I’m thinking ahead here but I’m going to be wanting some first readers in a few months (I’m pencilling in Easter) but where do they live? For my first novel, Railroaded, I printed out ten copies of the third draft and handed it out to people; My Mum, Dad, three friends, a daughter of a
AuthorBen
Broken Branches First Draft Done!
In the early hours of Wednesday I finished the first draft of ‘Broken Branches’, stubbornly sitting up in bed determined to complete it. I gave myself the deadline of 31st December 2010 to finish the novel, having started on 1st Jan 2010, I failed by 5 days but, to be honest, I’m well pleased because
Speed wobble! Stay on target…
Finished Chapter 20 over the weekend which is a great relief as the past 2 chapters have been a bit of a headache and caused me to have a slight speed wobble just as my momentum for finishing the novel was building up. A few plot lines had me spiralling into dread about their believability
Some of my writing playlists
I haven’t blogged for a month because I’ve been busy writing and planning the remainder of the novel. I’ve started Chapter 17 and sketched out all the chapters up to the end, Chapter 23. A huge sigh of relief, and in my post-coital bliss I thought I’d post the playlists I write to. I say
What’s your writing warm-up routine?
I’m a creature of habit and routine, anything outside of my realm of obssessive organisation either has to quickly find a sub-section to house itself within or freeze itself in suspended animation until it catches my eye again. After writing for a few years and after my recent two week writing push, I became aware
Back up your writing!
Just a quick word on backing up your work. No, I haven’t just had that nightmare scenario where your work has been subsumed into the ether never to be seen again but I thought I would share my super anal back up practises…on second thoughts, I’ll rephrase that. This is how I back up my
Published in ‘The Last Laugh’!
So here’s my first ever publication, in the flesh. Feels good, feels like I’m actually getting somewhere. The best part was seeing my name in the copyright pages, nothing like legal mumbo-jumbo to stir the emotions! Richard from Spike The Cat sent over a copy of ‘The Last Laugh’ anthology a few weeks ago. I
Talking About Rejections
Read an interesting blog post by Heather Trese entitled ‘Should Writers Talk About Their Rejections?‘ after seeing it retweeted by @dirtywhitecandy on Twitter. This caught my interest because I painstakingly detail all my rejections here. I mainly do this for a personal record but intentionally because I’ve never seen any other writer do it. The
Short Story: Till Therapy Do Us Part
The second victim of my ‘5 strikes and you’re out‘ rule for short story submissions but i’m walking this one because it’s only faced 3 pitches. I like the idea behind it but I don’t think the execution has been particularly well done. Anyway, let me know what you think, how you’d rewrite it and
‘Broken Branches’ Cooking on Gas Mark 5…Finally!
After a few false starts, some dodgy decisions, mundane storylines, awkwardly plotted ideas, cardboard characters and directionless dialogue…everything’s all tickity-boo on the ‘Broken Branches’ first draft front. Trimmed down the characters, shuffled some scenes, deleted others, got my head down, wrestled with this sucker and now I’m halfway through Chapter 7, pretty happy with it