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 no no no?

Contrary to some sensible advice online, I’m doing NaNoWriMo and am up to 10,000 words.

I started a day late. I posted a Salon article on Facebook to say what a bad idea it was because the last thing the world needs is more trashy novels. Some more positive people said it was a good spur to get the words out as long as you remembered it was only a first draft. The Salon article said that in December agents and publishers are buried under an avalanche of NaNoWriMo unpolished first drafts (and this was back in 2010, it’s bigger now). One lady on Facebook replied that she has done it for eight years and had seven novels taken by publishers, AFTER polishing them.

So, I decided to try it. And it is indeed a good spur. I’m not a natural novelist and I suspect this story won’t run to the whole 50,000 words but as long as I get to the end of it, I’m happy. It will probably be a novella of about 30,000 words. Maybe I’ll keep going and write a second novella just to complete the word count making my own scheme NaTwoNovellasWriMo.

I read somewhere, long ago, that to break an old habit or acquire a new one takes a month. So if one produces 1700 words a day for a month one will have the habit of doing it every day. All those self-publish and make millions advisors say you should bash out 10,000 words a day, a novel a week, in a series of 700 novels about the adventures of Burt the Barbarian or whoever, selling them of 99p on Kindle until you’re rich. If everyone tried that (and I sometimes think everyone is, there are 20,000 new books a week on Kindle apparently) the world would be awash with novels. And…er…it is.

And Rejection makes you feel bad.

Just for balance. My story ‘Pee Pees’ was rejected by Phantaxis magazine, an excellent production of Canadian SF that I have reviewed on SFcrowsnest. Naturally, the best way for a magazine to succeed is by printing the best stories and rejecting all the others, especially mine. I don’t hold it against them. It really is a very good magazine. See my reviews here.

Phantaxis August 2017

Phantaxis May 2017

Fortunately, the acceptance from Alban Lake of my novella came in the next day so my dull drums didn’t last long. It is not always thus with rejection but you gotta be tough to be a writer. Bad reviews hurt too. ‘Oh, the pain. The pain’ to quote Dr. Zachary Smith.

Acceptance makes you feel good

Especially an acceptance from a publisher. Yesterday, I had an email from Tyree Campbell at Alban Lake Publishing to say he is accepting Brigstowe Dragons II: Return of the Black Magician and it will be out next April. Hoorah! Although I have self-published some modest books of short stories (mostly previously published in magazines so not too awful I hope) there is definite satisfaction in a publisher approving your work.

The first book Brigstowe Dragons: Dragon Eggs is available on paper from the publishers here or as an ebook on Smashwords here or from other good retailers here.