Doing OK,

There’s been the usual long gap between posts on this page. Of course, this has mostly been filled with the joys of the Coronavirus pandemic. There’s no way anyone reading this hasn’t been affected in some way, so whoever you are, I hope you’re doing OK, and haven’t been hit by it too hard.

Like most people, my working life has changed a great deal. I’m one of the lucky ones – I still have a job, but I work from home now, and spend a lot of time in online meetings. To be honest, my own circumstances are pretty good – lockdown life suits me. (It helps that the weather has been warm and dry and I have a bit of garden I can sit it). I can’t even say lockdown has impacted my productivity as a writer too much – like always, I have to find time in amongst everything else, but on the whole, that’s still possible. Most days I can get about 1,000 words written. The difference seems to be that while I still have lots of days where I’m too busy to write, what I don’t seem to have anymore is super productive days where I get 2 or 3 thousand words down. Possibly on the whole I’ve been a little bit less productive because of that, but it’s not by much.

So, I’ve been writing. So why haven’t I published anything? Because back in February when I picked a new project (I have an MS Word file where I dump all my story ideas, ready for this situation), I chose one that turned out to be the kind of story that grows in the telling! Sure, I should have seen that – whenever I sketched the story out in my head it had multiple scenes, which meant it was never going to be short, but as I got going, it quickly became apparent this is basically a novel-length story (i.e. well over 50,000 words). I’m 33,000 words in now, so I’m a long way from finishing. It is possible I may have something to show the world soonish – I’m thinking of releasing this story in instalments. The bit that will be Part 1 is done, and I’m 80% of the way through what will become Part 2. If I go down this route, I’ll finish Part 2, edit Part 1 and release it, and set a release date for Part 2 a month later. I’ll then use the time I’ve created to crack on with Part 3! (Which would then be released a month after Part 2 came out). Does that sound like a plan?

I don’t know either! For now, all I’m going to do is keep on writing. Like I said at the top, I hope you’re doing OK, wherever you are.

Take care.