Im on to them!!!

With 'them' referring to the authors of 'The Writers Handbook' and the creators of social media (yes I know thats a big group to hold a grudge against...)

But it is incredibly difficult to do both. As you or may not have noticed the site looks a bit different, spent about an hour and a half messing about with the blogger interface to make it a bit more 'phoenixey'. Not that im not happy with how it looks, but that was an hour and a half that could have been spent writing, instead it was spent maintaining a website that im told (by them) that I have to have.

Time is just about the most precious thing any of us will ever have (its the only thing they're not making more of!) and how we spend it determines a lot in life. In a world where deadlines and time limits are the be all and end all its hard enough already to find time to ourselves, let alone manage a Facebook, Twitter and personal blog, all supposedly to the benefit of my writing...which tonight I didnt manage to do any of because I was updating above mentioned social mediums.

Not that im moaning. I love FB and Twitter, and even enjoy updating this thing. I think im just feeling the pressure of the first 'real' deadline I've set myself for writing...

54 days until I submit to angry robot and I need to finish and proof read a book. Granted there are only eight more chapters to go, but thats a chapter a week, a thousand words a night and if I stick to that maths then it leaves NO time at all for proof reading.

So...starting from tomorrow im aiming for 1500 words a night which should leave me a large enough cushion of time to proof read the manuscript, need to start spending my time a bit better. I have no intention of sitting behind the desk of a dead end nine to five in ten years time and looking back to realise I could have had a better life...

Nothing more infectious...than an idea

Isn't it funny how sometimes they just stick!

For years I have been a writer, and ive tried a little bit of everything. From flash fiction to erotic prose ive dabbled and scribbled and written and edited and read and re-read and then enevitably fogotten about or disgarded.

With my first day back at work looming before me I knew it would be wise to get an early night last night. So I did everything right, no coffee after eight, no heavy foods, no loud music, stuck on the chilled out piano stuff on youtube and lay down to drift off into peaceful slumber...and I lay...and I lay...then just to mix things up, I lay some more. Sleep would not come.

What did come though was an idea. This tiny thing from the dark recesses of my brain that I could just not shake, an idea for a screenplay, one of the few types of writing I haven't had a go at. As I lay there the movie played out in my head and I knew I had to get this down on paper so turned disparingly to glance at the clock and see it was 1am. Thinking better of it I rolled back over to go to sleep. Then gave up five minutes later and downloaded Celtx screenwriting software.

Now at this point, the intention was to download the software and do maybe a paragraph worth of notes to jog my memory when I had time to come back to it. Before I knew it I was forty pages in with twists and turns I didnt even see coming! But the time was fastly approaching 3am so time for bed.

Ill just finish this page...

All nighter folks. 90 pages of a screenplay written in a night (a two hour movie is roughly 120). No doubt it will require a big amount of editing as I dont know much about formatting screenplays but the story is great! Its gripping and exciting and for the first time in a loooooooooong time, I drew myself into my writing.

Only when my mobile alarm went off did I realise that I was not infact a kick ass, yet subtlely cool assassin dating hollywood's prom queen and saving the world from a big bad political coup! I was infact a hobbling young man with a yellow belt in karate who has been single so long im scared they might have changed  sex and no one has told me about it who is going to find work excessively long and boring today...

And yet I survived work. It actually wasn't too bad. I hit the hay as soon as I got home and woke up around midnight...and here in lies the problem, its going to be the same tomorrow! Why couldnt my brain have done this to me when I had three weeks off with nothing to do?

So just to re-iterate my point here: There is nothing more infectious...or more persistently annoying than an idea that wont leave you alone!

That is all.

SBP

Update!

This is somewhat overdue, particularly since the last two posts have been somewhat short!

Back to 'work' on Monday. The day job. Uck. Although I know in a weeks time ill be cursing the place and wondering what the hell I am doing there, I am actually looking forward to going back. Four weeks off may sound like hitting the jackpot but the reality is somewhat different, especially since ive been housebound and even if I could get out and walk about, there is no way I am fit to drive so I would be somewhat limited to where I could go...'Oh look, the front garden......again!'

That being said, the time off has been spent 'somewhat' productively. I say somewhat because no doubt I could have done more writing, or more learning or more...more lots of things. Instead I spent an absurd amount of time playing Skyrim and watching Friends (I love that show). But I did get some writing done. I managed to finish two chapters which I am happy with and also wrote a competition piece based on 'identity' for Bloomsbury. The piece is entitled "The Perception of Appearance" and I am really happy with it, even if it doesn't win.

It takes the stance that our identity comes from our appearance, which in itself is ridiculous. "What I look like is not who I am." But it is the very first thing we show people, and whether we like to admit it or not, the way we look does say alot about who we are. I wrote it from the perspective of an unnamed girl in her twenties who was born with a similar birth condition to my own. I felt that by not giving the girl a name the reader would be forced to focus on the way she looked and kind of drive home the importance of the point I was trying to make. She has a med interview that she is preparing for and it is about what she sees and how she is seen. I must have read it a hundred times already but still I keep going back to it, honestly one of the best pieces I have ever written...at least in my opinion, hopefully the judges feel the same.

I enjoyed the chapters that I have written in the Empire series but feel I really REALLY have to develop Keira's character more. She just seems a bit...emotionally detached. I think I will need to go back and put in a bit more about how she's feeling or what is going on in her head at certain parts of the story. I want the reader to understand her, to get involved in her as a person and to understand her thought process behind the decisions she makes without having to spoon feed them.

So that's me upto chapter 11, word count of just over 63k (Standard for fantasy fiction is anywhere between 90 and 140 thousand so nearly there!) I have opted to split the original story I had in my head into three parts of which the final part will be a seperate book. Part one is too small to be an independent novel, part two wouldnt make sense to be without part one and part three is too large to include with the other two.

Angry Robot publishing house is doing an 'open submissions' fortnight in April and they are focusing on the Classic Fantasy genre. I feel the book falls into this category, it deals with sword fights, magic, mystery, politics, love/loss and everything in between. But its not exactly Merlin and the Knights of the round table so hopefully they dont mean 'that' kind of classic fantasy. So thats my dead line. 16th of April is the first day of the submissions so I want to have it done and proof read by then.

In other non-writing news I have dived back into the world of music by deciding to get back into piano. My wrists are protesting and I fear at times my eyes have crossed from reading sheet music but im getting there. Can bang out the base line for "Old time rock and roll" and the first couple of pages of "Walking in Memphis". Still very out of practice though, reading sheet music never used to be so tough.

Recovery from the operation is going slowly, my face is fine but my leg is a pain, not that its in pain, it just is one. I will never again take it for granted just how capable I am.

Anyways, thats me pretty much up to date, no night out stories or drunken tales to regale you with as I have not been out or got drunk, but dont panic, the year is still young :P

Hope all is well whoever you are and whatever you are doing.

Thanks for reading,

SBP

The day before the day before...

Well this is interesting. Currently sitting on my bed with the tablet and my new 'all singing all dancing' motorola keyboard which is pretty cool...all be it a little frustrating because some of the punctuation keys are all over the place but im sure ill get used to them eventually.

I was meant to visit Dunoon this weekend but given the fact that surgery is looming ever closer i opted not to go, anyways, this is just a test to see if it uploads ok and check there are no formatting issues. Ill delete this post later.

Gamblers Fallacy...

This update is a bit different from the others in that it is not directly related to writing, it is more related to the fact that I have a pretty major surgery in five days time and to put it in Scottish terms I am "shitting it!"

The peculair thing is, that it is not the surgery itself that concerns me, or even the recovery time. Its the 'what if' that I have to deal with after it. I could go on and write screeds upon screeds about my condition using pretty impressive medical terminology (considering i'm not a doctor) but I wont. Suffice to say I was born with the ability to move only half of my face and by no stretch of the imagination is this my first operation.

The previous operations-despite the best intentions of many skilled hands-did not work. Or more accurately, did not work fully. The goal was and is to give me the ability to smile. The result was and is that I have partial-and by partial I mean minute-movement on the LHS of my face.

The operation being performed on Tuesday is similar to the last. They transfer a muscle from my thigh and graft it onto an existing nerve in the face in the hope that when the nerve is stimulated the transferred muscle reacts and manipulates my face in the desired direction. Essentially I should be able to clench my jaw or 'bite my teeth' and the LHS of my face will move up, giving me a fully functioning smile, essentially.

Here in lies my dilemna, and its only dawned on me tonight. To perform this surgery they must remove the muscle previously implanted, which is the muscle that is giving me partial movement at the moment, and replace it with the new muscle with the hopes that the effects will be more substantial. But what if they arent? What if this time, instead of some movement I have none? Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Best case scenario - The operation is a big success and I can smile fine and dandy.

Worst case scenario - I lose all existing movement and do not gain any.

There is no middle ground. One of the above will be the outcome. Here I am five days before the operation and I am seriously wondering how much I care about having the ability to smile. On the flip side, I can honestly say I dont know if I would care if I lost the movement I already possess. It doesnt serve any purpose, doesnt give me increased functionality, it certainly doesnt do anything to improve my smile (which is charming enough as it is all be it a little lopsided :P! ) But its there, and its mine...for now.

Now the bit about writing comes in :P

This whole thing has got me thinking about a piece I have written for Bloomsburys competition on 'Identity' next month. I chose to go with the approach of our appearance being our Identity. Its certainly what we use to identify others. When asked "Hey have you guys ever heard of Stephen Hawking?" the reply is not "Isn't that the guy with the masters degree in physics, the Einstein of our time?"

No dont bother lying to yourself.

It would be "Stephen Hawking, the guy in the wheelchair?" or words to that effect. Dont be ashamed, its what we do. We see people and make judgements and a persons appearance stays in our minds alot longer than their personality does. We have become a society of 'perceptionists' a persons physical appearance often decides which category of our pre-conceived perceptions a person falls into before they have uttered a word, and its not bad, its not good, its not something to get caught up about. Its just society and how it works.

Now lets bring it back to me (I know. Im self centered...what can I say?) my face is the same one ive had my whole life. Its mine. But its also everyone elses. Its the first thing they see when they meet me and I dont think its wrong that I want to improve it. The question remains, do I want to risk it...IS the juice worth the squeeze?

I know regardless of my thought process I am going to opt in rather than opt out. Because I am an eternal optimist and despite my best attempts cannot help but fall into the 'Gambler's Fallacy' which basically means that luck is bound to change. If the balls went red ten times then it simply MUST come black next.

No. You are wrong.

Just like the last ten times, the chances are 50/50. Despite my knowledge of this, despite this being an independent operation with all of its own pros and cons. I cant help but cling onto the notion that surely...surely after all the pain, the long hours on the table, the weeks and months of recovery time, the uncountable fingers that have poked and prodded my face and the indescribable feeling of gut wrenching emptiness when told it was all for nothing...surely this time, it has to work.

Red pens and honey flavoured coffee...

It is officially Sunday the 8th of January and I have spent the last few hours (cough...days...cough) reading 'The first five pages' and applying some of the advice to my manuscript. And it is hard work. Re-reading, and re-doing, then re-reading then rinse and repeat until my eyes are sore and I give up for the night.

Of all things, I am SERIOUSLY struggling with chapter 1. It is way to heavy with information, alot of which I go over in later chapters and try as I may I couldnt cut out the bumph and make it read right. Write?

As opposed to throwing in the towel I opted to move onto chapter 2 and 3 which turned out to be somewhat more productive. By productive I mean 'made me doubt my ability to write AT ALL and question whether or not I should bother.' But I did, and I will. Applied the changes to chapter 2 and it reads a whole lot better than it did. Without a doubt it will require at least another three re-reads but that can come later.

Still need to tidy up the end of chapter 8, at least another 500 words but tonight I cant face it. Instead I shall spend the remainder of the evening listening to Adele and working on my submission for the Aeon competition for Albedo One (which to be honest I am enjoying alot more even though its only 70 words in at the moment!)

Submitted another chapter to the GWG so will need to put my hard helmet on and prepare for Thursday night.

The blog will probably take a backseat over the coming weeks as I am going in for surgery on the 23rd of January. Another big op albeit an elective one.

Oh yeah, according to Dictionary.com I know 45000 words. Go me. That'd be great if there werent estimated to be over one million words in the English language :P 

Well its here!!!!

2012 is upon us and I have hit it at full speed.

I spent the Hogmanay/New Years day weekend writing, ive come into work with my notebook and continued writing, I'll go home tonight and carry on writing. Safe to say the book is progressing rapidly.

That being said there have been a couple of 'speed bumps', an apt term to be sure as they have slowed me down no end. One of the last bits of crit I received advised that new line should be taken for each new speaker in each new section of dialogue. Which is true. This however means I have to go over all 60'000 words of my novel so far and tab it to the right place, which will take some time. I also encountered a major problem in the last chapter (chapter eight) whereby I was writing too much, giving too much detail and pushing my word length way over my target for the chapter. I have had to thin it down and am almost scared to read over it, I hope I have removed the right bits and that it all still reads as well as it did before.

I think there are perhaps two, or at a push three more chapters in part two. Then comes the problem area. Part 3 which is still on the drawing board with no chapter plans whatsoever. I know pretty much how I want it to play out but its going to be a biggy! To be honest I am toying with the idea of expanding on parts 1 and 2 and ending where I intend to end it and thats it! End of book 1. Part three could then be released as a standalone book continuing the story of Keira and Fluke and their journey into the new land of Kerona.

Actually the more I think about this plan of action the more it appeals to me. It all depends on how long parts 1 and 2 are when they are wholly complete.

I have one writers meeting this month then im in for surgery so will be off work (and absent from meetings) probably for four to five weeks. This will give me lots of free time to work on polishing the book and working for the first competition submission of the year.

Its all happening! Watch this space!