Dragon Lake Books

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Fallen Warriors

Goal 31

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I keep returning in my thoughts to Goal 31: To be and do all that God wants of me. Not every minute or every day, yet this phrase follows me around. I used to have a website: www.goal31.co.uk which I used for my contracting/consulting business. I made a poor decision to take it down and attempt to rework it into a new site for advertising my books, and for blogging, and unfortunately was unable to complete the process of developing a new one. Other things, family, people, commitments, all seemed more important and still do. What is it that God wants of me? To have a beautiful shiny new website, or spend time with people? Perhaps there can be both, though I’m having to prioritise my time and the website, even this website, is so far down my list of important tasks that it has been over four years since I last wrote a blog post. But I have been blogging. I’ve been attempting to use a new site and you can read a whole new book there if you’d like: goal31.substack.com

At some point, I do hope to retire this website and replace it with goal31.co.uk. When I do, I’ll likely redirect from dragonlake.co.uk to there.

So, this may be the last post on Dragonlake. I hope to keep posting, if infrequently on Substack. And continue writing new books. For those of you awaiting the sequel to Fallen Warriors, I’m back to writing that. Sign up to my mailing list using the link above and follow me on goal31.substack.com for more updates.

40K

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Lightbox with #done

It might be that weekly posts are all I can manage until the first draft of Fallen Warriors Season Two is complete. I met my target of 10,000 words today and did manage to hit 2,000 words each day this week.

That feels good. An accomplishment.

I haven’t managed much else, publishing wise.

I kept a record of time spent writing and word count achieved. It’s interesting looking at the numbers:

Screenshot of wordcount achieved over past week

Three out of five days I took over four hours, the longest time being four hours, twenty five minutes. Then two days, today and yesterday almost half an hour faster on average.

My words per minute has really jumped around, with really slow points and then one half hour when I blitzed almost 500 words at a pace of 16 words each minute.

I’m only averaging around 8 words per minute though. That seems really slooow to me. It makes me more inclined to look at dictation.

Admittedly, the fact is I spend a lot of time just staring into space, thinking. So if you actually measured my typing speed when I was typing, it would likely be much faster. So dictation isn’t going to stop me needing to think and work through plot and character development.

But how much faster could it be?

Next week and the week after I’m not going to be able to write as much. I’m helping my parents move house and that needs to be my main priority. My word target for next week is just 7,000 words.

But I’m going to give Dragon dictation a go. Nuance offer a free one week trial of Dragon Anywhere and I’ve signed up this afternoon! This is an app you can install on Android or Apple phones and as long as you’ve an internet connection you can transcribe what you say.

Last week I bought The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon: Using Speech Recognition Software to Dictate Your Book and Supercharge Your Writing Workflow by Scott Baker. I’m going to work through this while I get used to dictating and will let you know how I get on.

It might be too much to hope that I’ll exceed 7,000 words next week by starting to use dictation, but I’m hopeful. Even if I could reduce the time it takes to write the same amount of words, that would be a huge help and allow me to focus on other tasks I have waiting.

What helps you to write faster?

Progress

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The poem Progress by Mark Anderson Smith with a greyscale background of a wooden grid

I wrote last week that I was setting a new target to write 5,000 words a day.

Why do I do this to myself?

The results are in. I think I managed a thousand words one day that first half week, then I’ve managed 4,790 this week.

That’s not even a fifth of what I’d imagined might be possible.

I think it’s okay though. I’ve written several new scenes and expanded on both the character and plot for a main character in this new season. I’ve also broken out my initial synopsis and plan, using Scrivener, so that every key scene I’ve planned is in order, so that it will be easier to focus on a specific character’s story while writing.

If you are interested, after splitting out the synopsis and looking at what I feel I can actually use from my initial writing, and including the scenes written this week, I now have 30,292 words. My goal for Season Two is 120,000 words which would give 6 20K episodes. A bit shorter than Fallen Warriors, but with my publishers hat on, cheaper to print!

Since I started using Scrivener, I’ve found it really helpful for dealing with the complexity of the stories I want to tell. I can group scenes by chapters and by episodes, keeping the TV theme I’m using for the Fallen Warriors series. I can search for a character name and filter so that only scenes where they appear are shown. This allows me to read through their story and check I’ve covered everything I need to happen. Also so I can check their story is consistent all the way through.

I can add notes to each scene so i can remember why I wrote something, or add hyperlinks to research I’ve done. I can backup each scene individually as many times as I want. And I’m probably not even scratching the surface of what the application is capable of.

I’m still aiming to work up to 5,000 words a day, but am conscious that might not be possible unless I try something radical like switching to dictation. I’ve been looking into Dragon speech to text software, but at £350 for the professional edition which allows you to record and transcribe later, I’m hesitant to shell out that cash.

I think 2,000 words a day might be a more realistic daily target for the next month as another issue I’m facing is that I need to spend time setting up marketing and promotion of my next book: Double Your Salary. There is no point in publishing a book if I don’t make an effort to promote it, and it makes a lot of sense to start that promotion now.

I’ve been able to look at what writing 2,000 words a day might mean. I could finish the first draft of Fallen Warriors Season Two by mid August. That might then allow me to edit and ready for publication by Christmas, or if not, the three year anniversary of Season One’s publication date.

I would be happy with that.

I thank God for the progress I’ve been able to make. I’m conscious I’m still not really well. Finished the course of antibiotics, but am still coughing and my sinuses are full. If I could complete 10,000 words over next week, I would be delighted with that, especially if at the same time, I’m able to make progress towards promoting Double Your Salary.

I would appreciate your prayers.

Progress

I tell myself
my novel is a book
made up of words.
The first word
followed by another,
each word building
on the words before,
creating something of beauty,
of purpose,
of insight.
The novel does not yet exist.
But it will,
if I keep writing,
one word at a time,
until it is finished.

Copyright 2019 Mark Anderson Smith

Jamaica? No, she would have done it anyway…

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photo of feet wrapped with chains

One of my many favourite things about writing is getting lost in research. Tracking down a fact, or answer to a question that might be useful or essential in taking the story forward.

I rarely share any of this because I’m terrified of giving the plot away. But is that just a wasted opportunity?

Would you be interested in joining me on some of these trips down a rabbit hole?

I wonder if it’s possible to share at least some of what I’ve found out on my research trips without giving too much of the game away.

Today’s (or yesterday when this is published!) fascinating expedition was to the Caribbean island of Jamaica. I just wish it had not only been virtual!

I found this article by Professor Geoff Palmer: Slavery, the Scottish Caribbean connection, which has given me an insight into one of my characters in the sequel to Fallen Warriors. It’s a fascinating read in any case, diving into Scotland’s connections with the slave trade, our hypocrisy in ignoring how many in Scotland benefited from slavery and tried to prevent abolition, and also revealing that in spite of a dreadful past, and maybe even because of it, there are thriving communities and people that have much to contribute.

It’s a complex and messy world out there. Have you ever been to Jamaica? What do you think of Professor Palmer’s article?

A new target

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Photo of street map of York

I’ve taken a couple of months away from contracting to work on the sequel to Fallen Warriors and ready another book for publication. I ended up needing almost all of the first month to ready that book and was finally able to send it to the printers at the weekend and am now focusing back on Fallen Warriors.

I like big targets for my writing. Huge, seemingly impossible goals that are quite at odds with how I tackle other projects. I had in mind that I would write 5,000 words a day and produce a 100,000 word draft by the end of May, then perhaps even go on to write the first draft of the final book of the trilogy in June.

I started actually writing today and managed 1,000 words.

Considering that I’m trying to switch my gears from editing mode to creative mode, that might not be too bad. In the last month of “editing” Fallen Warriors, I actually first draft wrote most of the final chapters. They were then edited, they were proof read, but the story just flowed out as ten years of subconscious thought made itself known. That was while I was working full time.

Over four weeks I virtually wrote 2,000 words a day in three hours or less. It should be possible to write 5,000 words a day when I’m working full time at it.

In theory.

5,000 words a day seems like a goal worth pursuing. The first draft of any book doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to get the story out and since with each of my books there has been a process of rewriting and editing, I know I can and will improve on the first draft. Also, I have always needed to delete scenes and chapters. So why waste time carefully writing scenes that may eventually have to be cut?

I already know I’m not going to have all of June available, other commitments have taken priority. It might take me a week or two to get up to speed, but that’s okay. My main goal is to tell a gripping and enjoyable story. If I can do that faster, fantastic.

If it takes a bit longer, that’s also okay. I’ll be posting daily updates from Thursday onwards. Tomorrow is a different kind of day, but more about that later…

Surviving Writers Block

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I thought I was making really good progress on the sequel to Fallen Warriors early this year. I’d put together a plot that seemed to allow me to tell the story I wanted to tell, I’d managed to write around 30,000 words, then I ground to a halt in the Spring.

It didn’t help that I’ve been working flat out all year, going straight from contract to contract, sometimes spending more time working than I’d hoped or planned. Yet I think the real problem was more practical even than that.

I was trying to write and edit at the same time. It just killed my ability to continue the story.

My first draft of Fallen Warriors was a glorious mess, full of odd scenes that had no apparent relevance to the overall story, but which I found myself writing simply because I knew I needed to write something, anything to take the story forwards. The plot was too complex, the characters… well there were too many of them. Trying to be creative and adhere to some sort of structure at the same time kept me stalling and was probably a major cause of the book taking ten years to write.

Those odd scenes ended up being some of the most beautiful parts of the story for me. The chance for me to explore who the characters were in more depth and understand what made them who they were.

I now feel I need the same freedom with the sequel, but last year and early this year I didn’t give myself that freedom and I ended up unable to continue.

I didn’t stop writing though, I simply changed track. Here’s something I don’t know if I’m ready to share, but here goes… My working title for the sequel was Fallen World. It would be good to hear what you think of that title, but you should know that I’m already considering another.

I wanted to explore what the title might mean and so began writing a couple of short stories set in the Fallen Warriors universe. My hope is that I’ll be able to publish these soon, allowing you a wider glimpse into where the story will go while I aim to complete the first draft of the sequel.

In addition, as I’ve had to focus on work far more this year, I’ve used that to motivate me to complete a first draft of a non-fiction book. If you signed up to my mailing list you’ve already heard about it and even had the chance to read an ealy draft and give feedback on it. If you’re not on my mailing list and would like to be the first to hear my news, you can sign up from the link at the top of the page or here.

I had a bit of a breakthrough last week with my thinking about the sequel and am aiming to take a new approach in January. I’d appreciate your prayers and encouragement.

I’ve two more Christmas/book Fayres to attend in the next couple of weeks, one in Argyll and the other in Dundee.

Poster for Dundee Book Fair on 8 December 2018

If you’ve any connection to Dundee, please share the above poster and let people know the book fair is on Saturday 8th December 2018 from 10am till 4pm at City Church, Tulideph Road, Dundee DD2 2PN. It would be great to see you!