Stepping Forward into Hell

This weekend, possibly because it was a long one and I wasn't getting drunk in commemoration of St Patrick, I put together a few different things for the coming months of my writing life. It was a fun weekend for me because of that. (Hey, look at that - I enjoy productivity!)

Aside from writing a ton from my topic cards, I put together a cover for a book and planned another, Stepping Forward and the sequel to Balor Reborn respectively.

You might have noticed that Stepping Forward stopped being available for free last year. This was in preparation for the more serious aspect of my writing career; I didn't want to just share my writing for fun, as I had done when I initially made Stepping Forward available. I'm making publishing my books a business, as it should be.

However, I loved Stepping Forward too much to just let it disappear forever. It will be coming back, edited and revised and with a new cover. I had plans for this cover late last year, but I didn't follow through with them until this weekend past. I'm not a graphic designer, but I enjoy putting together covers. Thankfully I receive some feedback from people, so I don't end up with the first thing that comes to mind. As a result, I've ended up with the cover below for Stepping Forward. I'll have to have a look at the manuscript again to determine how much I need to rewrite to improve the book. After that, I'll have a (re)release date for Stepping Forward.

As for the sequel to Balor Reborn, it's finally planned! Entitled The Hounds of Hell, it takes us out to the West of Ireland to the Murray household, where the neighbourhood dogs are running wild and a strange sickness has fallen over the locals. I'll be planning the sequel before I start writing it, but with my track record in mind it shouldn't take long to actually write the book.

That sounds like bragging. It's not. (Okay, it's not just bragging.)

But with that in mind, it should be made clear that once I'm free of college and seminars and exams, I'll be able to crank out the rest of this series within the space of a few months. If I plan the remaining books before the end of my exams, I'll probably be able to write the rest of them by September.

And by saying that, I've probably jinxed it.

I suppose I should make it clear that I am not just working on the Modern Irish Myth books. I've got a couple of big projects for the summer, which you'll hear more about soon. I can confirm that they are not novels, though that doesn't mean I don't have novels to work on (the sequels to my two favourite NaNoWriMo books - Meet Sam and Bliss, for a start!). Again, both of these need to be planned completely before I start writing them.

But yes... I'm planning my future writing in a major way, with publication in mind. This is a business, after all, and I'd be made to ignore that fact.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

I've been going through a rather reflective period of my life, of late. Okay, so I actually mean for the last six months or so, but who's counting? (Yes, I am... it's actually more than six months.) It's had me look at things in a different way, both friendships and this thing I call my writing career.

Way back in July, I got bored. I started to write a novel called Bliss (Have I mentioned that before?) as part of Camp NaNoWriMo. About half-way through the month, I stopped writing. I figured it wasn't worth it. I mean, I loved the book, but part of me just didn't see the point in trying to write it. To put it bluntly, that part of me considered giving up writing altogether.

I finally got my head on straight towards the end of the month, and in defiance to that niggling doubt ten days earlier, I started to write Bliss again, picking up where I left off. Four days later, I finished the required fifty thousand words for the month. More than half of that was written in the four days.

When I realised I could write pretty quickly and that, yes, things were worth pursuing, my head started going all over the place. I immediately set up the wordpress.com account that would host the foundations of my website.  Over the following month and a half, I got to work on articles, poems and a short story to put on the website. I enquired about newsletters and hosting and all the fun stuff that make websites fun, but they had to be free for the public (i.e. the people looking at the site) and affordable for me to justify the expense.

However, it was still only the start of August when a link to an article was posted on Twitter. I read the article, thought 'That was fun', then noticed two words down the bottom of the page: Writers wanted. I tweeted the writer of the article, he told me about the site - turns out he's the editor - and later that day, after my exceptionally nerdy cover letter, I had a job at The Phantom Zone. Go figure. In three days, I had finished an impossible fifty thousand words, begun work on my website and had my first ever writing job.

I thought, life just got pretty strange. And continued on as well as I could.

I wrote a play. Between getting the writing job and writing a few articles for it, and a month into college, I had gotten the whole play written and edited, which was no simple task considering what it's about (you know, depression, suicide... the usual stuff a debut play should be about!). That should have been enough for me, to have written my very first play. But no. I handed it in to someone wanting to direct it.

It's going on stage in a couple of months. What? I mean, what?! That made October pretty strange.

Of course, the fun was only really beginning. I edited a novella I wrote in the summer of 2010, Stepping Forward, and put up a sample download on my website. That same website, with the download, went live on September 11th 2011. The date was significant for the release only because of when I would be going back to the college (i.e. the 12th!). Go forward three months, and Stepping Forward was available in its entirety for download on Smashwords. During that week, I was also interviewed about the book.

In November (yes, I'm going back and forth, but things don't just happen overnight in my life, most of the time!), having gotten back from Taizé in France, I decided I would give NaNoWriMo an attempt. I didn't have a full month, I had a lot of work to do for college, and I had an unfinished manuscript. I resolved to finish Bliss. Thirty thousand words later, the first draft was done.

Come up to January, and I'm teaching. Now, part of this is to write reflective statements, but I don't really care very much for them. The teaching part was significant, though. I didn't think I would be able to do it. I thought the syllabus was much too complicated for me, but when I went into the class and kids began to learn things - and I mean, they were remembering dates and names for Judaism and the consequences of the Schism and taking a huge interest in Islam and all that other fun stuff - I really started to believe in myself as a teacher.

Of course, I did say this post was also about friends. So, significantly, I spent more time talking to friends in college. I have an awful habit of vanishing on people in college, I should add, so I was glad to be able to talk to people properly. Not only that, but taking part in Drama again meant I made yet more friends (the Drama Society has a way of doing that!). Add in the Writers' Soc and my inherent boredom in the morning, and through one mature student in first year I met over half a dozen others.

There's something to be said about mature students. Generally, they don't do clubs and socs. Generally, there are a few who just barely hit the over 23 mark and a lot more who are in their forties. These ones are mostly in their twenties. (Immediately less terrifying, because none of them are old enough to be my mother!) Since they didn't take part in any of the clubs or socs I did, I only really got to know them through proper human interaction. Mostly this was while blocking the smoke from a couple of cigarettes with a cup of tea (what can I say, I favour conversation over health - I just hate the taste of smoke!), but it meant I got to know some people who had a lot of real life experience (which you can only get after leaving school, unfortunately) and who made the decision to come back to college.

What this meant for my social life - which largely doesn't include a nightlife, because of the exhaustion of trying to keep up with third year and everything else I do, while having parents call me to come home for dinner - was that I had about a dozen new people in my life who were all that little bit quirky. (I have a theory that unless you're one of the ladz (yes, with a 'z') or you're a girl who loves shopping and WKD, you need to be a little bit quirky to survive my college. I'm more than a little bit quirky, but that's aside the point.

Now, remember that boredom I mentioned? The boredom back in July? Well, it was because I'd lost contact with a friend. (Boredom was the preferred mood, trust me.) Well, that same friend called me recently (okay, at four in the morning, and then again a couple of days later at twenty to six in the morning) and it's made me pause and think about life (hence this post.) During the first call, he had been watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you're seen the film, you know the iconic line:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Consider me looking around. I can't complain about life. Sure, there's always going to be something that could go wrong, but I've gotten to a point where I can deal with that sort of stuff, where it doesn't have to put everything on hold. (The teaching puts everything on hold, but that's expected when it's worth half my degree...) I'm happy, I've released a book, my play is going on stage, I have a writing job and my own website, and I have a whole load of fantastic friends to give me a reason to do it all, so I can finally show them and myself that I can do this.

Ferris Bueller, you're my hero.

Smile

When you download Stepping Forward, it puts a smile on my face. This doesn't seem like very much, but imagine what a smile can do.

That smile on my face will be passed on to someone else. Maybe the girl at the shop having a hard time today because she's stuck there while other people come and go as they please. She sees my smile, nothing about it to say anything but 'I'm happy', and it puts a smile on her face. I leave, the smile stays there.

An old man walks up to pay for his bread and his milk. He sees her smile and decides to pick up a chocolate bar for the grandson he has coming over. He smiles as he walks out of the shop, goes home and waits for his daughter to arrive with his grandson. He smiles when he sees them, hands over the chocolate bar with a childish grin on his face and watches as mother and son start to smile.

She brings her son to the park, where he shares his chocolate bar with other children there. They walk back to their mothers smiling, all of them filled with sugar, and four couples of mothers and children walk off to run their errands.

In every shop, the children are happy and smiling and the mothers are happy for seeing them that way. Everyone smiles: there's nothing like a smiling child to make people happy. The innocence of it, and the excitement at being out and about, rubs off on the shopkeepers.

They continue serving customers long after the children have been brought away, passing along the smile to every person they meet. When they go on a lunch break, they go back to that first shop, pass on the smile again, and make sure that someone's day is a little bit better.

It all starts with one little thing: downloading my ebook for free. And remember, when you go out today, to smile.

Life and the World to Come

Way back in July, I made a few decisions that would, inevitably, change the way I lived my life. Almost five months have passed since I made the choice to do a massive writing challenge to finish Bliss's Camp NaNo 50K. That, in itself, wasn't massively life-changing, except that it made me realise how much I could do if I stopped messing about, and if I put aside whatever was happening in my life that might distract me from my work.

In that same week, I made the decision to set up a website - which I worked on from then until the middle of September, when I launched the site. That involved a lot of planning, of course, and a lot of mulling over what would eventually end up on my site on Day 1. Over the next month and a half, I edited Stepping Forward, fixing up a novella I was already pretty happy with to give away for free.

That's been the first big change in my life: I now have a book out in the public domain.

The website has, since, been host to a number of articles, poems and short stories. While these haven't exactly changed my life, they have gotten me thinking about the different ways I live my life, and the way in which I write. I also decided to use the website to play host to a couple of projects in the New Year, one of which is an X-Men story I've been planning for some time. (I've checked, and given the fact that Marvel pick up writers and stories from self-published works - and that's the only way they will now consider someone new - I am perfectly within my rights to release this story as I see fit.) That one doesn't have any immediate effects on my life, though it will at least encourage me to stick to creative deadlines.

The other project is an adaptations ezine, which will help me (a) hone my critical writing and (b) review books, films and the adaptation process. Again, no immediate effect, but it will involve, once again, sticking to deadlines.

Aside from my website, I also decided to apply for a writing position at The Phantom Zone. While the rush of college work has stopped me writing for the site in some time, I still have this job. More than that, I still have my first ever writing job. It was something for me to be proud of.

In the two months that followed, I wrote and edited a play, The Rest is Silence. This is where things took another big turn: as a result of this play, I'm going to have something performed on-stage. More than that, it will, hopefully, raise some money for a worthwhile cause.

At the same time, I've set up an ezine in college, which has gotten someone else writing. He's a good friend of mine, and he's decided to put his quirkiness to good use. The immediate benefit for me? I can have a good laugh reading his blog when I'm stressed; he has all of these really funny observations and stories that aren't as noticeable in a group of ten (yes, there are ten of us... we're a bit of a mob.) It's also fun to be able to talk about writing with someone who's only just started to think of it as having potential to be more than a hobby.

The driving force behind a lot of this work was an old friend of mine. Whether I was trying to make him proud or merely using that as an excuse to make myself do something with my life, I mustered up the courage to finally put my name out there. As I said in my dedication in Stepping Forward, he taught me there's more to life than just existing. No matter what happens between us, I will always remember that I was too scared to do any of this on my own. Having a reason to get going has made the past few months some of the best of my life.

That's the immediate effect of knowing him; after so many years writing, and so many years living the same mundane life, I ceased to just exist. As a result of that friendship, I started to live.

Stepping Forward and Smashing Words

It's the release day for Stepping Forward (as if you didn't know, with the amount of times I've mentioned it), and I can officially report back that I love the e-publishing site I'm working with. Smashwords.com is definitely a recommended site: easy to use, brilliant guide and, best of all, human workers.

For their Premium Catalog (is that how Americans spell "catalogue"?), an author needs to have everything perfect. Everything. A computer could do a quick scan of a document to make sure it's correct, but there's only one way to guarantee it: there's a whole team of people hired to check that the books sent for inclusion in the catalog are formatted correctly.

A fun fact from Smashwords... they have 80,000 books on the site and around 60,000 of them are in the Premium Catalog. 60,000! That's how many books people have had to look through since they set up for business in March 2009. Yes, 2009. They're fairly young and they've already had 60,000 books put through for examination.

Wow. Just wow.

And the best part of all of this? They write a little note saying what needs to be changed and end it with "thanks". Thanks! Not "thank you" or some robotic, impersonal way of expressing gratitude, but a very simple and human "thanks". Love it!

Yes, this whole post about how much I love the service at Smashwords. I suppose it helps to mention where you can get the book! It can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114692

Even better, it can be read on your computer or on your e-reader (I believe there are file formats suitable for all the major ones!). I hope you like the book, and I look forward to hearing what you think of it!

Free Book Out Tomorrow!

We're literally hours away from Stepping Forward going live on the Internet. Hours. I plan on staying up to sort out getting it available as early as possible on December 15th (local time, of course...). The best part, of course, is that the book is free to download. This has a number of advantages:

1. It means that you, the reader, do not have to pay to read a longer work of fiction that I have written.
2. It means that there is literally no point in anyone pirating this e-book: all someone has to do is go to the Smashwords page and download themselves in whatever format they want.
3. And yes, I did say in whatever format. This is keeping in mind the available formats from Smashwords, but what it boils down to is that most, if not all, e-readers will be able to support the file.

One thing people haven't asked me is why I'm releasing the book for free. For a start, it helps me get my name out there. I plan on editing Meet Sam a lot over the next few weeks to get it ready for submission to a publisher, and this will be something I hope people can enjoy in the meantime.

There's also the fact that I've wanted to give a Christmas present out for a very long time: this is that present. Free for me and free for you. Simple.

I enjoyed writing the book, and the few people who have read it have enjoyed it, so with any luck it will appeal to the wider audience of the whole of the Internet. (I jest, of course...).

And why Smashwords? Aside from hearing a lot of good things about them, I wanted to get the book away from the little corner on the Internet I call my website. While I love my website, and while I loved the idea of having the free chapters there to download, it wasn't practical. While the server would have been able to deal with the traffic, I had no way of knowing how many people were actually downloading the book. Smashwords should fix that problem, while also putting the book in the market.

Mostly, though, I just want to have fun with this, and I want to have a book available for people to read. So many people in college have heard me say I'm a writer and aside from the website, there's nothing there for them to really base that on.

I do have a request, however: I want people to read this book. I want honest feedback on the book. What did people like? What did they not like? Would they recommend it to a friend? Is there a glaringly obvious typing error I missed in my edits? (That one's a joke... I've done everything I can to make this as perfect as possible in terms of spelling and grammar!) Mostly, I want to know if people enjoyed the book. Reading should be fun.

Remember, though, that this isn't the last book I'll be releasing. I have a project in mind that I have told people on various social networking sites, and I aim to publish things to do with that in the same way, while aiming towards the traditional publishing route with other books. I don't believe authors should restrict themselves to one or the other, especially not today.

Readers who still buy paper books should be given the option to read something extra by an author if they really want to. At the same time, readers who have only read the e-books might be encouraged to go for a paper book if they liked the author enough. This isn't just me I'm talking about. This is how I believe the publishing industry might survive in an age when e-books are getting stronger. Readers need more options, but not authors shouldn't be restricted to one market or the other in order to give a reader these options.

With that said, this is my first step into the publishing world. This is the first, but not the last, free book I publish. I can't say for sure what's coming next or when, but I will do my utmost best to ensure that there will always be new material out there by myself for people to read. This is a lot for myself as it is for people who genuinely love to read, and given the economic climate, I'd like to offer something for free to make sure that, so long as people have Internet access, people always have options of books to read.

So, quick recap, back to where this started: Stepping Forward is out tomorrow, December 15th 2011, for free. The first step of the longest journey of my life begins then.

Must Be Christmas Soon

It's that time again: we've had out Christmas party at college, we're off for a month... and we've all got to get lessons prepared for January. God I love December.

But seriously, I've been trying to find ways to make it neither boring nor stressful. I'll settle for it not being boring. With a Gothic Journal due in tomorrow, along with revised plans for lessons, I've got my work cut out for me. However, we've got some plans in place to make sure we don't completely ruin Christmas with work. Basically, dinner plans in Westmeath. Nom nom nom? You betcha!

But that's not all. Oh no, not at all. This coming Thursday, December 15th, will see the release of my novella Stepping Forward. I wrote it last summer in a mad rush, and I'm delighted with the result. I'm still thinking of what to do to celebrate. A free copy of the book to the first X people won't really help: it's going to be free to everyone as an ebook!

It's a fun book, mostly. I mean, it has a lot of elements that might completely confuse some people if they're not used to me, but I hope that doesn't happen. It's a learning experience, anyway. I've never seen a book like this in the shop (you know, that book shop I work in...) so it's either because no one wrote one like it, no one known well enough wrote one, or publishers deemed the idea and format too bad to even consider. We'll see.

I've also got an interview lined up because of the book. That's fun! I mean, I've answered the questions already, but it's not online yet. It was only a short little piece, but it's a fun bit of publicity. I'll be sure to link it just about everywhere I visit on a regular basis (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and Google+), so you can't miss it!

And yes, while I am aware that the holidays will be hectic, I'm really loving the idea of getting a book out. I won't have to worry about costs or anything like that, or about selling enough copies to make end's meet. This is published for fun and to get something out there. I want to share my work, and I really believe in the book.

Now, I need plenty of rest before the madness of tomorrow! God I love college work...

One Week In

So, I'm a week into the website, and a week into college. Well, third year of college. That makes me feel older. A lot older. The past two years have gone by so quickly, and so much has changed since then. But that's a story for another day.

So, the website hasn't had much added to it since the novella excerpt, the short story, the poems, the articles and the Doctor Haik-Who. I've added two more haiku and one more poem, but right now the list of new material on the site is lacking. This will change, over time. There will most definitely be more short stories over the next few months. For the time being, I'm trying to get a couple of them submitted to different publications. Others will find their way directly online. That's just the way it is.

Quick question though: what genre of story would people like to read?

1. Fantasy? (Including Urban Fantasy)
2. Science Fiction? (Including Speculative Fiction and Superhero Fiction)
3. Horror? (Including Dark Comedy - something that should both make you laugh and disturb you a little)
4. General fiction? (Like the story already on the website, Dear World)

Cast your vote for the genre of your choice and I'll write the story. Voting closes September 29th. I have a few ideas, so I'll just go with whatever people want to read with this one. (Vote in the comments below, please. You don't need a Blogger account to do so.)

Poems and articles will find their way to the website more easily. Some articles will require a lot more effort than others, so they will take a little bit longer to write, but they will make it there!

As for college... When did it get so tiring? This further emphasises the pain of feeling older. In first year, I was able to sit through lectures quite easily. Now I'm struggling to stay awake. While I have all 10am starts (much better than a 9am start!), I'm also in quite late. The earliest I'm off, aside from Fridays, is 4.30pm. But then other days I have lectures until 6pm. We haven't even started with clubs and societies yet!

I think my main issue is my sleeping pattern. I'm staying up too late, even if I still go to bed relatively early. My other issue is laziness. Fact.

It's been a good first week, back, though. While I haven't been able to talk to some people as much as I'd wanted to, I've survived our first assignment (that felt like homework...) and I'm very happy with the optional modules that I got. I'll be off to France for a few days later in the year for one of them! How cool is that?

Of course, everything will get even busier once the second week starts, but with the way everything is timetabled, it'll be Christmas before we know it! Which is frickin' scary, on account of Teaching Practice in January. Before I know it, then, it'll be my birthday and I'll definitely be old! (Or, eh, old enough to legally drink in the US...)

A good first week overall, for the website and college. I'm hoping more people will find their way to the website, soon, though. I think it's getting lonely. For now, cast your vote for the story and if you have time, download the sample chapters of Stepping Forward! I'm looking for reviews! There may even be a competition in that, sometime soon!

Website is a Go!

My website is launched! It can be found here: http://paulcarrollwriter.com

It's been a relatively long road. Well, six weeks. I decided, at the very end of July after finished Camp NaNoWriMo, to set up a website. The idea was simple: I would write articles on the website, I would post short stories and poems, and that would be that. I would run it through Wordpress.com.

That's how it started. I set up a Wordpress.com account, and I got things on the roll. Then I thought, I could run other things through this! And that's what I will be doing. I have ideas in place, some of which will appear sooner than others, that will be ad supported. I'm not a fan of ads on my own personal space, which is what this blog and the main part of the website will be, but when it comes to these other ideas, ads will be fine.

But that's way into the future (in one case, but not necessarily another). For now, I've got a set list of features on the website.

It functions like a blog, categorised and organised neatly so that it represents the two sides to how I work: with my head and with my heart. The "head" work is the articles under Writing Advice. The advice ranges from (very) basic legal advice to the basics of writing that I picked up over the years to a guide to what I call 50K in 30 Days, which is essentially NaNoWriMo. I've done it enough to know how to do it properly, and my "win" this summer in the Camp version was the final piece of encouragement I needed to try help people do it too. First drafts are important.

The "heart" work, then, is the Writing Samples section. This includes short stories, poems and Doctor Haik-Who. The last one is for a bit of fun and variety. I have specific niche talents and especially nerdy hobbies, and if I hide that fact from the world I'd be lying through my teeth (or fingers...).

Two ideas I have for expanding on what I offer the world - the ad based things I mentioned - also play on the "head" and "heart" of my writing. One will be an article site, the other a fiction based site, both attached directly to my website. For now, they will remain hidden (though I think some people can already guess the fiction based site!).

Combining the "head" and the "heart" is the Free Downloads section. I'll be adding downloadable pieces to the website through this section. Already there are opening chapters from a novella I wrote in Summer 2010, called Stepping Forward. I won't even attempt to explain it to you. The .PDF file features the opening five chapters, which should give you a pretty good idea of what the book is about, without giving away too much! It's short, of course, being a novella, but it's a fun book as far as I'm concerned! It didn't bore me in the editing process, anyway, and I normally can't stand to look back on things I've written!

There will be other things added to this section of the website, which you can find out about through my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages (links in the sidebar!), as well by checking out the News section, part of About. This About section has an author bio (er... my bio), the News section and a Writing Progress section. That last one is just a short page on what I'm working on. It's generally for larger projects than, say, my latest article for The Phantom Zone.

Aside from that, though, the website is like any other, right? I mean, the Free Downloads section isn't on every website, but it's not unique. I wanted this to be a new type of experience. Yes, there are plenty of ways to get in touch with me that make me a little more accessible than some authors, but I wanted to personalise my website more. So I set up a Skype account.

Yes, Skype.

In the sidebar of my website, you'll see three buttons. The first is to add me to your contacts list. I will generally accept all requests. The second button is to see my status - you'll know when I'm online just by looking at my website. The third button is to call me. It's as simple as that.

This enables people to meet the author! I'm not published, but I've seen lots of people who aren't published and who have websites and one thing you can't do is meet them unless you know them. I've spoken to dozens of authors online, but rarely face-to-face! I want to give people that option. My face is already on the website, so I don't have to worry about that aspect of it. And I only have to appear online when I'm free to talk. It's as simple as that.

One last thing about the downloads, though. They're free, but they're password protected. The passwords will be available on the website. The point isn't to stop people accessing the writing, but to stop spambots accessing it easily. I figured this was the best way to do it. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully you think it's worth it!

So there it is, my website is launched and ready to go. I hope you enjoy it, and feedback is appreciated!

Once More With Feeling

The past couple of days have been... well, different. Finally getting a chance to talk to somebody (albeit only through Facebook mail), we came to a conclusion that for the time being we need space. There's too many things that need to settle before we can really talk properly, again, but it didn't feel like I'd lost a friend. I don't think I did, anyway. We've done this before, but this time it's really necessary. Yes, I was upset when it happened, but once I calmed down... well, I've been happy. It feels right, this space between us - we set it up, it didn't just happen badly and for no reason. Things didn't end.

To keep myself busy, last night, I started to edit a novella I wrote last summer called Stepping Forward. I'd planned to edit the first three chapters, but I discovered that when the time came to do it they were much shorter than I anticipated! So I just kept on working. And working. And working. And I finished editing the book.

I'd been fairly happy with the first draft, when I wrote it, and the one person that actually read it (the friend mentioned above) liked it, so when I finally tidied it up I was delighted! It's been over a year since I wrote it, first, and in the space of a single night I got the finished book together! I will probably be doing a cover for it at some stage, as I'm wont to do, but for now I'm calling that book finished!

This morning, I then wrote a scene of The Rest is Silence. I have a lot of work to do on that play, but my ideas for it are exciting. This morning's scene was probably one of the more challenging ones... though there are still some major things to happen that will require a lot of emotional energy from the actors! I hope they get what the play's about!

To bring the day to a close, I made a banner for my website. As I write this, there's a badly-done version sitting on the website. The lovely Lisa Sills is redoing it for me, and the results so far are great! I can't wait until I have something to show the world as being my official banner for my website. Sure, I didn't do the finished piece, but the idea behind its design was mine! People have given it some good feedback, so clearly I did something right.

Between now and Sunday, I have to finish up with everything on the site - that means hosting, a domain name, the finished banner and getting it all set up properly. It's going to be an exciting few days. The plan is to release the website on Sunday, when people will have access to everything I've been working on the past month and a half. This is my gateway into the world wide web, going beyond what I've ever set up. All the little bits and pieces of my life are coming together on this site.

Feedback on everything will be greatly appreciated! Until then... my thanks go out to:

• Rebecca Woodhead, for her advice in everything I've done of late. This is both advice she's given me personally and things she's written about in Writing Magazine. I couldn't have done this without her.
  
• Lisa Sills, for her help in the banner and her continued support in this project.
  
• The aforementioned friend, for everything before this website. I couldn't have put together so much if there wasn't someone out there who made me feel like it was worth it. No one else continually gave me the encouragement to write and to be myself like he did, without greed, malice or spite. The very last thing he said to me was the final bit of encouragement I needed.
  
• The friends who continually make me happy; the smartest girl in college who I can tell pretty much anything, the comic book girl who gets my little eccentricities, the Ninjas who make me laugh even when being in a bad mood is easier and the long-time friends I kept from secondary school who never fail to offer new and interesting insights into the world, none of whom have even begun to bore me after all these years!

This website is everything I could want it to be; parts of it were put together with my head, and parts of it were put together with my heart. Sometimes I fail to use either one of them, but not in this case. This feels like something has finally been done correctly.

Found the Plot

Well, I've been writing this book on 9 days (I started a while longer than that ago, but I didn't write every day), and I've finally figured out where it's going. For once, I know what to write later when I get home. It's going to be longer than Stepping Forward, but it'll still be a novella. The plot isn't too complicated, but I don't intend it to be. It's sort of a confession of a book, an examination of the lives of friends, of love and longing and pain, and once again something that pushes into the boundaries of hypthetics, creating things in people that aren't there, or that aren't seen, at least.

In saying that... I had a plan to show a particular side of a character, who was based somewhat on a friend, because that side of him is almost non-existent as far as most of us have seen. Only, last night he showed it off, without really knowing that nobody had seen it much. I won't go into too much detail on it, but I thought it was a nice coincidence, and it just means that my character is a little more real than I'd first imagined.

When I get home, I'll be acting the arse and recreating a series of events that I found quite hilarious. If I finish the chapter tonight, I'll be moving on to something a little more difficult, which I'm not entirely looking forward to, except for the exploration part of the plot. That'll probably be carried into the next writing session, tomorrow morning, which will also see the start of the side of the aforementioned character that I'd wanted to show. The last chapter might also get written, if I focus enough. I'm working at five, so I have a good few hours to get work done on this thing. I only wanted to get it done by Sunday night, but now that I know where it's going I think I can finish before I go to work on Friday, or at the latest when I come home from a seperate shift on Saturday afternoon.

After that, the fun begins with another book. This one will probably be another novella - I don't plan on publishing them, but I like writing them for the experiences involved. You know, writing a book, creating characters, exploring ideas of friendship, love, life, death, mystery, getting to know people better. It's all fun, even if some of it is quite depressing. In fact, the next one is by and large all death. It's called The Great Leap. I actually can't wait to get started on it. I imagine it'll be of a similar length to Stepping Forward, but the ideas in it are a lot more difficult to get a grasp of. It calls into question matters of faith, and presents a continuous idea of always having a second chance. So, depressing but still with a bit of hope.

After that... Dignity. Though I may finish the second draft of Meet Sam instead. I'll have six days off work to get The Great Leap written, which is plenty of time if I have no plans (so far I have one plan, in the evening, when I rarely write anyway). Yeah, I think I'll finish Meet Sam. It could do with completion. When Dignity is written, then, I'll do the edits of Meet Sam, then start on my parody novel, The Masked Expellator, which looks at the life of a vigilante with a strange ability to throw up at will, and how he actually becomes a real hero. It's going to be utterly ridiculous, of course, but fun to write.

When all this is done - Meet Sam, Stepping Forward, The Great Leap, Dignity, The Masked Expellator and Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch - I'll be printing them in matching books, the difference being the colour of the cover, and perhaps some clip art on the inside. The books will be fun to have, and handy for having people read them. Meet Sam and Dignity are sort of free-for-alls, though I think a couple of people will want to read them first. Stepping Forward is currently in the possession of someone, who'll be the only person to read it until it gets a seal of approval. This is actually the same as The Great Leap, though I may make changes to my original idea to make it less like real life. Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch has to be read by two people before I show anyone else, and The Masked Expellator will find itself in the possession of the person who I first presented the idea to.

I've even kind of figured out the dedications... Meet Sam is just for friends in general, Dignity being for my fellow students at college, Stepping Forward for a particualr friend, Love is a... for two friends, The Masked Expellator for the person who gave me the idea, The Great Leap being for the friends who helped me through the darkest periods of my life (they won't be named individually.)

Okay... that was weird. I don't know how all that happened from I know where my book is going! I apologise. My ramblings generally just happen. Still, I hope you're enjoying following me on my journey to printing a number of books, single copies only. This summer will be amazing if I can get all this work done!

Writing Days

I have a very particular writing day; I've gotten myself into a habit, based on how tired I am at particular times of the day. I can't write too much at night, anymore, unless I'm still in the swing of things. I usually wake between seven and eight in the morning, so I'll shower by nine or shortly afterwards and get going for the day. I got over three thousand words done today. That's not my best, but I'd be more than happy to get that done every day.

Every day I write is the same, assuming I wasn't out the day before, and therefore extra tired. Admittedly, the tiredness can carry on for a few days. I've noticed two day gaps developing in my writing. Anyway, every day is the same if I'm not tired; I write after my shower (and my breakfast) until about one in the afternoon. At that point, I'll have lunch. I'll also have had about two or three cups of tea. I'm an addict at this stage. I'll get a cup at lunch, too, and one at hour later; by five or six, I'll have to stop to get dinner, and afterwards I'll be to tired to write anymore, as the day will have stretched on.

My writing day is also filled with music. I know some people can't write with music playing - I can't write poetry with music playing, for instance - but when it comes to fiction, I have to have music playing. I like my little writing montages. Many days it's the same songs, over and over again, a playlist on YouTube of songs recommended by Liam (he has the best and most varied taste in music out of anyone I know); unfortunately, the playlist is twelve songs long. So I switch between that, Alex Day's album on his website, and The Doors. Today, I did something special. I wrote along to The Beatles. I never listen to The Beatles. Ever. But I loved it. (It was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club) I also played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; I'm familiar with a few of the songs, but played as a whole... wow! The next step is to get my hands on a Bruce Springsteen album, more of The Beatles, a Bob Dylan album or two and something by Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently they're all awesome.

Writing along to music like this, I can get through a story in no time. It's my job, though I don't get paid. I just work throughout the day, getting lots written on my current work in progress, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. If I'm forgetting all about modesty, it's a pretty good book. I need to finish it within the next couple of weeks, though, because I have three more books I want to write before the summer's over, and I'd also like to get the second draft for Meet Sam written. I think that'll be next, so that when I've written the next of my books, The Great Leap, and probably Dignity, too, I'll be coming back to it nice and fresh. Once the edits on the second draft are done, I'll be working on a new idea, fresh off the press last night: The Masked Expellator. It's a parody superhero novel. I blame Fiona for it.

As you can tell, I'm a little bit busy, and still working weekends. Miley Cyrus might be getting a job soon, so my Adventureland days with her may soon be coming to an end... scratch that, they'll be coming to a pause. Adventureland doesn't end, it only takes a short break. We'll make sure to get more stuff done during the college year. It'll be awesome. The only upside for me (upside for her being money) is that I'll have lots of time to write in between the less frequent plans with other friends, so I should be able to get at least Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch written. Hopefully by the end of the month. I'd like to write The Great Leap and Dignity before I go back, but I'd have to have many days like today, or like June 25th - 9385 words that day! I'd be writing a novel a week if I wrote like that all the time!

But there you have it: my routine and my goals. My writing will slow down considerably once I go back to college, so I want to get as much done as possible within the next couple of months. The upside, of course, is that I have breaks of this length every year. For the rest of my life. (assuming I finish college and get a job as a teacher, and that I don't end up working as a writer full time, in which case I have a "break" like this for the rest of my life, during which I can write a dozen first drafts a year if I wanted to.)

Actually, I like that idea in the brackets. See, I don't just write novels. I write novellas too, now. They're shorter, but I still manage to get some depth into them. My trick is to limit the number of characters in them, so that there's not too much to have to do. I had two main characters in one I wrote recently called Stepping Forward, with a grand total of seven side characters, with only two of them having any narrative focus at all. And it's quite awesome, if I do say so myself. The only printed copy of it is in the possession of a friend for him to read before I can show anyone else.

Novellas are a wonderful thing, though. I mean, less publishers are likely to print them, but they're still fun to write, and if I actually become a successful, popular author, a publisher might take a chance with something like Stepping Forward, or it'd be published as a serial novella, or with two or three other books in one volume. Something cool like that.

Now I'm getting myself all caught up in hypothetics, again. As you can see, writing days leave me with lots of time to think too much. I've been told I do that too much, anyway. I'll leave this blog post here, before I write all about my plans for WORLD DOMINATION.