Of a mood

Although it has been rest days for me I’ve been plagued with irritations which have hampered most of what I had planned to do. Needless to say that sudden change in good old British weather probably hasn’t helped as I had hoped to get across to the Peak District with the new puppy which hasn’t happened (I can’t even stomach the idea of a muddy dog in my car).

I can’t actually put my finger on the niggling annoyance in my addled brain but it is probably a culmination of different things. Not least of all a decision in respect of my full-time job which I have made and now have to wait and see if I have made the right choice (cryptic yes but that’s just how I am).

As for writing. I am, thankfully, nearing the end of the master re-edit of INTO THE DARK and it’s gone swimmingly so far. Nice to see some of the continuity errors I had made with some minor details. Pulling it all together now I am happy with the story.

Which brings me to the style of this one. I confessed to another author on a Facebook Page that my first novel was one that was ruled by what I thought was the right length. Researching expected word counts and that perhaps influenced my story into being a little…..padded perhaps with aspects that need not necessarily have been there. Sure I may be no more famous or established since then but I feel I have learned from this and perhaps grown in my writing style.

With the ORIGINS OF THE MAGDON series, I was once again ruled by word count but in the opposite end of the spectrum. I wanted, needed, these stories to be accessible to all levels of interest, attention and reading as I wanted them to be a story shared between parents and children mainly. I knew I had to write a succinct story that appealed to younger and older audiences but wasn;t too convoluted and distracting.

And so the feedback was positive but some people wanted more….so from too long to too short.

With INTO THE DARK I’ve simply let it evolve. I haven’t set myself a word limit or goal, I’ve just told the story as it has played out and ironically it falls around the right “expected” length of a novel for Young/New Adults…funny that isn’t it. Let your head just spill the stuff out and somewhere along the way it makes it all work out.

I say that but I haven’t released it yet so could be saying all this and in reality churned out some utter tripe that people really do say to me “why the hell have you bothered you talentless hack?” I hope that isn’t the case though!

Who sets the conventions, who is to say they are right, who am I to say they aren’t? It’s a bloody funny world all of this and I confess I have no real idea what I am doing. I quite literally make this all up as I go along and find a few rules and conventions to follow along the way.

It’s the same with the Agent search. Low and behold I don’t find my inbox filled with requests for full manuscripts. I get that. I get that I am not writing the stuff that most Agents seem to be asking for. I’ve written a story I know I will enjoy, it’s not politically charged, it’s not filled with sex or foreplay, it’s not touting LGBTQ aspects…..what it is really is an escapism story for me (sorry to say I am a less than average married father with an enjoyment for life outside of the 9 to 5). So I expect little or no response but I can’t sell my self to write something I don’t think I would connect with and as such fail to deliver on a level that would make it worthwhile for people to read.

Making me my own worst enemy and a stubborn bugger that does what he does in the hope someone, somewhere will connect and like it.

But until then I can be my own Agent, my own Publisher and my own (pitiful) Marketer.

I suppose I should get back to the last 9 chapters of full re-hash edit having got extremely soggy with the doggy!

Nice to get a rant off my chest.

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