lifeblogging

When last we met, I was having some massive writing days, but also worrying that I was maiming my ability to function in a basic human way. I was also developing a growing addiction to 2048, the stupid tile-matching number puzzle which has managed to somehow bypass my usual instinctive avoidance of timesink phone games.

Not content with pouring hours into the Doctor Who version on my computer, I have now downloaded the actual app for my phone. It has not improved matters. But anyway, this isn’t meant to be a weekly blog where I moan about my latest procrastination discovery (although that by far one of the biggest challenges I face in my authorial life, sadly) – how’s the actual work going, Nick?

Old Father Time

As you probably know, I turned 30 this Tuesday just gone. You can read my thoughts on the actual milestone here if you’re so inclined, but in writing terms, it… had surprisingly little impact. I rarely work much on weekends anyway, so the only day of hard labour I really lost was the Tuesday itself. Got back into the novel editing with reasonable fervour by this afternoon, having completed my weekly Hobson & Choi tasks.

That’s still going, basically. I’ll probably hit the two thirds mark in a week’s time, and then we move into a slightly different phase and I’ll discuss that when it happens.

For now, though, I had a bit of chat about my novel at writing group last night, extending beyond the scene I read out at the time and out to the rest of the story. That was great fun, even though not every single comment was mega-positive and I have some stuff to think about. Helpfully, I’m still at the early stage of authorship when I’m slightly excited by anyone reading my work and expressing thoughts about it as if it’s a serious piece of story. I love every one of my Hobson & Choi reviews on Web Fiction Guide, even the not-glowing ones. (So feel free to add one. Ahem.)

Maybe one day I’ll be published, read my 1-star reviews and despair, but for now, yes please. Relatedly, someone reviewed the “Hero’s Best Friend” anthology I recently appeared in on Goodreads, and described my story as “Good story, but not a favorite”. Amazing novelty value, I don’t even give a shit about the but. I may have it framed. You can find more details of those anthologies in this post here, if that has enticed you to go buy.

Stop Touching Me, Please

So, that was the keen writery part, let’s now talk about my fuckton of recent procrastination. The big problem with 2048 is this: now I’ve become okayish at it, each game lasts about half an hour. So even though I don’t have twenty-game marathon sessions, it still eats up a chunk of time whenever I reach for my phone to have a couple of goes. I may inflict forced cold turkey on myself soon.

Oh, and I’ve decided to keep my Marvel Unlimited subscription going, because it’s an amazing service in terms of value for money, but having that amount of comics at my fingertips at all times is not good for getting other stuff done. Luckily, I can’t really use it when away from the house, so going to my usual cafe pretty much kills that, even if it has taken me a bit longer to actually get out of the house to go there lately. 2048 is on my phone, so there’s no escape.

Anyway, it’s now 11PM, so this is definitely a time when it’s okay to unwind with a few casual Marvel Comics. We seem to be thoroughly back to business as usual after the birthday. So, yes, that does mean I will stop talking about it on Twitter. I know you’ll all be relieved.

I started these WriteBlogs back in October, mostly as a way of creating imagined mass peer-pressure and encouraging me to finish my damn novel edits. Since then, they’ve gone through a range of topics, including thoughts on comics writing and moaning about my near-misses with writer’s block.

Well, this week we came full circle, as I got back into the novel edits hard, and ended up working on the very chapters I was blogging about when I first started the whole cycle. And then… well, I deleted a lot of them. This writing shit is brutal.

To be fair, a lot of this mass word genocide was in line with what I said I’d do – my new Chapter 12 is my previous Chapter 10, and as a result, a huge amount of it needed to be deleted to get it to fit its new place in sequence. I just hadn’t quite anticipated how much purging there would need to be – all of the twelfth chapter is more or less gone.

I managed to bring forward a couple of scenes from Chapter 15 (the rest of which no longer exists) to ease my burden, but the rest I wrote from scratch. And yes, this does make Chapters 13-14 a little awkward.

It’s not all grim news though – the new Chapter 10 I wrote during that last round of shuffling was excellent. Liked that a lot. Also, one particular scene in Chapter 11 might be one of my favourite things I’ve ever written in terms of comedy. I laughed until people in the cafe glared.

Yes, laughing at your own jokes is a bit lame, but they were lines I wrote five or six months ago, so basically completely new.Anyway, the point being: the editing is back on, and it’s proving brutal (more than I expected), but it is happening, which is good. I’ve had serious trouble identifying and making big changes in the past, so it’s a massive relief to see it start coming naturally.

Ow My Face

After writing from about 10AM-6PM for two days running (with a break for lunch), I was feeling pretty smug about my achievements, but also mentally dead inside. I spent the whole of Tuesday night playing this Doctor Who 2048 game – not only is it a complete waste of time, I didn’t even get beyond the Ninth Doctor.(I just played another twenty minutes after opening it up to paste the link in here, and only got to the Eighth Doctor. Dear God, I’m receding.)

Then on Wednesday, I went to writing group and lost the will to think fairly early on. Too much caffeine, then some alcohol, then a trance. There’s some adage about candles burning at both ends or snakes eating their own tail here, isn’t there?

Still: on Thursday night, I write this blog post which is clearly amazing, so there’s still hope.

Truth be told, part of me is tempted to say Fuck it! and continue just because I’m getting so much work done, but that would probably be stupid. Eventually the candle flames out or the snake finds itself eating its own teeth, and then you’re screwed.

Plus: it is my thirtieth birthday next Tuesday, and real-life people may expect me not to spend it ignoring them and typing. But I imagine you’ll hear about that on here/Twitter in the next few days, so I’ll spare you for now.

Two weeks ago, I spent the best part of seven days bashing my head against the same short story brief, before concluding that I simply didn’t have the right idea. So, last week, I went off to write other things, only to be distracted by the plumbing in our house going wrong.

This week, at last, I got my shit together. A nice man came over and rearranged our pipework (only sounds dirty) so we can have both hot water and heating at the same time. Meanwhile, I went to multiple cafes, battered the keys of my poor netbook within an inch of their lives and seem to have produced, at long last… stuff.

Splash Bang Wallop

I’d love to take sole credit for my recent breakthrough on the stuck short story, but the kick was actually provided by Alastair JR Ball, good friend and fellow writing chap. Once he made a handy suggestion about setting, the rest of it dropped into place like Tetris blocks.

And so I took myself to various cafes for the best part of 1.5 days, drank enough tea to keep five regular English people going and hammered out the first six thousand words of the probably-about-eight-thousand-word piece. If you’re curious exactly what it is, there are more hinty-details on tomorrow’s Hobson & Choi Podcast.

Suffice to say, you’ll hopefully get the chance to read it in the near future, but it is pretty cool. And funny. And sweary. And maybe at times a bit harsh, but aren’t all the good things? Just me?

Hemingway, Man

One last point, as just talking about myself typing isn’t amazing blog-fodder: I’ve been using the web-app Hemingway to edit some of my old work, during breaks from tapping out the new story. It suggests various ways to smooth out and improve text phrasing, attempts to spotlight long sentences and adverbs, etc.

Now, it isn’t flawless and I’m by no means advocating blindly implementing every change it suggests. Sometimes long sentences are long for a reason, and it also has a fun habit of marking any word ending in -ly as an adverb for destruction.

Still, Hemingway proves a useful broad tool for finding spaces where I can use a stronger, less rambling phrasing, so I’m recommending it anyway. Worth a look.

And now, I’ve got another few bits of work to run through that site, and then the remainder of this story to tap out. Fare ye well.