Mike Murphy's writing diary: March 2021

Sunday 21 March 2021

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.

Friday 19 March 2021

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.

Thursday 18 March 2021

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.

Authors I like

Anna Jacobs

A mentor in my early writing days and still one of my favourite authors. Her sagas about family life in Lancashire are among my favourites but she is a prolific writer and it's all good.

Michael Robotham

Michael urged me to keep writing when I was in a depressed period after another publisher's knock-back. He is basically why I kept writing and turned to self-publishing. I've read all his books and I'm always waiting eagerly for the next one.

Dave Warner

I only recently discovered Dave as a writer after having had his Dave Warner and The Suburbs album since it was on vinyl. It's interesting having another writer who sets his stories in Western Australia.

Dick Francis

I've read all his books at least twice and sometime more often. He's the writer I always return to when I need to feel totally in my comfort zone. Good stories, tight plots, easy writing style. I'd love to know if it really was his wife Mary who wrote them. His son Felix is doing a great job of keeping the family business going.

Leslie Thomas

Ever since Virgin Soldiers I've been hooked on Leslie Thomas and his Dangerous Davies series are among my all-time favourites.

I am because I write

I come across a lot of people who would like to be writers and I often wonder why. For me there has been no question. Since a very young age I have been a writer. Certainly not a famous or even successful one but while other people were doctors or teachers or sportspeople, the thing I did best and was most comfortable doing was writing. For some reason I had a natural flair for it and that raw talent was honed when I became a journalist and learned that what bubbled out of my head was not what was needed. I had to to be able to write to order. One of my earliest lessons came from Bob Duffield, a reporter who took the story of the closure of Perth's Roe Street brothels and wrote different versions of it for convervative, sensationalist, religious and sociological publications. I learned that writing was a craft to be learned, and I have spent many years learning not only the craft of writing, but of story-telling, which is an art in itself. Whether it's a poem, a short story, a novel, my family history, one of my blogs or web sites, I will always be writing something. It's simply who I am and what I do.