Comments for Flotsam:

Comment on State of the Writer: Not Perfect by Matt

Matt — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 10:15:13 +0000

Fabulous. This carrier pigeon is taking ages to train.

Comment on State of the Writer: Not Perfect by Neil

Neil — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:40:06 +0000

Thanks Matt. I’ll drop you an email with the MS attached.

Comment on State of the Writer: Not Perfect by Matt

Matt — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 07:42:28 +0000

Working from home is a great idea – you’re right in that it’s a big productivity booster, for both your day and night job. I tend to drown in work if I don’t have at least one day a week working from home. It suits people that have good discipline and need p and q to really chew through work.

Sorry to hear about Open Door, kudos to you for taking the criticism as a positive force, ‘cos of course that’s what it should be. I don’t think I know anyone who is more committed to a goal than you are – it hasn’t really crossed my mind that you won’t succeed.

I would love to read The Scarred God! I know you from the real world (or, at least it seems very real to me), so I will be contacting you through the usual channels. For this I select carrier pigeon!!*

* Failing carrier pigeon I think I might try this new-fangled ‘electronic mail’.

Comment on Contact by Neil

Neil — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:47:31 +0000

Hi David,

I’m delighted you like the work and think there may be another home for them.

If you want to pass me the details of the market I will drop them an email, if I haven’t considered them and it makes sense for the stories. Chances are I’ve already considered the market as I am pretty active about managing my backlist.

Please don’t submit any on my behalf. It’s not really the done thing.

Thanks,

Neil

Comment on Contact by David Carvin

David Carvin — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:30:59 +0000

Is your material creative commons? I know a paying flash fiction podcast that might be interested. Would like to submit it.
Please let me know. I like your work!

Comment on State of the Writer: Not Perfect by Neil

Neil — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 08:29:26 +0000

Thanks Gareth. Appreciated.

I’ve considered part time but it isn’t really doable for me right now.

However, I’m focusing on restructuring my week to better enable working from home part of the time and allow me a bit of a rest from the commute, which is a bit of a grind.

In many ways, I don’t make enough use of the willingness to let me do this and that’s silly because it would benefit both the dayjob – my deskwork productivity is much higher when I don’t have people at my desk every five minutes – and my writing as I have more energy.

Comment on State of the Writer: Not Perfect by Gareth

Gareth — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:11:09 +0000

Criticism always stings, but I’m glad you seem to be reacting to it philosophically. Sometimes, we need to hear it, even if we don’t want to. Keep plugging away. We both know you’ve got talent. But writing with that kind of schedule is a killer. Have you thought about going part-time? I would never have written my last two novels so swiftly had I still been working 40 hour weeks in the office.

Comment on State of the Writer: Our protagonist returns… by G

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:26:51 +0000

It’s still crazy….

Comment on State of the writer: Juggling by Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:21:22 +0000

I know what you mean – always disheartening to see problems. But you are right – it’s actually awesome that you’ve grown to the point that you can spot and fix them. That’s far more important. Improving is what it’s all about – getting it right first time is overrated I reckon (said on the basis of no experience of said phenomenon…

Comment on Music to write to by Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:17:06 +0000

I sometimes tend to find it hard to write to music, especially if there is a lot of lyrical content. I find music inspiring though, in terms of writing. I’ve always felt that all songs are really stories: the verses, chorus, bridge etc representing scenes.

When I’m in the mood for listening to music it could be (almost) anything I stick on. For fight scenes I tend to prefer something house / dance like (prodigy for example) or maybe metal. I sometimes think Metal sounds like the prelude to a fight, or the atmosphere after one, whereas the fight scene is really high tempo (and for me electronic, don’t know why…).

Eminem and rap is good for dark mood I find, although I tend to find this is the hardest to write with as the lyrics sneak into the writing. If you like atmospheric and instrumental check out the work of Emancipator. Beautiful almost bleak stuff, and awesome (IMHO) to write to.

On this note, I’ve always thought it would be awesome to make a note of what you’re listening to while writing, and then making up a sound track for the book. I think that reading and listening could be as much interwoven as watching and listening (a la the movies), but I guess that is harder to achieve)…