Month: July 2016

Write what you know. Write for the market.  Don’t write for the market.  Write what’s hot right now. Don’t write what’s hot now, for it won’t be hot when you’re ready to sell.

Whether you choose to write for the market or against it, how do you pick what the market is doing?

The best piece of advice I ever got about working out what the market was doing, and it’s true for readers as well as writers, is to

Read debut authors from the last year, maybe two years.

If you’re a writer, it doesn’t help with what to write, but it does give you an idea of what’s happening in the market.  If you’re a reader, it gives you a good idea of the way your genre is coming.

Why debut authors?

Because they’re the authors who don’t have any history behind them. They’re the ones the publishing houses are taking a chance on, the ones they think can sell.

So now we’ve established that it’s good to read debut authors, how do you know what’s coming?

Book publishers’ sites.  Booksellers’ sites.  Bloggers who blog about new and forthcoming books.  My personal favourite site is The Qwillery.  This lists all the debut releases for the month, and interviews many of the authors as well.  I’ve found a lot of books there.

Confluence, Linesman book three, has been with the with the copy editor a while now, and we’ve had time to sit back and reflect on some of the changes over the three books.  One of the biggest changes was the time it took to write each book.

We kept a daily word count, so we know roughly how long it was from start to finish.

The diagram, below, shows the count for part of book two, Alliance.

Book one: Linesman

We had plenty of time to write Linesman, because we didn’t have a contract for it.

• We started on 18 July, 2010
• Finished the draft we sent to Caitlin, our agent, on 18 December, 2012
• Rewrote again, and again, and our last count was on 7 September 2014
• Grand total: Four years, one month and 21 days (1513 days)

 

Book two: Alliance

Alliance was the first book we wrote under contract. We had firm deadlines. But we also had another book to complete first, and in between writing it we went back and did edits on the earlier book.

• We started on 16 February 2014
• Finished the first draft on 7 December 2014
• The last date counted in our calendar was 10 August 2015.
• We’re getting faster, but the grand total is still one year, five months and 26 days (541 days)

 

Book three: Confluence

Book one, Linesman, was published while we were writing book three. And we were doing edits for book two. We also did more rewriting in the first draft of this story, rather than leaving it for later drafts.

• We started on 1 February 2015
• Finished the first draft on 26 January 2016
• Final date counted was 21 May, 2016.
• Grand total: One year, three months and 21 days (476 days)

 

This has been an interesting exercise, because if you’d asked me before I wrote this, I would have said it took us twelve months to write a book.

It used to. What’s changed has been the editing. Twelve months to write a book and get it halfway to decent. But more time to edit it into something that’s publishable.

Compulsory voting

It seems that everyone is voting at the moment.

Britain with their Brexit. The US with their primaries and getting ready for an election later this year. And us, here in Australia. We had an election yesterday.

I vote. Everyone citizen over 18 years old votes in Australia votes. (Or at least, they’re supposed to.) Because, you see, voting in Australia is compulsory.

People from countries where voting is not compulsory think it weird. “What about your rights?” they say. “They’re denying you the democratic freedom to not vote if you choose to.”

I’m a fan of compulsory voting. The majority of Australians are. (Last I heard it was 70% in favour.) Sure, it takes an hour out of your day, but there’s usually a sausage sizzle happening, and the mother’s club at the schools (where most polling booths are) run a sweet stall.

It’s even easy to choose not to vote. Turn up, have your name ticked off, and then don’t fill in any of the boxes before you put the papers into the ballot box.

Democracy as governing body

I’m also a big fan of democracy. I think most of us who live in democratic countries are.

But democracies aren’t generally the first government of any country. They evolve, over time, when people become knowledgeable enough and powerful enough to force the incumbent government to listen to them.

It can go back the other way, too. An elected government can take away civil liberties, effectively removing democracy if it goes too far. Or the military take over.

Governing in space

Who’s going to make money in space?

Government agencies? Probably not. Governing bodies spend money, they don’t make it. They spend it services and infrastructure for their constituents. No matter what type of government they are. (By making money here, I mean actually getting something from space that will net them money.)

Thus the first people to make money in space will probably be companies. It follows, then, that the first peoples in space to be large enough to require any sort of government will be working for those companies.

Suppose a big, multi-national sets itself down on an asteroid and starts mining it. Whose laws are they bound by?

No-one’s but their own. So the first laws on that asteroid will be that company’s code of conduct. It may turn into a democracy eventually, but it’s a lot more likely to stay a ‘company’ for as long as the people are treated well enough and can survive.

The other big group I could see going into space is religious groups. Pilgrims, spreading the word of their god forever on or outward. Or escaping from persecution. For these people, the leaders of their church will become the ruling body.

Again, a fully-fledged democracy will be a long time coming.