed perfectly by me to my own exacting standards (come near it and I’ll knife you!) and it reminded me that a while ago I had my ‘that could work’ moment when brewing the aforementioned caffeine.
Somehow, someday I will have a paragraph or segment whereby the curling, merging of milk and tea is directly indicative of a characters own mindset. A bunker or canteen, a strung-out adrenaline or stim-hiked metabolism after frantic fights, the warm mug and the representative storm therein. It could just work. It doesn’t have to be a Pantone teacup in the 40k universe however, that could cause a cynic-suicide.

For now, I have my tea, its early and I realise that I really should try some good old Warhammer fiction to flex and/or demonstrate and experiment. Something easy and familiar but sufficiently dark and grimy as well.

Mmmm, tea. British much?

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