I returned from my residency at La Napoule Art Foundation with a full mind and a heavy but grateful heart. The time I spent there was incredible, both personally and artistically, leaving me with much to mull over and memories that I hope I will hold forever. Before I arrived I presumed that it couldn’t possibly be as good as…
Tag: Blog
October Blog: The God of Humormystics
I’m writing this blog on Oíche Shamhna from an old château in the South of France. Sometimes it really is a case of being in the right place at the right time. I’m well into the second week of my residency at La Napoule Art Foundation, on the coast in the Bay of Cannes, and I’m having a ball. It’s…
September Blog: A Little Less Murder
The writing process is so unpredictable. I had anticipated that the third draft of Attrition was going to be a tidying-up exercise but I seem to have landed myself right into a complete re-write. This was most definitely not on the cards. I’m focussing on the positive outcome of this; my novel is going to end up in a better…
August Blog: And Then There Was One
The process of reading through my current draft of Attrition continues. I delayed it by a couple of weeks while I worked on a smaller project, which I’m fairly happy with, and it was good to give myself some distance between drafts. I was hoping that this was going to be a read through, mostly focused on taking notes about…
July Blog: Put the Draft Down
I was about to start draft three of Attrition, in fact I had technically started it, when I realised I wasn’t following my own advice of taking time between drafts. So I closed the file and put the hardcopy away. There’s never a shortage of writing tasks to do or ideas to follow up on and as it happens I…
June Blog: Home and Away
June has been fairly chaotic, primarily because I’m in the middle of selling my home and buying to a new one. This has been a decision with a lot of mixed feelings. I currently live in a lovely Victorian redbrick terrace, full of character and charm, that I’ve been in for the last 8 years and was the first house…
May Blog: Bye Bye Baby
As the flowers blossom and bloom all round me on my daily walks with Cody it seems somewhat at odds with my current writing practise. Rather than growing, I seem to constantly be cutting at the moment. It’s all part of my paring the story back and starting the story later routine, although now I’m worried that I’ve been over…
February Blog: The Time It Takes
I finally finished the first draft of Attrition in mid-February and to say I was delighted is an understatement. It was a long slog just to get the first draft done, far longer than I had anticipated, especially compared to Bitten By A Dog On Tuesday (the first draft of which I wrote in 6 weeks). At present I have…
January Blog: One Hundred Thousand Words
I’m happy to report that January has turned out to be a hugely productive for me, writing wise at least. I was too busy to have the January Blues and if anything, the long month meant that I actually got more work done! That’s not to say that what I’ve done will be winning a Pulitzer anytime soon but I’ve…
November Blog: A Change of Plan
Attrition continues to move in the right direction although I’ve conceded that I won’t get the first draft completed within 2018, barring a Christmas miracle. It really has become an action of attrition itself, in every sense of the word. Sometimes it feels as though the characters are goading me on “come on, I dare you to finish this” so…
David Keane 