As you may or may not know, I’ve been working on revising Mik Murdoch: The Power Within for the past two months. It has been a much more difficult thing to do than writing the original book. That is largely because, with every change I make, I need to first think about how it will impact the book. Does the change need to have anything added earlier so it makes sense? Will it breach some sort of continuiity later? If I add this scene, will I need to dispose of another scene further on? All of these things mean that I am moving at a comparitive snails pace to how quickly I was able to write the book initially. Does […]
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Fun and Creativity
I have always liked to create things. When I was young(er?) I would make things out of wood and paper and whatever else I had at hand. I’ve also always written stories. Granted, most of my stories were childish and not terribly good, but I was able to write them and feel good about what I’d put on the page. That is even more true now, although I put the added pressure on myself of wanting the stories to be publishable. And, in the case of Mik Murdoch: The Power Within, I want the book to be equal to or better than the first one in the series. It has meant writing, rewriting, editing, revising and stressing about the book. […]
Read moreUps and Downs
Being a writer seems to be full of ups and downs. Up – you just finished writing your book, which is brilliant. Down – you submit it to 243 different publishers and receive an impressive collection of rejections. Up – Publisher #244 asks you for a full submission of your manuscript Down – You get rejection #244 Up (eventually, maybe?) – You get a contract Down – you get your revisions and the number required is 582 revisions and half the manuscript scrapped. ….and so on. Why do we do this to ourselves? Glory? Fame? Not money (although that is a common misconception – i.e. that getting published will result in lots and LOTS of money). I know, for me, […]
Read moreDoldrums
Have you ever been faced with difficulty writing after finishing a big, high-energy project? I know I have. It usually starts out as me telling myself I’ve earned a (brief) break after burning the midnight oil to finish something. The problem usually is, brief often becomes prolonged. I know, I really pushed to get Mik Murdoch 2 finished. I wrote more than 30,000 words in under 2-weeks to ensure it would be complete by the end of my holidays. Then I took a short break. I didn’t fall into the trap of letting it extend. I immediately followed that up with two short stories I had been meaning to write for two anthologies. That also was a relatively fast write […]
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