Author: davydwriter

A writer. My first poetry collection, All Mine, is now available. I am working on my first novel.

Writing: A Marathon or Sprint?

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Earlier this week, I achieved a milestone in my writing. I passed the one hundred thousand word count in the first draft of my first novel. The process has taken me twenty months to date, and I am probably a couple of months away from finishing the first draft.

There has been elation in getting to this point, and frustration in the time taken. In my defence, I have not suffered many bouts of procrastination, and have been working on a couple of different writing projects in those twenty months. For a bit of Friday Fun, I thought I would conduct some research and compile a couple of speed tables to see how I measured up to other published writers.

The Quickest Novels Ever Written

Book TitleAuthorTime Taken
1. The Boy in the Striped PyjamasJohn Boyne2.5 days
2. RasselasSamuel Johnson1 week
3. On the RoadJack Kerouac3 weeks
4. A Clockwork OrangeAnthony Burgess3 weeks
5. A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens6 weeks
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Humdrum Days

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As a writer, do you ever get those writing days where time seems to go backwards and the tick of a wall clock is louder than your thoughts? I do, on a regular basis. I refer to them as ‘humdrum days.’

Humdrum, has an almost onomatopoeic feel about it. The Oxford Dictionary lists it’s meaning as….

Is the Art of Spelling Dead?

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Earlier this week I received a text from my wife, informing me ‘the cat has passed its M.O.T.’ This surprised me on two counts. Firstly, we do not have a cat. Secondly, I was not aware of any recent legislation in the U.K where the roadworthiness of cats had become a legal requirement.

The whole episode ended over a conversation around spell checkers and idle thumbs. It got me thinking about the importance of spelling and, in this social media age, is the stress over a misspelt word worth the agony.

Calendars

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The smell and taste of cockles at the seaside always takes me to a certain place in a calendar. Calendars are for guidance; experience creates our own. January, was that not the time we discovered schadenfreude?