So, it's been a while since I've posted anything here - well over a year. What can I say? Work's been busy and there's been death, death, death in the family so Twitter was all I could cope with really. But now I've decided that I'll do NaNo again but as a rebel - I've got 60,000 words of a WIP written out longhand; 38,000 words of that 60K typed ( Read more... )

The final version of the first draft of chapter one is done. (I make no comment on the potential number of revisions, mind.) Finding the starting point has been a nightmare to the extent that at one point I did wonder if there was a story there/ it was ready at all. But, thanks to the interventive reading of Chum #1 I rewrote it at the weekend and ( Read more... )

Perhaps I should have given up at Draft 1, Attempt 3. In all probability I should really have given up by Draft 1, Attempt 7 but, last night, just as I was about to turn the light out (and isn't that always the way?) I finally realised where it should start. I wrote the paragraph before I went to bed - much to the disgruntlement of the two collies ( Read more... )

I came across a couple of interesting posts today while catching up on my blog reading. The first one was via jimvanpelt  - Confessions of a slush reader: why should I care? which talks about a story's lack of Who, What, and Why sending the Meter of Hope into the red zone. And the second was a post from ann_leckie  about default settings and assumptions (of authors) ( Read more... )

The short story is in the mail so I can forget about that for a bit and get back to the novel which nearly had a fatal pause last November. I'm 72,000 words in and only half-way along which means that there will be a significant amount of hack 'n' slash revising it from Draft One to Draft 2. I'm aiming for a draft one completion date of no later ( Read more... )

It's almost Christmas Eve and there is snow on the ground! It was a bit dodgy trying to leave my street this morning as we are not blessed with gritters (being unworthy dwellers of a dead-end road) but once the ice of two and a half streets was navigated it was plain sailing.

Although I don't enjoy driving in snow (driving back from Newcastle on ( Read more... )

Just over a week ago I finished part one of the current WiP, full of glee at getting a good 53K words and eager to start on part two. But I found that, having finished a distinct part without making an immediate effort to start the next section, it was difficult to set hands to keyboard again. First I had to re-read my outline and make sure that it ( Read more... )

Progress in the word wars yesterday, managed to clock up 2,679 words to bring the wip up to 9,396 which is almost to the end of chapter 3. The front end will definitely need work in revisions, but it's good that it's getting off the ground - word wars really help in concentrating the mind (for me, anyway)

Project: Unnamed UF
New words: 2,679
( Read more... )

Holiday over - back to the grindstone. (The updating of publications...oh, the glamour)
I had a nice relaxing time off; read a lot, wrote a bit, went and saw Harry Potter (not bad, but it lacked the zoom zoom pace of Order of the Phoenix - bit of a filler, I think.)

Fiona Glass has been doing posts on people's desks up on her blog. Mine went up on ( Read more... )

Interesting post (complete with diagrams) from Brad Torgersen (via jaylake ) comparing a writer's persistence and practice with the (slow) filling of a bath.
Good stuff.