October | 2011 | Peter Jones, Author

This blog, in your email! (What’s a blog?)

October 21, 2011 by Peter | 0 comments

Being an observant lot it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that over there on the right hand side is a mysterious box with a button next to it that says SUBSCRIBE.

See it?

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve been wondering what that means, right? What would you be subscribing to? How much would it cost? What on earth is a post? Or a blog come to that?

Ok, ok – settle down.

This right here – what you’re reading right now – is a ‘post’; an entry into a kind of online journal which for reasons that I can’t be bothered to look up is called a ‘blog’. I know. Computer people are weird. But we’re relatively harmless. If you click the blog link right at the top of the page you can see all the posts in (reverse) chronological order.

New posts are added as and when, and each one usually invites comments (at the bottom). Feel free to have your say, I read every comment that’s posted – but if you’d like new posts delivered to you via email (thus saving you the trouble to pop back), you can sign up for that via a free service (from google) called feedburner! Simply give feedburner your email address (completing the “are you a human” test), and when the confirmation email arrives, click the link. And you’re done. New ‘posts’ will come to you via email. (If you don’t get a confirmation email, check any spam filters you may have).

It’s all entirely automated. I don’t even get told who’s subscribed or when. And although I can find that information out, I absolutely promise that I’ll never ever pass your email address onto anyone else – the only thing I’ll use your email address for are blog updates.

And if you ever want to unsubscribe, either drop me a line via the contact page, or click the link at the bottom of any of the emails from me.

Everybody happy?

PS. You might also like to subscribe over at my other blog – How To Do Everything and Be Happy .com

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Poem for you (whilst I test something technical)

October 20, 2011 by Peter | 0 comments

Right then, the beady eyed amongst you will have noticed that there, over on the right, I’ve introduced a SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG widget. Does it work? I have absolutely no idea! So I’m going to test it, and unfortunately there’s no way of doing this without actually writing a blog post. So here’s a little ditty I wrote back in 2009.

Poem for you

why do you put up with me?

When I cough
and I sneeze
and I yawn
and I wheeze
and I offer you tea
when you’ve already
had three?

Is it because

we touch,
and we kiss,
and each other,
we miss,
when we are apart.
Have I captured
your heart?

5,497

October 4, 2011 by Peter | 4 Comments

Back in July you may remember that I told you how, after six years, my novel is almost finished.

Oh my god how wrong you can be.

Let me bring you up to speed on a few things: At the time of writing I had an agent, who, having read the first three chapters, liked the book and wanted to see the rest. Which would have been fine if the rest was just sitting around ready to be sent – but, it wasn’t. Hence the flurry of activity to finish it, and the aforementioned blog post.

A few weeks after typing the words THE END, the agent got back to me and invited me to ‘pop into her offices’ for a chat. There I sat, surrounded by books written by her other clients, whilst she told me that she really liked my manuscript – but she’d like it a whole lot more if I made some changes – namely;

lose a character,
add two more chapters,
bring the word count down to 90,000 words.

The first two items were achieved within a few days, but the third… well I’ve been struggling. As my novel weighed in at 115,000 words I was faced with having to cut 25,000.

This is what I tried first

made a list of every scene in the book (actually I had this already – a great tip that I picked up many years ago)
identify any scene that didn’t move the plot on – cut it
identify any scene in my heart of hearts I didn’t actually like – try and cut it
identify the wordier scenes – trim them agressively.

Two weeks ago I was down to 103,000 words. Still 13,000 left to cut.

Out of desperation I printed off the entire manuscript (something that my friend Wendy told me to do from the off), sat down with a red pen, and read the whole thing looking for anything that could go by the wayside, and a weeks later I was down to 97,000 words.

I’d be depressed if it wasn’t for the following
- I have an inch thick pile of pages covered in red pen that I’m working through (probably another 1000 words in there)
- I have a list of seven scenes that I could cut (though god help me I really don’t want to)
- the book is actually better.

And that’s the bit that’s really taken me by surprise.

Weeks ago my friend Della Galton told me my book would be better for the level of cutting I was embarking upon – and by golly she was right. Somehow, the very act of taking out the weaker words, scenes, and in a couple of cases whole chapters, has distilled what was left, and made for a much stronger story.

But please God I hope my agent doesn’t want me to lose any more. As of this morning I’ve still got 5,497 words to find.