No one can linger in the land of Egypt … The time of deeds on earth is only the occurrence of a dream.
(Egyptian Harpist’s Song, XVIII Dynasty)
Category Archives: Writing
Three ideas adding up
The idea of writing shorter fiction is not a bad one – there is a market out there that pays good money for stories under 2500 words. As I mentioned a few days back, I am a long-winded sort of writer, but I am working at my shorter fiction.
And then there is AMARNA, and the idea I posted a while back, about doing something with Fantomah, the Daughter of the Pharaohs.
And so I thought… Continue reading
Storium and the Writing Game
I mentioned Storium in my previous post.
I found out about Storium when I got hooked up into it as a result of my taking part in the 7th Sea Second Edition Kickstarter.
I took a tour, and was positively impressed.
Basically, Storium is a cross between a storytelling game, an old choose-your-own-adventure game book and a collective writing experiment. Continue reading
597 words
And what the heck, I did it.
597 words of science fiction story, and quite good it is – if I do say so myself – and with almost one hour before the deadline I set myself.
Now all I have to wait is for the publisher’s approval.
But it was a fun experience – all it took was a long walk in the cold of the night, to get my ideas finally come together.
So much I liked the experience, that I am really looking forward at writing more of this short-short fiction.
And if in the end I’ll publish it, even better.
Flash fiction
There’s something I really find hard to write, and that’s flash fiction.
Flash Fiction is usually described as fiction within the 1000-words length.
A “proper” flash fictionshould have a beginning, a middle and an end, just like a short story or a novel. Only, everything should be fitted in less than 1000 words.
Right now I’m trying to do a 600-words piece that will go into a game book.
I have the characters, the story, the dialogue. The plot works. The hooks are all in the right places. Only, I am helplessly long-winded.
But I’ll do it – because I have set tonight’s at 10 PM as my deadline.
And yet, the problem remains. Continue reading
Introducing Tenn Ford
The joys of planning a serial: you can just chance upon a bit of fluff that suddenly turns your story around.
The sort of serendipity my friend Claire loves so much.
It went like this: I was laughing with my friend Lucy a while back and this quote from Sir Alec Guinness came up:
Can’t say I’m enjoying the film. … new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper—and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April even if Yahoo collapses in a week. … I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet—and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can’t be right) Ford. Ellison (?—No!)—well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety—and treat me as if I was 106.—Oh, Harrison Ford—ever heard of him?
And I said, damn, I need to have a character called Tennyson Ford!
Continue reading
650.000 so far
About half an hour ago a friend asked me how many words I have written so far from the beginning of this year.
I did some math – it was a lot easier than I thought because I keep track of my projects wordcount: blog posts, work on my stories, articles and reports, translations.
The total came up to roughly 650.000 words in 2017.
A little more than 2000 words per day, every day – roughly 270.000 words only in blog posts here on Karavansara and on my Italian blog.
Which is actually less than I hoped for – I was aiming at 1.000.000 words in 2017.
But well, I still have seven weeks before the end of the year.
Writing 3000 words per day every day until New Year’s Eve, I might be able to pack another 150.000 words into this year.
800.000 would not be a bad number.
And in 2018 I will do a day-by-day wordcount tally, using a spreadsheet.
To do statistics on it.
I like statistics.
Karavansara 