Writing in the clusterfuck year
I would have focussed on writing in 2020, no matter what; the pandemic made it impossible to do almost anything else.
My MA in Creative Writing jumped online in March, and like millions of other people, I found myself plugged into classes on Zoom. I masked up to shop when I had to. I clicked to collect so I could avoid the covidiots as much as possible. I asked my elderly parents to mask up and isolate. And I wrote.
I don’t know how many words I wrote in 2020 — the word count on Scrivener only records the writing you save, not the half-finished sentences, paragraphs, scenes and chapters you delete, or the character profiles and worldbuilding you do outside the manuscript. Or the mind maps, drawings and location sketches on paper and in other software.
At any rate, a novel is like an iceberg; the reader only sees the shining crest of your creative work. It’s messy under the waterline. But out of it came this:
1 A Master’s with distinction. Let’s start with the big one. I completed my Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing: The First Novel, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, with a Distinction. I don’t when the pandemic will allow the university to formally ratify my marks, but a Distinction-level mark for my 25,000-word final submission crowned a steady improvement in my grades over the second semester.
I was a solid Merit for most of the year, and I’d have been pleased with that outcome. In May, though, an unexpected Distinction in the tricky Detailed Chapter Breakdown submission raised the chance of pushing my final grade into the highest category. Thanks in no small part to the insightful feedback received from my tutor, Russell Schechter, fellow students in our writing group (Alan Mason in particular), and my partner, Sharon, I turned a shonky collection of first draft chapters into a polished act of a novel.
2 A first draft of In Machina. With more than 60,000 words in the bag by the end of the MA in September, I was in a good place to use November’s Nanowrimo to finish a first draft. It’s rough as old boots in places, and nowhere near ready for submission, but nothing beats knowing your story has an ending.
The Detailed Chapter Breakdown from May had revealed itself to be the outline of a trilogy (or a half-million-word epic) that might never be completed. I focused my efforts on turning the first part into a five-act tale of robot worker William 47’s awakening into a 22nd-century world of ruthless extractive corporations and equally ruthless defenders of the Solar System’s unspoiled wildernesses.
By the end of November, 47’s story found its temporary conclusion at just under 100,000 words. It’s shorter than I’d like, but I’ve already woken up with new outlines for two key parts of the narrative fizzing out of my unconscious. New Year, new words.
3 Blood River submitted to agents. The gap between the MA and Nanowrimo was just enough for me to catch up with feedback from alpha and beta readers who’d looked at Blood River, the novel I finished just before starting the MA. Rob, Laura and Alan all helped me to tighten the story and work it into something that I felt agents might not immediately discard.
Throughout 2020, I’d been researching query letters and synopses, trawling agent databases and doing a little cyberstalking. The MA also included visits from editors who provided their own tips for getting a foot in the door. I selected my first five agents, and fired off the first round of queries at the end of October.
I launched a website for my novels: http://www.alexanderlane.co.uk/.
There’s no good news yet — but four rejections is nothing unusual for a first novel — and a second group of lucky agents will find bits of Blood River floating into their inboxes this month.
4 A writing AND reading group. I was lucky to find myself on a writing MA with a group of talented and supportive writers, and doubly fortunate that eight of us have continued to meet regularly on Zoom to critique each other’s work.
There’s nothing like having a group of nerdy talents with whom I can share disjointed dialogue, rambling descriptions of AI consciousness and physics-abusing spaceship combat, and receive constructive feedback. I get to do the same for their work, and I look forward to every extract, whether they’re writing about ghosts, the undead, floating cities, vengeful gods or death’s minions.
Once a month, we also take a break for a book club night. It began as a joke about alternatives to the MA reading list, with everyone proposing a contemporary novel they think might be useful to our writing. So far, we’ve looked at A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab, Chuck Palahniuk’s Damned and — my suggestion — Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I hope that our ability to productively critique novels we’re each fond of shows how far we’ve come since we began the MA.
5 Writing in the pandemic. Artists are wont to complain about how hard it has been to focus their creative energies during the pandemic, as though lesser mortals haven’t been working under as much stress — or far greater.
If anything, I found the first lockdown and the summer more productive than usual, settling into a domestic rhythm punctuated by Zooms with friends. It left plenty of time to write. At least Sharon was here when she had to work late, instead of at the wrong end of a commute into central London.
The second lockdown arrived under damp, chilly grey skies, the increasing incompetence of Boris Johnson’s administration, and the terrifying prospect of Donald Trump winning a second term. Nanowrimo provided a thankful distraction from the American insanity and I churned out a finale to In Machina that’s at least a competent foundation for the second draft.
My energy waned through December as British popular and political stupidity hammered nails into our national coffin. I haven’t written much this month, but I have outlined two significant sections of development for In Machina in January. There are vaccines, Trump is on his way out, and the idiocy of Brexit is upon us. Two out of three ain’t bad.
