All quiet on the Pigheart front eh?
Yes I’m afraid so. I do have a couple of stories of the piratical knave in the works but I have been neglectful this past week. That said we’ve had a pair of de Gashes of late which I’m quite pleased with: The Eldritch Entertainment (in which poor Franklyn takes a sideways slide into some more HP Lovecraftian territory) and The Recreational Entertainment (a tale of dogging, of all things, and a general massacre in the park). I have been adding pirate stories in audio form onto Reverbnation, which assuages my guilt somewhat.
How Scrawleth Thee?
Their development has caused me to muse on my writing process, such as it is. Both of the de Gashe stories above have been hanging around for a while in various stages of development. This is because I tend to write in flurries – scribbling as much as I can on a given topic or storyline until the muse deserts me. And who knows when she will return? Some stories I find I can pick up again easily and add to or write it through to completion.
In The Recreational Entertainment‘s case it was a straight scribe of half the story in one go and then caught it up the next day. The Eldritch Entertainment hovered at three paragraphs for about three months until I stumbled across it in my writing book, chuckled and proceeded. That’s nowhere near a record for me – the most recent Captain Pigheart, The Selachian Damsel Adventure was started two years ago with the opening drowning story. Then… nothing. That’s all I had, so I left it. The Booty Adventure was scribbled over three weeks during one of my favourite writing slots – the half hour I carve out before the weekly climbing session.
Musing Away
I try to write whenever I’m inspired to do so – almost all of the pirate and de Gashe stories start with a phrase or sentence which pops unbidden into my head. If it’s not captured in a writing book, on Twitter or tapped into Evernote I know it will be lost. This butterfly attention span can be beneficial – when I’m stuck on one story I can flutter over to the next, and back again. The best bit is when I finally hammer out a first (hideously handwritten) draft and get to type it up, then print it out and scribble all over it again with pink ink. Not all of them need it though. The Harmonious Adventure did – that was a bastard to hammer into the shape I knew was lurking within. Some just write themselves – it’s great! I’d really like to know what makes the difference.
Discipline (is in the eye of the beholder)
I’m trying something new. Well, something old that I haven’t done for ages. My sleep habits are generally terrible, but I’m fixing my life (sort of) by getting up at a set time and having a half hour after breakfast and before work for writing time. I originally found this practice labelled ‘morning pages’. The idea is that you write something, anything, dear god whatever pours through your pen just to be in the flow of writing and creating.
So you should be seeing more very short stories which will be fairly rough around the edges. I’m aiming to write a 300-800 word story a day (unless I get involved in something like I did today and stretch it across a couple of mornings) which I then need to type up (I cannot deal with keyboards in the morning), tidy a bit or discard. I reckon that’s going to equate to at least two stories on’t site per week. If it’s not – complain. I will listen, fret, and sort it out.
For now I’ll be posting them under Morning Pages – I hope you enjoy them, and that I manage to keep it up! Please let me know.
