Ray Daley's Blog, page 80

Just finished

The Grandfather Army.

I’d started it several months ago then stopped after writing the inital idea down.

Over the last week or so I’ve watched a couple of old war films but after watching “The Way Ahead” (starring David Niven), I finally got around to finishing it today.  It’s the 3rd title I’ve published in less than a week and the 4th story I’ve finished including the flash piece I wrote as an early birthday gift for EJ.

Smashwords — The Grandfather Army — A book by Ray Daley.

No plans to do anything for at least a few days now.

Working on….

A piece about reality tv that I started a while ago.  I’m working under new meds that hurt, a headache, the right eye giving me a ton of gyp in general and a bit of a creative drought as far as finishing this piece and writing new stuff goes.

 

I have to go and see my employment advisor tomorrow, hopefully he’ll be understanding about my health and general state of well-being.  I’ve got to do the new meds until the end of the month, hopefuly things will get better as far as the pain I am in is concerned.

On a totally unrelated note……

I’ve written 2 short flash pieces today or rather, this afternoon and this evening.
I also found a flash short I was convinced I’d either lost or not typed up at all.  And I parted out a couple of pieces.  So I have 8 things all done ready to go towards the start of a new (third) anthology.

You have to write the garbage!

Not everything you write is going to be any good.  In fact a large percentage of any writers output is going to be garbage.  Not good.  Crappy. Awful.  Boring.  Dull.  Uninspired.

But now and then you are going to hit creative gold, but to reach it you have to mine through level after level of detritus.

What I’m currently up to

Not a great deal, to be honest.

 

I wrote a piece just under 600 words today which I submitted to the 365 Tomorrows flash story site to see if they would print it (online).  It’s only the second time I’ve tried submitting to any sites.  The first was a rejection.

 

I’ve also got a story in a competition @Goodreads about witches that was a complete pig to finish as it had to be over 1500 words, a target I really struggled to hit.

Inversely the 600 word limit was hard to stick to for 365 Tomorrows & required a lot of tweaking to bring it in under the maximum.

 

I think it’s better just to write for yourself and have no limits set out, just write as much or as little as you feel works to tell the story that was in your head.  I’m still working on “The Time On The Island” which I started because I liked the idea but even when I started it I had no real idea where it was going or why.  I do have a rough idea on an ending, it’s a matter of reaching it though.

 

I would like to try and finish “The Night Bus” and “Panic Over Metropolis” before the end of the year if that’s at all possible.  I do know where both of them are going, Night Bus is literally almost finished.  I’m not exactly sure why I keep pulling away from writing the final parts, they are set in stone in my head and I know how to do them.  It’s just doing them.

“Panic Over Metropolis” requires more development, I have to work out a sequence of crimes that get worse and worse culminating in the ending I pitched when I came up with the original idea.

 

I would like to start getting all my handwritten notes for all my development ideas typed up so they are ready to go when I get time to work on each one.  Lots to do, it’s finding the motivation.

 

My last 3 ebooks are all finished for the rest of this years monthly publishing deadlines.

RIP Harry Harrison

Harry and his writing influenced me when I was quite young, I discovered The Stainless Steel Rat roughly around the age of 10.  Jim was a rebel, something a young boy could look at and think “Wow, he is so bad but so cool!”.

Later in life I also discovered the Bill series which were a lot funnier.

Harry was best known for writing “Make Room, Make Room” which people might know better as Soylent Green.

It’s very sad that Harry never lived to see a Stainless Steel Rat movie but now I hope it happens more than ever.

 

Rest in peace Harry, your stories will stay with us forever.

A Stainless Steel rat runs free in space forever.

Abandoned before writing

Sometimes I write stuff and scrap it.

Some of those things are written purely as a catharsis, to get them out of my system for the better.

Other times I have ideas and abandon them before ever committing pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Today I had such an idea.

Basically it was a short about the first time travel journey and those in the lab where it was made possible are arguing about where in history the first trip will be made to.

Many locations are suggested and rejected, The Marie Celeste, watching Titanic sink, finding out who really killed Kennedy. All are shot down, eventually the man who made time travel possible says he has a must do location, somewhere and something he MUST do.

When asked where he says he must go to the Hanna Barbera animation studios to prevent the creation of Scrappy Doo.

Even when I was pitching it to my brother earlier that internal voice in my head was telling me “This sounds shyte, don’t do it.”

So I didn’t.

EDIT:-

I want to be honest.  I didn’t write this story because I was too lazy to look-up when Scrappy Doo was invented. Decided to let honesty win out.