Reading
Since I’m in the middle of reading 2 massive books, there isn’t a lot to report on my progress. I’ve been enjoying the stories in Dangerous Women for the most part. I like that not all of the stories are fantasy or scifi. There’s crime stories and historical fiction as well. I’ll continue to chip away at this book slowly, as I usually do with short story collections.
I’m still in the middle of The Bear & The Serpent as well. This book has been slow-going for me, mostly because I’ve been focusing on Dangerous Women. I will say that so far, this installment in the series is shaping up to be better than the first.
I’ve started listening to Empire of Dirt by Philip C Quaintrell on audio. This is the second book in the The Echoes Saga, a self-published (but popular) epic fantasy series. I listened to the first book last year and thought it was just okay and almost gave up on the series. I started listening to this second book on a whim while I was working, wanting some easy listening.
His writing leaves a lot to be desired. It’s pretty simplistic, and formulaic. If he submitted one of his chapters to my critique group, it would be torn apart. That being said, some of the characters are pretty cool, and I like the plot, even though that too is formulaic and tropey. Sometimes you just want something that goes down easy, though.
Writing
I once again didn’t make progress on the novel, and I figured out why: I don’t have any desire to do the research required to write an accurate science fiction novel. It’s a pretty blunt realization, but there it is. I have enough of a barebones plot that I could turn this into a fantasy instead of a space opera, though I might just park this idea for now.
I have always been interested in space travel, and I watch a lot of documentaries on astrophysics. 90% of my television consumption is science fiction (Star Trek, The Expanse, Farscape, etc). You would think that this would make me the perfect candidate to write a science fiction novel, and maybe it does, but I haven’t written a full novel manuscript yet (I’ve had 3 aborted attempts so far). I might just not be ready for the work that would be required for this. Yet.
Don’t worry; I have a few other novel outlines I started. Let’s see if those bear fruit.
On the short story front, I’m going through rounds of edits on my Magi story. It’s done, but it needs some polishing.
My critique group looked at the final installment on my story about the recovering assassin in Jakarta. There was almost universal criticism on the ending. They said it wasn’t satisfying, and they hated the main character (so one goal of the story was at least achieved). The strongest critique came from two people who wanted me to write the story from another character’s perspective, as they said that was the more interesting story. I agree with them, after reading through their comments. I have another story I wrote years ago that I’m trying to rewrite from another character’s perspective, so I think we’ve hit upon a theme here.
It’s apparently pretty common for a less-experienced writer to write stories from the perspective of a character who is merely observing events. It’s how the writer sees themself, so they do it in their fiction. Problem is, it never makes for an interesting story. I thought I learned that lesson already, but apparently not.
Either way, this past week told me that I still have a ton of work to do if I want to be a better writer.
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What have you been reading and/or writing this week? Let me know in the comments below.
The Night Bulletin 