The Story so far...... (Part 3)

Motivation.

That's always been my problem as a writer. I need a motivation or I just can't produce anything.

I began with poetry in University. Partly to try and deal with emotional stuff going on at that time and partly to try and impress woman. Safe to say now I achieved more with the former than the latter.

When the Del and Staresy were looking to put a film together to get into Multimedia courses I started putting a script together about a bunch of friends making a film.They however, were more interested in putting together Martial Arts films than character driven plots. One result of that can be found here.

Please don't judge us. We were having fun.

My most productive period of writing occurred in the year I took off from Science after University. I managed several short stories and got a good bit of the screen play I'd written for The Del and Staresy finished. Sadly the giant palm top that I'd been using to write had a screen malfunction, and despite promising that they wouldn't the repair people memory wiped the memory. I was unable to make a proper back up due to my parents sending the cable for hooking it up to the PC back to Compact along with a malfunctioning desktop.
I tried to reproduce my favourite short story, the confession of a serial killer, but I just couldn't find the motivation to reproduce old work. I also managed to cobbled together a few little sketches for my local youth group.

And then the real world intervened and I got a real job. A job that had me starting between 7 and 9 and finishing between 6 and 8. That and the need to sleep made me forget that I was a writer for a very long time.
I had a brief revival in between leaving that job (I've never missed. Not once.) and getting my next proper one. I was, briefly, a song writer for a band Staresy was putting together. I may at some point post some of the stuff I did for that. Providing I can find it.

Then I got another job. Although I did manage to cobble together a few sketches for my local youth group during this time. I take comfort in the fact that I was asked on a regular basis where I was getting them from by visitors to our group.

I dabbled again when I met Rowan. She complicated my life in the most wonderful way and I felt the need to express this in words. My own personal favourite piece still sits framed in our bedroom. Don't expect to ever see it though.

Which brings up to recent times. I've been working on a Doctor Who novel for the last few years whenever time has permitted. I've got the layout, chapter plans and character arcs all plotted out. I've also got the prelude and first chapter done. Although I've taken so long doing that much that the Doctor has since regenerated. Mind you I had an idea last week about how I can make that work for me with out having to change the first chapter at all.

But that's a whole separate post.....

What these last few posts have been about have been my short story. Which started life as "The Exiles" until I realised that was taken and then became "The Conversation" until I realised that was a little on the nose. Now it is "Setting Stones" and I don't see it changing.

I just keep coming back to it. It won't leave me alone and events have transpired to keep it under my skin. Greig's interest has provided me with motivation to get it finished and his gentle prodding has helped me appreciate why authors have editors. So I had several marathon sessions in front of the keyboard and forced out an ending. A very rough first draft that still needs work. But damn it felt good to get it finished.

As I'd said earlier "Setting Stones" began life as a proposal for an audio play and if you're one of the people I emailed a first draft to you'll be able to see that beginning pretty quickly. It's pretty dialogue heavy. I gave it a quick polish and sent it out to a handful of people whose opinion I actually trust and waited for feedback.

Which so far has been pretty positive. I'm expecting the last two opinions is over the next 24 hours, at which point I'll think about generating a review post.

And that's pretty much the story so far.

I'm going to get back that second draft. Who knew writing could be so much work?

Or so much fun?