The plan

A big part of this blog, and Writ­ing On Your Palm before it, has always been to doc­u­ment my jour­ney as a writer and serve as either a cau­tion­ary exam­ple or inspi­ra­tion to oth­ers. It occurred to me recently that I have a unique oppor­tu­nity to do so much more.

When I was writ­ing my first novel, one of my idols was Joe Straczyn­ski, the cre­ator and writer of nearly every episode of Baby­lon 5. I read every word Joe pub­lished on the inter­net dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the show, and I learned a lot about both writ­ing in gen­eral and how tele­vi­sion is made. But there was always more I wanted to know. I wanted to see the scripts. I wanted to sit in on the break­out meet­ings. I wanted to see the back­ground of the story the way Joe saw it. I never got those things, because Joe is sane and had a busi­ness to run.

But now, I have the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide just what I wanted. I can do some­thing no one else has been nuts enough to do. Here’s the plan.

Step 1: Write and edit Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles simultaneously

Reg­u­lar read­ers know I’ve com­mit­ted to writ­ing all seven books of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles series in ten months, to be fin­ished by Labor Day week­end, 2010. But now that I’ve fig­ured out how to write 2,000 words a day and still have time for my nor­mal life, I’ve decided to aim still higher. I’m also going to edit the books in nearly the same span of time. Basi­cally, while I’m writ­ing 2,000 words a day of Book 2, I’ll be edit­ing 5 – 10 pages of Book 1. This is pos­si­ble because the 2k-​per-​day rough draft I’ve been turn­ing out is sur­pris­ingly read­able, not at all the unread­able crap I was expect­ing. Turns out you can write well and write fast at the same time (Mike Cane, I’m look­ing at you).

Step 2: Blog everything

Yes, every­thing. I’d like to announce The Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles Blog, where I’ll be pub­lish­ing every sin­gle thing I use in writ­ing these books, doc­u­ment­ing every step in the process. There you will find notes, research, plot out­lines, even drafts posted as I write them, and before I revise them. I want aspir­ing writ­ers to see the whole pack­age. To be able to com­pare out­lines to drafts to the fin­ished prod­uct, and see how it all changes. I’ve set up a wiki for most of the struc­tured infor­ma­tion that doesn’t work as well on a blog.

Step 3: Sell the fin­ished prod­uct cheap or free

Once I’m done with each book, each chap­ter will be avail­able as a free PDF file or a free pod­cast (nar­rated by yours truly, and a straight read, none of this voice cast busi­ness). Each book will also be avail­able on eReader.com, Fictionwise.com and Amazon.com as a 99 cent ebook. At the end of the series I’ll also make a 7-​book omnibus edi­tion avail­able for $5.

For those that want some­thing to put on a shelf — or don’t take my advice about how to read ebooks com­fort­ably—I’ll also be pub­lish­ing each book via either Lulu or Cre­ate­Space—haven’t decided which yet — for just a lit­tle bit more than it costs to print. I’m not try­ing to get rich here. But I want to make sure that any­one who wants a printed copy can get one. I likely won’t be doing a printed omnibus edi­tion, how­ever, as it would sim­ply be too expensive.

Step 4: Embrace the Chaos

One of the rea­sons I’m doing this is to estab­lish a cer­tain set­ting I plan to come back to again and again through­out my career. This is the Chaos. After the events in Book 5, I basi­cally have kicked over all the anthills and set the galaxy on fire. Every­one is at war with every­one else, human­ity is in pretty dire straits, and every­thing has gone to hell. Book 6 actu­ally takes place dur­ing the Chaos, but it’s far from the only thing going on. It will take years, maybe decades of this to get to Book 7, Uni­fi­ca­tion, where the heroes that sur­vived Book 5 get back together and unify the galaxy. In those years are an infin­ity of tales.

But I’m not going to be the only one writ­ing Tales of the Chaos. At least I hope not. I’m going to open up that set­ting under Cre­ative Com­mons so that any­one can write sto­ries set there. There will be a few lim­i­ta­tions, like not using actual char­ac­ters from my books, so the new sto­ries don’t end up con­tra­dict­ing Uni­fi­ca­tion—and even that will be nego­tiable, I expect to approve a few canon­i­cal sto­ries I don’t write — but over­all, it’s an open sand­box. Most of the sto­ries will even be hosted on the Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles site.

Step 5: The Audition

Once I’m done with Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles — aside from Tales of the Chaos — I’ll keep writ­ing, of course. Home­world (my NaNoW­riMo 2006 project) and Titanus (which I devel­oped for Script Frenzy 2009 but decided I’d rather write as a novel) still need to be fin­ished. As does Ghost Ronin, the first in a new adven­ture series. These, and the works that fol­low them, will in all like­li­hood be writ­ten with the door closed. I will seek an agent and get these and future works pub­lished tra­di­tion­ally. But here, the work I’ve done for Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles will give me an advan­tage. Agents and edi­tors con­sid­er­ing my work will be able to see that I can write to a spe­cific length, fin­ish what I start, and tell a good story. They’ll have half a mil­lion words of my fic­tion as a work sam­ple, and they’ll be able to see exactly how I research and write a book. And hope­fully, they’ll see you, dear read­ers, and see that I can build a fan base and get peo­ple excited about my work. That’s why I’m giv­ing Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles away for free — or as cheap as I’m allowed to make it. Because if I pull it off, and do every­thing right, then I get to…

Step 6: Quit my day job and write full time

I want to make my liv­ing as a nov­el­ist. I want my only require­ment in life to be con­tin­u­ing to tell the sto­ries that make my life worth liv­ing. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been really good at, and with your help, I think I have a way to make this hap­pen. I expect this to take time, but hope­fully I’ll be a full time work­ing nov­el­ist by the time I’m 45 (I’m 38 now).

Let’s get started.