Day: January 27, 2011
Works in Progress

I guess this is why people have day-jobs, huh?

It’s been a long time since I thought hard about the thing I’m writing as I wrote it, rather than sprinting for the finish because I needed stuff to be done and sent out and justifying itself now now now! 600 words on the great-swashbuckly-lovecraft-ghoul-wahoo! novel draft this afternoon, which brings the total up to about 5,000 for the week. It feels so very slow, working like this, but I suspect it may actually be better for me – when I’m not trying to rush things and get wordcount for the sake of wordcount, I have time to start picking at phrasing and thinking about the pace and structure of the scenes. Oddly, writing slow and considered is also a means of curing myself of my addiction to semi-colons. Also, 2011 is the year I teach myself to write in third person or die trying; place your bets on whether it works, but my money’s on the latter. I’m going to

PeterMBall 27/01/2011
Works in Progress

Toil

‘Tis actually a horrible name for the blog post, ’cause the writing thing doesn’t actually feel much like toil this week. Not even yesterday when it took me seven hours, total, to get fifteen hundred words down across two projects. There is probably toil coming though – there’s a Flotsam deadline looming in nine and a half days – but for the moment I get to skip through the word mines surrounded by bone-white moths and singing ravens and tinkling silver bells whose chimes echo strangely in the dark and shady corners. Plus I have Leonard Cohen CDs on, which is always a source of the happy. One day I will remember that the cure for not-writing is writing, rather than having to relearn that lesson every time I stop. I recently chatted to a friend of mine who enjoys the discussion of toil on the blog, watching the numbers stack up and the reports of work done come in. I

PeterMBall 27/01/2011