Update on the World of Karl...

OK, so once again I've left it a while to update this blog of mine. Sorry about that, but I did have a good reason. My father had been suffering from lung cancer and sadly, on 10th May, he passed away. We had the funeral very quickly, and I read out a poem that I had written a few months earlier about my realtionship with my Dad. He got to read it before he died, and he liked it.

And so it's been a difficult time for me and my family, but things have slowly got back to some sort of normality.

Obviously I've had more important things than my writing to worry about over the past few months, but I have still been doing some. I was able to get the last three of my Open University course assignments completed and submitted on time. I got good marks for the first two of these, including a really high one for the second one (which was written hurridly as it was due in within a week of my father passing away - although at the time it was good to have something else to focus on). The third one was the End of Course Assessment (ECA) which carries a significant amount of marks for the course as a whole - my excellect marks for the previous two assignments means that as long as I get at least 70% for my ECA, I'll get a "Good Pass" for the course overall, which is the second highest grade, and the highest grade that I can now achieve. I'll be getting my mark for the ECA back sometime in early August...

In April I took part in Script Frenzy, and, unlike last year, this year I was able to win it. I did just one radio script, which at some point I intend to do some more work on and submit to BBC Radio Four...

And talking of submissions, one of the assignments for my Open University course was to write a story aimed at a specific magazine. I wrote one aimed at The People's Friend and, as I got such a good mark for it, when I've got a moment I'm going to do a quick rewrite of it, and then submit it to them...

And finally, as mentioned in my last post, I've started a new novel writing inititive via Facebook. The aim is to write just 250 words each day, every day, for up to a year in order to get the first draft of a novel written. It's been running for just over two weeks, and so far it's been going pretty well - I have a rough idea of how the plot is going to go in my novel. I've also got several friends on Facebook giving it a go as well. We've recently had a vote on what to name the group, and the winner was "TorNoYe" which is short for "Tortoise Novelling Year" - the idea being that if NaNoWriMo is the hare, than this is the tortoise, and we all know how that story ended...

Anyway, if you want to check us out on Facebook the direct link is:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=93069867815&ref=mf

And so that's everything writing wise that I've been up to recently. With everything that's been going on in my life over the past few months some of the deadlines mentioned in my previous post have had to be dropped, and I also have a new one to add to them. And so here's a rundown on all of my deadlines:

I was planning to write a novel by writing and publishing on the web one chapter per week, with the novel's title being "Recall". Originally that was due to start yesterday, but will now be postponed (again) until later in the year. This is partly due to the fact that something new has come along (more on that shortly) and partly due to the fact that Geocities, where my site has been hosted for over ten years, is going to be axed later this year by Yahoo. And so I'm going to have to find a new home on the web. I think I know where I'm going to go, and once I've decided on that and done the migration "Recall" should be good to go.

My "novellette" idea, where I would write and self-publish a 20,000 word story, is also on hiatus at the moment. The original deadline for this was 31st May, but this would have clearly been impossible for me to meet given what else was happening in May this year. I still intend to do it, but it probably won't be until autumn. I'm going to aim to get it done in time for Christmas...

I was planning to finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel in July, but this will now need to be moved until September. However, I still intend to do the rewrites in October, before doing the next NaNoWriMo in November.

As for the final two things mentioned in my previous post, the unnamed complicated idea that I was planning to start work on in September is going to have to be postponed until 2010, but my plans to take part in the Writers' Forum competitions haven't changed.

And so I believe that covers everything that I mentioned in my previous post. But I now have one more thing to add to the list. Last week I read about this competition:

http://www.scifinow.co.uk/tag/war-of-the-words/

The aim is to write a sci-fi or fantasy novel that is at least 80,000 words long, with publication being the prize. The deadline for this is 20th August. And I've decided to go for it! My ECA consisted of the first 2,500 words of a fantasy novel, and so I'm going to use this a starting point. From tomorrow I'm going to aim to write at least 2,000 words per day, which means that by the end of July I should have a first draft of just over 80,000 words written. I'll then spend a couple of weeks frantically rewriting it, and writing a sypnosis, ready for it to be submitted. As I'm having to write it very quickly I know that I probably won't win, but that deadline will spur me on, and, as long as I meet it, I'll still have a novel that I can continue to improve on and then send out to agents and publishers. (Although, if I were to win...)

And so that's all of the news from the world of Karl. As you can see, over the next few months Karl is going to be a very busy Karl...