An Embryonic Idea Grows

I had a few ideas thanks to the short story competition but had no idea about chapters or setting out...so I just wrote and decided to worry about the technical side of it later.  It took another four years before I finished as I was still working at that stage and slotting my writing into my spare time.

However, it wasn't until I moved to the Gold Coast at the beginning of 2012 and joined a writer's group that my writing really started to take off.  I attended some work shops (actually I had no choice as they were held at my place!) which gave me a better understanding of the technicalities of writing a book.  The facilitator of the workshops, a freelance journalist who also gives a lot of her time helping and encouraging budding writers, taught us the importance of grammar, spelling, punctuation, phrasing and paragraphs.  Yes, I hear you say, that's pretty basic stuff.  Not these days, it isn't.  Apparently editors won't even look at a manuscript that is not set out correctly or is sloppily written.

With that in mind I began writing, using spell check on every page and rephrasing any dodgy or clumsy grammar.  As I say, it took me four years; at least one year of that was working on editing and in some instances rewriting whole pages.   Our facilitator kept asking me if my book was finished, in other words encouraging and chivvying me along until the day came when it was finished!

I had great glee in telling her the good news.  Her response?  "Have you started a second book..."  That is now a work in process.

As for the content of Villainy, my family and friends were wonderfully obliging in telling me their faux pas; plus I had remembered some they had forgotten and I had my own misadventures, of course.  I was determined that above all, the book was going to be humorous with a bit of grumpy old man/woman thrown in for good measure, albeit told with a somewhat wry twist (hopefully).

My mother, bless her, was and still is a major source of material.  At almost 94 years old, she's lived a hell of a lot longer than the rest of us so naturally would have had more "funnies" in her life.  She will often ring with something that's happened either to her or one of  her cronies from the retirement village where she still lives independently with her third husband (she outlived the other two and we, me and my four brothers, warned The Third about that!).

Tomorrow I will tell you where I'm up to in the preparation for publishing...