Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Since a lot of what I write is quite spooky, it seems fitting that I’m racing to beat the witching hour this Halloween.

Not only has there been the dramatic twist to Teratogenesis, but I’ve also decided to share my own experience with the uncanny on Scribd.  As always, there are versions for both print / screen and for mobile devices.

The incident described in Crying Wolf is actually true.  But the situation is so ambiguous, even seeing isn’t really believing.  And this is where I stand on the issue of the supernatural.  If I can see it myself and there is only a paranormal explanation then, yes, I would believe, but until then I’ll just keep an open mind.

After all:

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…”

Good For The Soul

Well, the wolf is out of the bag for Teratogenesis today.

Our protagonist has finally realized what we have suspected for months.  And he has tasted blood.

And what do you do with a dog that has turned on it’s master?

The end is surely nigh.

Specifically, there is only about eight weeks left.  And then I’m starting my next project:  A short story a week for a year.  It’s entirely optimistic, there is absolutely no way I’ll have fifty two short stories, but I need to shoot high.

And then there is going to be process of editing up Teratogenesis for it’s final version.  Which is bound to be easier said than done…

 

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Wake Up Everyday, That Would Be A Start

If I were to start Teratogenesis again, what would I do differently?

I would use a WordPress account rather than LiveJournal.  There is no way around this- LiveJournal is showing its age.  I had thought to take into account the ready built community but, frankly, the social networking element is a lot more rudimentary than I expected.  The other element is the inability to place tracking code on the blog.  Ten months in, I still have no idea of how successful it has been.  I can see how many people read this blog, but not Teratogenesis.

I would shill a lot more.  So far, all of my traffic to Teratogenesis is, presumably, either direct, from here or from the Xaeromancer Project.  And that is mostly from the fact that if I have an account somewhere that will let me post a link here, then I’ve posted a link here.  I should also have gone onto online writing forums and talked up the project that way.  Reaching the most people is the trick, as not everyone will be a fan; I accept that, but I need to reach the people who would be interested if they knew about this project.

I would have structured it a lot more.  Sometimes there is a perfect storm of synchronicity, but other times it’s a real challenge to move the story along.  I think managing the story arcs week-by-week rather than month-by-month would have kept a better pace.  It’s all a matter of flexibility versus slack and rigidity versus robustness.

I wouldn’t have bothered with the Amazon links.  Maybe with higher traffic, this would have been worth it, but so far…

Still, Teratogenesis has cost me nothing but time so far, so I can afford to experiment.  A real time window into the life an increasingly strange protagonist?  It’s not a safe bet at the best of times.  But then, I’d sooner fail for over-reaching myself than be successful for playing to the lowest common denominator.

Spot The Deliberate Mistake

In the last chapter of Teratogenesis, there is a quote purportedly from Neil Young.  It’s actually from Mama Said by Metallica, which sounds like a Neil Young song anyway.  The Neil Young song / songs he actually means are My My, Hey Hey (Into The Black) / Hey Hey, My My (Out Of The Blue.)  This song became infamous when it was quoted in Kurt Cobain’s suicide not.  But, Rudy, he chose the Metallica…

One of the oddest things in this project, is to make other peoples mistakes for them.  And yes, the typos and grammar errors are left in deliberately.

 

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The Rub of the Real

I’ll be honest, I stole the idea for Rudi’s tea from a friend’s Facebook post.

I needed an example of a meaty, starchy comfort meal for him to eat in today’s chapter of Teratogenesis and I had written “a steak I had cooked impatiently, mash and a mug of Bovril.”  But when I saw a friend’s Facebook update, I changed it to beef noodles and hot dogs because it not only seems more authentic, but because steak and mash isn’t the kind of lucky combination that comes up when you shop while hungry.  You get salad and rice or beans and Spam, truly atrocious meals that you have to eat because there is nothing else in.  But sometimes, you do get lucky; the occasional pasta and chilli con carne or Mars bar toastie.  And so, we get to noodles and hot dog sandwiches.  Good call, Nik.

Also, it’s the lyrics to a song:

“…Looking for a place called Lee Ho Fuks /Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein…”

One of the things that I’ve had to do over the last year is develop who (and what) Rudi is.  Given what Teratogenesis means, it should be obvious by now, but it has definitely been easier to describe the mental changes rather than any physical ones.  It was even very tempting to use an existing clinical condition but ultimately, that would’ve been a cop out.  Which meant I had to work out what would happen to someone afflicted with the “other” condition.  I imagine it would ache a lot and would leave you hungry, no matter how much- or even what- you ate…

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Dreaming of Wolves

Well, it seems I’m not the only one who is having strange dreams lately.  Thankfully, mine weren’t nearly as gruesome as Rudi’s.

“Tomorrow’s is especially important…”  Talk about famous last words?  You’d have thought I’d have learned by now, to stop writing cheques my keyboard can’t cash.  Still it’s a double sized chapter, that’s got to count for something, right?

Nonetheless, the latest instalment is probably the most important to the overall story so far and is a definite sign that we’re on the home stretch.  I’ve had to wait nine months to write this chapter.  Hopefully, all the foreshadowing has fallen into place.  The end is nigh…

The more I write the more I realize that I’m using a lot of ‘uncanny’ and Freudian (or, rather, Jungian) images:  The wolf, the moon, dreams within dreams and, in this instalment, trains and tunnels.  This isn’t an especially deliberate decision.  My own writer’s instincts play a huge part in this, and, really, that is the main exercise of Teratogenesis, to start imposing an order and discipline on my writing, to balance the wolf and the man.  Certainly, it’s good practice to be writing to deadline again, the pressure certainly imposes a clarity that is sometimes lacking otherwise.

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Double Barrel

Two instalments of Teratogenesis as we move into the busiest five weeks of the serial so far.  In fact, there’ll be an average of two posts a week for the next month, which will account for about a sixth of the story come the end of October.  I told you things were picking up pace.

Tomorrow’s is especially important, but might not seem so for a few weeks.

Even in fiction as strange as Teratogenesis, you have to draw on your own experiences, probably especially so for weird fiction.  So, in writing about Rudi’s “aches and pains” I’ve drawn on almost all of the injuries I’ve had over the years and addressed the issues of both the terrible growing pains I had as a kid and the Typist’s Gout I seem to be developing in my hands.  It’s important to sympathise, rather than just emphasise, with the character as I write.  After all, if I can’t do, how can you, the reader?

I’ve also had to start using a spreadsheet to keep track of the soundtrack.  When the serial is complete, I’ll see about assembling a Spotify soundtrack and posting a link on here.

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“I Saw The Rain Dirty Valley…”

A slightly unusual Teratogenesis this week (even by its own standards.)  Thankfully, I’d had the presence of mind to describe how Rudy writes his blog and have him do so in a way that can leave posts floating around for a few days (or weeks…)

You see, this was originally last Friday’s update, but I have been unable to write for a few days.  When I say “unable to write” that’s not strictly true.  There was something I wanted to write about, had to write about, but to have sat down immediately afterward, it would’ve just poured out of me and I was decidedly unsure of where it was going.

Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid that you woke up shaken?  I have.  I’ve had dreams that have seemed to run for months and left me unsure of the date when I woke up.  Sometimes I dream of dreaming, of waking from one dream to another and not being sure of where (or when or even who) I am when I wake up.  It’s interesting to watch in Inception as an adult, but it was horrible as a child.  I’ve had nightmares so utterly vile that I can’t bring myself to transcribe them.  And, given the direction Teratogenesis will take, you may be surprised at this.

But I had a dream the other night that was so strange, beautiful and profound that it took me two days to fully recall it and another to write a record of it.  Most strangely, I instantly made a connection between one story but, on further research, found that it resembled more a legend which had influenced that story.  A legend I was unfamiliar with.

There are a lot of theories about dreams:  they are just the brain defragmenting itself, there is pool of race memory that dreams tap into, they are messages from a higher power.  I’m not sure were I stand on this, but I think there are elements of truth in all them.  Even when I’m awake, I find that writing is a lot like dreaming onto the page, that the idea is just moving through me like light through a lens.  This is what I think of as the “talent” part of writing, the intuitive aspect, as opposed to the “craft” of writing, which is very much a discipline earned in blood, sweat and the proverbial tears.

I’m not sure what I will do with this dream, but I’ll certainly do something; it’s too much of a gift not to.

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Taking Aim

After posting today’s Teratogenesis, I noticed that I’m nearing the final act.  As Teratogenesis has been unfolding in “real time,” this also means that the best part of a year has also passed and, more importantly, I can get rid of the current theme- far too orange for my liking, but then it’s not meant to be my blog.

If I were to start the project again, would I do things differently?  Yes.  I certainly would.  For a start, I’d probably use a Wordpress account instead of LiveJournal.  I’d also do more marketing.  Which is to say, I would do “some” marketing instead of relying on word of mouth and click-through traffic from around the web.

But there have been definite successes.  It’s taken months of discipline not to reveal the protagonist’s name, although it’s should be fairly obvious now.  There is also the issue of is he going mad (or has he already?)  Or is there another explanation?  There will be answers to that coming up as well.  I certainly don’t plan a Lost-style ending which spends the final act raising questions and then copping out on the answers.  Nothing has happened without purpose (well, there is a whole sub plot which is meaningless, but even then, that’s deliberately without meaning…)

This also means finalising plans for next year.  The secret project is on a knife edge, but probably isn’t as time critical as I thought it would be.  Characters are beginning to emerge as well as methods and means.  Next year will probably be the year of the short story as I’ll be ramping up my output from an average of five hundred words every eight days to closer to a few thousand every week.  In short (excuse the pun,) I’m planning a short story a week for a year.  One day to plan, two days to write, one for the first draft, one for the second and post on a Saturday.  This will also deliberately shape my writing habits around my day job.  There is no way I can get fifty-two short stories done, what with Christmas and holidays and everything, but the point is to aim higher so that should I fall short, I can still hit something.

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Double Time

A double posting of Teratogenesis, first yesterday and again today, I guess I was right about things picking up, eh?
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but one of the things I’ve come to like about working on a serial is the progression of sub-plots and how they advance the main storyline.  The current industrial espionage one is something that I’ve  been looking forward to for a while and is an opportunity to show how strange and ruthless the narrator has become.
Teratogenesis is a character piece and we learn more about our narrator about how he is talking than what he actually says.  And the opportunity to show how morally flexible he has become is nearer and nearer with every chapter.  Things will, no doubt, get worse before they get better…
There isn’t much going on that isn’t Teratogenesis at the moment.  There should be, but there isn’t.  Steps are being taken to reverse the situation.

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