Further Progress on the #WIP

On By stuartakenIn Author, Book, Creative Writer, Fiction, opinion, Progress

Hard to believe, but I first posted about the new novel in progress on 11th March this year, when the word count for the actual book had reached 4443 words. By 17th March the count was 20,293 words at Chapter 8. And, on that date, I ‘promised’ to keep you informed of progress.

Those with acute eyesight will no doubt notice two documents on the screen pictured above. On the left is the top page of my research information, also used as a record of where I am in the book itself, which is the document on the right.

On 7th April, I managed to let you know I’d reached 62,531words. That month also saw me writing more in the series on Oddities, as well as some posts about our visit to Salisbury and the ancient monuments around Somerset.

By 29th April I’d managed to reach 77,854 words, and there had been further posts on the Oddities and the Salisbury trip.

On 14th May I’d reached 84,141 words and finished the first draft. As usual, after completing the initial creative stage of any book, I wanted to give the novel writing a little time to settle while I spent time on other projects. More posts in the ‘Oddities’ series followed, and I gave you a short story, along with more on the Salisbury visit.

June saw me present two more short stories, a book review, and more posts on Oddities. In July, I posted 4 more book reviews (I enjoy reading!), 3 more short stories, and more of the Oddities. August revealed 3 more short stories and more Oddities posts. So, I haven’t been too idle.

In fact, I’ve also been working on the first edit of that initial draft. I’m up to Chapter 12 now and the word count has reached 57341, at around halfway through the novel. That suggests the eventual book length will be in the range of 120,000 words, which is fairly average for my long fiction.

Unfortunately, at the end of May, for reasons still to be determined, I fell foul of some strange medical condition that remains a drain on my energy and upsets my balance, making me prone to stumbles. Slightly alarming of course, but not too surprising for a man of 76 who’s led a somewhat idiosyncratic life. I’m currently awaiting the results of a CT scan on my head (did they discover a brain in that bony box?), and I have a second GP appointment arranged for early October, such is the current state of delays in our once wonderfully efficient NHS.

Of course, the last Conservative Government, now ousted by an electorate that have had enough of incompetence, corruption, lies, and broken promises, ensured our NHS, once the most admired health service in the world, was reduced to a less than good level by deliberate lack of funding. The Tories, you see, are interested only in services that operate for profit. But enough of our political issues.

The upshot of this so far unidentified condition has been a reduction in my output. Frustrating, but not yet enough to stop the work entirely. There’ll be more short stories (these are tales that have been previously published or awarded recognition in various literary contests), and the Oddities will continue to flow.

So far, this month, I’ve managed another book review (I urge all of you to read this book essential to our future), and another in the Oddities series. I will try to keep you updated more regularly on the progress of the WIP, which still lives without a name on my system.

11 thoughts on “Further Progress on the #WIP”

    1. Thanks, Penny. Everything is taking me much longer to do at present. But my time is mostly my own, with occasional need to do the domestic stuff and to ferry Valerie to and from her Bowls matches, which she loves as a pastime.

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  2. Good luck with determining your health issue, Stuart. I had something similar happen recently, and it turned out that I needed an increase in my B-12 (I’ve had chronic pernicious anemia since I was in my early 30s). I hope yours is relatively simple, as well. Cheers.

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    1. Thanks, Lynette. I have Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, which is known to alter the body’s ability to process food for the best results, so I also take vit B12 supps. One of my writer friends here in the UK has the same condition and she has been diligent in her research, since most GPs have a limited knowledge of the condition. She advised me to try the vit B12 when she learned of my symptoms, as she had a similar experience. Apparently, it may take a few months for things to settle, though.
      My mother had pernicious anaemia, but she died in a car crash a couple of days after my 16th birthday, so she never saw the benefits of the recently applied injections of the vitamin, unfortunately.

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      1. I take the injections and they work incredibly well. If I go too long without B-12 the fatigue and brain fog are awful. I looked up your condition and wish you well with it. We are having difficulties with health care here, as well. There’s a shortage in all categories of medical professionals and accessing the care that we all pay for is becoming slower and slower. Ugh.
        Take good care of yourself, Stuart. Cheers.

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        1. Our once brilliant NHS, free at the point of use, has been left broken by years of Conservative Government underfunding coupled with corrupt schemes to buy PPE for Covid, which resulted in rubbish equipment being supplied by cronies and friends (mainly donors) of the Conservative Party. The ongoing investigation into that is taking years, but £billions was wasted.
          You take care, too, Lynette. Let’s hope both our countries manage to get things back on track, eh?

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          1. Ours is free also (it’s covered by our taxes) but Covid caused many early retirements of our very experienced nurses and doctors (and lots of other health professionals as well). It seems that those who could retire, did. This has left a huge hole with lots of fallout as you can imagine.

            I knew that your conservative government was bad, but I’m shocked to hear of this level of corruption. They were in government for more than a decade, right? Maybe term limits should be considered. We should do the same. We have a federal election in a year’s time and the conservatives with their Trump-lite leader are in the lead. Ugh! They’re already corrupt, in my opinion. Yes, good luck to us both!

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            1. Ours is also free, but they use some private medicine to cover areas where there is a shortfall of service. We also lost a lot of medical staff during the Covid crisis, some of them died as a result of poor personal protective equipment supplied by cronies of the Govt.
              The Tories have been in power for 14 years, but that includes a few elections and some changes of leaders (PMs) where the public where not consulted. Our Parliament can govern for up to 5 years before a General Election is called. Our problem here, is twofold. We have the First Past the Post system of voting, which means many votes are wasted. We also suffer from the same problems as the USA in that many of our people are ill-educated and essentially indoctrinated by the right-wing press that owns almost all our press outlets.
              We now have a Labour (Socialist) Government at last, but they are having to deal with huge debts left by the Conservatives, along with many other social issues like overcrowded prisons, understaffed public services across the board, and an unfair tax system that fails to tax those who have the most.
              Time will tell regarding improvements, but it’ll be a long hard road for the new government.

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              1. Died as a result of poor PPE from the government!! I am shocked. It’s hard to believe that you wound up with this gang of grifters “running” your government for so long! We also have a parliamentary democracy with King Charles III as head of state (or in our case a governor-general who represents him); our systems are very similar since we originally inherited it from you and are still a Commonwealth country. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I understand how your system works!

                We also have FPTP (as it’s referred to here). There have been repeated calls to replace it with more effective methods but once in, governments who run on changing it as part of their platform immediately drop it. It’s just too good a tool for manipulating elections. We have legislated election dates every four years; however, a change in party leadership – if that individual also becomes PM – immediately triggers a general election. I knew that you had various leadership changes while the Tories still held power, but I wondered why elections weren’t automatically held after a change in PM.

                We have that fringy, far right-wing gaggle of poorly educated (and usually attached to some fundamental religion or other), loony Tory supporters here as well (and a federal Tory leader who’s a chip off the old Trump) but at least there are fewer of them. We’re dealing with an angry backlash against the present Liberal government that the Tories are pouncing on, however, and that needs to be mitigated.

                There’s no way that your new government can deal immediately with 14 years of graft. That’s going to take time. Good luck with it, Stuart.

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                1. We’re clearly in similar situations, Lynette. I’d love to see proper PR instituted here, but even though the Labour Party voted for it in their last general meeting, their leader, our new Prime Minister, is against it, or at least only lukewarm. It raises a question in me: ‘Of what true value are political leaders?’ Maybe I’ll explore that further.

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