Decisions are for better people than I
As I mentioned before, I’ve decided to start a piece of online fiction, serialised for you dear readers for free. I’ve bought the website, the bloody marvellous Jonic has set up some back end stuff for it. I will be moving the blog there soon, and I hope to get the first installment up in the next few months.
Only one problem though. The writing itself is in essence, an attempt at a British road novel. My initial aim with it was to examine the death of youth culture in this country, and it was born out of my frustration at seeing so little that kids could call their own. It was written about five years ago.
Since then, there has been a renaissance of sorts within British youth culture. Landfill indie does seem to have given way to some genuinely exciting new music (of course most of it is still shit but whenever was it not so?) and social networking seems to have given the Skins generation a genuine sense of belonging that I’ve not seen since the halcyon days of (for me) grunge.
And there is the other problem. When I wrote the first few chapters I was in my early to mid twenties, running gigs and in a band, whereas now I am over thirty, with an infant child and a general sense of foreboding over my bald spot. I think this no longer qualifies me to write the book as it was initially intended.
A lot of the writing I still like. But it needs a drastic overhaul. For some reason I now feel more like a horror writer than I was before, and I thought it might be interesting to follow that, but I really can’t decide. And since I really want this to be an interactive experience I thought I’d throw open the forum to ask you what you think I should do here. I’m not saying I will listen to you, but I’d like to know what you think I should do. So for your voting pleasure I present you with a little poll. It should be pretty self explanatory. If you have any other ideas, please feel free to drop them as a comment.
*Edit! I’ve realised that the poll doesn’t, in fact, work. I shall get a new one up tomorrow, but for now I have spanish chicken to eat. Feel free to leave comments though!
*Edited again! Right, I have a new poll up now, as you can see below, so please feel free to vote. I understand that you are essentially voting on something you’ve never read, but humour me.
It depends who you want to read your book. If you want it to be read by your peers then go with the loss of youth. Thats the one i’d most like to read. If you are aiming for a younger audience go more towards the horror. nb. I hate zombies!!!
Interesting. Really I just want to be read. The upside to horror is that there is a lot of horror on the net and therefore many more places to go and publicise my stuff. On the other hand, there is a lot of horror on the net and therefore it’s gonna be a lot harder to get heard.
I would say that you should write the one you think you’ll write best. There’s no use choosing the one you think more people will read and then it not being as good, because then less people will probably end up reading it. Does that make sense? You get my drift anyway.
Or, start both and then see which one feels like it’s better. That might be interesting actually.
We can discuss it tonight, hurray!
I think the horror type stuff comes easier to me, but the original story was better because it was challenging. Might be interesting to try and match the style from the original story to a horror.
fyi- poll looks a bit wonky here, as only half of the black script is on the white, while the other is black on black