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The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: One
Things yet to do.
Yes, it's that time of the year again. Already. Consider this a nudge about getting your Christmas shopping done. (And while you're at it, check out the latest episode of The Flashing Blade Podcast, in which I'm interviewed in a festive manner.) This yuletide the Twelve Blogs are going to be slightly more informal. I realise that, this year, mostly under the influence of Twitter, I've tended to write less for the blog, so I'm hoping that many of these will be pieces from me on things that I've noticed or appreciated during the year. However, we do have a quiz tomorrow with an amazing prize, your fan fiction (only one day left to submit it) and a couple of other surprises, with regulars like Laurie Pink and Penny Andrews popping in as we go.
Today, I'd like to begin by talking about things I haven't done, and may never get to do. This year has been a very successful one for me, creatively, but that success means that my choice of projects has narrowed, because I've got less time. I've made the decision, for example, to move away from television a little, because I'm tired of spending months on projects that nobody ends up seeing, even though one is richly rewarded for that invisibility. Working in comics feels to me like being in the business of serial fiction, connected to Conan Doyle, Dickens and the pulps; it's got to be delivered on Thursday, it'll be out in four weeks, there'll be an instant audience reaction and (mostly) you're left alone to get it sorted, sacked if it doesn't work. That feels immediately satisfying. Working in prose is the aim of my life, so that's the marathon. Television still feels awkwardly in the middle, and though there are some interesting things which might happen (a couple of which have popped up very recently) I think leaving that media fallow is still the most likely course of events next year.
So, given all that, I thought I'd list a few things that I'd like to do, but may well not get the chance to, at least not for a long time. Long term ambitions, dreams, things I could do in another life. Some of these would need powerful people to agree to them, and are staggeringly unlikely. Some of them I could start on tomorrow if I was able and willing to drop something I've prioritised.
Edit a Science Fiction/Fantasy anthology. It's top of the list because I hope to find a space to do it, and a publisher willing to take me on, in the next few years. I have a broad theme in mind, and the address book to do it. I'm in awe of people like Jon Strahan and Lou Anders, who do what seems to me to be a monumental undertaking all the time. Getting a big name to write for you, and then having to say to them 'well, I have a few notes...', that takes doing.
Run a series for Big Finish Productions. I'd love to show run one of BF's ongoing series of audio dramas, especially a spinoff from the main Doctor Who range. I imagine that bringing in one's own choice of writers, casting, and doing all the organisation of studio and production must be tremendously hard work, but also tremendously satisfying. I suspect, though, that this is now something that I could have done, past tense, because the time commitment involved is enormous, and I've moved on. Still, if time stops and we all get an infinite holiday to do as we like, I'll be banging on Jason Haigh-Ellery's door.
Become a columnist again. I feel I rather failed with my column in SFX Magazine. It was sarcastic, confrontational, bratty, and, reading them again, I feel that I spent most of my time trying to almost deliberately alienate the readership. If I had my time again, I think I'd do something much more inclusive, but these days those evenings on Twitter where we're all talking about the same thing, and I get to both talk and re-post, interacting with the audience, does this sort of thing just as well and so much faster.
Be a judge for the Clarke Awards. I'm pickled in British SF, I love the Clarkes almost as much as the Hugos (check out a piece from organiser Tom Hunter on the way forward for the Clarkes here) but do I have time to read an entire sackful of novels sent in by publishers within one year? It'd be good homework for one's own adventures in the field, but at the same time, to fail would be to let down a lot of people. Maybe when I retire? Let's hope the Clarkes are still healthy then.
Present the Hugo Awards. While we're on the subject. And actually I could do this one. Tomorrow, if, weirdly, required. Worldcon could be coming back to the UK soon too. Oh, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!
Create a game universe. The idea of people playing in a world I created... oh, I like the sound of that! Particularly if there are, you know, many sided dice and massive multiplayer PC games involved. But again, that would have to be my entire world for years.
Write the book for a musical. I have a very particular idea for a musical in mind too, and every now and then I mention it to someone, and they get a glazed look in their eye and stumble off, glancing back over their shoulder at me every now and then, as if in fear I might pursue them.
Write erotica. I had a go once, back when Virgin's Doctor Who and erotic fiction lines ran out of the same office, and I was run out of that same office, shamed by the laughter. If I ever got the time, it would be something I'd slip to people under the bar at conventions, and never tell the world about. After all, Caroline may one day become an Archbishop.
Write a James Bond movie. I calculate that I'm in the top couple of thousand of the writers in the queue. And many of those have movie experience. And currently there's no vacancy. And no series. But apart from that...
Write a book for children. I started one this year, and it fizzled within a few pages. It wouldn't be YA, but for younger readers. There's something getting in the way right now. I think I'll have to first write the three novels I've got planned.
So there we go. Sheer pie in the sky, most of them. I haven't mentioned any ambitions where there are actual meetings going on and actual progress being made. The above are, if anything, a worrying indication that I'm still a jack of all trades, whereas I hope that, by 2011, I'll have settled on something to be. I suspect that one of the many sacrifices that really successful writers make is to drop all these might have beens, stop sighing after them, and concentrate on what they're best at. So that's my aim. Consider them exposed to the air and thus exorcised (apart from that Hugo one, that's still on!) I'm sure many other writers have a similar list, and I wonder if they might share it with us?
Tomorrow is our Christmas quiz, with a truly amazing prize. Until then, Cheerio!
Labels:
Big Finish,
Clarke Awards,
Doctor Who,
Hugos,
James Bond,
SFX
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Ha! It looks like I was right about you wanting to write a James Bond film. Here's the blog post that proves otherwise: http://thecomicbookscene.blogspot.com/2010/03/analysing-black-widow-deadly-origin.html
Among other things on this list, I'm ridiculously pleased you have designs on doing a musical. I'm in the middle of finishing one/mounting a workshop of it right now, and it's the best fun EVER even if I do get that look you describe quite a bit -- "A musical? Really? About that?"
My list includes some of yours:
1) Write a stage play and see it produced.
2) Write a musical. No, I can't read music, am practically tone deaf and have no talent, but Mel Brooks did it for The Producers just by humming and singing into a tape recorder, and got full composer credit, so the precedent has been set.
3) Edit a Science Fiction or Fantasy anthology is also on my list.
4) Create a game universe is not on my list, but mostly because I have already done (am doing) much of that. If you find yourself ready, I still have a few contacts that might be interested in publishing something from THE Paul Cornell.
5) I've no desire to write a Bond movie, but (and don't you dare tell anyone this, or I'll deny it and call you a dastard) I have long nursed a secret, embarrassing desire to write a Star Trek novel, movie, TV series, or some such. Then again, my chief desire is to fix what's wrong with that fictional universe and in so doing would no doubt wreck everything.
6) Write a book for children. Ditto. Getting close with next year's novel.
7) Write and publish my "Jack Kirby Verse". Basically, like Kirby did with his Fourth World books, to create my own Billyverse, either inside or outside of an existing comic book universe, consisting of three or four interrelated ongoing comicbook superhero series.
8) There's more, I suspect, but these are what comes to mind. If only I had the time...
Since I'm still a computer moron, and can't seem to make the allowed ID choices work, I'll just have to sign at the bottom and wish you a very fine 12 Blogs, Paul.
Bill Willingham
All fine things to want to do, Paul, several of which I'd be interested in seeing come to pass.
Mention of erotica reminds me of a time I (very briefly) did some slushpile reading for a publisher of erotic fiction. I was amazed by the amount submitted by people who had no experience of the female anatomy. The line that sticks in my mind to this day, and always makes female friends wince, is: "Then he parted the twin nodes of her clitoris". And, no, this wasn't from an SF story.
- Rob Hansen
when you're ready to show run for Big Finish, and you need any american voice actors let me know ;)
J
IMHO, you should remember the end of the rhyme: "Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one." And you shouldn't concede that you're a "jack," either. That Neil guy under the snow in the Midwest probably considered himself a jack now and again, and see how many trades he's mastered.
I see no reason for you to limit yourself to anything other than the things that fulfill you.
I'd love to see what you'd come up with as an MMO. It's an interesting medium. ON the one hand, it's persistent and open-ended. On the other, there's possibility for a good story.
OMG, I LOVE this list, and I sincerely hope that you get to do at least some of them! (What WOULD Paul Cornell erotica BE like?! And would you use your name or a pseudonym you come up with by using the name of your first pet as your first name, and the name of the first street you lived on as your last name?)
But I'm surprised by how many of these things are on my list, too.
And now I'll be off to search for your columns for SFX, as I'd like to see if you were as bad a columnist as I am! :)
Well done DD! Don't taunt me with that, RM! Bill, thanks for popping by, and one day I'll take you up on that gaming thing. A Fables musical would run and run! By 'Jack Kirby Verse' I actually thought for a moment that you meant a volume of poetry devoted to the great man. 'Shall I compare thee to Jack Kirby?' I suspect, like a few of mine, you could do the Trek thing now. Rob: oh, you saw my idea! John: you were top of my list. Chip: I didn't know it ended like that, thank you! Gar: how I feel about it. Ter: I don't know if people would buy an arousing book by Spudley Hayle.
First, you're a Writer. That's what you "do" isn't it? You're a Master of Writing things, and they just happen to be in different formats, that's all. It's not as if you're all "I want to write a novel! OR I want to help build a skyscraper!" :)
Second, you've made me think about a list...
I'm still such a newbie as far as the writing goes, so my list is very beginnery (and probably way too "all over the place") compared to yours, but here goes! My list of everything I'd do if I had the choice and all the time in the world:
1) I'd love to complete and publish a novel. Yes, there's one in particular. Hopefully there will be more, but right now, it's just about the one.
2) I would love to publish a creator-owned comic with artists I know. I have two friends whose art I love, and two stories that might be best-suited to comic format in my brain. I'm hoping to eventually make that happen.
3) I would love to write and publish a young adult novel. It's something I've always wanted to do, but ever since I read The Hunger Games (which I LOVE, and if you haven't read it, you should seriously give it a whirl), it's gone more into "burning need" territory. I think YA fiction has some of the most exciting storytelling there is. (Seriously, read The Hunger Games)
4) I actually WOULD love to write for television. I have no real desire to write a screenplay for film, but television seems really exciting right now, and I'd love to (in my pipeyest of pipe dreams) showrun a show I create someday. Ideally, I'd be a cross between Ronald D. Moore and Steven Moffat, but way cuter and with even better hair. :)
4a) I want to write an episode of Doctor Who. I don't know if they let Americans sully the TARDIS, but if they do, I wanna.
4b) I want to write a pilot for the BBC writers room. I have a very specific idea that I've already been working on that, for very specific reasons, makes more sense for British TV than to shop around here.
Really I'm just looking for excuses to be able to move to London and marry a hot rugby player...I should've just made THAT #4.
5) I want to create a commercially viable webseries. The one I was working on, The Pack, is on hiatus for the moment, but I'm hoping to re-start work on that in the new year.
6) Another one we have in common is writing a musical. I'd love to do the lyrics as well as the book. I'm sort of the Weird Al Yankovic of my group of friends. :) Writing lyrics comes pretty easily to me as long as I'm working with someone else's music.
7) I'd love to be the fiction editor of a magazine that doesn't currently have one. :) Like BUST or Latina. I've always thought that it's such a shame that most mainstream magazines other than The New Yorker seem to have dropped short stories altogether. I don't get it. And I think that magazines like BUST or Latina (um, can you tell I'm a Hispanic woman?) would do well to include fiction to cater to a literate audience as well as promote/cultivate female/minority writers of literature. So there.
That's all for now. I've got a million other dreams and aspirations, but this is YOUR blog. Not mine. :)
Wow, Paul. You have the most unfortunate Porn Name in all of God's Creation. If you ever DO publish any erotica, do us all a favor and do it with your real name.
Mine is Scarlett Seville, which is AWESOME. Also Cody Seville (I had a dog named Scarlett and a mouse named Cody at the same time). It's as though I were destined for a life in porn. Well, at least I know I'm not entirely devoid of options if the writing doesn't work out...
Paul's porn name is better than mine: "Neverhadapet Barwick". AROUSING
Tabletop RPGs with many sided dice are rather easier to get out into the world than MMOs (I once had a hand in creating one in eight hours flat) and I daresay the chaps at Cubicle 7 Games would be willing to hear a pitch...
Well, you've pleased rugby players, Ter, and I liked *even* better hair. I'm quite fond of Neverhadapet Barwick too. He sounds like something out of Pratchett. And thanks, Craig, but as I said, these are things I can't get into right now.
Great list Paul....If I were to pick one I hope to see I would love to see
a Paul Cornell Bond film.
Do you favour a particular era?
And just cos it's fun to get involved...my porn name is Scoo Connaught.
Well, hey. Ronald Moore has excellent, romance novel cover-worthy hair. I know when I have competition, and all I can do is make sure mine is that much better and pray he starts going bald.
I think I've got Steven beat in the hair department, though. Sorry, Steven, wherever you are...
Alex: I love where Bond is now. Best it's ever been. Ter: it's kind of... curly...