Colin Harvey – author

After the excitement of November in the shape of Bristolcon, the BSFA interview and several days worth of filming, it’s been a pleasure to do only a minimal amount of work today, and instead concentrate on chilling.

Walked Alice round the community forest, and then did my daily allocation of Ultramassive. Mark came over for lunch, since when we’ve had a fest of armchair sport. Later on, I have Pratchett’s I Shall Wear Midnight as my evening reading.

Back to the grind at Uni tomorrow, but it’s been good to rest up and re-charge.

 Routine is the enemy of the writer. When we go into work on the same route every day, or when we have the same meals day in day out, or watch the same television programmes day after day, we dull our minds with repetition.

So coming back from London and the previous night’s meeting yesterday morning, I was able to see the commuters with an outsider’s eyes, scurrying from home to work, the school-kids getting on with their uniforms cocooned in leather jackets. And the vertiginous stairs, the claustrophobia of the crowds of people shuffling along.

What struck me about the eateries at Paddington Station was how similar they all were, if one changed the individual food elements from pancakes to coffee and pastries to Full English: Lines of people queuing to buy, before sitting awkwardly, sharing their space with strangers who intersect their lives for no more than the few minutes necessary to gulp the purchases down.

And so onto the train, carrying me back to routine, but also to familiar surroundings and family and friends. Because while routine is the enemy of the writer, so is constant upheaval. The trick, as is so often the case, is too strike a balance between the two.

This will be the first time that I’ve written a cross-blog post that covers all three –my general blog (this one), my specifically SF blog, and the Film-making blog- but since the exercise that it relates to covers all my activities as a writer, and a creative writing student, it’s particularly appropriate.

I’ve often quoted the hours that I work in broad approximations, but starting on the 1st of November, I started to keep detailed records covering writing (for publication), blogging, reading and ‘other,’ (ie everything that doesn’t fit in those boxes) and of course, my four uni subjects. I’ve been as honest as I can be, since it’s really for my own records.

I’ll post up the results at the end of the month when I’ve correlated them all, but the interim results at the mid-month mark are surprising…perhaps even shocking.

Well, here we are; Sunday night is already falling on the first night of winter time, and I’m just about done.

Four reviews, five guest blogs and a post of my own on Suite101, culminating in a review of the third anniversary Black Static, which is maybe the best issue I’ve read yet.  The lowest I gave any story was one of the three Highly Recommendeds, an Outstanding, and a Year’s Best contender.

Plus a horror film blog over at Film Making Mumblings.

That’s about three hours work this afternoon. More on that later…

Tomorrow I’m going to start posting extracts from Dark Spires, if I get time, I’ll do two a day — if not, I’ll do one. So expect actual blogs to be thin on the ground for another week, at least until after Bristolcon. But next week is not only post-con, but it’s Reading Week as well, which gives me about fiften to seventeen hours extra to…well, read.

Have fun this Hallowe’en night….mwahahaha…

Another day of reading and writing and blogging ; I finished Iain Banks’ excrable A Song of Stone and wondered why I’d bothered with it; then turned my attention to the contents of Black Static, which was much more enjoyable.

On the writing front once I’d finished revising Ultramassive, I turned my attention to Suite101 where I have a procession of guests traipsing through the visitor’s lounge to celebrate Halloween weekend, while I’ve posted the daily update over at Film Making Mumblings. 

I have a horrible feeling that the blog yesterday may have been an academic own goal. It seems that if we use something that’s been published and then use it in an assignment, we’re guilty of self-plagiarism. (Wtf?) So my thoughts on writing to brief are out, or I have to re-work them substantially.

Hmm, interesting…

I don’t often post a blog this late in the day, but it’s been an unusual day; almost perfect weather from a working point of view. Sunshine this morning for us to walk Alice around the fields, when we got home it rained for most of the day.  While Kate has lurked in the kitchen making soup and Apple Almond Cake I’ve spent the day on the usual revision.

But unlike most of the week, once the revision is done I’ve left uni work to one side to concentrate on reviews. And then, having written a couple of thousand words, the sun came out again for us to walk Alice through the park. She repaid us by bringing a stick fully fifty per cent longer than she is. As the girl used to say on the Clio ad, “size matters.” It certainly does to a dog.

Blog posts next week are going to be limited. With Damage Time out in the US on Tuesday, I’ll be posting extracts from the novel. And I’ve four reviews to go up on Suite101, all horror, which I’ll be linking to on the day they’re posted;

Stephen King      — Carrie

Joe Hill                 — 20th Century Ghosts

Gary McMahon — The Harm

and

Black Static 19

Right, that’s it for now. Off to eat some pizza.

Have fun!

 As part of my Making A Film elective requirements, I’ve started a new blog which –like all the others in my class– needs to be on Blogger.com (I guess if my lecturer needs to read thirty blogs at a time, it helps if they’re all in one place!). Probably my second biggest time-sink over the next thirty days is going to be the Film Group.

As part of my course, a team of six of us have to shoot an eight to ten minute film the weekend of the 20th and 21st. The preparation for that is going to be huge — and none of us have any idea how long it will take. Part of that preparation is to blog about it, and if you’re interested, the link is here. Feedback is welcome — oh, and there’ll be lots of links to short films which are far superior to mine.   

You’ll notice that I said ‘second biggest time sink.’ The biggest? Well, that comes with good and bad news, from my pov.

First the good news: I have to work at the Eye Hospital for two days next week, two days the week after, with an option of a further two weeks work on the same basis. That brings in some critical cash to ease the shortfall of about a grand’s worth of income that fell through over the summer.

Now the bad news: I have to work at the Eye Hospital for two days next week, two days the week after, with an option of a further two weeks work on the same basis. I’m already fighting to juggle priorities, and I’ve just lost 14 to 16 hours a week.

But on the whole, it’s more good news than bad. I just need to raise my game still another notch.

Back to the new blog…

When I signed on, I suddenly realized that I already had a blog there,  my first attempt at a bespoke blog, about three years ago.

And boy does it show.

But one interesting post, which was supposed to be the first of a series, is some of the outlining process involved in Winter  Song, which is here. I haven’t sat down and analyzed how far away (or how close) this version is to the final one — it might be an interesting exercise — if I had the time. 

Meanwhile, I have a short non-fiction piece to write for my Feature Journalism elective, a horror story to write for Halloween (and my Genre Fiction elective) and a couple of pages for Black Death, which is my Creative Workshop piece this year. But at least today’s bit of Ultramassive is revised.

Onward!

And only after I’d posted this, and the links went Facebook, Twitter, etc, did I realize that it’s actually 5 days to release. The UK releases on Thursdays -it went out on the 7th– while the US unleashes books into the trade on the last Tuesday of the month. Doh!

But back to the original post…

I was up before dawn this morning and nearly lost my fingers twittering in the dark (I had to alternate removing my glove to press the keys and put it back on when my fingers went numb) which meant that one tweet took twenty minutes, so Alice and I scuttled back into the warmth in record time.

This morning I’ve subbed a couple of poems to a magazine; I’ll be amazed if they take them, since the whole process was a little tongue in cheek, but I’ve long given up trying to second guess who will buy what, and who will reject it.

And I’ve tidied up the order of the Damage Time extracts, so hopefully new -and returning- readers will be able to run through them a little more smoothly, and added Chapter 7. I’ll add two more sidebar chapters next week in the run up to the US release (which is a whole 7 days away! eek!) and on the big day will post one last extract, which is a main narrative chapter linking into the two sidebars.

Right, onto revisions and uni homework. Abyssinia!

Monday evening at the beginning of week 3; I’ve just about caught up after the landslide at the start of term. Home at 7.10 pm — after an 11-hour day, I really needed Worst Bus to fail to turn up like I need a chocolate fireguard.

I guess that if I can keep that going, it’ll be the pattern — swamped by the end of the first Monday, holding on the Tuesday, and then gradually catching up over the next twelve days, with a second mini-deluge.  With a reading week to come in November, that may give me a bit of a breather.

I’m going to need it, I suspect. I’ve found the last two weeks really stretching;  in the last two weeks –on top of working on Ultramassive– I’ve had to read Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts which must count as one of the best collections of recent years, Stephen King’s Carrie and On Writing, and Greg Egan’s Zendegi, and  I’ve had to review and/or critique every one of them.

Today’s highlight was watching Brendan Donagh’s short film Six Shooter, which had me holding my sides at times. I couldn’t add it to my Film Making blog, since there’s no available footage, but if you get a chance to watch the exploding cow, I urge you to take the opportunity.

I must be the only man I know who puts on weight when his wife stops exercising.

While I love food – and I do love food, it’s my achilles heel– I love writing more; if I’m working, I can forget to cook dinner and substitute grazing, or even not eating.

But Kate likes to cook, and in the six months after we married, I put on three stone (I did only weigh eight stone at the time, so my Body Mass Index was somewhere in the region of 18%).

But she now goes to exercise classes four nights a week, and one unexpected result — as we realized yesterday– is that time spent down the gym is less time in the kitchen.

We learned this because when she didn’t go yesterday, she took up residence in front of the cooker and made Lemon Lamb Casserole. And a chocolate cake. And ginger and choc chip cookies. Which of course I just had to try. I wasn’t sure about it, so I had another one. And another….(they’re very more-ish)

I’m dispatching her back to class tonight before my jeans explode, and I’ll do the damned cooking from now on.