The last I talked about my book, The Murder of a Superhero, I claimed to be embarking on one final edit. As always, such grand statements have proved ambitious. This book takes far longer than I ever expect it to. A major part of this blog is to track my journey as an independent writer navigating from editing to publication. Bless your patience if you’re one of those people more interested in my writing journey than thoughts on television. Here’s your latest update.

Manuscript Assessment

I’ve had a manuscript assessment done whereby an editor and someone in the industry reads the manuscript and gives advice on how to progress. For those that remember, I planned my book to be three interweaving narratives. Both the editor, and the people I’ve had read the book so far, have questioned one narrative. The narrative in question was the character of the Prime Minister who acted as a more macro-level narration of the events in the book. The sections slowed the pace, asked a lot more of the reader and jarred with the other character driven sections. On the back of this feedback, I’ve removed the character to better flesh out the other two. The father of the murdered superhero Mike and the mind reader investigating the murder, Juliet, remain. 

6am Starts

If you’ve missed the news recently I have a bad update, we’re in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. The country has been on lockdown since March, and we’re only just opening back up. Fortunately, my job allows me to work from home and all things considered I haven’t had as nasty time as many others will have done. I’m lucky, it’s important to acknowledge that, in what has been a stressful time. With that stress in mind, trying to navigate through lockdown, there’s been some weeks where I get a lot of writing done and others where none gets done at all. That’s fine, the nature of the time we’re in. In good weeks I get up at six, write for just over an hour, and get ready for work. I won’t exaggerate, this isn’t every day, just while I can amid what’s an obviously stressful pandemic.

Having removed a narrative, there’s a vast amount of rework to do, especially in the early chapters. The manuscript assessment advice also covered grammar, style and many things. A massive value adding thing to have done, actioning changes on the back of the assessment is taking the time. The next step is to have a copy edit done, where an editor goes through the manuscript line by line and offers suggestions and fixes.  To hit this point, the structure and story need to be in place to add the most value.  It’ll take time, I’m still aiming for a 2021 release, but as always we’ll see how it goes.

Content of the Blog

The eagle eyed of you will have noticed that there’s been some changes in the past few months on this blog. First, I’ve changed the domain from a pseudonym to my actual name. If this is to be a blog about my journey in writing it’s only right to make the switch to my actual name. That goes for my Facebook, which I’m trying to use as a base of where to find my content.

Ultimately, I don’t want to pitch myself as a voice of authority on things I know nothing about. It’s taken me a bit of time to figure out what I enjoy writing about and what is best received.

I used to review television shows and films. I feel I’ve seen enough to at least call out what does or doesn’t work well in what I’m seeing. Readers don’t need me to tell them that Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul are classics, I hope to identify and flesh out why they are. I don’t dwell on the poor output I consume, if I’m to talk about it in a blog post there’ll be a reason. As a creative, why would I want to put out negativity and tear down the output of other creatives? Luckily the quality of television is an all-time high at the moment, dozens of shows I’m yet to talk about that are worth a view.

Documenting Progress

I hope that update interests some of my followers out there. From a selfish point of view, I find it as interesting to talk about the process of creation than the end outcome. In my case, my dream is to write and publish a book. Whether it’s a self-published piece of work that six people read, or a bestseller, it doesn’t really matter to me. Someday I want to go over to my bookshelf and see a copy of a book I’ve written, my name on the spine, knowing end to end I pulled it together. 

Think of people who inspire you; the Stephen Kings to the Venus Williams’ of the world. We crave hearing their stories, histories, and how they reached the top. Documentaries, photos and footage are gold dust of these people’s early output. I don’t put myself in such a high bracket. But how interesting will it be to have a back catalogue of any journey wherever it goes? That’s at least part of my motivation behind this blog. 

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