Parallel stories

 There are two themes in my new novel with the idea being that, while they are miles apart in the events that develop them, there are many parallels in the emotions and choices that underlie them. At times it makes for tricky writing. As I am writing one scene I realise that it relates to a scene in an earlier chapter. Do I stop and go back to rewrite and improve the previous scene or stay on course with the one I am writing, either taking a note to myself or trusting in my memory to bring me back to that other scene later? The trouble with going back is that it breaks the momentum of the chapter I am writing. Even stopping to take a note to myself can do that. On the while I prefer to stay in the moment and continue writing from the ideas that are already fomenting in my brain. Hopefully I can come back and add the frills and improvements later.

Writing and thinking

 I began the day writing and spent most of the rest of it thinking about writing while doing other things. It's amazing how just putting a few words down on paper (or on the screen) starts the imagination whirring and new ideas thrusting forward. I am working on a chapter in which my protagonist meets an extremely intelligent woman. At one level she could be the soul mate he has been looking for but on another he begins to doubt that he could sustain a relationship with her - that she might be too intelligent and he could not match her. The chapter needs a balance. If it is all her spouting thoughts on obscure subjects it could be boring. She has to be human as well as intelligent, and the setting in which they are meeting has to be a part of the balance between their intellectual and human selves. It's a challenging exercise and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Chopping and changing

 It's fascinating when you have written a chapter, can see that it doesn't really work, and then realise it contains parts of several different possible chapters. Call it cutting and pasting or chopping and changing but in no time at all the parts are separated, expanded and lo and behold, instead of having completed one chapter you have completed two or three.

The novel grows. My hero has reached a crisis point where he has to make a decision. What will he do?

Novel moving along

 I made a big step forward in my new novel today when I brought a character in out of the rain into the cafe where the hero was waiting. I had the scene clear in my mind, her clothes dripping, wearing the wrong type of shoes, angry but trying not to show it. The trick was to get that into words - and suddenly they flowed like the rain down the folds of her coat. In a few sentences that captured all of what I had imagined, she moved from the doorway and launched into a torrent of conversation which almost overwhelms the hero and carries the story forward as he comes to grips with his first impressions and decides whether this can possibly be the soul-mate she seemed to be from her on-line dating profile.

When writing flows like this it at its most enjoyable and I can't wait to see where the next session will take the characters, and me.

Successful launch

 Good crowd of past and present friends and family for the launch of A Life In Short Stories today. Son Darren gave the official launch speech and commented on how I had been writing all my life, sometimes going away from it but always coming back.
In my speech I talked about how much of me there was in the stories, not as a person but in the feelings my characters expressed. At least one other writer who was there was nodding vigorously,
Sold enough copies to cover the cost of the launch and go some way towards covering printing costs but that is not what I do it for. I am more than glad that there are now people out there reading what I have written.
Now I go on to my next projects, a collection of poetry and songs and a new novel,

One new book and one new cover

 Copies of my short story collection 'A Life In Short Stories' and the second edition of 'A New Era For Manny Youngman' have arrived and both should be available through Ingram Spark and on-line sites like Booktopia, Goodreads, Amazon and Kobol.

I am going to be interested to see the reaction to 'A Life In Short Stories'. In some ways it is a memoir, with notes about when and where I wrote each story, starting with the earliest written in the 1960s. Looking back over them now I can see themes that I have worked through around fairness and tolerance but there is no fixed theme or genre. My approach to writing them was always to write the best story I could, whether it was romance, science fiction or comedy.

To prove that they have stood the test of time, I selected a humorous story I wrote in 1967 and submitted it to the 2021 Best Of Times Short Story Competition. It won second prize. 

Meanwhile, I have received favourable reaction to the new cover of "A New Era For Manny Youngman' Hopefully it results in more sales.

Slowly but surely

 My new novel has not started off with a bang. I wrote two chapters and then decided it needed a more suspenseful beginning. A new first chapter later I found myself with a hole between it and the chapters I had written earlier and no clear idea how to bridge it. I knew what had to go in there but not how to shape it. Then yesterday morning it came to me and I wrote solidly for several hours, always a great feeling. The two main threads are now in place and I feel comfortable about working through them to the end which I already have firmly in that deep well at the back of my head from which all ideas and inspiration seem to flow.

Meanwhile the first copies of my short story anthology, along with the reprints of my two novels are only days away. It is going to be very interesting to see whether the new cover on A New Era For Manny Youngman results in increased sales as I had a few comments that the first cover was not working. 

So much happening

 The Short Story anthology is on its way to Ingram Spark for publishing, I have laid out the basic plot for my new novel and started writing the first chapter today.

I have also started reading again after a long spell of not feeling like reading, and my first books were by my two favourite authors, Felix Francis, writing in the vein of his father Dick, and Michael Robotham, who told me to keep writing at a time when I felt I was wasting my time.

The new novel is not autobiographical but is the story of a man who lives a very similar life to the one I am presently living. It's a balancing act between borrowing from real life as I am experiencing it and making my protagonist's thoughts and reactions as different as possible from my own.

I had one of those highlight moments recently when the end to the novel came to me almost in a dream. I knew what had to happen but not how, and certainly not how the ending would tie neatly back to the beginning. And then it came to me. A good feeling. Can't wait to be writing that scene.

Anthology in draft

 I have the draft of my short story anthology for the final edit. It always amazes me how much slips through earlier edits, but stands out when it is in text form. Some of this was due to using character reader and audio entry go get the stories into digital form. That can lead to a lot of errors of spelling in particular, and also line spaces and other minor issues.

Also have the new cover of A New Era For Manny Youngman, which is very different. It is going to be interesting to see if it sells better with the new cover.

Cover lesson

Have learned not to be precipitous in announcing the cover of my short story anthology. That picture is not available except with some complicated restrictions and at a high price. I had a back-up so we are going with that, and doing the poetry book cover and a new cover for A New Era For Manny Youngman at the same time because we can get a better price from the picture suppliers. 
Meanwhile the new novel is taking shape quickly. I have the broad outline and just need to fill in some detail before I start writing the first draft.

New novel starting to take shape

 I've started on a new novel, provisional title Searching or The Search. The central theme is a man looking for a soul-mate and going through a process of deciding whether such a thing exists and, if not, what he can do to find someone.

I am developing several story lines with different characters all searching for something but with some obstacle in their way. The stories will be interwoven with the solution to each problem giving the main character a clue to solving his own.

Because of this structure I have to have a plot worked out. It is not a seat of the pants novel, at least not at this stage. It is going to be important to time the events to come together at the right time, 

One problem may be the number of characters - I may need to cut them back, which means reducing the number of stories, or introducing them in a different way - say one character referring to another story as well as her/his own.

All good brain exercise and something to look forward to working on each day.

Proposed cover

 

This is the picture I plan to use for the covers of my short story anthology. Buying the right to use it from fineart america. The right side will be the front, with the title in the yellow pages area and the blurb will be in the top left hand corner on the back cover.

Decisions on reprinting

 With the publishing of 'My Life In Short Stories' under way I have been giving thought to what to do with my two novels. I have limited stocks of both. 'The Man Who Didn't Like People' has been the better seller so I will reprint that as it is. With 'A New Era For Manny Youngman', there has been criticism of the cover so Bec is going to give it a fresh look before we reprint it. Meanwhile I am putting the finishing touches to 'All My Years', a collection of my poetry and songs I plan to publish later in the year. By the next time I have an exhibition I should have a good selection to present to potential readers.

Anthology on its way

 Completed the final edits on my anthology of short stories. Now goes off to be typeset and sent to the printer. It was an interesting experience, reviewing stories I have written over more than 50 years. Some of the earlier stories were better than I expected and there were one or two themes that ran through a lot of them. One was observing strangers and imagining their stories, another was a dislike of prejudice and discrimination and a third was a continuing search for a something not quite attainable.

A fitting end

 I struggled over the ending of the final story for my anthology until yesterday, when I realised it had to finish with an inconclusive ending. The anthology is my life in short stories, a chronological account of stories I have written since my first when I was in my teens. Since my life is not over, it follows that the ending of the last story leaves the future open to speculation. Moreover, the last story is the most autobiographical, it tells of a elderly man travelling on coach tours, looking for something or someone as I have been doing in the past year. 

After throwing out a few which I did not think were worth including, the anthology now consists of 27 stories totalling just short of 80,000 words. They range widely in subject matter and are not confined to any genre. I have no idea what readers will make of them, but my aim is simple - having written so many stories over the years I want to see them in print instead of gathering dust in a drawer. Hopefully my great grandsons, Noah and Cooper, and their descendants, will one day read them and have some idea what sort of person they are descended from. That's probably a vain hope, but it is one that gives me a good feeling.

Ready to start editing

 I have finished transcribing my short stories into the first draft of an anthology. Twenty-seven stories and 75,000 words. Now I start editing, which may see some of the stories disappear as I have found some of them not up to the standard I want to be remembered for, On the other hand, the anthology is meant to be a memoir of what I have written throughout my life, so perhaps they should stay, 

I am also at the same stage with my book of poems and songs, which will be a much slimmer volume. I think at this stage I may leave that to be published at a later stage.

Another project

 Partially ignoring my previous resolution (in as much as I have shelved some of those projects) I suddenly became enthused with reviving my book of poetry and songs, which I had almost completed. It would be great to be able to launch both my short story anthology and my book of poetry at the same time, although perhaps staggered launches would produce better sales. That is something I will have to think about.

So I have made a first draft of the poetry book and I'm working on changing the typeface to make the poems look better on the page. Some of them have to be on a single page and some go over two pages, I have also designed a cover for it with the title All my years, which is a play on All my tears from Omar Khayam.

I have also transcribed most of A Living Death, with only two more stories to be transcribed and one new story to be finished before the first draft of the anthology will be ready. The cover for that is also in draft form, the title being A Life In Short Stories.

All of this is making me feel good and a lot more positive about life in general.

Need to concentrate

 In a rush of enthusiasm generated by my renewed urge to write, I think I may have rushed off in too many directions.

I've given up the idea of an illustrated children's book. Not only is it not the sort of thing I usually write but I don't want the cost and effort of organising an illustrator.

My priority has to be the short story anthology with the hope I may get it published in time for the Book Fair in July. I have nearly 60,000 words so far with about another 5,000 transcribed. I can start to work on the cover while this and the editing are in process so it should be possible.

I have two stories for the Writing Centre's anthologies and there is plenty of time to tidy them up and possibly write two more.

Everything else has to go on hold, including the other short stories I have been working on and the next novel.

On a roll

 Not only can I transcribe my old hard-copy stories using the OCR capacity in Onenote, but I've realised I can read them direct into Word using the "dictate" feature in the top right corner of the Home page. I really should have read the manual when I started using computers. I wonder what other clever things it can do?😊

So, I have been transcribing stories for my anthology using both methods (my voice gets a little tired doing only dictation), I have completed a first draft of a christmas children's story I am so pleased with I am thinking of making it into an illustrated book, and the germ of an idea for a new novel is starting to sprout into something more tangible in the back of my mind.

I have one other short story I have to get beyond the first opening sentences and then all my current writing projects will be moving along nicely.

All this has been helped immensely by being in lockdown because of Covid. There's no pressure on me to get out and make as if I want to be part of the rest of the world. I suspect it was the feeling I had to do that and have a busy social life that contributed to the hiatus in my writing through most of last year.

Now I am back writing I know what I always knew before - that this is who I am, misanthropic old hermit or not.😉

OCR

 I great find yesterday - I can use Onenote, which is already on my computer as part of Windows, to use optical character recognition to transcribe my old typed stories into digital format. It is an easy process, basically scanning the original, inserting it in Onenote and clicking on it to produce the digital text on the clipboard, from where it can be pasted into Word or anywhere else.

So far I have transcribed  two stories in a lot less time (and effort) than it would have taken me to retype them. 

I made someone cry

 It always good to get feedback from a reader. One lady messaged me this week: " I finished reading your book. It was great. The last chapter brought me to tears. That's how involved I got."

What more can an author ask? As the BeeGees almost sang: "I wrote a book and started the whole world crying."

That was The Man Who Didn't Like People.  Some suggested I should now write The Woman Who Didn't Like People. Maybe it will make readers laugh.

2021 Update

 The new year has started off brilliantly. I am writing again after a long spell thinking I wasn't going to write another word.I am compiling an anthology of about 30 of my short stories, writing two short stories for the up-coming anthology of the Rockingham Writers Centre and starting to put down some ideas for my next novel.

Meanwhile, my two novels: A New Era For Manny Youngman and The Man Who Didn't Like People; are among the best sellers at the Friends of Rockingham Arts Community exhibition which has been running all this week and will be on again in March. I'm not sure why there has been this burst of interest in them but it may be because I have become more involved in the Writers Centre activities and have taken over as convenor of their short story group. Some of the members who hadn't heard of me may have decided to check out my novels to see if they are any good.

Not that I worry why people read my books as long as they do. 

With the anthology of my own stories. it may take some time as a lot of my early stories were pre-digital and will have to be transcribed from the hard copies I have kept in drawers for a couple of decades. The earliest go back to the 1960s.

It has been fascinating to revisit them. I can see a period in my twenties when I was first published and sent off story after story, a long hiatus while I aimed at a more up-market publication without any success, then back to where I could get published. By then my life had moved on, I was married and had children and was busy running my writing business, which included writing for clients and not for publication.

During this time I started writing a number of novels without getting any of them to publishable stage. That was very much a learning period. I did write some short stories, mainly aimed at competitions.

Around 2011 I had success with a couple of minor competitions and that set me off on a burst of short story writing.

Finally I started writing novels again, having by then learned what I needed to do, and A New Era For Manny Youngman and The Man Who Didn't Like People were published.

However, trying to write another novel took me down a dead end, mainly I believe because I was trying to write for a market and not what I wanted to write. That dried up and I stopped writing for about a year. Now I'm back in the writing harness again and it feels good.