Thursday 20 March 2014

To End All Wars: Half Way!

I promised I wouldn't post every time I hit a landmark on new novel-in-progress To End All Wars, (at any rate I promised myself), but I didn't feel like I could let passing the half way point go without a brief mention.

Right now, I've written thirteen chapters of what, if all goes to plan, will be a novel of twenty three chapters, placing me comfortably on target to finish the first draft by the end of May.  The wider significance of all this is that, for the first time since my somewhat-disastrous experiment four years ago, I'm trying to write a novel full time, and to say there's a lot resting on it would be kind of an understatement.  One of my conditions to myself for being allowed to have a go at this full time writing lark was that I can produce at least - at least! - two novels a year, and that May deadline is an important landmark in proving I can pull that off.

What's perhaps even more important, though, is that not only am I on target with To End All Wars, I'm on target with everything else too.  In the last two and a half months, I've written two short stories and the first issue of a new comic book series, plowed through hundreds of pages of research, and mostly planned out the second novel I'll be starting this year, the book formerly known as War For Funland, which I hope to start come April ... meaning that for the first time in my life I'll be attempting to write two novels back to back.  Not to mention more short fiction and the various other smaller projects I'm working around those two monoliths.  Which, when you've been struggling to write a novel a year, sounds a bit crazy written down.  But hey, these are crazy times!

And once again I've attempted to talk about To End All Wars and rambled on about every other damn thing instead.  This shouldn't be taken as any indication of how excited I am by it or how well it's going - it's going very well and I'm exceedingly excited about it - but more a sign of how giddy I am to finally be able to throw myself at every damn project I feel like.  But yeah, TEAW is shaping up nicely, and in fact every bit as well as I could have hoped it would.  One of these days I'll have to write a post that does more than just mention it in passing...

2 comments:

  1. This is great news!

    I am really geeked for you. Also, I may ping you about various war questions soon when my next gig comes in.

    No, I really might. 8)

    Best,

    Anne*---

    P.S. I have a request for that pic you sent me. If I send you a short email -- yeah, I know, me and SHORT, hah! -- could you let me know about it?

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  2. I also love your new homepage background, Dave. It's really pretty sharp.

    And pretty too. I'm both envious and delighted.

    8)

    me*---

    ReplyDelete