My Life as a Writer: Process Talk

My next project is making progress. I'm making time to put together the sort of outline that will help me when I'm stringing words together, to help me focus on what I want a reader to get out of this, as a means of improving myself as a writer over my past performances. I can write well, but when I get into a flow state I have a tendency to go off my outline and that means wasted time in revision and rewriting, and that is where I'm going wrong right now. I need to curb this down to its useful limits.

The narrative is a simple one--a man makes contact with a friend he'd not seen in a while, finds friend in the thrall of a cult, cult sees him as a threat and tries to kill him, man gets allies and collaborates on the rescue attempt, attempt goes wrong for man, and decides to go after the cult for revenge--but the usual form is to have a young man as the protagonist and make it run more like a Lifetime movie.

Nope.

This is, technically, a novel in my Future History SF/F series. It's set before the Apocalypse, before everything went weird, but the protagonist is going to be consistent with his post-Apocalypse form. Ken is the protagonist. Hugo is the friend. There are ex-wives, girlfriends, criminal conspiracies great and small, and the sort of Fuck You And Die problem solving that Ken's good for. I'm aiming for 40-50K words, which technically is a novel (but often regarded as a novella due to Fat Fantasy Inflation). I'll post excerpts when they're ready.

Until them, just this:

"You have a lot of nerve coming here, after you cut and ran on him when he needed you most, you lying cunt. Why shouldn't I kill you where you stand and throw your fat-assed corpse on the pile here?"