Because I'm trying to do some editing at the moment, naturally I would prefer to be doing almost anything else. I found myself wielding a duster for the first time for months (maybe even years) earlier today, and I've just sent out a summary of actions from a meeting in record time, which will probably …
Goodbye to July
I am fairly happy to say goodbye to July. Due to circumstances beyond my control I've spent more of the month in the house than expected, which has translated into some extra writing, but only enough to exceed my Camp NaNoWriMo goal by about 10,000 words. The goal was ridiculously small to start with as …
Muddling Through
The River Ness in Inverness As mentioned in my New Year post, I've been focussing on the completion of my two unfinished novels, and I'm happy to say I've actually got to the end of both of them, more or less. Because 'The Elusive Widow' is longer and therefore will probably be harder to edit, …
Hope Triumphs over Experience, as often happens
I'm happy to announce that yesterday I created a new writing plan for 2022, despite having failed in all previous attempts to keep to one. I think there's slightly more hope with this one as I added a new element, which was that as well as turning over the page and starting again, something I'm …
Continue reading "Hope Triumphs over Experience, as often happens"
Summer Update
This seems like a good time for an update on my writing projects, as, after quite a lot of months of writing about 1,000 words every morning, I am about to have a short break to go away for the weekend on a train (actually 8 separate trains in all since my journey from Scotland …
Season’s greetings
I would like to wish everyone reading this the best Christmas and New Year season they can have under the circumstances. Apologies for not being more whole-hearted about it. It doesn't mean my wishes are less sincere, just that I know it's already been a difficult year for many people and at the time of …
Here we go again…
I see it's some time since I wrote a new post here. In the months following the previous post I've retired from my part-time day job as a database manager, published the 21st of the Pitkirtly Mysteries and taken part in a mad project to write 14 screenplays in 14 days. Fortunately all these things …
Reaching 50,000
Thanks to NaNoWriMo, in which the target is set to 50,000 for everyone, getting to 50,000 words in a novel always feels like almost the end. Actually 50,000 words or even 60,000, which most of my mystery novels conclude at, is fairly short for a novel these days. My writing session this morning has just …
Not the Holiday Season
I include this classic picture of Venice, taken by me on a visit there with my mother in about 1972, just as a random example of the kind of place I won't be going to this year, or for the foreseeable future. I still have a plan in my head for a trip down the …
36,000 words and counting
My first piece of news and maybe the most important to some readers, is that I'm making very good progress with my latest Pitkirtly novel ('As Yet Untitled' - I doubt if that will be the final title by the way, although I suppose it's an option but maybe a bit too literary!). I've reached …