Wow! What a month
Can't be arsed to write my book, can't be arsed to write my blog
Got my first set of feedback about the opening chapters;
In summary:
Fuck off - it's crap
I must admit, I was reading between the lines a touch there but hey, you get the drift
Major downer
Here am I supposed to be catching you up with how the novel goes and I can't even be bothered to do that
Hey ho. Such is life
I fell ill for a week - a cold and a so-cannot-be-bothered spirit-draining cough that still happens today. Bloody thing
The week in bed feeling miserable and sorry for myself was followed by a week of moping around the house feeling sorry for myself
I took another look at the recommendations from the first reader and just couldn't sort it out in my head
Make a plan, I said (because I do that - talk to myself . . . a lot. Well there's no point waiting for you lot to post a comment is there? Might as well talk to myself)
So a plan was formed; it involved, reprinting and reformatting the opening chapter, removing the two page description of Irsi (on account that we don't meet him for a good three or four chapters yet) describe Sariro and Kentse, drink beer, eat like a pig, mope, procrastinate, scratch my arse, play games on mousebreaker, set up a facebook account and then stalk everyone I knew to see what they are up to, more beer, half a bottle of vodka, more food and what was I doing with the book again?
Good plan
Pick and choose the options I want to undertake, ignore the options I should undertake
Have you ever heard the Americanism MoSCoW? (It stands for Must have, Should have, Could have and Wont have) well I have a new one for you;
ParIs - Pick what you want and Ignore the rest
Just got an email from an old friend that has read the blog - he has decided to use my new language to name a buddy of ours Seyuenti. Work it out . . . it's very funny
Now if he could just learn to post a fucking comment, maybe I won't feel so pigging lonely . . .
:o(
Oh, and he's only complaining that the blog is too long. Too long?! Once I get started I can't stop - but that's the problem; once I get started. It's the getting started bit that's tricky!
Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yeah, being a right misery and bumming everyone out
So, that would explain the last twenty empty days.
And now, I'm back!
I got a second review of my manuscript from a published author who described it more as an unpolished diamond (she describes all manuscripts that way but fuck it straw clutching is a forte of mine) and more than that she said I had the makings of an excellent book
Woohoo!!!
She concurred with the first review however, in that there was very little description of Kentse and Sariro. She also pointed out that the chapters were too long . . . ! Apparently 6000+ words bores the tits off you lot
Ok, so I ramble, I get it. Enough already.
There were a whole bunch of other suggestions which, if I’m going to be brutally honest I plagiarised immediately - not enough to name her co-author but nearly . . .
So I'm procrastinating again; the blog instead of the income generating novel. See what I mean
Thank heaven I am not alone - do you know how many people out there are writing?
1 in 10 is a conservative figure.
1 in 10!! That's fucking huge! 61million people in the UK - that makes it 6million budding authors
6 million! Holy Shit! But. And it is a J-Lo. How many are doing it in their spare time, coming home after work and sitting down; wang out a couple of hundred words a night then off to the telly for a rest? I'd say, probably about 5.99 million. Phew! That's better.
So I'm only competing with . . . um . . . 10,000 unknown writers. Ah. Ok. 10,000. Shit.
But another interesting factette; there is a thing called a slush pile; this is the unsolicited manuscripts sent to agents and publishers and that sits at about a million.
A million manuscripts in the UK alone
All sent "out of the blue" as it were
Ok, so if we do some more quick calculations - I reckon that there will easily be an average of at least 20 copies of each one in different agency piles
That brings the figure down to 50,000 manuscripts from 10,000 aspiring writers
5 -1 - interesting. Every one chucks out 5 different manuscripts - none of which are any good (otherwise they wouldn't be on the slush pile would they . . . ? Bear with me on this)
After a whole night juggling the numbers and a 20Meg spreadsheet of calculations and formulas I finally decide that there is just me and a bloke called Tarquin vying for the next advance
Woohoo!
I tell you, alcohol may well have its detractors and side-effects but you can't deny it has it's good points too!
So where am I? Oh yeah - I have cut out some length (chuckle) and tweaked some bits (snigger) and I'm ready to throw the old chapter back over the fence and see what happens
All in the space of a day
Do you think I should spend a tad longer working on it . . . ?
Yeah, me too
One other thing my mentoress (?) offered was a professional, independent copy editor
Holy shit! Do you know how expensive that is?!
It looks innocuous enough - £4 - £6 per 1,000 words until you multiply it up by the 100,000 fucking words in my bloody novel
That’s four grand! At the cheap rate! Four grand! Fucking hell. Oh wait . . . no it isn't . . . it's four hundred quid
Phew! Nearly gave myself a coronary there. Stupid sodding spreadsheets.
Well, four hundred quid is still a tad rich for me but hey, if it's worth it, it's worth it!
And think of the help I'll get from it
Now, how the fuck do I sell this idea to EzBird . . . :o(
1 comment:
You've eaten virtually every thesaurus going and possibly a dictionary or two... for Christmas, I'm going to book you a slot on "call my bluff"
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