 |
| Image: Martin Kingsley |
Frustration was the word of the day; frustration with how everything changed slightly and yet had such a big impact on my plans. To start with, I missed the bus by 30 seconds because I left my sandwiches in the house and had to run back to get them. A good start, which left me with a walk into Leith and a wait for the “crammed” bus; no seats for the living dead.
My day job schedule changed negatively when I was told I would be required to attend an afternoon meeting. “No problem,” said I, and then discovered it ran for 5 hours from 12:30 in the afternoon. Nice. What with the 9:30 meeting already scheduled and the implementation I had to do at 11:30 for an hour, I had little time for anything else like food, or a lunchtime run at Blood Ties.
Not a happy chappy.
Still, I managed almost 1200 words, taking me over the half way mark, before I went out to my writers’ group in the evening. I almost never went, but having missed the last few I thought I should make the effort under the new regime.
I’m not sure if I’ll be back to many of the meetings on a regular basis; It’s not what I wanted from the group when it was first set up. Originally it was a meeting for writers to just get together and have a few pints, maybe chat about writing, publishing, life, whatever. Back then we hit the high of 14 writers turning out. Now there’s barely half a dozen and the format is to read out short stories or novel extracts, and probably rather selfishly, I find it rather dry and lacking in spirit. The stories were good – the guys who read last night are talented people – it’s just that giving critiques over a pint of Guinness isn’t what I had in mind.
I work all year on my writing, whether on holiday, evenings, or weekends, and the main social occasion for the year is the Edinburgh Book Festival. Other than that there’s nowhere else to network on a social level with other writers away from the pressure of deadlines and word counts. Which is why I need that kind of interaction; relaxed and informal, a wee drink and chat about the larger issues, not sentence structure and story arcs, subjects that I spend every other waking hour thinking about and working on.
It was fun while it lasted but things move on I suppose.
Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo)
Blood Ties (Full Novel)
Like this:
Like Loading...
About Colin Galbraith
Keen runner, thriller author, Madness fan, Mets fan, St Mirren fan/owner, rabbit tamer, outstanding fake faller. Loves cannolis & espressos. #LFGM
Freedom from the Mundane
Frustration
Frustration was the word of the day; frustration with how everything changed slightly and yet had such a big impact on my plans. To start with, I missed the bus by 30 seconds because I left my sandwiches in the house and had to run back to get them. A good start, which left me with a walk into Leith and a wait for the “crammed” bus; no seats for the living dead.
My day job schedule changed negatively when I was told I would be required to attend an afternoon meeting. “No problem,” said I, and then discovered it ran for 5 hours from 12:30 in the afternoon. Nice. What with the 9:30 meeting already scheduled and the implementation I had to do at 11:30 for an hour, I had little time for anything else like food, or a lunchtime run at Blood Ties.
Not a happy chappy.
Still, I managed almost 1200 words, taking me over the half way mark, before I went out to my writers’ group in the evening. I almost never went, but having missed the last few I thought I should make the effort under the new regime.
I’m not sure if I’ll be back to many of the meetings on a regular basis; It’s not what I wanted from the group when it was first set up. Originally it was a meeting for writers to just get together and have a few pints, maybe chat about writing, publishing, life, whatever. Back then we hit the high of 14 writers turning out. Now there’s barely half a dozen and the format is to read out short stories or novel extracts, and probably rather selfishly, I find it rather dry and lacking in spirit. The stories were good – the guys who read last night are talented people – it’s just that giving critiques over a pint of Guinness isn’t what I had in mind.
I work all year on my writing, whether on holiday, evenings, or weekends, and the main social occasion for the year is the Edinburgh Book Festival. Other than that there’s nowhere else to network on a social level with other writers away from the pressure of deadlines and word counts. Which is why I need that kind of interaction; relaxed and informal, a wee drink and chat about the larger issues, not sentence structure and story arcs, subjects that I spend every other waking hour thinking about and working on.
It was fun while it lasted but things move on I suppose.
Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo)
Blood Ties (Full Novel)
Reddit
Facebook
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Digg
Share this:
Like this:
About Colin Galbraith
Keen runner, thriller author, Madness fan, Mets fan, St Mirren fan/owner, rabbit tamer, outstanding fake faller. Loves cannolis & espressos. #LFGM