I’ve just received the proof copy for the paperback version of Alexandra and there is some universal law that states the errors will appear in the hard copy version that where completely invisible on screen, no matter how many times you have read through the manuscript!

I am also revising Alice and hope to be able to publish the paperback soon after Alexandra.

I am also plotting Justine. I was struck on Chapter 2. After all the flash backs in chapter 1 I was unsure how to write rest of the novel. Writing the entire novel as “overlapping flashbacks” seemed firstly very difficult and secondly could end up being very hard to read. I could easily get lost writing flashback after flashback, and the reader could become totally confused. But I think I have devised a way that will work.

Also If I want to publish Celia as a paperback I will really need to rewrite it. Celia was my first novel. And it is not at all up to the standard that I write to now. I have ideas for other novels set in the same storyline telling Becky’s, Jazz’s and Sam’s stories(characters in Celia). So If ever want to write them I will need to rewrite Celia.

So I’m proofing Alexandra, revising Alice, plotting Justine and maybe rewriting Celia. And maybe working on Becky(I have an outline of chapter 1 from years ago), Jazz and Sam.

And yes, I have noticed a trend in the names of my novels(though in this case Sam is a boy).

OK, firstly the bad news. My September Resolution was to write an average of 1,000 words of Alice every day and finish the first draft by the end of the month. I did not average 1,000 words a day and I did not finish Alice.

But now the good news.

Since records began (19th May this year) I have averaged 170 Words/Day(including September). However my average for just September alone is 275 Words/Day. So I my production (of words) has increased. I started writing Alice two years ago.  At the start of September I had 28% of Alice complete and now I have 74% complete.

As well as quantity we need to consider the quality of the writing. And on that front I have also made good progress during September. I cut out several scenes, rearranged others and generally tightened up the story quite a bit. The middle of the story was really going no where.

This has always been a problem for me. My beginnings are great. My endings are pretty good. But my middles tend to sag. Sometimes I loose the plot completely. And it is always the middle of the story where I tend to get bogged down.

So the good news is that I have upped my daily word count, improved the story and written an additional 46% of the novel. – Not a bad month’s work.

Note: I ment to publish this last week but I hit save instead of publish and only noticed today that the post wasn’t showing – silly me.

So after a day of cutting and pasting and generally rearranging chapters and scenes – and then rearranging them back to more or less where they started at – I now have a new design for Alice finished.

I’m pretty pleased with the result as it’s not everyday I go from having completed 49% of a project to being 66% complete without actually writing any new words. In fact I lost about 2,500 words in the reorganisation, so if I had of found a way to keep those half written scenes I would have even more of my project completed. But there was no way I could make them fit. I happily gave them up in order to get nearer the end of writing Alice.

So now I’m toying with the idea of starting a new art form the “Author as Performance Artist”. If I keep my readers entertained with amusing posts about the progress in my writing maybe I can build up a loyal readership – a readership that might even someday buy my books.

However I also risk destroying the mystique of the author by revealing all the changes and rewrites and plain mistakes that I make as I write. And also that I can get so fed up with writing a novel that I just want to get it finished by any means necessary(including cutting a quater of the storyline out of it) in order to have done with it once and for all.

OK – My resolution to write 1,000 words a day for the month of September and get my novel Alice finished has hit a little speed bump. I did no writing Sunday or Monday. Also I did very little on Saturday and Friday.

The reason I did no writing was, paradoxically,  because I had nothing else to do over the weekend except write. I was alone in the house(with my dog) for two whole days so what did I do? Did I knuckle down and write 10,000 words words of my novel. No I did not. Instead I “ran around like a headless chicken” writing a little bit of this story and a little bit of this story, writing a little scene, doing a little plotting, rearranging a couple of chapters. But in at the end I had no finished story, or chapter, or anything to really show for all the free time spend in front of the computer.

It is almost like some bizarre form of writers block, an analysis paralysis for the writer. Except instead of being overwhelmed with the amount of information coming into me I am overwhelmed with the amount of ideas I have for stories I should be writing.

Some Good News

My average word count for the first two weeks of September is 569. While this is somewhat short of my 1,000 words a day target it is much better than the 157 words/day I was averaging between 18th May (when I started to keep a daily word count) and the end of August. So my attempt at a target of 1,000 words/day is improving my overall productivity. And I can see no resulting drop in quality. When I’m writing 10,000 words a day I’ll see what the quality is

Back on Track

However my resolution was to finish Alice by writing 1,000 words a day. The main goal wasn’t just writing 1,000 words a day it was getting Alice finished by the end of the month. I now find, by a careful analysis of the chapter summaries I have for Alice that there are 3 chapters with basically nothing in them. If I remove 3 chapters from my novel I remove the need to write 15-20,000 words(I average 5-7,000 words/chapter.) So a little cut and paste, rewrite a couple of scenes and I only need 12,000 words to finish the story.

The only flaw with this plan is that I still need to write 1,000 words per day for the rest of the month. But it’s now the plan that I am working towards. We’ll see how far I get this time. You never know on the 28th I may realise that there is another chapter I don’t really need to make this story work

OK – not good news on making my 1,000 words a day goal.

On Sunday I wrote 475 words. But Monday I only added 53 words to Alice. And on Tuesday I did 0, yes zero, words. I got a bit blocked on a scene in chapter 3 and instead of switching to another part of the story I tried to work my way through it and wasted a day. On Wednesday I did what I should have done on Tuesday and stop working on the scene in Alice where I was blocked and I did 727 words. Unfortunately it was 727 words on another story. However I was writing again.

On Thursday I had to travel for work so I didn’t get too much time to write, but I did get 398 words written.

So far this week I’ve managed an average of 168 words/day. The bad news is I’m not reaching my target of 1,000 words/day, which I need if I am to have any hope of making a living as a writer. But the good news is that I am writing every day and still making progress.

Now I just have to focus on finishing Alice ASAP so that I have a finished novel I can sell.

Here is the summary of week one of my September Resolution to write 1,000 words a day and finish my novel Alice.

I wrote a total of 2,614 words which averages at 373.43 words per day. However only 1,718 words were in Alice the other 896 where on other stories. (I’ve actually lost count of the number of stories/novels I’m currently “working” on.) Either way I have not managed 1,000 per day.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I can improve my daily word count is to get up earlier in the morning. I find that if I get an early start I can get a good bit done before the kids wake and the daily routines kick in. I’ve not been very successful in integrating my writing time into daily life. I have also tried staying up late but find I am often too tired to work properly.  So I’ll will have to make extra time by getting up earlier.

Now, I am not naturally an early riser. I have had to get up early in the past (5:30 – 6:00 am) but the longest I’ve managed to maintain it was 6-8 weeks. (You would think that after 6 weeks getting out of bed early would have become an ingrained habit, but not with me.) However now I know that I only have to become an early riser for 3 weeks, until I complete my September Resolution, and also that I am getting up to do something that I want to do (As opposed to previous periods of early rising where I was getting out of bed to commence a very long commute to work.) I am hoping that I will be able to get out of bed at 6:00am for the next 3 weeks. And that once out of bed(notice I don’t use the word awake) I will be able to do productive work.

I’ll let you know how it works out here on my blog. So subscribe to my RSS feed for updates.

OK – off to a good start today with 294 words before my kids woke up. We’ll see if I can do two more writing sessions like that one to get my 1,000 word total today.

BTW I did zero words yesterday. Adverage for the week so far is 88.7 Words/Day (that’s for the full seven days).

But now that the kids are fed and washed and dressed I need to shower and dress myself, or should I sit down and write another few words first?

I have resolved to finish Alice this month. It is now two years since I started writing it and it is time I finished it and moved on to something new. I have no shortage of ideas for stories. Of course I haven’t spent the last two years working solely on this one novel. I keep getting distracted with all those new/better story ideas and writing outlines and sometimes whole scenes and even whole chapters.  I keep thinking I should be writing short stories so that I have some “finished product” to show potential readers/fans. But these short stories keep turning ito full length novels. I would say that I have ADHD if it were not for the fact that I don’t believe ADHD is a real illness.

So my plan is to write 1,000 words a day for the next month and complete Alice. Biased on the size of completed chapters I have a little over 29,000 words to go.

I am taking my inspiration from both the National Novel Writing Month and from 30 Days to Success by Steve Pavlina. I know it is possible to write 1,000 words a day and I know that setting a limit of only doing it for one month means that it does not seem like such a daunting task, like a complete lifestyle change would be. But then as I am going through my Mid Life Crises maybe a complete lifestyle change would do me some good

I am also thinking of publicly exposing myself by posting my word count for each day here on my blog. Of course I will have no problem posting on those days that I achieve, and exceed, my 1,000 word target. But how would I feel about days like yesterday where I only wrote 323 words of Alice. I also wrote 298 words of my Cinderella story and bits and pieces of other works so the total word count for the day wasn’t too bad. But I don’t want to bore my blog readers with posts along the lines of “Oh dear, I only wrote 128 words today, Woe is me.”

But we shall see.

Currently I am working to finish Alice. My projected finish for the first draft is the end of August. Hopefully that won’t slip too much. After that I will try to find a publisher.
If I find time, and depending on the feedback I get, I will do some more videos of my stories.
In the meantime continue to enjoy my site.

I have not been posting very often ,but I have been working on Terminal Singularity and recovering from our house move.
I am making good progress on Terminal Singularity and have even outlined two possible sequels tot the story, and maybe one prequel.
Once I have finished Terminal Singularity I will finish Alice while I shop around for a publisher.

I blame you guys

At least those who have commented and e-mailed me about Seducing a girl. About half of you seem to think that more will be seen of the girl on the couch and that she might play some further part in Justine’s and John’s story. This had not been my plan. She was supposed to have just a “walk on” part. She was never going to be seen again.(Look people, I didn’t even bother giving her a name.) But now that several people have mentioned that they would like to see more of her I can’t get ideas for her out of my head.
There is also another “walk on” part for a girl towards the end of Justine, and now she has that part as well. She fits the part and now there is an extra thread running through the story’s universe, so it is all good.
She also now has a name, “Julie”. Originally she was just going to be a sex object for Justine to use to play with John, and you don’t need a name for an object. Now you guys have got me thinking about her she has become a “real” person with a name and she wants her own story line!
However I don’t have space for her story line in the novel Justine. Except for her two brief appearances at the party in the beginning and towards the end, in a scene that shows a fundamental change in Justine, but which I can not describe without telling you half the story of the novel, there is no space for her. So she has ended up having her own “mini series”. I have a story outline for her that is about 4 chapters long (25,000 words). Now all I have to do is find the time to write it!
If you look at the sidebar on my site you will see a section titled “Work in Progress” there are currently 3 novels listed with a progress meter for each.
However I now have about 20 other stories started, or outlined with a plot and an plan. But I can’t work on every idea I have or I would never get anything finished. So only the 3 stories I am currently working on get a progress meter.
So if you see “Julie’s Story” popping up as a progress meter in my sidebar you know that she jumped up and grabbed me by the throat and won’t let go until she has her story told.

I can’t place the blame entirely on my readers. I did after all spend most of last weekend working on plotting/developing/outlining and writing some key scenes of another novel entitled “Domestic Service”. Again this is a brief flash of inspiration that grew into an entire novel almost over night. It started with a couple of images of some Manga that I downloaded from the Internet (Ragnarock City if you must know) and some of the costumes caught something in my imagination and out popped a future history of an overcrowded earth, with 99% of the population living in poverty, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, and the elite 1% living in luxury enclaves behind hi-tech security in a 21st century paradise: flying to orbital space station spas for week long parties, having the latest medical procedures and their every whim administered to. The story is about a young girl, called Aimee, who enters “domestic service” as a sex slave in one of the luxury enclaves to escape the life of poverty that awaits her on the outside.
However Aimee is also a character with a mind of her own. Not content with being a sex slave in one novel she has demanded a trilogy where she ends up leading a revolution that overthrows the corrupt social order and the whole story is written “by her” as she sits in her prison cell awaiting the verdict of a tribunal set up to try her for crimes against humanity.
However Aimee’s story is now parked and I am once again concentrating on writing Terminal Singularity. Then I’ll finish Justine and then I’ll finish Alice. (At least that is the current plan.)

So Happy birthday Julie, you are now a character with her own story. And you get to star along side the third most important character in Justine. I say he is the third most important character because he plays a pivotal role in the development of Justine’s and John’s relationship. Although he still doesn’t have a name, he is just called “Master” in the story. But “Master” does suit his character. We will eventually see how Master instructs Julie in the finer arts of BDSM submission and self esteem. I say “we” because I don’t quite know what is going to happen in that story because it seems that all my characters have a mind of their own.
But I think I am looking forward to the adventure.

For those of you waiting for chapter 3 of Alice to be written I have some good news. I have rearranged some of the action and taken a scene from chapter 4 and put it into chapter 3. This means that chapter 3 is now Just under 2,000 words long. With chapter One – Drink Me at 5,094 and Chapter 2 – In the Garden at 6,758 , that means that I am nearly one third of the way through Chapter 3.
I am tempted to say that it feels like Chapter 3 is going to be shorter that the first two, but I thought that about Chapter 2 as well and but then I went and added over 1,000 words from the time I posted that it was nearly finished until I actually got it finished.

I have just posted the completed Chapter 2 of Alice. Only a month after I posted that it was nearly finished.

With that in mind I won’t be predicting when chapter 3 will be posted!

I’ve just read this post from Rich Minx about her receiving her first Adsense cheque. She had been waiting since 2004 to accumulate the $100+ one needs before Google will write you a cheque(or does Google cut you a check).

I’m still waiting for my first cheque/check, and yes I put my first Adsense adds up on a web site in 2004 as well.

And yes I know that I should have been busy working on Chapter 2 of Alice, which I said over a month ago was nearly finished, insead of reading other people’s blogs. But hey I have added over 300 words to it this week, but I keep getting distracted by ideas for Justine.

PS now you see why it took me five years to write Celia, my first novel!

Well I can honestly say that I dillied and dallied for the past couple of days. I did very little work on Chapter 2 of Alice. My reason/excuse is that my wife has been away on business for the past couple of days and what little free time I did get on my computer was spent on web site maintenance. I also got a bit bogged down doing research, in other words I started to surf, and finding loads of wonderful stuff about space technology, rather than focusing on getting the information I needed and getting the job finish in a reasonable period of time.
When I did get back to writing I started to work on chapter two of Justine. Yes, I know I said that I said that I would leave Justine as it was going to be part of a trilogy rather than a stand alone Novel. But now I’ve changed my mind and I will be writing it as a stand alone novel. The ideas I had for the first two books that were going to be in the trilogy will work as a good back story for Justine. Her back story will be partially revealed in the novel as needed in order to fully describe her character and motivations and her relationship with the other characters.

I wanted to use the words “dillied and dallied” in this post, it’s supposed to be some sort of running joke, my “word for the week”, just as I used the phrase “faffing about” in the posts I wrote before going to Italy. But it’s hard to say that I dillied and dallied when I added over 650 words to Chapter 2 today, added to the over 700 words I added in the past five days, not to mention all the words I’ve deleted and rewritten, that’s a lot of writing by my standards.

And the *!$% chapter still isn’t finished!
How’s that for an insight into the authors’s mind?
I just want to finish Chapter 2 and get on with a couple of cute little ideas that I have for Chapter 3. But I can’t work on Chapter 3 became I need to get chapter 2 finished first. I need to finish Chapter 2 first because I want to publish by story sequentially on my web site. I could, as I have done in the past when I wasn’t publishing my novel as I wrote it, concentrate on the chapters and ideas that take my fancy. But then, as in the case of my novel Celia, I could spend five years writing and rewriting the same novel over and over again, so that all the remains in the final version from the first draft is the general setting of London and the names of the two main characters.
However there is some kind of progress to Alice, even though the story is set in a dream like, hallucinatory fairytale format, so I will not post the chapters out of sequence.
So there is nothing for it but to crack on and finish Chapter 2.
Ok to be honest I did add nearly 250 words to chapter 5 today, but I still managed to add 650 words to Chapter 2 (Net)
In the mean time I have posted two more pages to Chapter 2 bringing Alice into the long grass.
The bit with Alice in the long grass is the bit that is taking the time to write. Also I need to polish up the bit where Alice first meets the boys flying the kite. Don’t worry about it that will make sense when you get to read the full chapter.

Trust me, I’m an author.

It’s not that I’ve dillied and dallied I have worked on Alice chapter 2 for the past couple of days. But the short polish I felt the end needed grew into 700 words added to the chapter and the “bit in the middle” has yet to be written. However I will have more time over the week end to finish this chapter.
Over all status of Alice is that I have just over 20,000 words written out of a projected 60,000 total.

… and I do not have Chapter 2 of Alice finished. There was a lot more that needed to be done to it than I thought, plus more distractions. (Well they are my children so I guess I am somewhat responsible [for/to] them.) In the end I think that it will be worth it. In case you are reading this post when I have finished Alice Chapter 2 the part that I have added and that I am working on is the part where Alice is in the long grass. Hopefully it will be very sensual and maybe even erotic.
Also the more I look at it the more I think that the ending needs a little more polish.

So why have I taken the time to write this post rather than working on chapter 2? Well this is my attempt at marketing, not a dilly or a dally honest.
I had wanted to turn the blog part of my site into an “inside the artist’s mind” sort of thing. Showing my readers the processes and trails and tribulations that go into my working life as an author. So I will start more regular posts along these lines. I’ll leave out the mundane details of my life, like feeding the dog and taking the kids for a walk.

Plus writing this post will, hopefully, warm up my fingers and my brain and increase my output when I do start to write Alice again.

Well I’ve dillied and dallied, and have not finished Chapter 2 of Alice yet. I mostly spent my free time the past couple of days catching up on mailing lists and web sites that were updated while I was in Italy. There was supposed to be Wi-Fi access in our hotel room, but I couldn’t get it to work, nor communicate my problems with the staff, so I didn’t get any Internet access while I was away. However I didn’t have very much free time even if I had of had access. I did write a little of Alice Chapter 2 (about 250 words) while I was away though.
Also a short part linking one scene to another in Alice Chapter 2, originally envisioned as being a sentence or two, has expanded into a scene all of its own.
The good news is that the rest of the chapter is written and I should have more time tomorrow to work on this(and not be distracted by anything else). So Tuesday is looking good for the full chapter to be posted.

As for Justine, the story has now expanded into a trilogy, of which the first chapter that I have posted is actually the first chapter of the third book.

So I have decided to finish Alice first, while working on the story line, characters etc, for the Justine trilogy. The whole Justine story needs time to settle and formulate within my mind, and on paper, before I take a run at writing it.

So this month I’ll concentrate on Alice Chapter 3 (once I have finished Chapter 2 of course).

I am just back from Italy and am busy unpacking, catching up on email, etc.
One piece of advice before you go away is always remember to take out the trash the day you leave, rather than the day you return.

I nearly finished Chapter 2 of Alice, but I have a lot on for the next few days and probably will not get it finished until Monday or Tuesday.