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Sunday 22 February 2015

Maybe I have turned a corner?

After reducing my medication I feel much better and more my old self assisted by red wine and verboten foods in moderation. "But you will shorten your life by doing so." I hear the medics cry. Then I feel perhaps a shorter full life is better than a long half life? Time will tell. I have started to clear out, what a soul destroying task it is too ... but all those things I have kept and keep turning over will this time have to go. It is surprising how many rolls of drafting tape, sellotape and other rolls of carpet tape etc I have accumulated when consolidated into one box. First law of clearing out is to stop buying. 

Shame also about all those great writing thoughts I managed to note down but now I read the notes ... or those where I can read my writing and think "what was all that about?"

Good news more writing this last week the best for three months after reading Alice Orr's book on loan from the library.  No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells - Hardcover – 28 May 2004

Not that going the traditional publishing route is one for me at the moment. Some comments in the book inspired me after a three month gap to dust off LOOK - NO TOUCH and write a synopsis. Amazing, I recalled all my story I last touched last June and managed to bridge a few gaps and improve the story line. Then a new starting page ... not sure if it is any better than the last one but at least I am getting back into the creative writing and editing groove. I have read somewhere writers should take a rest from time to time and based on my experience I think it is good advice.

Also working away at draft TIPM monthly posts. The bookshops topic is proving interesting but time consuming. Drafting a post for March about the actual buying and purchasing decision process. For those who have battled rejection and finally got their book in hard copy in the book shops the last stage is critical ... getting your book picked up and purchased. 

I thought I saw a note on a blog somewhere this week that the UK book readership at nearly 3,000 people per million population is higher than most other countries. Waterstones have nearly a million titles on sale in their best sellers listing. So with a UK population of some 64m that makes c 21,000 readers ... no something is wrong here.

I see Jeffrey Archer's smiling face in the national press and his dulcet tones on radio so I know he has another book out and a bonus with an announcement about another two books to come in his current series. At 74 he is still writing all by pen and pencil so hope for me yet. For successful marketing look no further. I will ring the BBC when my next book is ready for sale ... "Douglas Burcham, The Allrighters who are you / they? We do not do interviews with unknowns." Perhaps I need to do something notorious to get well known and then publish a book.

I see and chuckle about a some sample sentences from extracts from eight books competing for the Folio Prize.

"Our house was taken away on the back of a truck one afternoon in the summer of 1979." 
Miriam Toews All My Puny Sorrows

I used to think that my father had been assigned to us by the government. This was because he appeared to serve no purpose."

Akhil Sharma Family Life


Good reading and writing to you all.

Douglas and Alexander

 

 

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