Okay. It’s been a while since my last post but I’ve been extremely busy with other things namely work, study and my story. So it’s just not possible for me to release a new post each week however I will be maintaining this site, instilling it with growth, value and content in the hope of entertaining and educating my readers. Now we’ve just come out of the second lockdown only to be thrown into a Tier 4 lockdown. I’ve been stuck with the same books for almost a year now as the libraries are shut. This is rather frustrating and as you can imagine has ruined Christmas for most.
Apparently a new strain is on the lose and for several months it feels like we’ve been trapped inside an apocalyptic sci-fi movie. I don’t think this simile is much of an exaggeration considering what’s going on around the world with this pandemic but these are scarier times now and we must remain strong and continue to remain calm, safe, and collective despite these dire periods.
To The Point Now As To Why It’s Taken Me So Damn Long!
Most writers today can do a book in around a few months so I guess I’m the odd exception. So why has it taken me so long to put forth a novel I started way back in the early 2000’s? Well if you’re eager to know I will tell you. I began my journey around 2002. I had just purchased an Apple I-book (A very expensive machine back then however easier to use and also it was my first computer.) I was doing graphic design at college and as I understand was told that they were using them in the industry. We even had the desktop Macs at my college. So, as you can imagine, the course I was on was completely unrelated to writing. I was living at home and was about to transition to university to then do a degree in Illustration, again another unrelated subject to my writing.
The Novel Was Never a Purpose
Using my I-book I’d began to experiment with the default word app it came with. Before then I was constructing whole sentences then a paragraph centred on an alien protagonist. I continued this on and off for months. There were whole droughts where I wasn’t writing at all and had to focus on my coursework and other issues. From bad experiences to unfortunate circumstances I had to juggle a lot in my personal life but despite this I persevered. Every so often I’d make changes to the growing story, most of them have been drastic. As I continued, I made efforts to read more and borrow books from the library. My vocabulary started to grow.
A Seed Of Where It Began
One could say I also had a head to write because back in 2001 I was retaking English GCSE and my teacher asked me what I was doing for a living? I told her my part-time job and she said I was wasting my time, that I had potential to be a writer also she critiqued what I read and suggested I should read a well known Newspaper in order to develop my writing more. Now through my adolescence there was a lot of English teachers I wasn’t fond of. Most of them came off as condescending and rude. they’d often embarrass me and other students in class but she was different. I never took her advice seriously. Yeah, I appreciated the encouragement but my heart was on my art more. However writing fiction was something I rather liked further back through my childhood.
The Hiccups & Mistakes Along The Way
My I-Book was heavier and bulkier than all the laptops that are out today. I carried it with me and on the eve of a University trip to Rome the computer broke down and I lost all my work including the story. I didn’t think to back-up or even knew about that procedure. I was clearly ignorant back then when it came to computers. I started from the beginning using, I think, a printed but unfinished copy of my story. Now this was in 2004 and I hadn’t even finished the story. In 2006 my machine broke down again following a flight from Barbados. Again I’d lost work, mainly art in Photoshop. I’d neglected to back up the progress to my zip drive. Despite the delay of getting it repaired I continued. In 2008 whilst on another holiday, this time in Ghana, the machine buggered up again. The I-Book was now a complete write-off so I purchased a trendy MacBook and continued my writing still. This wasn’t even the end of my delays to finalize my novel.
To Publish Or Not
Initially I wasn’t even serious and had no plans to get it published just finished. Having already had negative experiences with publishers in sending graphic novels, I’d produced as projects at uni, to them I wasn’t at all keen on using them as they’d more than likely not respond and bin my manuscript. Also I had a friend at work who was telling me about his son’s efforts to get his book recognized so I was getting a feel of how cut-throat and bloody that industry was. Certain people I told showed some interest with a couple of them encouraging me to continue. Eventually I discovered and considered self-publishing instead.
Lessons Learned
There was no outline of my story at all, and even though some established authors would say it’s not really a must I did a small plan and it helped me a bit with the arc’s construction. In the beginning I did zero research only throughout and towards my novel’s end did I learn I had to look for things that may be incorrect. Initially when I finished I found my story was far too long with a ridiculously high word count. Certain aspects of it were farfetched despite it originally being a sci-fi/fantasy planetary-romance. Also I was hell-bent on improving my story and making it more readable as once I read it I believed I could do better. A thousand revisions later and now in 2020 I would say I’m totally done and am finally happy with my work. Other issues such as wasting money on a self-publishing course and selecting the wrong editor I will save for another post as this also impacted. Now I’m waiting for the proof copy of my book which should arrive some point this Christmas week.