Self Imposed Deadlines

I was withering on a while ago, either here in Curves or in Book Stuff, about knuckling down to it and beginning to write my second book – I’ve got loads of notes and ideas and scraps and bits of dialogue and that sort of thing – the day after my first book, Raiding Cúailnge, makes its appearance on an unsuspecting reading public on 20 April.

Days away from that now and I am getting cold feet.  After all, the first book took me twelve years plus to write and now I seem to have given myself a rod to beat my own back with by announcing to the world that I am going to start work on “Three Spears” on 21 April 2016.  (By the way, Three Spears is a title that popped into my mind about a year or two ago when I first contemplated the – at the time – absurd notion that I would ever write another book again in my lifetime.  Anyway, that was all very well when I considered just tinkering with a novella of about 60 or 70 thousand words but now the concept of a full length novel  of about 110,000 words has wormed its way into buy head and I lie awake at night, feverishly wracking the brains to find a way to connect all my scattered notes and form them into some type of cohesive and coherent whole.

So, a cautionary word – do not impose deadlines on yourself unless you are a) capable of delivering the goods and b) do not, especially vaunt to the (cyber) world what your plans are.  Not, that is, if you want to leave a loophole so that you can escape from the awful responsibility you have dumped upon your own slender and sloping shoulders!

Author: serkeen

I am Irish, currently living in West Australia. I have a degree in Old & Middle English, Lang & Lit and, despite having worked in Kuwait, Italy, Malaysia, USA, Brunei, Australia and Hong Kong over the last 40 years, I have a strong interest in Ireland’s ancient pre-history and the heroes of its Celtic past as recorded in the 12th and late 14th century collection of manuscripts, collectively known as The Ulster Cycle. I enjoy writing historical novels, firmly grounded in a well-researched background, providing a fresh and exciting look into times long gone. I have an empathy with the historical period and I draw upon my experiences of that area and the original documents. I hope, by providing enough historical “realia” to hook you into a hitherto unknown – or barely glimpsed - historical period. View all posts by serkeen