Thanks Alan for sharing your backstory. You’ve clearly got more than one compelling story in you, and I'm rooting for you to wrestle them onto the page.
Ha, ha. You are so much more of a nerd than I am. Not that I'm cool or anything. But almost anything technical gives me a nosebleed. Did I ever tell you that I shared an apartment at Finch and Tobermory with a York student. He was actually going to Ryerson, but using the computer lab just down the street. I wonder if you could create those neural pathways easier by writing short stories, or even unconnected chapters to the book ideas. There's probably a name for that but I don't know it. Seems like a long way between writing code and writing novels. What if you were puts some limits on the length of your stories? They would take less time to produce, help you build that muscle, and allow you to fail with less consequence. Failure after all is a critical component to most people's success story, but failing at novels seems just so devastating. What do I know? I'm probably wrong, but isn't writing a novel right out of the gate something akin to running a marathon when really, you've just learned to walk fast, and are pretty good at that.
No, I did not know that you'd lived up in "the corridor"!
Much like in software, the skills required for a short story and a novel have a lot in common, but a lot where there is no commonality. As an analogy, one could become extremely adept at renovating bathrooms, but incapable of building a house, even though many of the same skills are required for both. Even if that kind of work would help, the short story form doesn't have as much appeal to me as a novel does.
What's required is practice, discipline, a rhythm. I've seen many well-known writers saying things like "I didn't really know what I was doing until my third book." My hope is that the extensive education I've put myself through over that past two years will reduce that to "second book", but we'll see.
As for "failure", the only real failure is to not finish. For a first novel, especially one that's self-published, objective success is recovering costs. That's a bar that I expect most first novels don't clear, and many first time novelists aren't discouraged if the first one doesn't earn back. Success for me will be publishing something I'm proud of. If I recover hard costs (valuing my time at zero), I will be ecstatic.
I'd be lying if I didn't find the task daunting at times, but when that happens I re-read the opening scenes of this story, and that makes me really want to read the rest. Since I'm the only person who can achieve that, I simply have to keep going!
Always knew you were an anarchist; love the uni hacking IRL bit - well done.
Thanks Alan for sharing your backstory. You’ve clearly got more than one compelling story in you, and I'm rooting for you to wrestle them onto the page.
Cheers,
John
Ha, ha. You are so much more of a nerd than I am. Not that I'm cool or anything. But almost anything technical gives me a nosebleed. Did I ever tell you that I shared an apartment at Finch and Tobermory with a York student. He was actually going to Ryerson, but using the computer lab just down the street. I wonder if you could create those neural pathways easier by writing short stories, or even unconnected chapters to the book ideas. There's probably a name for that but I don't know it. Seems like a long way between writing code and writing novels. What if you were puts some limits on the length of your stories? They would take less time to produce, help you build that muscle, and allow you to fail with less consequence. Failure after all is a critical component to most people's success story, but failing at novels seems just so devastating. What do I know? I'm probably wrong, but isn't writing a novel right out of the gate something akin to running a marathon when really, you've just learned to walk fast, and are pretty good at that.
No, I did not know that you'd lived up in "the corridor"!
Much like in software, the skills required for a short story and a novel have a lot in common, but a lot where there is no commonality. As an analogy, one could become extremely adept at renovating bathrooms, but incapable of building a house, even though many of the same skills are required for both. Even if that kind of work would help, the short story form doesn't have as much appeal to me as a novel does.
What's required is practice, discipline, a rhythm. I've seen many well-known writers saying things like "I didn't really know what I was doing until my third book." My hope is that the extensive education I've put myself through over that past two years will reduce that to "second book", but we'll see.
As for "failure", the only real failure is to not finish. For a first novel, especially one that's self-published, objective success is recovering costs. That's a bar that I expect most first novels don't clear, and many first time novelists aren't discouraged if the first one doesn't earn back. Success for me will be publishing something I'm proud of. If I recover hard costs (valuing my time at zero), I will be ecstatic.
I'd be lying if I didn't find the task daunting at times, but when that happens I re-read the opening scenes of this story, and that makes me really want to read the rest. Since I'm the only person who can achieve that, I simply have to keep going!
And I wish you all the best of determination and luck in seeing that vision completed. i too want to know what happens.