Tag: A distant horn

“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update – September 26, 2013

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Hey everybody, what’s happening? I’m in that weird stage between not wanting to work on stuff, not wanting to watch anything, not really wanting to chat with anyone, and trying to stay up even though I am yawning like crazy. Seems to be the perfect time to write a NOVEL EDITING UPDATE!

So, where are we? A month and a half ago, I had just finished my first pass at cleaning up the vomit-draft of my debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. I spoke about how I was gonna print that sucker out by the end of July and read it line for line and mark it up with a red pen. Well, I can tell you now that I have indeed done that! So yay, brownie points for that!

Even though I’d JUST read through the whole thing, I still didn’t feel like I was done yet (ahhhh hell nah), so, like, at 4 in the morning one day, I made a self-published proof copy on Createspace (including a terrible, generic cover), and ordered it before I realized it was probably a bad idea. To help me see the story as fresh, I decided to “search and replace” all character and location names with completely new ones. If I was reading about different people, I might be able to see things a little differently. (The only name I couldn’t change was the town of “Led”, which, upon first attempts, changed EVERY “led” to whatever the hell name I had cooked up, leading to words like “stumbled” and “grumbled” to be “stumbGondor” or “grumbGondor.” My 11-pm self might have caught that, but my 4 AM self? Not a chance.)

Do I care enough to fix them?

Anyway, the proof came a couple days later (early!) and I started reading it right away. I felt like I NEEDED to have the story in my hands, in a BOOK form, in the font it’s going to be in (Garamond, please!). You can look at stuff on screens all you want, but you won’t know what it looks like until you have that shit right in front of you. And this time, while reading it, I would not do so much of a “prose” pass, but more of an overall tone/enjoyment pass. How was the flow? Was I having a good time? Was I not having a good time in some parts? Does it ever get boring? Is it polished enough to be presentable?

When studios test television shows, they’ll have people watch them with these little dials. The dials, which people move either up (for happy) or down (for not happy) throughout the episode, represent people’s enjoyment. This way, producers and studios can see exactly in real time where the audience is having a good time and where the show might be lacking. Does the quality dip here? And if it dips, then why? Well, since I seem to be a crazy freaking perfectionist (and have a lot of time), I DID THIS MYSELF by chapter. Let’s take a look!

As you can see, both the “quality of writing” and the “enjoyment” lines (I forgot which ones are which) dip around the middle before going back up to being fun again. Even though none of my friends cared about this when they’d read it, I think I might have the middle a littttttle too dark than is probably acceptable in the current story. The change in tone kind of felt like watching the goofy Batman and Robin, then switching to The Dark Knight for a second, then back to Batman and Robin. Tonally, it kind of messes things up. So I’ll be looking forward to CHANGING THAT TOO, when I go through this thing for a third time. (Note: My book is hopefully better than Batman and Robin.) But seriously, the story got a little nasty in the middle there. Maybe I put out all my editing frustrations into it, I dunno. Either way, I traveled that narrative and tonal path and know it wasn’t right, so yeah, at least I know it’s wrong.

Well this is getting pretty long, so I guess I should totally wrap it up. I could keep going on forever and ever, but you probably have your own novels to get writing (so get typing!). So yeah, I’m sort of avoiding the big cave-troll in the room here, but I think, there were, on a couple occasions, places where I said this book would be released November 1, 2013. Hmm. . .

When I saw Timothy Zahn speak about “Star Wars: Scoundrels” last year, he said the publishing houses take about nine months after a manuscript is delivered to find all the typos and do all the cleaning and get the artwork, etc, and publish the thing. I thought to myself Hey, nine months, that sounds doable! I mean, think about it, it’s a whole NINE months! But then, as I started editing, I realized that writers’ primary jobs is WRITING. And, in addition to that, they have editors and all that junk that do the crappy, typo-hunting stuff for them (at least that’s how it works, right?) So, nine months for me isn’t really enough time to finish everything because, y’know, I have a full-time day job that isn’t writing about fun goofy adventure stuff. (At least not yet :P)

As seen here, Timothy Zahn’s day job is actually “astronaut”

I realized, that over the course of nine months, I will have spent basically 1710 hours either at work or driving to and from. That equals basically TWO MONTHS AND ELEVEN DAYS taken out of my editing schedule. I mean, sure, I didn’t really start editing until May (instead of February. . .) but I’MNOTTALKINGABOUTTHATRIGHTNOW. I guess what I’m trying to say is I won’t finish this thing in whatever 30-some-odd days are left. The way I see it, you guys are all my friends I’ve invited to a dinner party, and my novel represents the homemade burgers (or chicken or noodles) I am cooking. My responsibility, as a cook and friend, is to make sure the chicken and burgers are cooked thoroughly, lest you get all sick and hate me forever and never come over for more dinner parties. As much as a cook can’t serve you semi-pink burgers, nor can I, as an author, deliver to you a semi-cooked novel. Gotta make this sure this book “al dente”, y’know what I’m saying?

Anyway, onto pass number three (million!) Thanks for being interested and patient. The adventure will come, I promise! Let’s shoot for 2014!

-Casey

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“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update – July 20, 2013

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**note: The featured image is not the official cover. I Googled some fantasy stuff and made it in like 5 minutes. Looks kinda cool, though. . .***

Hello there, everyone! It has come to my attention that I have, as of this year’s past six and a half months, written only FIVE articles to post on here. I do mean to write more, but a certain DEBUT NOVEL seems to be taking up all my time. (Like, seriously, all my time!) To not disappear completely, I’ll write something here and tell you how the whole editing process is going.

Editing! . . .yay . . .

Over the past couple weeks (or months…or years?), I have made massive headway on my revisions to the original text, which was written for National Novel Writing Month 2010. That’s right, I wrote 50,000 words in twenty-something days, which means that pretty much all the original text is unusable. What’s that quote? “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”? The writing equivalent would not doubt be “Write in haste, re-write the whole fucking thing at leisure”. In addition to writing a like Cheetah on catnip, I really had no idea what the in-world setting was. I was just flying by the seat of my pants. The world mostly wouldn’t be established until the second book which (which I wrote the next year),which meant that I had to go back and FIX everything. You’d never guess, but if you’re backstory changes, so does a lot of your current story. (Like, everything. . .)

As of two nights ago, I finished my first pass of the entire novel. Well, what I mean to say is that I reached the end of the original text. I still have to go back and add in some SEVEN new little scenes which are either new or are complete re-writes. But that shan’t take long. I’ve contractually obligated myself to have a final, printed, double-spaced, and bound copy of the draft by the end of this month. If I fail to do so, I owe my roommate twenty bucks. (8 bottles of Charles Shaw wine…) After that, it’ll be onto the second pass, where I’ll read the whole damn thing AGAIN, but this time off the printed page.

Hopefully with less edits.

After fixing the second pass, then it’s off to a couple pre-determined beta readers, which’ll be very exciting, for instead of just rambling about the book to friends, they’ll actually get to read it and see how it is. It’ll be good to finally have some objective eyes looking at it, too.

If there’s one thing I have learned about editing/revising a previous work, it’s that it’s an IMMENSE amount of work. Sometimes even more work than actually doing the initial writing itself. I feel like I went into this process with the domestic-care-metaphor assumptions of straightening up a room. Just a little messy. Straighten this up, straighten this out, right? Well, as I started cleaning, I soon realized I was gonna have to build a whole fucking addition to the house. And then I realized that my house wasn’t just a simple one, but three separate ones, and I need to plan and build bridges between them that were structurally sound and wouldn’t crumble under their own weight. The amount of work, to be completely honest, kind of blindsided me.

In order to help me with the crazy task of planning the set-ups, pay-offs, and callbacks of an estimated 180,000-word trilogy, I wrote a long, detailed summary of all three books. The super-summary itself turned out to be some 6,000 words. And that’s not including the some 70-year chronology I included, that detailed the backstory of the entire thing and all the characters since birth and. . .hey, what are you doing with that straight jacket?

J.R.R. Tolkien is known for saying that The Lord of Rings, the massive sequel to the shorter The Hobbit, “grew in the telling”. While I’ve always let my stories and music/all creative stuff take a somewhat organic route to forming (because I am a creative hippie), I had no idea that the novel I started writing for fun in November 2010 would EXPLODE to be a full-fledged trilogy with a long backstory. But the most interesting thing about that fact is that the story CAN’T be anything else. If it wanted to be a short, simple story, then it would be. The story’s really calling the shots here, I’m just writing it all down. I feel like the story itself knows what is best for it, and all I can do is obey its commands.

“Write a new introduction for the company’s arrival to Falkenbir, or else!”

This practice of obeying the creative work reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, this one from Rammstein’s lead guitarist Richard Kruspe. Here he’s talking about music, but I think it works for any type of creative work: “You are part of a machinery, and the music lets you know where it wants to go, which direction it wants to take. . .It is the case that when you have a song, it lets you know if the song should be stately, aggressive or rhythmic – whatever. It always tells you, and when you recognize that, when you are sensitized to this and recognize this, you can’t do anything wrong. We [Rammstein] got this wrong in the beginning. We thought we should try to press into a certain direction. You can’t do that. You can only follow.”

And follow, indeed! Even if it means re-routing your entire story and writing thousands of words of new material (which also means throwing away thousands of words of old material), you gotta listen to your story so it can be the best it can be. I probably should have been writing in “A Distant Horn” while writing this, but oh well, this was a nice, and most welcome, break.

Oh yeah, and the book is about a perilous quest to find a great warrior that can defeat a ancient, super-evil Lich. Didn’t think I had mentioned that yet.

Stay tuned for more updates!

-Casey

~MORE GOOD READS FROM THIS SITE~

Menneisyyden Laulut: One Year Later and Album III news (05.18.2013)
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“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013 (o5.09.2013)
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James Bond Countdown: #12: The World is Not Enough (03.14.2013)
~
Listen to the first six songs from the new Fadenfreude album! (03.07.2013)

“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013

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Hello everyone, just checking in here with some news about my upcoming self-published debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. Don’t worry, I am still planning to release it on November 1st, although my progress with the editing is going a lot slower (repeat: A LOT SLOWER) than I earlier anticipated. That’s all right, though. I was pretty good in college about spending entire days in the library or the editing bay to meet fast-approaching deadlines. So far with this project, I haven’t had to do anything like that, but have been showing it a bit more attention lately (instead of giving it to those pesky music projects).

As of now, I am some 29,000 words into my first pass of the edit, which is pretty much half way. If I want to do ANOTHER PASS (which my perfectionist self DOES want to do, ugh), then I am 25 percent done with just doing passes before handing it off to my trusty editor friend, who’ll hopefully point out all the typos and none of the plot holes. 25 percent, yikes.

I bet you probably guessed this already, but let me tell you, editing a book is no easy task. Each of my James Bond Countdown articles averages around 2,500-3,000 words, despite my best efforts to cut them down (just love those movies, I guess). Those roughly take me half a day to edit, clean up, and come up with pictures. While I won’t have to find pictures for “A Distant Horn,” it’s around 57,000 words, which means it’s like TWENTY James Bond articles, which is a HUGE amount of work. For some reason I thought editing a book was going to be easy. Just fix a thing here, fix a sentence there. Oh, but wait, I forgot, I CHANGED THE ENTIRE BACKSTORY. Oops!

The work is fine in itself, but a lot of times when I have free time now, I want to do absolutely nothing at all. After your day job, you don’t really want to come home to that unfinished riff or that unedited chapter, that has been waiting there all day with an expectant look because you didn’t work on it YESTERDAY, either. Sometimes you just wanna cook your sweet potato and watch “Frasier” all night, you know what I’m saying? And despite my temporary disinterest in doing this work, I know that I HAVE TO if I want the end result to be as good as it can. It’s like being your own boss, but the only worker is you, and lazy, and doesn’t wanna do anything.

I’ll start editing after this episo. . .season, I swear.

So the clock is ticking for “A Distant Horn”. I have 175 days until my projected release of the book (thank goodness I didn’t make any more promises this year). Will I be able to make it? All I have to do is finish the first pass, do the second pass, draw up the map nicely, give it off to an editor, go over it again, make sure everything is perfect, then hand it off to my graphic designer friend, get a cover from the artist (is he still in the USA?), make the pdf, order a couple proofs to see if its good and then publish it. TOO EASY!

Thank goodness I at least have the first draft of the map, which I decided to draw up at work over the course of a couple days. Marion, the crazy, fantastic world in which “A Distant Horn” and it’s two sequels (DON’T EVEN WANNA THINK ABOUT THOSE ATM!) was finally being realized. It’ll have to be re-drawn on the computer, of course (hire someone to do that?), but I think it’s a pretty nice first draft. Check it out and stay tuned!

Click me to enlarge!

Oh, and please, wish me luck. I’ll need it!

Sincerely,

Casey Poma

STATE OF THE UNION 2013, or “I’M BACK!”

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Hello everyone, I have returned! I know that for all of you that’s either great news or the greatest news, so I’m gonna dive right in, talk about 2012 a little, give you a heads-up about all I am doing creatively this year, and go over my horoscope for 2013!

It’s very safe to say that the last quarter of 2012 was a complete bust. Well, not totally. I did start a really cool job with lots of chill people, so that was positive! Having no internet for a month was a drag, trying to get it fixed was a drag, having your eight-year old computer break while trying to fix it was a drag, and then having my friend’s “it’s-so-bad-I-don’t-want-it” laptop break completely was a drag too. Like, Jesus. Luckily I was able to squeeze out my Nano before they both died completely, but still, reverting back to 1991 was a pretty hard thing to do.

Beside these technological troubles, I moved during the Holidays, which is the absolute worst idea in the history of time. Do not do this, ever. Working so hard made me feel like a real Scrooge, what with not being much in the Christmas spirit and all. Much to my surprise, I didn’t even get around to watch A Garfield Christmas (see…this is why I NEED Internet), but at least I snagged an Advent Calendar and a Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town DVD right before Christmas.

Fuck yea!

But anyway, enough bitching about old equipment breaking down and living in the 1990’s and having to move heavy objects on my days off. It’s a new year! And with that new year, it’s time to give you a taste of what you can expect from me.

CREATIVE PLAN: 2013

There’s a couple people I am associated with who seem to be creative workhorses. Every other day, they seem to be developing or releasing something. Some have written like a billion scripts and made 100 videos. Others connect with local artists and collaborate on stuff. I would love to be as prolific as them, but seem to come out with (a lot) less work. This could be attributed that I want everything to be PERFECT, that I feel I have to do everything myself, my whole “let creative works simmer for as long as they need to, man” mentality, or just plain laziness. Either way, you’re not gonna get much from Factory Poma this year (at least not that I can foresee).

Another diagnosis for this creative slow-cooking could be that I absolutely hate editing and tweaking. I can’t stand it.It’s so damn boring. And everyone who edits stuff wants money for it. (How dare they?!) Since I am too frugal (cheap) to pay them, I have to edit things myself, which turns me into Mr. Unreachable when my unpolished projects come calling. I’d much rather write something new than edit and tweak something else, but alas, no one’s gonna read an unpolished book on my shelf, nor the five other ones I would write after that. I considered taking this year off of creating things, and having an “edit” year, where all I do is make my stuff nice and shiny. I doubt that will happen (especially since FAWM, Scriptfrenzy, and NANO are happening again. . .), but we’ll see.

WRITING

As I just stated, editing is so damn annoying. While I have some new ideas cooking around for what I want to write this year, I’m hard-pressed to get “A Distant Horn”, the first part of a fantasy comedy trilogy, polished and self-published with the release date of NOVEMBER 1. That’s right, people, “A DISTANT HORN” coming out November 1, 2013. I even told my roommate that he was to keep me on track about it, so…I hope he remembers. I have no idea when the other two parts would come out, because by that time I’ll probably have another billion projects. Just saying, “A Distant Horn” coming out in November! I really need to get someone to draw the cover. Hmm. . .

Yes, definitely need a better cover..

And oh yea, maybe I’ll keep that Bond countdown going.

MUSIC

Oh, music. You’re so much harder to make than just writing shit. If you’re looking for a Linnalapsi release this year, don’t hold your breath. These babies take about two years to come out, and seeing as I released one last year in May, you’ll have to wait til May 2014 for the next folk metal installment. I’m just going to polish the songs I have now, fuck around with the recording process, and cross my fingers that it will turn some more heads than the last album did. I don’t want to get TOO into the details of what I’m doing with album III (I can explain all that later in another post), but yea, most likely, no Linnalapsi this year.

On another note, I probably will do another Fadenfreude album, which will all be composed during the month of February for February Album Writing Month. If everything goes to plan, it will be released probably in the following months and put up for free (and have some awesome songs on it). The Fadenfreude album I released last year, “Die Bäckerei ist geschlossen“, has actually grown on me this past year, so maybe I’ll take this next one a little more seriously (or at least draw a more attention-grabbing cover).

So, Linnalapsi, no, Fadenfreude, yes.

FILM/VIDEO

Oh, my first love. It’s amazing how you can’t make film or video without a good HD camera or equipment or a good editing program or ANYTHING. I’m blessed to choose hobbies that are so fucking expensive, so in the downtime, Ralph and I have been developing ideas for our two little projects: Grape-Flavored Waterslides: Season 2 and our horror comedy feature Die-Ing Pan. We have a bunch of episodes planned for GFW: Season 2 and would plan to release on once a week (or something) for a number of weeks (we haven’t decided how long the season is yet). Once we get a camera (or borrow one), we’ll start shooting away, but for now, all the episodes are on the starting line, ready to run. I would most likely expect these around the end of summer or Winter if they end up getting off the ground at all.

Die-ing Pan, our murdering frying pan movie, is still in the development phase, but don’t worry! We have a production schedule on our fridge, so nothing can stop us now. We plan to start writing the movie on March 1 and have at least the first draft by April 30 (I could do this for Scriptfrenzy, eh?) We’ve set aside the whole summer for location scouting and finding actors (friends) and plan to start shooting in the Winter. Our projected release date is Winter 2014 because hey, movies take a long time to make, bro. And yes, we did film a teaser before we even started writing the script, but doesn’t that make us edgy?

HOROSCOPE

This picture is lame

Now that that’s out of the way, I can get to my favorite part of these little annual updates: My yearly horoscope. What will 2013 have in store for the Ram this year? My commentary provided in parenthesis:

2013 Horoscope (as provided by Cafeastrology.com)

~begin~

Your Aries 2013 Horoscope points to areas of life that are destined to expand and grow. (Sounds promising).

Until June 25, 2013, your communications continue to increase and expand. Your ability and desire to express yourself is greater now, and your personal interests grow. (Who’s writing this shit?) Good fortune with vehicles, transportation, through siblings, and with the communications industry can be experienced during this cycle that started in June 2012. (What positive cycle? The last part of 2012 sucked).

Potential negatives: Taking on too many daily activities (better stay home from work!), communications (what is that anyway?), new interests (how is that negative?), and learning endeavors or studies can be a problem now. Don’t overload your plate. (Ooh, I’ll keep that in mind). The more excessive tendencies of this transit are more likely to be experienced from January to March 2013.

However, for the most part, you are likely to enjoy more opportunities through your communications (“communications”?) and contact with others during this cycle in 2013. You could make new friends and feel more connected or part of a group this year. (Ok…) You might find that you travel less or not at all, and that you are busier locally, in the first half of 2013 while Jupiter is in Gemini. Your thinking is more upbeat, positive, and forward-looking, (upbeat and positive?) and so is the way you express yourself. In fact, this is an excellent time for improving your communication (there we go again with “communication”) skills and your general attitude or mindset. There can be opportunities through meetings, courses, teaching, and connections made in the neighborhood or through siblings. You are a great storyteller and teacher during this period. (Finally something I wanna hear!)

From June 25th onward, your inner world, family life, domestic activities, and domestic arrangements begin to expand and grow. Relations with family can be more pleasant and supportive. (That’ll be nice) You might move to a new home, likely a bigger one, or expand real estate holdings (Yea, I have a lot of those…). Family itself can expand, or there might be an addition to your home. (What? Who?) Some might take on a roommate for example, or bring more friends to their home. Entertaining in the home can be emphasized, if that is something that makes you happy. (Only if there’s beer). Otherwise, you can experience a stronger sense of peace and privacy in your home life. Generally speaking, more positive energy is brought to your domestic world, and long-standing problems with family might be put to bed. Do be careful about overextending yourself with home improvements (no problem there), or larger accommodations that cost more (no problem there again). Your personal life tends to overshadow your professional life or material activities during this cycle.

On a more psychological level, you might increase your confidence in yourself and feelings of security during this period. (Yay!)

Some of you could become closer with in-laws during this period. (What? I didn’t know I was married yet.) Some Aries might welcome friends from overseas into their homes. (Hmm..)

Potential negatives: Excessive money spent on home improvement, too much emphasis on the home to the point that other areas of your life suffer, or some unwillingness to expand your horizons (I’m an INFP, I never expand my horizons). Avoiding or escaping responsibilities is more possible in August and September. However, July and December bring stronger energy for enjoying the most positive effects of this transit. (What? This is so vague) For the most part, you are likely to feel emotionally secure and supported during this cycle. This is a time of nest-feathering. (Of what?)

This influence is with you until July 2014.

(What a shitty horoscope! What did that even say?)

~end~

Well, there you have it, folks. What would you want to see released this year?