Hey folks, how are we all doing? I’ve had a busy start to the year outside of writing but have still been squeezing in time to get the words wrangled.
I’ve finished an initial read through of what I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year, and boy do I have my work cut out. I’ve got a lot of material to work with, but most importantly I’ve got a decent handle on what I need to do to get a first draft of the first book in this, what’s looking to be, a multiple book series.
I’ve got some time off coming up, and I’m going to try and get working on mapping out what I need to do to connect the dots in this first instalment. It’s feeling pretty good, i’m excited to get stuck into it.
Right, shorter post today. I’ve got an early tomorrow so I should really think about getting to bed.
This year has been a ‘Get Shit Done Year’. Writing wise I didn’t have a lot of focus in the early part of the year as that attention was on personal matters. Those were happily resolved and I could put a little more attention into writing.
I did set out goals, but they ended up getting lost in the churn a little. The core focus was on getting the Zombie book done. That, was essential for this last year. It’s going to be three years past when I had first wanted to get it published, but better late than never. It is done. All that needs to be done is have the artwork for the cover finished (the artist has been super patient and trust me, the cover is awesome!), and the formatting needs to be done. Once they’re done, it’ll be published. Hopefully the early part of next year, but definitely next year at some time.
Another project that had a lot of attention this year was Penal Earth. This story has been on the go since 2015 but I’ve really honed into a story, the setting, and the feel of the world in the last couple of years. This year I’ve got it to the point where I can’t take it any further, I think it’s as good as I can make it and I’m really proud with it. The next stage with this one is to have it edited and or submit to publishers. I do want to test the waters with it as I think it’s my best written tale and I think it does have appeal to it. If it doesn’t get snapped up, I’ll self-pub it.
Next up is The Vampire Era. This has a similar history to Penal Earth, in that it’s been on the go for a long time. This one even longer than Penal Earth, bit again. It’s had a lot of work on it this year, and has come as far as I can take it. Also like Penal Earth I’m very proud of it, and hope it finds a following. The main difference with this ones future is that I’m going to publish it on here. It’ll be released on Welcome To My Nightmare tier and the first post is live. It’s a nine episode first season, and will run until August if I remember right. After it’s come to the end of it’s run I’ll put it in the list to be professionally edited and then I’ll self-pub it. I won’t do that for at least twelve months after the final post has gone live.
Speaking of Ko-Fi, I don’t get a lot of income from the site, those who do support my work on here are all awesome people and I can’t tell you how much it means to me for you to give me your hard earned money. I’m barely a newborn when it comes to writing careers, and I don’t expect anything but what I do get I’m incredibly grateful for.
Although I don’t write for the money it’s nice when I am paid for my work. The way I look at it at the moment is, if it pays for my fees for my web domain each year, then I’m happy. And thankfully for the last few years it has done.
Back to the fiction, and we come to Black Blood. This story is not at the stage that say Penal Earth and The Vampire Era are. It want’s one more deep edit and then it’s going to be ready for an editor. At the moment I’m feeling like self-pub is the route for this one, but I’ll leave it open for the moment. This has been another long term project that has come a long way during 2022 and I’m very glad it’s moved in the direction it has. It’s not far off done, but isn’t quite there yet.
A project I got quite deep into this last year has been a series of serial killer stories that are like The Vampire Era in that they are set up like a TV series and will all build to a conclusion. This one isn’t anywhere near done yet though. It is a huge mess, but I’m not worried about it. It’s one where I need to focus on getting the individual stories tidy and then I can add in the little knots to tie them together. Some with be big, heavy duty knots. While others will be smaller ones. It’s a long way off, and one that isn’t a priority for this year, but I think I’ll be working on it here and there.
I was looking at starting Penal Earth 2 in the early part of 2023 but I’ve got a few hard decisions to make about plot lines and where I want to take it, so I’m not quite ready to get it off the ground just yet.
The first part of next year will be getting a first draft of the NaNoWriMo ’22 project completed. I’ve been editing it this month, well editing is a strong word. I’ve been going through tidying it up and making a sort of bible for it as I go. Again, this one is a long way off but will be a priority for the next twelve months.
Black Blood will also be a major project in the first part of the year as well.
2023 isn’t going to be a make or break year for my writing career. It’s going to be a series of steps forward.
Howdy, folks! How are we all doing? Are people having a good festive period? Mine has been pretty darn good, but it’s back to work tomorrow. Which I am looking forward to, I enjoy my day job a lot and I like the routine (if shift-work has such a thing), and as most of my shifts are early’s I tend to have the rest of the day to get stuck into what I need to.
In the week before Christmas I had very little time to focus on writing, but I did manage to squeeze writing time in. This years NaNo project is still in process and I didn’t want to go too many days without working on it. I’ve had seven days this month where I haven’t done any writing at all, and likely a few days where I haven’t worked on NaNo ’22, but I’ve not let too many days in a row where I’ve not worked on it. Something I’ve talked about a lot on here is momentum, and I think it’s something that’s very important. I’ve lost momentum before and it’s very hard to get it back. I’m worried it’s going to happen again, so I’m hoping I’ve done enough so far with this story to stop me from hitting a roadblock that stops me dead like has happened in the past.
I don’t want this year to end with a bang, and I definitely don’t want it to end with a whimper. I want it to end with a nice steady pace, similar to where I am at the moment which rolls right into 2023 and continues.
I haven’t spoken much about my mental health publicly of late, that’s simply because I’m feeling better than I have done in a long time. Okay, then I’ve ever felt. Yes, there’s a long way to go. There are still things which really eat away at me, and as I kinda tick one thing off another three crop up. But I’m working on it all. I have less bad days now then I used to and the good ones are more frequent. I don’t believe it’s one or the other. I think some days are a mix of both, while others are neither. Those are the days I have most of, but even those days tend to be more towards the positive side of life.
The biggest lesson I feel I’ve learnt of late is to get a decent amount of sleep. Life is a lot more settled when I’m more rested.
We all have that one co-worker that don’t do much 😉🤣
I’ve been getting into a light edit of this years NaNoWriMo story. I say light edit, simply because I’m skimming through it to get rid of any excess scenes that I either rewrote or just didn’t need (you don’t delete nothing during NaNo!). I’m also making some tweaks that I changed later on in November that gave the story the mentality that I want.
I’m definitely more organised, I’ve got a lot of details written down and am adding other details that I need to be thoughtful of for later in my notes.
This month has, obviously, not been as consistent as November, but I’m rolling along nicely.
Not many words today, only a couple of hundred. I did move the NaNo story into Scrivener, which means I can break it down a little better and get building on what I have.
Only 415 on the NaNo story today, but 1420 yesterday and this evening I got my Ko-Fi posts for my Welcome To My Nightmare tier scheduled up to September.
I did set out to do those final tweaks on the vampire book, only to discover that I’ve already done them! (Happy Dance!) that meant I could get them scheduled on Ko-Fi.
Right, I’m off to bed. Have an awesome evening, folks!
My post NaNo world has been much of the same, just with a slightly lower intensity. I’m at about 3700 words for the month on my NaNo project, I still have no idea how this first book is going to wrap up, but it’s fun working my way through it. I do need to transfer what I’ve got into Scrivener, but I don’t think that’s too much of a priority for this coming week.
I will still be working on the NaNo book, this is now a primary focus for me, but I still have to get the vampire book ready to be published on my Ko-Fi page. I could do it monthly, but I’d like to get it all done and dusted and scheduled for one story a month on my Welcome To My Nightmare tier. I’m trying to be better organised, and having this scheduled will be one thing I won’t have to worry about.
That’s what I’m going to be working on alongside with the NaNo project for the next couple of weeks.
I wrote 50082 words for this years NaNoWriMo, hitting the target at about 9:40 last night.
This years NaNoWriMo got off to a slow start for me, I didn’t get caught up until the 23rd of the month, then I had a couple of days ahead of the goal, then a couple of days behind and then I brought it home on the last day.
It was a month where I was feeling like I was chasing the goal each day. My lowest word daily count was 247, while my highest was 4026.
The month started off with a busy schedule at the day job which didn’t leave me much time for wrangling the words. I’d write before work, then during my breaks and then get stuck in after I got home. Most of the time when I was writing at work I’d not really be able to get really in-depth with the work, but I did manage to get some words down. These feel more like I was thrashing out a synopsis of the scene/chapter I was working on. I’ve now got a lot of little synopsis to build from.
Other scenes I’ve managed to build a pretty solid part of the story which won’t need much tidying up when the time comes.
Where I’m at now is I’ve got a lot scenes scattered throughout the document and I’ve got to start figuring out how to connect them all. I don’t think it’s as bad as I might be fearing, but there is a bigger problem I’ve come up against. Originally I saw this as a three book arc, but was worried I wouldn’t have enough to fill three books. Now that I’ve started it, I think I’ve potentially got a lot more than three books worth of story to tell. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me with this one.
This story, working title ‘War Child’ has been one I’ve been wanting to tell for quite some time, but have been intimidated by it. I feared I wasn’t capable yet to do it justice. But after some encouragement from friends and peers I decided to dive in head first. I’m so glad I did. This is going to be one where I think I am going to be pushed as a writer. I’ve spent so much of the last year trying to get stories finished and ready to either self-publish or submit I’ve forgotten what it’s like to begin crafting a new world.
Away from the writing part of NaNo I didn’t get much chance to host or even attend write-ins. Between the manic work schedule at the start of the month and a slow cash flow it just wasn’t on the cards. The one I did manage to host turned into a solo session. Which was okay, I got words down. It’d have been nice to get a few faces there though, hopefully next year I’ll be in a better position to be the ML I really want to be. I don’t feel like I’ve had the chance to step up how I want to. Between Covid and non-writing matters that have cropped up I’ve not really been able to dedicate the required time and effort to it that I’d have liked.
What’s next? I’m going to continue with War Child, but I also need to get The vampire book ready as I’ll be releasing that via the Welcome To My Nightmare tier on Ko-Fi. So I need to pull my finger out and get that final pass of edits done!
Good morning! I have sucked at blogging this month. I was planning to blog every two to three days but I’ve had a lot going on this month. Especially at the start of the month. I got behind quite early on and I’m almost back on course. I’ve managed to keep it about 5000 behind target and now I’m about 2000 words off.
I’m at 36007 words and think I can hit the target. I know I’ve got days where I won’t be writing, or if I am it’ll only be a few words. But there’s still a lot of time for me to get the words done. If I keep this momentum going then I’ll easily be able to make the 50k.
I’m not worried about that, what is on my mind at the moment is how many moving parts this story has. I knew it was going to be complicated when I started. I’ve always felt not ready to handle it. I have a hand written draft of fair chunk of this story somewhere but I knew it wasn’t what I envisioned. I didn’t exactly know what it needed to be, I just knew I wasn’t ready to write it. But, then I thought I wasn’t ready to write it twenty-three days ago and I’m thirty-six thousand words into it now, and there’s so much more I need to write that I planned for this book. I mean, a lot. I’ve barely scratched the surface with so much of it and I’m looking at it and thinking this is going to be either a really big book or I’m going to have to rethink my initial plan of this being a three book series. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough material for a three book series, but depending on how this story goes will mean I need to rethink the entire series. I might even just write the whole thing out from A to Z and then break it down where it works the best.
But that’s something I need to think through, I might reach out to a couple of more experienced writers and see what they think.
I hope all of you are doing well. I don’t say this enough but I appreciate every view, like and comment. I write this blog for myself. It’s something I enjoy a lot and knowing people read my ramblings means a lot to me.
Right, I’m off to get some words written. Have an awesome day, folks!
We’re well past the NaNoWriMo halfway mark now, and I’m at 23246 words. So, about 5000 words behind. Quite happy about that. I feel like I’m staying in sight of the goal while still building a story. I think I’m going to end up with a lot of fragments of scenes when the month is over, but that’s a foundation to build from.
Strangely I feel like I’m stepping up a level with this one. It has a lot of moving parts and I think I’ve got a good handle on them all.
I’ve written a little differently today. I’ve knocked out about 1700 words but done it while laying on my bed with movies going in the background. Both movies are ones I’ve seen a lot and have been helpful because I can drop into them when I need a mental breather and don’t end up getting sucked into a social media blackhole. Which happens a lot when I sit at my desk and try and write after a work shift.
It’s a hard life isn’t it? 🙄Tired human 🥱
I also had a couple of hours between work and starting to write to relax a bit. Going straight from work to writing can sometimes prove difficult. Kind of like I’m putting too much pressure on myself, but putting that mental break in there seems to be working okay.
Peter Germany's World 