Category: Goals (Page 5 of 5)

November could easily be a cut-and-paste from the October recap because most of it was spent on the edits to Thieves in the Temple, which went on sale on Amazon, Kobo, Apple etc., on December 5^th. 

I added a couple of chapters, and combined a couple more and by the time I finished the last read through, I think I could probably read the story aloud from memory.

One of the most valuable tools during this editing exercise, apart from the inevitable editorial red pen has been the application Pro-Writing Aid. It does a much better job of spell-checking than Word, and also flags the correct spellings in the wrong context – form instead of from – that sort of thing.

Most importantly for me though is the long term block I have when it comes to using commas. No matter how much I study the rules and correct application, they still appear in the wrong place. Pro-Writing Aid is excellent for catching those mistakes. A word to the wise, though. Word has a different view on the correct application of commas, and will “argue” with the changes you make in Pro-Writing Aid.

November finished up with a lot of thought about what comes after Thieves in the Temple. If you’ve browsed the rest of this site, you’ll have an idea :). The next novel is Death at a Wedding, and that will be followed by Murder of a Dead Man. 

I’ll keep you posted on progress

October was spent mostly on edits for Thieves in the Temple. It’s been a bigger and longer task than I expected it to be, but it’s also been a huge learning experience.

The editing process has also made me stop and think about historical accuracy, and that has led down some very deep internet rat-holes. The most recent was a reference I made to lace in the story. When I checked online, the first historical references to lace are in a will by the Milanese Storza family in 1493, and disputed by the Flemish pointing to a 1485 painting by Hans Mernling.

Either way, the chances of lace being on garments during the Exile, would be a stretch. Fortunately, it wasn’t a big change to make in the manuscript and nothing in the plot hung on the lace.

A bigger gap was the realization I’d reached the end of the story and never explained how the crime was committed. That needed a little more work, including adding a couple of scenes.

I’m planning to get Thieves in the Temple available in early December. There’s also been a lot of thinking around the sequel – or rather sequels. I was looking through some notes a couple of weeks ago and had ideas for two Jacob and Miriam stories. Not sure where they’ll fit into the planning, but I’m sure that will become clearer as I get deeper into the next story – Death at a Wedding during November and December.

September is usually quite eventful with family birthdays at the beginning and end of the month.

As I look back though, nothing really stands out as memorable. Yes, there were things that happened: we went away for a few days at the beginning of September, and I managed to get the copies of Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine featuring my story Family Harmony ready to send back to family in England, but of course that got delayed until October!

The rest of the month just seems to be a blur, and while I’m sure Covid played a part in that, I don’t know why didn’t it affect me so much in July or August. 

One suggestion from a friend, was that having pushed to finish Thieves in the Temple by the end of August and get it to the editor I was in what they called a recharge period. It’s not that I didn’t write anything. I did, and the stories are very different from Jacob and Miriam, but maybe that’s what was meant.

For various reasons, Thieves didn’t come back from the editor until the end of September. More on that in a future post, meanwhile it’s back to tightening up the story, and making sure Thieves stands alone and isn’t dependent on having read the short stories.

My last monthly recap was back in early June, which covered May. I don’t know if it was Covid, a new day job project, or something else, but June and July, from a writing perspective were very dry months. I wrote fewer new words in those two months than I have since early 2019. 

August was better, and I finally completed the first Babylon mystery, mainly by committing to an editorial date and forcing myself to meet it. I haven’t looked at the manuscript since I sent it off on September 1, but will open the covers next week and see what I actually have. The title has changed several times, but seems to have settled as Thieves in the Temple. 

I already know the broad outline for the second book, and need to do some final research before making a start on that. It’s not deep research, just refreshing my thoughts on some of the Babylonian customs around marriage.

Talking of research, if you write any historical fiction, I would strongly recommend academia.edu. It’s free to sign up, although there is a paid option. Once you enter your search criteria, and download some papers, the engine sends you recommendations. 

I spent some time yesterday clearing out my in-box of recommendations. Glancing through the summaries as I downloaded the papers triggered some new ideas, and the realization that even though I’m writing about a place and time nearly three thousand years ago, humanity hasn’t changed that much in the intervening years. 

I’m still trying to work out if that’s a good or bad thing!

Like almost everyone else, we’ve been under a stay-at-home order, although that’s being eased a little as we move into May.

As someone who normally works from home, I think my biggest challenge has been, that even though some restaurants are open for delivery and take-out, I have missed the ability to get out of the house to eat in a restaurant.

On a positive note, Iast weekend was story fifty-two. One full year of writing a short story a week. I’m several hundred words into a story for this week, although with no clear idea where it’s going. That isn’t unusual, and I’ve learned not to let it worry me. I know there will be an ending, I just haven’t found it yet.

While the longer fiction is coming along, it’s not making the same progress as the short stories. I’ve thought about the reasons for that, and have some ideas to address it during May. Some of those ideas come from the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. His comments about our technological age, and the ease with which we can become distracted, definitely struck a chord with me. I’m still working through the book, but it’s worth looking at.

I’ll report back at the end of May, because I’ve only got about 25,000 words to go. Maybe by the end of May, I’ll have a finished manuscript!

As I mentioned last week, February was a bit of a mixed month. I did complete and submit my short story a week. so that’s four more in inventory. Mostly I got the stories in with some time to spare.

This past weekend though, I was definitely leveraging the time difference from Central to Pacific to make that midnight (Pacific) deadline. That was partly my own fault as I was well into the story on Thursday until I realized I was telling the story of a secondary character, but through the eyes of my viewpoint character.

Talk about draining the energy out of the story.

So on Friday morning it was back to the drawing board and redrafting just over 2,000 words so they’re from the new viewpoint, and much closer to the action. I think it worked better.

There wasn’t such good progress on the novel. That seems to have stalled a little at the moment, but I did go through what I’ve already written and tidied up the timeline. I also rethought some of the scenes and moved them around so the overall timeline is reduced by a day. Poor Jacob will be run ragged by the end 🙂

No real progress on getting more of my short story backlog up onto Amazon, Kobo, and Apple although I finally got Angels Without Faces up on the iBooks store. And wasn’t that a challenge! Sign this, acknowledge that, and approve something else. Then you have to download the iTunes Producer app, load the manuscript into Producer, and then submit to Apple.

I think there might be a market for a workbook to help folks through that process. I put it on the “Projects to think about” list and will come back to it.

March has started well, so fingers crossed it stays that way!

Well I’ve completed the first two short stories of 2020, although the first one was quite a struggle for some reason, probably because New Year was right in the middle of that week. It also triggered some thoughts on how I can write faster, and maintain quality. I’ll be working on that in the next few weeks because it’s an important part of what I want to achieve with my writing in 2020 – which is:

• Continue to write one short story a week
• Complete the Babylon historical mystery novel I mentioned last week, and three others
• Publish wide. I made a start on this by putting my short story Angels Without Faces up on Amazon and Kobo. I’m still working on iBooks!

I’ll post progress on a regular basis along with my other ramblings.