With having had some days off due to a house move that couldn’t happen, this is all starting to feel like the summer holidays in which I used to get a SHITLOAD of my earliest writing done. 

I’ve never had or really wanted much of a social life and spent all my summer holidays from 1997-2005 writing as much as I could (even jotting notes on the back of cinema flyers – re: the college and university years). It feels good to get that mojo back; first starting out, creating my own worlds and it feeling amazing and a tiny bit (read: massively) badass.  

In a rather pessimistic run of apocalyptic movies, E4 have even run Independence Day this week! I was obsessed with that film the first summer I started scribbling furiously on a notepad whilst sat on my bed, a tiny portable TV linked to my VHS player talking mostly to itself across the room. 

The sun shining outside, music in my ears or easy-viewing (Disney, 90s movies, Red Dwarf) on in the background and literally NOTHING else to do – aside from the day-job – means all the nostalgia feels which are stirring up some crazy creative vibes. 

With the realisation that such an opportunity may never present itself again (thankfully and hopefully), I want to make the most of this time. Because time is all most of us have right now and that is more precious than we ever fully appreciate, and I feel I do a marvellous job of wasting it already. 

Now, not going to lie, I had to google this next part before I did it but... I’ve outlined two new novels! Alright so I’d already started one of them, but it lost direction around 17,000 words. Ordinarily, I’m what they call a ‘Pantser’, I’ve never used many writing aids and once I start writing I kinda just roll with it until all the scenes I’d like to write have slotted together and there’s a rough beginning, middle and end. 

I’m pleased to report that it seems I’d followed the guidelines accidentally with my first (18-year-old) novel – even if the writing is terrible. I’ve been re-reading that too and I’m beginning to lose hope that I can ever save it. 

Being a Learning Designer of six years in real life, it dawned on me how a set outline/scope/list of topics is the must-have tool for writing a course I have little to no prior knowledge of and that as a result I might work better from a detailed brief these days. So, I did a little refresher on plot, checked out some example outlines and have drawn up a template of my own and populated it twice.  

Now I’m armed with easy-to-follow guidelines for both novels and short stories with two novels ready for take-off – hell, one is even halfway down the runway and gaining speed already. I read a fantastic quote recently on the Middle Finger Project blog and feel it is an appropriate aviation-relevant battle-cry here: “Wheels up motherf*cker!”  

Let’s get this baby off the ground. 

As per my first blog post, I’m not going to promise to have anything ready for you to read by the time life is allowed to enter into whatever the new normal is going to look like, but for once I feel like less of a fraud whilst using my evenings to string words together rather than just cups of tea and/or biscuits. 

(IF a short story pops out of all this, I MIGHT just pop it on the website – but no promises, I suck at those too!)