Author: admin

Boring title, but who cares. The manuscript is done, the whole flipping thing, and that’s three books in eight years, and a whole weight off my back.

I’m writing this during the first morning of edits (I spent yesterday evening doing the same, but today feels more official), and have already taken two weeks off. Holiday in Paris, which I could have extended, but I had a horrifying urge to get back home and get started on this new part of making sure the book is ready.

It’s been really interesting to look back on how certain people talked about this book while I was writing it, that for eight years, it looked (to them) like I was doing nothing and was ‘unable to finish even a mid-sized project’. Technically it’s not their fault for thinking like that, having no curiosity in how this thing was actually completed, but I’ve never been the kind of person to only believe something when I see it, or to only see the value in something if I can physically fucking point to it. So I’m sneakily glad to have the last laugh on that one.

I don’t really care about stuff like this, and it doesn’t drive me to get back at them, but it’s still nice to have a little quiet win that I don’t need to address – watch how they never bring that argument up again, even though they’ve been stuck on it for multiple years!

Anyway, editing at this stage is pretty freeing, and I quite like bringing the hyper-critical examiner out to the front: she says all the bitchy things, so I don’t have to. It’s just a read-through at this point, and if something does jump out at me, I don’t fix it or try to think of a better word in that moment (will leave that for another stage), but I do write ‘expand’ or ‘rephrase’, or my favourite, ‘CLUMSY’.

If bits of dialogue or phrasings do jump out at me, I’m not going to suppress that urge, I’ve just been scrawling them into the margins or above that line. Again, my reasoning is that I’ll have to deal with that issue eventually, and if I get a brainwave on the first read-through, why not make use of it?

So it might take a little longer doing this first read than most people, but as you can see from how long it’s already taken me, I’m very happy with that. What’s another week, if I can get it right?

And there you have it – I’m done with the ugly draft of Chapter 12. My next job is to turn it into normal prose that one might typically find in a book, and (I’m trying not to say ‘but’) I’m completely exhausted from various things going on in the world around me.

I have a total of 4 weeks before my work becomes (temporarily – it gets busy) five days a week again, and I’d like to be completely done with Book 3 before that shit starts.

Luckily, that will allow me to take some sort of mental break once I do properly finish, but till then, I’ve got to make do with what I’ve got to spare.

My word count is now 75.5k for this book, so I think it’ll come in at just under 85k once I’ve properly finished.

I’ve got a plan, anyway. I’m going out this afternoon, and I’ll take Chapter 12 with me to read through – then I can start making little indents in what needs expanding. Lord help me. Did I use the metaphor of the engine light flickering already, and having to ignore the clunks as the last of the petrol spits out? Well, for your appreciation of the circumstance, mentally I’m still there.

I really don’t know why I’m having such a hard time finishing this book. Really, it’s not ‘a book’: I’m onto the last 3.25 chapters of three whole books, not just one. (The entire project is sitting at 299,058 words in total as we speak.) Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

I suppose what will work in the end is getting myself into an angry state of ‘get the fucking thing out of my sight’ and will finish the damn book that way.

To be honest, I think I’ve reached my limit: I don’t have anything else to say.

In a good way, of course. I’ve managed to creatively say every possible thing I could ever want to talk about, or make some metaphor of, and the only downside I can see is that I’ve still got another 3.25 chapters left of material to write.

Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m starting from scratch from any of these remaining chapters. Chapter 9 is already at 5.7k words, and the other 3 are all at least 1k – and most importantly, they have a clear fucking plan.

To sum up my problem in entirety: if my brain was a petrol tank, I am running on the bits of grit and dead twigs at the bottom. The engine is clunking, and everything I’ve tried so far has been a pitiful attempt at solving the problem.

Will have a look through what I wrote at the end of Books 1 and 2 (I complain a lot in my diaries, whenever the hell I get round to actually writing them), and see if there’s anything I can use.

19th October 2025.

I’m so disastrously tired tonight that I’ve done the perfectly natural thing, and poured myself a coffee. I haven’t updated this website – blog, if you will – in quite a long time, but for very good reason: I have finished my first book, and my second book, and am now 3-4 chapters into Part 3.

These are all first drafts, of course, but it’s such a relief to have it all in one place. I’ve also written another poem, courtesy of how much I detest my current job, and the second half of my ‘novelette‘ is going alright – it’s a bit of a mess at the moment, and things need to be reworked and lengthened… the rest of it will take time.

Other than that, I’m trying to get back into what I really love.

Update: it’s now Thursday 22nd January, and I’m much further ahead in the novel, but it still feels like I am dragging myself through mud. I’ve written the ugly draft of Chapter 9, and in turning it all into ‘normal’ prose, have got about 10 items left to sort out. They’re not even easy items to deal with, either; each one needs dedicated thought and space to think about, and it’s all a bit of a fucking mess, if I’m honest.

Why won’t this chapter fucking end??

I suppose I should blame myself for getting into this writing thing. It’s not the easiest of things to do, but I go crazy – as I’m doing now – if I don’t get regular words out.

Beyond that, I’ll be on the home straight for once, as I’ve already printed Chapters 10 and 11 (thank you, 2022 me), and I’ve danced over a lot of the detail for the final three chapters, so it should – should – be full steam ahead at that point.

I can’t wait to see the open road on my Excel spreadsheet. Chapters to finish: 12, 13, 14. I’m in heaven just thinking about it.

Beyond that, it’s raining miserably and slowly, so I’m going to walk to the library and see if I can convince myself to finish chapter 9 today. A bribe of Pret a Manger might be in order.

Speaking of ‘work’ (you may have read my previous post), I’ve been thinking of taking time off. More specifically, quitting my job for two years and doing absolutely nothing to bring in money, my only job being to finish Parts Two and Three of this book.

You can imagine that the resounding argument from my dear family has been less than satisfactory. But I’m in a reckless, impulsive time of my life, and if it doesn’t come now, then it’ll never come. I’ve given too much to the whole idea of maturity, and doing the right thing, and I’m bored. I’m just plain bored, and my argument is that I need to do something drastic and devastating or I’ll die. I mean, I’ll die anyway, but boredom is something I simply cannot stand.

I’m sorry. I’m going to have to change the subject.

We’re watching a simply awful film, and I’m having to sit here and pretend that my eyes aren’t peeling from the quality of the writing. As it is, I can’t leave without looking like an utter snob – which I am, but that is beside the point – and so I’ll sit here for the next 15 minutes to half an hour, try to type quietly into the evening, and wish I’d never sat down at the same time they’d turned on the bloody TV.

All I can think is, ‘why?’: why bother writing this script? What was the point? Why haven’t you taken the chance to say anything new? Why have you used the same sets, the same get-up, the same plot points, characters, resolutions, dialogue, camera shots…?

It seems that I am in the minority, however, and everybody thinks it is a wonderful show. I’d better keep quiet, then, and save my thoughts for this website.

It’s a unique kind of boredom that I’m experiencing with this film (which is now thrillingly facing all kinds of technical difficulties – I’ve never been more overjoyed to see the blue screen of death).

Maybe one day I’ll finish the point I started off with, but tonight is a different kind of night altogether.

A strange thing: we actually did something at work. While I get over the shock of that nonsense, that shift in affairs, it gives me time to bemoan the fact that I’ve not done any writing at all today.

Well, that’s not really true. I got up this morning, well before the others, and had planned out the full scene block by the time we left the house. I’ve done something, at least. All that I’ll need to do is get a cup of something hot (after dinner, of course, I still haven’t eaten), sit on my own in my room – or maybe downstairs at the dining room window – and basically write the mess that will be the first translated page of my efforts from this morning.

I’m so glad that the previous chapter is done. My celebration usually involves a happy dance, a quick cup of tea, and then a successful round of printing off the official thing and getting it stapled and into my Big Blue Folder.

Big Blue Folder is getting heavy now; it’s a collection of every chapter that I’ve completed already, and it’s really strange having it all in a physical format together, rather than flung into different notebooks and scribbled down in stages amongst other turgid material, or kept away on a Word document that only I know about, that never feels like it truly exists in the real world. There, the book is theoretical; here, I can see exactly what I’ve done for the past seven years.

Onto tomorrow. Hopefully there will be a bit less work this week, but we can’t always get what we want.

I’ll just have to cram it into the evenings like usual, and hope for the fucking best.

I’m very tired, as you might – or might not – imagine. I woke up this morning and felt it was the perfect morning to be getting up at that sort of time to write, with the sun coming through the trees and the room warm enough to actually want to get out of bed.

But the tragic tale is that I had to go to work and spend time with some very annoying people instead, which is not my idea (or anyone else’s) of a pleasant outing for the day.

The good news is that I managed to read through a few bits from my previously written chapters last night, and although they have bits to work on (they will always, before you start, have bits to work on), the parts that did not need work were everything I hoped I’d managed to achieve when I first set out to start writing. Sometimes it’s nice to have proof that a project taking a long time really is worth it. I mean, I know it is, but no one else seems to, and all the other writers I know are flying past trying to cram their first draft into three months or less and chomping at the bit to ‘get onto the next one’.

I suppose it helps that there really is no ‘next one’ for me. It’s this idea, and that’s it, and that’s the only funnel for my experiences and other stuff to go into. I haven’t managed to find a single topic of interest that won’t fit into it in some way, even if it’s only by a passing remark.

I know exactly what I need to do tonight: I’ve got a night off in-between other commitments (thankfully, neither of them are to do with work), so I’ll make the best use of it at home and potentially go swimming later on tonight. If I want to, that is.

But my tasks for this evening: briefly skim this Chapter 7 and be absolutely sure that you’re happy to move on to the next chapter; move onto the next chapter and start scrawling. I want my brain to run all over the page and basically splurge, because I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now and I always feel like writing is the best filter.

I never end up writing exactly what’s going on, thank goodness, or it would get depressing and dry, but I feel that I know – maybe for the first time, even subconsciously (God-allowing) – exactly where the hell I want to go.

I’ve done most of my writing goal today. I give myself an absurdly, stupidly low number to hit, and then it’s always a bonus if and/or when I go beyond it. Mentally, I freak out if I give myself about 500 words to hit each day – I always end up panicking about whether the stuff I’ve written is actually of any use at all – so I stick to a worthy little 300 words, and then I can take as long as I need in order to get the words right.

Have never been one of those writers who just likes to write random bullshit. It gives me the heebie-jeebies doing that, and if I have to scrap what I’ve done anyway, I’d like to know that I’d put effort into it in the first place.

Not long before we leave for the end of the shift, but I’m reasonably happy (ish) with the work I’ve done today. It’s still a process of translating the details I wrote in the first draft, and I’m about a third of the way through. The good thing is that not all of it needs ‘translated’, just about seven or eight sections that will need a bit of focus—and put into the correct tense (when I’m racing through the details of a first draft, I like to write in present tense instead of past).

Not much is happening at work, for which my writing is thanking me, Jesus, and the people who’ve sent us here.

Anyway, beyond that, I went for a run yesterday and hit a PB because I thought I was going to be late for dinner.

The circus continues.

So my method yesterday sort of worked. Not really, of course, and I wrote a dismal amount while still at work, but the fact is that I actually did write last night and effectively translated the first draft of Chapter Seven from absolute bullshit into something that might resemble a story.

I’ve been reading quite a lot this week so far, and although some of it is directly related to what I’m working on, I haven’t been able to gain much from it—it feels too close to the subject matter (more like exactly the same subject matter), and my best inspiration has always been that which I can get from a distance. It’s like people – I could never directly write someone’s personality into the book, untrimmed and unchanged from real life, because it would feel like the most inartistic expression I could muster up. Borderline sacrilege to the idea of art, in fact.

Anyway, we’ve got about twenty minutes left here, sitting and doing absolutely nothing, so I’m going to use that to upload whatever I’ve written and get on with translating this chapter.

Not much else to say at present. I’m due out for another run this afternoon, and it’s already freezing, so I’ll have to work out how to cope along the way.

Luckily have the kind of job where I can sit here not doing much – in theory, it’s supposed to be good for thinking about what to do for this book, except I’m no further along and I have no idea what to do next. A lot of thought needs to go into it, and my mind is at that stage again where it’s like a cloud – a good cloud, where you know stuff is actually in there and it just needs to be brought out – but a cloud, nonetheless. I need some way of putting it into speech or making it into a mess on paper or typed up.

This is a trial to see if typing shit out this way can actually help me. I’ve finished reading one book today (which I hated), and continued another, but neither has given me any clue on what the hell to do next.

I’ve also cleaned up the deleted scenes and rearranged the scene blocks regarding where they’re actually supposed to be – but it’s not clearing anything up.