Jim Haynes Weblog

Changes

James S Haynes — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:44:17 +0000

With no study courses in progress at the moment this blog seems to have become somewhat redundant. I am still writing of course, though mainly poetry and that can be found over on The Odd Ode.

As well as posting there, poems have also been published online at forces poetry and at the online magazine Four & Twenty; one has also been used on The American Cold War Vets site. So from now on this blog will take the form of a personal diary type blog, cataloguing anything I have found of interest or worthy of note.

I have been retired now for fifteen months and feel I have adjusted well. Some of the things I intended to do at this time of life I have found no longer hold the interest that they once did and consequently have been dropped. Others, now I have the time to devote to them, are giving me great pleasure, as are a few new projects. So from now on posts will be catalogued under the following categories; Life, Writing, Motorcycling,Countryside and Archery.

Archery is my latest venture. As a boy I was always making bows from wands of green hazel cut out of the hedgerows. They were usually strung with bright orange or blue bailer twine and arrows, also made of hazel, when fletched at all, would use pheasant tail feathers. All this was left behind me when I was fifteen and joined the army but this year I have completed a beginners course at Frome Town Archers. This has reignited the old interest I had in archery and bow-making and I will record my progress here.

One of the first things I did on retirement was to sell my car (my wife still has one) and now my mode of transport is my trusty 1989 Indian made 350 Enfield Bullet, I also have a 1951 British made 350 Model G Royal Enfield in the very slow process of restoration, I will record here as well.

I have always enjoyed walking especially in wild places, though the places tend not to be so wild these days. Retirement has given me more time for this pastime and as fitness improves because of this, the thoughts of wilder places are returning. Notable walks will also be recorded here.

Finished.

James S Haynes — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:19:02 +0000

Well target achieved 50,505 words and in only twenty-one days. The first draft is not completed that would probably take another ten to fifteen thousand words.

Have I enjoyed it, well yes on balance I think I have, although I think part of that has been the novelty value, I’m not sure that I would feel the same a second time.

Some parts really flowed well. The need for a word count deadline forces you to keep going and not keep stopping to research or edit. This led in some parts to me loosing belief in my plot because I was unsure of facts or technicalities. It led to a dropping of the sci-fi element and the novel turning into a mainstream thriller. This was something totally new to me. In hindsight I think I would have fared better with historical fiction where I feel more at home.

Will I ever finish it and try to get it published? Probably not. The value of this exercise to me is that it has fired my enthusiasm for the projects I have already started. I think they will progress much faster now as I have discovered that even if you are not particularly happy with the passage you are writing, if you push on through it, you often find the ideas for improvement suggest themselves in later passages when things seem to be going better. Until now, faced with this problem, I would stop, put it away and work on something else for a while before returning.

So it is back to ideas already started and although the pressure of deadlines has gone, the pressure of my own enthusiasm is ready to take it’s place.



Week Three
James S Haynes — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:02:42 +0000
Day sixteen and 40,000 words banked. I have managed, so far, to average 2,500 words per day. This includes last weekend when I was away and wrote nothing for two days. Although I have reservations about plot believability at the moment, I do think that with a little research at the end of it, most things will be able to be put right. 
At times it has seemed hard going and I lost sight of the big picture, but at this point all the strands are starting to close towards the finish line. I have no doubt that I will be able to fulfil the 50,000 word target, but I am not sure that I will be able to conclude the novel in that word count. I think it may need another 10,000 words for a full first draft and I could see it being beefed out by another 10,000 words on further revisions. 
The plan on reaching the 50,000 is to put it on hold for a few months. This will let me get back to my other novels as I find that, in writing this one, I have re-ignited my enthusiasm for ‘The Stars Look Down.’ I am missing my First World War characters.

         


Day Five
James S Haynes — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:15:44 +0000
NaNoWriMo day five.  15’594 words. I have really got down to things in the last few days and I am now well ahead of schedule. This is partly because I intend to ease up at the weekends. I have decided to ditch the sci-fi element as it now seems to be turning into a believable futuristic thriller. Three chapters are now complete, and so far the story line seems to be driving itself. Although trying not to edit as I go, I have started to make a brief list of items to address on a first revision, mostly items of continuity, or of timing, even settings may need moving slightly to keep up with the direction the story is taking me. It’s all good fun.

         


Day Three
James S Haynes — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:05:30 +0000
Three days into NaNoWriMo, and 8,233 words in the bank. I try hard to shut out the inner editor, who is screaming at me, but it is not easy and I find myself going back again, and again. Generally I am pleased with the way it is panning out and am starting to feel a rapport with my main protagonist but am now being tempted to deviate from the sci-fi and keep to simple futuristic. Tomorrow will see which path I take. 

         


Ready Steady!
James S Haynes — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:26:33 +0000
Halloween; 5 hours to the witching hour and the NaNoWriMo kick off. I’m as ready as I am likely to be and for the next four weeks I will try to add short progress reports to this blog. 

         


NaNoWriMo Countdown
James S Haynes — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 06:19:41 +0000

Count down to NaNoWriMo is gathering pace. Nine days left and I will be away for eight of them. However the time restrictions for both the actual writing and the planning certainly have helped in focussing the mind.
This is already the most prepared piece of writing I have done. Knowing that I will not have time once things kick off, to plan or research, I have tried to foresee problems and listed them with solutions. I’ve established all my main characters and grouped them into relative places within the plot. For the most part I have decided on main settings.
In an attempt to keep things simple I am aiming at 10 chapters, each of 5.000 words. I have briefly mapped out what I want each of these to cover and now keep returning to them with a little more detail. There is still plenty of scope to run with ideas as they crop up while writing though, with chapters 6 to 10 being particularly open at the moment. If I get little else done next week, I certainly feel much more prepared than I was a week ago.
Among all this NaNo work I have also managed to write another poem this week, ‘Counting the Cost,’ was written in anger and frustration at the governments announced defence cuts. As well as at the ‘Odd Ode’ this can be found at ‘Forces Poetry.’

         


NaNoWriMo.
James S Haynes — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:45:39 +0000
‘NaNoWriMo.’ That’s right November, the month when thousands of would be novelists around the world nail themselves to the keyboard to try and knock out a 50,000 word tale in thirty days. If they are all mad, as I suspect they may be, then this year they have one more among their number. Under the username of ‘mustbemad’ I have signed up for the first time and with only eleven days till the off, I have to say, I am full of enthusiasm. 
Having planned to write in my usual genre of historical fiction, I was surprised to find the seeds of a very different idea growing at the weekend. I have a plot, my main characters and my settings firmly established in my mind if not all on paper yet. So now here is another first for me a slightly futuristic piece of Sci-fi!
As if 50,000 words in a month is not enough to contend with, I will try and report progress and experiences here as well as to keep posting on ‘The Odd Ode.’! 
Synopsis: The Restoration Project. 

The year is 2025, most of Britain is in a state of anarchy as the knock on effects of the second big banking crisis in 2012 has bought the country to the brink bankruptcy. Three successive, ineffective governments have failed to gain the confidence of an increasingly restless population. Unemployment and crime rates are spiralling upwards although they are no longer being published. 
A highly organised black market and civil rights movement is organising protests, strikes and ever more direct and violent action. Now a state of emergency is declared and the military form a coalition with the government to try and keep control. 
Among the new coalition elite, a small group of ruthless men are planning to launch an experiment that will control the minds of millions. Not only subduing the restless mobs, but creating a false sense of acceptance that will eradicate all opposition to government policies in the future.
Unwittingly caught up in the final preparations for this programme, and key to its final development, are two young scientists. Mark Williams; who has been recruited by the MOD, is relocated to Scotland where, in a research establishment that is not all it seems, he is teamed up with Eva Milichek, a brilliant and beautiful Hungarian communications developer. 
Eva and Mark are to work together to complete the final stages of the software and hardware development for ‘The Restoration Project’.

It is only when their work is almost complete that they realise just how it is to be used and the implications for the future of the country. 
Will they be able to sabotage the programme? Or will the country and the vast majority of the people in it be changed forever?
Now it is back to some more detailed planning.

         


Independance.
James S Haynes — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 07:48:20 +0000
Most of the last month or so has been taken up launching ‘The Odd Ode’ where a collection of my poetry is now available online. So I will no longer be including poetry here on this blog. I have however still managed to write some fiction, though it has taken me a long time to recover the enthusiasm that I seemed to loose during study for OU A363.
One of the things I have noticed lately, is that post OU A363, I have become far more critical of my own work. Prose that I had written prior to this course, even things that scored highly during OU A215, I find myself cringing at as I reread them now. A lot of rewriting has gone on in the last month! This has to have been one of the biggest benefits of this course.
I have also managed to get down to some new writing as well. My novel, ‘The Stars Look Down,’ now has three chapters in at least draft form. I know! It should be much more than that by now, unfortunately, apart from the occasional interruption by the urge to write another poem, I also get interrupted by a new idea nagging away at me. When this happens I just have to make a start at whatever this turns out to be. The result of this is that three novels now have a start. 
‘The Inheritance,’ (all these titles are working titles by the way) a novel set on Dartmoor in the early 1970s, with a parallel story in 1814, has two chapters in draft form. Then wanting to write something that was not set in the past; ‘Natalya,’ a tale about an illegal immigrant has its first chapter down as well.
Now all of this, I’m sure, seems to be an unorganised way of making any progress, and it is, but it does also seem to have one advantage. That is, that on those occasions when I find myself getting stale with a character or storyline, instead of just putting it down for a week or two, I just move on to the next project instead, always working on whatever one of these ideas that I feel the most enthusiasm for at the time. At the moment it seems to be working for me!

         


Relief!
James S Haynes — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:45:04 +0000
It’s over. No more waiting for results. I have got my ‘diploma in literature and creative writing.’ Well not the actual piece of paper. Not physically in my hand, but the results have been delivered digitally, and I just have to wait now for the post.
I have looked at to possibility of continuing my study, perhaps aiming at a degree, but to be honest I can’t find courses that I want to follow or that I feel that I have sufficient interest in. Studying itself has become a kind of displacement activity, it’s begun to stifle my creativity and imagination. 
The last assignment for A363 was back in May and it is only now that I have re-found the desire to be back at the keyboard, to continue with my novel or to write any poetry. It was with great satisfaction that I finished a poem last night. Needless to say that involved a very late night, but it was great to feel that old enthusiasm again. That feeling that you just can’t leave something until it’s finished has been missing lately.
I have no excuses now, I retired in December, now is the time for prevarication to stop and for me to do the things I’ve been saying  I intended to do for years. High on that list is writing. 
The focus of this blog will change somewhat as now I will include other things, though quite what they will be I’m not certain yet. I intend opening up another blog that will be a repository for the collection of poetry (or doggerel, depending on your opinion) that I have accumulated over last few years. After all what use is poetry if it’s never seen? 
Perhaps now at long last this blog will get the regular attention from me that it deserves.