Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! So yes, I have 43 problems to solve in my rewrites. 43 questions or comments left to myself in the text. Some are thankfully minor, a note to self to change a sentence, or even a word. (Yes, one word changes can be a nightmare, just let me …
Reading my SPFBO Cohort #6
Hello my friends and the occasional relative! SPFBO 8 is over, its winner revealed here. Congratulations to Small Miracles! A close run contest – check it out for some quality writing and great stories! So I finally finished #6. For me this is head and shoulders the best of the six I have read. It …
The Slaves and The Djinn: Read through update
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! So, it has been a few weeks now since I finished my Ernest Hemingway edit-as-I-go manuscript (digital), and this weekend I sat down and read it in one uninterrupted sitting. I tried VERY hard not to stop and edit, or add comments as I went, but I can’t …
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The Writing Life: Edinburgh Chip shops and fantasy city design, a diversion
Time Passes. Hello, friends and the occasional relative! I visited my home town of Edinburgh recently, and while much had stayed the same, a lot had changed. Profound, I know. So I’m going to talk about chip shops. First, I am convinced that if you want the real experience of fried fish in Scotland, don’t …
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Why I Write Fantasy: Managing the Disconnect.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This is my sixth attempt at writing this column. I'm not saying this is the best, it's just the one I'm willing to share right now. Once I was a boy with shining dreams. Fantasy fiction, of my own making and the stories I enjoyed reading, were an …
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Not an update, a Sale
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have officially left the recently completed book alone for over a week, and will let it rest a while more before reading. In the meantime, because I am chronologically challenged, and just to prove you can read my books in any order, I have sales of my …
A week of thought and edits
So I went through and edited chapters 28-33 this weekend, re-jigged the ending a bit, got it closer to final. It would do now, but no doubt could be improved. I went back and forth through the last three chapters looking for places to possibly insert a line or two, and ended up not doing …
The Slaves and The Djinn: Final edit-as-I-go draft update?
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I write this before I have finished my writing for these days off, with Chapters 31 and 32 written, so I am 96.96 recurring% of the way to completion of this edited-as-I-go draft. Cheers Ernest! Still no graphic representation. Except I have not really edited from 29 on, …
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Seven weeks in a row: truncated activity and a difficult finish line
Hello friends and the occasional relative! This has been a disjointed weekend, and as expected, I only managed one chapter, that looked easier on paper than the last couple, but turned out to have a lot of challenges. The surprises of writing. Three chapters to go! So I am now 90.9% of the way to …
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Weekly update: knowing you don’t have perspective, and being okay with it
Hello, friends and the occasional relative! Six weeks in a row. The streak will be busted sooner or later, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. This has been a good weekend. I wrote not one, not two, but three chapters! 87.87% of the way through this edited-as-I-go draft. Still no progress bar. I am …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 