Saturday writing
Today has turned out completely different to the way I expected. Not in any huge way admittedly. I mean I didn't swap a day at my keyboard writing for a day parachuting or paragliding or dog sledding or anything like that. I still spent most of my day in front of this computer and I still wrote. It was just what I wrote that wasn't what I expected.
You see at two this morning I woke up with a story idea in my head - the complete story, everything. I had concept, plot, characters, bits of dialog, how it started, and as it is a comedic stories a number of jokes. So I grabbed a notebook, the one I keep for story openings and started scribbling.
I really should have had confidence enough to grab a fresh notebook and dedicated a book to this one but I was still half asleep. You see this book has one or two page ideas for a page 1,2 of a novel that are waiting for a plot to come along and take them somewhere. This was a fully formed thing. I had the ending. But that doesn't really matter. I got it written down, that's the main thing. Only it wasn't one or two pages. By the time my hand gave out forty minutes later I'd covered 14 sides - fully covered. And this was mostly in note form. I did say I had a lot. I could probably have written more - if I could have written more. But my thumb was agony so I had to stop even if there was more and I was risking losing it. My hand hurt and I was exhausted. It was now 3 am.
When I woke in the morning I was happy to find all the stuff I hadn't managed to scribble down was still in my head including a joke featuring Van Morrison and Ed Sheeran (which I can assure you is actually kind to both of them. Neither of them are the target of the joke.
When I sat down at my computer originally intending to put a resource file together to sketch out the rest of the details so I wouldn't lose them - my thumb was (and is) still a little sore so I opted not to add to the notebook. Only I found I didn't want to just note down the extra bits and bobs. I wanted to write the damn novel. The only problem with that was I already have a current work in progress - Tithebound. And I like this story a great deal and want to get it finished. But I was not in control today - the new story was.
By the way I should probably mention it has a title - it's called "It Started with this Conversation".
So I gave in basically. I thought to myself if I let the urge take over for a bit and write some of it and get the feel down on the page it might let me get on with Tithebound. Only it didn't. Once I had started I was trapped.
But there is a benefit of this. You see today was a day of not being able to stop writing. I only stopped when I got to the end of chapter 1 with 5,611 word written. That's the most I've written in a single day this year. And it's been fun. Writing has been a little hard in the last few months. I've actually had to force myself to the keyboard at times.
My wife suggested this might have been because I was doing a full revision the Patternmaker's Daughter for the publisher rather than writing new fiction and that once I got back to a new novel it would be fine. Only it wasn't.
When I wrote the first three chapters of Breath of Imagined Dead so they could go out with the Stairs Lead Down as a teaser of book two it was a struggle to get them written. So I gave Tithebound a try. This is a story I started writing as a ya fantasy, albeit quite dark, last year only to find the ya part wasn't working. I abandoned it to write (and finish, yay) the Ben Williamson novella, Were It Was So and the satirical A Thousand Rick Wakemans Dancing Round My Brain.
My wife loved the idea and when I had a chat with her about what I should try writing next she asked for this one. So I gave it a go. And being honest it was going. It wasn't a full flow situation but I was writing fiction so that was good. As I mentioned in last night's post I'd managed to get this second attempt up to 15,413 words in a couple of weeks. I thought that kind of progress was alright. I'll settle for that.
Today though, that all changed. Today I could hardly stop. I'm hoping this will continue. Let's see...
Oh, and one last thing. I mentioned the books that I'd bought recently - most specifically the Stephen King and Robert Harris. Well I can confirm the Robert Harris won - that's the one I'm reading. Although it's mainly because it was the thinner book. I didn't fancy launching into an epic of King-ian proportions.
You see at two this morning I woke up with a story idea in my head - the complete story, everything. I had concept, plot, characters, bits of dialog, how it started, and as it is a comedic stories a number of jokes. So I grabbed a notebook, the one I keep for story openings and started scribbling.
I really should have had confidence enough to grab a fresh notebook and dedicated a book to this one but I was still half asleep. You see this book has one or two page ideas for a page 1,2 of a novel that are waiting for a plot to come along and take them somewhere. This was a fully formed thing. I had the ending. But that doesn't really matter. I got it written down, that's the main thing. Only it wasn't one or two pages. By the time my hand gave out forty minutes later I'd covered 14 sides - fully covered. And this was mostly in note form. I did say I had a lot. I could probably have written more - if I could have written more. But my thumb was agony so I had to stop even if there was more and I was risking losing it. My hand hurt and I was exhausted. It was now 3 am.
When I woke in the morning I was happy to find all the stuff I hadn't managed to scribble down was still in my head including a joke featuring Van Morrison and Ed Sheeran (which I can assure you is actually kind to both of them. Neither of them are the target of the joke.
When I sat down at my computer originally intending to put a resource file together to sketch out the rest of the details so I wouldn't lose them - my thumb was (and is) still a little sore so I opted not to add to the notebook. Only I found I didn't want to just note down the extra bits and bobs. I wanted to write the damn novel. The only problem with that was I already have a current work in progress - Tithebound. And I like this story a great deal and want to get it finished. But I was not in control today - the new story was.
By the way I should probably mention it has a title - it's called "It Started with this Conversation".
So I gave in basically. I thought to myself if I let the urge take over for a bit and write some of it and get the feel down on the page it might let me get on with Tithebound. Only it didn't. Once I had started I was trapped.
But there is a benefit of this. You see today was a day of not being able to stop writing. I only stopped when I got to the end of chapter 1 with 5,611 word written. That's the most I've written in a single day this year. And it's been fun. Writing has been a little hard in the last few months. I've actually had to force myself to the keyboard at times.
My wife suggested this might have been because I was doing a full revision the Patternmaker's Daughter for the publisher rather than writing new fiction and that once I got back to a new novel it would be fine. Only it wasn't.
When I wrote the first three chapters of Breath of Imagined Dead so they could go out with the Stairs Lead Down as a teaser of book two it was a struggle to get them written. So I gave Tithebound a try. This is a story I started writing as a ya fantasy, albeit quite dark, last year only to find the ya part wasn't working. I abandoned it to write (and finish, yay) the Ben Williamson novella, Were It Was So and the satirical A Thousand Rick Wakemans Dancing Round My Brain.
My wife loved the idea and when I had a chat with her about what I should try writing next she asked for this one. So I gave it a go. And being honest it was going. It wasn't a full flow situation but I was writing fiction so that was good. As I mentioned in last night's post I'd managed to get this second attempt up to 15,413 words in a couple of weeks. I thought that kind of progress was alright. I'll settle for that.
Today though, that all changed. Today I could hardly stop. I'm hoping this will continue. Let's see...
Oh, and one last thing. I mentioned the books that I'd bought recently - most specifically the Stephen King and Robert Harris. Well I can confirm the Robert Harris won - that's the one I'm reading. Although it's mainly because it was the thinner book. I didn't fancy launching into an epic of King-ian proportions.
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