When I am feeling a little down, I can’t be bothered to write entries on this blog thing, therefore I guess you can guage my manic mood swings by the quality and length of the material submitted here. If its a good day, there’ll be loads of text; if there’s a bad day, there’s nothing. Or it could be that nothing of any significance has happened.
Well not a lot has happened lately. I’ve just been plugging away with this book thing. I got to chapter ten and now I have over 30,000 words in the bag. Now writing a novel is a lot like growing up. At the beginning, you are full of excitement and energy and ideas and nothing can hold you back – that’s like being a toddler again. When you get to the halfway stage, you have a crisis, you wonder if it’s all been for naught and whether you can carry on – that’s middle age. And when you get towards the end, you just want it to be over, you beg for swift resolution. That’s lying half-dead in a nursing home somewhere.
I’m at the halfway stage and so I am full of doubt and criticism over what I’ve written. Is it any good? Is it a decent story? Will people want to read it? Will a publisher or an agent want to pick it up? Am I writing this for nothing? Why couldn’t I have a practical career that actually earns us serious cash, rather than being a complete and utter parasite who wastes his time with all of this nonsense?
Well I am 10 chapters in and committed to the project by 30,000 words, so I’ve got to continue. I am enjoying telling the story, but no-one else other than the Missus gets to read it, so I don’t have much feedback. When I was working, I used to hand out manuscripts willy-nilly for people to read over the weekend and the feedback was generally good, so this spurred you on. Now I feel adrift in a sea of troubles. It’s at moments like this I wish I had the support network that most other people have, but I don’t, so deal with it.
The thing is, I just want to be vindicated. I just want to be able to produce something that gets picked up and then I can turn around to people and say: “Look I was born to do this afterall.” I mean, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do other than put words together. The problem with that is that I’m turning my back on my only revenue stream (freelance writing) to pursue this. I’m being awfully selfish, but I feel I have to do it. I feel compelled. Oh well, the worst thing that can happen is that The Missus finally has enough of being married to completely useless bum and ups and leaves. Then the Embankment and that cardboard box beckons…I wonder how Alex the Wonderdog will adjust to sleeping under the stars?
Anyway, it’s chapter 10 and I’ve taken the main narrative thread away from Vince Pearl, the ghost, and introduced the reader to the heavy metal band that going to be using his lyrics. Yes, the lead singer Daniel De’Ath is in communion with a spirit and has a hard time convincing his band that the gimmick of putting out an album of dead men’s songs will work. “Well everyone likes Alice Cooper and Manson,” reasons Guy the drummer and so they agree to work on the lyrics for their difficult third album.
Has that got you interested? Nope…ah well, I give up.
Meanwhile, my other novel, my “magnum opus”, my serious novel, the one that is my ultimate expression of characterisation, London Voices (though that title will change), is languishing at a similar stage of development. It’s the halfway mark and I’ve got to pull together a lot of material for that. The problem with that story is that it isn’t a story at all, just a thinly connected series of character vignettes, told in first person.
You would tell me if I am wasting my time, wouldn’t you?

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