Past, Present & Future

So I guess I should give a little more detail about myself, if anyone is ever going to have any interest in this here place.

I am a guy in my mid-twenties (let's not get too specific here...) from south-east Ireland (Top of the morning to ya, Ooh, me lucky charms, ya feckin’ eejit, whatever other common Irish phrase you can think of…).  I’m currently travelling through Australia for a year on a working holiday visa, exploring new places and generally getting away from the horrible unemployment back at home. 

At the moment I’m working towards qualifying for a second year’s visa over here which involves doing 88 days of regional work(i.e. manual labour in the back arse of nowhere). I’m a little worried that once I hit 88 I’ll travel back in time but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. The work I’m doing for my time is swede harvesting.  It’s hard physical work but on the plus side it’s getting me more in shape, building some muscle and losing some weight.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about the work though, is that gives me time to think. It doesn’t exactly involve mental gymnastics or anything, so when I come home in the evening I write (most days at least. Sometimes I sleep). This has been great for me. I’ve gotten a lot of progress done on my book in the last month.

Ideally I will have fulfilled my quota of days in April (as long as it doesn’t get rained off too much) and that point I intend to do some more travelling along the east coast of Australia for a month or so. This will be followed by another few months of work (hopefully not involving manual labour) in order to fund some travels in south-east Asia and then home for Christmas.

This rough plan has given me a pretty tangible deadline to deal with. I want to have the first draft of my book completed by the time I finish my regional work. After this the time travelling (I mean time spent travelling, but I’m not ruling out the whole hitting 88 thing) should be about the right length of time to let the story rest in the back of my head. I might try and write some short stories while travelling to keep up the writing process, or maybe start expanding on one of the other pieces I have some ideas for. Then once I start the next period of working I can return to the book with fresher eyes and begin the process of wincing at the terrible stuff I had thought I was happy with and rewriting and editing the story.

So that’s the plan for the book. So what’s this blog all about, then?

Well it’s mostly a record of my thoughts as I write. Ideally it will give some insight into how I write and the quirks about writing that interest. Mainly this will be about the process of writing, rather than specifics about my current work. That may change though once I start on the whole submission process!

Of course, I’m sure over time the blog may grow and change, but it will always be about writing. And me. Also I can’t promise the occasional tidbit about monkeys won’t crop up.

You’ve been forewarned.

I’ll be back soon, but in the meantime, feel free to leave some comments below, above, or however the hell this blog thing works.

Long days and pleasant nights,

James.