The First Month of 2014

Something of a transitional month for me. Having finally committed to spending more time on writing activities and less on the building of the author platform, I’d also committed to certain activity on Twitter, which lasted until the last week of the month.

Much of my writing time was spent doing the final edit of book 2 of the fantasy trilogy (46 chapters), completing it on the 28^th. Book 1, A Seared Sky: Joinings, is due to be published by Fantastic Books Publishing in spring. I then began to edit book 3. This is a much more time consuming exercise as it’s the first edit of the rough draft, much of which was written for the NaNoWriMo project last November. So, where I could edit a chapter of book 2 in around 20-30 minutes, the chapters of book 3 are taking between 3 and 4 hours each and, so far, I’ve done the first 2. I’m doing a structural and language edit together and following that with a full edit using ProWritingAid. I then give each chapter to my wife to read. Valerie has a great memory, and spots repetitions, typos, anachronisms and inconsistencies. She makes the perfect beta reader and I usually have to do only one final edit after she’s made her suggestions.

I’d set myself a target of submitting 4 short pieces, either stories or poems, to magazines of writing contest each month and I managed to send off 2 stories and 2 poems to contests. Of these, 1 story and the 2 poems were written this month. I also wrote and posted two short autobiographical pieces to the excellent ReadWave site. These submissions are up to 800 words each and may be factual, opinion, memoir or short story. If you click on the site title above, it’ll take you to the relevant page.

My writing group, Hornsea Writers, decided to celebrate 25 years of being by designing a group blog and I contributed to that. If you click on the group name, it’ll take you to that site.

I read and reviewed 4 books, though one of those reviews will actually follow this post, as I wrote it this morning, having finished the book last night.

And I updated the Writing Contests page 3 times. I’m due to do another update this weekend. It’s a popular page and receives a lot of visitors. If you know of a contest I haven’t listed there, by all means let me know. (there’s a ‘contact me’ link at the top of the page.) I only list contests with cash prizes at least 20 times the cost of entry, by the way.

So, not a bad start to the year so far. Let’s hope the output increases as the year progresses. How are things going for you in 2014? Drop us a comment and share your success or other news.

The chart, explained:

Writing - initial creation of stories, blog posts, reviews and longer works.

Editing - polishing of all written work to make it suitable for readers.

Research - discovery of info for story content, market research, contests and blog posts.

Reading - books and writing magazines.

Networking - emails, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and comments.

Admin - story submission, blog posting, marketing, organisation, tax, and general admin tasks.

November Was NaNoWriMo Month: So What?

The major project for November was the completion of the first draft of book 3 of the fantasy trilogy, A Seared Sky. The book stood at 111,079 words when I set out on the NaNoWriMo journey and it ended up at 194,352 words. That’s 83,273 words during the month, though I actually completed the book on 21^st November.

I accompanied my wife to the frozen north to visit her relatives and friends for the pre-Xmas get-together and that took a few days out of the month. I read 4 books and reviewed 3 of them; the last one was reviewed in December. And I completed 4 blog posts. I also wrote a couple of poems I’m intending to submit to contests this month. So, all in all, a pretty satisfactory month’s writing.

The end of NaNoWriMo generally leaves a void to be filled. I’ve been pretty busy with other things, so it’s only today that I’ve started feeling the need to create again. Lots of ideas for short stories, and there’s a novel brewing somewhere in the back of my mind.

The 1^st volume of the fantasy trilogy was supposed to be published this month, but, as can happen in the publishing world, a technical issue has delayed that. No-one’s fault: just one of those irritating things that sometimes occur. Because we’ll miss the Xmas window, we now intend to publish in Spring 2014. So, the marketing and pre-launch activity I was expecting to participate in is no longer necessary and I find myself with a small spell of spare time. Those poems, stories and the novel start to beckon. And, I think I might put one of my ebooks out as a paperback: possibly The Methuselah Strain. There are still large numbers of people who don’t yet have the facilities or the desire to go digital and it seems a shame to exclude them from the circle of readers.

The pie chart shows how my time has been spread over the month. I urge you to do something similar, especially if you have a tendency to procrastinate; and what writer doesn’t? Keeping a record of time spent on the various aspects of your writing activities can be surprisingly informative and sometimes a little alarming!

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The NaNoWriMo Experience Fulfilled.

In common with many of my fellow writers, I started the project to complete the 1^st draft of a novel NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which ought to be renamed International Novel Writing Month, except that InNoWriMo somehow doesn’t have the same cachet), is a motivational project aimed at moving the writing along.

during the month of November.

I had a go at this in 2011 and completed over 110k (the official target for the month is 50k), but ditched the result due to an insurmountable flaw in the plot. This time, I used the motivational aspect to hurry me through the final half of the 1^st draft of book 3 of my fantasy trilogy. I expected to add about 110k to what I’d already written. But, as so often happens when you write by the seat of your pants, the story took a slightly different turn from that expected and came to a natural end a little earlier. In the end, I had only to complete another 83k words, and I did that on Thursday. The book now stands at around 194k words.

So, my NaNoWriMo experience is complete for this year. This doesn’t mean the book is finished, of course. In fact, it’s only just begun. The real work will come in the editing, which I’ll start in a couple of weeks, once I’ve done other stuff that will let me come to it more or less fresh.

But there’s no doubt that this publicly undertaken exercise does wonders for self-discipline and motivation. At the rate I was writing before November, I’d have been completing the book by the end of December. A worthwhile effort, I think. I’d definitely encourage anyone to have a go. And for those would-be writers who have difficulty completing anything, this is an ideal exercise as it encourages you to just write, without ever stopping to edit along the way.

I strongly advise writers to try this. Too late for this year, of course. But next year might be the time you finally get that novel actually written instead of just talking about it.

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NaNoWriMo Progress into the Third Week.

The first draft of volume 3 of A Seared Sky: Convergence, is going apace. I started the NaNoWriMo process when the MS was at 111,079 words and it’s now at 181,684 words, which means I’ve averaged 3922 words a day so far during November.

Believe it or not, I’ve lived a life at the same time. It hasn’t been easy, turning out this number of words each day, but the public nature of the target does concentrate the mind and helps prevent prevarication and distractions. I know that, once this draft is finished, I’ll have some serious editing to do. But the story, the essence of the novel, will be complete. I’ll have all the twists and turns in place, all the characters where intended, and all events covered.

Along the way, I’ve had to introduce new characters, of course. I made this easier for myself by creating a list of possible names for future use before I started on book 1. I also have a character template and a collection of around 1,000 assorted photographs of people, so I can hang the description onto an image of a real person. I find this helps me develop the character more fully. Some events have occurred quite unexpectedly, as characters take on more importance than I originally envisaged or as favourite characters get into situations it’s impossible for them to survive. I don’t like killing off characters, but it has to be done, of course.

And now? Well, my guess is that around 20,000 words will complete the book. I’m working on the denouement, putting each of the three groups of individuals into those situations that will close their parts in the story. There’ll inevitably be a few loose ends, with a cast of over 90 named players, but all the main characters will end up with a satisfactory conclusion to their specific tales.

I’m looking forward to the appearance of book, Joinings. FantasticBooks Publishing are currently waiting for their designer to complete the cover design. And the book should be available before Xmas. I’m excited about the publication, of course. But, for the moment, I’ll continue to use NaNoWriMo as a way of ensuring that volume 3 gets completed. At least those who buy volume 1 will then know that they won’t be let down by an author failing to complete a trilogy; something that happens far too often, unfortunately.

Watch this space for further news.

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