A blast from the past

This evening I've done something that I haven't done for an age... I added some words to my novel!  This thing was started two, or more like three years ago while offline and sitting in a holiday cottage.  It's an all action WWII romp that I was inspired to start after reading "Contest" by Matthew Reilly.  Now there is an author who knows how to write action. Sure it's over-the-top, but it's simply fantastic fun that you can put down.

He inspired me, I wrote an outline and then started writing. Of course there have been a few breaks, such as forgetting about it for six months, writing short stories, the annotation projects, another few months break, the game book etc etc etc.

So on and off I've been hammering away at this thing for quite a while, but tonight I got back on the writing train and added another whopping 715 words!  Not many in the big scheme of things, yet it's brought the total up to 33315, which is not to be sniffed at.

With luck I'll stick with it and get this first draft done. Fingers crossed, eh?

It's started!

I have just completed the first two paragraphs of the game book, the first draft. Actually it's not paragraphs, I should say "entries". In the old Fighting Fantasy game books, most of the entries were paragraphs.  In my book most entries will be more than one paragraph, and indeed featuring a lot of dialogue, which will make the "paragraph" terminology redundant. So henceforth I will try and say Entries.

Word count on the document is at 3000, but at this early stage that is mostly a junk number. The majority of that is the headings for each entry and the "go to ..." that appears at the end of most entries. After this however the word count will allow me to see how much it's growing by. Yet, now I think about it, word count hardly matters in a game book. Progress is really measured in entries that have been completed.  So in those terms, 2 down and 119 to go.  Boy oh boy that sounds like a lot.

Finished a first draft

I've just finished the first draft of another short story. It's the first in what I hope will pan out to be a series of short stories featuring in the genre of "giant fighty robots".  Here's the stories opening...

Sergeant Karen Nowak lent her chair back from the briefing table, reaching for a cup of coffee as she did so. “No way, Rosco if they start taxing people for windows they’ll be revolution.”

“I know that, you know that, but these” Corporal Orosco pointed to the news article displayed on his tablet. “are career politicians. They’re about as far from real people, from reality as you can get. Not one of them has ever had a real job!”

It's first a draft, so none of your nit picking!  I probably wont edit it for at least a week. This draft is 8824 words and under the provisional title of "AMRAT: the Bank Heist".