Dubious dads & well-cooked concerns

Note: This is a re-run of one of the membership-exclusive, weekly blogs from over in The Familiar Society on Circle. Head over there if you'd like to discover more!

Lovely people, before we dive into this week’s missive about writing mishaps, I need to let you know that we officially have our titles for the next two books! Thank you so much for all your suggestions and help, and for leaping in so quickly after my panicked request.

We now have:

Dales of the Unexpected for the next Adams book (thank you Jean-Pascal!)

Twist of Fête for the upcoming Beaufort (thank you Marcia!) 

The talented Monika has already created the new covers, so I can now stop panicking. We are all set for the next two books (for ebooks at least, and I am hopeful she will be able to do the print covers when we get to that, now that the main design is done), and I appreciate your help so much. You’re all wonderful. <3

It is entirely possible that the main thing I like about dictating is the bloopers.

Seriously, they’re fabulous. I know my accent confuses a lot of dictation software (and, to be fair, my tendency to mumble means it has its work cut out of it anyway), so some errors are inevitable, but the utter earnestness with which it serves up such things as ‘Get yourselves dried up so you don’t dive to the pipe of Serbia’ and ‘We’re at the wish-a-hand of dear of the sneezes’ (what?) is honestly quite endearing. I think I enjoy that as much as the speed of a rapid first draft.

However, as had been mentioned before (not here, and I’m afraid the previous dictation blooper posts have yet to make their way across to here from their old home on Ko-fi, but they will, I promise!), I can never stick to one writing method.

I mean, I stick to not doing one method, which is to say I still never plan anything, because that’s a sure-fire way (for me) to procrastinate for a good couple of weeks, give up halfway through, decide it’s good enough to start with, then abandon the whole thing two chapters in. So I do have some consistency there.

But as for the actual method of getting the first draft on paper (or computer), well. That varies from book to book, and often within the book as well. 

Sometimes I like dictation, because it’s fast when the ideas are a jumble in my head and I just need to get something down to get them moving, like pulling the stopper out of the bottom of a barrel to let the flood start.

Sometimes I prefer the Remarkable, because I can curl up in a corner and scratch away to my heart’s content, the tactile feel of the stylus on the screen close enough to pen and paper that there’s a comfort to it, a familiarity that reminds me this is how I’ve been writing since I was a wee small thing, scribbling ghost stories in notebooks and building scraps of worlds that I couldn’t quite explain, dreaming that I’d be a proper writer one day. (Little did small Kim know she’d still be thinking roughly the same thing in 40-odd years …)

I do kind of love the idea of boiling one’s concerns. Really get rid of those things. Don’t just disregard them, boil them!

And sometimes I just like to settle into the sofa, persuade the cat my lap is for the laptop (with varying degrees of success), and pour the story straight into the Scrivener file, like a Proper Writer (TM). Well, except for the choice of writing place, probably. But I basically only write stories at the desk if the laptop battery’s dead. Desks (or table in my case, my place is small so all things are multi-purpose) are for editing and accounts and social media and non-story writing. Sofa, comfy chairs, and floors are for stories. 

No, I don’t know why. That’s just a law of the universe. My universe, anyway. 

Anyhow. The latest DI Adams has mostly been a laptop story. And the downside of laptop writing is that there are far fewer fun bloopers to share, particularly as the squiggly red you spelled this wrong! lines really annoy me, so I tend to correct them as I go (yes, I know I can switch it off, but I don’t. For reasons of some sort, although I can’t quite think of any right now …)

But I do still have a few to share, because sometimes the squiggly red lines don’t save you …

Heh. Got to be careful if you’re sneaking around the woods trying to be covert. All those mimosas and smoked salmon toasts scattered underfoot get noisy …

And, of course, I did start Adams with the Remarkable. This is often my favourite way to start a new book, and almost always how I write my short stories. The actual act of handwriting sinks me into the tale, and while the poor Remarkable does its valiant best to translate my scribble, I basically write in code, and often have to go back to the handwritten version to see if I can figure out what I meant, with variable results. So it can be forgiven for deciding Dandy was Dad (it also decided Rory was Rong, which entertained me far too much).

But the whole Dandy/Dad thing gave such gems as:

She let Dad take the chew toy and hurried off … (Still possible. Maybe he was holding it for her.)

She'd just brewed herself a coffee on Rong’s machine, topping off her mug and glaring at Dad when he stuck his nose a little too close ... (He might like coffee just as much as her.)

And my favourite:

To be fair, we all know Adams’ dad by now. This is unlikely, but you know he’d just sort of muddle along if it happened, and probably have a couple of bad physics jokes to share (or maybe a T-shirt …)

Now over to you, lovely people. Any peculiar problems with physics to recount recently? Share away in the comments!

Mine’s regarding time, and I’m not sure if it’s a complaint or simply an observation, but I would like to know how I can sit down to do a chapter at 4 p.m.., and suddenly it’s 1 a.m.? How does that work? I should like to know. (As would my sleeping patterns …)

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