2015

Inventing an inventory

M. J. Magee - Thursday, the 31st of December, 2015

It’s Christmas and – as per the law – I have been overindulging in mince pies and underindulging in everything else.

The production of Cuthbert has slowed the past few weeks; my free time has been taken up visiting family and acting as a guinea pig for my five year old niece’s, erm, enthusiastic beautician work.…

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MVP: Myth, Very Poignant

M. J. Magee - Wednesday, the 9th of December, 2015

I was quite chuffed with myself for writing 50,000 words of Cuthbert last month; they were messy words, leaping between different scenes as I scrambled for something new to write every time I finished a scene or (as happened with a bit more frequency) got stuck and started a new one instead of wasting time staring at a blank-aside-from-all-the-finger-smudges-I-should-really-clean-my-laptop-in-fact-I-should-clean-my-whole-flat-perhaps-I-should-get-a-new-flat-perhaps-I-should-be-spending-this-time-investigating-mortgages-and-also-a-new-career-in-the-circus-that-comes-with-food-and-board-I’d-save-a-fortune-and-get-a-lot-more-exercise-and-nope-no-clowns-are-terrifying-that’s-a-terrible-idea-screen.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Four and one day left!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 29th of November, 2015

There’s officially twenty-four hours and twenty-four minutes left of this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’d feel pretty good about hitting the target if I didn’t have to work and sleep during a bit of that…

I’m more or less – probably coming down on the less side – on top of things, though.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Three and Worried

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 21st of November, 2015

Well, it’s the third week of National Novel Writing Month (or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November, as appropriate), and I have frantically scribbled a lot of words; the current count is a respectable 25,426 words out of the month’s target 50,000.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Two and Aaaaaah!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 15th of November, 2015

Well. I don’t know quite what happened this week. One early night seemed to snowball into no-writing-getting-done-ever, and the lack of progress seemed to snowball into quick-write-whatever-you-can-anything-anything-will-do.

That would at least explain this small busking rap:

Yeah, I get the boys together
Say, Dog, we gotsta earn.

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NaNoWriMo: Week One and On-Track. Mostly.

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 8th of November, 2015

It’s the end of the first week of National Novel Writing Month – or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November as I’ve been calling it, FranScrAdGaNoNo for short – and I have almost 14,000 words of… well, adventure game nonsense.

FranScrAdGaNoNo is a good way of keeping me honest and working on Cuthbert every day.…

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Planners vs Pantsers

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 24th of October, 2015

When discussing the creative writing process, people often talk about writers in two different camps: ‘planners’, those who outline upfront then write to that outline, and ‘pantsers’, those who write spontaneously. Or by the seat of their pants, as you’d have to say to understand why bloomers were suddenly brought into the conversation.…

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