booksandstories.com

May 2004 Review

Writing Progress

How many of you noticed “The Friendly Ambassador” appear on the List Page? Not many, I'll bet, you rotten lot. Why don't you let me know what you think about things? Too many of you come and go without a thought for all us poor webmasters slaving away to give you something to look at on the internet. A short critical appraisal can't be that difficult or time consuming, can it? “I liked the site,” “It was crap,” how long do these take? Come on, put the effort in, I have to.

Being a nut as far as writing goes I still couldn't resist some minor tweaks to “The Friendly Ambassador” even after I put it up. These have tended to be descriptions of things I only brushed over. I am terrible at missing out simple things like descriptions of clothes. They don't really have a bearing on the story so I often forget them and have to go back to put them in. I also sometimes forget a character description or get it wrong. Eyes change colour for example. So I've gone over it again to try and be more consistant. I think its called continuity in film. But in general I am very happy with the end result. I think “The Friendly Ambassador” is my best work since “The Look Of Love”. They are very different stories but they are the last two that I have written. Only “The Dreamer” fits in between them. As this started out as a Short Story Serial it differs from the other two in its approach and execution, but it is also a story that I like in particular. As a writer I tend to like all my stories and characters, but like everyone else, I do have my favourites. At the moment it is these three.

As I mentioned last month, I am going to start looking at “A Fine Woman” next. I want to finish it and then join it all together as a complete story. At first I will leave it in the Short Story Serial section, but after a month it will move to the Contemporary Thrillers and Romantic Books section. It remains unchanged at the moment.

My next big project is “The Twelve Ships”. At the moment it is just a big blob of things in my head with only a few main events or plots penciled in. It will take a time to sort out, and will only really begin to solidify once it gets on the paper, so to speak. After that I want to go over the later stories in the sequence, as they will all need reviewing once the events in the first two have been written. And I think they could do with a rewrite just to bring them up to date in my writing style. Only “The Return Of The Sixpack” is close to the standard that I am writing now, as this story was written before “The Look Of Love”. This will also take time. If only I didn't have to work for a living I could do it all quicker.

Please, someone out there, anyone, pay me to be a writer!

Oh, by the way, this site is now officially five years old.

What do you think of it so far? Email me!