First things first: In case anyone could possibly forget, this weekend is GenCon 2012!!! I'll be in author's alley near the signing table if you want to come by and say hello!  It's also worth noting that I have a short story appearing in Missing Pieces vol. III from Dragon Roots press.  I'd link you to their website, but it looks like Rocco hasn't updated it in a while...

 Now, on to even more interesting news!

I'm sure many of you are familiar with fantasy author Michael Moorcock , who created such iconic characters as Elric of Melniboné and Jerry Cornelius . His output has been prodigious, and looking at his bibliography it's hard for someone like me (who writes relatively slowly) to imagine one guy writing all that in one lifetime. I've heard a story (probably apocryphal) that in the case of his earlier more pulpy writing, he could crank out a short novel over the weekend.

According to wikipedia he did claim at one point to be able to turn out 15,000 words on a good day, which is amazing to me. I have heard tell (again, I have no idea if this is actually true) that his trick for writing a "weekend novel" was to actually do a lot of prep work before hand: do some pre-writing to get a good handle on the main characters, and then break the story down into sections and chapters and create a very detailed outline. So, before he sat down to bang out the first draft, he knew ahead of time what had to happen in every chapter, and all of his plot and development was mapped out, so he could just lock himself in a room for three days and have a first draft on Monday morning.

That kind of methodical approach to a short novel sounds just like the kind of thing that would work for me, since I'm a big fan of prep work and planning when I write fiction. So I've decided to try to follow that plan, and build up to writing a 120 page novella over a weekend. I'm a very busy guy with a lot going on, so that weekend will likely remain some distance down the road. I'm thinking sometime after the holidays, which are the busiest time of year for my job. However, during the run up I should have plenty of time to plan the book.

I'm going to work through some of the planning stages here, so this should becme a semi-regular feature.  Watch this space!

Next installment: The Protagonist