Saturday 29th July 2017 Whereas yesterday I woke from a nightmare, this morning I woke to a revelation. The novel starts in the wrong place. I’ve been stressing over the early chapters of Black As Knight. It’s probably been the biggest challenge throughout the creation of this novel. I rewrote it a couple of years [...]
Wednesday 12th July 2017 For some reason I’ve been consumed by note taking today. And not taking notes but the process of taking notes. I’m not sure if this is driven by a need to be more organised after the disruption of the last week or not but I realised that there must be a [...]
Tuesday 4th July 2017 I’ve been doing some delicate editing today. The first couple of chapters are the real challenge in this edit. I have to make some subtle changes to blow the protagonist’s agency through the roof. It basically means that his plans have to be a little more solid. Of course, this means [...]
Monday 26th June 2017 Trusting your gut is a very scary thing, especially when the stakes are raised. I’ve gone through a few more pages today editing Black as Knight and I think I’ve found an area where my agent and I slightly diverge. For the most part, removing clauses and redundant sentences doesn’t bother [...]
Thursday 22nd June 2017 Let me preface this by saying that there are lots of ways to write a book, not only in the actual writing but in the planning and plotting as well. If you look at this and think “I don’t work like that” it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. In fact, [...]
Tuesday 6th May 2017 I’ve been editing in an entirely new way today. Usually, when I have a major edit to do, I’ll start at the beginning and work my way towards the end. I like working that way as it gives me somewhat of a sense of security. It means that I can check [...]
Thursday 1st June 2017 Today was the first day resembling a return to normality. I woke up in my own bed and returned to the day job. Of course, now that Chasepalooza is over, I have a mountain of things to do – from the mundane such as unpacking all my gear and dealing with [...]
Friday 28th April 2017 As you know, I like to write each edition of The Climb at the end of the day and then edit the next day. In the interests of full disclosure, this one was written at the start of the next day (for reasons you’ll find out). My current schedule is leaving [...]
Friday 24th March 2017 Today was a day of doubt and a lesson in patience. The day job was a bit busy today. I seem to have run out of youtube videos from the people I follow, and so the day seemed to drag. I then had to go grocery shopping, cook dinner and get [...]
Sunday 12th March 2017 I had originally planned that issue 50 of The Climb would be my manifesto issue, where I would state my objectives and aims as a writer. But then I realised that my blog post on The Year of the Offensive was just that. And so I was stuck for what to [...]
