First Draft

Made it! I finished the first draft last week: 98,000 words. I did promise myself I would have a break before beginning the read through and edit, but I started reading it a couple of days ago. Pat asked me this morning if I was pleased with what I had written and I found myself hesitating before I could answer. Does that mean I’m not happy with it? Who knows? I have to go with my instincts and my self-belief. In a TV interview (it can be seen on my website) I claimed that a writer should be able to write anything. I did say that it might not be very good if said writer had to write in a genre in which he or she wasn’t use to, but the prospect shouldn’t faze them. I can only describe my latest work as a mixture of romance, mystery and intrigue. It’s a two-fold story in which one is interwoven with the other. One story spans a number of years while the other spans just a few months. There is an element of violence that would stop it from dropping neatly into the romance category, although I believe a lot of romance readers would put up with the bad bits because the good bits are, well, good. Oh, and there are opportunities to shed a few tears (for the girls). But, and it’s a big but, whatever I or Pat (she will be reading the manuscript for me) think about it, the one person who has to like it is my publisher. And there’s the rub: I write thrillers, and she may not like me diverting from that. If the book is rejected I will publish it on Amazon. And this is the beauty of writing today; the fact that a rejection doesn’t mean that your book will never see the light of day. Hooray for that! So what now? Well, I will press on with the read through and have the MS ready for Pat by the end of this week, providing I don’t come across any major problems.

On the domestic front, readers of my blog will know that we are trying to sell our house. Today we have a viewing. This will be a ‘third’ viewing. The first couple liked the house after two viewings but they could not make an offer until their relative sees it (half of the money). It will probably be a week before we know one way or the other, but if we receive an offer we are happy to accept; it will mean we’ll be on our way back to UK. But first things first: sell the house. Oh, and get the book finished. I don’t think the two projects will clash, although our tempers might become a little frayed. Watch this space. More next week!

Getting Close

I’ve reached 92,000 words of my next book and am getting close to my target of 100,000. With luck I should have my first draft finished by the end of the week. After that comes more hard work. And for any of you who read my blog and are thinking of writing a novel, simply because thousands of writers are at it now and publishing on Amazon, think carefully of what you’re letting yourself in for. Preparing any book means research, which can mean a great deal of writing and time spent before putting pen to paper. Depending on whether you work for a living or are retired, there’s the prospect of having to knock out a weekly target. Mine wasn’t set in stone but I like to think I could manage 3000 words a week. Sometimes I manage more, sometimes less. Over the last four weeks I have pushed myself and added about 7,000 words every week. What next? Now I have to go through my work line by line and make corrections to the grammar which includes spelling mistakes, punctuation etc. and the biggy of them all really: making sure my timelines are right, my characters remain the same age throughout the story, I don’t have someone living in a bungalow one minute and a house the next and the hero actually ends up with the right heroine. There are so many hurdles to cross that it makes you wonder why we write. After I have corrected my work, I will print it out, double spaced and my wife will read through it with a red pen. No doubt she will find errors and point out where I have misunderstood a woman’s intentions or something equally absurd. But the point about this example of which way I’m going is to show that I’m still a long way from finally producing a novel that I’m happy with (are we ever happy?). Then I have to send it to my publisher, and if she likes it, she will make me an offer and if I accept, the book will be passed on to the professionals for editing and proof reading. Phew!

I find I tend to get a bit insular when I’m closing in on the end of the book. I make excuses to myself for not doing those jobs that require my attention, and I neglect other pursuits like reading or playing my keyboard. I try not to but my focus does seem to be drawn away from everything else. I don’t miss my sport on TV though. Saturday might was the Scandinavian Speedway Grand Prix won by Niels Christian Iversen (brilliant rider), and this afternoon, Sunday, was the derby football match between Manchester City and Manchester United. City won 4-1. Oh, and there’s speedway tomorrow evening on TV, then football again on Wednesday evening. It’s a good job I only write during daylight hours. But first things first: Let’s see if I can finish my first draft by the end of the month. Wish me luck.

One more thing: if you check out my website, you find that you can click on the jackets of three of my titles currently on sale at $0,99. A good buy.

A Different Kind of Week

No writing to speak of this week because we spent four days in Valencia. My wife has been there a few times, but this was my first trip. It’s a lovely city; very clean and well cared for. The tourist attractions are plentiful which was the reason for our visit. The highlight of the trip for me was the Bioparc: a zoo in which the animals are virtually behind glass. It gives the visitor the chance to literally walk among the animals. We also visited the Oceanograhica which is a huge aquarium. Once again a wonderful exhibition but like most aquariums (aquaria?) they are all very similar. The dolphin show was good. It always amazes me how those creatures can interact with humans and how they can identify commands which are usually just small sounds and hand slaps.

Although I haven’t written anything this week, thoughts of my next book and the progress I’m making haven’t been far away. I am currently at about 85,000 words and hope to reach 100,000 by the end of this month. With the advent of Amazon publishing there is no longer the worry that my book will be rejected by my publisher which would leave it gathering dust on some literary agent’s shelf. As an established writer I know I can publish on Amazon and enjoy seeing my work in print. Naturally I would rather my publisher do the work for me and produce a splendid hardback novel for me to gloat over, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Nothing else to write about on the book front other than the slow sales I’m experiencing with my titles. No doubt I’m one of several hundred thousand writers in that position, so I wish you all a lot of luck. More next week.

Pulp Fiction

During the week I came across a post on one of the author websites that I visit every day in which the lady author stated that she had published five novels during 2012. I can’t remember if she claimed to have written five novels in that time, but the fact that five of her books went live during that time got me thinking: what has Amazon led us into? Once upon a time it would have been a work of supreme effort to achieve that, but now it seems a common occurrence among some of the writing fraternity. I have to ask myself the question: are they any good? But does it matter? The advent of Amazon has removed the myth and mystique that used to surround a writer. Now we are all authors. Whether we are good or bad; it matters not. In a way that lady’s output diminishes the value of being a writer when I think of the hard work and hours of writing and editing that used to be the norm; for most of us anyway. Jeffrey Archer writes his first draft in longhand. After that there are usually another two drafts before being offered to his publisher. This comes after the research of course. John le Carré would write about a million words and discard over 50% of them. Jilly Cooper bashes away on a typewriter. All of these are world-wide best-selling authors, but I think they would shudder at the thought of their profession being sacrificed at Amazon’s altar of pulp fiction. Ghost writing is a lucrative profession, but it is pulp fiction nonetheless. Matt Lynn used to ghost-write military thrillers for Random House: the kind that sell by the ‘truck load’ in his words. Those writers write to a format in which creativity takes a back seat to the formula. In their own way they have talent, but they hide it behind the name of someone who ‘sells’ books. Eventually they usually give up hiding behind a ‘name’ and write books for themselves just as Matt Lynn did. I think Amazon has opened the way for a lot of good authors. It has also opened the door for the bad ones too. It doesn’t matter to Amazon: their remit is to sell books, which is what they do and do well. But it allows people to force feed the market and devalue the art of writing.

Words and Wealth

Another month begins and I hope to make more progress with my sales and with the word count for my current mss. Although my book sales are not meteoric, I have seen the increased figures for August published on Novel Rank (not entirely accurate), which is always good to see, and I have increased my word count to 76000 words. If both those figures remain on an upward trend, I should get past the one hundred for sales and reach 100,000 word count by the end of the month. But when things are going well, there’s always something cropping up and getting in the way. Last week I had a medical problem that needed sorting out, and as a consequence of that I have spent more than a few hours in waiting rooms. I still have a way to go yet, but I’m expecting to be out of the woods fairly soon. Its times like these when I think of people who cannot be in my position because of constant ill-health or financial problems. My life ticks along fairly evenly: no dramas. I mix my time between my hobbies and pursuits (I like football and speedway), my church, reading and watching TV. I’ve seen statistics that put me and my wife in the top 5% of the world population when it comes to health, wealth and happiness. By my own standards I am definitely not wealthy, but compared to a lot of people I must be. But what constitutes wealth? An income that covers your bills for one. It doesn’t have to be an enormous income so long as you have sufficient. A holiday once a year? Well, I’m retired and live in Spain where the sun is virtually guaranteed all year round, but yes; we do go on holiday. Last year we went to Australia, dropping in at Singapore and Bangkok. This year we spent time in UK. Next week we are having a break in Valencia with friends. And the other thing for happiness is, of course, good health. I admit that good health is relative: I’m not as healthy as I was in my twenties, but I mustn’t grumble. And I have a loving wife and we have God in our lives, so it can’t be bad, can it? Getting back to the book sales, I believe it’s all about promotion first then sales to follow. This month I kick off with a promotion for ROSELLI’S GOLD. This will be with the Kindle Book Review. I can only gauge the success of that promo if I see an increase in the graph when I check my Amazon sales rank. So what next? Well, I must keep my head down, keep writing and get to that target of 100,000 words. But even then I won’t be finished because I will need to read it through, edit it and then pass it on to my wife who will read it and point out all the mistakes I’ve missed. What would I do without her? Wish me luck!