Colin Mulhern

Sorry Scrivener, all is forgiven. I've actually been using LibreOffice for about a month because I was using for a different project over the holiday period, and generally, everything was fine. But then today, right in the middle of a sprint, it started acting a little weird. I tried to undo a few things only to see it replace chunks of text with error messages. Then it crashed completely. Thing is, this document is less than 5,000 words. That's not a lot for a word processor to handle. And while it autorecovered the file, it's still one too many crashes for me.  Going to back to Scrivener, I suddenly remembered the Session Target tool. This makes life so much easier, as I can see, as I type, my progress. In LibreOffice I'd have to paste the word count into the spreadsheet I'd made.  Project targets window It also displays as a line bar at the top of the project with the Manuscript Target at the top, above the chapter title, and the Session Target below, so there...

Well, I hit the word count. In fact, I crossed the line just now at 2376 words, so I'm writing this quick before Only Connect comes on (love that show, but I never get a single thing right!) Anyway, quick summary of the day. I'm off work for the Christmas break, so I managed to do most of the work during the day, but I'll hold my hands up and admit that I went into editing mode which ate up a good few hours. A little change in Chapter 2 had a bit of a knock-on effect which meant deleting quite a chunk of chapter 1. I also needed to write a new opening.  This is something I was thinking about last night. The story kicks off with the MC looking at an old house, but the village where the main action takes place acts as a crucible. Therefore, I wanted to have a metaphor for crossing into the forbidden world. I liked the idea of the village being cut off by a flooded road. I went down a few false paths, but ended up with fairly clean copy. Just a quick note on writing software. ...

source: laurieboris.com The challenge Rather than do Resolutions I can't keep, I thought I'd kick off the New Year with a little writing challenge.  This challenge comes in three parts. Write an entire novel in January. Edit and clean up in February (possibly – see below) Submit to Agents in March. Background One of the surprises that came out of doing a degree in Creative Writing was finding that I have strengths in areas I thought were closed off. There was one story in particular that resonated, a short piece about the son of a grave robber. Dark fiction was something I found quite difficult after Matthew passed away, but this felt good. Unlike my Victorian vampire novel, which I had peppered with humour as a kind of safety net, this was pure, dark gothic fiction with an honest, earthy folk horror feel. Gearing up The genre of folk horror got under my skin and I found myself revisiting old classic movies like The Wicker Man (1973) and Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) - a movi...

Three years ago, I started out on a part-time BA in Creative Writing. This was an accelerated course, meaning a minimum of 37 hours of work per week and no summer break. credit: Chris Spiegl, Unsplash While that's a lot to take on when you work full-time, the course seemed to be exactly what I was after. It was structured for personal development as a writer and to explore subjects, genres and formats I would otherwise not consider.  Some of the things I've written over the three years include: Fantasy Magical Realism Creative non-fiction Podcast scripts Evergreen blog posts Poetry for Performance (and performing it!) Comedy scripts Writing for theatre Interactive fiction RPG game Romantic Comedy Screenplay for an animated movie (partial) Screenplay for a sitcom (full). Screenplay for a drama (full). One thing I did enjoy was writing for film and TV. Initially, the strict formatting and strange headings (INT. CAFE - DAY) were completely alien but once I realised the creative el...

2023 was a busy year writing-wise because I rewrote my first romcom in 1st person and relaunched it under a new title, Trust Me, I'm a Liar , then got to straight to work on book 2.  While this was going on, I was also working full-time and doing a part-time degree in Creative Writing. This is a fast-track degree, so it's a lot of work and there's no time off during the summer. Year 1 was a breeze and a lot of fun. Year 2 stepped it up a notch and then in September, I started my third and final year, which made writing Trust Me, I'm an Artist a big challenge to fit in.  But, I did it. Yesterday, I uploaded the final manuscript to Amazon. This is the first book I've put up for pre-order, so it doesn't actually go live until the 5th of January 2024. I thought putting it up for pre-order might spur me along into finishing it, which worked a treat. Who doesn't love a bit of totally unnecessary pressure?  Looking ahead to 2024, I've got a bit of a choice. I ...

I've been playing with a budget Chromebook for the past few months and have to say, a Chromebook is a pretty good choice for writing. I'm using an Acer CB314-1H which cost me a whopping £79 (thanks to a £100 cashback deal). It has a bright, crystal clear FHD screen, a fantastic keyboard (much better than my HP laptop) and it is super lightweight. As far as the keyboard goes, on first impressions, it seems that the keyboard has no delete key or CAPS lock, but both are available with help from the ALT key. It also seems that there is no way to turn the Trackpad off. This takes about ten seconds on Google to enable debug shortcuts, but to be honest, even with the option available, I rarely use. I catch my laptop trackpad all of the time, but hardly ever on the Chromebook. The next thing to consider is software. There's Google docs. You can waste time searching the internet for alternatives, but this means enabling Linux and playing about and it's really not worth it. I man...

 It all began with a duck. Two ducks, actually. They appeared in the middle of a housing estate and were waddling about outside my front door. I went out to get a photo and they were really friendly. They were curious too. This messed with my mind a little. I mean, ducks with personalities. You can’t eat something that’s friendly. That's just not right. But the ducks flew away and I got over them. Well, kind of. But then last week, we were on holiday in Scotland with a farm right next to us. Our back garden looked out on a field full of cows. The cows had calves. They were friendly too, and curious. They kept coming over to see how we were getting on then skipping about the place exactly like cows don’t.  Suddenly, I felt a bit guilty about the huge block of minced beef I’d bought for bolognese.  The thing is, I've never had much success when I've tried going veggie before. I usually fail when it comes to ordering take-away or going into a pub for something to eat. But th...