Finally, back to writing

Today I finally managed to find an hour to revisit my draft of Legacy, the sequel to Loyalty. I was pleased with the changes I've made to the first seven chapters, but I did have to sacrifice a few paragraphs that I had been very proud of before. I strongly suspect I will reuse the phrasing elsewhere!
Life gets so busy these days that finding time to write becomes difficult. With the lighter evenings I'm hoping that I can find time to push on with Legacy, as I won't be so tempted to wrap up in thick blankets and snuggle down as I did on those  dark winter evenings!

Inspiration in unexpected quarters

Went out as planned but unexpectedly came across a tiny fourteenth century manor house. Only a few rooms remain including an upper chamber with a beautiful wall painting. They uncovered the Angel Gabriel making his famous announcement, but sadly we don't have Mary. Just standing in that room was like travelling back in time. I have my notebook out and a whole scene for my novel is unfolding.
An inspirational setting. If you're in UK, and Dorset in particular I recommend a visit to Fiddleford Manor.

Legacy - barriers to writing

Well, I set aside a few hours to write some more of this story. I had so many details and plot lines in my head to get down. The computer behaved, but sadly I didn't! I allowed myself to get distracted by a tiny bit of double checking research! I simply had to check the dates of an outbreak of the infamous sweating sickness and the lure of internet links swallowed up a whole hour!
But, that aside, I managed to add quite a bit. I also rewrote one chapter and feel much happier about it.
It's much harder to write about ordinary lives in an exciting and page turning style, but I hope I'm making progress. Focus on the things that resonate with today's reader is my mantra. Hopefully it's working.
Then I went out to the supermarket and had an idea for a short story based on ancient Roman figures - not sure how that happened!
So today I'll go out for a walk and to get some more inspiration for Legacy, but I won't count on it!!

Jane Grenfell strugglingauthor Blog: Legacy - progress report

Jane Grenfell strugglingauthor Blog: Legacy - progress report: Well, as planned, I sat down to write a few more chapters for Legacy. Writing a sequel is hard! Ensuring consistency with volume 1 of the tr...

Legacy - progress report

Well, as planned, I sat down to write a few more chapters for Legacy. Writing a sequel is hard! Ensuring consistency with volume 1 of the trilogy takes longer than I thought it would. By the way a huge thank you from me to all of you who have downloaded Loyalty from Amazon. I appreciate your support and interest.
As I say I did sit down and typed up several thousand words only for my computer to crash. I lost the whole morning's work. #sadface does not do justice to how I felt.
But rather than rail against fate I decided it was the editing fairy or Calliope herself taking a hand. So I started again and actually feel that although I wrote less, it was better.
As I approach this weekend I have two data sticks, a virus checked hard drive and a cloud storage area all ready to receive the fruits of my labours.

Jane Grenfell strugglingauthor Blog: Get writing!

Jane Grenfell strugglingauthor Blog: Get writing!: Promised myself that this Mother's Day weekend I will concentrate on getting Legacy closer to being finished. Need to get about 50,000 w...

Get writing!

Promised myself that this Mother's Day weekend I will concentrate on getting Legacy closer to being finished. Need to get about 50,000 words so I thought let's go for 10,000 over two days. I'll report back!

I want to publish in April, a year after book 1, Loyalty came out.


But, as for many fellow struggling authors I get easily distracted. Usually by a series of other ideas for stories.

Even that triggers ideas for a story about an ambitious author who can't ever complete a project.....