My book is completely based upon that, even though I know nothing about it.

You could say the same of Nicholas Sparks' writing.

But yours is far better crafted, based on your samples, Gud.

Aw, thanks.

I did a critique last night and had no time for more work on my own stuff.

However, pieces are starting to click into place for my next book idea, the one set on a tidally-locked planet orbiting a red dwarf.

Humans are not indigenous, but this is long forgotten. A red dwarf star burns for much, much longer than a star like our sun so this planet is old. Life has had a long time to evolve after the star has settled down and no longer pours down deadly levels of UV radiation. Super-predators in the rich twilight zone have driven humans into the deserts of the day side and the frozen lands of the night side.

I wanted to start off on the day side. Here water and food are scarce and vicious storms (as one would expect on this sort of planet) means settlements have to be underground. The settlement that the book starts in has put into place rules and restrictions on reproduction because of this.

The restrictions are carried out by education, giving woman the right to manage their reproduction, and compassionat--no, it's done the traditional way, brutal oppression especially for women.

I wanted to make the MC male this time around, but as I started figuring out this society I'm finding myself going female again. The MC is a third-born daughter (her mother's third daughter) and a third-born daughter must be exiled when she comes of age unless her father pays to have her placed in a celibate order. There are no restrictions on sons because additional people don't come out of men, they tend to die off more, and men make the rules.

The MC's father is wealthy, but she's a bastard born from an affair her biological mother had and there's no chance of the father paying the price to keep her alive. The story starts the evening before she will be turned out into the desert with neither food nor water.

Okay, that was a lot longer than I thought it would be for just the starting bit that clicked into place. The other bits I'm not going to inflict upon the board.

I think that this post is a useful and entertaining read for all writers. Remember: your character just wants a glass of water.

That sounds like an interesting premise, Gud. How are you planning on dealing with finishing up your current work while not losing your new ideas? This is a perennial problem for me and I can't decide if working on several things at once is just my process, or if it's a bad habit I should try to crush.

Gud, as part of your research for the next book, you should read Dole's Habitable Planets for Man.

The PDF is free to download at: [link]

How are you planning on dealing with finishing up your current work while not losing your new ideas?

I'll just let it percolate in the back of my head. I don't want to start it up until I get finished with TDM.

Gud, as part of your research for the next book, you should read Dole's Habitable Planets for Man.

Looks like a good resource. In theory, the big problem is the atmosphere. It would need to be thick enough to survive until the star settles down. Once settled it would then need to be not too thick and not too thin, weather would be hell though, with the amount of convection. Probably not real likely, but there are a sh*tload of red dwarf stars out there and I'm not going to to place this at a particular one.

-t, I always make notes about a new idea, but otherwise I just let it percolate, like Gud said. If I have the perfect first paragraph or something, I'll write it down, too, but I try not to actually work steadily on it until the current thing is done.

That seems very sensible. I'm thinking a lot about work-flow and how to make time for writing and this is the sort of thing that can really throw me off.

Gud, that's a great idea and I already want to read it.

I met with my (future) PhD supervisor yesterday (great guy). He's a bit worried about my freelance project interfering with my PhD research, because the subject matter is very similar and for ethical reasons. I think I need to keep my own project as non-academic as possible and aim for a collection of stories around various themes, rather than an 'academically' researched book. I probably need to keep the participants in each project separate, too. How to decide which to use for which project is the difficult bit, though. I need to get back to the people who've offered to participate, but I need to decide how to select for each project first. Hmm.

Sounds complicated, Seska. I hope you find a good solution.

I like to contemplate ideas while I commute or can't sleep (probably not helpful there). The plot is starting to build itself in my head like a movie. I have the MC and two other major characters figured out along with a few minor characters and a bit of dialogue in the second chapter. The night-side civilization I'm seeing as have technology (with no sun they need an energy source) and probably borrowing a bit from steampunk to develop that.

In terms of actual work, I'm moving on to cutting up chapter 14 and seeing if I can find more vivid verbs since it's fairly action-packed. I also read by current revision of chapter 1 and found some repetitive sentence structures, a grammar error, and a couple lines of dialog that have both an attribution and a beat (I can cut words, yay!).