Whine, Whine, Whine...

So, I'm still not exactly "writing" my books, per se, but I did find an interesting problem when I upgraded to MS Word 2007 (and 2008 for the Mac): the new DOCX format (their XML-based format) is nice because it shrinks the size of your files in general. I went from upwards of 1MB per document, down to about 400KB or so... not too shabby.

Unfortunately, it also randomly removes the spaces in between words on the screen, and doesn't seem to see an issue with this. Basically, it would print out the sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog as The quickbrown fox jumped overthe lazy dog, and it wouldn't consider quick and brown as one big misspelled word.

So in effect, if I were to print this, my books would look riddled with space-caused spelling errors, which not even the spell-checker could find and fix for me. I'd have to go proofread all the books again and find these stupid things and fix them - which, FYI, actually embeds two spaces in between the word when you look at it or convert it or whatnot.

The net result of all this? I ditched the DOCX format and am back to the old DOC format from MS Word 2003 and prior. Ugh. How annoying is that?

Creative Roadblocks

So, this is allegedly supposed to be (going to be?) my blog for keeping track of what I'm doing on my book(s), but I haven't actually posted anything here that's related to writing.

Of course, most of this is because for the past year, I've been languishing in a mire of major writer's block, and unable to think of how to work through the novel I'm writing - currently, the third book in my series.

It's kind of difficult to explain why it's so hard to write. I mean, I can visualize what should happen, and even see it happening - just as if I was watching a movie in my head. I can hear the voices, see the action, visualize the dialogue... all of it. The problem is that I can't get from Point A to Point B successfully.

It's kind of tough for me, since I tend to think in terms of "storyline events." I see a plot point and work it out, but then I have to come up with filler in between those events... and that's where my problem has been. I'm in the third book now and had an event, and am working toward the next one... but I have to fill in the intervening time. Sure, I could just do a "And so, three months later...", but that's relatively cheesy.

And, I might need to do that later, so I want to save that as my ace in the sleeve.

So for now, I'm stumped on the third book - unable to figure out how to wrap up the filler between plot points. Yuck. I'll figure it out eventually, but I guess for now what I'm going to do is focus on the prequel.

Overall, this is probably a better idea anyway. After all, I want to get published. Most publishers want to make money without spending too much. I've never been published. Therefore, most publishers wouldn't want to spend much money on me, an unpublished author, if they didn't have assurance I'd make them any. It's logical. They need less risk, I think... and a five-book series from a first-time publisher is a bit risky, generally speaking. I'm guessing maybe that's one big deterrent as to why the publishers don't want to pick up my books/series***.

I'll write the one-off prequel, in the same world with some of the same characters, set seven years prior to my series. It'll stand on its own, but it'll be connected, so that if the prequel is picked up and sells, I can hit up the publisher and say, "Hey... I got five more where that came from in a series..." and see how it goes.

So that's my plan, in a nutshell. I'm re-editing the prequel now, what I have of it - about five chapters worth, all focused on one particular character at this point. Once it's edited and looking satisfactory, I'll write the chapters for the other main character, and then alternate them into place and make sure it's not too jarring switching back and forth. Then I'll start writing up the rest of that book, prettying it up, and eventually soliciting it around.

I'll keep notes here about it as I go, with various writing labels to track the subject matter. Who knows, maybe someone will actually read these.

Maybe not, but who cares; it gives me something to do...

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Footnotes:
*** Yeah, that or it sucks.