Skip to main content

Because of one author in the UK

 #Writing



Because of one author in the UK


So, I have been writing for many, many years. In my teenage years I was too much into sex, drugs and rock n roll. Nothing too heavy. This was New Zealand way back in the 80's. From 14-24, I barely wrote a word. A few short stories here and there. Stories that moved into a box and stayed there. I still have that box of work, but it is inaccessible as the storage key is lost and the government owner apartment in run by people who don't give a shit. (Gee, I thought I was over losing that box. Guess not.) Recently, I listened to R. R. Haywood's awesome book, A Town Called Discovery. And I noticed something. To confirm, and because I loved the book, I bought Extracted and listened to that (Review soon). I would like to thank R. R. Haywood for showing me something many books and YouTube videos couldn't.

How to move up to the next level. The thing that stalled me at the small press. It's a little thing, but to clean requires a lot of work and, at times, a heap of rewriting.

Fucking glue. Sticky words to be precise. What Mr. Haywood showed me (and a bunch of books never mentioned or brushed over) what a sentence could be. I've now started noticing this in other books. Mostly thrillers. So, I wrote a short story. I over-wrote and self edited. Then I opened Pro Writing Aid and hit sticky sentence review. 70%. That's bad. But I did over-write on purpose. The program highlighted all the sticky words. This is thinking cap time. Rewrite and cut and repeat. I got sticky down to 27%. Lost 600 words of the short story. Subbed it. Sold it. Yay me. That's 76 short stories now.

Also, Pro Writing Aid link is an aff link. Get 20% off, here. Help me pay for my human editor :-)

I have a lot of work to do in my Death World novel before I sent it out to agents. On a positive note, book 2 is brewing in my head. I have worked out the opening (it's a flash back but important), and I have a rough idea of a large chunk of the book. Still working out what happens from there.

I got the title (may change in the future but for now): Death World One Eight Oh.

Or Death World 180.

Why one eight oh? You'll need to read book one to find out.
It's the thing that ties the two books together.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pen Names

Hello all, I'm debating on whether or not to us a pen name for my crime novels. You see, way back in 2001 when I made my first sale, I used the name Richard Lee ( http://threeand10.com ). In 2009 a publisher of my second novel, The Last Church convinced me to use my real name. Although I announced the name change to my massive Ning group, MySpace and Twitter, not a lot of people took notice and The Last Church didn't sell as well as it should have with the Richard Lee brand. I had no idea about branding back then. Now, I do. In 2015, I returned to write under the Richard Lee brand and some comments I got were: I wondered what happened to you. Welcome back, Dude.  Missed you. Are you still writing? etc. My books now sell in several languages. Richard Lee wrote horror and science fiction (usually blended together).  Now that I'm writing crime, ( http://www.thriller.nz ) I decided to switch to my real name, and start crime fiction branding (no idea how to do that). But, now I...

How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes | Adam Leipzig | TEDxMalibu

This is a must watch video. Do you know what you wanna do with your life? My wife worked it out two years ago and put a plan into action at the age of 52 (back then) to be a kids English teacher. My wife can find joy in almost everything, even meeting hew people. She sometimes laughs when they introduce themselves. She's bursting with joy. She's very very VERY social. People sometimes give her a strange looks when can't contain herself and laughs at introductions. I know why. You do too, now.  My wife found her life's purpose by accident.  I knew my life's purpose at age eight (when I stopped drawing and started writing) but never really put a plan into action. I wrote many short stories but New Zealand didn't have much of a market (actually it had none) for the horror stories I wrote. This was in the late 80's and 90's before the Internet opened wide.  Thanks to the Internet, I sold my first short story in 2001. Writer's groups were all over the pla...

It all starts with an idea

It all starts with an idea and they come at any time of any day and you can’t control it. You have no say in the matter, really. For me, ideas just pop into my head, as if my muse was chewing her pencil and a crack appeared in the  fabric  of space and time. From that crack, a slice of thought slipped out and my muse caught it. A lot of people believe ideas are the product of the universe and some people (Dean Koontz?) can just grab them when they need. But adhering to this belief, one must assume thousands of other people also received the very same thought. Writers would plot around it; poets would create  beauty  from it; hundreds would do nothing with it. This is called the initial idea and it is the start of whatever you want to make of it. My initial idea is to write a series of articles based on  writing  / learning the art of screenwriting. It is an area that interests me and has done for years. Only now do I have the opportunity to attempt it....