Monday, January 10, 2011

Space Available: First Impressions.

I'm just over a week into Space Available and already it's a blast. Easily the most low-pressure writing I've ever done. Instead of putting my head down and cranking out content to meet a high daily word count or a publisher-mandated deadline, I am really enjoying taking my time and thinking through each tweet I send. I have an entire year to get this thing done, so instead of writing 2000 words a day, I can take it easy and write a measly thousand words per week.

I say it's low-pressure, though that first sentence was a doozy. I mentally crafted and rejected probably twenty first sentences over the final week of December. As New Year's Eve hit, I had one ready to go, but when the morning of January 1 rolled around, it just felt wrong. I opened up Twitter and meant to type it in, but I just couldn't do it yet. I waited and waited and waited (and quietly panicked) until finally, sometime that afternoon, something else entirely popped into my head and I knew it was my first sentence. Yes, the beginning of the novel sprang, fully formed, into my consciousness as I made macaroni and cheese for my kids.

I'm curious to see how this project feels as I get into the routine of writing and as the story develops. Obviously, I'm still introducing things and am not yet beholden to pay off much of it yet. The real work will be to make the ending live up to any promises I've made in the beginning, especially since I'm making those promises so early.

Thanks to all who are following and (shockingly) retweeting as it comes along. If anyone is interested in joining the journey now, you can head over to the official Marcher Lord Press Space Available page and catch up. It is updated every Monday, so that should make it semi-easy.

I said in an earlier post that anyone with questions can send them through email or Facebook, but I realized you can also tweet questions/comments/encouragement to me through Twitter at @AdamAuthor and I can then answer them here on Dregs.

5 comments:

Michelle R. Wood said...

I just caught the first three pages at Marcher Lord Press today, and they look great. I'm pleasantly surprised by how coherent a story written entirely in tweets is shaping up. I mean no offense: it takes a talented author to best utilize this art form (or is a style?) I look forward to more.

MangyCat said...

This is a fascinating project! I look forward to watching it develop.

Grace said...

The link for Space Available is not working, and I can't find you on Twitter either :(

Grace said...

The link to Space Available is not working and I am unable to find you on twitter :(

Adam Palmer said...

Grace:

Looks like Marcher Lord Press has taken the free online version of SPACE AVAILABLE down; they're going to make it available as an ebook in the near future, so I'll mention it then--as soon as it's been released.

Also, I've changed my Twitter handle to @ThatAdamPalmer. And I'm WAAAAAY more active on Twitter than I am here.

Thanks for reading!

ap