by Gerald Hornsby

100kword100days update

Further to my 2019 goals, I’ve been working on the novel “MELTDOWN”, during the 100kwords100days challenge.

It was going pretty well – it’s more of a rewrite than a first draft. The first draft was written way back in 2013, during NaNoWriMo. The story sort of held together, but there were several plot holes. And the usual mish-mash of character and plot problems. It needed a rewrite.

I was doing quite well, adding and changing words, then got sidetracked into the actual design of the story. Those who know me will understand, as I have a fascination for Story Design (I even wrote a book about it), and I realised with this rewrite that I really needed to go back to first principles, apply my ‘Snowflake‘ and ‘Save The Cat‘ procedures to really get a grip on the story and make it work like a thriller should.

In conclusion, I have 15,000 good words, all in the right places – from the original 47,000 words. And that’s where the story now is. There are more old words that can be imported into the new framework, but for the moment, the project is parked. There are more important, real-life issues to be sorted for now.

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by Gerald Hornsby

Essex Book Festival

My partner, [ Anita Belli ] has been booked for several drop-in sessions with the [ Essex Book Festival ], working with children and adults to help them with their creativity.

In addition, Anita, myself and our colleague [ Ellie Holmes ] are present at the Essex Author Day. This is a chance for Essex people to meet authors in person, and chat to them about their writing and their books. We shall be taking this opportunity to launch [ TheNovelMakers ], our joint venture, with a one-hour presentation.

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by Gerald Hornsby

The NovelMakers


There’s a new project on the go! In conjunction with my colleagues and partners Anita Belli and Ellie Holmes, we have created a new venture.

The intention is to help novel writers and, as we say, turn a Writer into an Author – helping them from their manuscript to produce a publishable novel.

We will be offering mentoring and manuscript appraisal services in the short term. Eventually, we will be expanding on our business offer, to include online courses to help improve and polish a client’s writing.

For now, have a look at the website [ TheNovelMakers ] that we’ve been working on, and check out my colleagues’ websites:

[ Anita Belli ]
[ Ellie Holmes ]

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by Gerald Hornsby

Jumping into 2019

I’m splitting my look forward to 2019 into two parts: my own writing, and my writing-related business plans.

In terms of writing in the near future, I’m participating in the 100kwords100days challenge again, and the project for that has the title “Meltdown”. It’s a thriller. It’s something I wrote (badly) a few years ago, but I’ve now restructured it, and I’m going to rewrite it, hopefully better than I wrote it originally. It currently stands at 47k bad words, but with the new structure in place, I’m expecting it to become well over 60k of hopefully better words during the first month or two of 2019.

In November last year, for NaNoWriMo, I rewrote another novel I’d part-written which was called Deceit (although the title changed several times during the process, and used to be called Circles of Corruption). This was another thriller, showing political corruption surrounding the UK activities in Syria. I’m pleased with how it turned out, and that’s now ready for a first edit before sending out to beta readers.

Short fiction-wise, I STILL have the dark Christmas collection that I collated a year or two ago, that needs a serious editing session, but that will be later this year (again). Also, I have the beginnings of a collection of 500-word stories, which I might publish later this year.

Non-fiction wise, I have an outline plan for a non-fiction book which describes my outlining and plotting method. That’s a bit meta, I know, planning a planning book, but there you go. I think the method works for me, and hopefully might be insightful for others. Look out for something which may, or may not, be called Save The SnowCat.

Away from writing, there are two writing-related businesses I’m involved with.
The first is Writer.Support http://writer.support which aims to support writers (geddit?) for all levels of ability. As mentioned in the 2018 roundup, I help writers from beginning writing, short fiction, memoir; through to editing, self-publishing and ghost writing; and beyond into marketing and promotion.
The second business is The Novel Makers http://thenovelmakers.com which is an expansion of the work I and two colleagues have been undertaking with our wonderful critique group, Frinton Writers. The three of us will focus on helping novel writers from the initial steps, through completion and into and beyond the first draft status. Our ethos is to turn writers into authors. The business will help through manuscript appraisals, online courses, one-to-one mentoring, and eventually workshops and writing retreats.

In addition to all that, there are some ‘ideas’ which may or may not come to fruition during the year”

  • Vlogs – I have ideas for three entertaining (hopefully) writing-related vlogs (video blogs), which will comprise edited videos published to YouTube.
  • Publish Literary Roadhouse reviews on website – I have been a co-host of a Literary Fiction podcast for several years now https://www.literaryroadhouse.com. I aim to publish my reviews of both literary short stories and novels on my own writing website. Because I can.
  • Proper blog schedule – yes, a recurring dream this. A proper blogging schedule with subjects planned in advance. Dream on, Gerald.
  • Local and online book clubs – as authors, we should be reading widely from both within and outside our favoured writing genres. So I hope to form at least one reading group during the year to encourage reading and discussion of general fiction.

Phew! A pretty big list, eh? Aim for the stars, and you might hit the moon, and all that.
Let me know what your aims and goals are for the current year. Because without a destination to aim for, we are wandering aimlessly.

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by Gerald Hornsby

End of year – 2018

Look back on 2018

This was an interesting year, for sure.
I looked back on my goals for 2018, written around this time last year.
Embarrassing.
2018 was going to be The Year Of Publishing Dangerously.
I was going to publish at least 4 (count ‘em) novels this last year. I was also going to publish two collections of short fiction, too.
Hmm. That didn’t quite happen.
One of the problems with a huge store of Works-In-Progress is that it’s difficult to decide what you should concentrate on. Which will have the most beneficial effect on my writing career? Which do I want to publish first?
It’s like the donkey in the desert scenario. A sad tale, for those who don’t know, but it describes a donkey walking through a desert, hungry and thirsty. He comes across a bucket of food (whatever it is that donkeys eat) and a bucket of water. He can’t decide whether he’s more hungry than thirsty, or vice versa. He stands in the middle of the two buckets, indecisive, and eventually dies.
Yes, I know it’s a sad tale, and it’s not even true, but there is a dilemma when faced with a decision between choices when all have equal merit.
I went on a writing retreat with my lovely critiquing group (Frinton Writing Group) and presented the multitude of options to them. Having analysed what I’d written, and where I’d reached in the writing, they advised me to concentrate on my crime fiction.
I have two major threads to my novelling – crime (police procedural, with a series main character) and thrillers, mostly concerned with the end of the world as we know it. I call it ‘pre-apocalyptic fiction’.
So I worked on my crime fiction, and I worked on my thrillers. But, alas, none of them are at the ‘publish’ stage yet.
So, I suppose, you could call me a failure. And I’m okay with that.

Away from writing, there have been other developments too.
I am working with two writing friends to set up The Novel Makers http://thenovelmakers.com – a service which will expand upon the work we’ve been doing as part of Frinton Writing Group. We will work with authors writing novels, whether they’re just beginning, whether they’ve begun and are now stuck, or whether they’ve completed their manuscript and are unsure of what to do next. We will be offering online courses, one-to-one mentoring, manuscript appraisals and writing workshops and retreats.
And I personally have set up Writer.Support http://writer.support, a service which begins the work of The Novel Makers, but extends the services sideways, into help with writing short fiction, ghost writing, author websites, and podcasting / vlogging.
Tomorrow, I shall be posting my goals for 2019. Yes. Ever the optimist, me.

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by Gerald Hornsby

Look ahead to 2018

As I’ve explained before, I don’t do resolutions. There’s just something about stating a specific goal, which then becomes a binary success indicator – you either ‘win’, or you ‘lose’. Or else they become wishy-washy, “I resolve to not eat so much junk food” type resolutions.
No. I’m a goal person. It’s good to have goals in life, especially when you want to achieve something.
And what do I want to achieve? I want to publish more of my writing. 2018 is *that* year, when I’m going to publish some of my long-form fiction (i.e. novels).
For those that don’t know me, I’ve been writing ‘seriously’ since 2003. I’ve written a lot of short fiction, and I’ve written a lot of long fiction, too. And there it’s stayed – unfinished, unedited, unloved. And over the past few years, I’ve been getting more and more dissatisfied with this situation. Part of me thinks “what’s the point in creating new stories, working hard on the plots and the characters, for it just to end up as hard disk filler-upper?” There’s no point writing the beginning of new stories, adding to my glut of part-finished works.
So, 2018 is The Year Of Publishing Dangerously.
Basically, I want to publish at least 4 novels this year. I want to publish two collections of short fiction this year, too.
These are not pie-in-the-sky dreams. I’m not coming from a blank sheet of paper here. I have seven completed novel-length works, and several more which are close to being completed.
I’m working on completing a political conspiracy thriller for the first book to be published. Then there are crime stories, and more political conspiracies, and pre-apocalyptic thrillers. There’s a ton of stuff which could be completed, edited and published. Which ones are close enough to make the cut, I don’t actually know yet. But they’re going to be sent out there, into the big wide world, so I can move on with other, new stories I want to write.
And who knows, someone might even like them. We’re not going to know until they’re released into the wild.
And that’s what is going to happen.
Wish me luck, people.

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by Gerald Hornsby

End of year 2017

2017 ROUNDUP

Hello, faithful reader (who am I kidding?) As you may know, if you’ve ever been near this blog before, at the end of the year I analyse what I’ve done, writing-wise, during the year. And I use last year’s writing goals as the yardstick by which I measure my success over the year.
So, without further ado, let’s look at how I measured up.

1) Write one short story a week for the Bradbury Challenge 2017. I can definitely do this. I have far too many ideas for me to stop writing them now.
Okay. Let’s start with this. FAIL! To be fair, there wasn’t actually an ‘official’ Bradbury Challenge 2017. We thought about it, talked about it, but it never actually got off the ground. I’ve written a number of c. 500-word stories during the year. But no Bradbury Challenge. No story per week, although there are about eighteen or so pieces of flash fiction. So they can be smartened up, polished until they’re as bright as a new pin, and packaged into … something.

2) Complete the 100kwords100days challenge.
FAIL! Hahahaha! To be fair, I got to 77,000, which was about 5k behind at that time, but then I seemed to stop. Yeah. Sounds about right. But the two cozy novellas I was writing when I started got completed, so that’s good! I had a bash at the July one, too, and only got to 26k.

3) Novels. (i.e. write some)
FAIL! Not doing very well, am I? Another year where stories have been started, and not finished. Which, to be honest, is becoming a bit of a habit for me.
Let’s be clear about this. I don’t feel bad about not achieving my goals. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to feel bad about it, to give me more impetus into achieving them. Maybe if I was starving, I’d be more inclined to write, complete and publish.

SUCCESSES
One area of success this year has been publishing – I have managed to self-publish three short non-fiction writer support books. One was a short guide to Scrivener, the writing software I use, and two were books about NaNoWriMo – how to complete the challenge, and how to self-publish your novel when you’d completed it. So 2017 was an unqualified success! Haha!
Seriously, I enjoyed publishing again, and the Scrivener and NaNoWriMo books were ones I’d wanted to write for some time. Generally, they were well-received.

We did also keep the Literary Roadhouse podcast going. Logistical difficulties, arranging four people to be on the end of a viable internet connection, in four different time zones, is not the easiest thing. Also, the time needed to edit and prepare the audio for podcast takes a toll, and I’m hoping that when things settle down a little after the Christmas break, I’ll be able to help out a bit on that score.

And I did finish NaNoWriMo 2017, for my 13th ‘win’. As is becoming a habit for me, I tried something different for 2017, and that was to write a short-ish story which blends the romance and crime genres. It was a challenge, and my writing always tends towards the dark, so trying to keep at least half of the focus on a romance story was challenging. It won’t be until I look at it again early in 2018 that I’ll be able to tell if it works.

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by Gerald Hornsby

Story structure

I’ve been thinking a lot about story construction for months and months. I’ve tried various structures – 3-Act; 8-Part; 12 pillars; multi-layer 10 key scene; snowflake. All of them sort of work, in that they help me keep focussed on the story, what the key, underlying theme is, and help me keep an even pace throughout the story. But is this good for my writing? Is it taking the creativity out of it?

I’m an engineer. I was born into an engineering family, my father was an engineer, both of my older brothers were engineers. We rode cycles we built from parts that we rescued from a tip; we all worked on our own cars, fixing them when they went wrong; we all went into engineering as soon as we left school at sixteen. And, although I moved from mechanical engineering into electronics and industrial computer control, engineering has stayed with me all of my life.

And it influences me, even now, at just over 60 years old. I prefer function to form: that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate form. I love art, I love photography, and, of course, I love writing. But when you have a ‘thing’, an item, that needs to perform a function, it’s that which takes priority with me, and form comes second.

So let’s look at writing. A piece of writing, especially a novel, has both function and form. It needs to function for the reader, give them entertainment or enlightenment. It needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It needs to have proper characters, a plot that makes sense and draws the reader in. Also it needs to have sentences, have proper grammatical construction, and needs words to be spelled (spelt?) properly.

However, a novel isn’t a paint-by-numbers kit. It needs to have form, and art, it needs to communicate ideas, through the authors use of words. It should convey feelings, it should paint a picture for the reader, just by using words. If you can weave theme into it and voice and style, so much the better. Above all, it should be a compelling story, taking the reader on a journey.

I love C.S. Lakin’s book, The 12 Key Pillars of Novel Construction because it likens the novel structure to that of a house – having four main corner pillars, with another eight pillars to keep up the roof. There are lots more building / writing analogies, but the whole idea is one I can get behind.

So, for me, there needs to be a strong, logical structure (the FUNCTION) underpinning the complete story, onto which your artistic creative techniques can weave the FORM, the characters, the plot, and the themes.

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