Draft Three Done

12-01-2015

At the moment I am currently reading Terry Pratchett's non-fiction collection 'A Slip of the Keyboard'. It is one of those books that is fascinating reading. A lot of it are collections of his thoughts on various topics, all revolving around writing. Others are reproductinos of his speeches that he gave over the years. Such as the one he gave at a convention in the 2002 stating that he was no longer going to be working on two books at the same time.

Two books at a time? That is mind blowingly impressive no matter how you cut it.

In fact he said that he actually had a month a year when he was working on three books at the same time. One had been shipped off to his editor, one he had just finished and was waiting to send off to the editor and the third was a new book to work on.

I just can't figure out where he found the time to do all this writing while also holding down the job that helped pay the bills and dealing with everything else that life threw his way. I mean I found it hard enough to get time to work on the second Filthy Henry novel. It took me til today to get draft three finished. Something that I probably should have finished a long time before now, but I seem to let things get in the way a little

By no means as impressive as what Sir Terry can do, but something that I figured I would mention in passing on the Interwebs as a little milestone. The plan now is, while I have some steam in the writing engine, to continue with the good work and just take tonight off from re-writes. Draft four starts tomorrow on the bus into work.

I had said to a few people, stupdily, that I was aiming to have the second novel out and ready for sale by Spring. Now I did play fast and loose with the confirmation of which end of Spring I was talking about. Some assumed the start, others got told it would be the end of. This may be a little tricky to stick to, as once I am happy with it I still need to send the thing off to my editor to get them to have a look at it. Allowing the number of weeks for that work to be done it could well be summer time before the book is properly ready for people to get. So now the new plan is to get it finished and ready for August.

Why August? Well because I decided to be a nut job and signed up for a vendor stall at Dublin Comic Con, which takes place on the 8th and 9th of August. What better way to get motivated than to have a hard and fast date which will involve a bunch of random people walking past and judging my work?

Blue_jester