This has been a shit weekend for writing.
Nothing done, nothing looking like it will be done.
Oh, well. I have until the end of the month.
Encouragement, anyone?
...
Anyone?
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Friday, 13 January 2012
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 13th 2012
I've taken a day off from it all today.
I've worked really hard to get to 50,000, and I just need to take a moment, a breathe, and come back to it in a big way tomorrow.
This weekend I intend to write to 60,000 (or as close to it as I can) and hopefully get close to wrapping the story up. I know where I want to go, I know what the endgame is.
I'll also being writing on the blog what this whole thing is about, the concept and thought process behind, and other general stuff.
There might be photos. I dunno.
I've worked really hard to get to 50,000, and I just need to take a moment, a breathe, and come back to it in a big way tomorrow.
This weekend I intend to write to 60,000 (or as close to it as I can) and hopefully get close to wrapping the story up. I know where I want to go, I know what the endgame is.
I'll also being writing on the blog what this whole thing is about, the concept and thought process behind, and other general stuff.
There might be photos. I dunno.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 12th 2012 - C
2,833 words of plotting done this week.
That total is both this book and the next, which I'm already gearing up to get ready for writing. It's kind of infectious, this narrative. I know where I want things to go, but I also know how rubbish I am and how I can get super revved up to work on it... and then don't. Never do. Have the idea in my pocket but never do anything with it. Which is super disappointing and kind of pathetic. But I should enjoy this kick while I can!
I think I need to calculate how many rambling, awful words of blogging I've done through the process too. I just go on and on, but hey, why not? All this has helped. This running commentary is going to go a long way to helping me figure out the whys and hows of this mad thing.
Anyway, the good news: 50,109 words reached tonight. Thank God.
I'm now going to go cry myself to sleep.
That total is both this book and the next, which I'm already gearing up to get ready for writing. It's kind of infectious, this narrative. I know where I want things to go, but I also know how rubbish I am and how I can get super revved up to work on it... and then don't. Never do. Have the idea in my pocket but never do anything with it. Which is super disappointing and kind of pathetic. But I should enjoy this kick while I can!
I think I need to calculate how many rambling, awful words of blogging I've done through the process too. I just go on and on, but hey, why not? All this has helped. This running commentary is going to go a long way to helping me figure out the whys and hows of this mad thing.
Anyway, the good news: 50,109 words reached tonight. Thank God.
I'm now going to go cry myself to sleep.
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 12th 2012 - B
Woo, absconded into another office on my lunch and typed up my notebook scrawl from the last few days. I need to try and get this show in the road again. Could I finish by Sunday?
Hmm.
Doing this gives me this odd feeling that I'm collaborating with my past self; typing up, elaborating, parring back... Old Charlie always has the last say though... Very strange.
Hmm.
Doing this gives me this odd feeling that I'm collaborating with my past self; typing up, elaborating, parring back... Old Charlie always has the last say though... Very strange.
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 12th 2012 - A
On the bus into work today my brain was going into overdrive. I know how the book is going to end and I know what's going to happen in the next one. I know where every character is going to be at the end of the final chapter and I know where they're going to go in the first of the second book.
Blimey.
Anyway, I was on Warren Ellis' website and he linked to this interview with William Gibson (http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson) and I thought you might find it interesting, I did:
- - -
INTERVIEWER:
How do you begin a novel?
GIBSON:
I have to write an opening sentence. I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.
INTERVIEWER:
You won't have planned beyond that one sentence?
GIBSON:
No. I don't begin a novel with a shopping list—the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it. It's like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn't a violin. That's what I do when I'm writing a novel, except somehow I'm simultaneously generating the wood as I'm carving it.
E. M. Forster's idea has always stuck with me—that a writer who's fully in control of the characters hasn't even started to do the work. I've never had any direct fictional input, that I know of, from dreams, but when I'm working optimally I'm in the equivalent of an ongoing lucid dream. That gives me my story, but it also leaves me devoid of much theoretical or philosophical rationale for why the story winds up as it does on the page. The sort of narratives I don't trust, as a reader, smell of homework.
- - -
I think I'll respond to that thought process when I'm home, it's bloody fascinating though.
Blimey.
Anyway, I was on Warren Ellis' website and he linked to this interview with William Gibson (http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson) and I thought you might find it interesting, I did:
- - -
INTERVIEWER:
How do you begin a novel?
GIBSON:
I have to write an opening sentence. I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.
INTERVIEWER:
You won't have planned beyond that one sentence?
GIBSON:
No. I don't begin a novel with a shopping list—the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it. It's like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn't a violin. That's what I do when I'm writing a novel, except somehow I'm simultaneously generating the wood as I'm carving it.
E. M. Forster's idea has always stuck with me—that a writer who's fully in control of the characters hasn't even started to do the work. I've never had any direct fictional input, that I know of, from dreams, but when I'm working optimally I'm in the equivalent of an ongoing lucid dream. That gives me my story, but it also leaves me devoid of much theoretical or philosophical rationale for why the story winds up as it does on the page. The sort of narratives I don't trust, as a reader, smell of homework.
- - -
I think I'll respond to that thought process when I'm home, it's bloody fascinating though.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 11th 2012
Another day, another lot of nothing.
Buggery.
Buggery.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
The Month That Is; How I Wrote Richard Faraday, Ghost Detective - January 10th 2012 - B
Okay, so I went out for drinks tonight and didn't write to 50,000. I did scribble away in my notebook for Chapter Five. I continued Chapter Four. Okay. Well. Tomorrow maybe (but I think I'm going to the cinema). So, uhm, Thursday? Whatever.
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