New Story

Isn’t it funny? Before, when I was office manager for our family construction firm, I always had dozen things to do a day, now I think it’s a lot if I have seven a week! The tasks take longer to complete now though, in general, like finding a new story to write.

I started to put the new Behind The Smile covers on this blog today, but only finished with the bookshop – about half. The biggest problem was that I had forgotten how to format the page correctly, but then there always seems to be something.

I am very pleased with the row of six books in the series though… It impresses the Hell out of me and I wrote them 🙂

The emphasis at the moment though has to be to read Lek 6 for the first pass and come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo which starts on November 1st. I have had a few, but I don’t think that they are capable of running to fifty thousand words (the bare minimum for the competition), so they will be more suitable for short stories.

One genre that I do fancy having a go at is the ghost story. OK, I have the Megan Series, but they are realistic to me and I have tried horror with absolutely no success at all (The Disallowed turned into a comedy).

A horror ghost story is probably beyond me because I have no fear of ghosts, so it will probably turn into another ‘comedy’.

It is not what I want, but what I am able to write is not usually fully under my control. The two extremes of writers are those who plan everything and those who rely purely upon inspiration as the pen is on the paper. In other words, they literally don’t know what they are going to be writing next. Most writers fall between these stools, as do I.

Lek, the main character in my first novel, Daddy’s Hobby, ran the whole book, but I have gained successively more control of the series since then if I want it. Sometimes, I don’t and just let the characters run.

Years ago, I was fascinated to hear Arthur C. Clarke say in a recorded interview on Radio Four after his death, that when he needed to write a new story, he would sit quietly in a comfy chair and wait for voices to tell him their tales. His job was simply to choose the best and write it down.

Brilliant! That is how Behind The Smile has largely been for me.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: New Story