My next book

Various things are happening with "Verbosity's Vengeance", so I really need to turn my attention to my next book. I thought NaNoWriMo would give me a jumpstart on it, but that didn't happen.

After writing the opening of a sexy adventure novel featuring vampires as victimized underclass who rise up to overthrow their cruel human masters, I realized that I don't write sexy adventure very well. I trashed it and reworked the plot to be  a conspiracy adventure novel, still with the vampires as victimized underclass, but now with less sex, much more double-dealing and hidden agendas.

After a stumbling start, that book went nowhere, too. Spending time on twitter and in the writerly blogosphere, I heard lots of complaining from agents and editors about all the damned novels flooding the slush pile that were jumping on past successes. No more teen wizards! No more dragon trainers! No more zombies! No more coming-of-age-while-sharing-a-lifeboat-with-a-tiger! And above all else, no more vampires!

It's hard not to lose confidence in a book when you read that kind of thing.

Since then, I've been thinking about what book to write next. Different ideas have struck me, with varying levels of novelty, enthusiasm, and promise. None have been enough to dislodge me from this sense of aimlessly casting about in the foggy darkness. I don't lack for ideas; I just haven't gotten one big idea that I could build a novel around.

===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.

9 comments:

  1. Uh-oh, no teen wizards? Houston, we have a problem. :-P

    Screw that crap. If my teen sorcerers keep telling me their stories, I'll keep writing them.

    To the point of your post: the novel will come. It might be a flash that wants to be a big story when it grows up, for example.

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    1. It's like I'm constantly prowling an online dating site and haven't yet seen anybody I'd like to ask out.

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  2. Amanda Hocking wrote about trolls. Suzanne Collins wrote a mash-up of teen-gladiator and reality tv. And let's not forget Larry Kollar, who turned your average white pick into a new kind of spooky apocalypse.

    Tony, go back and re-read your "Handbook of the Writer Secret Society," and that "one big idea" will come to you. Go, now. And don't come back until you have that new great idea and a solid outline to go with it. :)

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    1. Somewhere between "hackneyed and overdone" and "freaky crazy" is my "by George, it's so crazy it just might work!".

      Thanks for the reminder - I'll re-read the Handbook. ;-)

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  3. I agree with Larry, I have another fantasy adventure on the boil called Wizard - i think you have to write what you love writing you'll find your audience. I think though what you write depends on your agenda. It was like when I was exhibiting watercolours (did that for 18 years, sold a fair few) but I painted what I wanted to paint, others painted what they thought the viewer wanted to buy - in my opinion and it's just my own, one is not being very true to themselves doing that, to paint or write something because you think it is what will sell will not necessarily turn out to be your best work. My experience.

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    1. There's the rub: I don't want to write a novel solely because I think it will please someone else. I do enough of that already. Besides, a novel is too much work, too much time to invest in something I don't really care about.

      I'll keep looking.

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  4. YA was never inviting to me anyway, and I almost can't wait to stake a vampire. While I'm sorry your early explorations didn't shake out, if you're looking for major commercial distribution, ditching vampires-as-X-Men was a good move. True Blood already has plenty of people chasing that market, none of whom you'll now have to compete with. And I wish you the best of luck with that big idea once lightning strikes.

    Now I'm no further along in my publishing career than you, so my advice should only matter so much. But the thing I liked about Grammarian, from a purely secondhand level, is that I don't think many other people would write that idea. The best way to avoid chasing the market and to write something strong is to look into what you really want out of your literature. Grammarian sounds like it was one such property, but it can't be the only one. What are things nobody else is doing, that you'd like to read, and that can be summarized in a few sentences for pitches? Because that's the Shazam sweetspot of creating art that will satisfy you and diversify from the market.

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    1. And this is the main thing I'm held up on, John. I have lots of ideas, but I've been discarding them simply because they feel like retreads and derivations of things that everyone has already seen.

      The Grammarian was (and IS) a fresh kind of story. At least, I hope it is, despite being set in the conceptual framework of superhero adventure. I'm trying to find another fresh kind of story that will be equally compelling.

      It took me more than a year to figure out how to pitch the Grammarian in just a couple of sentences. Any future book will have to gel around a comparably strong central idea.

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  5. Write whatever you want and screw the market. If you don't love it, why would anyone else?

    What works for me sometimes is to go back and look at ideas I've had in the past (I keep a notebook)and combine 2 or more that don't seem to go together, then try to come up with a story to make them work. In the meantime, we love your flash!

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