Well, I’ve managed to break just about every writing and sketching resolution made at the beginning of the year, and it’s only March. One thousand words written every day has fallen by the wayside, as has a new blog post every month and, most shamefully of all, one new significant piece of writing published every month has conspicuously soooo not happened.
There are mitigating factors, not least among them a serious health scare for my youngest, but things are looking up and I’ve been able to turn my attention back to writing. In early February I received very useful feedback from a dozen beta readers on my second Hana Walker mystery. It’s taken a month to go through all their suggestions, but as a result, I’ve added two new chapters to the novel, unraveled a couple of confusing plot threads, killed off one character, eliminated a bizarre plot twist, cut five scenes that confused or didn’t belong, and rewritten the ending. Give me a week to read through the results and tidy up some dialogue and I’ll hand the manuscript over to my editor and then I should be able to set a date to publish on Amazon.
And in the meantime, I have written the first draft of an English as a foreign language textbook for Japanese sixth-graders. So, I haven’t been slacking, it’s just frustrating that I have nothing to show for all my efforts yet.
But I did do one sketch this last month (see above), picturing Hana Walker, which I’m quite happy with. That reminds me, gotta figure out what to do for a cover and title for Hana Walker II…
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Patrick Sherriff 