Tag Archives: Feast of Crows

Dragon's Flight — Dragon’s Flight (Photo credit: jcc_seveq)

Apologies for not posting more regularly about my writing this week. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been doing. All words are for Dragon’s Above – chapter 1.

Tuesday, 3rd September – 299 words

Wednesday, 4th September – 371 words

Thursday, 5th September – none! I did do some stuff for the Alt Hist website instead – posting an interview with Priya Sharma, one of the contributors to Issue 5.

Friday, 6th September – 144 words

Saturday, 7th September – 76 words – we had someone over at the weekend, so pretty difficult to write!

What I am finding a bit disappointing this week is that my word count per day is going down. This seems to be partly because I am often only doing a single session a day and leaving it at that. Partly I think that’s explained by having a lot of work on at the moment, but also I think I need to be a bit tougher with myself and force myself to hit a target of at least 500 a day.

I promise to do better this week!

Reading

Finished How to Read a Novel. Not the book I was expecting, but a good read nevertheless and inspires one to read more novels! Still reading A Feast for Crows (which I have been calling Feast of Crows by mistake in previous blog posts!) I am not sure what to think of this book. The writing as ever with GRR Martin is great, but the characters don’t particularly seem to be going anywhere (I am half way through). There’s stuff that they are doing, but none of them are in particular danger as far as I can work out, and I am left thinking so what. I’m hoping it will pick up a bit soon.

Naked Writer

Naked Writer #9: Slow Start to the Week

September 3, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

Monday was a fairly slow start to the week yesterday – quite a bit to do at work and when I did take a break I didn’t feel that inclined to do any writing. My main session was 353 words on Chapter 1 of Dragon’s Above at lunchtime. The words flowed pretty well and I enjoyed what I was writing. I often feel more at ease writing the start of the novel as I don’t feel the same pressure to move the story along fast – instead I can show a scene at greater leisure.

Also I submitted one of my short stories, Bring on the Night, a medieval horror/fantasy to a new market. It’s been to four so far, so I keep bashing away with it and the other ones that are doing the rounds.

Reading

Back to Feast of Crows now that I’ve got through most of the backlog of Alt Hist submissions.

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Naked Writer #6: Exceeded Target and Whole lotta subs

August 28, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

Started off the morning by getting through a whole lot of submissions to Alt Hist – I’m now mostly up to date for submissions sent in May of this year and have started working through a list of about a dozen stories that I thought were good enough to read again. I read three of those more interesting stories while travelling to and fro work and accepted two of them, which is a great return. One of the stories was so good that I had to finish it off as soon as I got home – it’s a corker!

Writing went fairly well too – did 599 in one session at lunch time on Trial by Dream. I am at about 1500 words and reckon about half way through.

I did set myself a goal of doing 1000 words in total today, but I think because I had such a big chunk (for me) at lunchtime, I didn’t push myself to me – I subconsciously figures that nearly 600 was enough!

Must try to sort out the subconscious tomorrow!

Reading

All Alt Hist submissions – and may tuck into a bit of Feast of Crows before bed!

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Naked Writer #3: Writing While Starving

August 22, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

Just to be clear this post refers to yesterday’s activity (21st August), but I’m writing it today (22nd!).

Things did not go as planned – and I blame blood sugar levels and the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet! It’s probably also my own stupid fault as well for not prioritizing writing new words and leaving it until later in the day.

If you don’t know about it 5:2 intermittent fasting, or the Fast Diet, is a diet where you eat normally on five days of the week and then eat a lot less on two days. I have done it occasionally this year and I do think it works, the only problem is that as you start to get into the afternoon the lack of food takes an effect and you feel pretty damn light headed! I didn’t do any writing until I took a break from work at around 2:30 p.m. and as a result only managed about 400 words – and gods now what type of words they are!

Anyway I’m nearer to the end of Time’s Arrow and I have learnt a lesson – do more brain-taxing stuff earlier in the day if fasting, or maybe have a smaller snack later in the day as well. I feel thinner today though, so can’t be bad.

Other stuff I did yesterday was to review a few submissions for Alt Hist. Still catching up with these a bit – the aim is to get back to people within 3 months, but it’s a bit more like 4 months at the moment.

Also I posted another chapter of By the Sword’s Edge on Wattpad

McMahon's illustration of Judge Dredd from 200... — McMahon’s illustration of Judge Dredd from 2000 AD prog 2, (1977) shows his early style, influenced by Carlos Ezquerra (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

. I’m experimenting with this site at the moment and posting a chapter a week.

Reading

Finished Sweet Justice – a very quirky collection of Judge Dredd short stories – and you really need to have been around in the 1980s to appreciate them – there’s one story that features Give Us a Clue for instance!

Slowly reading Feast of Crows and really loving it – also realised that I didn’t have the foggiest what had happened in the previous book so had to go back and remind myself via some online reviews of Blood and Gold. So now I know why Cersei is so upset!

Somehow the writing in Feast of Crows seems a lot denser and richer. I wonder if Martin spent a bit more time on some of the settings before writing, or perhaps was just feeling particularly inspired. One of my writing conundrums is always how much time to spend planning and how much to actually go ahead and write. I’m torn between the two at the moment, and I’m still working out the best approach. Maybe more on that another day.

Naked Writer

Naked Writer #2

August 20, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

Today was a funny day. I thought I’d written a lot more during the day than I had – around 600 to 700 words was my guess, but it ended up being just 402 more words for the Time’s Arrow story about an alternate Agincourt. But at least the words flowed pretty well and I was generally happy with them.

Also I feel that I’m nearing the end of the story, which is a good feeling.

I also did a bit of thinking about the next story – it might be called Broken Lance and will have some basis on the grail legends and a fantasy Morte Arthure feel about it – I think!

Other activity included located primary sources for the next section of Stonehearted, the sequel to By the Sword’s Edge. I’m getting copies of Medieval chronicles that relate the events of the Pontvaillan campaign of 1370, which is the setting for the story. Praise be to archive.org!

Reading:

Not quite finished Sweet Justice and read second chapter of Feast of Crows – loved the third new setting and set of characters – Sand Snakes awesome and very evocative!