Preemptive Retaliation

Over the weekend I spoke to four people about the novel I’m working on, three of whom I had never spoken to about it before. I was away at a cabin with some friends and if I want to get shortbread tin on you, I would describe it as a weekend on the banks of Loch Tay drinking the water of life and writing on the heathers and my lost love. In truth we sat and played a bunch of boardgames, chatted, and I wrote on my weird little sci-fi novel.

That was one of the first conversations about it, actually. Whilst I did the dishes one morning an acquaintance started on the drying rack, and he asked me if I was still writing, and what it was about. I said I was, and he immediately asked what genre. I think some form of imposter syndrome prevents me from calling it Literary Fiction so I said I pivoted to Sci-Fi, but immediately clarified and caveated. Well, it’s kind of sci-fi, but it focuses more on big questions rather than big set pieces, and only one element of it could be considered sci-fi whilst the rest is modern day, so it’s a bit of a mix.

He asked what it was about.

I told him. I told him it was about an artificial intelligence housed inside a robot body that was successfully presenting itself as human, and how that AI wants to create art and challenge what people think about art.

He said it sounded pretty sci-fi to him.

And it is. It is sci-fi. It has a fucking robot in it posing as a human, of course it’s sci-fi.

But is it marketable as sci-fi? Over two holidays I read two books, Klara and the Sun and Ancillary Justice. Both of them are told from the perspective of an artificial intelligence and both of them deal with aspects of being an AI in an otherwise organic world. I read Justice as a bit of an agreement with a friend who wanted to read Klara after I waxed lyrical about it, and it turns out we both like the opposite types of books. Justice was a rollercoaster – a plot driven space opera that thundered along with a rich, detailed universe, with a lot of hooks and action and suspense. Klara is a character driven slow burn, about spirituality and belief, humans and humanity, bittersweet to the end.

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So it’s been a few days since beginning this post and completing it, and my thoughts have cooled – or settled, I should say. Most times I sit down to write one of these things I have a problem in mind. Almost every blog post I write begins with “So the problem is” and then at the end I delete that, because that’s Telling not Showing etc. Since starting this novel I’ve had a green Moleskine notebook to record my thoughts on it. It’s where I plan out characters and ideas, and holds the initial chapter-by-chapter outline that I’ve tried my best to adhere to. Every once in a while there’s a page of just writing – no indentations, no graphs or lines or boxes, or anything else that makes the book look interesting or fancy (something I will touch on another time, maybe) – just writing. Usually it’s a thought or a moan or a problem that I’m stuck on, and by the end of the page I’ve either solved it, dismissed it, or descended into a small microcosm of insanity (depending on how much I’ve drank preceding opening the page). I have a journal that’s largely the same.

My favourite conclusion to this type of writing is where I, somehow, gain a sense of perspective or clarity. Recently, in my green notebook, I wrote a page forlorning the direction of the novel. This was supposed to be a book about imposter syndrome and not fitting in! I yell, pulling my best Obi Wan impression. Not another look into AI as humans!

I go back and forth on it for a few paragraphs until I realise that I’m still in the first draft. It’s the first draft for chrissakes. There’s still an entire character that I haven’t even added yet. Of course I’ll go back and make it more about being separate, of course it’ll have my thoughts and feelings wrapped up in too many adverbs and split infinitives. In the book, the green notebook, in scratchy writing I call myself a Silly Goose and to not worry about it. Write it first. Then worry about it.

I have been writing three hundred words a day. I complete a chapter roughly once every two weeks. I think I’m on the fourth to last chapter, which means I may be able to complete this early next year. The first draft, that is. First draft done by February twenty-twenty-five.

Wouldn’t that be nice.