Twenty five thousand words into Stealing Light, and I've realised something I'd been vaguely aware of for a while without consciously formulating it, at least until now: that the first draft of a novel is not in fact a novel. Instead, it's a highly complicated set of notes towards a novel.

There is indeed no point in adjusting on a minute level the text of that first draft (at least for me and many, if not all, writers), because that first draft is merely an expression of the ideas in your outline. Some bits will go, others will stay. I've heard Neal Stephenson suggest to the contrary that the first draft is where all the action is, that the first draft is effectively, bar a number of adjustments, the completed novel: but all that tells you is the amount of preparation he puts into the planning stage.

Personally, I think writing the first draft, for me, is the planning stage.

All right ... I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this argument, but ...

Thinking again about the whole debate over Gregory Benford's blog article about the success of fantasy in relation to science fiction: particularly after reading Lou Ander's own thoughts on the subject.

Here's a comment Lou made that particularly struck me, and made me realise why I felt some of the responses to Benford's article were missing the point:

As someone who grew up in a much deeper south than even the region is today, it was exposure to science fiction that had a direct and measurable influence on deprogramming me from the prejudices and ignorance prevalent in a lot of my immediate childhood environment. I grew up around Christians who believed in a seven day creation, preached the reality of Hell and Judgement, and railed against the lie that was evolution. They were also, for the most part, racists and homophobes. They told jokes using the N-word, would never date a minority or someone who had, and generally represented a host of values I find base and inexcusable. And the only difference between them and me was that I had a father who shoved a science fiction paperback into my pre-teen hands and ordered me to read it. After all, it's pretty hard to be prejudice against blacks and gays when you're a-okay with Klingons and the Green Men of Mars.

When I say 'missing the point' what I mean is that (so it seems to me) Benford's real concern is that scientific rationalism - or simply rationalism, full stop - is under constant attack from base superstition and base prejudice. This strikes me as an argument easily derived by the simple act of watching the news. Anders' own comment reflects on how exposure to a wider world of reading and knowledge can inform people otherwise informed only by their peers who are, perhaps, rather less than informed themselves.

When Benford disses the rise of fantasy, it seems to me his real concern is the loss of science fiction's core message: that it can introduce the reader - particularly the young reader - to one of the core values of rationality: questioning the accepted order of things. SF of the best kind has the knack of illustrating radically different philosophies and ideas that might otherwise never occur to the reader by the simple act of creating an imaginary environment in which those concepts are allowed a degree of free rein impossible in the real world.

It's hard for me to define what the core values of fantasy (however you might choose to define it) might be, but ultimately fantasy, like sf and every other form of literature, is a tool to be used in whichever way a particular author chooses to use it. Sf can be radical, it can be forward thinking, but it can also be deeply conservative. This depends less on core values than it does on the philosophical and political proclivities of the author. Fantasy, I'm sure, can be radical and forward thinking and introduce the reader to new ideas: it can have something to say about the world we live in. But like Anders, I find it hard to think of many examples, possibly due to my relative lack of exposure to that part of the field. I'd be more than happy to hear of examples to the contrary.

If science fiction fails to reach an audience, Benford seems to me to be arguing, we lose the opportunity to offer points of view entirely opposed to those who would see the achievements of the Enlightenment cast down forever. If the best fantasy can address these concerns, then that's terrific. Yet, somehow, I find it hard to be convinced as yet; so, like Anders, I find myself setting down on the science fiction side of the divide, meanwhile glancing around to see if there's any sharp bits sticking up that might cut my feet.

Plans for 2006: my natural caution concerning personal expenditure notwithstanding (I'm very careful with my money), I'm thinking of putting some money aside for a holiday and/or research trip once I've finished Stealing Light.

The last time I had anything resembling an actual going-away holiday was last century. I figured it would be nice to hit some of the American conventions next summer - and when you couple this with a vague desire to, say, take up to several weeks off to just go wandering, it starts to look like a plan: so, for the moment, I'm thinking of what I can only describe as a road trip.

Even though Tor apparently aren't expecting the finished manuscript any later than December 2006(!) I'll be seriously surprised if I don't have it wrapped up, at the very latest, by August next year. Which means I can give myself a personal deadline of finishing the manuscript in time for the break.

I remember a book Mike Cobley had, a series of interviews with well-known sf writers by Charles Platt, compiled during Platt's own journey across the US, and at one point the idea of doing something similar occurred to me, particularly given Platt's book is something like a quarter of a century old. There's a lot of new writers out there. Plus, it would make for some interesting blog entries. Then other ideas occurred to me: I'd visit several writers and, before leaving, take a picture of them to post in a blog entry. But instead of a regular photograph, I'd get them to lie on the ground outside their front door in a pool of fake blood and a hatchet lying nearby. Or slumped over their desk while a hand from out of frame uses a handkerchief to slide a pistol between their apparently lifeless fingers. Or maybe just a pair of feet hanging in the air in their hallway ...

... what can I say? I have a macabre sense of humour.

So at last, long last, more reviews for Against Gravity are starting to come in. One enormous review in Locus' December issue (almost two thousand words, over one and a half pages!), and another due, hopefully soon, in Interzone.

The Locus review is kind of weird, since it doesn't so much review the book as it does, er, my career, via this blog. It's more than a little strange seeing bits of my life extensively quoted in Locus magazine, let me tell you, like some weird fever-dream from before I even had a book deal. But what's downright scary is that people like Damien Broderick - author of the review - have clearly read the whole damn blog. And taken notes.

Scary. Anyway, here's a snippet:

Glaswegian Gibson's interesting achievement -- prompted by Rudy Rucker's logs of several recent books -- is to convey a likeable personality, beginning, in Gibson's case, pretty much at the bottom of the pecking order, then catapulted through his own wit and effort into startling success, with two widely praised novels published by the British arm of US science-fiction giant Tor Books.

Reading through his apparently unedited blog is something every would-be writer could profit by, starting with his early thematic statement of what was then a very inchoate outline that would become, change by accreted change, Against Gravity ... If the novel we're reading is a sort of Frankenstein Harrows Hell, then the blog is Cinderella, with Gibson in a self-mocking, candid role as Buttons, perhaps.

Anyway, there's a couple of words in there I can skim out to stick up in the 'reviews' column over there on the right of your screen (like 'Gibson is a writer to watch, not least on the white screen', though I'll wait until the Interzone review comes rolling in before I do that. He has some problems with my prose style, but that's okay, I have problems with my prose style. If I didn't, I'd be worried. Like my agent reminds me, I've only got my second book out, and for most writers, that's early days indeed. But there's definitely some food for thought in there.

Fantasy versus Science Fiction.
Everybody's pitching into this one.

Here's my suggestion to anyone thinking about adding to any of this: put down the laptop/keyboard, go outside, and get a frigging life, for Christ's sake. Anybody who thinks spending several hours of a hard-earned weekend thinking about this desperately needs to reevaluate the best way to use their spare time. ESPECIALLY if you're an author.

I do in fact have a take on it, but I can't really reply to the arguments being bounced around at the moment, given that by the time I get to the second paragraph of any of them, my eyes start to glaze over. Zzzzz.

No. I've got a better idea. We'll have a wrestling match at the Eastercon next year. We'll get a couple of people dressed up Mexican wrestler style and the fighter who takes three slamdowns in a role is declared the loser, and whatever literary stance she/he/it represents thereby rendered obsolete, dead, nada for eternity, and then we can get the fuck back to the bar.

Random browsing through the net got me thinking about self-promotion. It's an unfortunate truth that publishers most often don't spend that much (if any) money on promoting authors, so when I stumbled across this essay by sf writer Robert Sawyer, it started wheels turning in my head. Mind you, I can't see Tor doing anything but completely spazzing out at me if I did actually go ahead and make up my own advance copies of my books. But that's not to say it isn't tempting.

It's a minor example, but when Angel Stations came out, I asked Tor to send a review copy to a Scottish magazine called The List. It's the same kind of publication as London's Time Out - local listings, reviews of bars, events and gigs, interviews with writers, politicians and artists of all kinds. A general local entertainment guide. I didn't really expect a review - but not only did I get one, it was one of the best reviews I ever got (see the bar to your right). That quote turned up on the back of the mass market publication of Angel Stations. So there you go.

So anyway, I got an offer from Tor UK for 'Stealing Light', which means I'll have to get nailed down and get to serious work on the thing over the next several months. The nice thing about a new book deal is this time, large chunks of it won't be going on a deposit on a house. This time, I get to spend it all on ME.

For a start, I can actually afford to take a proper holiday for the first time in a very, very long time. Where and when is hard to say, but sometime in the summer next year seems like a good time, ie whenever I finish Stealing Light. But I've had it in mind that it might be nice to take up to several weeks off the day job and go to some places I've never been before, and certainly going to an American con has entered my mind.

First, time to spend a little money on ME. Therefore, in the words of Max Bialystock: I'm going to buy a toy. I worked very, very hard, and I think I deserve a toy. But the type you find in Dixons electric stores.

Hokay, that's one minor mystery solved: when it comes to the missing Interzone review, the pixies got to it. Or as near as damn to. Turns out since it went so thoroughly awol in the system, they're going to hold the review back until the paperback issue of Against Gravity, which should be sometime in the late summer of 2006. Which means so far I've had precisely one - one! - print review of Against Gravity.

Arse.

Paul Raven - the book's reviewer, who let me know of what happened in the first place - let me know he'll be taking his review back down soon, since it will in fact be published at some point: not quite absolute victory, but at least I gain the sense of snatching one tiny morsel of success from the slavering jaws of defeat.

Got an email from a bloke called Paul Raven, who writes some reviews for Interzone: turns out he wrote a very nice review for Against Gravity, except it hasn't actually appeared in the magazine's new issue. Which is, to put it mildly, a bummer: given that the only print review of the book I can recall seeing so far was in SFX, it does rather lend to the paranoia that people don't realise the book even exists.

You can, however, read the unpublished review at the reviewer's blog, which can be found here. Thanks again, Paul.

I've worked on magazines myself in the past, and I know how hard it can be to fit in all the available material, and how easily reviews or articles can be cut, chopped or dropped altogether in the last-minute frenzy of getting everything ready for the printing presses: so I'll be the last person to complain. But I'm hoping the review might yet appear in a later issue Interzone - it's like a direct tap into the hardcore sf audience in the UK.

Other bits and pieces - the short ten minute script didn't get any farther with the BBC, and I find myself not that bothered, partly because I've been keeping busy. Apart from the ten k outline for a new novel which is already with my agent and editor, the first thirteen thousand words of 'Stealing Light' went off in the post on Friday. Now it's a case of wait and see.

The day after that, I started writing an hour-long tv script, partly for the practice, and partly because I know a local production company is looking for material for one of the shows they produce (inside contacts). Even if it doesn't get anywhere, it might make for a kind of calling card. The same for the ten minute script: this will also get another, brief shine, then sent out elsewhere.

I think one of the things that attracts me to the whole notion of screenwriting (as if you could have failed to notice) is that you can get an entire story down in a fraction of the time it takes to write it to novel length. It's even occurred to me that a convenient way of working out the plot of a novel might be to write it in screenplay format first, and iron out the plot. We'll see.

So it's late October, and outside it's ... sunny and warm. (Adopts craggy stare of doom-saying Scotsman) ... it's the end times, I tell ye, it's no' natural: the seas are gonnae rise up and potatoes'll be worth more than gold dust, aye, we're doomed, DOOMED I tell ye, Doomed ...

I just came out of a minor attack of flu, and not a pigeon in sight. Felt well enough a couple of nights ago to make it along to the Halloween-ish meeting of Edinburgh's Writer's Bloc at the Canon's Gate pub with Mike G and Phil Raines from GSFWC, at which surely the highlight was Gavin Inglis' 'Springheeled Jock', the delivery of which should surely be the measure of all pub spoken word events. Gavin, I salute you. And your comedy fake beard, wherever it may roam.

The past couple of months have actually been surprisingly busy in a fun way, which is one reason for (insert typical excuse here) my pathetic lack of blogging. What can I say? Sorry, I have a life, okay? Like Al says over at geek show, Duncan Lunan had a sixtieth at the Bon Accord several days ago: I don't know what deal the bastard's made with Auld Nick, but the fact he looks twenty years younger than he actually is ... well, it's no' natural, I tell ye ...

Writing: the ten minute script I submitted to the BBC's Tartan Shorts has currently made it as far as the longlist, but of course that's no guarantee it'll get any further. If it doesn't, it's going to my agent, who works with another agent to er, agent scripts for tv and film. People have said I'm getting my hopes up too high concerning scriptwriting, but the point isn't about getting your hopes up, it's about giving it a shot regardless of the hopeless bleedin' odds against it. You could make exactly the same series of statements about writing novels, and I got a couple of those published, so what the hell.

There's going to be another joint Writer's Bloc thing in mid-December, and I'll be back along to that: it's likely several of us from GSFWC will also be participating, so come along and say hello if you're in the area. I keep meaning to write something for it, but I'm hardly the best organised for this kind of thing - plus, I tend to set myself high standards: it's got to not only be a good story, it's got to be in a suitable style for reading aloud. Think more 'stand=up' than 'intricate prose'.

Wednesday last: disaster. I'm sitting at my usual place - laptop on coffee table, in kitchen - when the phone rings. So I stand up, reach for the phone, and my foot catches the power cord. Too late: the laptop slides off the edge of the coffee table, and hits the floor, edge first. The whole thing in slo-mo in my head.

Well, at first it looked like it was fine, but it turned out the usb ports were gubbed: I'd had a usb modem plugged into it when I stood up, and that clearly twisted and broke the internal usb slots. Oh joyous fucking day. And thank my lucky stars I hadn't stuffed my desktop pc away in a cupboard somewhere, like I'd been intending.

Thing is, since Wednesday, I've only been able to get on the net on my old desktop. And (aside from the mental shutdown mentioned in the next paragraph) I'm getting more writing done. Big surprise, really: it's way too easy to keep checking the email, look stuff up on Amazon, on the laptop. Now the work is evenly split between two machines: ancient pc for email and web, laptop for writing. One day I'll get a wifi card so I can not get around to ever sitting in coffee shops pretending it's actually possible to get work done surrounded by dozens of people talking loudly.

I crashed last weekend, and hardly did any writing, something I'm hoping to fix this weekend. Mind you, some good news: word from the agent is Against Gravity's been picked up by a Spanish publishing company for release in November 2006.

I think I mentioned before I'd put a short (ten minute) script into something called Tartan Shorts, where the BBC pick three scripts for production. The benefit isn't just to new writers, it's to producers, engineers, directors, whatever. I made the longlist out of maybe three hundred entries, which was apparently enough for me to get invited along to the BBC to talk to two producer types about how I saw the film being made, should it get so far as the top three: I had no idea what I was supposed to say, being entirely new to this kind of thing.

The story is set in an isolated religious community in the Highlands in the near future. It's very much science fiction.

At one point, one of the women said, 'you know, with the technology and the robots, it could almost be ...' She mused for a moment, before leaning forward. 'Almost sci fi.'

But it is science fic - I started to say, then closed my mouth and sat back, remembering the monthly lists of actors in Ansible saying their new movie featuring faster than light ships and aliens wasn't really science fiction, it was ... futuristic drama. I give up. I have no fucking idea what goes through these people's heads. No, I do know, but it's too depressing: what goes through their heads is Buck Rogers and flying cars and, I guess, a big blank nothing when it comes to imagining the world even a year or two from now.

So anyway, they're looking for a rewrite, for two weeks from now. What they're looking for seems faily reasonable, so that's something else to muck about with. I need a holiday.

I like this. Apparently there's a thing going around where people put up the first lines or paragraphs on anything they're either working on, or that's unfinished, unpublished or whatever. It came via Charlie Stross' blog, I think. So here's my contributions:

THE FRACTURE (unfinished novel)
Jacob gripped the shunt unit in his hand and glanced up, seeing a baneful Chicago moon hanging low over the alley. The unit pulsed red against his skin. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, bright afternoon sunshine spilled across crumbling stonework and mossy flagstones. He put a hand up to shield his eyes from the sudden light and turned in the direction of the stables.

WESTERN GOTHIC (unfinished wild west horror fantasy)
Rain slashed down on the south-east coast of China, turning the sky into a slate-grey wall that extended from the top of heaven down to the waves that crashed against the pebbly beach. Lawton pulled the hood of his cape tight around his neck, rivulets of rainwater somehow still finding their way inside. He felt cold, damp and miserable; under the cloak, his wet cotton shirt stuck to his skin. He cleared his throat and tasted salt.

CONVERGENT
There were memories here.
If it had a name, it would be Teacher. Humans called its kind Baskers. It lifted its pale-furred snout and scented the remembrance of other times, carried to the rocky ridge on which it stood by warm, sulphurous winds blowing up from the lake below. The Basker tasted memories and snatches of thought, pissed or spat onto rocks and the wide roots of the canopy trees that towered over the landscape.

A GIFT FROM THE ANGELS
Lian stood on the roof of the only world she had known until the age of thirteen, and felt the wind lash at her face like a frozen whip.

WONDERLAND/THE SIGHT OF THINGS UNSEEN
Jonah woke suddenly to darkness, wondering just what it was he'd heard.
The back of his head rested against the scarred and beaten leather of the couch he fell asleep on most nights, usually to the serenade of police cars wailing their way downtown. The sound of the sirens always made him think of listening to Charlie Parker, forlorn yet also hopeful at the same time. He stared up at the cracks that patterned the ceiling, like the relief map for some river valley hidden for centuries from the sight of man. The plaster was now streaked with pale moonlight that drifted through tall windows overlooking a fire escape. Jonah shivered, the gas fire to one side of the window cold and inert as an empty promise. Here and there, beyond the narrow pool of illumination cast by the single bulb hanging above the coffee table, could be seen several tall canvases, all shrouded in white sheets.

STEALING LIGHT
Sonja looked up, and saw stars.
Her breath frosted in the cold night air, puffing out from behind the scarf wrapped tight around her neck and chin as a chill winter wind whipped across the darkened courtyard. Dark blonde hair spilled out from under a knitted cap pressed down over her head. Tutor Langley stood next to her, the craggy features of his face rising above the upturned collar of his heavy black coat like an island of basalt above a wine-dark sea.

Funnily enough, Stross isn't the only writer I've found who seems to keep two blogs - one regular one, one on LiveJournal. I'm not sure why. Just one is a bad enough excuse for excessive procrastination.