Tag: process

Spotty raptors: not a moment’s peace

ImaginariumOne Comment

It’s fledgling time for the spotty raptors. “Oh hey wow. One of four, eh? Must be tough.” “Dude, you have no idea. It’s impossible to get any peace. It’s all ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. I can’t even have a bath without one of the others wanting to get in too. Just five minutes, you know? That’s all. That’s all I want. Just five minutes. Or two. I’d settle for two. Or even one. Hell. Yeah. Let’s say one. One damn minute of peace. To chill, have a drink. Get some water up under the feathers. …

Turning the page – 2016 writing goals

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Towards the end of January last year, I posted a note of my writing goals for the year. I declined to review the year that had just been because it had been a particularly difficult one. I’m not going to dwell on 2015, either, because I want to keep my focus firmly forwards. Still, there’s no point setting targets unless you review how close you came to meeting them. How did I do? I didn’t manage having something out to market at all times. Not quite. The process of moving from draft to fully polished piece is still taking longer …

Hypergraphia — bleeding inky thought onto paper

ProcessOne Comment

I have no fixed process for writing. Stories come the way they come. Sometimes that means a single scene from which I have to uncover the rest of the story like an archaeologist digging up a pot or an ancient skeleton; other times it means sitting down with a pen and paper as soon as I’ve dragged myself out of bed, scribbling furiously while someone tries to ask me what I want for breakfast and whether I’ll be making coffee any time soon. I keep what is probably some kind of commonplace. In fact, I keep several, and carry all …

More word fuel: Bread. Nommy, nommy, home-made bread.

RandomLeave a comment

What better accompaniment to freshly brewed coffee than soft, delicious, home-baked bread? We make all our own bread. It started as an experiment, because I was having trouble with wheat. Marko read somewhere that the commercial method of bread production, the Chorleywood Bread Process, can produce bread that some people find problematic, because it is so fast the yeasts don’t have time to break down the gluten properly. This might or might not be true in my case, but my experience of home made bread has been a positive one, and I don’t enjoy commercial bread any more. It might …

Chemex brewing for the caffeinated caterpillar

RandomOne Comment

It’s a common generalisation that writers are fuelled by coffee. (I know of one or two who reserve the coffee for the editing part, but it remains part of their process.) I consider myself one of the unfortunates who was born with a less than optimal quantity of caffeine naturally present in the bloodstream, thus being obliged to consume more merely in order to obtain some semblance of normal function. I drink a lot of it, and therefore am particular about it. My beans are fresh ground at home in a burr mill grinder approaching its fourteenth birthday, and every …

When the time comes, move with the seasons

ProcessOne Comment

It’s a new year already! I can hardly believe how long it has been since I last updated. Last time I posted anything here the weather was still relatively warm and we’d just had a glorious weekend sea-kayaking off the Banffshire coast. Today the snow is falling, there’s a thick layer of ice outside and we’ve just finished taking another wood delivery. Keil’s Den at Christmas I’ve been submerged in a number of projects (and life), deep down past where blue turns to black, and it has been impossible to come up for air. At the end of a year …

When short stories aren’t

Fiction / ProcessLeave a comment

Although I’ve been putting words on paper since I could hold a pen (I shall dig out some of my earliest journals sometime), I have written purely for myself, not with a view to submitting to market. I started doing that only recently, and I’m still finding out where my strengths and weaknesses lie when writing for others. Some of them are obvious, such as the struggle I face balancing too much exposition with confusing prose, when part of what I want to do is conjure ambiguous worlds where nothing is definite. My crit groups are invaluable for dealing with …

A triathlete’s guide to dealing with rejection

Process2 Comments

I’ve been submitting a lot more this year, which inevitably means handling an increased number of rejections. Rejection is never fun, but it’s part and parcel of writing life. There was a time, back in the dim and distant neon glow of the past, when I believed my first story sale would be some kind of watershed. It would mean I’d learned how to write and everything flowing from my pen from that moment on would be finest prose, to be snapped up by eager publishers. I would dance around in an ecstatic haze surrounded by fluffy unicorns, and I’d …