What a difference a year makes

Not strictly on stationery or filofaxes... humour me. Or don’t read. I will never know.

This time last year, I was about to abandon writing “book 4” (it still has no title. But then, it still isn’t written or have an ending I’m completely happy with. These are all linked...). I was beginning to feel that describing myself as a writer (even a part-time one) was in breach of the Trade Description Act as writing seemed to be the last thing I was able to do. My inspiration was withering on the vine and my other novels were all still just in my laptop.

This is where the novels were, a year ago:
Book 1: “Trust Nobody”
This is what I still think of as ‘my practice book’ – the one I made all the mistakes in when I was writing and one that will probably never be released into the big wide world. It’s a thriller.

Book 2: “Fault Lines”
Something completely different – an exploration of how a series of friendships are fractured when one of the group is diagnosed with cancer. I stopped sending it out to agents in 2011 because The Black Dog would have eaten me alive if I hadn’t. Vain as this will sound, I love this book. And it never fails to make me cry when I read it.

Book 3: “The Wrong Kind of Clouds”
Another thriller. Another one I’m happy with and would like to release into the wild. See the comment about The Black Dog above.

Book 3a:
Fully plotted out but never written. The thrill was in the chase, not the writing and this was a notebook with fully-formed plot, twists, character notes... and no more.

Book 4:
No title, no ending, not finished. About to be abandoned with despair.

Book 5:
Not even conceived never mind born.

I was languishing in that hell that is Writers’ Block (when your imaginary friends stop talking to you) and hoping that somewhere down the line, inspiration would strike again.

Where am I a year on?

• “Trust Nobody” is still a practice-run and may never see the big bad world but that’s fine. Who pays to listen to a concert pianist playing ‘A tune a day’? Exactly.
• “Fault Lines” is off to a competition. Regardless of the outcome of that, it’s getting published this year because I will self-publish it.
• “The Wrong Kind of Clouds” will also get published this year, for the same reasons.
• “Book 4” is itching to be finished and I have some idea of how to do that. The 50,000 words that are written are okay. It was the 50,000 to come that were the problem! But I think that’s sorted now.
• “Book 3a” is going to become a screenplay sometime this year.
• Book 5 is at the end of the first draft stage and I am about 20% through a first edit. It will get published this year. It also has a name: Six Deaths (yep, it’s another thriller).
• “Book 6” (which might become “screenplay 2”) is bubbling away and I am scribbling things down like mad to capture them before they go.
• "Book 7" is also slowly emerging from the ether and announcing its arrival and I am desperately trying to capture its essence too before it fades (I can only cope with so much writing at one time - some of all this will have to wait its turn!)

I live in hope that this will continue and that my imaginary friends will always want to talk!