Still here

Yes, I am. In writing hell right now. I think I have just junked three weeks work. Don't want to say too much in case my editor reads my blog. He'll know soon enough - heh heh heh. I'm not much of a tosser (quiet in the back there, my English friends!). But what I was writing didn't feel right and the switch...does. Heh ho, we'll see. Early days yet. But I think one of the reasons I've been a bit down about writing lately is the speed of turnover. I've just finished polishing 'Ragnarok', honing a sentence here, doing a small rewrite there. Now I am faced with the blank page each morning, constant invention. Its harder... and I am so very, very tired. (Last said in a sort of fading, upper class voice!)

Well, as my friend Jack Absolute would say: 'Bollocks!' I get paid to do this so I better just get down to it. To be honest, I think the junking and restarting may have turned a corner for me. I can see the story again which I'd lost amid all sorts of debris. I'd danced around it but not worked out what the story itself was.

I know I keep saying this but I will start to blog more. Especially as my friend and fellow Historical novelist Simon Scarrow has started blogging on Blogger too. Yesterday. Check him out. He's a fine writer and even busier than me.

Turmoil

Appalling time lapses, I know. Still, here I am, ever apologetic. Wish I could blame it on brain overload.
Actually, I think I will! My brain is overloading. I am in that hell-land just before starting to write the first draft of a novel when I am convinced that a) I can’t write b) if I ever could, I’ve forgotten how its done and c) why, oh why, did I allow agents and editors to talk me into this ridiculous venture?
I am fairly sure I always think this for a while. Trouble is, it feels new each time. I then lurch between a fanatical desire to just start writing any old bollocks just to commit myself to paper, and the equally pressing urge to…er, not. Not ever. Certainly not tomorrow, or even this week, month, season…
Today I excused myself hard labour by the pressing need to get a sense of Dracula as presented on film. So I rented Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as perceived by Francis Ford Coppola. Some wonderful moments, some shockers. What was Keanu Reeves on? How was Gary Oldman so brilliant, sexy and horrible all at once?
Another pressure I am putting on myself – make my Vlad sexy. But how do I meld one of history’s great slaughterers with sex appeal? I am sure it can be done. Can’t it?
Now, if only I could remember how to begin a bloody novel!