Summer writing schedule

No, I’m not going to give up the blog, just to kill the suspense right away. I’m still going to hack away at it for the foreseeable future. However, there might be some changes coming up over the summer.

First, with Cathy’s departure for the summer about two weeks away (I’m not counting down, she is. You’ve never seen someone more ready for school to be over with) I’m going to have a lot of spare time on my hands for the month of July. I’ve resolved to start another novel.

Yes, I still have that thing from last November. That’s going in a drawer somewhere until I can figure out what to do with it. Besides, the new one is whacking around inside my head, wanting to be written. Right now I’m mostly doing character sketches and trying to plot out the story arcs (there’s going to be flashbacks, so I’m trying to work on the timing). Once Cathy heads out, I’m going to start writing.

Unlike the last attempt, I won’t be putting chapters online. I’ll be running sections past one or two people, but it’s not going to be for public consumption.

So what does this mean for the blog? Several things. One, I might not be posting every day like I normally do. Last November during National Novel Writing Month I was trying to get my word limit in, write my blog, do a college course via correspondence and my job. I did not have a happy wife, what with me hunched in front of the computer so much. Plus, it was hard writing that much.

So if I go two or three days without posting to the blog, you’ll know why.

Secondly, some of the content might start getting a bit...odd. Well, odder than normal. Part of the book is going to be based on things I experienced when with The Muse and The Packet. There’s no sense in trying to disguise that, it’s going to be fairly apparent if it ever sees the light of day. So what you might start seeing here are my recollections of odd events and experiences from my time with those papers. It could be stories I covered, conversations I had, parties I went to, etc. (Note, names will be changed to protect the guilty).

I’ll be writing it down to jar things loose and to have a place where I can find things if I need to go look for them. Warren Ellis does something similar with his website.

I think I also might be putting more photos up on the blog. I have a lovely camera and the weather is finally warm enough that I can use it without worrying about the components freezing. Besides, I learned something when I was with The Packet...I often write best when I take long walks first. I can talk it out (it gets looks from people, yes) and playing with the structure and language. I used to do it all the time with my columns. I still think the columns I wrote with The Packet were better than the ones with The Express, and one of the reasons why were the walks. I walked everywhere in Clarenville. That stopped when I moved to St. John’s and got a car.

So I might go for a walk, take some pictures and try to figure some scenes out. And then put the pictures online.

It’s all a bit weird, but then again, at the rate my stats are going, nobody will be reading by then anyway. Although I do find it amusing after reading some of the comments in the last post about what people do and don't like to read. Everyone has their favourites, it seems. So I guess it's a good thing I mix things up in what I write. A little something for everybody, apparently. Except curling. No one likes the curling writing.

Anyway, it should be an interesting summer.