Michael's Blog – June 2014 Archive (5)

Well, I wandered up another cul-de-sac by attempting to use Scrivener. There’s nothing wrong with the programme, and I can see how it could be a very useful tool for many writers, but for this writer it proved to be a little too cumbersome. Trying to learn the simple use of just a couple of its features meant that I would spend more time clicking through tabs, files and links in order to get to elements of my manuscript that I would otherwise have to hand and therefore easier to access. So…

It seems to have been a week of long walks for some. Metaphorically the England football team began their long walk back home from Brazil to the UK, while me and Pat have been stretching our legs walking around Alicante and Torrevieja. The other kind of long walking I’ve been doing is with my fingers over the keyboard as I battle with a trial on Scrivener, but more about that later. Last Monday we went into Alicante and wandered around the shops. It hadn’t been part of our plan, but we went…

Most writers, I would imagine, have a set routine for their writing process. Any haphazard approach would almost certainly result in a disjointed piece of prose and cause the writer many problems during the re-write. I find myself in that position, and have done for several months now. I could blame the house move, the chemo therapy and even put it down to an enforced change of lifestyle now that we are living in rented accommodation. But that would be a hatful of lame excuses for not doing…

During the week I received the first edited draft of my latest novel from my publisher (Robert Hale Ltd.). It was a case of reading through the comments and observations and replying without actually making any changes to the draft. Two things struck me about it: spelling and PC. I have a decent vocabulary of words I can spell and have rarely struggled with that part of the English language. But I was constantly corrected for spelling words like ‘realise’ and ‘organise’ with the ‘s’…

Suddenly it’s June and we’re approaching the half-way point of 2014. I know what I’ve done with my half so far: spent most of it battling cancer and letting Pat do all the packing for our planned house move. Now we’re settled in our rented accommodation, we are itching to go back to UK permanently, but have to wait until later this year. It gives me an opportunity though to push on with my novel, the prologue of which you have all seen now. I hope I can have it finished before our move back…