WHAT ARE YOU WRITING?

[Talie Helene]

Here's a thread where you can bash your head against the monitor and weep in frustration over how this sub-plot or that POV issue is doing your head in.

I'm currently a mere thousand words into a new short story - which is to say, that the easy stuff is written, and the real work is before me.

What are other Darklanders working on?

[Mark Farrugia]

Have been playing around with flash fiction a bit lately but a week a go I picked up my attempt at a novel...third draft here we come.

[BT]

I've just completed and sent out my ninth dark fiction short story. Now the waiting begins. I've also just started something a little new for me - a historical dark fiction novel. Not sure if it's going to play out yet but I'm enjoying the research and have written the first two chapters. To keep the authenticity of the time, it seems to be bogged down a little in the details so the edit could be severe, but that'll have to wait until I've finally got all the story out of my head. I'm also writing another short story for my diploma. I usually write a short in a week or so and then polish over the next month(ish) before sending out. This thing is to be crafted over the next five months before final submission! I could go stir crazy just because I have to keep putting it aside or I'll rewrite the thing 1000 times over. Patience in a writer is a good thing isn't it??

[Robert Stephenson]

I'm 20 000 words into 'The Stainless Steel Hammer' a new fiction novel. First draft should top out at 50k with several rewrite bringing it in around 85-90k. Just written the intro, plan and first two chapters of my non fiction book 'Mad Dog, Black Dog' Inside Bipolar Depression, should finnish at around 70K, depending on if the proposal floats with Allen and Unwin or not. Editing two Horror stories for Leaves of Blood, writing an SF story (3K in) for Writers of the Future and have just completed the creation of 25 assignment questions for the new Publishing a Magazine course for Australian College. Planning a possible antho for 2009 (more to come later) and another possible book for pitch with major publishers, planned deadline date probably end of 2009. Been a bit busy, but enjoying myself for the first time in about five years.

[Sharyn Lilley]

I'm doing a line edit on a short story I wrote thinking it might be suited for the Masques antho. I thought it was a fairly light hearted piece, with some solid historical research. Every beta reader who saw it sent back variations of 'well, this is a nasty little tale' So now I'm confused.

[Lee Battersby]

No, they are :)

[Stephanie Gunn]

Currently revising a contemporary fantasy novel, "Shaede" and have another, "Thought and Memory" being read by beta readers.

[Cameron Rogers]

I'm on what I hope (hope) is the last pass on my current novel. It's the single most complex thing I've ever worked on, and it's driving me - to quote Austen - batshit. And then I've got an article to write on immersion in videogames.

[Pete Kempshall]

Ah, well if we're talking about what we're *meant* to be working on ... I'm in various stages of development for a couple of stories for the crew at Morrigan, but school holidays mean all I'm actually doing is wrangling small people.

I'm also failing miserably to apply myself to a spec script for Big Finish - if I don't have a deadline to work to I'm lost.

[Lee Battersby]

Just putting the finishing touches on a submission for the Datlow/Mamatas "Haunted" anthology, called 'Comfort Ghost', set in the Fremantle Arts Centre, and a piece called 'Alchymical Romance' for the Remix My Lit project (www.remixmylit.com). I'm due to have a story to the New Ceres anthology in the next couple of weeks, entitled 'Smuggler's Moon', and after that, the rets of the year is comprised of some agent-requested tweaking of my novel 'Napoleone's Land' and continuing my 2nd novel, "The Corpse-Rat King".

The new year will see me collapsing in a soggy heap...

[JanW]

I've been in rewrite mode for a while now. A few weeks ago we finished the final polish of a mystery that I'm pitching: Lost Anchors, the first in a series set in Williamstown, Victoria, featuring Dr Sadhu Singh and Detective Taylor Franke. I'm about halfway through the follow on: Starving For Life, about a recovering anorexic teenage girl who is caught up in the murder of a night guard at Myer. That one has been languishing for a while now, since about December, but I keep adding notes and collecting ideas.

The new revision stuff started this week on our very first novel, Reflections, about the CEO of a US pharmaceutical company that is being sued for a deadly weight-loss potion. He sees a glimmer of hope out of their financial disaster when his cousin discovers a plant in South Africa that is strikingly similar to the chemical make-up of the synthetic poisonous stuff, yet safe. Since it was our first effort, it has mucho need of repairs, so we wrote a new opening scene on Thursday that introduces the real stakes then instead of 2/3 into the book as it was. Silly us! But at least we've learnt the better way.

I also am working through an exercise book with two folks from OWW. We're up to #49 in the book The 3a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley. Have created some interesting characters in the process, but mostly tried some techniques I wouldn't have thought of -- some experimental, like substituting kitchen related nouns and verbs in a sex scene, which turned out pretty funny.

[Paul Mannering]

".. like substituting kitchen related nouns and verbs in a sex scene.."

Hey... don't knock Utensiphillia until you try it.

[Lee Battersby]

Ohhhhhhhh, whisk me baby, whisk me good! >:)