read, write, ramble

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Writing update: April 2015

The contractually required update on my writing activities for April 2015. Well, not really, but anyway …

April was a relatively straightforward month for me: I dedicated the entire month to finishing my final draft of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. (Spoiler alert: I finally finished the edit on May 5). I probably wrote some blog posts as well, but being a neglectful sort I failed to count those.

I did pretty well at getting up for my morning shifts. There were only five days that I overslept, and on several of those days I caught up during my lunchbreak. There was one morning that I got up in good time, but my youngest son also decided to get up early and was rather more in the mood for playing than for sitting quietly on the sofa. So, writing did not happen on that occasion.

This was by far my best month for editing (in terms of total word count), but that feat is tempered somewhat by the lack of any actual writing and the fact that it’s nowhere near my best average (that was February, during which I edited an average of 1806 words on the days that I did editing). Given that this was the ‘final’ draft of a story I already thought I’d finished, the obvious conclusion is that the story needed a fair bit of extra work and the decision to give it a final pass was the right one.

I also had a story rejected, which I view as more of an achievement than anything else. I’ve been attempting to write stories for quite some years now and, apart from a few efforts several decades ago, I’ve not really felt in a position to do anything other than self-publish. That I’m getting to the point where I think my stories might possibly be worth having someone else publish them is a mark, however potentially misguided, of how much more seriously I’m taking my writing these days. Bring on some more rejections!

The stats

  • Number of writing sessions: 0
  • Number of editing sessions: 26
  • Days missed: 4
  • Words written: 0
  • Words edited: 32,733
  • Average words written: 0
  • Average words edited: 1,259
Tony Stark attempts to lift Mjolnir

A few thoughts about that ‘rape joke’ in Age Of Ultron

In which I continue to explore the fallout from, and possible precursor to, Joss Whedon’s exit from twitter.

London Falling (Paul Cornell)

I’d heard many good things about London Falling, and had always liked Paul Cornell’s work on Doctor Who, so it was with some degree of anticipation that I added this book to my reading list.

Writing update: March 2015

Fashionably late, as ever, here’s an update on my writing progress and activities for March.

The joy of gender (part two)

In the first part of The Joy Of Gender I discussed some general principles I’ve adopted when determining the gender of characters in my stories. In this follow-up I offer some specific examples along with, hopefully, an overview of how my approach has matured over the recent years

My new web project: ‘beta’

Over the Easter weekend I set up a new website with the goal of making it easier to get early feedback on my writing. It’s called ‘beta’ and you can access it right here: http://beta.justincawthorne.com/

Of quotes, breaks and drives

Or how I went faintly mad over the case of the curly quote and ended up exactly where I began

Infected (Scott Sigler)

I continued my bid to become a ‘real’ reader again with this visceral sci-fi chiller from Scott Sigler – a sort of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, but with blood and guts turned up to 11.

Writing update: February 2015

February was some distance from being my most productive month (that’s shorthand for: it was fairly rubbish). I did however, make a start on a significant project.

Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

Brilliance (Marcus Sakey)

In the ongoing saga of my bid to develop a healthy reading habit, I moved straight from The Girl With All The Gifts to Brilliance, a sort of science-fictiony, crimey-wimey novel by Marcus Sakey.

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