Category: Other

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the project I had been hard at work on.
I am pleased to announce that the latest draft of it is now done. What follows is a lengthy edit process. Taking each page at a time and reading through it until I am satisfied that every word is in the right place. I’m also highlighting the jokes per page to ensure that the tone (self deprecating and darkly comic) is consistent. More than anything, that’s what I want to keep this time around while the events of the book have jumped around thanks to some excellent recommendations.
It’s still some way off of being in any way ready for anyone else to read but it’s a milestone.
I took the time to stop and have a glass of whisky but it’s back to it. As much time as I can dedicate to it.

It goes without saying that this is the best thing I have ever written and every faith in my possession is rolling up behind this like the boulder bearing down on Indiana Jones.
I’ve watched The Shawshank Redemption, Ocean’s Eleven and Schindler’s List as part of the process. If that isn’t the most compelling companion pieces to a new novel then you need to get your head checked (by a jumbo jet).
It’s been such a pleasure to right with this pure desire and love for what I do.
Can’t wait to give a little more info on it.

Last week, a friend asked if I was still writing and where they could read more of what I’ve been doing. While I love that people are aware of my passion for writing and know that it’s what I want to be doing more than anything else in the world, I’m not currently in a position where I am sharing what I am working on, beyond the odd mysterious post on social media.

You should know that I am certainly writing. I am working on something exciting, that has set a fire in my belly and that I have real hopes will be the thing that sets the world on fire. It is, without a doubt, the best thing I have ever written and I think it’s healthy to say that about everything I put together. If you aren’t improving then what is the point.
So there’s the answer. I am working on something at the moment. I’m very much in it. I find myself drifting off in other situations and thinking about it, fitting together these intricate puzzle pieces in the hope that it will all come together in the way I am hoping and will become an HBO series and be taught in schools.
I am not afraid of manifesting but you’ve got to put the hard work in and that’s where I’m at now.

At the start of April, I was bragging about the work I was undertaking, intent on writing 90,000 words in a month. I updated my blog about it every day and then I went radio silent for three weeks.

I can’t completely cover the reasons for this. All I can say is that something else came up that needs my attention. This is the first time in maybe ten years that I haven’t completed the task I set out to do within a National Novel Writing Month event. I went from writing a book a year to writing three a year. The novel I was working on, Death By Chocolate, has now been removed from their server. I couldn’t have it staring me down.

Having moved house this year and given the amount of time that has taken up, as well as an increasing workload in my 9-5 and then the additional project that came to the fray in the middle of the month, I wasn’t able to dedicate to this properly. I thought about pushing on and meeting the 50,000 words that most people try for as part of NaNoWriMo but it was too late, I’d set the goal at 90k and couldn’t find a way to edit that down. I intend on returning to that story, but when the time is right and I’m not quite as fraught.
I’m not quitting on writing or on myself. I’ve just had to shift the focus to catch something that’s far more pressing. I hate being so speculative and opaque about anything I’m working on but for now it needs to sit with me and me alone.
Wish me luck with that.

In my usual way, I am being far too harsh on myself. Today I hit the 30k mark but I know I’m five thousand words behind where I expected to be. If I had kept the marker at 50,000, as is the goal for anyone else doing the National Novel Writing Month challenges then I would be well ahead of the curve, both for my target and for anyone else involved. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of traction and I’m going to struggle to make it back.
It’s funny to me that it’s the weekends, when you would think I have the most time, that I could get this writing done. That’s simply not what happens. My weekends are full of great things but it doesn’t leave enough time for me to disappear off and write for a couple of hours.
Let’s keep in mind that I’m doing it, I am looking after myself and that there is no obligation here except the one in my own head. Set it free.

I’ve recovered from the position I left myself in yesterday, which is an incredible personal achievement considering how busy I’ve been all day. I don’t know how much of Chapter Seven will remain because even as I was putting it together it felt like filler but it’s all working towards something. At the end of this month, I’ll have a first draft and can go from there. There are going to be some days when it feels like I’m squeezing words out of my brain just for the sake of it.
I’m at 24,015 words.
It’s time to kick back, watch Sonic and switch my brain off until the morning.

Well, I’ve fallen behind. It was only a matter of time. I have been doing well for a week to keep up with my insane expectations but I’m calling it a night at 2,400 words. I’m too tired and I shouldn’t have had three beers before trying to make the last thousand words, while on a Zoom call and with a film on. This has been a learning point. I’m off to bed. Tomorrow, I catch up.

I started out well. Got over a thousand words done after my morning exercise but before work, but then the day got away from me.
So I am now up until at 11pm, drinking white rum and making my wordcount because I am insisting on getting this done to my own goal, rather than the 50k that is standard for NaNoWriMo.

Fun story. I left my notes in my office this morning and started writing what is actually Chapter Eight. It doesn’t matter because they’re about different characters and all slot in around each other but it made me think when I did check where I was supposed to be going in this chapter and realised I wasn’t supposed to have got to it for two days. Either way. Wordcount done. Bedtime.

Well, I feel like I’ve cracked it. I’ve often said that I do my best work before 9am and that was certainly the case today. I got up at six (very quietly because it’s a Bank Holiday and I don’t want to be killed), worked out for half an hour, showered, dressed and wrote two thousand words in an hour. I then took a break to do some work and came back in this afternoon to finish up my thoughts.
Chapter Five sustained the Mexican Standoff that I left the characters in at the end of Chapter Four, and I was pleased with how the tone held out. Everything is now in place for the adventure to begin for my two main characters. I keep checking back at the Story Circle I’ve drawn up for it and thinking about where everyone will be by the end of it. I’ve only written up my plan to Chapter Fourteen but am planning thirty chapters so there’s room for it to breath and for me to feel out where it should all go.
For now, I’m a happy man.

Well, I’m still to learn from the last few days. Over the Easter weekend, it has been difficult to carve out an exact time to write. I know that I can get a thousand words done in half an hour if I really set my mind to it and there isn’t much outside research that needs to be done. At the absolute maximum, the three thousand words I want to set down each day should take me three hours. A thousand words an hour seems reasonable. That being said, there’s a lot of outside research and consideration in this one.
Today was a fortunate break where the whole chapter I was writing was a study of a particular character in a particular situation so there was very little outside influence involved there. I got a thousand words done this morning when I got back from my kayak trip and then I left it until 10pm to start writing again. That was after half a bottle of wine. I got two thousand words written in forty minutes. A lot of that won’t make the first edit but at this stage it’s just a case of getting everything down and worrying about the order later.

If anyone is reading these in order, I suppose it can seem flippant the way I talk about the form that it has taken. I will tell you that I have spent months planning this, mostly in my head, and have the general arc down. I like to give some mystery to myself as I work on each chapter but there’s a definite guideline for each of them. I tend to put a bulletpoint down for each thousand words I want to put into a chapter.
No spoilers but today’s three were escape, run, hide. It sounds simple enough but from there I could fill in enough to make the word count. Everything else is a consideration for a couple of months down the line when I can dare to look at this manuscript.
For now, I just need to get it done!

Another late start, I left it until after dinner to get any writing done.
Chapter Three was a complete departure from the characters that I had introduced in the previous two days/chapters so it was an easy roll into the world of the chocolatier and a chance to get some outside ideas down on the world that I am building out.
I’m now at 9,000 words and getting to grips with some of the jokes, references and symbols that could be repeated down the line. As much as I love to plan these things through, it’s strange the places the mind goes to once the flow of words is coming. It’s also a welcome distraction as I am waiting on news back on something that I wrote previously and have high hopes for an a high opinion of. If I’m writing something new then it lends me an air of protection against my previous work. With everything new that I write, it feels like a step closer. I’m learning all the time and today I learnt that the scientific name for a sucker fish is a plecostomus.