Colin Mulhern

 After having Sunday off, I gave both WIPs some thought and decided it's worth switching to the romcom for the rest of the month. This way, I still get a manuscript at the end that I can work on.  I have a plan, but it's a very loose one. I also have an end-point, which is important as the romcom is essentially a mystery. I worked out the "crime" a while ago and thought it was funny enough to develop, so I wrote the set-up, have the solution, but matching the two together is the tricky bit in the middle. I also couldn't find the right backgrounds for the main characters to make the story work.  But something clicked on Sunday night and the cogs started moving.  Yesterday, I wrote 1,460 words. Today, I've just done 1,799 words. I am writing this one completely out of order, so the chapter I wrote to day is quite near the end. Yesterday, it was working about five chapters in.  The other thing to note is that romcom novels and cozy mysteries are generally much sh...

No words today, and no more to be written... just yet.  Basically, I got up this morning and reviewed what I've written so far and thought it was literary equivalent of a really bad homemade curry. All the ingredients are there, but it tastes bloody awful. I'm not bothered about the writing itself because that can be polished, it's the story content and the path it's taking.  But worse than that, it started wandering into cliche territory, and think this is entirely down to not being able to brainstorm paths and reject the obvious ideas - which is how I usually work. So instead, I've written down the first thing that's come into my head. I've ended up with a poor mix of the Blair Witch and the Midwich Cuckoos glued together with a personal rant about something that's got nothing to do with the story.  And on top of that, I wrote myself into a corner. What was a surprise was that I was fine with writing the dark stuff, but I've been totally distracted...

Okay, the first 10k is in the bag on day four, which is much better than I hoped. It's weird because when I hit the daily goal there was part of me that wanted to say, "Fine, that's me done for the day," but as the 10k mark was right there for the taking, I couldn't resist the temptation to push on.  I'm quite glad I did because I hit a major plot turning point. It's that moment when the reader should be thinking, "Oh, shit. Something bad is going on here." which is fab as a writer. So, a quick look back. I haven't found it particularly difficult to Write Into the Dark so far, but I can really feel the pull of wanting to plot and plan. However, some of the things I've written wouldn't have been in a plan, so in a way it's working. I'd love to write more on this but my fingertips are numb and I need to make chicken fajitas.  10k in four days. I'm happy about that. Until tomorrow! Current word count: 10,075 Words to go: 59,9...

Sorry Scrivener, all is forgiven. I've actually been using LibreOffice for about a month because I was using for a different project over the holiday period, and generally, everything was fine. But then today, right in the middle of a sprint, it started acting a little weird. I tried to undo a few things only to see it replace chunks of text with error messages. Then it crashed completely. Thing is, this document is less than 5,000 words. That's not a lot for a word processor to handle. And while it autorecovered the file, it's still one too many crashes for me.  Going to back to Scrivener, I suddenly remembered the Session Target tool. This makes life so much easier, as I can see, as I type, my progress. In LibreOffice I'd have to paste the word count into the spreadsheet I'd made.  Project targets window It also displays as a line bar at the top of the project with the Manuscript Target at the top, above the chapter title, and the Session Target below, so there...

Well, I hit the word count. In fact, I crossed the line just now at 2376 words, so I'm writing this quick before Only Connect comes on (love that show, but I never get a single thing right!) Anyway, quick summary of the day. I'm off work for the Christmas break, so I managed to do most of the work during the day, but I'll hold my hands up and admit that I went into editing mode which ate up a good few hours. A little change in Chapter 2 had a bit of a knock-on effect which meant deleting quite a chunk of chapter 1. I also needed to write a new opening.  This is something I was thinking about last night. The story kicks off with the MC looking at an old house, but the village where the main action takes place acts as a crucible. Therefore, I wanted to have a metaphor for crossing into the forbidden world. I liked the idea of the village being cut off by a flooded road. I went down a few false paths, but ended up with fairly clean copy. Just a quick note on writing software. ...

source: laurieboris.com The challenge Rather than do Resolutions I can't keep, I thought I'd kick off the New Year with a little writing challenge.  This challenge comes in three parts. Write an entire novel in January. Edit and clean up in February (possibly – see below) Submit to Agents in March. Background One of the surprises that came out of doing a degree in Creative Writing was finding that I have strengths in areas I thought were closed off. There was one story in particular that resonated, a short piece about the son of a grave robber. Dark fiction was something I found quite difficult after Matthew passed away, but this felt good. Unlike my Victorian vampire novel, which I had peppered with humour as a kind of safety net, this was pure, dark gothic fiction with an honest, earthy folk horror feel. Gearing up The genre of folk horror got under my skin and I found myself revisiting old classic movies like The Wicker Man (1973) and Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) - a movi...