Everything is still going ahead. Dark Reign is still being edited, so we’re on track there.

I have been writing other things, so I haven’t been alone but I thought I’d write in here about some of the things we do as writers.

Planning vs Pantsing vs Plantsing

So, you might have heard the term “pantsing”. You’ve probably heard the saying “flying (or driving) by the seat of their pants”. Well, pantsing is the same thing for writing. It means opening either a blank page in a notebook or computer, whichever the way you write, and putting words on the page.

Now, sometimes, as with me, those words come from a dream, which is where Dark Dimensions and Heart of Deception came from, sometimes it’s a prompt from a writing group and other times it’s just an idea either from television or from a picture. The point is, there’s nothing on the page to start with and you’re just laying words down.

This is the way I tend to write and I will write the first draft that way – because I believe it’s the characters telling me the story so that I can refine it in other drafts to tell you. But that’s for another post.

This can, however, be problematic – I will admit it. My main problem came up when I decided to explore one of my characters’ pasts. In Heart of Deception, Marek, the main character, is 25. While exploring his life between 20 and 25, I found that he’d been traumatised at the age of 22 and subjected to all 15 symptoms of emotional shock. Luckily, I had to pull Heart of Deception and Legacy of Risks from sales because of the crash of my publisher, so I have been able to rewrite scenes in those books to reflect the effect that trauma had on Marek.

For anyone interested, these stories may come out in a book of their own – sort of compiled events of Marek’s earlier adulthood.

Pantsing is an interesting way to write. It means that a story will continue for what seems a very long time before you get to the end. I know in Nanowrimo 2020 I wrote 25000 words this way in my paranormal story. Which I am now setting out ready for the second draft.

If you’re a planner rather than a pantser, then you will know your characters, setting, plot, subplots all before you start. Generally, a planner knows everything that’s going to happen in a story, right down to the twists, the supports, all the deaths are planned and everything is worked out before the first draft is even written.

You also have your characters right down – their goals, their childhood, their drives, their motivations, their education, their looks, how old they are, etc.

This can be a great way to write and you know exactly where your story is going with each word that lands on the page before you.

Now, plantsing is a mix of the two – I tend to be a little of a plantser – or I try to be. I love pantsing the first draft, but sometimes I tend to repeat information or I info dump. Thus, by planning the second draft, which is what I’m doing with my paranormal story, I can work out exactly what belongs in each chapter.

Also, by this stage, I know what my characters are like and I can write their goals, motivations, destinations, drives, everything that a character needs – even down to the clothes they wear and their looks.

So, that’s the three types of writing that I know. The knowledge I give to everyone here is – if you’re a pantser or a plantser, remember, if you explore a character’s earlier life in another piece of work, then you’ll need to check previously published works to see if you need to reflect those actions in the earlier life of the character.

My suggestion to anyone interested in writing a book? Go ahead – write it. As someone often says to me – someone out there needs that story in your head.

But if you want a “get rich quick” scheme, then don’t look at writing. With writing you have to build readers – and those readers include strangers as well as your friends. This has to be done before you even look at sales.

So, if you are driven to writing, like I am, then you’re in it for the long haul. It’s a long-term career for us and we love every minute of that career.

So, every 2 weeks I help run a writing group in Midland, Perth. It’s a pretty loose-run group, we do a lot of yapping and about all types of subjects. (We’ve even been known to drag Stu into it at times when he’s down from the mines.)

Yesterday’s group were faced with a dilemma presented by one of the members. How to recover a corrupted file from a drive.

Now, having been in this situation on the desktop, I have finally figured various ways of getting to a version of a doc that has been auto-saved, but not saved generally – you know, what happens if the power goes out suddenly and – oh, btw, let me just pause here to save the work I’m currently in the middle of – okay, done. Back to the subject.

So, the times when the power suddenly goes off and you haven’t saved your work for a whole page or more. Win 11 gives you a few options, including opening the “start” menu and searching for the last doc in there. Now, that works perfectly (most of the time) on a desktop, but what if it’s a flash drive?

So, the story goes that the member wrote up a story on the flash drive on the laptop, but edited it on the desktop. Instead of saving it to the hard drive and then editing it, it was saved directly onto the flash drive.

Now, this is something i’ve done regularly, but in this particular instance, the file got reported as corrupted on the drive and wouldn’t allow the file to be accessed on the laptop. My suggestion ended up being to check it out on the desktop at home. hopefully the file would be on the hard drive. Can’t guarantee it.

In the end, the member accessed some of the changes on the edited file through the cloud. We still don’t know how this was done as I know I didn’t open a hotspot on my phone. I’ll have to ask the member at the next meeting.

Now, fast forward to 8.30 last night and there’s a thunderstorm rolling in from the north. I made the calculated decision to turn off my desktop, deciding that if I get woken up by a storm right on top of us, that I would unplug the machine.

Just to be on the safe side, I emailed my current WIP to myself. Just in case.

Suffice it to say, but we must always be careful when saving our work. If you don’t want to lose it, then save it at least once a day in more than one location – especially if those changes are dramatic and cannot be repeated. Email the work to yourself in a word processing document, save it to the cloud, if you trust the cloud, save it in a different file on your hard drive, save it to a back up drive and, as long as you do those things, save it also to a flash drive. One of those options should work for you.

And remember – save as often as you can. Because unlike writing by hand, such as the classic writers did, electronic files can disappear into the aether never to be seen again!

So, I’m sitting here waiting for the vegetables and rice for a rice salad to finish (now cooling), then I’m going to go and veg out in the spa for a short time.

Yes, we have another hot day in paradise. I wonder why that’s the reason I can’t write snow storms?

Dark Reign’s editing is coming along nicely. Once that’s done, I will get proof readers to go over it and then work out the size so that we can get the word count for the cover art.

I have done an unusual thing – I say it’s last minute heat. I have entered a competition. It’s not a very lucrative competition, but it’s a competition all the same. Of course, if I do happen to get a prize out of it, it’ll go toward membership for another year. The competition is Kathryn Suzannah Pritchard’s Spooky story – After Dark and for those who have read the few stories I’ve put up about Nina and Sam Mitchell, it is one of their stories that I’ve put forward.

For anyone who read my short story “Enhanced War”, I have started expanding that and it seems to be gathering strength. Although there is some work to be done as I go with that one.

I have also got the main story of Nina and Sam to almost 58k words and I’ve started looking at that as a whole, so that’s been some fun.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to say! Apart from sorry I’m late yet again!

I was sooooooo busy over the past two weeks, I am sorry for missing last week’s blog.

But I do have some news – Dark Reign is with the editor! So we’re a step closer to release. This is the first ever release of Dark Reign and it will be as an ebook to start off with.

I’m not sure whether I’ve shared this, but this is the new cover for Dark Reign.

The other books are still on Amazon Australia, so still have to get those unpublished before I can update those.

So, our weather is warming up again. But that’s good because that means I can work on more stuff.

Dark Reign is almost edited, then I’ll be able to move forward.

Unfortunately, I am still waiting for Dark Dimensions to be taken down, so the rewritten version of that will have to wait. I’ll have another look at it once Dark Reign is re-released.

Mind you, I’m itching to get into new works.

I have finished my Creative Writing course and just have to wait, now, for the final score. Hopefully I’ve passed. The feedback I’ve got for the last piece (an opening scene for a play) has been positive, so here’s hoping the tutor thinks the same.

I did go to a Writer’s Festival in Fremantle late yesterday and found that what I’ve been doing is what I should be doing. So, I’ll keep doing it.

Wish I had more, but there will be time that I have more! Until then …

Have you noticed that sometimes it’s hard to get back to a routine after a change?

I keep trying to post here every week on a particular week, but I’m finding that I’m sliding by a day or two. So, I apologise for that. I will get back into my routine, I’m sure.

The editing of Dark Reign is nearly complete. There have been heaps of changes, but I think it’s a better book for the changes. Hopefully it will be ready soon!

I have almost finished my course, I passed the poetry side, even though I did not have a clue what I was doing! Just doing the screen writing module – which was changed to writing for performance and we were asked to write as though it was a play rather than a movie and hopefully I’ll do well in that.

I am working hard on other projects, but I have taken up a second job, so the going is tough and I’m concentrating on getting Dark Reign finished so that you all have the second book to the Clans in Conflict series.

With Dark Dimensions, this is still partly on Amazon, so I have to wait until that comes down before I can do more with it. I have split it into two books, so it will probably be either Volume 1 and 2 or Part 1 and 2. I’m not set on either as yet and it may eventually be combined into one book after editing. At the size it is, however, it may be a bit daunting for readers.

But, that’s it and I’ll write on Sunday (cross my heart and toes and eyes).

Okay, this one is a short and sharp post.

Just an update to let you know that Dark Reign has a cover!

And that I’m almost halfway through editing it. One step closer to publishing!

Getting a little jittery!

Gosh! Time flies sooooooo quickly! We had a really hot weekend, so I’m going with the – brain melted!

But I do have news. Dark Reign is coming along – I’m actually editing it fairly heavily at the moment – and it has a cover.

All will be revealed when it’s finalised. Just working on the words part of the cover.

Also, my books are currently only available on Amazon Australia, but I hope that they will come down soon. Then I’ll be able to concentrate on getting Dark Dimensions back up.

Now, since I have written The Dark Road as well, I am going to concentrate on the Clans in Conflict series before I look at the Consequences series. They, too, will get a tweaking and for those interested, there maybe a compilation of short stories of Marek’s younger years. That is well in the future, however, but one of those stories plays heavily in some of his reactions in both Heart of Deception and Legacy of Risks, which means I have to ensure that it is reflected correctly in both books.

That’s all I have so far! Oh, I have one more lecture to go with my studies and I may continue with my poems, but I am learning (surprisingly) more from the screenwriting module of the studies. The lecturer has some interesting points that can easily be translated into novels and will improve what I give you all to read.

Well, I may have found a hidden talent. Who knew I could write poetry?

Still, it’s not the same as writing a book from start to finish.

I am still going through Dark Reign, although the cover is getting closer as I edit. Once the editing is finished, it’ll go on to the next step which is beta readers. I am getting excited because this will be the first new book I’ve put out for a few years, and I’ve got a few strategies for getting more readers.

Because I had it pounded into me this week that before you get sales, you need readers, so the more readers you have, the more people get exposure to you.

So, my strategy will be focussed on readers to begin.

It’s quite exciting to look at it from that point and I can’t wait until I can get it up and running.

This weekend, however, I’m doing a bit of a refresh. Going away for a few days with only a laptop – no internet. I probably won’t work on Dark Reign but I may do a little of paranormal and other work.

Yes, I got a cold. It was last week. Still not 100% but much, much better.

Thank the gods for Star Trek Discovery and South Park! I slept through most of South Park for the first day and then when I had a lack of energy the other days, I binged Discovery. What a dynamic show that is!

So, because I was virtually off the computer for two days, I did not get a lot done. But we are moving forward with publishing Dark Reign. Still editing it to death, but it’s going to be far better once the edits are done. Then it’ll go back to beta readers and then to the editor and finally proof reader for final check.

I will keep you informed and I do apologise for not writing last week.

Next week may be a short post because I will be away for most of the week.

For the next book after Dark Reign, it will probably be The Dark Road. I’ve tweaked that one and will probably tweak it again once Dark Reign is out but that shouldn’t take a lot to fix.

And I may have completed my paranormal story. Just have to have a read of it as a whole to see if that’s the case.

So that’s us up to date!