Thursday 29 July 2010

The job in hand

The plan for today after I have visited Mr. Morrisson is to prepare BTL for a foray out into the big bad world without her Mummy (just like the boys starting school all over again) and then work on the edits of the first part of NMBK. I will have approximately two and a half hours to do this and I am determined not to spend that time flicking around the internet, looking on facebook etc etc which is why I'm doing that now, over breakfast.
I must fight the hypnotic lure if cyber world and live instead in that one that exists only in my head (but in a good way.) Must focus.
I had my PDR with my line manager (actually ex but it gets very complicated) yesterday and one of the things that I said I was going to do to help me achieve my objectives was to - in the words of Jack Reacher, take care of the job in hand. I did leave out the Jack Reacher reference because said ex line manager doesn't strike me as a Lee Child fan.
So that's it - focus on the job in hand - hopefully.

Thursday 8 July 2010

Being realistic.

How's this for prolific blogging - twice in one day.
So anyway, here's what's on my mind. Remember the project that I said might not have the legs? Well I've been giving it a lot of thought and I'm not sure it would work the way that I wanted it to. You see, it was based on something that I thought I had started i.e. a screenplay. Some of you may remember me harping on about it a life-time ago. So I was going through said screenplay the other day trying to get inspiration and before I knew it I'd read it all and realised that I'd actually completed the first draft. As a screenplay I can see it very clearly. I can see the things happening in my head. Sadly I'm not getting the same feeling from the prose experience. I think it may be because to try and convey what I want to say in words is just that, a lot of words and not much dialogue to move the thing forward. So for now anyway, I'm going to stick to the screen play version.
Anybody know what you do with one of them?

Bit of a buzz actually.

There I was, in the supermarket that shall remain nameless (no free advertising here) walking down the aisle that has magazines down one said and televisions down the other when I threw a cursory glance at the magazine that someone was holding and thought Hang on! That looks familiar. Sure enough it was the article I wrote about Rome for My Weekly. As I'm not sure if MW provide contributor copies I bought one just in case. Said magazine is now sitting very pretty on the kitchen table, open at the appropriate page.
Deep joy.

Monday 5 July 2010

Plan the plan

I logged onto the computer before 7am for something totally different which I have now completed and found myself drawn here. I read a couple of comments that had been left and then it hit me. When Suzanne wished me luck with the planning I suddenly thought that I should be good at it because I plan lots of things for the day job - usually big changes around. When that happens everything has to be planned. Where we're starting, where we're finishing and each stage in between. It occurred to me that I need to apply the same theory to this - or at least give it a go.
Anyway, must go. I should have been in the bathroom ten minutes ago.

Thursday 1 July 2010

The fog is clearing a bit

I've tried all the things that were suggested by you good folk and I am feeling a little more motivated. My concern (it doesn't qualify as a problem) is that I now want to write but don't know what to concentrate on.
BTL is in the bag as it were and just looking for a home and I have started on my second "great" work. But there is another project that I want to work on. So I decided to work on the project that is exciting me the most and that's great. However (didn't you know that there would be one) it needs planning and I struggle with planning. But it is a skill that I would like to learn.
At the minute I have the idea but I'm not sure it's got the legs to get to 70k. If I just write it I think that it might fall a bit short.
Any ideas for best practice for planning a book?