Huge April updates, my friends...

# "But I’m gonna burn, I’m gonna shine and multiply, I’m gonna fill up the great divide" # - Anya Marina

As the results of the 2nd Fiction Decisions Poll trickle in, I thought I'd report on some cool news, some disappointing news, and hopefully, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, some downright earth-moving news (for me anyway)...

A little while ago, I read an article on Blogger about blogging your novel (not something I plan to do, incidentally) but what I do intend is to keep writing and writing, and writing – one way the article suggests is to post “promises” on your blog of things to come and it’ll somehow make you keep to it, because it's in the public domain... For such a long time I was someone who loved to announce, “I’m a writer”, but actually looking back now, I can admit, I didn’t do that much regular writing...




So, along with my Coming Soon post from Jan, as well as that Blogger article, I’ve been inspired to create:

http://www.scriptnouveau.blogspot.com/ - a place for my "new writing"!
(NB - addendum 2012 - this featured fiction page now has a permanent new home at: http://www.findthemissingreel.com/indiefiction/ )

After almost a full year of blogging and putting up old stories and half-begun-now-finished stories, I’m ready to post up brand new stories and use my blogs more practically as a tool to hone my chosen art form... Script Nouveau is brand new in every sense of the phrase and definitely my most ambitious, adventurous and challenging blog to date – all of my “indie fiction” stories that don’t fit anywhere else in my other story blogs will go onto this new one. I promise here and now, it’s the final ever blogspot of CGAllan! (my wife thinks I'm a blogaholic) AND, more importantly, it’s where I’ll be giving tantalising extracts of Moon Crater as the year goes on – that’s why its link is in the film reel strip on my desktop homepage... (to whet your appetite, there’s an exclusive extract on Script Nouveau right now! - Prepare for the mystery to be magnified over the coming year...)

But getting back to the practical uses of a blog to me as a writer, as well as new future writing like my Micro Fiction and Seal Your Own Fate stories... I've also added a clue somewhere on this very blog you're reading now that links with something fishy (or should I say "gnomey"?!) goings on over at my official site - remember, "Only eagle-eyed spies win the prize" so keep your peepers peeled and all will be revealed very, very soon...

My other news this month is a mixed bag of tricks in a lot of ways. In my old year review/new year preview back in January I mentioned that a few exciting things might be in the works as regards my writing - well, not wanting to talk about them specifically until I knew anything for definite (now I do!) these exciting things were a writing contest and a writing award that I applied for in late 2006. Unfortunately I didn't get anywhere with either (not my first "could do better" replies, mind - I'm developing a thick skin in my old age at 30!) but they were both important learning curves in preparing the applications for them and also because it was parts of Moon Crater which I was submitting. I redrafted a couple of the early chapters to send in and this process really, really got me thinking and buzzing about my main writing project once more (you tend to go through waves of enthusiasm and passiveness with stories as a writer, I find...)

And so out of this sort of rejection, I've tried to gather a new impetus on the more important task in hand of actually getting Moon Crater to a full draft stage and sent out to agents and publishers. I want to renew my focus and be more the writer I keep spouting that I am through this blog – so for a short while at least, I won't be writing any more "features" about random aspects of writing here - just as Caesar had his 5-year plan, I’ve got my 5-month plan... 3 chapters a month (if RLStine can write a new book every fortnight, surely I can do 3 chapters a month!) And so like living with a garden for a year before you see the grand scheme of things, now, after almost 12 months blogging, I know what I want to do with this writing journal properly...

As the sage philosopher Wallace once said, "It's no use prevaricating about the bush" so I'm basically getting back to basics with why I originally set up this blog - and that is to get myself into a regular writing routine and also so that other amateur writers can learn from my own experience in trying to get a novel published for the first time...

As I said, it's essentially all an effort to get a first complete draft of Moon Crater it’s all change from May for me here, (marking the 1st year’s anniversary of my official site and blog first appearing) – it'll be a straight 5-month stint of journal posts about my week-to-week writing of the novel itself up to September – this will include everything from the early drafting stages through to character development and the evolution of my writing voice as well as agent searches and profiles.

I'll still insert the odd short updates about the new Missing Reel web pages as they are launched and the Coming Soon post stories promised across my other story pages... AND I’ll discuss the preparations of the puzzle page which I want to be more involved than a simple crossword – really drawing readers into the mystery…

So, that's that - apologies in advance, dear reader, if it gets boring here for a while but I won't just be describing how many times I sharpened my writing pencil today or how my printer ran out of ink yesterday - it'll be more of a record of my experience forging my opus in the furnace of my mind tomorrow... Ultimately setting up this journal blog was intended to provide me with motivation and inspiration, so setting up my “promises” here over the next five months should in theory help to keep me going... Hopefully you'll enjoy the ride too even if you're not a writer, but if you've ever had an inkling of an idea for a novel yourself, you never know, joining me as this new journey begins may inspire you to open the pages of that book for yourself once more...