On writing

It occurred to me the other day that it has been some time since I last added anything to the latest story that I’m writing, namely Cry of Xenotaph. The reason that this came to light was that my fees to keep my website voiceoftheocean.org have just come up and I need to spend some of my now limited funds to keep this going.

Part of me felt that this was a little futile as I doubt that I have many visitor to my site (to be honest I haven’t checked the number of visitors for some time now), however, it has never really been the number of visitors to my site which has motivated this. I tried and failed to get “World on Fire”, my only completed novel, published, as such I just wanted my body of work to be available in the public domain in some form, hence the website. It’s just nice to know that my stories are available for anyone to read on the internet should they wish to, even if these are seen by a small scattering of people.

My last completed story was “Dance ‘til Dawn”, which I finished earlier this year. It’s a story which I’m rather pleased with. It deviated a little from the original intent of the story, but overall the story simply is what it is, and is as complete and satisfying as I had intended it to be. Since then I have been writing Cry of Xenotaph in very short bursts, more often than not at work during my lunch hour (or should that be three quarters of an hour). I’m also aware that since starting my blog, I’ve probably written even less of Cry of Xenotaph, but hey, at least I’m writing in some form or another.

The problem really boils down to time. When I’m not working, I’m usually spending time with Roz and Elliot (which I don’t mind), this means that when I do get my own free time I usually want to do something less taxing (pun intended), namely either watching a film or playing a console game. Writing, it seems, comes further down the agenda. It just take quite a lot of effort, and by the end of the day I just don’t feel in the mood to be creative.

The funny thing is I have so many ideas for more stories, be they short stories or novels. I could give you a huge list of possible titles for ideas that I’ve had, to name a few:

The Marilyn Project
Swinging Dead
Children of Lazarus
The Love of a Stranger
First Dawn
Uriel: Genesis

For some of these I have even written a short outline, and a few I have even written the first couple of pages. There are many more that are just idea’s waiting to float to the surface. The funny thing is that to me at least, these stories have already been told, it’s just a case of putting words of the page to fully flesh them out. It’s almost as if the job of creating these stories has already been done and it’s only the laborious task of putting them on paper that awaits. To some degree this puts me offs starting to write, as it lacks excitement, but often or not the joy is weaving the extra details into these stories, the type of details that don’t occur to me until I’m writing a particular scene. Heck, I just wish I could plug my mind direct into a PC and download the stories into word, it would save one hell of a lot of time!

I very much doubt that I’ll finish Cry of Xenotaph this year, it is after all quite an ambitious and strikingly different tale when compared to my other work. I’ll likely make it a New Years resolution come December the 31st.

One other thing which I have been meaning to do for some time, is to see if I could find some sort of online forum, or links page for various writers who have published online.

On a different matter, I've seen that damn mouse (I presume it's a mouse - and not mice, i.e. multiple) on two occasions this evening. Still no luck with the traps either... Grrr...