Search

12 Books in 12 Months

writing books and blogging about it

Open Search
Tag

Edinburgh

How to Focus on One Thing

The thing about writing a book every month for a year is, it’s not very focused.

I mean, obviously you have to focus on getting words out there.  But because you’ve got this thirty-day window to get the story down NOW NOW NOW, you spend the whole time splurging out bits and pieces of ideas at a rate of knots without ever getting the time to really flesh them out properly.  Everything exists in potentia and parts that aren’t working yet can be left for much later, after further thought and research will surely have occurred.

All of this is really exhilarating – but then you get to the end of the project and realize now you have to go back and start addressing some of those flaws.  Continue reading “How to Focus on One Thing” →

9

Great King Street

I was going through half finished word documents from last year (there are a fair few with beginnings of characters and ideas started then abandoned) and found this.  It’s a poem I wrote for my brother in December which I considered making into a picture book before I got into the falcon idea.  Maybe I’ll get it done this year, though.  In fact, maybe I’ll do a collection of story-poems based on Edinburgh streets and illustrate the whole thing… if you think that idea has legs, please leave a comment!

The background to this one is that my brother and I were crossing Great King Street in Edinburgh and both slipped on a wee patch of black ice.  However, the temperature was a balmy 6 or 7 degrees and there was no ice or snow or anything anywhere else – so naturally we got suspicious.  Why was that bit icy, when everywhere else was fine?  Clearly the answer was magic.

Continue reading “Great King Street” →

2

28 Drawings Later – Day 28

And so it is the 28th of February, which means the end of 28 Drawings Later for this year (the clue is in the name, people).  What with one thing and another the past few days have been really quite annoying (crisis of confidence during book five editing and Ryanair are the main culprits, here) but it has genuinely cheered me up to look at the photo gallery of other people’s 28 drawings on the facebook page.  I particularly enjoyed the dude who just posted about twenty pictures of Pokemon in one go – what a legend.

My last piece is a digital one, a flyer idea for the show.  I drew it freehand in the sense that I drew it straight into PhotoShop using my super cool graphics tablet… So it’s not exactly cheating.  It’s pretty purple, though.

Day 28 - Flyer
0

12 Books in 12 Months: A Review

In November 2010 I completed National Novel Writing Month, a challenge where you have to write 50,000 words of a novel before midnight on November 30th.  From this adventure, an idea was born.

The received wisdom is that once the first draft of a novel is written, you’re supposed to leave it alone for at least three months before returning to edit – preferably longer.  Coming back to it with fresh eyes means you’re more likely to be ruthless about cutting stuff that doesn’t work.  But what do you do in the meantime?  For me, the answer was write more.  Essentially, NaNoWriMo created a monster.

In 2011, I set out to write the first draft of a novel every month of the year.  I gave each month a genre, and off I went.  It was hard going, and I only reached the hallowed 50, 000 words twice throughout the year.  But I don’t regard that as total failure, more as a lesson in what is physically possible.

Whenever I was tempted to beat myself up about it, I went back to the fact I was working four days a week as an office temp throughout the year, as well as producing monthly columns for The Broughton Spurtle and Ten Tracks, and other articles for Mslexia Magazine, IdeasTap, The Guardian and STV as I went along.  I may not have produced 50k fiction every month, but I think I probably did reach 50k across all my writing.  I blogged about this in June to serve as a constant reminder.

But what was the final word count?  Drumroll, please….

Continue reading “12 Books in 12 Months: A Review” →

9

End of Year Review: The Plots

My festive stay in Perthshire sans graphics tablet has been prolonged, so the comic isn’t finished.  However, it’s a year to the day since I registered the 12 books in 12 months domain name, so it seems like a good time to reflect on how it’s gone.

With that in mind, American novelist Alison Walkley came across 12 books in November, and asked if there was a post explaining the plots of each book.

There is now.

Continue reading “End of Year Review: The Plots” →

2

Merry Winterval

Happy Festive Season to you, dear readers, from me and this weird sideways faced owl I found at the German market in Edinburgh.

I was hoping to have a PDF of the falcon comic for you to download as a present on Sunday but alas, time got away from me and I’m not going to manage it before embarking upon a round trip of Ayrshire and Perthshire in about an hour.

You can look forward to that next week sometime, but for now why not see if you can make your face go sideways too? It’s hours of fun.  This is my one:

Have a lovely weekend.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑