Thursday, September 26, 2013

Thoughts on A SEPARATE LAW

So, my serialized novella, A SEPARATE LAW, has its final episode up at the Spectrum Dispatch site. I think it turned out well. There were certainly a lot of kind comments on each episode, and even more within moments of the posting of the tale's conclusion.

It was my first experience of such immediate feedback. It was an interesting experience. I used to think some authors were a bit obsessive about reading reviews of their work on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.  Now I know how hard it is to resist hitting that refresh button every five minutes. That in mind, I'll stop keeping my nose in the air like I'm somehow immune to the writer's urge to stand up in public and moan loudly, "LOVE ME!" while stroking our tender ego parts.

Nuts and bolts wise:


The writing of this story was fairly easy, as I found it flowed very quickly out onto the page. This is not my normal experience of writing. I agonize, normally. I fail to complete.

At about 19,ooo words, it was nice to stretch a bit without the massive obligation of a door-stop novel.

I don't normally work from an outline, but one was required for this, and it helped immensely. Beyond the immediate help with the story, I was also outlining 1636: THE MUGHAL MISSION, so the experience proved very useful. Needless to say, outlining has become my new fetish.


David Ladyman, the editor for the project, was aces, working with me when I needed assistance and, more importantly, telling me the whys and wheres of the things that did not work in the initial drafts (And there were multiple drafts for each episode: sometimes the game designers required a change, but more often it was just because the writing simply wasn't as smooth as it needed to be.).  David was extremely easy to work with, and was very enthusiastic about the story throughout.

All in all, a very good learning experience for me. One I am sure will be of use for the rest of my career.

Oh, and I got paid quite well and promptly, which is always to be desired, and seldom experienced with short fiction.

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