The Gospel According to....

Well, I thought putting "Darren" in there made a strking contrast - but a more established writer called Courttia Newland has come out with an "according to Cane" - which is a bit weird - not Cain? or Kane?   But what can you expect from a man named Courttia (who I heard on the radio - he sounds very interesting).  When I heard about the book I was terrified that he might have used the same idea... but mercifully the Gospels don't seem to play a part in this.

If GATD is published I can see a number of objections to the title from editors and agents along the way.  I love the title - and it describes the thing perfectly... but perhaps by that time the other book will be less prominent (I'm assuming he's going to be a midlist author for a while anyway).   So I can resume my efforts.

GATD today

I gave myself a deadline of the end of June originally for this book - but I realised that was hopeless a while ago.  However, since I am now at 42,000 words despite only having had a few hours to work on it this week, I am beginning to see that it could almost be finished in time... if I worked like stink next week... and the bit of the week after.   Which is a very WOW feeling.    I will then have a great deal of difficulty doing much about it - since no one will read it and so on, so I will just have to send it out to a few agents, explaining that it is a first draft and see who bites.  Or should I put it away and leave it for 3 months like they tell you to do? It would be better to get feedback sooner rather than later.    The beginning of the book i.e the first 10 pages needs a lot more attention - start with action...

I also know that sending a first draft to agents is risky and arrogant... what will happen if they all say NO again?  This is assuming that the US agent doesn't take me on.  

GATD Week - ? 7 ? 8

I dunno, I must have been at it longer than that.  Anyway, I am now onto the 5th section of the novel - entitled Redemption.... which is where things begin to come right (I think) but not before there has been a bit of jeopardy for some of the characters.  I've got about 40,000 words under the belt, and this week have managed about 6,000 - which is great, considering.  In the last two days it's really been flowing - those great days when you just sit down and write and when you read it back it seems absolutely fine.   It is so much more agreeable than having to struggle with one sentence after another.  Sadly, a lot of this book has been written by the one sentence at a time method - hard work.  I guess that an enforced break from the novel has meant I've been rehearsing these scenes to some extent - but even so, a lot of the ideas have been completely new - I had no idea that the father of Shayla's baby was a married, middle aged Greek Cypriot bar owner.  When this happens I become a little scared, and worry that somewhere in Margate there is such a man, also called Nikkos, and that he will sue me when the book is published.  Let's hope not.

I will do a couple of hours tomorrow - and then start prepping for Saturday night's festivities.

The Agent Update
There is no news on the agent front  Tara tells me this is a good sign.  She is tweeting about doing a duathlon.  She does not tweet very much - I feel that's a good thing.  Possibly a very good thing!  It means she is spending more time with her clients (and prospective clients)..  So I wait in hope.

GATD update

I am still slogging on - agent or no agent, I will need more product in due course.... funny to think that this is a project I hadn't even considered in January.  The whole thing is about 1/3 through at 33,000 words - and stlll going - today was less of a struggle, I force myself to write - and then I do.  Good ideas come along and more or less fit with the outline I've done.  I'm not sticking to it religiously - for example I've changed my mind about how to deal with the supervised child contact a couple of times - it's not that important.

I feel quite happy about it, but I yearn for more time to do it. The next week or so is going to be frantic.   Never mind - I had given myself a purely arbitary deadline... I hope to finish it before we go away in August. A lot of things are likely to happen before that though - which will be time-consuming.

I wanted to find a Darren like picture and put it here - but the only Darrens I could find were either ludicrously good looking, incredibly geeky or rather middle-aged - the nearest I could find was a bit of low-life who is temperamentally closer to Steve probably - because he's a murderer... but I'm putting him here anyway.

He's dark and skinny and a bit rough looking - he would probably look better in other circumstances - he has the essential elements of Darren, but he does look rather mean, and my Darren doesn't and isn't.