Tag Archives: writing time

The Novelist

Just stumbled across a new game called The Novelist:

From The Novelist website:

The Novelist asks one central question: can you achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love? The game focuses on Dan Kaplan, a novelist struggling to write the most important book of his career while trying to be the best husband and father he can be. The Kaplans have come to a remote coastal home for the summer, unaware that they’re sharing the house with a mysterious ghostly presence: you.

Read the family’s thoughts. Explore their memories. Uncover their desires and intervene in their lives. But stay out of sight; you can’t help the Kaplans if they know there’s a ghost in the house. It’s up to you to decide how Dan’s career and family life will evolve, but choose carefully; there are no easy answers, and every choice has a cost.

Dan’s relationships – to his work, his wife, and his son – react and shift in response to your choices. With a different sequence of events in every playthrough, The Novelist gives life to a unique experience each time you play.

The decisions you make will define the Kaplans’ lives, but they may also tell you something about yourself.

The Novelist screen 1

Obviously both the writer and gamer parts of me are pretty keen to play this, but so is the father part. The key question (whether as a writer you can achieve your dreams without pushing away the people you love?) is one I think any writer with a family struggles with. Time spent on your writing, particularly when writing is not your ‘real’ job, is time spent shutting yourself away from those most important to you. Finding a balance is not easy and a game that explores that idea makes a nice change from the usual identikit shooters out there. Plus, you play a ghost.

I’m also hoping that the screenshot below means you can spend hours just typing ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ into the typewriter:

The Novelist screen 2

You can pre-order the DRM free game for the discount price of $14.99 from the website.

2011: My Writing Year

2011 has been a busy year. I applied for and secured a place on a Creative writing MA and am now at the end of the first term of the first of three years. Since March I’ve been a regular contributor to Write Anything, a wonderful writing site staffed by a host of talented people. Unfortunately my MA commitments, amongst other things, have meant I am no longer able to be a regular voice on the site, though I hope to return for a guest slot or two.

In January, Ether books published five of my short stories on the Ether app; including my prize-winning story Half-mown Lawn.

Over the year I published these fictions online: Third Party, Fire & Theft @ Neon, Medushair @ The Red Asylum; Catchin’ Out @ Monkeybicycle’s One Sentence Stories; Things I No Longer Wish To Possess @ Staccato; Jump Start @ Spilling Ink Review; Heaven in 00 Scale @ The Pygmy Giant; The Leaving of What’s Left @ Metazen.

I published my first piece of creative non-fiction: A Father’s Arms @ Spilling Ink

I also had two stories accepted  for print magazines:

Dirty Bristow Issue Two, available to buy here, featured my short story ‘The John School.’

The View From Here Issue 35, available to buy here. featured my short story ‘Connecting.’

The biggest thing 2011 taught me about writing was the importance of perserverance. I’ve had a number of stories rejected this year, from both online journals and print mags, but I stuck to it and either found the story a home with another, better fit, or redrafted the story and found it a home once it was improved. I was particularly pleased to land stories over on Neon, Staccato and Spilling Ink Review as these were two places I’d had my eye on for a while. And my virtual sticky notes are full of places I plan to try next.

The other thing I focused on this year was redrafting. Over the first six months of the year I wrote six short stories and placed them in my first draft folder for tackling later. I left each story for at least a month, sometimes as many as eight, coming back to them with fresh eyes. This was massively helpful as it provided an experience as close to reading someone else’s work as you can get when reading your own. So far I am redrafting story three, but each one has been much improved because of the increased distance I had coming back to the stories after a longer time than I would have previously left. It pays to be patient.

The key addition to my writing process this year has been the step of recording a draft to listen back to like an audiobook. This was something Nik Perring advised way back which I really used this year. It has helped improve my last two pieces of short fiction no end; those little errors and breaks in rhythm just can’t hide when a piece is read aloud. I went so far as to buy a decent microphone to record with, to get a better quality playback of my reading and even started to dislike the sound of my own voice a little less.

Looking to 2012, I already have two short stories set to appear in the early part of the year, and will hopefully be able to share some truly great news with you soon, just waiting on the final nod from an editor before I start babbling like a fool about it.

Here’s hoping your writing year was a good one. What was your key achievement of the year? What was the most important addition to your writing process this year? Did this year’s writing teach you any crucial lessons?

So much for that.

So much for getting some writing time for #WAG and #fridayflash last week. Another blur of nappies and night feeds and taking care of two other bundles of energy aged 7 and 3 respectively means writing time has been short. I have managed to get some reading done for the Short Story Challenge though, and will be posting a review of Etgar Keret’s ‘The Nimrod Flipout’ once I have enjoyed the final handful of stories.

Mrs P bought me a great present today; a Book Journal from Moleskine.

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This satisfies both my notebook addiction and my nerdy need to keep records of what I read and enjoy, something the Short Story Challenge has served to highlight. I am looking forward to filling the pages with notes and dates and general ramblings about what I am reading and favourite books I have already read.

Tomorrow should be the first morning I get to myself in the last six weeks or so. Guess what I will be doing. Writing. Drafting. Editing. And if things go well, submitting the list of almost complete stories I have. Plan is to clear the decks so I can finish the story I have half done. Only then, can I move on to my list of new ideas, which are steadily filling up my nifty, leather bound A4 notebook with detachable pages. See…..notebook addict.