Tag Archives: new projects

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, The Chalice War, Thieftaker Chronicles, Time's Demon, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Professional Wednesday: Planning For Next Year — Try Something New!

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. CoeAs you know, early in 2023 I will be coming out with a new urban fantasy series that is steeped in Celtic mythology. Before working on this series, I hadn’t known much about Celtic lore. But I did my research, learned all I could, and then started to imagine ways in which I might blend those Celtic traditions with my vision for the stories I wanted to write. I tried to be respectful of traditions that are not my own, while also having fun and writing something I hoped would be fun for my readers.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)Two years ago at this time, I was revising Radiants and starting to organize my plans for Invasives, the second book in the sequence. I had never written a supernatural thriller before, but I had the idea and wanted to give it a go.

Two years before that I had just released the second Islevale book and was working on Time’s Demon, the second book in the trilogy. These were my first forays into writing time travel and while I knew there were tremendous pitfalls to writing in that particular subgenre, I wanted to give it a try. Plotting a time travel series is probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever attempted as a professional writer; I doubt I will ever try it again, but I’m glad I did it once.

TIME'S DEMON, by D.B. Jackson (Art by Jan Weßbecher)Around that same time, I was also reading submissions for the Temporally Deactivated anthology, my first co-editing venture. Last year I opened my freelance editing business, and a year ago at this time, I was editing a manuscript for a client.

Back in 2015-2016, again at this time of year, I was working on the Author’s Edit of the LonTobyn Chronicle, my first series. Up until then, I had never re-released any of my old work, but I had the rights back, and I knew I could improve the books with a deep edit of the original manuscripts.

Yes, there is a point to all of this.

Temporally Deactivated, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua B. PalmatierLast week, I wrote about planning out my professional activities for the coming year. This week, I want to discuss a different element of professional planning. My point in starting off with a list of those projects from past years is that just about every year, I try to take on a new challenge, something I’ve never attempted before. I didn’t start off doing this consciously — I didn’t say to myself, “I’m going to start doing something new each year, just to shake things up.” It just sort of happened.

Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)As it turns out, these new challenges have brought me to a place where I can say, in all candor, that I have never been happier in my work than I am now. Each time I try something new, I reinvigorate myself as a creator. I force myself out of the tried-and-true, the comfortable. With each of the new projects I mentioned above I had a moment of doubt. I wondered if I was capable of accomplishing what I set out to do. Now, I’m a pretty confident guy when it comes to my writing chops and my ability to help others improve their writing, so those doubts didn’t last long. But they were there each time.

Indeed, part of the joy of taking on the projects lay in pushing myself, in overcoming the doubts and getting the work done. As I’ve written before, writing is hard in any number of ways. We help ourselves when we can self-define our successes, rather than relying on a fickle, difficult marketplace to define them for us. Each of the aforementioned projects boosted my sense of self worth.

The Loyalist Witch, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)But those new challenges did more than that. They kept my professional routine fresh. I am a creature of habit. I try to write/edit/work every day, so in a general sense, my work days and work weeks don’t change all that much. By varying the content of my job — by writing new kinds of stories and expanding my professional portfolio to include editing as well as writing — I made the routine feel new and shiny and exciting. And at the same time, these new projects made it possible to return to some old favorites, notably the Thieftaker series, with renewed enthusiasm.

I also made myself better at my craft and deepened my understanding of and appreciation for the nuances of storytelling. I learned a ton by revising my first books. I saw old mistakes that I was still making, and also gained a fresh appreciation for the ways I had improved as a writer. Writing time travel strengthened my plotting by forcing me to look for the loose ends that might have escaped my notice had my characters not possessed the ability to go back in time and undo my choices! Editing has taught me a ton about my own writing by showing me, in unfamiliar narrative contexts, what story elements work best (and worst).

My point is this: As you begin to plan your professional activities and ambitions for 2023, try to put in your calendar something new and different. It is fine to set as a goal the completion of that novel you’ve been working on for a long time, or the publication of a series you’ve had written for a little while now but haven’t yet sent out into the world. Those are laudable aims, and I wish you every success with them.

But maybe you’ve never tried writing short fiction, or you’ve written stories but never submitted any of them. Maybe you’ve written fantasy but never tried science fiction, or thrillers, or romance. Set as a goal for 2023 taking on one of those new tasks. Allow yourself to accomplish something unfamiliar. At the very least, doing so will force you to grow as an artist, which is always a good thing. And perhaps you will discover a previously unexplored talent and passion for something you hadn’t even considered trying.

Best of luck, and keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, Writing

Writing-Tip Wednesday: The Allure of the New Shiny

All of us who write have felt it. Many of us have given into it. Others have resisted. Personally, I’ve done both — with different projects and also within a single one. We loves it and we hates it, but always we must have a healthy respect for its power.

I speak, of course, of the allure of the New Shiny. The bane and grail, the procrastination and promise, the distraction and passion. The New Shiny is all these and more.

The first time I experienced it, I was in the process of outlining the SECOND LonTobyn book. Not the third and final book, but the second. Nancy had a conference in Birmingham, England and we made a trip of it, even though we were toting around our older daughter, Alex, who was all of three months old. Our travels took us to Wales, where we toured castle after castle. I fell in love with the countryside, became totally obsessed with the notion of writing castle intrigue, and started to imagine the books that would become my Winds of the Forelands tetralogy.

The problem was, I still had TWO books left to write in my first trilogy. As the Forelands began to take shape in my mind, as I grasped the myriad possibilities of a new world in which to write, LonTobyn seemed to shrink before my eyes. Compared to the Forelands, the LonTobyn world became small and ordinary. In reality, of course, it was neither. In fact, LonTobyn was a pretty good world, and those books not only sold well, but also won me an award and launched my career.

For weeks after we returned home, though, I spent hour upon hour building my world for the new series. The series that wasn’t contracted yet. The series no one had ever heard of. The series I absolutely WOULD NOT GET TO WRITE if I didn’t FINISH MY FIRST SERIES.

I don’t need to tell you that our minds are notoriously independent of our wills. The moment we tell ourselves not to think of, say, golden retriever puppies, golden retriever puppies become the only things we CAN think of. So telling ourselves not to think about our New Shinies is pretty much futile. More to the point, I’m not entirely certain we would want to banish them from our minds. The creative energy that comes with falling in love with a new world, a new concept, a new set of characters, can feed all our artistic endeavors. Why would we want to deny ourselves the power of that process?

At the same time, though, more often than not, the best thing we can do for our careers at any given moment is finish our current project. I learned a valuable skill when writing my first trilogy, with the Forelands concept lurking in my hind brain. I learned to compartmentalize my art. I continued to think about the Forelands books. As ideas occurred to me, I typed them out. But then I closed those files and went back to writing the LonTobyn books. I had no choice in the matter. I wanted to build a career, and I certainly didn’t want a reputation as a writer who failed to complete projects, or as someone who delivered books late. I allowed myself to brainstorm when I had the chance, but I forced myself to reach my daily word counts on the work-in-progress.

And I would suggest that when grappling with the New Shiny, you do much the same thing. Don’t stifle your creative impulses. Take the time to jot down every idea, to write out scenes that come to mind, or to create character sketches as the people in your new world present themselves to you. When you have set aside your WIP for the night or the weekend, let your mind run wild in New Shiny-land.

But do not sacrifice the work you’ve been struggling with, simply because the New Shiny is teasing you from the other side of your brain. Because here are a few things the New Shiny will never tell you. First, the idea might not pan out. I have many files on my computer that contain half-realized worlds, half-baked ideas, and half-formed narratives. The New Shiny can be fickle and undependable. Second, as wonderful as the New Shiny MIGHT prove to be, the work-in-progress is real, it is immediate, it deserves to be finished. It represents a tremendous amount of time, energy, and completed work. As I said before, finishing our current project is almost always the best thing we can do to advance our career. Third, and last, never forget this one essential truth: No matter how bored we might have grown with our current work, no matter how much of a slog those last chapters of the last book can prove to be, the current work-in-progress was once itself a New Shiny.

The next idea is always the most exciting. That doesn’t make it most important.

Keep writing!