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Hi all, Well it's nearly the end of February and I was supposed to be rewriting a novel I wrote the first draft of a few years ago: I'll Just Sit Here and Watch it on My.. . Instead, I have just about finished chapter 26 of Stalking Tigers and there are at least two chapters to go. I have passed 120,000 words so at least there is plenty of scope for cutting when I finally get around to editing it. I often wonder how people get the time or, more appropriately, make the time to write. I read about people writing 2,000 words or more a day. The other day I read a message on an online writing board where someone said he wrote 80,000 words in January (he said it needed heavy editing), and here I am struggling to get 5,000 words out in a week. Well at least I am sticking to the mantra followed by some of these prolific writers in that I am writing every day - I have done so since January one 2008. Stephenie Meyer has numbers 1-6 in the Victorian best seller list this week. Not bad...

Hi all, The end of the first draft of my novel is proving elusive. I had hoped to be finished and submitting it for critiques by now, but I keep on having to extend its length. What were meant to be three short scenes in the final chapter filled up all of chapter 25. I've started chapter 26 and I think there is at least one more chapter after that. At the beginning of chapter 22 I had thought that I had one more chapter to go and about 10,000 words, 14,000 words later I think I still have about 10,000 words to go. I only achieved half of my desired word count last week. After last week's rant blaming the Prime Minister, The Victorian Premier and Rupert Murdoch for my low word count, this week I have the bushfires , weather and Trend's antivirus software to blame. The bushfires kept me listening to the radio and reading the newspapers and their smoke has irritated my eyes and affected my breathing. The weather produced another thunderstorm (again with virtually n...

Sorry to those who have made comments that I have seemed to ignore. I had thought that I had set blogger to notify me everytime someone made a comment, as happens with the myspace version of this blog, but obviously I did something wrong. I think I have rectified the problem.

Hi all, Last week was a lousy week to attempt to be a writer, in Wangaratta anyway. The heat just sweated any desire to be creative; thunderstorms had me switching off my computer; bushfire smoke had my eyes sore and irritated; bushfire threatened power outages also had me switching the computer off; the heat meant I spent more time watering the garden; and news on the bushfires distracted me from writing. It has been 40 degrees or more for about half the days in the past three weeks with the other days being in the mid to high 30's. Last Saturday 46 degrees was, I suspect the hottest day on record here. This is climate change so I, and other Victorians, better get used to it. Victorians have no one else to blame but themselves as we are probably the highest per capita greenhouse gas polluters in the world. Yeah, I am really narky today. Fed up. Angry about a dickhead Premier of Victoria who might now, after all these years of inaction, finally look up the meaning of global war...

Hi all, It must have been so much easier for a writer to spend time writing before they invented the Web. All these bloody distractions at your fingertips, you don't have to move or even switch on something, just with a couple of clicks you're off to myspace or facebook for five hours of networking and playing games, or you're off to check your emails or you're off to do some research on.... I just heard some thunder I think, dark clouds outside, so I better make this a quick post before turning the computer off. I heard last week that just down the road in Benalla a guy's computer was destroyed in a power surge during a storm. I think that same power surge caused the power to flicker in Wang and turn my computer off. So, how was my writing week? Okay, but I still didn't get to 5,000 words. I wrote just over 3,000 of the slow breeding bastards. I finished chapter 24 and then wrote about 1,000 words of notes for the final chapter, so it might be a long one. I...

Hi all, I know it's not the latest edition of Analog - and I still have plenty of earlier editions to read - but I learn a lot from reading older editions of what is probably the world's best science-fiction magazine. This time around, the magazine had one novella, one novelette, two short stories and part four of a serialised novel. The magazine began with the novella The King Who Wasn't by Lloyd Biggle Jr. It was a story about a political researcher who is sent to a planet to explore what seems to be a perfect political structure due to its absence of wars and political unrest. Inadvertently the researcher gets caught up in the politics and finds himself the chief advisor to a newly elected King. I enjoyed the story and its comments on what happens with a compliant and ignorant population. The story was more fantasy than science fiction as it could still have been told if the science elements, space ships and communication devices, had been removed. The novella was follo...

Hi all, We're well and truly into the new year, Christmas seems so long ago. It's Australia//Invasion day and I am watching the cricket. I've read that Mathew Reilly watches the cricket while he writes his very successful techno-thrillers. I am sort of glad Mick Dobson won the Aussie of the Year, as I am sick of sports people and self-serving celebrities winning it. Global warming guru Tim Flannery was a worthy winner two years ago. Interesting that Mick Dobson opposes the current government's Aboriginal intervention. For the third week in a row I did not meet my writing target of 5,000 words a week. I only wrote 3,800 words, but at least it was more than the previous week. I should have written 17,000 words so far this year, but I have only written 11,600. The deficit grows. I had hoped to be boasting that I had finished the first draft of the novel I am working on by now, but my dawdling writing pace and developing plot elements have combined to put tha...