Tag: #amediting

Writer’s Block

There is this thing called writer’s block.

There are days when I think I have it but the more I have thought about it while staring at that blank page, it occurs to me it is more likely I cannot put words to my thoughts.

In fact, I have been staring at this page for nearly half an hour.

There are no fewer thoughts of what I might write about going through my head at this time or any other time.

It’s a matter of what words I want to put on the page.

Those thoughts are spread evenly between three different stories I’m working on, this particular blog piece, and two other stories I should be editing.

And thrown into the mix ideas for more stories, fuelled by something I just heard, or read.

Perhaps I should put these aside temporarily and take a more simplistic view.

On this side of the world, it is spring.

It is raining lightly but persistently and when I look outside I’m reminded there are a dozen jobs that need to be done in the garden.

So, perhaps when the rain stops …

 

 

 

The Things We Do For Love – Coming soon

Like Sunday in New York, this is another attempt at writing a romance novel.  I’m one of those deluded fools who believe in happy endings.

I guess that was a ‘spoiler’!

This is the description I’m currently working with.

 

Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters.

For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself.  Tonbright, a small village by the sea, is one such a place, but he never expected to find another, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.

Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something had happened.  Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.

A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone.  To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.

But can love conquer all?

It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.

 

The cover, at the moment, looks like this:

lovecoverfinal1

 

Save, you idiot, save …

It’s late at night and there are twenty other story ideas that are currently running around in my head, instead of the story I should be working on.

These ideas are impinging on the current story, and somehow are finding their way onto the page.

Writing, cursing, deleting, re-writing, deleting, cursing.

I’m working on the latest book and it is not going well.  I don’t have writers block, I think it is more a case of self doubt.  It’s why I can’t concentrate.

It’s why I’m thinking about the nest story and not staying on track.

This leads me to be over critical of what I have written and much pressing of the delete key.  Only to realize that an action taken in haste can be regrettable, and makes me feel even more depressed when I realize the deletions are irrecoverable.

Damn.

I think I’d be happier in a garret somewhere channeling van Gogh’s rage.

Lesson learned – don’t delete, save it to a text file so it can be retrieved when sanity returns.

I was not happy with the previous start.  Funny about that, because until a few weeks ago I thought the start was perfect.

What a difference a week makes or is that politics?

Perhaps I should consider adding some political satire.

But I digress…

It seems it’s been like that for a few weeks now, not being able to stick to the job in hand, doing anything but what I’m supposed to be doing.  I recognize the restlessness, I’m not happy with the story as it is, so rather than getting on with it, I find myself writing words just for the sake of writing words.

Any words are better than none, right?

So I rewrote the start, added about a hundred pages and now I have to do a mass of rewriting of what was basically the whole book.

But here’s the thing.

This morning I woke up and looked at the new start, and it has inspired me.

Perhaps all I needed was several weeks of teeth gnashing, and self doubt to get myself back on track.

Who would want to be a writer?

Me!  First in line, every time!

Thoughts, maybe

It’s been a long time, or what seems to be a long time.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of the computer screen, the ever pervasive cursor flashing om a blank piece of digitized paper, and that was as far as I got.

No, the house didn’t burn down, mo major catastrophe, or family member or friend was in dire need of my help.

I just didn’t know what to do next.

But, I have been writing but not necessarily in the normal sense.  I have SomNote on my phone, and when I’m waiting, usually for doctors or n Government offices, I write.

A bit of this, a bit of that, but usually the YA novel I’m writing for, and not necessarily about, my 12 year old grand-daughter.

I find SomNote excellent for just putting words down, emailing it my myself and rehashing it later.  It has basically been used to write the first 37 chapters on the novel.

But as for the other writing?

Strangers We’ve Become, the follow up to What Sets Us Apart had taken a new direction.  As this is the next book to be published, I should have been working on it, but instead, some of it was still swirling around in my head.

Last week I went back to it.

Now, except for one chapter, possibly two, it’s done and so much better than the original.

Never let anyone tell you there’s not something else to be done after 10 edits, and re-writes.

The Things We Do For Love, a little story I wrote many years ago, was resurrected almost intact, and is also almost ready for publication.  It will be categorized as Romantic Suspense, along with Sunday In New York.

Look for those to be released in August or September this year.

My other story, the tales of PI Walthenson, private detective, had taken a back burner for a while, as I try to get a handle on where it is going.  It is a story now that is so very different that when I originally started it.  I suppose that’s what happens when you start writing with no idea what the end it.

I do now, and it’s going to be fun getting there.

Look for Episode 74 in the next few days.

This is a link to the last episode here:

http://tinyurl.com/PIWalthenson73

After that, Zoe will be back.  After the trials and tribulations in The Devil You Don’t, she finds that the past she tried to leave behind had come back to bite her.

The second adventure is called First Dig Two Graves, because it is about revenge and whether or not it’s best served cold.  And whether or not John’s romantic aspirations are fulfilled.

I will get back to the short story, Trouble in Store.  There is more on the development of that work in progress.

Now, I guess, it’s back to work!

Thoughts, maybe

It’s Monday again.

Or on this side of the world, it’s actually Tuesday morning.

Very, very early in fact.

Very cold too, which is strange for a city near the tropics.

I survived another week, still contemplating the job of working on the next edit of my sixth novel.  You’d think it was easy by now, routine.

Outline the story.

Write the chapters.

Bundle it all up and let it stew in the back of your mind.

Come back and do the first edit, find all the grammatical errors, fix holes in the plot, make sure the sub plots don’t take over, or minor characters steal the limelight.

Or, as in this case, after the seventh, yes, you heard right, the seventh edit, I decided there was a big hole and had to fill it.

If it was a murder mystery, it would be a body.

I was missing character motivation.  The main character was drifting, much like I am, and I realized there was a little of my circumstances coming across to the story.

Cut, slash, burn.

OK, wrote the new part and I’m happy with it now.

All I have to do is make sure there is sufficient hooks in the earlier part to make it seem like a natural progression.

Piece of cake.

I’ll start first thing tomorrow.

Perhaps I might be better off selling used cars!

Maybe not.

I think I’ll stick to writing.