Yes, insane as it may appear, your humble scribe churns out the first draft … in long hand! And yes, the typing is a killer.
Okay, there is actually a reason for this. Back, waaay back in about 1998 I had, after many years of handtooled manuscripting, made the crossing to using the keyboard for my initial drafts. Unfortunately, I then got a job in a call centre, full time too, which meant that when I got home the last thing I wanted to do was use a keyboard after battering away at one for the entire day at work. Thus I reverted to the inscribing of ye scrolls by kandlelyte.
But, like Gordon Brown’s government and Big Brother, this just can’t go on. So for book 3 I shall strive to make that leap again and, who knows, it might increase the old production rate. Get back to you on that one.
Filed under: on writing | Tagged: another tree bites the dust, joys of lined paper, tippex cloggings I have known
Wow – that’s a manuscript! Hey, if you need a hand typing it up….
Very generous offer, but there are certain burdens which only the perpetrator must endure!
Ahh well – I guess I’ll just have to wait before I can get a peak at it. Any news on a release date at all Mike?
Not entirely sure. I know that due to my inability to hit a fudging deadline, there has been a leetle slippage, shall we say, in pub schedules. Hopefully in the spring, but once I finally submit the ackshul full MS document my editor might be able to gimme an idea. But as I’ve said, I will be posting a few sections in advance, right here!
[...] Cobley has finished the first draft of The Orphaned Worlds, the sequel to the hugely enjoyable Seeds of Earth, and he’s done the entire thing in long [...]
Yeah – pub schedules caused many a slippage for me too.
Wow…unfortunately depressing. I have just finished the first book and it looks like a very long wait till the second is in print! Please tell me I am wrong.
Well, hopefully not. I just received today the cover rough for the massmarket paperback of Seeds of Earth, and it looks rather neat. That edition of bk1 is scheduled for a January publication, so I hope that publication of bk2 will be shortly thereafter. That’s just the facts of publishing, well, of writing too!