Ray Daley's Blog, page 57

What’s occurring?

Hello all.

No actual writing done today.

I did find my other notes I’d been looking for about a month ago for a piece I was trying to finish.

I typed those up. Quite pleased to have found them. Thought they were lost.

Wrote a new 9 Regions outline up, based on a dream I had, Jimmy Doohan had a guest cameo as Scotty.

Quite a weird dream but it made for basis of a decent idea.

I don’t mind the odd weird dream, if I remember it then they generally become stories.

The weirder ones go straight into the 9 Regions pile.

The idea pile on my computer is starting to build up now.

I’ll scan through it tomorrow, hopefully use another framework to knock out next weeks Bradbury Challenge story.

I’ve also noticed that my stories are getting longer.

This can only be a good thing when the eventual target is a novel.

More submissions!

Another story submitted to another anthology.

It’s rare people ask for reprints but that story I sent out is a blinder. In my opinion.

Fingers crossed.

If I keep submitting stuff at this rate I’ll run out of fingers to cross in about a week.

Todays writing advice

Write what you know.

I know it’s an old cherry but it’s true.

The more familiar you are with a subject or set of personalities/characters, the easier it is to create realistic sounding situations for them.

Because you understand the basic dynamic, it makes building something from it that much easier.

It doesn’t feel like work, you know it. Without thinking.

You can mentally ask “What would that type of person do/say in those circumstances? How would they react?”

The work feels more real, it flows more naturally.

You’ll find yourself writing more than you normally do because of your familiarity with the background.

Write easy, write what you know.

Use your personal experiences.

Finishing up and polishing off

Did my final work on the Korean war story I completed yesterday.

As it was mainly dialogue I went through it and made sure to indicate who was speaking each line to make it clearer. I also added some descriptions, exposition and explanation at the start to make the whole premise more obvious to the reader.

It’s now just shy of 5000 words.

Some of the polish created new characters, improved the ones that existed and made their relationships more realistic.

Quite pleased with it in general.

I’ve got an idea for a cover too so it’ll be released eventually.

Creative update

Finished my war story, 3342 words.

It didn’t feel long as I was writing it, flowed quite well. The finish worked better than I hoped, I wasn’t sure if the resolution I had in mind would pan out but it ended up falling right into my lap just when I needed it to.

Quite happy to have finished that.

The headache subsided a little after eating, enough to allow me to finish the thing.

For a war I know very little about, it wrote fairly easily.

It’s mostly dialogue, the soldiers speaking to each other.

Writing, or trying to

I started something new last night, getting the inspiration after watching an old B&W war movie. I’m working on it toady, or rather trying to because I’m struggling with quite a bad headache which isn’t helping matters in terms of being able to focus and concentrate. Important skills,both very much required when writing and creating from scratch.

I’m going to have a rest, eat my dinner and maybe try again later this afternoon.

I can’t say how much I’ve already written as I am using Notepad which provides a distraction free medium. It’s also a feature free medium so it’s a double edged sword.

TL; DR.

Am writing, have headache, about to eat, might try to eat later.

Update on the update

I do this a bit, don’t I?

Right. Dieselpunk story is submitted. Hear back by 1st Aug 2014.

Story also submitted to Every Day Fiction. Hear back in a max of 90 days, that’s June 24th by my estimate.

Fingers crossed.

Quick update & a competion link

Still waiting on details back about the dieselpunk submission.

Fellow blogger DysthymiaBree is running a short story competition for the mental health community here on WordPress, if you’re interested:

http://dysthymiabree.com/short-story-comp/

Have a look, enter if you can. The more people talking about Mental Illness, the less of a stigma it’ll be.

News before bedtime

I’ve written a dieselpunk piece I’m hopefully going to submit to an anthology, I sent them an email asking for a few more details about story requirements in terms of length. Hopefully my 2006 words is enough.

I’ll update you when I know more. Off to sleep now.

News update

New short submitted to Every Day Fiction.

Hear back in a max of 90 days.

I hope they like it.