First thing to cover is a bit of house cleaning: my Sunday blog post is going to be moved to Monday's as this fits much better with my current work schedule.

"Jupiter Symphony" is still suffering through edits and is roughly 80% complete. It's also facing the prospect of having the last fifth chopped off and made into a separate book, but I won't know for certain until this edit is complete.

This actually dovetails in nicely with today's blog posting, which has to do with two of the hats an author must wear (and there are many more, if you are wondering).

At minimum, no matter if he is an independent author, an ebook proponent, or a hanger on of the archaic, a writer has two primary jobs: writing and editing. The order of operations is simple enough. You write, and then you edit. Except when you don't. Because of the development "Jupiter Symphony" has gone through, the order has been writing, editing, writing, editing, writing, editing. All in all, the book has gained roughly 20,000 words since this major edit began, mostly in the form of two entirely new chapters, although this also encompasses rewrites of certain sections that were too skinny previously. If you are writing, put meat on the bones of your text. Give the reader something to sink their teeth into, or they will find someone else who does.

Now, due to this shifting of job functions, I've discovered how challenging it can be to rapidly make this shift. The creative and exploratory mindset I put myself in while writing is a stark contrast to the analytical viewpoint I take when reviewing and changing the manuscript. As it turns out, I struggle to do this quickly. Now, this may be one of those things that I get better at with time, but I already have to work hard to get into editing mode, so bouncing back to writing again could prove challenging. What this means is that I've seen progress slow on the book to levels I am not happy with, and some changes need to occur.

I'm interested to know how other writers face this challenge. Perhaps it's something that only I need help with, but I would hope that isn't the case. I have yet to go through life without finding someone else that shared a struggle I have. Because things have slowed already, I don't feel to bad putting my work on hold in order to take a step back and assess the root of the issue, with the goal of coming back swinging so that I can finally knock this thing out.

I'm sure I've brought it up before, but the large overhauls and additional material means that rather than another cursory read through, the book probably needs another in depth edit, but after that stage I should be looking at a solid end time, so I've you're among the literally several people awaiting my novel, you get to wait just a little bit longer! Hey, you can't rush art. You also can't rush whatever the thing is I'm editing. Writing. Editing. Whatever.

So, if you're someone who foolishly thought that you would write a book and now are struggling to edit it, let me know what you do to get by. The best way to reach me is my Twitter, @ReadACHarrison. If you don't like that, tweet me and I'll give you my email. Honestly, though, in the top right of this page you will see buttons via which you can communicate with me. Until next Monday. 

A.C. Harrison
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...as Walter so eloquently stated in The Big Lebowski. National Socialists aside, I was recently viewing some interview material from William Gibson, and I was intrigued by the fact that as a writer, the godfather of cyberpunk does seem to carry in him an ethos, a sense of purpose and direction. More than just a survivor of the business of writing, Gibson was the spear point of the cyberpunk movement, which I daily see reflected in the world around me, despite the claims of others that dirty tech has worn out its welcome. As such, I respect Gibson's opinions and thoughts, and the fact that he seems to know his place in literature piqued my interest.

Do writers, myself included, need an ethos? Do we need a pillar around which we wrap our thoughts and motives, a foundation on which our stories base their morals and movements?

Up until this point, I hadn't really considered the question. When I sat down to write "Jupiter Symphony," my only goal was to finish the manuscript. I told myself that I would not write the great American novel, nor would I revolutionize a genre. I wasn't after classical prose or witty banter. Why? Because I wanted to be true to myself, and as a writer I knew that I was not ready to approach those things, and that I didn't have a passion to explore them yet. I promised myself, "write what you know," and so I did. Slowly, over time, the story began to form, taking shape out of clay (or more likely in my case, spilling out of the primordial ooze). The whole process was very organic, a form of natural selection that guided the prose to completion.

Science fiction is a tricky animal. If an author writes "high" sci-fi, he will utilize technologies and materials that are far flung and imaginative, so far outside the scope of our world that we find it to be more of a fantasy world than one grounded in our universe. It's something we can aspire to, for sure, but not something that we will ever see in our lifetimes. Star Trek is a great example of this, where we see amazing starships and warp drive, phasers and terraforming, and we accept it all as possible, but not probable. The concepts are very high minded, the technology just a tool for fantastic storytelling, whipping the crew of the Enterprise (whichever your flavor) from fantastic planet to remote space station, all in the blink of an eye. It's a future that gleams brightly, all polished, perfect, and prim, of high morals and the conundrums that follow. This type of science fiction, however, seems to have fallen out of favor, the Star Trek films being repackaged into action flicks, with flawed characters and shiny graphics, the better to ship the franchise overseas and make more money. The future was so far out there that many people stopped chasing it, the horizon forever distant, never approachable.

Let me begin by saying I'm going to try to keep to my Sunday blog posting schedule, but I started a new position at work, and the hours are quite different from I'm used to. I've never been a morning person, and now I'm up at 6 AM each day. In winter. In the cold. Angry.

Thankfully it's only the dark and frigid dawn that upsets me. My new position is much welcomed, being far more satisfying and challenging than the posting I had until recently found myself in. So, once more, give me some time to adjust and I'll get right back on schedule.

"Jupiter Symphony" sitrep: the edit of the manuscript is roughly three fourths done, but still proceeding at a rather leisurely pace, mostly down to my need to rewrite entire sections and add on in many places. All for the better, though. I want to put out the best novel possible, and if that means delaying release, then that will have to be how things play out. The book has blossomed to 140,000+ words, so if I keep this up I can get into "Snow Crash" territory, though I would never think to match Stephenson in both volume and depth. Still, something to shoot for.

Best of all, even though I have a new job that I find interesting and that yields me a great many benefits, I still can only focus on my writing, wanting to see things through to fruition. Really, that's what this week boils down to: staying hungry. I was concerned that with a new job, one that wasn't a dull, plodding endeavor, I would no longer feel as great an urgency to finish my manuscript. If anything, it has solidified my stance that writing is what I want to pursue, damn the torpedoes.

It's a long, painful process, the slow build to even amateur acceptability, but the draw is undeniable. Before, I turned to writing as a way out of the job that I struggled with, but now I stay with writing as the job that I cherish. It's thankless and offers absolutely zero security, but it's mine, and that's more than can be said about many of the things we do in this day and age. Writing is timeless. No matter how the media changes, it will be there, even if we're beaming books directly into our brains, "Moby Dick" in five minutes or your money back. I think many times we think of writing as an escape, especially in the genre of science fiction, but the exact opposite is true. Writing is what sheds light on our human condition. Writing is what makes us understand one another, makes us consider the world we live in, and the direction we are going.

I'm thirsty and I'm hungry. I greatly want to see my novel finished. Not because I want it to end, though. I want to see it over so I can begin. So I can keep chasing down the next human experience. Science fiction in particular holds wonders to quench the thirst, where our species starts asking the questions and seeking the answers to problems that most people do not yet realize already exist. Cybernetics, stem cell research, artificial intelligence. All these things are here, now. They aren't some far flung thing. We are staring them down, eye to eye, and most people are blinking first.

Me? I stare back and reach for a drink.

A.C. Harrison
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