Post the Nineth: A-Version Therapy

Apologies for the lack of posts lately.  It's been a mad month in the Day Job, as well in the Personal Life, and quite frankly I'm still not sure how I woke up this morning to find myself only a few days away from the clocks going back.  I'm sure someone owes me a large portion of October somewhere down the line.  Things will calm down soon hopefully and I'll be able to get into some kind of routine of publishing posts.

The Manuscript - in all its imperfect glory!
(photo: Jack Gilbert)

So what have you missed? Well, the good news is that my Proof Reader has finished proof-reading THE WICKEDEST WAR, thus becoming the second person (one of my beta-readers was the first) to have read both the 1994 original version and the 2014 reboot.  The general feedback was very positive. That was a huge relief to me, especially when you consider that his main observation of the original was "it's a good yarn full of thud and blunder".

So, I took a break from compiling the TWW bible - yes, it's taking much longer than I thought it would - and I started going through the marked-up manuscript.

There's only one marked-up manuscript, which is just as well because when I came to correct the electronic copy I found that it the digital versions have been fruitful and multiplied.

Post the Eighth: Know Thine Enemy (And Thine Good Guys and Thine Places...)

So, I started work on DARK DAWN just as I said I would in Post The Seventh.  However, I haven't added a single word to the narrative in the last fortnight.  Instead, I've started compiling the basic skeleton of the novel's bible, that's the reference guide for any of you out there unfamiliar with the term beyond the...err...biblical context of the word.

A small glimpse of the bible (with a small "b").
They're only spoilers if you know what you're looking for...
(Photo: Jack Gilbert)

And to procure a phrase from the Good Book, "it was good".  Is good, I mean.  But it got me thinking about THE WICKEDEST WAR.  It's now in the hands of another three beta-readers, including a fellow writer - one far more experienced than I am - and I thought to myself, "Jack, it's been two years now since you touched the half-finished bible for TWW.  I wonder how many inconsistencies they're going to find in that tome of yours..."

It turns out the answer is quite a few.

Post The Seventh: Confidence Tricks (of the mind)

It's been a bit of a crazy and full-on time at the Day Job lately, but I still feel I should apologise for not posting anything sooner.  Although, in my defence (yes, I know I'm my own prosecution counsel as well) this is about the tenth time that I've sat down at the computer with the intention of writing Post The Seventh.  However, the previous attempts all ended with me writing three or four awkward paragraphs which were then promptly deleted due to lack of clarity, direction and coherence.

The part of my brain that's responsible for assembling and committing words to the page just haven't been working properly for the last few weeks and I felt I had what they refer to in motor-racing parlance as "a bag of neutrals".  And if I'm honest, I've also suffered a crisis of confidence of late as well.

I should have seen it coming, the stress had been building-up again and I was pushing myself to stay creative in amongst it all, partially to keep my writing skills sharp but also because I wanted to stop my brain's fly-wheel from spinning itself into destruction thinking about work matters so I kept the problem-solving portion of it distracted with the construction of the plot for my next novel, DARK DAWN.

Post the Sixth: Tools of The Trade

I found myself thinking this week.  My netbook had slowed to a crawl while the anti-virus software hogged the processor to update its library of digital nasties and neither my browser nor my word processor were willing to interrupt it.  Writer's block I can cope with and many creative-types down the centuries have suffered a dip in productivity because of it.

But dips in productivity due to constant software upgrades is a very twenty-first century problem.

I wrote my first story when I was eight.  It was a nine page epic written in pencil in my school exercise book.  I wouldn't say it was that good, but it was the start of something special.  It must have been special because my teacher had it typed-up, illustrated and two copies put in the school library.  My next attempt at a feature length story, which I started three or so years later, was also written in pencil to begin with but it soon progressed to being written in pen, as befitted a fourth year junior school  pupil heading to the first year of "big school".  The point is, the pen, pencil and paper worked.  If they didn't I got another pen, pencil or sheet of paper.  No upgrades necessary...unless you count a fountain pen in the first year of secondary school as an "upgrade".

Where it all started.  Two of the nine pages of the original
copy of my first serious attempt at writing.
(Photo: The Author)

The pen may be mightier than the sword but it was no match for the typewriter that quickly superseded it - which itself was surpassed by a very basic and none-too-user-friendly electronic typewriter that took one line of text at a time into its limited memory before it would print it out in a variable range of hard to read dot-matrix delivered greys.

The electronic typewriter was out of fashion (not to mention readily-available supplies of ink cartridges) pretty much as soon as I'd started using it.  But that wasn't a problem.  By the time I turned fourteen, I'd become the proud owner of a Commodore 64 home computer complete with a five-and-a-quarter inch floppy disk drive and full-on dot matrix printer.

Post the Fifth: Let's Try Something New...

Things constantly change.  Even when we try to keep them the same, or resist them changing, things change around us.  Even if we're not aware of it, or delude ourselves into believing that everything is static, things change.

Once upon a time (no, this isn't the start to a badly-written fairy tale), twenty years ago when my body was leaner, my hair thicker, my energy seemed to know no limits and the world was one massive exciting playground for me to explore and enjoy, I was all for change.  I hated things staying the same.  I was always the one who pushed for progress, sought ways to upset the status quo (not the band, the axiom) and went looking to mend things that weren't actually broken.

In short, I was a progressive pain in the bum.

Post the Fourth: New Kid on the Blog

I should start off by apologising for the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks.  It's been a crazy start to July, some of it good and sadly also some it not so good.  I won't bore you with the details - and I don't thinks this is the place for them anyhow - so I'll just say that hopefully things are back on track and I should be more regular from now on (no sniggering in the back row).

Right, so back to the title.  Yes, it's a corny title, I know.  But frankly, it's very true - and yes, I am referring to the "New Kid" bit not the "Post the Fourth" bit.  Reading around a number of blogs I've discovered how much of a novice I am in this field.

Post The Third: Back to Reality

It's been only a fortnight or so since I returned from my Great Scottish Road Trip and already the heady mix of tranquillity, contentment, direction and sense of purpose that I discovered while on it has begun to boil-off in the unforgiving heat of everyday life.

I know I said all I had to do to dispel any stress was close my eyes and remember The Valley (the location of which shall remain a closely guarded secret...until the novel gets published at any rate), but I blame that same heady mix for dulling my senses to the rigours and demands of the real world.