Published Author Or Bust!

New plan. Unrealistic, and I know I’m going in with an air of defeat, but I’ve been crap recently so I need to get my arse into gear.

This weekend, I’m going write all of Chapter Three.

I finished Chapter Two ages ago, and keep meaning to get started on Three, but by the time I’ve got home from work, cooked dinner, and done whatever else I need to do (podcast, scouts, blog, etc), I can’t be arsed to write. I keep putting off those ‘20 minutes a day’ I was using till last, meaning when I get to the stage I can sit down to write, I’m too tired to care. I need to start doing those 20 minutes FIRST and the doing all the other stuff.

But yes, to kickstart this initiative, I want to write an entire chapter in a weekend. It’s only a short chapter, literally just introducing the third character (I need to stop waffling and learn there’s nothing wrong with short chapters), so it should be doable. Although I won’t be able to start until I’ve recorded the podcast tonight (3 hours gone already), washed the car, posted a few bits in town, tidied the house. Then I’ll be able to write until 6/7pm when I have friends coming over. And Sunday’s been written off by more scouting.

Figured I’d get my excuses out there first!

James Uncategorized Misc

I really need to do some more reading. Actual reading, not podiobooks. The thing is, I’ve got in the habit of listening to podiobooks and podcasts on the drive to and from work, which essentially adds up to two hours reading per day - so surely that will suffice for a day’s literary intake? I’ve recently finished Scott Sigler’s Earthcore and I’m currently enjoying Playing For Keeps by Mur Lafferty.

I know I should read more actual books, and I’ve actually built up a pile by the side of my bed: The Time Traveller’s Wife, Bernard Cornwell’s Holy Grail Trilogy, The third and fourth Thursday Next novels, The Wheel Of Time: Book one, Peter Hamilton’s The Reality Disfunction, Red Dwarf: Last Human, Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire, Indiana Jones And The Seven Veils a Wilbur Smith double bill - and my recent encounter with the Golden Compass movie makes me want to read Northern Lights again (if only to confirm how much they got wrong).

But - and this will sound silly - until this weekend, I didn’t have a reading lamp, so reading in bed (my preferred reading location) meant getting out of bed to turn the lights off afterwards. Which is irritating. So now that I have one, I can read some more actual books - when I’m not writing my own.

That pile’s depressingly big now. Need to cut it down.

James Uncategorized Misc

No, I haven’t been sucked into the money guzzling world of MMOs – I’ve been searching for a writers’ community.

It’s deadline day at work and, having finished the current load and decided not to start the next one until tomorrow morning, I’ve been listening to Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast. While I’ve been focussing on episodes that discuss confidence (something I feel I’ve been lacking for the last couple of years), a topic that has also come up frequently is friends.

Mur recommends that you have a group of friends that you can talk to and discuss work with, and that if possible they should be writer friends, fellow would-be authors that understand what you’re going through. I used to have these. Three, in fact. One changed her medium of choice and took up art, the second has apparently stopped writing and spends most of our conversations begging for me to come and visit her and the other is an arrogant, ego-tistical, melodramatic twat.

However, what Mur said makes to much sense to ignore, and I miss being able to discuss our work with those three. So, with the age of the Internet opening new doors, I’ve started looking for new friends – either a writing group or a forum. The NaNoWriMo forums initially fit the bit, but they’re currently locked out until October 1, preparing for the upcoming competition. Once they are unlocked, the problem is temporarily solved, but since the vast majority of the community seem to be focussed on these annual challenges rather than ongoing works, I’ve been searching for a general writers forum.

I used to moderate one, but it became overrun by spambots, and none of the groups or forums I’ve found today seem as welcoming or as active as my old boards used to be. If anybody can recommend one, please let me know!

And one minor point/rant: I’m becoming increasingly frustrated that, while I’m getting more of my novel done, I’m falling behind with my professional blog. It’s already over a month since I returned from Leipzig and I’ve only written up two previews – and I’m putting off all other entries until I’ve got these done. Think I need to sit down and write them all up this weekend, but it feels too much like work compared to my own fiction.

So yeah, anybody a member of a friendly writers community, email me please…

James Uncategorized Misc