NickNoWriQuart - One K, Once A Day

I stopped blogging regularly about my writing a while ago, felt I was running out of new/readable ways to say the same things - certainly, nothing I couldn't say on Twitter more concisely. However, I'm embarking on a Big Writing Exercise shortly, so I'm throwing it a post.

Because, yes, it's autumn, the end of the year is poking its head over the door, leaves are brown and it's cold in a Winter-Preview kinda way, all that can only mean one thing - Writers Doing Calendar-Based Word Count Challenges!

Obviously, I'm a little ahead of everyone else here - most are waiting for November to embark upon the epic NaNoWriMo quest. But I'm doing something a little different and I'll now attempt to explain it...

Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke!

Like a bolt from the blue, the Hobson & Choi Podcast is back on the scene!

I've moving house in the near future and will be without wifi, so internet content from the Nick Bryan/H&C Media Empire will be thin on the ground. But before disappearing into irrelevant meatspace for a bit, I recorded an interview for Writers' Huddle, a subscription-only writing forum run by the excellent author and blogger Ali Luke.

Listen now to hear me talk about H&C, serialisation, self-publishing, writing characters different from yourself and whether I ever considered putting Hobson & Choi into first person. Plus a little news about the status of upcoming H&C books in the outro.

So, download the episode here using the power of browser rightclicking!

Or use the embeddy player below, or if you're faithful enough to still be subscribed to H&C in iTunes, it should be there too...

Hobson & Choi Podcast Special - Writers' Huddle Interview with Ali Luke! by Nick Bryan on Mixcloud

Thanks to Ali for hosting the chat and letting me put it out to the wider internet. Be sure to check out her blog at Aliventures and her own self-published fantasy book Lycopolis. Plus she's on Twitter (obviously) as @aliventures.

If this interview got you interested in my Hobson & Choi darkly comic crime books, you can read more about them at HobsonAndChoi.com. Sounds by zagi2 on Freesound as before.

And that, for now, might really be it for a wee while...

Five ways my book plans collapse upon contact with the real world - A Metaphorical Disaster Movie

At this stage, I've written a lot of novels, and started even more than that. Every single one started with a plan of some form - sometimes a couple of ideas scribbled on a pad, other times thousands of words of ideas, followed by a chapter-by-chapter outline and then individual scene breakdowns within those chapters.

But either way, the plans always come a little unstuck when exposed to the writing process. As I've been doing a lot of first drafting lately, so spending a heaping helping of my time dealing with plans not corresponding to prose.

So, to inform and reassure anyone in a similar place, I've broken my Plan Vs Reality problems into an internet-friendly Buzzfeed-style five-point list. Yes, only a thin membrane separates some of these feelings, but I've spent enough time staring at my plans in despair to know they're all distinct. If you've experienced all five of these, you can award yourself a prize when you reach the bottom!

SERIAL KILLER - Hobson & Choi webserial conclusion contemplation

As you’ve hopefully struggled to miss if you follow my various web presences in the last few days, the last chapter of the Hobson & Choi webserial on JukePop debuted on the site, bringing the whole 1.75 years of its life to a close.

The story of Hobson and Choi themselves will continue in the self-published book editions, the second of which comes out in January. However, future cases will be written in longer chapters, entirely with the books in mind. I thought the loss of week-to-week serialisation from my life warranted a few words.

Pros And Cons Of Reading Your Writing Out Loud (or Why I Was Talking To Myself, Honest)

From eleven o'clock yesterday morning until seven in the evening, I sat at my desk alone, reading out the first sixty percent of my current nearly-finished work in progress. (The second book of the Hobson & Choi series, since you asked.)

For a couple of years now, the read-out-loud has been the final step of any work before I show it to other people. I vocalise the entire text to an empty house. If you don't do this, I'm not going to tell you it's essential (because different strokes for different folks and I would never tell you how to stroke yourself), but if you've never even tried it, here's how it works for me.

Hobson & Choi - Updates & End-dates

Hobson & Choi, my ongoing webseries about two mismatched detectives and their weird adventures in a horribly corrupt modern London, has experienced a strong few months. We've done well on Jukepop Serials, the first collected book edition has come out and also put in a strong showing. So since we had a big positive announcement today, it seemed a good time to do a general H&C post, talk about stuff, make some declarations.

Hopefully it's all ultimately going to be good news. But be warned: your emotions may vary. Let's start with the really obvious flag-waving upbeat section.

Draft Four The Win? - The Novel Continues

I've just finished draft four of the fantasy novel I've been writing for around 18 months. This is obviously an achievement - not a top-rated one worthy of a party, but a clear rung up the ladder.

So what does finishing a fourth draft actually mean? How many more am I planning? Do I even know?

Well.

Novels By Numbers - How I Killed My Precise Book Structure

My novel - the urban fantasy one I am currently editing after intensive beta reading - has a very strict structure. Three parts (because I love the three act structure), each containing seven chapters (because... I'm not actually sure). I laid it out like that when I started, and have stuck to it ever since.

In my last edit, a few conclusive plot developments got pushed off the end of the final chapter - Chapter Twenty-One, obviously - and I put them in an epilogue. Because this preserves my precious structure.

I've continued this game of sevens all the way to the fourth draft, and frankly I think I deserve a medal. Or at least a giant seven-shaped cake. You can probably find one in shops under Birthday Cakes For Seven Year Olds.

Still, all good things are determined to come to an end, and I don't think I can sustain this shape any longer. I've planned out my new final third and am adding some major new sections to the book, important new bits, cool stuff, all thanks to good suggestions from my excellent beta people. But I don't think I can do it within the seven/seven/seven framework - not without writing chapters that are also ten/twelve thousand word novellas, at least.

So, with a heavy heart and a grim smile, maybe ever a cinematic single tear, I am waving goodbye to the sevens. I will miss them, but anything that makes the book better is probably worth it. And I still have sevens in the first and second third.

And, ditching the faux-eulogy tone for a second, let's be honest: if an editor, agent, publisher or similar entity says I need to add extra chapters to the book anywhere, further messing up the sevens, I'll definitely  do it as long as I agree it'll improve the story. Hardly seems practical to get over-attached to these things. Not as if the chapter-counts are story relevant, it just worked out that way.

And it least it gave me something to work within while I got the book written. Let's not be ungrateful.

I'm glad I wrote this blog post, it was therapeutic.

Interview with me about The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf!

I have not written a blog post today, but it's okay, because Julianne Benford has interviewed me for her blog, so I can just link to that!

It's a fun interview, I talk a bit about my inspirations and process, throw in a few jokes. Give it a look and report back.

And yes, the interviewer is also my girlfriend so there is a nepotism element in there. But don't worry, it's definitely addressed in the post.

Should reading that inspire you to pick up a copy of the book, below is the array of buttons enabling you to do so. And if it reminds you you've read the book and still need to write a review on Amazon/Goodreads/your blog/somewhere else, that's cool too.

Oh, and I 100% finalised my design brief for Book Two last night, so that's looming in the distance, ready to bubble over at any moment. But for now, let's focus on The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf. Read interview, buy, enjoy.

Dealing With Beta Readers - An Early Report

It's been a few months since I last looked at my full-length fantasy novel about Faustian deals - I put it aside for a spell, both to let beta readers have a crack at it and to focus on getting the Hobson & Choi book launch in order.

But the first H&C book is all fired into the atmosphere, the Book Two work now with other people, and most of my beta readers reported, so time to start in that direction again. Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in a while, I opened up the novel Scrivener file, looked at various beta reader notes and thought about it.

So, how does it feel returning to a novel post-beta? Have I got any advice for other writers in similar situations? Let's find out!

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf - Hobson & Choi: Case One! Cover! Blurb! Release date!

So. In the not-too-distant future, the first case of Hobson & Choi, my mismatched detective duo London crime series with a darkly comic tone, will be self-publishing. I have a nice cover, a sales blurb-type-thing, a new title, a release date, and I am about to declare all of those things.

Exciting stuff. Probably best to just get on with it. First up, then, is the real meat: cover and blurb time.

Doin' HTML Till The Break Of Dawn - Technical Self-Publishing Time

I have been locked in my room at my tiny corner desk, working on the process of turning my upcoming self-published book into beautiful HTML. It has taken a long time. I can neither confirm nor deny that I was up at 4AM Thursday morning, listening to the birds tweeting outside (and, for once, not tweeting much myself) working on exciting tasks such as reinserting italics.

As you may gather from this nuts-and-bolts self-pub stuff, the day of the Hobson & Choi release is getting very close now. So close, in fact, that I may put the cover up next week, announce the title, blurb, maybe even a date. I'm 90% sure that will happen.

But for now, here's a blog post about the experience of processing a book into HTML. This is not a walkthrough, because there are plenty of those and I don't have sufficient advice to justify bringing another one into the world. The posts I used to guide me was this one by Guido Henkel, it's pretty comprehensive.

Becoming An Internet Author - Week One

The slow but determined march towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. A few days ago, I blogged a little about receiving professional edits on the text and my feelings on same. I think I reached equilibrium by the end, and I'm relatively okay with the direction it's going.

However, there is obviously another side to the whole thing. If I'm self-publishing (or author-publishing or hybrid-authoring or whatever), I obviously have to do all my own promotion. Well, I'm hoping some good reviews will do a bit of the work for me, but I still have to get the book to some reviewers.

All of which means doing some tweeting, some blogging, some awkward-for-me self-advertising. Talking about myself. Becoming an Internet Author. Never mind my damn edits, how do I feel about that?

Receiving my first set of edits - A Psychological Journey

So, the ongoing plunge towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. I sent my manuscript of Book One off to an editor, because if my trip to London Book Fair taught me one thing, it's that you gotta let someone else loose on it.

After all, I'm competing with an array of authors who have editors, I'm bothering to get a decent cover done, so I might as well make sure the insides are up to scratch.

With that goal in mind, I got my book back from the editor about a week ago, and have just blasted through the whole lot of edits once, making changes accordingly. It's a strange experience, getting edited for the first time, and even after chatting to other people beforehand, it's still... interesting.

Is comedy dead? Or just not a great selling point in publishing?

Yesterday, I attended the final day of The Literary Conference 2014, an event thrown by The Literary People at The Literary Consultancy. I attended a few things, drank some nice coffee, and heard a thought that stuck with me: a brief answer uttered by a literary agent during the Pen Factor (literary X Factor) event.

One author read from a work which seemed to place itself as a humour story. Said agent commented that novels which identify heavily as comedy versions of existing genres tend to be a hard sell. After all, comedy is pretty subjective and "parody novels" are rarely amazing, so if possible, it's better to market your comedy thriller (for example) as a thriller, and let people decide whether they like the book on those terms. If they happen to find you funny, bonus.

As someone who writes "funny" stories and mentions that attribute when describing them, this obviously gave me pause. So... time to reconsider?

Devil Deal Novel Draft #3 Word Count - By The Numbers

All on target this week, as I sailed through the final stages of Novel Draft The Third. This will be a familiar tone to regular readers of this blog, most writing updates in the last month or two have broken down to: "Today I reached another book milestone!"

But just to reiterate what it all means: I am now at the point where I will show my book to some other humans. I've recruited a few volunteers from my writing group and personal life, now just gotta email it over to them. Once I've plucked up the courage to tackle Scrivener's sometimes-horrific ebook compiling options.

Anyway. In a bid to keep the blogs interesting, I'm going to run some actual stats for the whole project, to see how much I cut, where it went, what it all means, etc. Will the numbers tell me anything of worth? I don't know, as I haven't generated any of them at the time of writing this intro. Better go do that now.

My Writing Music - Songs to mash the keyboard to

Some writers don't listen to music while they work, needing constant silence to produce their genius. However, I require an endless rolling soundtrack to drown out the screaming choirs of my own insanity (10 points for knowing where I stole that last phrase from), so I get through a lot of tracks.

A lot of the choices go in phases - new records come out, or I fancy immersing myself in the music of one artist, so I load my phone up with their albums. Then I listen to this person exclusively for a while, until I'm sick of them and don't want to hear anything they've done for months.

A few songs/sounds do survive the gap though - elevate themselves above the flighty phases and become evergreen presences. Here, then, are my perpetual audio companions. Apologies if a few of them turn out to be part of temporary phases and I'm just blinded by momentary love.

How many drafts? Definitely more than zero...

Today, after considerable striving, I finished one of the many readthroughs I am doing on The Novel. This was one part of a raft of edits, which together constitute a third draft - more details on those here if you're interested - and I'm hopefully within a week or two of finishing the whole damn lot. After that, I may let some other people read it.

The whole draft-counting system is a very personal thing really - you'd think the criteria for a first, second and third draft would be easy to define, but in reality you might as well ask a writer to define the concept of being. In fact, that might be quicker. (But I would say that, I have a Philosophy degree.)

In general, I'll use whatever approach works for me at the time. One numbering idiosyncrasy I've never quite found a use for, though, is Draft Zero.

My Writing Process meme - The truth behind Hobson & Choi

So, for the first time ever on this blog (WOO), I have done one of those answer-some-questions-then-nominate-people memes. Because, y'know, why not? Lets me talk a bit about Hobson & Choi, which I always enjoy doing. For anyone who ever wanted a straight-forward pitch for the whole story, here it is.

Thanks to Lisa Goll of London Writer's Cafe for nominating me, you can see her pass at the same questions over at her blog.
But now, on with the ME.

Why can't I work at home? - A video study in writing and procrastination

So, for a while now, I've found myself unable to get much work done in my home. I'm not sure why, my procrastination levels just spiked, but I've spent ages going to a local cafe as a result. Loads of time, loads of money, but I've also achieved a fuckton of writing, so maybe it'll just have to be fair enough.

Anyway, long story short, I fancied doing another video blog after last month's moderately fun experiment, so I have created the below. A short piece exploring that very question: why can't I work at home?

And for anyone interested: yes, that is my workspace. Judge away.

So, can you no longer work in your house? Is it for the same reasons as me? Feel free to form a sufferer support group in the comments, I'll break up any fights.