A little something about writing.

So I think I should put something about my writing process. More specifically about procrastination.
I love being a writer. Really, I do. I find writing a very fun activity and burst writing (putting out a large amount of words in a short space of time) is a huge rush. Some day I hope to be able to inspire the same emotions in others that authors have inspired in me.
The only thing is...I'm lazy.
Distractions on the internet are an easy way for me to be entertained and I have a hard time getting myself to focus. It's always been that way with writing for me. Before I had internet access I'd stop writing to read random sections from random books. Once I'm in the zone I can output words at an fantastic rate but getting into there is really hard for me.
And ok, I'm writing this news post instead of doing NaNoWriMo.
Apart from the chronic procrastination things aren't going badly. I wrote 8000 words yesterday, bringing my total up to 10,000. That's me a fifth of the way there. I'm hoping to write 10,000 tonight, which will leave me with a total of 20,000.
I guess I should stop wasting time. I'll post an update on Wednesday. Hopefully it'll be all about how I succeeded and how I reached the 50,000 words well ahead of time. But we'll see.

A late beginner

So if you've been following this blog for any length of time or even if you've just flicked back through my posts you'll know that November is NaNoWriMo. It's the month where you have to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I look forward to it every year.
Sadly, due to some hefty time constraints I haven't started it yet. I'm going to change this tonight.
Everytime I do this, or try burst writing novels, I tend to tweet pretty heavily. You can follow the ranting here if you do so choose.
7 days, 50,000 words. Let's jam.

Unsouled by Neal Shusterman

If there’s one stereotype that I don’t particularly like it’s the idea that teenagers only like dark, depressing stories. Every time I go into a bookshop and go to the teenage section all the covers are black and most of the stories are about bad romances, persecution and misery. Would it kill them to try and write a happy teenage book? Or at least try and have a bright front cover?

I mean, I do like dark, depressing books but it’s still a stereotype.

So one of the new releases that I’ve been looking forward to for the past year is Unsouled by Neal Shusterman, third in the Unwind series. The general premise of the series is that there has been a second civil war in America over the abortion issue. To stop the fighting and to control the ‘feral’ teens that have started roaming the streets Unwinding was introduced. Abortion becomes illegal and every pregnancy must be seen through. However between certain ages the teenager can be retroactively aborted. What will then happen is that they’re unwound. All their limbs are removed, every part of their body gets harvested and then used in medical treatments. The thing is that the teenager is never killed. All this happens while they’re still alive and, as none of the tissue dies, technically and by law neither does the teenager. Naturally this develops into a huge industry and thousands of teenagers get unwound every year.

You don’t get much more dark and depressing than that.

The first book focused on three people bound for unwinding. There was Connor, one of those whose parents had chosen him to be unwound. There was Risa, one of the 10% of kids in orphanages that get unwound every year due to budget constraints. And finally there was Levi. Levi is the most interesting of the three, at least initially. He actually wants to be unwound. Raised as a Tithe he believes that it’s his religious duty to sacrifice himself to be unwound.

This isn't a review for that book but let me just say that it caught my interest. I read the second one almost straight after and now, finally, the third one is out.

Um…..it’s ok.

It’s usually not a great thing if all you can say about a book is that it’s ok but I’m not sure I can give it much more praise. My main problem is about the plot. The first two books, Unwind and Unwholly, are both pretty much self-contained. You get the whole story from them. Unwholly does set up for Unsouled quite well but it had enough content to leave me satisfied. Unsouled feels more like a set up book, one that is all about setting things up for the next one. It’s not that stuff doesn’t happens and that the plot doesn’t advance but I don’t feel like I’m getting as much of the story as I did in the previous two.

This book was definitely about backstory, understanding the people working behind the scenes and their possible motivations. And honestly, meh. It’s not something we haven’t seen before and personally I’d have preferred it if there were multiple threats, not one big bad guy. But that’s just a personal preference.

The other main issue I have with it is that it doesn’t have a great moment. The other two books have both had a moment that crystallises in my mind as a great piece of writing. In the first book it was a chapter where the narrator is unwound. But Unsouled doesn’t have that.

Still, those two things aside it’s worth buying, if only because I have a feeling that the next book is going to be amazing. This series have always had great characters and their development is well thought out and interesting. The writing itself is ok, nothing to really write home about, but it does the job well. All in all I’d definitely recommend the series and if that means this book as well then I guess you should get this book as well. My meaningless rating is six out of ten and it can be bought on Amazon here.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson - A review

I’m not really into comics but I can confidently say that Superman is the worst hero.

Seriously, he is. And I’m not talking about being weak or having the wrong power. He’s practically the definition of over powered. And that’s the problem. It makes him really boring. I prefer heroes like Batman and Thor because, although they may be powerful, they have clear limitations and have to come up with inventive ways of winning. Whereas Superman just brushes all other characters away. The only way to beat Superman is to either put him up against someone else OP, use kryptonite with depressing regularity or write him as somehow less powerful. It’s just annoying to read.

Anyway, rant aside I read Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson this week and I loved it. Set in a post-apocalypticish world random humans have been given super powers. These people, called Epics, did what any sensible person would. They don costumes, give themselves names like Steelheart and Nightwielder and proceed to slaughter and dominate the world.

Wait what?

Yes, in this story the superheroes are the bad guys. After realising that they were basically unstoppable they ripped the world to shreds and claimed the bits for themselves. The narrative is based in what used to be Chicago and is now called Newcago. Apparently originality isn’t a super power. The main villain is an Epic called Steelheart, who is basically Superman. He’s got a cape, he’s invulnerable to harm, he can fly, has super strength, can fire blasts of energy….basically he’s super over-powered. And I love it.

This may seem a direct contradiction to what I said in the opening paragraphs. Let me explain. As boring as Superman is there is one instance where I liked him as a character.  In the Injustice: Gods Among Us game, where he was an evil overlord. You see, being overpowered isn’t a bad thing for a villain to be. As long as they’re beaten in the correct way then it’s actually a good thing. It gives something for the protagonist to strive against and a feeling of accomplishment if the bad guy is ever beaten. Superman never really had to try. That’s why he’s a bad character. Darth Vader never really had to try. That’s why he’s a good villain.

Evil superheroes in general is something that I will probably never get tired of and it’s done really well here. As a balance to every Epic being a newly minted demigod they’ve all got a specific weakness, their kryptonite if you will. The weakness differs from person to person and could be anything, from a mood to a symbol to someone’s age. The problem is figuring out what that weakness is in enough time to be able to kill them.

With that basic premise out the way the rest of the book is fairly standard sci-fi story telling. Most of humanity is squashed beneath the spandexed foot of the Epics. But there’s hope in the form of a resistance, ordinary humans who call themselves the Reckoners and kill every Epic that they can lay their hands on. The main character is a teenage boy called David, who has the distinction of being the only person who has seen Steelheart bleed. Calamity ensues.

Can I just say how much I liked this book? Usually I like to talk about the faults with a story but with this one I honestly can only think of one. The plot has a good rhythm to it, always keeping a decent pace but never feeling rushed. The characters aren’t stereotyped and are mostly developed well. My only fault is here and that’s that two of the main characters aren’t really developed. I mean they’re interesting and all but you don’t really get their backstory. Looks like that’ll come in the confirmed sequel. But the setting is what I really like, as well as the way it’s thought out. It’s a very believable world. Dark, depressing and horrible but believable.

I can’t think of much more to say. It’s the first Brandon Sanderson novel that I’ve read and I’ll definitely be looking at his other work. It’s a good solid novel. There’s nothing really outstanding about it but I enjoyed reading it and I’ll probably read it again. Several times. If you like dark superhero stuff then definitely give it a look. The completely meaningless rating is a solid 7 out of 10 and the Amazon link is here.

Apparently not the end.

Low and behold, it's two months later and I'm back. Turns out leaping onto a new platform while knowing nothing about that platform is a terrible idea. It's not that Tumblr is a bad platform for what I was wanting to do, it's just that it wasn't quite what I thought it was. The main problem was that Tumblr usually uses short, snappy posts and my reviews, the shortest things I do, average about 700 words. So yeah. That was dumb.
So what happens now? Well I want to say that this day mark the dawning of a new age. And it sort of does. The reviews won't be coming as fast as I'd have liked and I'm not sure when I can start putting up short stories again but they will at least be more regular. This will be helped by me putting all the reviews that were on Tumblr on here over the next few weeks, just to make them more visible. I've got a few ideas for other things I can do that I'll be messing about with over the next few weeks. But none of this will be happening fast. My university course is getting busy and I'm still working with editing the chicken novel, though I'm almost done with that. Lastly it November and you know what that means. NaNoWriMo is back. So any spare time I might have will be devoted to writing the next novel.
But it's nice to have this going again and I can promise at least a moderately regular update schedule. To start with here's a book review. Have fun.