Just get on with it!

Hey ho, sorry 'bout this, but most of my typing vanishes into the ephemeral trivia of social media, and blogs have slowly gone dormant.

I keep meaning to complete an autobiography, which I already started on, and which I even commissioned a cover for, from the excellent Bob Campbell (which is ready to go, on standby).

Of course, I remain schtum about the title I chose, so let's call it Work-In-Process...

Back in the day, I challenged myself with writing 50,000 words in a month, as part of NaNoWriMo - a personal marathon to write a short novel in the month of November.  At that speed, an autobiography could get finished before Christmas.  I actually finished the marathon half a dozen times.  No great books emerged (although I quite liked Infinite Monkeys - and even played the game of getting a cover and promo image from Bobby Campbell, and then publishing it on Lulu, as paperback or ebook, just to see how it all worked).  Still, I failed to go back and do a serious edit of most of the other attempts, and the editing process matters much more than just dumping out a first draft.

November looms, so perhaps I should push myself to write at that frenzied pace (1667 words per day) and get the damned autobiography into first draft, at least.  I might even enjoy it!

2007:  I wrote "Foolproof", my very first attempt at fiction.  I struggled, but completed the task.  It muddled up bits of my own life, with bits of imagination, and prove simply a slog to the finish.  I can't re-read it.

2008: I decided in advance, at least, on a theme, of a quest, and hidden items, and puzzles, etc.  This led to "Infinite Monkeys".  I still quite like to read bits of this...and I love holding a real book!

2009: This time I wrote "Handwaving", more or less about "Art" and the empty space, the white room, the blank canvas.  I think I included a small esoteric group, as well, as a source of inspiration.

2009a: enthused by the process, I also did a film script, on Script Frenzy, "One White Crow".

2010:  I wrote "Does Not Compute" aka "Spooking the Herd" which I can't remember much about. Something to do with business, and money, and hustles, etc.

I skipped 2011

In 2012, I decided to actually work to some kind of game plan, so read and analysed a bunch of conspiracy thrillers.  I didn't want to have a hero who was ex-SAS, though, who could field strip a bunch of weapons, fly a helicopter, etc, so made him a diffident Englishman abroad.  But apart from that...

2012: The Columbus Caper  I quite liked this book, and really should go back and look at it again, do some editing, and maybe even follow through with a Lulu version.  If it amuses you to see the process, I did the work on Scrivener, and used this blog as a diary of the days of November 2012.

I tried using 2013 to work on the autobiography with the same level of motivation, but it felt like cheating, as NanoWriMo has a specific brief of writing fiction. 

And then I pretty well put it all aside.  And six more years drifted by...  Hey ho.  So it goes.