First brain hurricane season of 2023

I think its “Brain Hurricane” season again, this week there has been lots of new fresh ideas for things and I have started some new stuff, whilst working on my current projects too!

This hurricane season started around the 13^th May 2023, I never know how long it’s going to last or what will survive the storm, but I hope I get as many of these ideas finished as quickly as possible nonetheless!

So far the storm has given me a dark cabaret play, a children’s series with art ideas for making a new toy brand and some better ideas for old projects such as one of my ghost stories.  It has also reignited my interest in a project I abandoned eighteen years ago about a boy addicted to video games.

But mostly this storm has given me a lot of ideas for art projects to make my art brand more recognisable with its own characters.  One such character is a type of rag doll, based on an old story I gave up years ago – talking of which, this doll’s story is also in revival.

Now I was beginning to panic about how this will affect my current main work, Project AD but it turned out to be assisting me with that, which is highly irregular for brain hurricanes! 

This storm is actually helping me think of art pieces for the characters of that project too and they look more original in my mind – the thing is though, I am not a particularly good artist, so there are a lot of art practises that needs to be done!  But I believe I have found a style I want to work with and that excites me a lot!

So that’s the general work update right now.

Thanks for reading!

My forsaken vampires

One of the most painful things about being a creative is the idea that you love to write things that the world tells you time and time again, they are sick of seeing around!

I love writing stories about vampires and for the past five years there is a lot of discrimination against vampire authors.

I join new creative communities and as soon as I mention that vampires are a third of my creations, well, let’s just say the respect is dropped greatly, shall we?

So, around five years ago I lost my confidence in writing about my vampires, which put a huge hollow in my heart virtually overnight – I used to write my vampires with excitement and pride and now when I do venture to write them I kind of do it with apathy and shame.

I mean why bother writing about vampires when you know the majority of the world is growing sick of them?

It hurts, it hurts a lot because up until this realisation a few years back, my vampires meant everything to me – I mean the reason why I wrote anything at all was because my primary focus was my vampires and I have been writing them since I was ten years old.  I know them, like long lost family, it is part and reason for the emotional experience I have known as “Hiraeth”. 

Hiraeth is Welsh for a longing or a home sickness for a place that doesn’t exist or a place you want to find in order to feel emotionally whole again.

I spent a third of my daily daydreams in my vampire stories, trying to ignore them and think of something the world would like.

It has got so bad my avoidance of writing for them that I have forsaken the movies and books I used to consume pertaining to vampire mythology in order to train myself not to want them anymore.

It is a huge upheaval and it is a little emotionally damaging as stupid as that sounds!

Literally, vampires were everything to me growing up.

It was more than an obsession, is there a stronger word for that?

Since last month, the urge to write anything pertaining to vampires has got out of control – yes, I have a children’s story I am working on where there is a small vampire scene so I haven’t completely given up on them – but I miss the focus on vampires as a whole theme.

Today in particular is really bad, today I have the energy and the emotional space to write and potentially write at length, but all I can think about are those vampires I have abandoned.

Finishing their stories, seeing new scenes, writing stories for minor characters within the books and just generally getting them out there; I am trying so hard to ignore it and as dumb as it may sound to you, it brings me to tears to think it would be a waste of time writing them like I really want to – because nobody would want them and I only write because I want my stories to appear on TV someday – there is no other motivation for it, other than the pleasure of it.  I can’t waste three hours a day on my vampires if it were to affect my writing for other things that would be published and adored.

Because I would hardly write towards those other things, so I have to choose my secondary and third loves.

But my secondary choice is getting to the extent where people are getting tired of those too – dragons.

I will now share my main ten themes with you, that I enjoy, the first and second have already been mentioned above.

My third one is gaining popularity right now and I am hoping that society won’t be bored of them before the series is published and that is anthropomorphic animals.

My fourth favourite theme are anything pertaining to childhood wonder, Christmas and Easter stories, Santa, The Easter Bunny, nursery rhyme worlds, toys coming to life, that sort of thing.

My fifth favourite theme to write are stories about inventors and gadget creators in a post-apocalyptic world.

My sixth choice has never really been a hugely popular theme, giants – but I am hoping my style will change that.

My seventh favourite theme are stories about descent into madness or haunting memories.

The eighth theme is anything with regards to circus performers, carnivals, fairgrounds, fortune tellers and clowns.

The ninth favourite theme to write about is stereotypical war between gods and the underworld and the battle of control over mortality and or power.

The tenth theme are stories about magical water/sea creatures or sea life, such as pirates, mermaids, kelpies and sea monsters.

Those are the themes I love the most to write.

Before I got self-confident about writing my vampires, I would write my vampires a third of the time I wrote per day and I wrote every day because I really looked forward to spending time with my vampires and it was what got me up every morning!

Nothing else excites me in the same way anymore and it’s really disheartening.

As idiotic as I may sound, to me it is like I have betrayed my whole existence and theirs by not paying attention to them (the vampires) anymore!

My vampires in my opinion are sort of unique to the world of fiction, but sort of already done in other parts too – but I can’t help but think that they are getting old-fashioned or they are overdone and that not many people would want them.  My vampires are not violent enough or are too unethical to be wanted so it leaves me in a state of overwhelming confusion.

I am fortunate enough to have friends who love vampires and demand them from me, but hey they are friends and they are gothic, of course they would – but I am not dissing my friends, but just how many people would want these vampires?

I know the vampire fandom is pretty big, but the vampire fans that are occurring these days are less and less about traditional vampires and more and more into what I regard the slasher kind of vampire and I am sorry to say but my vampires are far more refined than that and romance with mortals is rare or unheard of in their world.

So there it is…

I have said what has been on my mind for months – I want to write vampires.

But they will have to come after Project AD and the Easter project now.

Thanks for reading!

Sleek and grey

Today is a semi-masculine day for me, I feel like having a pixie cut or spiky hair and wearing a grey pinstripe suit, odd for me as I usually hate the colour grey, but I want a really nice sexy silky white top on that’s not a button up shirt, no, instead it has a slit down to the navel showing off cheeky cleavage.

I may feel masculine but I still want to feel sexy.

Though I feel masculine I still want to be glamorous and so I would probably have been wearing lots of make up today if I could have had it, particularly a dark red lipstick with a darker lip liner and Cleopatra eye make-up.

Shame I don’t have either the body, make up, the clothes or the style of hair to be like that today!

May have topped it off with a fedora too!

Happy reading!

Sods law

I believe I am writing daily to add towards my blog consistently for the past three to five months now, that I can now say I don’t believe that scheduled posts are any longer necessary.

I think that I can now write daily and publish daily, though no doubt I will have some things in drafts for when I think my immune system is going to have a hit again – talking of which I seem to be developing a really bad bacterial ear infection right now and a cold, so who knows what is going to happen in the next couple of days.

Expect up to four posts per day, but I will refrain from doing more – because I don’t want to overload my readers.  I will try to make a poem daily, but we’ll see. 

I do aim to do more prose like short stories in the future too.

I am saving up money for a passport as my instinct is telling me something is going to happen soon where a passport is going to be needed.  It will cost £85 I think and will take 10 weeks to get at the current length to get it.  You can fast track it for a week but there are specific requirements and I think it doubles the price too!

Thankfully one of my personal debts has gone, which means I have enough money to save per week.  Unfortunately it could mean I won’t get my passport before Christmas, but we’ll see.

I don’t like to spend money on things I don’t need, so I am unsure if I will spend money on the passport, unless I have some notion as to why my instinct is telling me I should do it.  So I am not going to be too hasty, because £85 is two weeks food money here, it’s a lot for nothing… if you get me?

So I am trying to save £5 a week for it, I have been trying to do this for a while now and I am currently the third of the way.  But as I said, I won’t get the passport until I know for sure; there is a reason to do so!

Another thing I am trying to do is to clear the house a lot more.  Sure, a lot of the things I am getting rid of, I still actually want to keep – but I am getting picky now.  I have a feeling that my time in the near future will mean that I will need things like that less and less because my time will be spent doing other things – so get rid of the stuff I won’t need in order to not only make more space, but not to become a hoarder. You know?

I like knitting and crochet, but I know that it causes the carpal tunnel syndrome to flare up, so I avoid that activity these days, I am debating with myself, should they go?  I know during the winter I knit myself fingerless gloves and hairpieces, because they can be done within the hour, but should I actually just say goodbye to that hobby?

There are lots of things I need to wave goodbye to, old clothes that are now too big on me, styles that were given to me by my mother a few years back… do I really want those hanging around in my cupboards?  No, I don’t, because I don’t intend to wear what she picked for me and I don’t intend to gain my weight back anytime soon either.

For the first time since Henry was three years old, I am nearly in the 16 stone mark, another two weeks and I should be there!  I have came down from being over 22 stone, it’s amazing – because I literally thought I was going to die and never be thin again.  You ask Paul, this time last year I was sure I was dying!

I think the reason why I got this big, this time around was because I was bedbound sick and I had the attitude of “well, I’m going to die anyway”. 

Seriously I used to think that, because my lungs were so badly damaged over the four pneumonia bouts I’ve had since 2014.

It’s amazing the recovery I’ve had.  I really did give up.

But you know what made me start the changes in Easter?  The fact that I started to see that if I died, nobody would actually care, nobody but Paul and Henry will attend my funeral and I would be a forgotten part of the world and that made me feel – no fucking way am I going to exist in the crap that I’ve had and nobody is going to know about it… I am determined to make the world know me and I want them to mourn me when I die.  Vain I know, but it worked to give me the kick up the ass I so desperately needed!

I have a feeling that the more I DON’T WANT the more of it I am going to get, so what the Hell!  I don’t want fame, yet it creeps along behind my back, I don’t want someone to help me, yet I am inundated with kind helpful people… I mean the universe is sick in the head isn’t it?

You want something… too bad… you don’t want something… here your cup runneth over!

I desperately want a dog, so my house has no dog… when I decided ok I can live without a dog, someone comes along and says, hey do you want to look after my dog for six weeks whilst I tour Europe?

It’s like the universe loves making me rant at it because its funny or something…

Ok, ok, ok, I really don’t want roast lamb anymore….I really don’t want to be thirteen stone… I really want to be alone… I really want to be ugly… I really want to have an uncaring partner… is it going to work this reverse psychology or is the universe going to double agent me right now?

Yeah, so I try.

Well anyway, happy reading.

Steampunk giraffe day

It’s a Joe Brown day, but I don’t own any of that brand anymore unfortunately.

It’s a velveteen jeans day, with a shirred tank blouse in autumn colours and a wheat coloured shrug.  But alas, all I have is the shrug – lol.

Anyway, my shape wouldn’t look that good in this style at the moment, I miss the days when it did.

I am feeling a little insecure hence the shrugs, cardigans and ponchos I tend to hide in.

Wedge heeled boots would be good too, to help with my confidence because it would make me a lot taller and although more people will notice me it will make me feel stronger. 

I am already 5ft 8 so those boots would make me 5ft 11 like my pink wedge heels!

I can’t walk in regular heels; well I can, but not gracefully.

Though I tend to opt for flats most of the time!

I kind of also felt a bit steampunky today, my steampunk carnelian and copper owl brooch would have been worn too and if I had them, steampunk copper earrings.

If my hair was obedient and was not having problems with long covid, I would have tried a messy bun today.

So I guess today would be called a steampunk giraffe day, lol.

Happy reading!

Who is the Tardy Creative?

TardyCreative.com was named mainly because I realised that although I am a writer and I aspire to someday becoming a selling artist, I knew that I have other interests which can sometimes absorb me!

Especially interests regarding gardening, reading, pets and other matters close to the heart, such as the LGBTQ community and generally defining myself as a person, healing from abuse and having fun!

I had wanted this blog to become a broad outlook about me, this was never meant to be a professional blog in which I will sell my books, because to me, this is a personal blog.  When I approach an agent with my work in the future, I will create a professional blog separate but connected to this.

This blog was purely intentionally made to share my life with people and my progressions in my life, including my progression as a creative.

I suffered a lot of abuse from controlling people who moulded me into becoming what THEY wanted; this blog was my attempt at showing the world that I am becoming who I want to become!

Unfortunately until this point, I have done so with some sense of shame and embarrassment.

I have not been confident enough in sharing photographs and things in too many depths, but I am learning to change and I am building confidence, slowly but surely!

Any idea that this was meant to be my actual “Professional” blog is wrong, this is a personal blog, and it always has been!

I am fine tuning myself in various ways in my life at a fast pace, because I am determined that my life really will start at forty, like the old adage says it does!

I need it to work, I need it to happen and I need to stop living in fear!

But ultimately, I need to learn to love myself, be happy in my own skin and I am not.  But I am trying my best to change how I see myself and to learn to love the skin I am in!

I am going to be shouting loud and clear about who I am in up and coming posts, but I do not intend to preach and I do not intend to convert, my intentions are to purely and wholly be me, without shame and to share who I am to the world!

Because hardly anyone knows the real me, they just know the trained, tamed version of me that my mother and other abusers have made me into.

The boring me, the monochrome me, the quiet me, the me that is not me… basically.  My shadow is more me than me!

So, as I fearfully crawl out of this rock, learning technology as I go my way, I am also learning not to fear being rejected for who I really am by the world I am creeping into!

Hello, I am The Tardy Creative, my real name is Tina, but that is going to change soon to something that is more me, it is something I have always intentionally wanted to do – change my real name. 

So I will be forty in October, October the 3^rd to be precise and I heard that life begins at forty and I really hope so for me!

I have struggled with two different and very clashing eating disorders in my life, both compulsive eating (when angry, stressed, feeling trapped and bullied) to anorexia and bulimia (when sad, grieving, depressed and sick).  However, when I am relaxed and happy and enjoying life, I have been known to forget to eat because I am in the moment, whether or not that is anorexia or not, I don’t quite know, but it’s a funny thing with me!

I have body dysmorphia, I believe I am really hideous, so I don’t like to share images of myself – I am trying to change my perception of myself, by adding pictures of myself here soon and regularly.  To see whether or not I am as hideous as I think or not! 

Stupid in reflection, because social media is often cruel as it is sometimes kind!

Things most people don’t know about me, is that I am very bisexual or rather pansexual, if I find someone attractive and I get along with them, I will go into a relationship with them, whether man, woman or trans.  I have dated Trans men before and ladies, but I was never open about it.

I am also shy about my own crossdressing forays.  I love to dress as the young dandy of the late eighteenth century but I am also really into Bohemian and kawaii styles too, I am very eclectic and I live each day differently. 

If I could have any magical power I suppose it would be transmogrification, so I can change my looks according to my feelings of the day!

I love to have long hair, but I have alopecia as well as mild trichotillomania (which is triggered when badly stressed or bullied) which is ruining my looks – I have thought about shaving my hair to a very short pixie cut or crew cut and wearing wigs, but I am frightened of doing that, in case of abuse and attack and becoming unattractive to new relationships in my life.

My alopecia is due to malnutrition as I have a digestive disease and pernicious anaemia where I am not able to absorb B vitamins and biotin in particular. 

Despite not wearing makeup much and having a limited wardrobe, I am very fashion conscious and love the fashion industry and watching Vogue on YouTube etc.  I have never been educated in how to use make-up by anyone, except the videos I see online; I am really quite a novice.  I am not confident about knowing what I am doing and this too is something I want to change!

I am not known for wearing dresses, but I am getting into them these days!  I never liked wearing trousers, but I did it because I was told to for so many years, that wearing them became a habit!

I always liked maxi-dresses and skirts and certain styles and colours and up until recently I have been mostly black (influenced as a perfect choice by my mother) and occasionally pink (chosen by Henry and Paul).

I like loud and bright looking clothing and I was told in order to wear bright garish clothing, I need to be a super confident, loud and garish person!  If I am not that, then I will be humiliated by the public and picked on!  So I have avoided it.

This too, will change!

I always felt that nobody is interested in somebody like me, no one wants to hear what someone like me wants to say – but as I am learning more about the social media, the more I have learned that you become who you are, share what you are and you will find your tribe, you will find others like you and the world will become smaller and more inclusive for you as an individual.

Gone are the days of true isolation.

This is why I want to harness using technology and social media, I need to find out for myself that I truly am not alone, that there are people out there just like me, who think like me and like the things I like too – that I am not a weird little thing that needs to be hidden in case it is destroyed by society, like I have always been told I am!

I have the right to exist how I want to exist, so does everybody!  So I am going to fight for it and become exactly who I want to be!

You realise of course I am shitting brick as I am saying this?  Because now I have told this to you all, I have to now actually act upon it… don’t I?

Well, I’ll try…

Thanks for reading!

Simplifying my art makes me happier

Yesterday I discussed how I am struggling with what comes to me naturally and what I really wanted to do in my writing; How I wanted to be a serious writer of adult fantasy and horror, but instead I am naturally drawn to corny humour, vampires and comedy fantasy as a natural lean to in my actual first draft writings.

Today I am focusing on the fact that I wanted to be a realist artist, who paints mostly portraits of my characters and some impressionistic landscapes and watercolours, but instead, I am naturally drawn to creating cartoonish characters suitable for children illustration or satire comics.

Increasingly a few of my writing and art ideas are becoming more and more comic ideas, not just funny, but comic as a whole, including the art I do.

My colour palletes are specific and consistent, my doodles are too and I am finding that comedy is punching its way through my art too!

I am creating funny creatures and doodling faces into random splatters and blobs and creating unique characters; with Henry’s help, we have been deciding names and personalities for the beings and progressively Henry is encouraging me to make stories of them.

This is something I have fought against in a professional way and kept to only doing this as a hobby with Henry – but more and more, I am starting to become more inclined in doing art consistently, when I do this, than when I do what I feel I am supposed to be doing!

I have noticed also that I am simplifying my art increasingly instead of refining it to become more detailed and realistic, to such an extent that it is very suitable for many children’s novels.  My style is looking similar to artists such as Quentin Blake, Katie Risor, Dr Suess and the likes.

Yet my aim was to be more detailed and to eventually brave steampunk and to perhaps be of a similar style to, Brian Froud, H.R Giger and Colleen Doran eventually, though my colour palette is very different.  I tend to like pastel primaries or as I call them, candy colours, or my darker palette which concentrates mostly on black, purples, orange and gold.

As I am fighting against my natural inclinations to develop a wanted style, I am finding that I am burning myself out in both art and writing and therefore becoming grossly unproductive.

When I ignore what I really want to become and focus on who I really am, I tend to do more and feel happier in myself doing those things.

But I do worry a lot about how simplistic my art is – I mean, other than children who would really be interested in this kind of art?

Something I did for inktober a couple of years back! See the injected humour… couldn’t help myself!

Pictures originally made to cheer Henry up after a bad day, being bullied at school. But instead, Henry is trying to collaborate a series of stories with me, regarding them.

created via blobbing random water colour paint on paper and drawing details of what my mind saw in those blobs.

Maybe I am a snob – no definitely I know I am a snob, it must be true.  Why else do I fight against the grain?  I must be… up until now a snob in denial?

Happy reading!

Learning to get around ADD?

I think I have to accept the fact that I have had attention deficit disorder most of my life, but was never diagnosed and still not diagnosed, this is the analysis that a couple of friends of mine have of me as I do seem to be disorganised and easily distracted – look there are butterflies outside my window right now hovering and ducking each other in and out of the lilacs! 

You see, that wasn’t a mock of people who are diagnosed, it is merely an example of exactly who I am and how I think.  Yes sure, I can sit down and write but I really struggle to stay here for more than 15 to 25 minutes at a time; I struggle to do anything longer than 30 minutes.  Watching TV is great if it is a varied show like Gardeners world or sketchy comedy (I think that’s what they are called, where they have mini 5 minute scenes?) I love movies, but I tend to need an intermission every 45 minutes for toilet breaks, getting a drink, or just generally not sitting there doing nothing and for me it doesn’t really matter how riveting the movie or anything else is, I just have this urge to move on for a few minutes and I will get back to that.

When I write I can write 750 words in 15 to 20 minutes, this is not revised and unplanned pantsing style work.  What irritates me is when I start to write a story then go into prose or poetry mode at the same time about the same thing, no I don’t want that to be my thing, but my brain starts to make songs and poetry of my stories a lot, this is usually a sign for me to stop – because I generally start ruining the story by letting it flow like that.  Though I suppose I should just edit those things out after I have done the book?  I don’t want all of my books to be musicals.

So I tend to write in 15 to 25 minute bursts, on days I try to write a set word goal, I need to break this down to 15 to 25 minutes an hour or every two hours until the word goal is completed.  For NaNoWriMo that goal is usually completed in about two hours but spread into three most days because of mental irritation.  This is not three hours of solid writing, please understand that.  I will start writing generally around 9am and by 9:25 I am going for a toilet or drink break and maybe checking social media or a game; then I am writing again around 10:15 till 10:35ish and getting a snack or thinking about checking on the wildlife in the garden.  Then around 11:30 I am writing again and at 11:55 I might start thinking ok, should this be it for the day?  It’s not that I don’t love writing it’s just I tend to overwork and I burn myself out and people usually have to remind me not to overwork!  Because you see there are certain types of animal in this world which have a feast or famine mentality and that is very much like me regarding my writing.

What you saw above was me struggling to write the same story without deviating throughout that whole day and throughout that whole month in NaNoWriMo, so basically it is a normal NaNoWriMo month for me.  A usual day to day writing habit is a little different in that every time I go back to writing it is poetry, writing down intense ideas because I don’t tend to like pantsing everything, then there are diary entries, blog entries which happen rarely to be honest, more ideas flow into my head and I would say around two thousand words a week are honestly going towards just one novel.  Well, I agree with my ADD friends, this can’t go on.  I have to accept the fact I am one of them and learn to cope with it and learn a way in tricking myself into doing more work without so many breaks!

How?

By accepting the fact that the reason why I have so many brainstorms for new ideas is because my brain is easily bored with old ideas, so I need to either learn to write short stories quickly or learn to write several novels at once.  You see, I used to do this before 2010, before writing became difficult – I used to write around seven books at once skipping merrily every half hour from one project to the next, but then I was advised by so many people not to do that as I will be killing my creativity and not putting enough love into just the one I should be working on.  Well, to be honest, I know now, the opposite is true, because since taking on those ideas for a decade now, I barely write and I barely enjoy writing as much as I used to.  In fact I remember last year telling Paul how I think my love for writing has died and that my new love for creating art is becoming more of a thing.  Well, I do with my art what I used to do with my writing; I have/had several art projects on the go at the same time, flitting from picture to picture as the whim took me.  But I realise now, I know me, the people who advised me not to write like that, didn’t know me that well and still don’t. 

So I have decided, as from today, I am going back to the old me.

This worries Paul slightly because I get tired when I try to write more than two thousand words a day lately and back in the old days of my writing I used to throw out double that and sometimes even the occasional 10k a day spout.  But I think I won’t wear myself out if I go back to my old style of writing, flitting from one idea to the other because I am not easily confused with my stories.  I know categorically my ghost story to my vampire story, my mermaid story to my pirate story, my other vampire story to my werewolf story and my deity story to my leprechaun story.  Yes I write many stories at once with the vampire theme, but I know my vampires so intimately I don’t confuse plots, it is difficult because they are so different, the characters are so different.  I know the difference, even if my friends and advisers think I am toying too much with my own mind, the thing is that it builds up slowly for me and so I get to know them intimately like real people or books that already exist if you understand me?

It is like knowing a Fred and an Alice in real life, I know that Fred won’t like Alice because he doesn’t like eco warrior vegans and Alice won’t like Fred because Alice hates people who hunt for sport and wafts bacon in front of her nose.  Fred might be a big business man living in a rural setting at the weekend and lives a party life as a bachelor, whilst Alice is constantly researching climate change and the latest protests, living in suburban Greater London and seeking new vegan recipe ideas; it is as simple as that for me.

Now this isn’t bad, I have written this in forty minutes without vacating the area, but now I really have to stop.  So bearing this in mind, starting my new/old way of writing again, I could be producing more stuff quickly again, which would be amazing!

No more forcing through the same novel day in and day out, I have to do what my brain needs me to do.

P.S throughout all of this writing today, I had also had two conversations with Paul and four conversations with my rabbit.

 

 

lego hair

My son is my inspiration

He is totally mad

Holding my hair up with lego bricks is how he’ll have me clad

After doing my hairstyle, in a rocket we will go

Flying through the universe to find aliens with pink toes

This is life with Henry

My son who’s conceptual

I’m writing this whilst lego bricks are gripping at my skull

 

Writing style and narratives

Many new writers write in a first person narrative; this is very limiting and produces problems if they want to include other characters opinions and viewpoints.  The main character of a story isn’t psychic, so wouldn’t know the real reasons behind their nemesis or co-inhabitants reactions to various events.

When I first started writing my vampire dark fantasy series, I was also to blame for writing in a first person narrative; this made it very complicated for me to introduce new characters with their personalities effectively.  My aim was to write the series as a series of biographies of individual characters from the same story, but this wouldn’t work well as it had already more or less been done by Anne Rice and I wanted to be different.  I found it much easier moving onto the third person narrative, which is what’s happening in my rewrites.

Writing in a third person narrative gives me more flexibility for my story’s direction.  I can skip viewpoints and characters at will, I can write about how everyone feels simultaneously and without too much effort.  Since writing in this style I have been able to write more words to my story daily, much more than before, alongside another technique I will tell you about shortly.

As a writer you must see yourself as a god, you are creating a world and these are your people; you’ve made them, you control them, you control events; you should be as dedicated to your creations as you are to your own god, you should be motivated by the sheer fact that your characters are waiting in limbo for how you are going to progress their lives.  But gods have two sides to them, good and bad, cruel and kind and so you should not feel too emotional about wrecking their lives, otherwise you’ll have a happy, clappy, crappy story.

Thinking about how I structure my novels, I am not the usual can of beans; I’ll share with you why;  It seems to me that most writers write a book from beginning to end, I’ve noticed I can’t dedicated myself to surprises. 

I write down my ideas in my ideas book, then I put up bullet point of events on my computer that I’d like to see happen in my story; then as scenes come to mind I write them, whilst trying to write from beginning to end, then I sew it altogether and sometimes I revise but mostly I don’t – in fact, everything that’s posted on this blog is never revised, I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I don’t have faith that what I write up here is my best work?

I do have massive flaws grammatically, punctuation wise and possibly prattle on too much needlessly, this is mainly down to the fact that I’ve had limited formal education.  My mother home educated me mostly and had a problem with me studying in college and university so I was put under pressure to become a drop out on seven occasions.

I must remind you too, that my main tutor at home was my mother who is dyslexic; yet I still managed to do a distance learning course when I was nineteen and got my only qualification in the world of a B grade GCSE for English Literature.

So, if I am not fine-tuned or polished, those are my excuses and I learn through tenderness.  This is why I beg for criticism and comments; I need help fine tuning my art of writing.