This post, entitled An Intense Young Man At An Open Mic Night, could just as easily be called The One Where My Husband Writes A Book. Or the more passive aggressive One Where My Husband Has A Book Out Before I Do And Is Now Dead To Me. Or maybe The One Where My Husband Has A Book Out Next Week But It’s Only Poetry So Pfft. Continue reading “An Intense Young Man At An Open Mic Night”
Andy Stanton is probably best known as the author of the Mr Gum series of books (technically aimed at 7-10 year olds, but I started reading them at 24), and the mastermind behind hit TV show Bag of Sticks. If you haven’t read anything by him and you’re not sure whether you’d like to, my rule of thumb is to suggest you head to your nearest book shop or library, pick up a copy of You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum!, and turn to chapter 4. If it doesn’t make you laugh, there’s probably something wrong with you.
I interviewed the man himself on Monday afternoon after a hectic weekend at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Here’s what he had to say.
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Meanwhile, the writer was determined to get to a reasonably high word count irrespective of what that meant for the quality of the story. She typed like the wind, except for the long gaps in which she was checking her phone, or making cups of tea, or yawning.
Sometimes she would go off on a tangent about how she was looking forward to having crumpets for tea when she ought to have been describing Amelia’s hat collection (which was vast, expensive and unexpected; not least because Amelia never wore hats, not even at weddings or funerals).
And when she ought to have been making subtle hints about the whereabouts of Chris’ mother, she was actually looking up forums about digital photography in the hope someone would be able to enlighten her on the best way to take a self portrait to go with one of several articles she was writing on the side.
Continue reading “Meanwhile, the writer…”
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Today being the 27th of the month, I am remarkably close to the half way point of the whole 12 books in 12 months fiasco (unless you count book 13, I suppose, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
Unfortunately this happens to be the point where progress has slowed down an embarrassing amount. I ought to be basically done with book six by now, yet I’ve only written about 10,000 words. Almost all of which is background and characterisation that I foresee myself editing down to maybe a few paragraphs in the final book. It’s the type of stuff that it makes sense to know as an author, but probably feels a bit long winded and boring to the reader. Pottermore, rather than the material a gripping plot is crafted from.
Continue reading “A Progress Report”
12 Books in 12 Months 