The grass is always greener...

The novel is on the back burner at the moment. It needed a rest and now it's having one until I get my Machinations muse back.

Right now, I'm working on a new side project; my first detective story, which I might call Dodge and Fukkit if a better title doesn't come along.

It's nice to be writing something new. When I’m editing or reworking and not writing new stuff, having the words flow out from under my fingertips, I begin to wonder whether I’ll ever be capable of writing something new ever again or whether that particular talent has deserted me.

But then I sit and start something new and there it is, the skill just comes back and I find I can still write at the same pace as I can create.

Then I have an idea too late, something that should have happened before this or that bit or a new thread or theme or plot point pops into my head and I think ‘that’d be an awesome thing to do’ and I begin to wonder if I still have the ability to edit and polish, to work a short story and incorporate new ideas and make the language flow and sparkle; basically turn a nice short story into a great one (great, here, being a relative term. For you, dear reader, read 'ok').

I guess there's just no winning with me. I always feel I'm losing the skill I'm not using at the time.

Schrodinger's Publication Date

Planning is great. Other than the Saturday, on which I was working on a very hard scene, writing has been smooth sailing. It's been one of those weeks where, after all the weeks of worrying and stressing, writing has just come easy and you know exactly why this is the kind of thing you want to do (hopefully) for the rest of your life.

I've been writing and changing scenes in accordance with the new plan, some things have changes (for the better I hope) as they have occurred to me but the rest is ticking along nicely. I might even have finished by the end of the month!

Short story front is quiet. Murky Depths turned down The Old Factory Award.

"It's a very clever piece of wordplay. However, we're going to pass on this as it doesn't seem like a Murky Depths piece to us. "

So there that is.

Revolution SF have still to publish No Longer Living but I'm being patient and don't really mind not knowing when it will be. It's a philosophy that borders on quantum physics, Schrodinger's Publication Date, it is not defined or measured simply by the act me looking. It just is, whether I know the date or not.

Promises and Earworm Turns are going to get a bit of an update so I can start sending them again. Just re-read them recently and think they could do with it just to make sure that they're the best stories they can be. That's the worry about sending stories, you always wonder if they're turning it away because of a gaping plot hole they didn't bother telling you about, poor writing, the fact that you're a nobody when they could be publishing somebodies or a mixture of all of the above and more. This is just my little precaution so I can tell myself "It's all them, Tiger, it's not you. It's all them."

Thanks for reading

Reading and Recovering

I lost a couple of day's worth of work this week. Something buggered up on my memory stick, corrupting my latest novel file. It was beyond saving so I lost a few hours worth of work. What made it worse was that once I had got over my initial frustration I couldn't rewrite what I had lost. Every time I tried my brain was too intent on remembering what I had written before and reproducing it verbatim. So, I put it aside and got to work on the first draft of a short story instead.

It's finished now and I'm back to work on the novel and everything is progressing again.

No news to speak of otherwise on the story front, magazines are all very quiet.

In June, I mentioned an argument I had had with housemates about what a writer should read and one of the arguments was that a writer should read the classics. I don't agree. I see where my housemates are coming from, if you want to do something start at the beginning, but to me reading the classics is very much like a racing car driver having a go in a Ford Model T; interesting, but hardly conducive to better driving skills.

But, I acknowledged to myself, I can't just dismiss the classics, perhaps they do have something to teach me. They are, after all, the classics. So last week I finished reading A Tale of Two Cities and what did I learn? Bugger. All. It was a fine story for its time as I'm sure are many of the classics but I picked up no real tools that would help me with my own writing.

Perhaps I chose the wrong classic, I don't know. Maybe if I read War and Peace I'll learn something that will make me a better writer. But maybe I won't. Well, how about Great Gatsby? How about Wuthering Heights? Why don't I just spend the rest of my life reading books everyone else tells me are great hoping I'll find in them something I could just as easily be searching for in books I actually enjoy?

The problem I feel with people who insist on only reading the classics is that their reading lists all look the fucking same. Who decided these books were 'the classics' anyway? Dickins doesn't seem all that to me. Wodehouse wasn't that great. To Kill a Mockingbird was fantastic, I did love it, but I didn't feel there was anything to learn from it. Harper is simply more talented than me. Or at least more talented at writing that kind of book, don't know how she'd fair writing sci-fi for teens.

Anyway, rant over. I'm reading The White Tiger, Booker Prize Winner. It's ok so far. Nice in a look-into-modern-India journalism way. No real story to speak of. Classic? Probably not.

Also feel I should mention this. Hannah was a close friend and I miss her a lot and her death coloured my writing a lot. News story seems a bit divorced from reality for me. I never met the guy that killed her and never will. Hard to hate someone you've never met.

Anyway.

Thanks for reading.

Middle of the Road Revisited

Right, I mean it this time. I am now half way through the whole novel. Huzzah!

Chapter 29 was wrapped yesterday and I'm well into number 30. The next ten chapters are quite intimidating at the moment, all that clutter to be tidied, rewriting to be done and such but I'm sure once I get stuck in it'll be rather fun. Plus, the final 50 pages are pretty much set in stone. I know exactly what I want from these chapters, hopefully they'll play ball and allow themselves to be those things.

The short story front is quiet, things still with mags so now there's nothing else to do but sit back and play more Fallout 3.

Life is good.

Thanks for reading.