Villi Asgeirsson

Drafting ideas...

writing

Mont Noir, where are you?

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It’s hard to believe it’s finally – almost – here. My third novel!

I wasn’t going to write a sequel to any of my books, but life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. That’s also why it’s taken so long to get it out. The spark came in 2013, when I was visiting Belgium. On the border with France, I saw a sign, Mont Noir. What a cool name! I have to use that some time.

After Blood and Rain was published, in 2017, I started thinking about the next project. What would it be? I’d fallen in love with Celestina, the fierce anarchist we got to know in Blood and Rain. No, not a sequel. Maybe a fantasy thing? I plotted a story where the peasants are fighting a war against the gods. Celestina was not amused.

Mont Noir. The name kept calling me. Okay, fine. I came across an article that explained how Wilhelm Canaris, the head of German Intelligence had phoned Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister, in early 1939, informing him that a German invasion of The Netherlands was imminent. The Dutch War Scare, and I found old newspaper articles that confirmed this happened. It was a lie, but Canaris wanted to scare the west into preparing for what was to come. He disliked the Nazi regime and hated how the west was in denial about the danger posed by Germany. And so I had my story. Celestina had to go to Amsterdam.

It’s been years in the making, not because I write slow, but because I write sporadically. Work is busy, the house needs to be cleaned and fixed, and I wrote a series of short stories last year. All this time, Mont Noir slowly developed.

Recently I had it read by a few proofreaders and they loved it. It’s time to release the beast into the wild.

Publication date has been chosen, 12 January 2023 it shall be. You can check the book page here.

Remix, remaster, re-edit?

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When is a work of art finished? Is it ever, or do we simply abandon it when we’ve had enough?

In early summer 2013, I completed my debut novel, Under the Black Sand. It was done. After years of work, from a short film to a screenplay to a different screenplay to a novel, to a different novel to yet a different novel, it was finally done. I checked spelling, grammar, designed a cover and published on Amazon.

An early review mentioned error. The horror! I went back to work, ironed out whatever I could find and re-published. I would never have to look at the story again. In 2019, I did revisit it, after I decided to translate it into Icelandic. I changed the structure a bit, one communicates differenty in another language. I shortened the chapters. The original novel had 80.000 words spread over 13 chapters, the Icelandic version was 92.000 words across 26 chapters.

That was it. No more. Never. I had written and published another novel by this time and it was firmly time to move on.

In October 2022, I was working on finishing my third novel. I design my own covers and as I was working on this, I opened the previous two. The Black Sand one and Blood and Rain. I was happy with Blood and Rain, but the first one I designed… it looked dated. I could probably do better.

I went to work, first replacing the main image, then tweaking the back cover… then removing an element. Before I knew it, I had a complete redesign. Nothing was left of the old. It looked new and fresh.

But the novel itself? Did that still hold up? I couldn’t just republish a new cover? I fired up the old project and started reading. Fixed a couple of things, removed two scenes I always felt slowed the story down and added an opening scene. Something that would take the reader by the hand, lead them into the story. Reading it, all these years later, it felt like I’d thrown them into the deep end. Keep reading and you’ll figure it out. Not so much now. At least, that’s the idea. It was still 80.000 words, but spread across 27 chapters.

As I finished the editing, I decided it was time to say goodbye to the one thing that had stayed unchanged since the short film days. The typeface. I replaced the old and trusted font on the cover, replaced it with soething more modern, something cleaner.

And that was it. A new book. It felt fresh and new. I could now show it to people again.

So when is a work finished? It never is. Sure, creating an outline and writing the first and second drafts is a great deal and everything is fluent. Subsequent revisions are a matter of diminishing returns. There comes a point where you think, any work I put into this from now on isn’t going to change a whole lot. Time to let it go.

I’m sure a painter or a musician would say the same thing.

Looking at it years later meant I was reading it almost like someone that hasn’t read it before. Some things I’d forgotten, some were, oh yeah. I remember that. But most importantly, I read it objectively, saw a few flaws and fixed them, saw the scenes that added nothing and were potentially tedious, and saw where a bit of extra info was needed.

That’s it. Under the Black Sand is done. I will never look at it again. I think.

Is it possible?

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The decision to dedicate 2021 to short fiction wasn’t taken a long time ago. It was two days before Christmas and I was aimlessly browsing the web. Came across a list of 52 short story concepts on Tumblr and it made me think. What if…?

I have written 2-3 shorts in my entire life. 4-5 if you include short film scripts that could potentially be adapted to stories. Writing 52 in as many weeks seems like a challenge destined to fail. So, why not?

I immediately started working on ideas. The concepts the Tumblr list presented me with start with the following.

A story entitled “A New Beginning”.
A story about rising to a challenge.
A retelling of a fairytale.
A story about three siblings.
A story set in London.
A story about finding something that has been lost.
A story about a journey.
A story set during a war.

Fairly vague concepts. I really have to come up with the stories myself. What this list does is give me a starting point. It will prevent me from writing the same story time and time again. So, what do we have so far?

A New Beginning is finished and will be published next Friday. The story about a challenge is written, I just need to edit it a bit. The fairytale? I dabbled in Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but ultimately settled on Norse Mythology where Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer, is stolen by the Jotnar and must be brought back. I’ve just started that one. Three siblings, I’m thinking about the great flood in the Netherlands in January 1953 but haven’t come up with a concept. That may change, it may become something entirely different. London, lost and journey, I have no idea. A story set during a war, I have an idea of what I want to do there but haven’t written anything yet.

None of this existed prior to 22 December 2020.

So you see, this really is 52 stories in 52 weeks. I don’t have anything laying around that I can use. This year will see my typing a lot, struggling to write more than I’ve ever done. Life is bound to get in the way.

Here is hoping someone will discover this project and cheer me on. I think I’ll need it.

Look out for A New Beginning coming Friday.

52 Moments

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2020 was a drag. Many say the worst year ever and that may be true for some, but there have been worse years in history. I have had worse years. 2020 was still a drag and I can’t wait to go out without a facemask, go on holiday, meet the family… heck, just go sit in a café with my laptop and type while enjoying a double espresso.

It’s the simple things in life I miss.

So… simple things. I haven’t written much lately. There was going to be a novel in 2020, but it all seemed so pointless, seeing what was going on. I am still not ready to dedicate myself to a novel, even if I have one almost done. Time to simplify one’s life.

2021 will be a year of great triumph or a massive failure. I have dedicated myself to writing one short story every week. Really short and simple stories, 1000 words or thereabouts. But every week. A new story. No serials, no blog posts, but proper stories. Moments in time of various characters. Every week.

I’m not a betting kind of type but if I was going to put money on this, I’d say it’ll fail. It’s a New Year’s Resolution and we’ll just have to see if it survives January.

So, there we have it. 2020 was a drag, 2021 will hopefully be better for us all. Look out for the first story on the 8th. It’ll be called A New Beginning and it really takes us to the very beginning of time… if you believe in that sort of thing.

Cheerio!

It’s (not) All About the Money

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I have decided to stop charging for my books.

Writing is a passion. Certainly in the beginning, before you build an audience. You write because there are voices, people and stories in your head that want to get out into the world.

If you’re lucky, you sell a million books and can make a living from your passion. I never reached that. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not. I remember when I started making films and videos for a living, my hobby became a source of income and I was forced to make more videos and films. The magic was gone.

Would that have happened in writing? I’m not sure. Writing involves less people and I can do whatever I please. This probably changes as you hit a nerve and build an audience and have to please them in some way. But as a hobby writer without an audience to speak of, I could write whatever I wanted. It remained fun up until the end.

My first novel dealt with an Icelandic business man entangled in seemingly supernatural events. It was a story that just came into being, I was just there to write it. My second dealt with the Spanish Civil War because I was interested in that at the time. My third (unpublished) took a look at life in Amsterdam in the final year before World War Two broke out.

Recently, I created a medeaval world where the gods interfere with the lives of the people, where the church and king try to retain power and the kids try to break out of their routine lives, either by joining the army or planning a revolt against the gods and king. I never finished that.

Those are all wildly different projects. I’m not sure if it’s because my interests are all over the place (they are) or if I haven’t found my voice or niche. Knowing myself, once I’d found my niche, I would try to break out of it.

There is a problem. I don’t have the time to explore my voice, my audience or thoughts in general. A full time job, family and the usual stuff leaves little time to write. That’s why it takes three years to write novels, why I don’t have time to properly publish them. It is the reason why I finish a draft and then leave it for a year or more until looking at it again. Blood and Rain was as good as ready in early 2016 but was published a year later. Mont Noir, the Amsterdam based novel, could have been published in 2018, but… you get it.

Up until now, I have sold my books at low prices. I’m not in it for the money and they don’t sell enough to make a difference to my finances. So, I came to a conclusion.

From today, all my books will be free. They will cost you nothing. I don’t care if I earn €2.99 per book or nothing at all. My job pays me, so my books don’t have to.

If you always wanted to read my novels but never had the money, now is the chance. The price has been implemented at Smashwords and should trickle to other retailers in the coming hours.

Thanks for your support.

How do I write?

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Someone asked what my process of writing novels was. Here is what I said. This how you manage to keep track of 60-90.000 words without getting lost.

I first come up with an idea. Why do I want to write this story. Without an idea, you won’t come very far and you’ll get lost. A novel without an idea or message won’t work, in my opinion.

Then I come up with place and time. My first two novels were Iceland, present time and Barcelona 1937. My third, still in progress, will take place in Amsterdam in 1939. Place and time is important as it dictated what kind of characters you have and how you bring your idea across to the reader.

The comes the fun part. Research. I dive into the world I’m about to create. For Blood and Rain, I read books and watched documentaries on the Spanish Civil War, for Mont Noir, I did the same for Amsterdam in the months leading up to the Second World War.

Only then do I create characters to tell the story. 

When I have the place, time and major characters in place, I use Save the Cat or similar to roughly plot the story. This helps me avoid slow or boring mid-section and tie the end to the beginning. 

Then I write the first draft. I don’t worry too much about lame dialogue or plot holes. If I see them, I make note of them and fix them in draft 2. Between draft 1 and 2, I look at what isn’t working and come up with solutions and implement those in draft 2. 

It is not uncommon to see characters go their own way and that creates plot holes as they refuse to follow the outline. Therefore, draft 2 becomes a compromise between my initial plot and where the characters want to take it. 

Draft 3 is where I polish things and tie them up. Only then do I let others read my story and give feedback. If needed, I use that to create the final and fourth draft. 

This is ideal. I try to make it happen this way but this is writing and sometimes you have to alter your strategy.

As for chapters. I let the story define those and usually split things up into chapters after I’m well into draft 2.

The software I use has enormous influence on how I work. Stories are plotted and written in Scrivener. When they’re done, I export them into Apple Pages and create a layout for the printed books. Photoshop is used for the cover. Only nag is that most eBook vendors can’t work with Pages files or Word documents exported from Pages, so I have to borrow a Windows machine for a final export. Hopefully, I’ll find a solution to that soon.