One Hundred Thousand Words
A milestone has been reached in this blog series. After publishing I always cut and paste a copy of my latest post into a word document as another backup. That word document containing all the posts from Inside the Fiction Factory to date, now amounts to a little over a hundred thousand words. That’s almost thirty thousand more than my novel The Kill Chain. Same for the sequel The Kill Ward which is being published next year. It just goes to show that writing a little every week or every other week soon mounts up.
I’m quite proud of this. Looking back it’s all positive, with no negative or whinging comments about stuff and I’m glad of that. It means when I dip back into it at any random point, it’s upbeat, provides some interesting facts, and hopefully gives some useful pointers and ideas for places to visit. I have written about writing at times, but I prefer to keep that to a minimum. I like to have a balance between what is happening fiction wise and Scottish history along with any other random things that come to mind. There is always something to write about and for the next one hundred thousand words I will try and feature more of my book and music collection as that is another passion of mine.
This blog is more or less written in what I describe as real time. I’m usually a couple of weeks behind with posts from the actual content or subject matter itself. Sometimes I can manage to write about something within a couple of days of it happening. It’s more or less in order, though I am having to jump back a couple of months regarding the trip down the Rhine. Sometimes within a post I will refer to something that occurred a long time ago. I haven’t jumped back and written specifically about places I’ve visited previously. This is partly due to time constraints and because I am trying to stay up to date with what is happening right now. It can be tricky finding time to blog. Looking back I see I never got around to writing about the Danube, during 2023. For whatever reason it didn’t happen. There are also other places and events that didn’t make it in. There are castles I’ve visited that remain undocumented, paintings I’ve seen that I’ve not a made a note of.
These posts are written quickly, of the top of my head. Editing and revising is almost non-existent. I do occasionally sneak back in and correct the odd word or phrase if it has become glaringly obvious to me. Otherwise, these blog posts are left as they came out on the first time of writing. I will make a correction when checking something I wrote earlier, usually if I’m revisiting a place or event I have previously documented and need to confirm some detail or other.
Why do I do it? Initially, it was for myself. It’s a good exercise, and a welcome break from the concentrated effort that novel writing takes. I’m aware there are in excess of five hundred and thirty subscribers so I’m grateful others have taken the time to signup and I am conscious of writing for them too. So, it’s developed into a means for me to write without any pressure or indeed little thought, while being aware others may read and hopefully find something of interest within these posts.
A huge thank you to anyone who has ever taken a moment to read. I appreciate in an age where the short video reel is the dominant form, blogging may appear old-fashioned. However, it suits me and I’m looking forward to continuing and writing the next one hundred thousand words.
The Fiction Factory 