So, here it is, again, and it’s called…

I’m very hungover today, and though it’s been five months since my last diary entry, I haven’t got all that much to say, like usual (he lied). So here’s a short update on the state of my writing.

I put together a full short story collection - nine stories, I think it is, ordered and edited and reviewed. I sent it out to a shit tonne of short story chapbook competitions - no dice, obviously. So I dunno what to do with them, now, because in my eyes they’re finished, and at least two of them are good, I think, including the very personal novella which heads the collection. So maybe I’ll just post them on here, and share them with my friends.

Aside from that, I’ve been working heavily on the novel. The short stories were just a little break from the novel, which I needed after I finished the second draft near to the end of last year. (With a job, and a band, and trying to have a life, it’s difficult to get all this writing done, let me tell you, especially when I’m sinking five hours a day into CDDA.) Nonetheless, I’ve been pushing through the third draft, and I think really improving on it. It’s been a mixture of new words and stealing stuff from the first draft which I still think is good. I got to the end of Emily’s chapter (chap 2) the other day, and realised to my shock that I was already a quarter of the way through the story, which made me happy, because I thought this draft was going to take forever, and I’m actually getting through it quite quickly, as it turns out. Other stuff has suffered - my band’s album is still sitting on the shelf, waiting for me to finish recording and do the mixes - but such is life.

This third draft, when it’s done, I hope will be the final structural/heavy-content draft. My fourth draft will be a line check, and by that I mean, I will probably rewrite, to more or lesser extents, essentially every single sentence in the book. So that one might be the one that takes ages, but that’s okay - at that point, it’ll be basically ready to send to the few beta readers I already have lined up. I think I’ll finish the fourth draft first, though, so my readers can focus on character, plot, and theme, rather than on discussing individual lines which don’t read very nicely - I think I can figure out which bits need stylistic edits on my own.

And hey, that’s the end of this blog post cum diary entry. Told you it was gonna be a short one. Remember to wash your hands.