51,000 words

Writing more of the third part of the hospital radio storyline, and started on the second part of the musician idol storyline.

51,000!!!

50,000 words!!!!

Yeaaah!!! Come on!!!! 50,000 while listening to York City go 4-0 up! Perfect!

Oh my God, 50,000!!!

Tonight, I brought a new topic into the story - social anxiety - which is a great thing to write about, cos its really widespread but it's hardly ever talked about - at least not in detail of how it feels etc.

I've also started the third hospital radio scene!

Evening Blog

A little blog before I start writing for the night.

Listening to York City on the radio. I want to go to see as many of the remaining home games as possible.

I've had a really nice weekend. Had my soulmate friend Paula over on Sunday and a really nice day, including visiting Castle Howard. Maybe i'm getting old, but I've decided I want to get out walking as much as possible this year.. even when its crappy weather like this week. Next week, I'm going to head to the moors on Monday, and then the Three Peaks Challenge on the Saturday afterwards, which apparently involves us getting up at 5am!

The radio show was a really good laugh Sunday, thanks to Adam and Paula there. Adam guested reading his poetry, and had a lot of balls cos it was his first time on radio, and its incredibly hard to read long poems when you have no-one responding to you.

With my Radio York work experience soon coming up, I want to make the most of it. So I'm trying to find out wherever I can about events going on in the city, or things I can make into stories. I think footy commentators are amazing - its the hardest job on radio - because obviously its constant talking and you can't have a moment where you forget what you're on about.. and you also have to be really talented at knowing which player is which all of the time... even when i've been going to york city every game, I've never been anywhere near that!

I'm also going to listen to the Radio York breakfast show every morning so I can get a really good feel to what's going on inside the studio and how news stories are being crafted and churned out. I'll have a steep learning curve, because I have no journalism degree and only 2 weeks of experience in journalism when I was 17 or something.

Time to settle down into writing mode now..... :-)

49,000 words

worked on lots of little bits... did more on the first adult entertainment scene, the scene where the main character runs into town in his pyjamas in the rain hahahahaha, and the squirrel scene lol

49,000!!!

48,000 words

48,000 .... got the window wide open listening to the rain while I'm writing and it's inspiring me.

Written one of the DID sections, and working on the 3rd section with Squirrel in.

Editing the scene near the end

Well I've done one scene ... only really one.... that is going to come near the end, so I've been editing that this evening.

One of the running storylines throughout the story is that the character doesn't love himself, and then finally learns to love himself in this scene. Lots of big spaces, short gentle sentences and big pauses going in there to give it a relaxed and positive feel to it.

Mapping The Book Out

Vaguely ordering the book...

So far.. from the bits i've written...... here are my notes relating to how I am categorising and ordering it

Intro, honesty, deep stuff
monologue
monologue
set context for samaritans, set context for BT
set context for sexual
sad passage, love and truth part 1
monologue, song 1
BT part 1 (check over)
Samaritans part 1 (check ending)
Counselling part 1 (check gaps)
Interview monologue and office stuff (need to correlate with appendix notes)
Sexual part 1
deep stuff (kinda like a counselling addition)
monologue - includes politics
Love and Trith part 2, hospital radio part 1
family stuff, leading up to piece 1
childhood happy memories
deep stuff
love and truth part 3
chidhood happy memories, samaritans part 2
samaritans part 3 leading up to Piece 2
Sexual part 2
Slight DID, Song 2, Love and truth part 4
Spandau ballet intro, childhood happy memories
sun and wind moral, song 3, hospital radio part 2
incredible happiness piece, love conclusion (comes near end)
childhood happy memories (seriously needs looking at and making better)
beach monologue
london monologue and sexual part estimate 5
hospital radio part 3 (dom only)... needs continuing
philosophy, deepish
news monologue
TV monologue

appendix to sort into office section.

Morning

Quick update on my life!!!

As is completely evident from this site, I have been spending loads of time writing a book lately. This has been a big sacrifice of time, but I've still managed to fit in a good social life and everything around it. What I've cut out is doing all the little things that need to be done. My e-mail is choc-full of un-answered e-mails and things that need doing.

I have a new full-time job , in finance at the Crown Prosecution Service, which sounds more important and interesting than it really is!! Because it isn't really either. I'm hoping it will get more interesting in time, but at the moment, it's pretty boring and it's just bringing in a wage - which isn't the best reason for doing a job.

I do have 2 week's work experience at BBC Radio York coming up - April 19th to 30th. I'm very excited and fortunate, although I was really hoping for longer, cos I'd love to work there properly one day. I'll be helping out in the newsroom, helping research stories - who knows maybe creating my own drama if I can't find any happening in York.

I've also signed up to do the Great North Run.. oh and the Three Peaks in a couple of weeks time. At the moment, I am massively unfit due to coming home and writing copious amounts of book.

Caught up with my friends Rich and Pete last night and played some snooker. I used to play snooker with Rich when we were 16 and had just discovered going out, having fun and drinking beers, so it has some really nice memories. Back then, it seemed like, even when going out for some frames of snooker, that the possiblities for the evening were endless.

Today, I'm maybe going to see York City if my mate Ben comes back and tonight I've turned down a birthday party invite to get an early night. Need sleeps and to get up early Sunday.

Tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to seeing Paula - coming to visit me, sit in on my little radio show, and then we're off to the coast :-)

The first half of my show is themed around special days and months - tomorrow is Palm Sunday, Clock-change Sunday, coffee-break month, Marie Curie daffodil month, National bed month!! (wow, how appropriate), National Veggie Month and official Hospital Broadcasting Week. In the second half of the show, my friend and poet Adam Atkinson is on the show to mark the end of York Literature Festival :-)

47,000 words

been out drinking, come home and been writing about late night tv, dogs and newspapers!!!...have reached the 47,000

Working on the Introdcution

Introdution requires a lot of work. Out of all the sections, it needs to be the one that will be the most stand-out and memorable... Off to work now, followed by snooker hall this evening.

46,000 words

46,000 , and written the middle third of the first scene set in the adult entertainment industry. It is mostly observations about London town.

45,000 words

done 2 bits... Started the third scene featuring Dominic "Squirrel" Parnis... and also wrote a short scene about the beach. 45,000 :-)

44,000 words

Finished the second hospital radio scene. It's taken ages and certainly taken up a lot of words. It also features 5 characters including myself so was quite a challenge. The first hospital radio scene features 3. The samaritans has also got 2 completed scenes. I think each of them will end up with 8 to 10 completed scenes at a guess.

Editing

Editing the second sexual scene, while eating a toad-in-the-hole.. Don't worry there's no connection.

43,000 words

Yes yes yes yes yes!! 43,000!!! and further development of the hospital radio scene and the friendship group.

The Personal Stuff

Been working on the personal stuff....... The single biggest thing about this book is that it is very cathartic for me to write because it is very personal. It's great because it means that regardless of how long it takes to make a finished product, I'm getting a lot from it.

42,000 words

42,000.

I've written a little reminiscing section today to when I was 14. Game Boys, wallpaper stripping and newspaper competitions. There are a lot of memories and reflective moments in the book.

41,000 words

Written a really emotional scene near the end tonight. The scene where he learns to love himself. Wow.

And also done more on the second Hospital Radio scene. Simon Pattinson is in it. Simon if you happen to be reading, LOL!!!!

Editing

More editing and working on different ways of saying the same thing. I have to challenge myself on this, and striving hard to use different words and phrases, because this is a weakness of mine. But then I suppose it's in first person narrative, so if that's how I speak it, then maybe it doesn't matter too much.

You know, it's really weird that I can't copy and paste onto this page. If I could, I would copy and paste bigger chunks, but if I want to put it here, it actually means writing it out a second time!

40,000 words!!!!

Wow. 40,000. And the start of the second hospital radio scene. These scenes are difficult but so worthwhile when I've made progress on them.

Editing

More editing... working on Hospital Radio section some more, and character definition.

38,000 words

38,000!! I called 19,000 ten per cent of the novel....sooooo this is 20 per cent!!!

Tonight I've written the end of the hospital radio scene. Well, probably a few more sentences actually, but it's virtually done. I also wrote a bit about a time when i stood on the end of a centipede. And I wrote the first bit where the song True from Spandau Ballet is mentioned. Would you believe, it is a key emotional song that runs through the book?!!!! Good old Spandau. Out of interest, no-one for sure knows what the song actually means.

Editing

Back to the editing... The more I do it, the more I realise that a lot of editing will need to be done at the very end. That's okay though if it's the way it has to be. Editing the sexual scene I wrote up last night.

Review

Well.... time for another review....

And breaking 30,000 words has been another big milestone in my head. But also what is coming now is a real sense of more than just the foundations. The real meat of the book, and the storlyines are starting to flow.

Hospital Radio storyline... really getting into this, and its perhaps my favourite storyline, because its my strongest use of characters and decriptive language, and also has a very real sense of events and everyday life. Within the hospital radio storyline comes the storyline of a developing friendship group, and also the storyline of people sharing hopes and dreams.

Samaritans-style storyline... really flowing with this too. Viewpoints and insights into different types of people and mental health issues.

Sexual storyline... Nice progression here. Need to read over this and work on it quite a bit, but I'm happy with the way it is progressing, and have it well mapped out.

Counselling storyline.... This one is probably the one that has the most development yet to come, and I really don't know how long it will be.. I think there will be between 7 and 20 parts to it. I've only really done 1 part, but it is long, and a lot of the necessary background text has also been written.

Dissociative Identity Disorder storyline.... Well I was going to write bits of this when my anxiety was high, or if I was having a panic attack, but that hasn't happened LOL... so I haven't started this, but I will do at some point. I am hoping it will come naturally to write.

Musician Idol Storyline... Actually this one is going to be really challenging and require very thoughtful choice of words. It has started, although I'm not overall happy with it and want to edit it quite a bit.

and I think that is all the on-running storylines to the book.

All-in-all, I'm very happy with what I've achieved so far. The biggest barrier is going to be glue-ing it together in a way that makes sense and is all functional.

I've also written part 1 of 3 of my latest short story.

I've been thinking about my Web site too, and am going to have a home page which in turn links to a poetry page, a comedy skecth page and a short story page where I can upload all my old material from over the years, and also a page where I can upload any interesting material from my weekly radio show.

37,000 words

37,000.. really happy with my effort so far today. I had breakfast with my friend James, and decided to put him in the book, albeit not a main character.

36,000 words

36,000. Written the third part of the sexual storyline, out of about 10 to 12 parts.

Editing

Now been editing the second (short) Samaritans scene.... quite liking it, and do actually like the fact its shorter

35,000 words

35,000. Tonight, I've written the third Samaritans-based scene. These are quite easy to write, because unlike every other storyline, they are not progressive. They are stand-alone and largely feature imaginary phone callers, as a way of putting across a fly-on-the-wall view of some of the different people out there.

Of course, all the stuff with Samaritans is confidential, but there is nothing wrong with giving the charity a different name, and making up callers that might call, which is what I've done.

I think there will be around 10 parts to the Samaritans scenes, of which I've done 3 at the moment.

Working at my language

Having fun with the English Language in the book.

It's fun the words for very very very small things.

Such as an iota, a shred ( i love that word, you don't have a shred of dignity, meaning you don't even have the teeny-weeniest bit of dignity lol) and .. this one's cool... A smidgen, or smidgin, or smidgeon, or a smidge... like a smidgin of evidence.

Bed now, tomorrow I ask my friend Lexi if she minds being in the book. So far, so good with the people I've asked, everyone's been cool with it. Mind you, they haven't read it.

34,000 words

34,000!!!! Lots of more thought and philosophy. Feeling good about tonight's progress so far!!! My fingers are genuinely feeling exhausted lol.

~~

"The sun was playing a game with the clouds and an aeroplane was playing a game in the sky. I began thinking about the time I stayed in a Devon youth hostel, where I met a backpacking Australian girl who had a face like a koala and tufty hair like a koala. Then at night, when she climbed up to the top bunk bed, she climbed up like a koala does."

Editing session

Just finished another editing session. Also tonight I met with my friend who is a copywriter, who I can pay to go through my book when it's finished and copywrite it, even if that is in 2013! I'm trying to cut out phrases that i use too often.. for instance i use the word "always" far too much and "in fact" ..... Its done wonders for learning about my bad grammar techniques.

Editing the charity scene some more

Working more on the charity scene as so far it's one of the most important ones I've done... that and the introduction section, which is obviously really important in any book.

Editing

I have the habit of working in hour bursts, but although I say bursts I'm always doing other things while working on the book simultaneously. I'm really challenging myself but at the same time am enjoying this period of writing. It's very cathartic, productive and meaningful. Even if I stopped now, I would have a body of work that could sit alongside me for life, like a little external part of me I've created.

There's quite a few walk scenes early on in the book, where the character is walking, observing stuff around him, and thinking and thinking and thinking. I love all the time he spends thinking at the start of the book, because it's nice to write without attachment to much storyline or plot for a while, and have that freedom.

Although it's also great now that the storylines are kicking in, because it feels really productive.

~~

"I was wondering if it would be possible for someone to hop the entire London MArathon without their other foot touching the ground once."

33,000 words

33,000. I've been working on a really dramatic and concluding bit that goes very very close to the end. It is the author's conclusion on life, love and everything. It's not badly written at the moment, but is something I will go over many times so that it's written just how I want it.

I want to have this dramatic and philosophical conclusion as the second last section in the book. The last section will be a fairly every day kind of scene. The contrast being deliberate and hopefully creating a final feeling of hope in everyday life. :-)

On with the personal stuff

So much of this book is very very personal... but that's what gives it the edge in some ways. I find it hard to write about non-emotional mundane stuff. I've got some really personal sections, and I've just been working through them, and at improving them. Including putting stuff in from on post-its that I scribbled on at work when I thought of things I wanted to add to the book.

By the way, the book is literally in one Microsoft Word file at the moment. Its mostly in a size 10 font and its on Page 59 lol!

Working on the "charity" section

Been going over the section that writes about a charity similar to Samaritans. This storyline is going to weave through the book, but unlike every single other storyline in the book, it's not going to be progressive. However, it may have some kind of ending, which I'm yet to figure out. For the large part, the storyline reflects the human condition and the sadder side of it.

Editing

Done some more editing before going to work. It's now all about getting all the jigsaw pieces in the right order. And also tightening up the wording to make sure there's absolutely nothing that's in there for no reason.

31,000 words

31,000!!

In comes Dominic "Squirrel" Parnis. Hopefully the most memorable character in the book (apart from the storyteller) Based on Richard Pauer, can't wait to tell him he's going to be in a book :-)

At the moment, Dominic "Squirrel" Parnis joins the fictitious hospital radio station. LOL this book is a funny adventure.

Edited that last section

Been editing that last 1,000 or so words. Each section is either a) train of thought , or b) plot progress intermingled with train of thought. I love it when things are intermingled.

30,000 words!!!

Come home from work... write write write!!!

Reached the 30,000 mark.

29,000 words + fully edited the new stuff

Wow, today has been one of my most exciting days on the book so far. I've made some great progress on character definition and its been the best writing session I think I've had since I started the book.

I've been working on three bits today. The main bit is portraying the Hospital Radio experience and this is something that's going really well. I asked my good friend Jim Gavigan if he would mind me putting him in the book, and he is really happy for me to do it, so I am working at portraying his character, and the character of the radio station itself. I envisaged this possibly being one of the hardest storylines to do, as I figured it might be hard to persist with the more mundane side of the dialogue and action. . but actually I'm making really good strides at making this a really key and fruitful part of the novel.

So, yes, 29,000 words and been through and fully edited all the new stuff that I've done today. The biggest task for me is glue-ing everything together in a cohesive way and I'm happy I've made really good progress on that tonight!

Editing

More editing time... that's all for today now... bedtime.

~~

"When she'd gone, I went up to my room and sat quietly on the edge of my bed. I just sat for a while, thinking about nothing at all and then thinking about how she hadn't put her arms around me. Then I thought about Alice and the quick goodbye again. My head was drifting to a strange place now, and I started to feel really sad really quickly. I can't explain what it was, but I started feeling really vulnerable and inadequate and needing to cry.

I had lots of things I should be doing around the house, but I wasn't going to do any of them.

There was something that needed expressing first, and I knew it was really important for me to say it. I found an old notepad in a drawer, picked up a biro without a lid that had been sitting in the corner of the floor, and started writing."

28,000 words

28,000. writing about sadness and hope, and writing with sadness and hope. :-)

Review

Wow, I love posting these reviews, because they give me a chane to reflect on how far I've come.

Beating the 20,000 word barrier was immense and I'm really enjoying this experience.

I'm sorry that there are not too many passages from the book on here. There's a few reasons for that. The main one being that I like to use all my time wriritng rather than finding bits to display on here, and bizarrely, copy-paste doesn't work on here, so I'd have to type it up word-by-word like they did in the old days, before God invented copy and paste.

Certain key things about the book are changing massively as I've progressed. It's becoming very much a monologue style now, and is also a lot more about the first person than the other characters around. Before, I envisaged the key role of many dramatic characters. Now, simply, many of these will not appear or only slightly.

One of the biggest threads is that the main character starts to wonder , and believe that everything in the world is made of love instead of physical matter LOL. This is a theme I never envisaged appearing, and there are other things that are surprising me about the direction I'm taking.

The biggest biggest challenge is combining it all into something very cohesive.

And the biggest thing I've overcome so far is consistently writing large volumes of words. This is good, because I think you should always address the hardest thing in any project, rather than shirk it. And my biggest barrier to being able to write a novel was to be able to churn out so many words without losing interest. So in that respect, I'm really proud of what I've achieved.

However, it is putting those words into the right order, and making everything flow seamlessly and with perfection that is the hardest bit at the moment. That and varying the English language!

A few people have asked me about chapters. Which is one thing I initally didn't think about that much, but now am starting to think about. It will be around twenty chapters hopefully, rough guess.

In terms of how far I am to completing it.. most of the storylines are between 10 and 20 per cent complete, so at the moment we're looking at around 200,000 words as an estimate but again that's very vague.

26,000 words

26,000. I've started writing about Hospital Radio. There's two people at the radio station who I'll be writing about and I have to ask them tomorrow if they want to be in a book. (or more to the point, tell them they're going to be in a book haha)

Late Night Editing

hard-going now, really tired so working at editing for a while..... probably gonna finish at 1ish tonight.

The Red Underline

some words which still flag up as being spelling errors, but I refuse to change...

untrodden
boredness (lol i don't like boredom)
airheady
sarnies
uncomfortableness
addictable

Going over office stuff

Been going over the office stuff I wrote last night and the early hours of this morning and editing it.. still got quite a bit more editing to do on this side of things.

BT

Been working on the section based on BT who is my musician idol. And just been generally going through the book and correcting spellings and punctuation.

25,000 words

25,000!!! Now almost all important parts of the story are rolling. Finished the first of the sections about the charity that is the equivalent of Samaritans. It really feels now like any wheels that were stuck in the ground at the start of the project are firmly unstuck and set in motion. 25,000 words, wow, can't believe it.

Work, work, work

Well, I've spent years doing office jobs, and it's given me insight into stuff, but in terms of material that makes a good book.. erm... no.. I have however set aside a bit of the story for "office jobs" although it is just a very small part of the book really. It's a good time to write about it, with me having started a new job this week, and it means its flowing well so far.

24,000 words

24,000....crazy...tired but feel really really happy about what i've written up tonight.

The main character is now no longer called Robert, he's called Paul :-)

23,000 words

23,000 and been putting sexual bits in - fun! Also been planning more of the book and how it fits as a whole. I have a good idea, but the more I write, the more it changes and new ideas come to various twists, plots, endings etc.

More character describing

Tired, but keeping going :-)

still taking me ages to describe characters well... especially when planning a radio show and listening to lady gaga sing about a telephone... I find a scene of simple conversation amongst initial character description takes me ages, and is hard to get how i want it.

22,000 words

22,000.

Never thought I could write so much about dieting. Gonna keep going through the night tonight. Snacks all around me, and drinking plenty to keep my mind active and keep me awake. Nothing too strenuous on this weekend, so I plan on writing a ridiculous number of words more.

All of the topics I'm writing about mirror an experience in my own life... Samaritans and charity work(done a lot on this one already), Hospital Radio (barely started), therapy (done a lot on this, really proud, did about a 4000 word session on it), Dissociative Identity Disorder (haven't started this, and it will probably be the last plot bit i start), the adult entertainment industry (only just about started this, will create the next bit on it soon), the office workplace - largely, this is a very boring thing to write about in a book, there I still points I want to make though and I've been working on this tonight. I've probably covered about half of the office-related stuff I'm going to write... Some other themes too that I forget right now.. Oh, the idol musician, that is about 10 or 20 per cent done, something like that.

Editing

Been going over and editing. I have so many parts to it now. Some things about the book are good. Others not so good. I'm happy with the way its flowing, and really happy with the way the various plots are starting to show their first flowers. I'm less happy with my use of the English language throughout, BUT this is what I'm working hardest on fixing/amending.

21,000 words

21,000.. I'm writing about some women who only have two topics of conversation, which are dieting and unhealthy food....

absolutely starving myself now...

Samaritans

Edited that last block of words. Its all about the Samaritans and their values.. only equated to a fictional charity, and so twisted a bit. I think its such a great thing to write about cos ultimately it represents the largest part of society that is normally hidden. So there's a lot to say that is often left unsaid.

20,000 words

20,000! :-) now to look over and edit those last 1,000 words i've just done.

19,000 words

19000 .. and i'm calling this 10 per cent of the way to having written a novel. Happy.

18,000 words

18,000.. deep stuff.. can't believe Real Madrid are out to Lyon..first day in the new job went well.. i'm not sure how well cos i'm not sure how you measure it.

17,000 words

17,000 while watching English football once again prove its the best :-)

16,000 words

16,000 words!! Still doing the therapy bit... :-)

Editing

Got up early to do some more editing on the book before I start my new job. Trying to work at getting the right amount of speech compared to non-speech. To an extent, this is controlled by the storyline, but also there is a great extent it can be manipulated to make it all flow in the best way.

Off to the new job now :-)

15,000 words

15,000 words. Now writing about the first therapy session. The therapy sessions are probably THE biggest theme running throughout the story.

Glad I had a big steak meal out tonight cos it seems to have put me in a flowing mood for the writing. From tomorrow, I have to juggle writing and full-time job!

~~

After a few seconds of eye contact, the space between our chairs grew shorter and the silence grew quieter.

Editing and silly songs and stuff

More editing. The idea is that the main character starts off as a geeky hermit (that's been very easy to write this past week!) and gradually grows in confidence, hopefulness and wisdom.

I've got all kinds of bits and bobs I've written as extras, which I'm now slotting into the right places, joining everything up.

~~

"Do you know that you are my earlobe? Do you know that you are the wax of my life?
Do you know that you are my earlobe? Do you know that you are the wax of my life?
Wax of my life, wa-wa-wax of my life.
Wax of my life, wa-wa-wax of my life.

Repeating this little song to myself in a jolly way, while strolling in the sunshine made me feel new and fresh and hopeful. I never did think of a second verse."

Early morning editing on last day at home

More editing. I have a lot of words at the start before any other main characters or plot kicks in. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I like how it gives a sense of freedom though, when the reader has no idea of what directions the book will take.

Book work will now have to fit around new job which starts tomorrow :)

Review

Yayy review time. Made some massive progress in the last few days. The biggest progress I've made in my mind and on paper, is thinking deeper about the ways the content in between the plot progressions is going to get filled.

The story is basically about a guy who THINKS lots, his mind jumps around a lot, and tends to think of everything in either a deep, philosophical, outsider view or a humorous geeky way - usually a mish-mash of both. I used to love how Harry Hill juggled five or six running jokes simultaneously, and I've tried to use that effect and want to continue it throughout. Its very much a splurge of the main character's mind... stream-of-consciousness style. I also want to give the sense of freedom throughout and that Robert (the main character) is never bound to thinking about one thing, and his mind may at any point drift to anything else.

So basically, in between the various stories weaving, is a stream-of-consciousness ramble, puctuated by moments of spiritual wisdom and questions and geeky immense-tangent lines.

Its such a great challenge to be doing this, and I've sacrificed a fair amount of socialising and cleanliness for the great discoveries I've made doing the book.

Another thing I really enjoyed doing was researching and learning how to do character descriptions. This is something totally new to me, and something I thought of as beyond me. In fact, when I started out, I planned to really limit the character descriptions, but now I'm planning very careful descriptions to enhance all the main characters. I wish I was like Dickens, it was amazing how he put his characters across.

In the near future, I plan to also set up a Web site for my creative stuff. This is so I can have fun re-learning basic HTML (yeah, I want to do it the hard way!) I plan on the Web site being the most basic site on the entire Internet.

:)

Making the threads work

been working on the threads that run through the book and making them strong, so that hopefully each will create its own storyline but each thread will have a very different feel to it.

The main story threads (similar to my own life experience) are.....

Samaritans
Hospital Radio
Counselling
The Adult Entertainment industry
A friendship group
Love interest
A musician idol

Its funny cos they sound dreadfully boring when put like that... but each one comes with its own progress and plot, with the idea of being powerful, moving and touching on emotions that people normally don't talk about.

I have plots and characters fairly well thought out, and what is taking a lot of time, is getting the wording and description how I want it in order to achieve the feelings behind the words. As an amateur, it really is teaching me a lot about the English Language. In particular, tonight, the harshness and softness of descriptive words. If someone take a CD sleeve out of a case, normally they would pull it out. But should they slide it out, or tease it out. Why is this sounding suggestive?

Similarly, a gentle female character. Her hands might caress, slide, cup or dust off. To create relaxed-ness, her body might amble or stroll.

I never really thought about descriptive words in such detail. Its fascinating. In some ways I wish I was a pro writer and knew all the tricks, but in some ways its great not being, and learning everything fresh.

Editing

Wow that felt like the biggest spell of editing that i've done since I started the book so far. Surprising how many changes I made, and how many I still want to make. Good job I have three and a half years to make them!

Editing Tomorrow

Doing more on the book tomorrow. Going to go through and edit it, work at varying the language and make it come across more meaningful.

I feel I'm at a really important stage, consolidating what I've done so far, and making sure the foundations are sturdy.

Excited about tomorrow's progress :-)

13,000 words

13,000 words....

~~

"All of us sat there, not saying a word, checking our mobile phones, playing with pen tops, blowing our nose more frequently than required, and in the case of one woman, pulling faces of surprise roughly every 40 seconds for no apparent reason."

~~

"And now as a culmination of that beautiful unselfish drive - that desire to give time and love to people less fortunate - they all sat biting their nails and sending imaginary texts. There was something really humbling about it."

Claire Fishpool

I'm learning a lot from this book journey. Its worth pointing out that I don't see myself as a great author or anything and am writing the book as much for fun as for anything else, and the proudness of having it bound somewhere when it's completed, whenever that is.

There's so much to learn, and what I consider my biggest weakness of all is descriptive language. As a consequence, this is where I have been putting most of my time and research. Especially as I am near the start of the book, and this is where I am requiring most description.

Today, I've been fascinated by character descriptions, and have been working at the description of one of my characters Claire Fishpool (incidentally the names of main characters I have are: Robert Chadwick (the main first-person of the story), Olia Flowers, Sara Maplethorpe, Claire Fishpool, Dominic "Squirrel" Parnis, Mark Winterford, Andrew Kingston-James, John Fossett, Rufus Grant, Tim Watson and Daljit "Bobby" Singh)

Anyway, I've been feeling my way around how to do character descriptions, and its made sense to make documents into which to put all the things about that character. Visual facial desciptions, metaphorical visual descriptions, clothing, words to describe how the different parts of their body move, and the whole point of trying to get across what emotions you would feel by being in their presence. Thats the real challenge, and its been fun cos its all new to me.

12,000 words

12,000 words... wow this is a real challenge.. the battle between creating new words, and forming them into pieces of the big jigsaw.

Review

Well, its been a real success these last few days. Starting off on the daunting but very exciting prospect of writing a full-length novel. Wondering if I am doing everything right, if I will run out of steam, and if so when.

So far, I can honestly say that I've exceeded my expectations and am very proud of what I've written and the short time-frame I've done it in.

I think what is different to what I expected, is that I've been able to write very free-flow without much need to feel perfectionism, and instead i've been allowing my quick typing speed to bring a very conversational feel and flow to it all.

I'm not sure how many words the novel will entail. I am sure that it is not just a case of writing the sections, but also of re-writing, perfecting and juggling the order of them. Thankfully this is something I have factored in as I go along.

Regardless of how many words will be required to form what I want in finished format, I am happy with the 11,000 I have so far.

I am writing very free-flow, except I have also 7 or 8 plots that I am going to weave through the book. At the moment, it is a case of initialising those plot threads in the book -- letting the reader know about them. Then as I continue through the book, some plot threads will move faster than others.

All-in-all, very happy with it so far :-)

11,000 words

11,000 wordies.

10,000 words!!

Reached the magical 10,000 :-)

9,000 words

9,000.

last of the deep stuff.. gonna concentrate on plot progression now...

here's some light-hearted snippets...

~~

"It's exactly 10:30am. I know that because my Mum told me just now on a voicemail she left. Why does she do that?

"Hi Robert, it's 10:30. I'm just calling because....."

Why does she do it? Does she think I have no idea of the time and need to be informed? Or that it may help in some way if I decide to manually log all my voice messages on to a chart, ordered by time and date?

It's always the start of the call when she says it. So it's like... "I'm introducing myself as your Mum, and now here's the time."

Forget the speaking clock, just give my Mum a call. And while you're on, ask her if she's sponsored by Accurist.

Remember when we were kids and had arguments about whose watch is telling the correct time, and you could always win the argument by saying "Mine's right, because my watch is set to Big Ben!!"

Let's face it, there was absolutely nothing anyone could say to top that. And you always believed it too. And pictured them in London, looking up at Big Ben and setting their watch accordingly, with the knowledge that they could now win any future arguments about the time."

~~

8,000 words

stretch.. yawn... 8,000 words in.. all the sub-plots starting to grow, and almost ready to produce the first flowers...

~~

"... on the pretend news, I always reported that there had been a very serious road traffic accident. I went across to the Live reporter, where he would give his detailed description of the crash scene. He would finish by saying "Fortunately no-one was injured. (pause) Everyone died."

Then I would read the pretend business news and say "The pound has gone up today. It is now worth one pound and one pence.""

6,000 words

6,000 words and the start of some real plot progression...



"... it was lovely to see some chavs hanging around the bus station. I've noticed there is a kind of chav bus station theme in towns these days. And I've often thought that maybe chavs would enjoy going on some kind of touring holiday where they could get the opportunity to hang out at different bus stations srounf the UK. Or across Europe even."

~~

"I glanced over the magazines arranged in their fan shape, and wondered who had put them there, and how frequently the magazines got disarranged from their fan shape. And how frequently they were put back together into the fan shape again. And who was responsible for it."

4,000 words

Yay! 4,000 words! rocking and rolling

~~

"My friend Rufus says that lately, if I was a crab, I would be a hermit crab. He didnt' explain why."

Polishing the Introduction

Early morning, polishing up the introduction, and filling it with spiritual quotes....

~~

"When you're struggling to make progress through reaching out, simply reach inside yourself; that's where the biggest progress is made."

~~

2,000 words so far

2,000 words written so far.

~~~

"I look round at people and wonder which people are completely honest about everything."

~~~

"It was a beautiful beautiful feeling, and I realised after the dream, that this must be how it really feels to be a child and have unconditional love from a parent. I can't describe how magical the feeling was. And that is the best things about feelings. No amount or combination of letters can describe them. We try and pin the beauty of this world down, and record it with words and measurements. We are miles off."

~~~

"I mean it felt kinda easy, pretending to have sex with someone while secretly being sat there eating chocolate digestives and playing on-line poker in another window. In the poker, a man named ClassicDave told everyone how he sold classic cars for a living. It was clearly the only thing that mattered to him, and he was clearly happy with that. He was shit at poker."

Yay a book

Hello. If you are reading this, its a little web site for me to put my creative writing. Actually, if you're not reading this, thats what it is too.

Over the years, I've written poetry and short stories, and always wondered if one day I will TRY and write something longer... a novel.

One thing i've learnt is that lots and lots of people say they are going to "write a book" and then fail miserably. Will this happen to me? Maybe... only time will tell.

I've been planning the book for a short while. It is a work of fiction that is semi-autobiographical, and semi-exaggerated. I plan it to be very shocking, deep and unusual, and to talk about the things that people generally don't talk about. I couldn't be arsed to just write about simple stuff. It will also be very personal and in places sexual. For these reasons, I will not be sharing all of the book. I hope to be able to share a lot of parts of it, but will just have to see how it takes shape. Its great to share things, and its also worth pointing out that the main reason I am writing this book is for myself... for my own spiritual good, and for a sense of meaning and journey.

I don't want it to take over my life, so I aim to have it finished by the end of 2013, by which time england will have won the world cup and mika will have fucked off.