Author: Eamonn Murphy - Writer

Eamonn Murphy has published over seventy stories in small press magazines and collected them into small, cheap volumes for posterity. They are available at all good eBook retailers and libraries. In his spare time, he writes reviews for sfcrowsnest. Retired now after years of hard labour (building sites and call centres), he lives near Bristol, England, with a nice lady, a nasty Jack Russell, an untrainable loony Labrador and some ducks. He has a BA (Hons) from the Open University but very little common sense. Find out more at eamonnmurphywriter.com.

Nanowrimo part two

Having finished 31,200 words of my SF novella Last Train to Clarkesville and finished the story too, I am continuing Nanowrimo with some fantasy, namely Book 3 of The Brigstowe Dragons. Book Two has been accepted by the publishers and is due out in April 2018 so three is almost pre-sold, as long as it’s good enough. Obviously, I hope to make it good enough.

After taking Sunday off, I needed a good word count today to catch up. Happily, as soon as I entered the familiar world of Brigstowe the words flowed like a flowing thing and I bashed out 3049 words in a three-hour session of inspiration. Writer’s don’t always get days like this.

Officially, Nanowrimo is meant to produce a novel first draft but if I’m sticking to the word count demanded to produce two novellas I am adhering to the spirit of it which is, presumably, to make writers productive. Obviously, there are not enough novels in the world and only 20,000 or so new ones every week. Writers must all work harder! But there’s no point in writing if no one reads it so readers must work harder too. The unemployed could be forced to read for 8 hours a day to make it all worthwhile for us. Obviously, they’re skint but they can have the free books, of which there are multitudes. No one expects to pay for a book nowadays.

Strange Nanowrimo days

I was doing well on Nanowrimo up until Wednesday this week. I had bashed out 26,710 words of first draft and my vertical bar was right on the rising horizontal target graph line on their little Nanowrimo chart. Hurrah!

Then I got stuck. On Thursday I spent most of the day in a state of stuck, staring at a screen, drinking coffee, pacing up and down. I didn’t know where to go next. This is what happens when you make it up as you go along. I knew the end of the story but was jammed on how to get there. Then I cut out the last few hundred words of Wednesday’s work, a wrong turn, replaced some of it, and finished Thursday with 26,063 words, meaning I had gone backward.

The replacement words came courtesy of exercise book and pen. Sometimes staring at a screen is futile. Somehow there is more freedom with pen and paper. It doesn’t look so finished. You can scribble notes on the side. It went okay on Thursday afternoon and today – Friday 17th November – may have been the best days writing I’ve ever done, for quantity anyway. I sat and scribbled out eighteen pages. That’s more than 4,000 words and it flowed like good red wine. I started just after nine a.m. and was finished by 3 p.m. even with interruptions for duck pen cleaning and woman feeding. And the story is finished too. It’s not a novel, being about 32,000 words, but it’s finished. Hurrah. I typed up most of it tonight and have about 3,000 words to type tomorrow. Not write, just type.

I’m making this public just to help anyone other Nanowrimists who get stuck. You can get out of it! Have faith. And try the pen and ink technique. It might work for you too. If not, try white board and marker, stone tablet and chisel – anything. Staring at a blank word document until your eyes bleed is not always the best way.

I believe I will carry on with the Nanowrimo schedule and get another novella out of it of 20,000 words or so. That’s made it a productive November. First draft, of course. There’s a lot of work to do yet but a first draft is a big step.

New Earth-type planet – Ross 128b

Scientists have discovered a new planet 11 light years away that is similar to Earth and could well support life. This means that as they view us through their super-scanners we are still in 2006. They may chuckle at inflated share prices but, all in all, we weren’t doing too bad back then.

In 11 years time, they will see Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Then they’ll assess global warming, U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and China building coal power stations at a rate of knots. They might see half the world starving while one man pays $450 million for a bit of daubed canvas. They will shake their heads in despair and know that the human race is toast. We won’t get to Mars, never mind them.