Apparently, it’s 10.04 pm, according to this bit of research.
I’ve heard most writers say they write either late at night or early morning, which tallys with the findings that afternoon is generally the least creative time of the day.
I shall make an appointment for 10.04 pm every night, to be out looking at the stars waiting for the next ingenius plot twist to strike!
2 comments October 21st, 2008
I’ve always been fascinated by Japanese culture, perhaps because to a young Irish boy it seemed so alien and exotic and eccentric compared to our Western norms. I did a lot of research on Japan for the novel, and my head is still swimming in the invigorating pool of Japanese culture. I don’t think you can ever really fully understand a culture unless you’ve grown up in it. Outsiders just get privileged glimpses of understanding.
However, it was great fun. I think I’m turning Japanese.
To the casual observer I must appear as un-Japanese as possible — a tall Irish Caucasian lug! And yet I feel an affinity with Japan: maybe it’s my love of baths; maybe it’s my love of electronic gadgets; maybe it’s because the road where I grew up was lined with cherry blossoms (or sakura as we Japanese call it!) ; maybe it’s because of my fondness for meditative ways and unobstrusive, demure, polite people.
Or maybe it’s because Ireland is mooted to be following Japan into a prolonged 80’s-style property-induced economic crash!
I think we’re turning Japanese … I really think so.
I just hope we stop before we get this bad:
Add comment October 18th, 2008
So the rejection came back this morning. They certainly move fast in that agency; it seems my tardiness on this occasion didn’t sit well with that admirable ethic after all.
To be frank, I didn’t expect a request for a full. You just get so used to rejection slips (not that I’ve had that many) that, for the sake of your mental well-being, you discount the possibility of an agent actually liking the submission. That thinking caught me out this time.
Ah well, lesson learned!
So while I consider what do with Broken Evolution now, whether and which agents to try, it’s time to start planning the next novel.
Did you know that worldwide the money made by cyber-criminals outstrips the money made by the illegal drugs trade? I smell a novel in that little fact. Time for my new character, Ania, to get busy and meet an old character.
Life goes on.
Add comment October 14th, 2008
The re-write and edit of my novel Broken Evolution is over, and has been sent to an agent who requested it. I hope the improvements will work in my favour, and the five week delay in getting to the agent won’t be held against me!
An interesting little irony – on the week that I finished Broken Evolution, the geneticist Steve Jones gave a lecture, saying that human evolution is over. Am I tapping a vein in the zeitgeist here? I suppose the premise of my book is that, while natural selection might be over, we might be embarking on a lateral step in human evolution instead. The theme came through nicely in the re-write, this time via the plot – where all themes should.
There was also the minor matter of a global economic meltdown during the week.
Evolution is over. Capitalism is dead.
Maybe Douglas Adams was right; it was a bad idea coming down from the trees in the first place. Time to go back up.
I’ll fetch my hammock …
Add comment October 10th, 2008
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