Category Archives: Writing

Weekly Writing Update (May 23, 2013)

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  • Accomplished This Week
    • I wrote three blog posts for this site. One of them I published on Tuesday. The other two are part of my backlog.
    • I wrote two blog posts for other sites (guest posts). Expect to see one of those soon.
    • I’m about halfway through Railsea by China Mieville.
    • Created a release checklist. My Voyage releases have become complex affairs. I’m made a Google Doc for myself where I literally tick off all the things that have to be done, to make sure nothing gets missed.
  • To Accomplish Next Week
    • Finish Railsea.
    • Do my final editing pass on Voyage: Embarkation #9 Nanogen and get it ready to go for all vendors.
    • Create a video for my Insomnium Kickstarter campaign.
    • Get my Kickstarter campaign approved, and if that goes off without a hitch, start up the Kickstarter campaign a week from today.
    • Maybe write a short story. There are ideas brewing. Depending on how they resolve, this one’s a “maybe.”

Cultivate Your Darlings

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I’ve reached a tipping point. I just read yet another blog post about how “real” writers will mercilessly chop up and throw out the parts of their stories that they really like. Here’s the advice given: If you write something, and then read it back to yourself and say, “Wow. That was really well done,” then hack it to bits. Stomp on it. Throw it out the window. Drown in the bathtub. It has to go. Anything that you, the author, like is bound to be hated by your audience. That’s the axiom.

Well, I’ve had enough of this.

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Weekly Writing Update (May 17, 2013)

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  • Accomplished This Week
    • I sent out the Voyage: Embarkation #9 Nanogen ARC to pre-release reviewers. If you’re interested in being a pre-release reviewer, there’s still three weeks to go. Email me if you’re interested.
    • I read friends’ and colleagues’ work.
    • I read and reviewed Inverted World by Christopher Priest.
  • To Accomplish Next Week
    • I plan on reading Railsea by China Mieville. In fact, I started it last night.
    • As I mentioned last week, I’m way ahead in my writing. I was supposed to finish Insomnium 12 this week, but that was done a long time ago.
    • I’ll finish up my mini reading binge this week, then move on to preparing everything for Insomnium Kickstarter project I’ll be running to raise money to fund the cover art.

Iron Writer

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513a13cae4b0f3422dd79181 On July 13 of this year, I will be participating in the Iron Writer Competition. Starting at midnight on that date, I will be writing as much as humanly possible, trying to beat out other competitors for the highest word count in a twenty-four hour period.

Not only will this help me crank out an episode or two (or three or four?) of Voyage: Windbound, but also, I will be raising money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, a non-profit organization working helping children beat cancer. If you’re interested in sponsoring me for the event, shoot me an email, and I’ll let you know how to proceed. You can also simply give a donation via the link at the bottom of the Iron Writer Competition webpage and let me know that you’re my sponsor. I’ll be posting a list of sponsors on my blog the day before the competition (of course, you may remain anonymous).

I’m really excited to be participating in this event. Socially beneficial stuff like this is right up my alley. Very consistent with the values of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press.

Check out The Dreadful Cafe, and their anthology of speculative literature, Membrane.

The Structure of the Serial: Omega Story

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ω

I’ve gotten this question more than once: “Why serialize at all? Whats wrong with the novel format? Or the novel trilogy format?”

Nothing’s wrong with those formats. I even have story ideas floating around my head that seem ideally suited to be stand alone novels or novellas.

But my passion has always been for serials. As you know if you’ve been following this series from the beginning, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Farscape were the formative stories of my early adolescence. It was through those TV shows that I began to explore questions of ethics, morality, justice, and philosophy that would eventually grow into the seeds of the series I work on today.

And that’s why I’ve set out to write this series. Why does the serial matter? Until the recent ereader revolution, it was commercially inviable. With the problems of mass produced, physical print matter shrugged off, production and distribution in this format are no longer monetarily problematic. But is it better?

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The Structure of the Serial: Delta Story

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δ

People often refer to children as “impressionable.” There was a point in my life, sometime in my early twenties, when I reflected on my childhood and adolscence and really started to put two and two together regarding this “impressionability” I’d never fully understood. In short, it means that, unlike adults, who have many experiences to draw upon in order to make sense of new experiences, and who already understand a great deal about life and the human condition, a child has no such foundation to work with. In fact, they are in the process of building their foundation, and its shape is therefore highly susceptible to their experiences.

In the case of a story, the child, rather than the adult, can be more greatly impacted by a powerful story, because, in the case of the child, it encounters little “resistance” from already cemented knowledge and ideas. Good stories can have a powerful formative impact on young minds.

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Weekly Writing Update (Apr 19, 2013)

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  • Accomplished this Week
    • I finished two drafts: Insomnium 7 & Insomnium 8
    • I outlined Insomnium 9
    • At a reader’s behest, I did an editing pass on Embarkation 5 & 6, and a corrected a handful of typos. I then reuploaded Embarkation 5, 6 and the Special Collection to all vendors.*
    • I did an editing pass on Embarkation 9.
  • To Accomplish Next Week
    • This weekend, my writing group will finish up the latter half of Embarkation 13.
    • I am getting caught up with Insomnium, but not fast enough. According to my schedule, I need to be done with Insomnium 10 by this time next Friday. Let’s see if I can’t hammer out another two chapters this week.
    • I’ll definitely write the blog post I missed earlier this week, about “delta story” in serialized fiction.

* At the time of this writing, Barnes and Noble is in a state of transition from their PubIt system to their new NookPress system. NookPress does not allow me to change the content of ebooks that I have already published (which seems very, very strange). Also, a number of problems on Kobo’s website are preventing me from updating Embarkation 5 and the Special Collection there. I will update my works on those sites as soon as I am able. They are up-to-date everywhere else, including Amazon, Smashwords and Gumroad.

* Late-Day Update: It turns out that PubIt is still active while NookPress shakes out its kinks. I’ve submitted updated versions of all my ebooks to Barnes and Noble. That leaves only Kobo.

* April 26 Update: It took them forever, but Kobo has finally sorted out all their issues, and all the episodes of Voyage are live on the Kobo store in the way they should be.

A Day Off

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Dear loyal readership,

I had intended, according to my schedule, to put up a blog post today about “delta story,” part of my ongoing series of blog posts about the structural components of serialized fiction.

However, as I mentioned last Friday, I am quite behind in my writing schedule, due to a number of factors, some outside my control, others not.

Now, normally, I would struggle through somehow and work really hard to get the blog post out on time. But, here’s the thing. This weekend, I finished Insomnium episode seven, and I started Insomnium episode eight. Eight is an important episode for a lot of reasons. You’ll see what I mean when it’s released. And it’s going really, really well. So well that I don’t want to move my brain space out of that zone.

Alas, dear reader, I wish I had infinite time. But I don’t. And I am human. I dare not excise from my life the friends and collegues that keep me sane(-ish). I dare not push them out of my schedule either, for fear that the damage in the long term will not compensate for the productivity in the short term.

I’ll return next Tuesday, with tales of delta story. Until then, be sure to check the Indie Spec Fic Fund post tomorrow, and if you like Voyage, introduce a couple of people to the Episode #1-7 Special Collection in person or on your favorite social network.

Thanks for understanding.

- Zack Bonelli

Weekly Writing Update (Apr 12, 2013)

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  • Accomplished This Week
    • I released Voyage: Embarkation #7 Duality yesterday, Thursday, April 11, 2013.
    • I also, very quietly, released a limited time special collection of Voyage: Embarkation episodes #1-7 this morning. This is to celebrate the landmark of seven episodes. Each Voyage sequence is fourteen episodes long, so Embarkation is now exactly half complete. It will remain on sale until the release of Voyage: Embarkation #8 Benevolence on May 9.
    • My writing group critiqued the first half of Voyage: Embarkation #13 last week, which went well.
    • I did my final pass of Duality before its release, and also did an editing pass of Benevolence.
    • I did not write any Insomnium, putting me far behind my schedule. I was supposed to be done with episode eight by today, and instead, I only have one scene of episode seven written. I hope to use this weekend to get myself caught up.
  • To Accomplish Next Week
    • According to my schedule, I’m supposed to have written Insomnium 9 by the end of the week. I’m certain I won’t accomplish that, but I’m pretty sure that I can at least get through both seven and eight. Especially since there are no releases imminent, it should be easier to focus on Insomnium.
    • On Tuesday, you’ll be getting the next installment in my blog posts on serialized fiction, this one about “delta story.”

The Structure of the Serial: Gamma Story

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γ

The late eighties and early nineties was a time of serialized television narrative that was very, very alpha, with an occasional sprinkling of beta.

I watched Murphy Brown with my parents, and Star Trek: The Next Generation and Sliders on my own. The main characters would persist, but their adventure and plot arc varied greatly week after week. While they all remained in the same setting together, the thematic crux of each episode was new each and every time we tuned in. Occasionally, a character would recur, characters would recall shared experiences, or some event of episodes past would become relevant for the present, but largely, each narrative was self-contained.

In the early nineties, a new show happened, one called Babylon 5.

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