Chocolate and spelling

I have now brought a black bin bag into my study and started to fill it with the detritus that results from writing a novel (at least, in my case). There are sheets of paper with notes scrawled on them. Page numbers jotted on old envelopes, referring to places where things don't connect. There is a huge sheet of paper on the wall - which has a schematic diagram of the novel as I conceived it at the start. (perhaps I should hold on to that and auction it on e-bay if the novel does really well). And there are chocolate wrappers. If emotion is the fuel that drives the narrative, chocolate is the fuel that keeps this novelist going.

And the novel? My wife is kindly proof reading it for me - finding some of the spelling mistakes that result from my dyslexia. Since I don't spell check this blog to the same degree of caution, you will probably have picked up the occasional glitch and will know what I'm talking about.

Yes Yes Yes

A very short blog entry today. I just printed out my novel. Novels are never finished, but when you can print one and give it to another person to read as a whole story - this is a significant moment.

Perhaps tomorrow I will start tidying my study.

And I notice there is another Martin Cruz Smith novel out - which I am very much looking forward to reading. Perhaps tidying the study will have to wait till I've finished that.

So close...

Each week for the last month I've thought I was going to finish writing the novel in the next couple of days. It's not that I've been slacking. These have been some of the most productive writing times I've had for ages. It's just that I seem to be a bad judge of how long it is going to take. Or perhaps the job is expanding.

But now I really can taste it. I'm so close to finishing. The shape of the novel is there - all on the page. Admittedly there are still a couple of places where I have a line of asterisks and a remark such as 'HERE I MUST PUT A SCENE WHERE WILLEM CONFRONTS HIS GIRLFRIEND AND THEY HAVE A HUGE ROW'

There is still work to do - but today I can really see it as a novel. And I'm excited.

Wish me luck.

Still Alive

Yes, the title of this entry is true. I'm still alive - though the level of activity on the blog for the last month might suggest otherwise. The reason for my silence has been a period of total immersion in the novel - which isn't really news, because that's what I said in the last couple of posts.

But other things have been happening. There was a really good talk at Leicester Writers' Club last Thursday - Peter F Hamilton speaking about his impressively immense science fiction novels. Also on the LWC front, we had a childrens writing competition, judged by the marvelous Chris d'Lacey - which I am proud to say I came second in. The well-deserved winner came from the pen (keyboard) of novelist David Hood.

I recently applied to take part in another regional writers project - this time organized by the literature development officers of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby. After an interview I was accepted, along with five other writers. The result will be a commissioned piece of writing and a series of creative writing workshops. More on that when there is more to tell.

What else? Not much. My life has been so full of this novel that it's pretty much all I can think about right now. But the end, as they say, is nigh.

Updates

Update on the Googleblat web search story - no one has reached my website by searching on any of the words in the story (other than herpetologist). But the number of people looking for herpetologists is apparently growing. Strange.

Update on the progress of the novel - Two days ago I was convinced it couldn't be written and I'd wasted a year of writing time. Yesterday I changed my mind and decided I might manage it - with a lot of work. Today it seems to me almost finished.

In that time all I did was a little editing. I also decided a chunk of the writing was completely wrong and cut out 4,000 words. Then, after looking at it again, decided the 4,000 words I'd cut out were wonderful and put them back - though in a different place.

I intend to get a workable version printed out by Friday. I'm going away to Baha'i National Convention that weekend, and it would be good to have it off my mind by then.

We will see.

Word Search

I've noticed a lot of visits to my website this last month that have apparently come from Google searches on the word herpetologist. This had set me thinking. Perhaps I have been going entirely the wrong way about things. Instead of attempting to produce good writing to attract a readership, I should just concentrating on fitting in the right combinations of words.

With that in mind, I have put together the following story. I hope you enjoy it.

Black Hole

Picture This

I've finally managed to find a place on the web to take my weekend snaps. Rather than putting them on this page, I'm leaving you the link and letting those nice people at photobucket.com do all the clever formatting.

For those of you who know Leicester Writers' Club, some of these faces may be familliar to you.

Photos from the Writers' Weekend

Writing Weekend

I'm back from the Leicester Writers' Club away weekend. Fifteen writers in an old manor house in the countryside with only each other for company. It might sound like a recipe for disaster. But the reality was really very pleasant.

True, we didn't spend a lot of time writing. And true, we didn't have a huge number of talks either. But chatting to the people there has taught me... Well, I'm not sure exactly what it's taught me. I suspect the answer to that will emerge over the coming months. But I feel as if I have learned a huge amount.

Photographs do exist of the weekend. I'm presently trying to work out how to share them with you. If not on this blog site, then somewhere else. I'll keep you posted.

Turning off the tap

You might have thought that after several days of solid writing I'd be keen to take a break. It's the weekend, after all. And yes, you'd be correct. I am very keen. But it is hard to turn off the tap.

I've written some 5 or 6 thousand words in the last 2 days. It's now Saturday morning. I woke up before seven and immediately started thinking about the novel. And then the thought came to me that I wasn't going to get back to sleep anyway, so I may as well be writing the thing.

But the end is close...

Wish me luck.

Obsessive Compulsive

I've been away from this blog for the last few days because I've been busy writing towards the end of my novel. There comes a stage in the writing process where you get so into the story that it becomes hard to figure out exactly what is reality and what is fiction.

No - that's not exactly right. You do know - if you think about it - which is which. It's just that the emotions of he narrative you are telling start bleeding into real life. Like watercolour paint spreading out into a sheet of paper.

It is the obsessive end of the writing cycle - for me, anyway.

Now... where was I?

Definitions

Block suffered by internet writers - Blog Jam

The journey to the weekly writers' club meeting - Narrative Drive

The car on the left with all the bumper stickers and stuffed toys - Character Driven

The car that has just cut in front of you - Clot Driven

Any more suggestions?

The Novel and the Novelist

I'm reading A.N.Wilson's wonderful biography of Tolstoy. I just want to share this quote with you:

Novels are works of art which arrive at truth by telling untruths. Novelists are frequently men and women who have been compelled, by some inner disaster, to rewrite the past, to refashion their memories to make their existence more interesting or more explicable to themselves.

Information Pollution?

I have a question - will digital technology change the publishing/printing industry into a writing/speaking industry?

A second question - will digital technology turn all of us into writers? And, if so, how will we readers locate the needle of excellent writing in the haystack of the information age?

Literary democratization or dumbing down?

I'd really interested in any feedback on those questions.

Interesting Times

After my first novel, BACKLASH, was finished, I didn't want to write a series of novels based around the same central character. I knew that was the commercial thing to do, but, quite frankly, I didn't want to put poor Mo through any more torment. (Mo was the first-person narrator of that novel).

In a moment of madness - I suggested a series based on a single time period, a single place. Three novels tied together by the same set of external events, but following different characters. The people at Simon & Schuster were enthusiastic about the idea. It was settled.

But think for a moment - one period of 2 weeks in Leicester. Three crime novels. They say Oxford had a high fictional body-count after Colin Dexter's wonderful Morse novels. But Leicester had horrendous body-rate once BREAKBEAT and BURNOUT were written - at least for that fictional two week period.

Interesting times. If anyone has counted up the bodies, please let me know.

The trick, of course, was to make sure that not all the bodies were discovered during that two week period. Otherwise it might give Leicester a bad name. Fictionally, at least.