Yeah, well to be honest this shouldn’t have 40 years to write, but it has I must admit and if I am honest with myself, this should have being finished at least 15 years ago, maybe even as far as 20 years ago.
Well, 20 years ago I had finished university and was completely burn out from writing and I full well remember going back to some ultraviolent science fantasy manuscripts I had tried writing at school 20 years before and a little older and decided it was too bad to work on and abandoned it – I just wasn’t ready.
15 years ago, I had another go – I had joined a writing group by this stage, and the person who ran it who I won’t I remember suggesting to me why not have another go at it. I got as far as 5,000 words rewriting one of the manuscripts (Yes, there was a whole host of them at school) only for my PC to die halfway through and the backup disc corrupted during the archiving which I was do.
10 years ago, well just over 10 years ago I became Diabetic. I’ve covered this story before which doesn’t need repeating here but it forced a massive rethink over my writing direction as I had published a poetry book Return to Kemptown, which I enjoyed but I knew wasn’t the direction I wanted to head to. Over a good year, I tried this book again only to get to on two separate occasions around 10,000 words in hand to struggle to write much more.
5 years later, I was just starting to get warmed up with the woman who eventually became my wife, Amanda I had another go at this novel spurred by Amanda who had wrote a series of novels / novellas etc. I remember that 2 and a bit year period where I wrote 45,000 words of this book now titled ‘The Author and the terror of the hellhole’ and 30,000 words of its prequel ‘The Return of the Author’ and 4 other manuscripts a bit years later when my Father had a stroke and in the process nearly took out my mother too and caused my family untold stress and in the process without meaning forced me to put it to one sign yet again when my head simply wasn’t up to finish the job.
I’m now back on the book and will be talking about this over time again this year I hope. I’m now on the 4th draft of my book now retitled somewhere which I will reveal in due course, but the one thing I have learnt from my poetry that some pieces longer than other take time to develop. I’ve had some poems which have took years to write, but heading towards 40 years. Now that’s a different ball game but I have learnt as a poet, something some pieces took longer than others to write, and if you believe in the piece you’ll never give up.
Like me.
(The image at top of this feature is Marvel hero 'Moon Knight' a major influence on earlier attempts of the my character, the Author)
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