Progress But At A Price

So the Scottish Government has suddenly been told to put in proper security into the Parliament building at Holyrood, with things like man-trap doors being put forward as essential. The project is now being scoped with a view to the cost and upset it will bring. The building is only a few years old, so why wasn’t all of this thought of when the thing was being designed in the first place? We’ve had these kinds of doors in our offices at the Day Job for years now, so I would have thought they were standard for new buildings with such a high profile. All it amounts to now is another spurt of growth in the ridiculousness of the White Elephant that sits outside Holyrood Palace, and of course, more waste of tax payer’s money.

I finished editing Stella today and I am not at all happy with it. The more I worked through it the more I realised several things about it. Ideally, I would want it to be around 25-30k, but because of what I tried to do the first time round, it’s only 16k long. It doesn’t meet any of the requirements I set out for it either. It needs a much bigger re-write involving some more detailed planning and altering of the story. It’s not a full-length novel, and never will be, but it definitely needs some growth and detail injected. The main thing I got out of this re-write was renewing the detail of the story in my mind with a view to doing all this, so I’ll set the counter back to zero and re-start it once I’ve sat down and planned what I am going to do with it.

Hunting Jack on the other hand is another ball game altogether. I think I’ve been too hard on myself with this book in the past, which is one of the reasons I’ve held on to it for so long. Confidence has played a big part, as well as working on other novels since then. Working through the novel now, though, I’m feeling different emotions at being involved with it again. I’m really enjoying reading it after so long on the shelf. Fingers crossed that when this process is complete I can find a publisher for it, and then maybe, just maybe, go on to complete the series from which I know it has come.

Greener is the Grass (Writing)

Hunting Jack (Editing)

Stella (Editing)

---

PLEASE DONATE – For full details of my Abseil off the Forth Rail Bridge in October for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, please go here:
https://rzss.workwithus.org/Fundraising/Donate.aspx?page=4212

Reddit

Facebook

Del.icio.us

StumbleUpon

Digg