Inspiration: Horse power

Trojan Horse III by Willie Bester at the Robert Bowman Gallery, London

{photo by Trey Ratcliff}

To boldly go...

Discovery landed toay at 11:57 EST (16.57GMT), touching down at KSC for the final time after 202 orbits around Earth and a journey of 5,304,140 miles.

27 years and 39 missions, she now retires as the US starts the shutdown of its space program due to financial reasons.

This makes me terribly sad. The space program has been a part of my life since I was a child, bringing that dream of seeking out life and new civilisations so lauded in Star Trek that little closer to reality. The idea of being able to reach out and touch the stars...

It's not quite over - Endeavour and Atlantis will have their finales in April and June respectively - but the end is nigh and I wonder if we'll ever venture into space on such a scale again.

A life less ordinary

During a Twitter conversation with the very awesome Gini Kock, I decided that I not only need to formulate a writing plan but actually put it down on paper. Well, the screen, but you know what I mean. So here goes.

This month:

• Edit my erotic short and sub it somewhere - done!
• Finish a rough draft of Flipside
• Finish, edit and sub Undercurrent

In the next six months:

• Deal with Ironhaven as appropriate
• Edit and sub Flipside
• Finish a rough draft on at least one outstanding WIP

By March next year:

• I will have at least one novel published
• I will have at least five short stories sold
• Be inquiring / have an agent

Big goals without a doubt, but I know I have it in me to do it.

Six Sentence Sunday: Flipside

For this week's Six Sentence Sunday, I'm posting more on the in-progress Flipside. Here, Johanna has fled an underground temple after an earthquake only to fiind things outside are no longer the same:

Johanna bolted for the exit, feet tripping one over the other in her haste to be outside in the open air.She stumbled out and crashed against the wall of the excavation pit, gasping and heart pounding. A shadow blotted the sun. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up.

A dirigible flew over the desert on a faint rumble of a steam engine and a billow of grey smoke, its silver-white sides gleaming. Though she’d seen them before, none had been quite this big... and it was not the only one.

For those new to this, the rules are simple:

1) pick a project – a current Work in Progress, contracted work or even something readers can buy if you’re published

2) pick six sentences

3) post ‘em on Sunday

Further information (and more snippets) here.

Outline time again!

Flipside has throw up half a dozen questions that I don't know the answer to, meaning I'm going to have to figure out what is actually going on.

Outlining is a new venture for me - the first time I did it was for Ironhaven and was a steep learning curve. First thing I discovered was that I could actually hammer out an outline. Second was that the Perfect Outline is pretty much a myth. Thirdly I found that writing an outline did not kill my desire to write the story, probably because of how I wrote the outline down.

That was simply a breakdown of scenes and plot points. During writing those equated to everything from a paragraph to entire chapters. Some ended up dumped (and lo! outlines *can* be changed!) while others were adapted as the story evolved.

This is my advice - use the outline to work out your rough plot but let the story guide you. Your characters might not do that thng you thought sounded so awesome, or you might realise that Plot B is going to make things too complicated (especially if you're writing to a prescribed word count). Make those changes - do a degree an outline should adapt to your story, rather than the other way around.

But don't lose the plot! Whatever changes you make, don't lose sight of where you want the story to go. Your outline is a map, but you're allowed to make detours... as long as you make your destination.

Whoa

Oh you guys! 42 comments on my opening paragraph - I'm utterly overwhelmed!

For those wondering: yes, I really did write that down in five minutes, though I was much longer in planning. That's still ongoing, and there's an outline sorely in need of writing as I get my head around the details.

Professor Flinders-Petrie is (or was) a real person. An English Egyptologist, he was responsible for discovering sites such as Naukratis, Tanis and Abydos (the Egyptian city not the planet, heh). More on Flinders-Petrie for the curious.

I know very little about archaeology, so this is going to be an interesting learning curve. Especially as what I do know comes from Stargate SG1. It has something to do with magnets...

Joking! I know more than that, I swear.

Six Sentence Sunday: Flipside

Here we go again! Flipside is a Steampunk Sci Fi Romance, set in Egypt 1880 and the world of the (as yet) unnamed aliens that our heroine Johanna Seymour encounters.

For Six Sentence Sunday, here's the very rough opening paragraph, as written about five minutes ago:

Thirty degrees in the shade felt hotter than it sounded. Johanna took the pith helmet off and wiped her forehead with a handkerchief that was already damp with sweat. She would not complain – she'd fought so hard to accompany the great Professor Flinders-Petrie, faced so many disparinging voices about her gender, her lack of expertise. Only Sir William had valued her enthusiasm and linguistic ability. So no complaints: she would not be the little woman, the fragile flower that wilted in the heat.

Even if the heat was so very draining.

 Read more SixSentenceSunday here.