Edmund Lester

I have a few issues when it comes to confidence; at least as regards my writing. I'm pretty good in my day job. In the office I can make decisions quickly and with great belief in my abilities. It doesn't translate to my writing. In this endeavour I feel a lot more exposed and a lot less sure of myself. It's why this week has mostly been a washout writing wise. I did write a scene on Tuesday evening but when I came to the document today I reread it, highlighted the lot and hit the delete key. It just wasn't any good. The reason for it is an email I received for a submission of my alternate Earth science fiction novel Against the Fall of Empire. I submitted it to a number of agencies last year and received a number of rejections, mostly pro forma style. I chalked these up to par for the course for a wannabe writer and carried on. Then the miracle happened and I received an email that was different. Admittedly it was still a rejection but it contained a personal re...

I have a bad back at the moment. It came on about two weeks ago. It's not too bad so I am not going to spend a lot of time bemoaning my fate and I'm certainly not looking for sympathy. As a result I have been limiting my time at the keyboard a little as just sitting upright to type is uncomfortable and I do have to maintain this position for my day job after all. I've cut down on my writing over the last two weeks so it can have a chance to recover and stayed away from blogging almost completely. I've tweeted a little but as I can do that from my phone while lying down it doesn't count. So why am I blogging now you might ask. Well it's just so I can explain myself. I'd been a regular blogger and now nothing for quite some time. It's only right I make a kind of statement on it. Golly, that last sentence made me sound very pretentious. I can assure I'm not; or at least not too much. My wife will probably disagree although she'd probably opt ...

I have been a Star Trek fan as long as I can remember. I started watching the show back in the 70s when it used to be shown on BBC at about 7pm. This was back in the days of just three channels in the UK, not the hundreds you get now. In this vastly under-populated media world there were a few gems - Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and Survivors spring to mind. But for me Star Trek was always at the top of the pile. So as you can imagine the news, when it came a while back, that there was going to be another Star Trek series in 2017 I was overjoyed, although just a little nervous. After a 12 year gap I am worried they are going to mess it up and put an end to everything Trek wise for good. Hearing about the new show started me wondering just how long it was since I last watched an episode of Star Trek. I'm not counting the new films - I cannot say I've particularly liked the reboot movies. So I headed for my DVD shelves and flicked through the Trek series and for some odd reas...

I intended to write this blog entry yesterday but never managed to get enough time, or to be honest I preferred the idea of spending the whole evening with my wife and not on this keyboard. I may have this writing bug but it doesn't trump that - it never will. Prior to the evening I did have a decent amount of writing time while my wife was working on her music. It was successful too. I had my second most productive day of 2016, adding 5,289 words to the YA Supernatural novel I've been working on for the past month. That last statement by the way was telling. I started writing the Stairs Lead Down on February 6th. As of yesterday it is one month old. In that month I have written 48,496 words on this novel. It could have been more. I wrote the introduction to what might be the next novel while it was in my head. That came to 1,495 words. If I were to add that in I come up 11 words short of 50,000. That sounds a little suspiciously like the NaNoWriMo target I missed back in ...

This week has been a bit of a blur. I'm not sure.where any of it has gone. I guess that happens sometimes. I know as I get older it seems to happen more and more. The perception of time I have now  is so different to how it was for me years ago. I managed to achieve far less in terms of the word count on the current novel than I might have hoped but considering the ending I now have plotted is so much better than before I don't begrudge the loss of actual writing time to sketch it into my notebook. This weekend should see progress, albeit not today. I pretend to a social life and will be out with friends this afternoon and the evening is reserved for family film night. Saturday nights whenever possible (when my wife doesn't have a gig) are always designated family film night. Not sure what tonight's choice might be. We have enough options. Maybe something Scandinavia in flavour. The word count was always doomed. The huge daily average of this book was artificial ...

I enjoy writing novels. It's interesting to see where my mind will take a scenario. Okay that part is usually the planning phase but it always leaves something for the actual writing part. Things change - just as they did tonight. I had an ending for this YA Supernatural story sorted. It was done and dusted nearly a month back when I planned this story out. And tonight it changed. For some reason my mind just through that original ending out and filled its place with one I think is a huge improvement. When it came to me I was actually excited by it. It's made me think a little. Should I go for it a little looser planned in future? I read about the ways of writing stories and there seems to be two distinct camps. Some people plan, some people go for it, seat of the pants time. I've always been more towards the former. In everything I've written so far I've had the scenario, the characters and the ending pretty much sorted before writing the first word. I leave a...

As mentioned in my previous blog I have spent a few days away from writing and enjoying time with my wife. Today though, she had music to arrange. Her time off after the pantomime is at an end. There is work to be done for the upcoming production - Anything Goes. There are only five weeks until opening night. She has to get busy now if it isn't to get too hectic later. As a result I had plenty of time to get writing and I took full advantage of it. Today I added five new scenes to my YA supernatural novel the Stairs Lead Down comprising 3,243 words. And a few extras just for good measure. As I started to type this blog entry the way to start the next scene came to me. I just had to type it up before I lost it. I did that last night. I had this idea for a twist to the plot of a future novel - or rather an interrupted novel. A while ago I started writing a SF conspiracy novel called a World out of Balance. I wrote about 6.5K and then decided I wasn't happy with the plot so s...