30 Days of Balance #11: Progress to Publication II – Six-Year Challenge

Posted on March 15, 2016 by The Imbalance

At the end of “Progress to Publication I” I was done with television production but held a great movie script in my hands sure to see no light of day. It became increasingly ignored on the backburner as only the dearest friends would read a movie script. There were no visuals. With only a few words to describe the action, could they ever see what I saw when put together?

I started on a comic with an illustrator while I waited for things to figure themselves out, and when they didn’t took another look at things. The comic was done, but in the end it had taken a long time without any hope of profit looming. Looking at the situation, I realized the proper answer was to work in a medium that was, by definition, a solo act. A way of producing the content I loved without relying on the approval of others or technology I did not know how to use.The answer was writing the movie script back into a novel – one using the script as a skeleton and my further five years of experience reading and writing as the motivation to finish.

What’s more, I had my original version of the book as a template for my first five chapters.

Now, I’ve mentioned my history of not quitting, but this was going to be the biggest challenge yet. Writing a full novelization was going to take a very long time and I was no longer a teen – I had bills and a job and responsibilities. I needed a way to gauge if I was capable of putting in the time to properly execute a full book. I also wanted to use the fact that being young had no bearing on being an author. In television and comics, being young and in the clique was essential to progression, but writing was deemed an older person’s game. It was and is a medium where your product speaks for you in full.

I settled on a 6-year plan to finish the book when I was 33. I figured that at 33 I would still be fairly young, I would be just as happy to have a written novel, and I would have a cut-off age to ensure the project never went into development hell forever. Over the next bunch of years I wrote, and I felt the cap of 6 years was very helpful in keeping me on track. I wrote when I could – sometimes in huge blocks of 8-hour days in a library, other times never for multiple months – but I always felt calm knowing it did not have to be done immediately. I had lots of time. There was no reason to ever feel like a failure if it ground to a halt once in a while. At some point I was going to haul out the gas tank and get moving again.

I finished my first draft of Purge of Ashes when I was 32 – and after numerous edits over the intervening years, found publication at 33, right near the end of my timeline. I will turn 34 eight days before the release date and what an amazing past six years it has been.

And don’t worry – with ‘publication’ replacing the ‘6-year plan’ as my principal motivator, you can rest easy Grip of Dust will not take nearly so long. At the time of this post it is 68,000 words deep.

30 Days of Balance #10: Favourite Authors

Posted on March 14, 2016 by The Imbalance

As a long standing fantasy fan I definitely have a few series that I enjoy greatly, but my angle on reading is different from most people. Lots of hardcores fans of a genre read everything and collect everything they find amazing, exposing themselves to a great number of worlds and concepts then digesting them all. As a reader I love these people. It’s such a cool way to live! Always a new adventure just a click away with so many start-up fantasy projects undergo at any given time. As an author I love these people even more because they are the venerable sort who will pick up a tome from a new author and treat it with respect.

Joel Minty, though, reads with less variety but more redundancy. I show my fandom and my excitement for the fantasy series I do dive into by reading and rereading. By delving deep. By digesting like a Sarlacc. I have reread all of, or parts of, Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Malazan Book of the Fallen sometimes in triplicate, and each time caught a little bit more. Of course, that still left me 80% in the dark for Malazan.

Thus, my favourite authors:

Steven Erikson – Memories of Ice and the Malazan Book of the Fallen. (Age: adult)

Lots has been said about Malazan, but billions of further words will be needed to fully wrap the series, and I am a staunch believer in its epic girth, it’s authorian attitude, and its all-encompassing capability. The majesty is in its patience and impatience both – patiently waiting lengthy stretches between connecting details and impatiently demanding the reader’s full attention. The beyond the pale structuring of the books rings of Alan Moore – as if Erikson is walking a leap year ahead of the rest of us. In fantasy novels I love weaving, and Erikson has so much of the series carefully constructed to the minute detail that I am always left in awe. Add to this the fact that his world-building is brave and vast, his races cool and unique, his landscapes historied and alive, his battles course and bloody, and his villains sly and… heroic – and you have every other element integral to fantasy. And that’s before the conflagrations make for 100-200 pages of fast-paced, action-packed conclusion. Plus it’s funny. Plus it’s sad. Plus it makes you think for a moment. Plus it dwarfs you like you are staring up at the immeasurable night sky.

Here is a link to an article I wrote for one of my favourite web sites, Dork Shelf. It further explains the amazing nature of Malazan’s scope (also, gotta love the related article listed at the bottom [for me anyway] “Sean Bean cast in HBO’s Game of Thrones”).

Ian Cameron Esslemont – Stonewielder and the books of the Malazan Empire. (Age: adult)

Alright, so Ian’s works are all a sub-category of the books of Erikson, but at this point, with seven titles to his name, I enjoy the co-creator’s works in their own right. Everyone compares him to Erikson, but instead I compare him to everyone else and find each addition to the compendium of tomes explaining their world a gift. There are times when I feel like his books are fillers meant to expose cool parts of the history otherwise left in the dark, and at those times the books can sometimes feel like Star Wars expanded universe stuff – built for the sake of exposition – but beyond that I still find their level of depth, scope and writing impressive.

Joe Abercrombie – The Heroes and the First Law & The Great Leveller trilogies. (Age: adult)

What I love about Abercrombie is that his strength is characterization where most of my big sagas’ strengths are world building and epic showdowns. Like Malazan it leaves little room for joy and hug-heavy endings, but ample care is put into his stories to achieve a similar level of ‘that left unsaid.’ I often have trouble deciding which characters I enjoy most, because none are ‘set up’ to be obvious choices (as opposed to, say, Tyrion from A Song of Ice and Fire). He also wrote my favourite sex scene of all time in Best Served Cold. Of his works, his initial trilogy is great, but his follow-up stand alones – jointly called The Great Leveller – are his best work to date, particularly Best Served Cold and my favourite The Heroes. Zooming in close to people in dreadful times of war makes for some grim dinner, but his chaotic, fumbling battle scenes remind the reader that in reality wars were little else.

George R. R. Martin – Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. (Age: teen)

I refuse to input a link here. I could never decide if GRRM’s work overtook The Wheel of Time or just hovered level with its own strengths and weaknesses, but as time went on I got further and further from traditional fantasy to settle into the (partially) GRRM-inspired ‘gritty’ fantasy that focused principally on humans and did not involve bugbears in any fashion. With A Song of Ice and Fire I follow the typical fan’s arc – I love the first three, grew tired of the fourth and fifth, and wait with marginal interest for the remainder. The first book is still the best and offers one of the best surprises in fantasy – especially if you read it in the ’90s when there were no spoilers from the TV community.

Robert Jordan – The Fire of Heaven and The Wheel of Time. (Age: teen)

No fantasy series had as great an impact on my formative years. Wheel made me want to be a fantasy author and inspired a ton of rereads and teenage fandom during long, hot summers. I once made a list of all the characters I could find and came to over 400 by the end of book 6. A friend and I once stayed up all night drawing pictures of every character we could think of. As I’ve said before, Wheel is a gateway fantasy – it opened my eyes to the fact an author could just invent his or her own monsters, own rules of magic, own maps and missions. I loved it as much then as I cherish Malazan now, and while I, too, follow the common mythos of Wheel fandom with regards to the latter books (8-11 could have been one book if you cut out Faile’s plot and the Bowl of the Winds) the work as a whole is still too important to disparage. The three books following Jordan’s death by Brandon Sanderson were an excellent finish and, likely, a distinct improvement on what would have come to fruition from an aging Jordan who had already become redundant.

Guy Gavriel Kay – The Lions of al-Rassan (Age: teen)

I read earlier work by Kay, but it did not strike me as much as the ending of Lions did. Even before reaching halfway through the Fionavar Tapestry I knew Kay was an author’s author who was more elegant by half than every fantasy author I had loved thus far. He seemed an author turned fantasy fan rather than a fantasy fan turned author, and holds the dubious honour of being the only author to make me cry. I have Tigana slated to be read soon and I have heard it may be his best.

There will be more. I have many new authors slated to read (Scott Lynch), and series I’m currently puttering away at (Patrick Rothfuss), but also feel as though there’s something to be said for Joe Abercrombie’s point of view that it is not essential for a fantasy author to constantly be trying to read everything fantasy. I can’t copy Mistborn if I keep putting it off, right?

30 Days of Balance #9: Never Quiting + Warcraft III

Posted on March 13, 2016 by The Imbalance

People often ask authors how they finish a book, the drudgery of day to day life serving as a constant reminder to them that they have no extra time for anything. Maybe they have started a book and not finished it. Maybe they just quit, or maybe they did not like the product. Maybe they spelled Yale with a 6. Regardless, they want to know. It is a challenge, isn’t it? How do people find the time and the words? What made you think your story was important? (That’s your cynical friend who creates nothing but critiques everything.)

I don’t know about most of it, but the one aspect of writing I feel like I have an exceptional grasp on is never quitting. It’s the element I am certain separates me from these inquiring minds at parties. It’s the single factor I could fall back on when hit with doubt. If you build a history of never quitting on projects – never getting bored and losing what made the idea great to you in the first place – then you will always continue, and thus can count on the fact something will be produced. When you know something will come, then there is no course but to put in the effort to impress. Otherwise there’s no surer path to a premature end. Alas, I have a secret:

I draw strength from Warcraft III.

Probably not what anyone was expecting – yet true. Warcraft III. Yes, a cartoony video game of my youth that I loved to bits, but also something more. It was the title of my first real story.

See, back in Grade 9 and 10 Warcraft III, as producers Blizzard would have it, did not exist. Warcraft II existed and love it to bits. So much so that I set out to write a sequel. Every day after school I would come home and head upstairs to write two pages single-spaced before dinner. I did this for most of Grade 9 and then through the summer and into Grade 10. When I finished, I wrote another one, and when I finished that one I wrote a third one. The combined result was an 111,000 word text document on an old Mac of which I was resolutely proud.

Now, here’s the thing. It may have been woven together with some creativity, but I borrowed half my characters from the video game. I used their map. I used their world. I made spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors galore. I wrote sentences that a grown reader would be incapable of digesting. The end product was rubbish in the real world, and in retrospect, even as far back as university, it was not a story worthy of attention.

Except mine. It inspired me because I finished it.

All 111,000 words. Now, years later, I can barely tell you any details of all this work (I remember a demon arriving mid-air in the middle of a four-nation boat battle, and Deathwing providing a final surprise attack before the final curtain – that’s it), but I can tell you the word count because the knowledge that I finished what I set out to do a year ago – which was like five years adult time – was all that mattered.

If I could finish a quasi-readable story that overtly stole half of its ideas when I was a pubescent teenager with plenty of understandable diversions, what excuse could I have as an aspiring author seven years ago? What, was the fantasy world I constructed from the favourite elements of my reading list not good enough for Azeroth? Were my Imbalance characters of less dimension than computer game NPCs and their cousins from the era of ‘I-can’t-use-commas-properly’? Finishing something of notable size through beginning, journey, and climax was no longer a hurdle. Starting such a project again was a decision made with the confidence that one day I would finish again, and unwavering knowledge that you can is the greatest of motivators.

30 Days of Balance #8: Two Levels: Shakespeare vs. The Simpsons

Posted on March 12, 2016 by The Imbalance

I have a theory that to be truly great a work of art has to hit on at least two levels – that it has to be able to excel with two separate demographics simultaneously. You cannot just draw from one source for too long or the well runs dry. I came to this conclusion while studying Shakespeare during an American Literacy course over a decade ago.

The premise is so: in the 14^th and 15^th centuries Shakespeare gained great notoriety for the plays performed in London, most notably at the Globe theater. The design of the Globe separated the audience into two distinct parts: the first were the wealthy, sitting in gilded chairs in front of fancy curtains. They filled most of what we would call the balcony and surrounding walls. The second part was the main floor in front of the stage, which more closely resembled a mosh pit than the orderly chair matrix we would find today. This design created a duality with regards to patronage. On any given performance, the gentry would be bumping shoulders with the commoners on their way to and fro, in line for the bathroom, etc. Back then even being within eyesight of a poor person was likely enough for a lady to faint, so you can imagine that such polar groups all shoved in together was quite a feat.

It only worked because of Shakespeare’s art. Most Shakespeare plays were brilliant in the witty repartee of the time, being inventive in their language and ushering in new terminology. They appealed to the educated in their complexity and vanity both. Most Shakespeare plays also featured baudy sexual humour, racy zingers and violent duels and deaths. They appealed to the masses who wanted a little break from the proprietary decrees of the time period. The content of the plays could be performed once and appeal to two entirely unique groups within the city. When the plays came across to America this sensation was made clear tenfold. The Americans treated them more like traveling circus shows than high art. That aspect was lost in translation (from English to English) but the Yanks loved a good dust up as much as the next state. Magic.

I realized this was mirrored in the brilliance of the modern day Shakespeare: The Simpsons (and dear reader please be mindful of the fact we were barely into the double digits with regards to which Simpsons era I was considering). Here we had a show that was clearly the most creative and hilarious thing on TV being made for an audience that mostly appreciated it when Homer fell down or was SMRT. All around the world The Simpsons became a commercial beast with smart alec Bart and dumb Homer as the lynch pins to the physical comedy, and every other aspect of the writing as the genius riding high on another plane. Harvard comedy writers knowing what would keep them on the air and keep them sane at the same time. Magic.

You might not be surprised to learn I really enjoyed MacHomer.

In fantasy I believe a good book tells a great story, but a great book tells multiple great stories to multiple types of audience. When people read Imbalance I want them to find the aspect of the work that best connects to what they seek in an escape. It could be the slower moments of introspection and manifest emotion. It could be the moments thick with desperate battle and unbridled violence. It could be the rings of history encompassing the present. It could be the depth of tragedy. It could be love. It could be the weaving of all five together.

If so, it could grow to be a novel that can hit on two levels.

30 Days of Balance #7: A World Birthed From Maps

Posted on March 11, 2016 by The Imbalance

In the end, or the beginning, it all began with a map.

As it should. Maps dictate almost every element of world building beyond conveyable possessions. Be it urban proximity or natural divides, once a map is set in stone much of an author’s writing is set in stone, too. The visuals for environments come to life. The distances between locations heighten to essential importance. The need for certainty becomes paramount. The scenery on the map sets out the climate, the abundance of food and water, the flora and fauna, and the hazards of an area until they become hard and fast rules that keep an author honest.

Maps create borders and borders create tension. The vast majority of epic fantasy novels are set during times of war where the political differences of neighbouring nations is critical to the story itself. Borders also create different types of ‘folks’ and therefore serve not only to point out how others live, but to reflect upon how the protagonists live. For example, in Imbalance the wild plains of the Sveldtlands serves as an important divide between the continents of Carn and the Thynlands. It separates an area of the world full of militaristic Barganols and human Taskmasters from the mercantile populations of Csarvent and Loce to the south – and in doing so creates an entirely new group: the Sveldtlander clans. Below is an older version of the world map divided by coloured continent.

One other thing to note before looking at some maps: with Imbalance I set out to do what many of my favourite fantasy series did not – give you the entire map. Wheel of Time leaves off on Shara and Seanchan. The First Law gives you chunks but never the whole thing. Malazan Book of the Fallen shatters a map on the floor and shouts at you to pick up the pieces. Song of Ice and Fire gets close, but ignores much of Essos. In Imbalance it is my aim to provide an entire, more or less precise map. Distances and the charting of landforms may not be satellite accurate, but the cities are the cities and the mountains the mountains. No mysterious ‘Salidors’ to pop up here. If the town is not on the map, then it does not qualify as a town.

Just don’t get mad at me when most all of Purge of Ashes occurs on one continent.

An outdated map denoting continental divide.

The original hand-drawn map. Plenty of little differences.

P.S.: One day I will do an astrological map to chart the stars and their signs.

30 Days of Balance #6: Value of a Good Ear + Friends

Posted on March 10, 2016 by The Imbalance

Writing can be very solitary. It can be especially solitary if you’re writing epic fantasy or science fiction wherein the vast majority of plots and terminology are challenging to explain to the general populace. It can be tripley-especially solitary if you’re brand new and none of the people in your life have an inch of respect for your work yet. My work on Imbalance is the same now as it was in the years it took to write and edit, yet thanks to my publishing deal the difference in respect afforded the book is night and day. Once someone in the outside world validates the work it leaps from “yeah, yeah” to “legitimate” overnight. I imagine self-published authors just have to keep pushing forward with this sort of anonymity – at least until a critical mass has read and lauded the release.

Having worked on Imbalance much of my adult life, I came to appreciate three friends of mine in particular who cared enough to listen to my premise and storylines. I’m a talker. These fellows were, principally, listeners. As such, they were well-suited to take it all in, and they already knew me to be a staunch supporter of my own latest projects. The details of the backstory – either told over a few hours of beer, or after badminton, or via questions about my old movie script – bred interest in actually reading Purge of Ashes while most people remained in the dark. These three were my primary beta readers.

I’m writing this post to emphasize the importance of such people – those willing to put faith in you when you have no meter to gauge your faith in yourself. I knew I was proud of the book, that it was very carefully woven, and that it maintained the action-pacing of a feature film. I also knew I read it through rose-tinted glasses and a pervading bravado. To discuss it with others in similar detail as to if we were discussing The Wheel of Time or Malazan Book of the Fallen was integral to realizing it was ready. That I could have a whole conversation with one of these three without mentioning entire story lines – or any character arc in particular – instilled a recognition that there was enough content to merit the page count. Now, friends are friends and not true beta readers – this I know. I think their contributions are just as important but in a different way. Such friends make it worth your while even if every stranger is unimpressed with the book.

They can also confirm that such a scenario is never going to happen.

30 Days of Balance #5: What is Imbalance About?

Posted on March 10, 2016 by The Imbalance

It is a fine line to preemptively explain an epic fantasy. No doubt it will be filled with fantastical elements, exotic locations, and a bevy of particular terminology. Explaining any major undertaking in such a realm challenging to describe to the layman, and yet – when a book is new – everyone is a layman. I always feel silly when family members, friends, acquaintances or anyone asks what Imbalance is about because I grew up believing a good epic fantasy concerns itself with the growth and development of multiple characters or the deep history of a fictitious world. Paraphrasing a past is just not a palatable prospect.*

I inevitably end up saying something about the following simplified terms:

swords
monsters
magic
grit
gods

These moments hurt a little because it short changes not just my own story, but every one of the amazing, amazing epic fantasy novels I’m proud to have read and loved. If it is woven complex enough, it simply cannot be readily translated to those with a fringe understanding of the genre. My favourite, Erikson, knows (See this post).

So how does this change now via blog? Well, for one I don’t feel like my audience immediately tunes out after hearing the word “magic.” For two I can choose my words a little more carefully. And for three I can assume some manner of interest beyond due diligence.

My query letter used to end with the line, “Purge of Ashes chronicles the mettle of young soldiers as their impact ripples from a dusty road all the way to the gods’ realm” and this is a pretty good starting point. The series is called Imbalance and it has a short game and a long game. The short game is based around the young soldiers of the Loce Freelancers, third division – who they are before the invasion and who they become while treading the ashes. War and upheaval frequently upset balances of power, leaving the young to fill in the shoes of the dead. They undercut self pity and notions of unfairness with the threat of eradication. Choices made in love and actions taken in hate cause butterfly effects that sway rebellions, quell insurrections or force a return to glory. The ordeal suffered by the Loce Freelancers, third division has repercussions that extend beyond each individual’s inner struggle to create tangible change in the world beyond. To simply tread the ashes is not enough. One must be purged to find solace, and with solace comes the return of balance.

The long game is the second half of the query – about the god’s realm. What constitutes balance between good and evil, chaos and stability, is rooted in the nature of the gods and therefore foreign to the mortal mind. For example, the gods of good and evil (alas, I simplify anyway) have separate notions of what constitutes a fair division of power between them, but it is the mortals who they need to sway. The rest, as they say, is in the text.

One final thing: I could type out a laundry list of concepts I believe to be ‘themes’ in Purge of Ashes and they would read like a Grade 5 class studying abstract nouns. What matters isn’t words like ‘glory,’ ‘redemption’, ‘honour’, ‘bravery’ or ‘love’ – what matters is the weight of all such concepts, and how heavy they feel against your chest. The words are empty and typical without the book behind them – and by the time you have read it in full, you can and will decide for yourself.

*Note: this alliterative sentence is entirely for my epic fantasy comrade Sean Rodden.

30 Days of Balance #4: Progress to Publication I – Original Draft + Movie Script

Posted on March 8, 2016 by The Imbalance

Imbalance was sat on for a very long time. Numerous times. Creativity for me has always been a sine wave and with each high to productivity comes the balancing low. It is not what it used to be, but with each progression towards the finished book, it is far more a product of what it was than not. All the roots came from a map, but at some point words came into play. There is always a first draft. This post is about the first incarnation of Imbalance and Purge of Ashes, between 2003-2007 when it existed first as a student’s fancy and then as a movie script.

The Original Imbalance Book One: Like most good stories, the characters and scenarios for Imbalance were conceived while steering a dragon boat on Little Lake in Peterborough, Ontario. The shorelines were dotted with houses and the air smelled of the Quaker Oats factory upriver. Being out on the water is quite different from sitting on shore and merely observing. Brushed along by the wind, yet bobbing gently atop the water, it is not so hard to forget oneself and one’s simple chore of turning a 22-passenger boat once every few minutes.

When I got home I collected a series of characters first, having pictured my aforementioned map as the homeland and decided what location suited me best for a beginning. Then I began to write…

I check the word count of my original Imbalance from back in 2003 and I see it totals 44,000 words. It is weird and foreign to me. Everything is out of order. People’s names are slightly different. There are five entire chapters dedicated to what I summed up in about three pages of the upcoming release. Plus I had a point of view from the Scalion Legion, which was… different. I also organized the book in an interesting manner. Four sections of five chapters each, plus prologue and epilogue. Each one was named after a location – the same as the upcoming release but adding ‘Hazenma’ between ‘Katolys’ and ‘The Longest Road’ disparities. Additionally, each chapter had a title, and each title was drawn directly from a war metaphor. For example: Chapters 1-5, from ‘Katolys’, where titled: ‘A Flicker’, ‘Embers’, ‘Heat’, ‘Inferno’, ‘Ashes.’ The chapters for Hazenma reflected the process of a blacksmith forging a sword, and so on. The prologue was called ‘Premonitions’ and featured Ronun Thel’s first memory. The epilogue was called ‘Apparitions’ and was likely a Matthew Good Band reference / cool rhyme.

While I scrapped most of this version when I began to write Purge of Ashes in earnest in 2008, I did borrow some of my favourite bits – and certainly many of the scenes flow similar. The very first scene I ever wrote was Kaern playing with fire in the fire pit beside his farmhouse, which lasted a long time before eventually being turned to memories in the release. The Chapter 1 scene with Bale overlooking the Katolyian wharf was not too different then than it is now. Nor our introduction to Aronan. Where these fledgling scenes were most useful, however, was the year prior when I attended a Television Writing & Producing program where I was asked to pen a movie script.

The Movie Script: Since everyone was there to try their hand at learning how to produce television shows, or in my case create adult animated cartoons, no one was too interested in drawing up a whole movie script for this one particular class. It was the odd combination of ‘movie scripts’ and ‘late night’ and slipped aside the objective of most students – myself included. After imploring the class for at least a few scripts before the winter holidays, I decided that while I had no new ideas for full-length movies, I did have one lingering property…

I took what I had written for Imbalance, chopped the ‘Hazenma’ part right down to almost nothing, and then actually finished the story by filling in the finale in the form of a movie script. I found the time over the holidays because… well that’s the glory of being a student, isn’t it? My teacher praised it some, but then he was desperate to encourage more scripts out of the other students, so I took it with a grain of salt. What mattered most was that I really liked some of the choices I made in the final moments of the script. This script also forced me to keep the dialogue short and to the point, which I believe later helped me with some of my favourite lines in the upcoming release. It also kept the pace of the novel fast and action-oriented, a pacing I am proud of amid my many details.

Now, nothing was ever going to happen with this movie script. Let us clarify that. I had not the comprehension to pursue it, and at the time there was a notable lack of interest in fantasy movies from nobodies. There was a notable lack of interest in fantasy movies from anyone. Anyone not named Tolkien or Rowling, anyway.

So that was where I sat in the new year. Cool script, but who cares? It would take at least a year to realize that the collaboration required to make it in TV was beyond my scope and that writing was a medium I could plumb until kingdom come… but that’s a story for Progress to Publication II.

30 Days of Balance #3: Biting My Nails vs. Writing

Posted on March 7, 2016 by The Imbalance

Some days my biggest adversary is not getting words into the story, obeying timelines or the organization of the almanac, but the wanton destruction I deliver to my own fingernails. See, finger tips are used to type, and unsightly fingernails can often tarnish said tips. A furious amount of carving disguised as cleaning will ruin these functioning appendages to the point of creating ten hyper-sensitive, throbbing extremities – digits no longer capable of pressing keys without exacting an unfair amount of pain. Equally as nasty, the distraction of having a hand up at my mouth keeps me from typing, lending my mind to long gaps in focus where my subconscious is instead hell bent on straightening some calcium deposit.

It does not bode well for an author. A quick Google search reveals few to no hits correlating the two premises and I find this odd. When I had this problem writing essays in university I used to minimize and load up a hockey video game. It took twenty minutes to play and required both hands firmly on the keyboard. The result was twenty minutes without touching my nails. Biting one’s nails is a strange thing to do – but once you start, it is the sensitivity of the area that drives you back without thinking. Fade that sensation and you are set free.

Alas, this tactic is insufficient. I no longer have twenty minutes to so freely spare.

My solution? I may be one of the only authors to wear a pair of gloves while writing. I am all style in a pair of black gloves so tight they almost cut off my wrist circulation – the kind as ideal for snowballs as they are unsatisfactory at keeping wetness at bay. While this is simply happenstance, it serves the tips of my fingers well because I can still type through the material. Despite their overt benefits, I don’t always choose to wear the gloves, usually resulting in stinging regret. Stubbornness? Discomfort? Assumed control over my vice. Whatever the reason, they are a necessity. They may look a little silly, but if I know I’m in for the long haul I make them my first priority. No one requires their authors to look good during.

As of the writing of this post, the mitts are sitting in a clump beside. I assumed I would have no fingernail problems, but my right index and pinky are sore. I don’t really remember causing the damage. Blog posts are one thing – their style is you and quick to fire off. Imbalance is quite another.

If you’re a writer and have the same problem, I’d love to hear from you.

30 Days of Balance #2: 200,000 Words + One From Joe Abercrombie

Posted on March 6, 2016 by The Imbalance

Being new is hard.

Being an author is hard, too.

Being a new author with a book breaching 200,000 words is doomed to failure.

Being doomed to failure is hard.

My debut Purge of Ashes clocks in at around 204,000 words, about double what ‘they’ say a newly minted author should attempt. Everywhere I looked my word count was not just implausible or foolish, it was impudent and rude. A sure sign of an upstart university kid who thinks piling words from his engorged lexicon comprises prose fiction. The gall of it, going a book’s length into the sextupal digits. And yet here I am writing with both a publishing deal and the guile to work the word ‘sex’ into a post sans smut. University was a long time ago.

The word count was one of the most daunting aspects of completing Purge of Ashes. Attracting an agent or publisher would be based on their opinion of whether or not I would make money for the company. At first there would be no bearing on quality. The gatekeepers were therefore math types who were hedging their bets to calculate the odds of your book being a success – a risk worth taking. At 204,000 words all the algebra in the world would never fit the right numbers into the right variables for me. The cost of the excess paper required to print the novel outdid my potential, especially if the measure of that potential was 250 words on a single query letter.

I could never simply lop a chunk of the book. The ramifications were either too vast to consider or too damaging to the atmosphere or pacing. Nor could I split the book in two. You don’t set out on a mass exodus only to have the story end mid-jaunt when people’s feet are starting to get sore. One option seemed ideal: print as is and cuff the norms.

The thing is, they say write what you know for a reason. If there was one thing I was comfortable with in my knowledge, besides the TV show Futurama, it was my understanding of why my favourite fantasy series were so great. The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire and then later Malazan Book of the Fallen and First Law. None of these were small books. None of them squirmed into the presentation britches of the so-called rules of publishing. If these were what I knew, then an 80,000 page one-off to get my feet wet was not for me. Not grand enough by half.

So what could I do? I had done it my way like a cool dude, but now my way had petered from a paved highway into a lapideous streambed.

An offhand comment from @Grimdark himself, Joe Abercrombie, did the trick. I was beside myself at how impossible maintaining my 204,000 words seemed in a day and age where the internet could tell me ahead of time the many reasons I would fail. No one was going to care to represent my work and my craft was going to be for nothing but a few loyal friends. Then, halfway down the comment section on a thread purporting to tally ‘caps’ for word count by genre, I came upon an old post of Abercrombie’s calling the results into question – and you’re welcome to read it here. (A search for ‘Abercrombie’ will find it for you quickly.) He basically implied that a great number of impressive debuts in the preceding years, including The Blade Itself at 190,000 words, were closer to 200,000 than anything else… so why imply limitations? The successes belied the restrictions.

This prompted in me a steely resolve to ensure Purge of Ashes failed or thrived as conceived. If other excellent books could skip the line then so could I. Even the most famous authors started out timid over their capability. Let April 5^th be the judge of the company it will keep.