I haven't been blogging because I haven't been writing. My cousin's daughter Rachael came to visit us and so my time has been otherwise invested.

DR

Hors de stilo

This weekend and to a lesser extent today, I have been hors de stilo. (Without pen) This is in fact a lie. I have been with pen but without fizzly brain. It gets this way sometimes. I think that I am a writer of habit. I have been on holiday and it seems to have clammed up my creative glands. To make it worse I'm about to go on holiday again. It may be some months before the creative juices really start to build up again. Probably around the end of August, just about when I'm due off in fact.

Ho hum.

I have also found out who my first mystery follower was, I'll leave that 'til next time though.

DR

I did, but not enough and not to a high standard.

I did write today but I don't like what I wrote. I also seem to have woken up dyslexic this morning. Words, letters and sentences have absolutely been a closed book to me today, bit of a handicap for an English teacher.

Today I was writing about some of the motivations of Ronin as we continue into his character. Suffice to say that I have introduced the character of Mémé who has a discussion with Ronin on possible responses to discrete prostitutes operating on board the Harlequin fleet. On the way to work I had a fizzly mind and it all went sparklingly, on my return, it was all a little flat. A disappointing day.

I fancy beer, anyone up for a night out on the streets of Paris?

DR

The words of Leo.

I was in a bar last night talking to my esteemed friend Leo and he asked me a very good question. He had been reading my blog, although is yet to leave a comment I note, and struck upon a thing.

"Who is Ronin?"

It's a good question. I don't want to reveal too much of course but Ronin is one of the principle characters of my book. He is a commander in the Harlequin fleet. I don't really know what else you want me to tell you. He is, naturally, a Harlequin and he is quite young. He is in an interesting position in his life and it has rather warped him. I like him as a character but I don't like him as a person. He would not be someone I consider a friend.

Ronin that is, not Leo.

Leo is lovely.

Today I have done some writing and prepared some groundwork for a tying together of several seemingly disparate statements. I started this yesterday but I didn't blog, I didn't feel that I had anything that I wanted to commit to screen. Tomorrow I have a long journey ahead of me, both there and back so I should have some more things to report. Maybe not of course...

DR

Shame on me.

I did very little today. I started again with Ronin on a new chapter which describes the Harlequin society in a little greater depth. I did a hundred words, two hundred maximum. But I'm quite happy with what I have written. it comes and goes I find. Some days I find I write two thousand words or more of complete and utter dross. On other days I write one tenth of that but I rate its quality.

Still, we're starting go get into the meat of Ronin as a character. He is, in fact, a bit of a cunt but we are starting to see some of the reasons for this. His upbringing and unique situation in the Harlequin fleet has made him overly ruthless I suppose. He is capable of making the right decision for all the right reasons when we, as readers, know he should make the wrong decision. He can be so charming and kind to one person and two breaths later have the very same person executed.

This is not to say that he is without emotion, but I think that all emotion can be displaced or at any moment be disregarded for those things he considers greater.

I'll leave you to make you own mind up as to his moral standpoints.

DR

Somethings and yet not others.

Today I have done no writing and only a little editing. I hope you will all forgive me. I have however done some thinking and have got further through various problems that I had. I still have other problems to resolve which will involve rewriting but each thing in it's own time.

I will try putting pen to paper again tomorrow.

On the plus side, I have discovered Tweetdeck.

I have got rid of Chirpr, for the time being.

DR

When things start to come apart at the seams.

Oh well.

Another day thinking things through having found more holes in my plot than a balloon in a pin shop. Missing planets, Ok, I can deal with that. Extra things, Ok, unforeseen but workroundable. (Perfectly cromulent that word) Missing character when you are hundreds of thousands of words in...

...A different sort of problem.

Still nothing that floods of tears and tantrums won't clear away.

Yes, I have edited out a vital character in the course of defattening, (leaning?), my plot. I have been going over things in my head and I think that I have found a way back in but we will see. Still a long way to go.

You know that fish thing I mentioned a few posts back. Wedll it turns out that it's more like a plague of frogs. Maybe like London Buses.

I am not a happy bunny.

DR

Comments

Hello Everyone.

Some people have had problems leaving comments and viewing my profile.

If you try again now, that should be working. They had foreseen an update but it ran over on time which is why it was out when it shouldn't have been.

Try again if you wish.

DR

Sometimes you just have to blog it.

I was idling my time away, I am on holiday after all when I discovered something that could not sum up my book in any better way. My book sits between the lord of the rings and star wars so to see this headline was something of a coup.

The Perfect Headline.

DR

Twitter & Stuff

I haven't updated the twitter feed because I am not at home, I must get round to it.

I will post more pictures the moment someone leaves me a comment.

DR

Timeframe.

I didn't. (See previous blog)

I'm sorry but whilst I have thought about timeframe I haven't actually done anything about it. Neither have I done any writing but I have eaten a considerable quantity of duck. I have also typed up one of the major chapters involving the plotters circle. I will do more as the week progresses. I'm not at all sure exactly how many words I have written but on reflection more than I think. Or thought anyway. I do not have them typed up so I don't know. When I have, I shall pass on the message.

Ho Hum, still a long way to go.

DR

To break.

Hello everybody,

I am on holiday on the French coast so in terms of both writing and updating this blog I may be a little wayward. Also some of you have noted that the red on black was too harsh, garish, difficult to read etc. I have changed it to pale blue but I am open to suggestions.

Yesterday I finished a section and I am going to start the next one but first I need to organise a bit of timeframe.

I might do that now in fact...

DR

Aha!

I both wrote and yet did not write today. I finished the last chapter of that particular section and then stopped to do some thinking. I need to make sure that I get my time frames right otherwise things will be happening at the wrong moment.

Anyhoo, I hope that you are all aware of the television series of Red Dwarf. I have read the books which are not as funny but a damn sight nastier. I think the TV series has less bite but there you have it. In the books, when the crew are still alive Rimmer takes his officers exam. Building up to it, he spends hours and hours and hours carefully designing and painting a revision schedule, a work of design beauty. The day before his exam, at a point where he has not done any of the revision planned, he discovers that in his timetable he has added September twice. Panicked he decides to cheat by writing the answers all over his body but being so nervous begins to sweat and all the answers are blurred. He responds to this problem by repeatedly rewriting the words 'I am a fish' on his officers exam going so far as requesting extra paper so he can carry on writing it.

I have had such a September moment.

I have had to very carefully construct a certain section of the book in terms of what happens and why it happens. It was specifically designed to built over six chapters.

I discovered the other day that I have written seven.

Watch this fis... ...space.

DR

The day that is today.

I finished another chapter today and have smashed straight into the next one. I'm pootling along at quite a lick. I have been writing for about 90 minutes today and I expect I will do another 90 shortly. I find that I write at about two thousand words an hour which means I hope that I will have written about six thousand words today. I will not have done. I will have only written about five thousand because various scribblings, musing and off-the-cuff ideas will also be put down. I wish I could write on computer that fast. I have stopped typing up recently but started again yesterday. Still I'm happy with the amount that I'm writing. When the pen is going full bore I find my days less wasted.

I'm gibbering today and for that I apologise. I should have thought harder about what I was going to write on my blog. I hope you can forgive me.

DR

Finding Me!

I wonder if I show up in a Google search.

DR

I have a follower.

I finally have a follower. In fact I've had them for some time but I have no idea who it is. I wish I did know then I would be able to write them follower love poetry. Saying that, now I have confessed, they are probably less likely to write me a response. Ho hum.

I have been neglecting my blog and for this I am sorry, but I have not been neglecting my book. In fact I think that I am probably about twenty thousand words ahead of where I thought I was and I guess I wrote another two thousand words today. That is I am writing not redrafting and editing and typing up. Just writing. I have been writing the opening chapters that introduce the character of Ronin. His first chapter is difficult. I always find it difficult to introduce a major character, his first chapter will need much redrafting. However his second chapter is rattling along and I'm enjoying writing it, or would be if; 1 I wasn't writing this blog and 2 I hadn't nearly finished it. Nevertheless where chapter two goes, chapter three must surely follow. Then four and five I hope. I would like to have finished Ronin's part of the story by the end of August but I know what I am like.

Here's to hoping.

DR

Restarting.

I have finished the section that I had started on so will start another one. Well I say start another one, in fact I have already started it. It is in fact the section that contains the five previous chapters. I rarely work in chronological order. Still you will be pleased to know that I have started. I was describing a war but it has become a bit of an albatross so I have put it to one side. I will edit it when this bit is done.

DR

I have nothing to say.

The Nature of Creation.

You may or may not have noticed that this blog has not been updated over the last few days and I am very sorry. Sometimes writing is my creative outlet but sometimes I get pulled into something else. This has happened recently. If it is something creative I don't really mind, I still feel a little guilty because I am not writing but nevertheless. I have been drawing, or more precisely, designing. I wanted some way of representing spaceships as they are featuring heavily in my writing at the moment and I have discovered Google Sketchup. It's excellent and my days have been filled with pushing and puling. I am still writing, I don't use the computer outside, but not as much as I should have been.

I apologise.

DR

A second picture

Harlequin Mayabadaw.

Harlequin - Mark 1 - Mayabadaw Class

Engines & Person

Today I should have been writing but after a bad nights sleep and a large number of words written, I decided I needed something else. Something completely different. As some of you may have guessed, I am writing about the Harlequins at the moment. They are very militaristic and can be a little heavy to read. Whilst the style of my writing overall is quite light I think that different ideas of peoples should be adjusted slightly. Thus the Harlequins are formal and structured. However, as the Harlequins are militaristic and as I am writing about them, (don't harass me, I finished another chapter today) I decided to design a piece of Harlequin hardware.

I have only done the engines, but it was still fun.

DR

Environment.

I'm not about to go all green on you.

When I talk about environment what I mean is the situation in which you find yourself when you write. Today I guess I wrote two hundred words of utter dross. As usual I was writing on the train, it is my usual little speeding world full of random mp3's. I was really tired; I dreamt I was trying to buy a house in Moscow. This house was vital so I could bring my date to my girlfriends sister's wedding. I have no idea where my girlfriend was. Pondering the imponderables therein kept me in a semi-conscious state for hours. I have no energy to write so it didn't happen today.

I will try again tomorrow.

DR

Excerpt - Chapter 83

Epee was still running. Her previous sprints had been short, from house to house or more commonly from body to body. At first the Harlequin aircraft had just flown straight over the city of Raggle. Again and again various craft would skim overhead, some lower and slower than others. Suddenly, about ten minutes ago, they had stopped. People had come out of their houses and looked to the sky in sudden hope. Cruelly, this meant that more people were outside than should have been when they finally did open fire. A whole wing of aircraft of had passed over shooting everyone still on the street and any buildings that looked like they could be used as a rally point. On the second flypast they had decided that the grain mill had been one of those possible rally points. They had punctured it with so many holes that flour poured out onto the street below. The last ship to go over had dropped an incendiary bomb to finish the job.  As the mill exploded Epee had had just enough time to weave herself a protecting fibril to before she was struck by the expanding mess of fire, dust and broken bricks. She had run towards a slightly more residential area after that, only slowing down as she came across many more bodies. Her first fibril identified those people still alive; three, although one of her markers vanished as the half-buried lump passed from person to body. The first person she got to was conscious but in shock; two broken legs. She removed the pain with her second fibril, repaired his legs with her third and used the fourth to remove all the other shrapnel wounds. Her fifth removed the shock and as she briefly explained what she had done, she wove a sixth to give the man good luck. Epee moved swiftly towards the remaining survivor. His injuries were a lot more serious, surprising to see that he had survived. It took her several minutes of steady going to undo the damage wrought on his body and to leave him ready to go again. She swiftly wove another fibril to find the next nearest person who needed help, only jogging towards them as the constant running and weaving took their toll. This was a young woman was trapped under the remnants of a partially collapsed house. Epee dug her out with her hands; using warp only to move a bean she couldn’t lift, remove her minor contusions and to pass on some good luck. As she moved away the young woman pulled on her arm, begging her to rescue her baby also trapped beneath the rubble. She screamed and pleaded but Epee knew that there was no life remaining in the broken building. She shook her head sadly and pulled the woman into her arms.

 

            “I’m so sorry,” were, by her own admission, the only futile words that she could find.

 

            Epee sat the woman down in the shadows of where she had once lived and moved on again. She didn’t want to reflect on whether her efforts were really worthwhile. She stooped to remove the damage from an old man’s body but no longer had the energy to replace his arm. Weaving was exhausting work; still he would survive. At the end of the street, two people lay huddled in a doorway. One was protecting the other with his body without realising she was already dead. Using her last reserves of energy she calmly healed the wounds on the man’s legs. At that point the Harlequin aircraft passed over for a third time and as Epee was smashed sideways into the doorway across the street she realised that she didn’t have the energy to weave a fibril for herself.

 

            She would wake a week later on a slaver ship heading towards the Harlequin fleet.

DR

Translations into Harl.

In my book you have a semi alien race called the Harlequins; Harl is their language. Below are some of the words that you will come across in my book. These are specialist types of harvesting equipment, each one used for harvesting a very particular crop.

I give you the names below and will leave you to speculate on the nature of what they harvest.

Reaz'idaon

Esh'idaon

Chelaz'idaon

Ch'aedaon

Ranaz'idaon

Mont'idaon

The Harlequins are famously secretive, except for these.

Ana'a irkhe'a hass.

DR

JK Rowling or Terry Pratchett

It is well known that when JK Rowling writes she writes longhand, which is then redrafted onto a computer before editing. I believe Terry Pratchett writes directly onto computer, I'm not sure what he does in terms of redrafting.

It's not that I follow the Rowling system religiously and I can write straight onto computer but generally I write longhand. The problem for me is the second step. I find writing extremely stimulating. Expecially when my pen is going full bore. (I've been known to miss my stop on the train.) I just find sitting down tapping and thinking another way around a problem so time consuling and effortlessly unthrilling. (I know, I know, I'm writing a blog.) Sadly I know of no way round it. My redraft onto the computer always improves my original effort and I enjoy writing on paper so much better than writing on computer. I just enjoy the one side of the creative process I suppose.

I'm rambling.

DR

No writing

Today I have done no writing. I was on the train when I discovered that I had put my writing book in my coat. I was not wearing my coat due to fine weather. Thus I have nothing to report, other than the fact I shouldn't be so damn stupid.

Hmm. DR

What to write in times of war.

Violence is a tricky thing to write. Especially large scale violence. The massed intricacies of battle are stifling to write and no fun to read. The small scale combat that takes place between infantry for example can be interesting to read but can only be used in small doses or it quickly dulls the mind to the horror of it. Personal combat gives no scale either. The whole, ' One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic', is particularly relevant to writers. Irrelevant if they get it badly wrong. I think that the increase of death by range is what draws people to read much more deeply into the realm of personal combat. I know many people who are fascinated by either unarmed combat or the chivalric world of personal comabat. Maybe because it is more personal. I think the finest account of a war is almost certainly Homer's Illiad. It has the touch of personal and the carnage of war, somehow without being repetitive. I remember being struck by the deaths of Xanthus and Thoon, (That is Thoon with an accent, an accent that I have no idea how to recreate on this keyboard), Homer introduces them through the story of the father, Phaenops I think, who is elderly and who will never welcome them home again. The passage itself is full of the glory of war but the last line sweeps your feet from under you with the callous nature therein.

"Relatives divided up the estate."

DR

English

Sometimes I find the flexibilty of the English language both wonderfully simple and overwhelmingly complex. The hunt for that one little word that has all the minor implications that you want in any given situation can be fruitless. You know, the one with those nuances we haven't discussed. In technical english it's easy, you have no nuances, a spatio-temporal disturbance is a spatio-temporal disturbance. In descriptive English, you can use that to describe a faint mist being whispered past a hibernating hedgehog. I love/loathe it.

DR

Notebooks.

Today, I completed a notebook. I'm not sure how many chapters are in it. quite a few I would imagine. I found it immensly satisfying to have finished it. On my return from work, I discovered that the enthusiasm seemed to have leached onto that final page. I couldn't start to write a new chapter in the new book. Perhaps because I feel so comfortable with the security of my notes. Anyhow it's done now and I'll just have to push myself.

DR

Chen the Priest

I am writing a chapter at the moment which contains a character named Chen who, as the title of this entry suggests, is a Priest. I quite like him as a character. He seems to be more humble than some of my other characters. I suppose that in many ways all characters are extensions of the authors psyche, either what they are or what they want to be. Chen doesn't feel like that to me. He has a more complete personality. I get the impression that he is aware of his flaws but accepts them for what they are. Maybe this is too deep. Either way, I like him. 

DR

A chapter

I have just written the second draft of a chapter in which I describe the physical form of a character called the Matriarch. I think that people will find it unrealistic, most notably the reaction of Nulfaga. That's fine. I wanted to give just a hint that Nulfaga is being manipulated through the entanglement. I was thinking of adding something about the Matriarchs breath but that makes it too obvious. I don't want to dumb down to you all. You're better than that.

Facebook folly

I think that I am going to give up on facebook.

If people want me, they can find me here.

DR

Digg & Stumbleupon

I am now on Digg and stumbleupon, just facebook to do.

Facebook Issues

One of the problems with facebook is that it often doesn't do what I want it to do. I tried setting myself up so that people can become fans but it creates me as a person. Grrr.

Facebook.

I am now also set up on facebook too, you can find me there if you want.