September

Hey, this is just  a quick update on how the writing is going. The word count of the first draft is now 29,202, and I still haven’t finished the second part (of five). I have added the first version of the world map now though, and  I’ve finally made the calendar, and being able to mention the dates on which events occur makes everything much easier to understand. So it’s all fair progress at the moment, not brilliant, but far from terrible.

In other news, I moved back to Lancaster today for freshers week, and am very much looking forward to it.

P.S. And for those of you who don’t know, the novel involves squirrels. So now you at least know something about it.

A Busy Summer

Hmm…blogging. It’s been a while. I’ve had a fairly busy summer; I managed to break a leg last term, and missed exams and a fair bit of coursework, so I had all of that to catch up on before I finally returned to Southport last weekend. It’s still busy now, but it’s a much more enjoyable sort of busy than coursework and revision were. This evening I’m playing ultimate for the first time since I broke my leg, and at the weekend I’ll be seeing a few friends I haven’t seen for ages, and then on Monday I’ll be heading to Oswestry for a Christian Union leadership training week, which should be good. I’m also working on a novel…squirrels again. I split this one into five parts to make it easier to write, so I can focus on one part at a time. I don’t like limiting myself to having to work on a particular chapter at a time, and without having separate parts I usually end up with a first draft full of holes that I don’t want to have to fill in, so while parts might not make sense for others, it does make writing a lot easier for me. I’m hoping to have part one of five done before I go away on Monday, and it’s nearly there now…and it’s currently at 16,748 words, a step up from the 11,000 I was expecting to have (a fifth of a small [50,000 word] novel along with a thousand word prologue). Anyway, I suppose I’d better get back to it…

Writing Eats Sleep

This was posted on my old blog, and I got a fair amount of positive feedback because of it, so I thought I’d post it again. Enjoy

October 25, 2008

I wasn’t in a sleeping mood again last night. I don’t usually sleep much…as soon as my head hits the pillow my brain goes into overdrive and I’m suddenly hit by a thousand ideas that fizz around for a couple of minutes before disappearing, so I have to write them down pretty quickly. This whole poem popped into my head at about 3am…which may explain why it’s not brilliant, but I haven’t written any poetry for years, so I’m happy with it.

Writing Eats Sleep

It’s night time,
The sky is black,
And the lack
Of sleep is starting to get to me.

I close my eyes,
To try again,
But then,
Click. On goes the light.

An idea,
Pops into my head,
I get out of bed,
And put pen to paper.

Repeat.
Writing Eats Sleep.