Monthly Archives: February 2022

flaw clean

I have written 1277 words towards the novel today, but I have to say I am unhappy to continue without going back and finishing up the flaws I can see in the plot thus far.  Therefore tomorrow, I am unlikely to continue going forwards in this novel because I need to go back to the first chapter and add a few scenes that I feel will make the current scenes seem more complete. 

I am unhappy to just write the entire draft and then edit afterwards in a few weeks’ time, I am seeing flaws now and it is eating away at me and grating.

So I am still writing the 1k a day towards the same project, but I really need to be able to go back and add things, rather than just waiting and moving forwards.

This draft is meant to be completed with as few flaws if any by the end of it, because I want to polish it up and look for an agent for representation by autumn.  I know I can finish a whole draft in three to six weeks, but I like the story to stew before review for a month or two.

So with that being said, I hope that this story will be done and dusted by the end of June, I know however, that agents and publishers may require yet another draft overhaul and I am more than prepared for that – I am no idiot and research intensely everything I do, I am a bore and stickler about perfection and professionalism.

Along with all of this I am also trying to hone new skills in comic book writing and graphic novelisation – I am not confident in this yet, but I am hoping to gain in confidence shortly.

At the moment, the main idea I have for a comic is currently being written as a novel, just to get it out there and written and then I can adjust the whole thing for a comic.  I know it’s a long way around, but I am doing things how I know to do them for now.

Happy reading everyone!

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Feb 1st 2022 update

I kept my promise, despite having an ear and headache to keeping to my plans that from the first of February this year, I will write a minimum of 1k words per day towards one set novel, rather than a bunch of them; because I am trying to live by “The One Thing” principle for a while to see how much of a difference it would make to my productivity as a writer.

Today I have written 1354 words towards the dragon fantasy novel, but instead of working for two solid hours like I had planned, I felt in order to prevent burn out – I would stop any time after 1k words if I felt I am getting bored or tired of being in this writing position.  Therefore I wrote 1354 words in just one hour and twenty minutes, with a ten minute toilet break in that, so it wasn’t completely tied to the chair.

I have moved in a different direction with this dragon story, focusing more on character development and even added a drama scene in there, which is not something I am known for.

But to me, it works and has made a vast improvement to the plot in general.  I feel this story has a firmer future than before because of it and it has given me more freedom to give the characters a future in other potential books.  With that being said, this is going to written as a standalone; in case the publishers feel that there shouldn’t be an extension to this story.

Basically what I am trying to say is, this story is going to be more complete by the time I have finished it, without any questions needing answering if the publisher decides that this book should not be a series.

Also, I have noticed that my chapters are shorter than usual because I have learned to condense down a lot over the past few months, which means that the size of the book I am writing will not be epic as I used to fear.

This has not affected the quality of the book negatively, but has improved it tremendously.

I do realise, even now, that there will be another draft, even though this is supposed to be the final draft, because after I had written the previous chapter, I realised there was a certain element I forgot to include in the story, a build-up, the tension was short, the backstory almost non-existent, this will just mean when I have finished this draft entirely  in a few weeks’ time, that I will need to add around three pages to make up for the little bits I missed out.

But I am making notes after I have written towards the draft, so I am not distracted from the writing process – this is another thing that is new to the way that I work on my novels.

I am still keeping a spreadsheet on how many words and minutes I write per day, this is excellent in showing me just how much I actually do, do.

I guessed at the end of January that I wrote around 5 to 8k and only for around ten days of the month, but as it turned out, I realised going back to the spreadsheet that I wrote 36k words all told and wrote for fourteen days throughout the month.

Much more than I realised, it is a confidence booster, it also shows me that there was a time where I thought I didn’t write for two days last month but it was actually five solid days where I didn’t even type one word!

It is a real eye opener!

So, with that being said, I will keep you updated day to day as I am writing.  But remember, I have Fridays and Saturdays as my weekend, where I do not intend to write anything and I have scheduled in holidays where I allow myself the time off from writing altogether, unless I feel otherwise.  My first holiday from writing will be the last week of February, because this is the time Henry has time off from school and I would like to dedicate my time to him.

Happy reading everyone!

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