Friday Writing Situation - plue head talk

Well one of the two Ben Williamson weird novellas is revised and submitted. I am still holding fire on revising the other. The Intersection is the better of the two so I want to concentrate on that one submissions wise. Not to say A Parallel Life (the other one) is a bad story. I think it's okay; weirded my wife out a little so it must have done something right. But Intersection is jut a little better. Gets into the Roald Dahl meets Zoran Zivkovic territory.

Re-read the opening chapter of The Patternmaker's Daughter, my YA fantasy idea. It seems pretty good. I might give it a try tomorrow. I have the evening free as my wife is off playing a gig somewhere on the Welsh border. She won't be back 'til late whereas I should be back at about 6pm. So a good six hours of writing time should be available; more if I stay awake. That all depends on whether I have a desire to hit a car boot sale on Sunday morning. I might not bother and just concentrate on the writing.

I need to not stop writing for more than a day or so. I have admitted something on this blog many, many moons ago. I have a tendency to depression. It's not fun just one of those things. Well this writing lark seems perfectly suited to exacerbating those tendencies. You spend hours and hours, week and week, trapped in a small room typing away. You put everything into it; literally. This is part of you. Then you have the soul destroying bit of trying to get it published.

Now everyone I have communicated with in this effort has been wonderful; friendly folks all. But essentially it's been rejection after rejection - or worse waiting for no reply. In days gone by this has been enough to stop me writing completely. Five years ago it did.

I'd been writing and gaining a little bit of success for about three years; many short stories published, as well as dozens of articles and reviews all to paying markets. Then my head went a bit sideways and I stopped writing - for four years plus.

I didn't do nothing in that time. After a while I started a company buying/selling sf collectables, comics, art glass and pottery and modern art prints. It didn't do too badly. I even had to pay the tax man his share of company profits.

Anyway head vaguely back to normal and not wanting to spend all my free time on the business, I sold up. That was about 16 months ago. Well I started writing again - yehay!

The first three novels are best left in the deep, dark recesses of my hard drive. Let them fester. They served their purpose. I proved to myself I can complete a novel length piece. The fourth was Mr. Stinky which has been the unlucky recipient of a good number of rejections from agents - even if some said some quite nice things about it.

Novel five was Against the Fall of Empire, my sf "blockbuster" (as if). I am hoping it will be the first of a series but I've decided not to write the others if the first is not going to get published.
I had a bad few months So I wrote the Ben Williamson novellas. And that brings me up to date.

Except for the head thing. That's a little weird. I went a bit out of things in March. Pressure in a number of ways got to me and I made some odd decisions. Nothing too bad - nothing irretrievable, but I wasn't coping well.

I am getting back into things again and this time have used the writing as one way of helping rather than it disappearing. But I am a little worried that I do not have the thick skin or infinite resolve it seems that are almost as important as having a good novel. I keep getting worried I might run away from writing again as it is a very negative experience.

I'm hoping Wattpad helps. I am posting the horror novel Mr. Stinky to it gradually in sections. So far I have posted five but it has not been inundated with readers. And this is where I have to admit a second shortcoming on my part. I am not a sociable person. I do not have a huge number of friends. In fact I could count them on one hand. I have no family beyond my wife and her parents - the perils of being the only child of parents who were older than average when I entered the world (not looking for sympathy BTW). It does mean I am struggling to get people to read either this blog or the story.

On Wattpad, despite my earlier post which states that someone has read it, I am not sure that the logged entries constitute anyone other than me.

At least I know with this blog that some people are reading it - Blogger gives me a geographic breakdown of the people viewing it and I can categorically state I am not resident in the United States, France, Germany, South Korea or Ukraine - the countries when most of the views happened. The ten in the UK could be me. But the others - someone is out there (very Mulder).

Anyway to get back to my rambling before it hit a tangent, I am trying to remain determined. I have a number of ideas I would like to write over the coming few weeks and months. I just hope that at some point some people out there in the big, wide and very scary world get to read them.

In the done pile
1 Horror Novel
1 SF Novel (intended the first of a series of at least 3)
2 Weird Novellas in the Ben Williamson series.

Ideas plotted in various notebooks
1 YA Fantasy novel (underway, 2,400 words done. Intended as the first in a trilogy - what other series length would you expect)
3 More Ben Williamson Novellas
2 Horror Novels (both part written but stopped when I was told horror is a tough sell)
1 SF space opera series (plots for 2 books sketched out - I destroy the Earth in chapter 1, very Hitchhikers)
1 weird novel of 1970s childhood (wonder why I picked that era)

The list goes on. I keep a pile of notebooks by the side of the bed, plus one in my car and others just around just in case.

So I need to remain determined. Else I could let this all go. I must keep at it. One day it will work. And before anyone asks - I AM NOT GOING TO CONSIDER SELF-PUBLISHING.

If you want to help - follow me on twitter
@EdmundLester68        

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