#0058 Oh Sweet First Draft How Much Have I Missed You.

Welcome back, my fellow travellers. It is a joy to have the pleasure of your company and spending a moment together. I hope your week has gone well and you’ve gotten as much life out of that as possible. 

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As always, I welcome all of your comments. They are helping me hone my craft and on the pathway to becoming the best writer I am capable of becoming.

Oh, First Draft How Much I Have Missed You

A new year, a new book. Do you mean you’ve published your last one? No. I realise it is time for me to engage with some professionals to help with this stage of the marketing and promotion strategy I outlined over two years ago. Some of you know because I wrote a personal account of what happened in 2022. Despite that, I still managed to produce a blog of new content Mondays at 07:00 (GMT) with the tomgalewriter website v2 rising from the ashes of website v1. I have begun the process of cataloguing my blogs into different categories. I think there will be no more than eight in total, and I hope to make navigating and finding myself a breeze in the next few months. I am resolute that I first want to pursue the traditional method of publishing books. Should self-publication be held in reserve before I begin banging my head against brick walls, and the medics were too slow to get the straightjacket around me and get me to the padded ones? 

I’m Brimming Over With New Ideas I’m Excited About

I am brimming with new ideas to engage you in this adventure I lead you all on. I had two significant ‘Eureka’ moments this week. Who knows where I will end up now that I believe in myself? And The realisation that I am not the same as I was even a year ago, and this latest iteration of me is more vital than any of the ones that preceded it. I never missed a deadline in 2022, and that was me warming up. This year I will shine a light on others who have lifted and inspired me. Are whose books have had a strong effect upon me. I will also introduce you to some very gifted and talented people with whom I have already crossed paths. Artists and designers. Showcasing their work because I think they are so freaking talented but don’t yet believe it—a bit of paying it forward, as it were. 

The Sweet Feeling Of Beginning A New First Draft

And as if that wasn’t enough exciting stuff to get your head around, I’ve started the first draft of a new book that I am so excited about. I have in the past described myself as a pantster. This feels like a confining and little explanation of who I am as a writer. True, it wasn’t until this week that I wrote the first word of the first draft of this new project. Before that, I had been busy doing hours of research. I was developing character sheets for several of the leading players. Then I think a bolt of lightning may have coursed through me as I wrote the structure of this piece would have a traditional ‘Beginning, middle and end’ of the majority of books. However, The beginning of the book is the middle of the story. The book’s centre will then contain pieces of both the beginning and end of the story. The end will be in the present. In a gripping and nailbiting finale, the strands that may have resembled the loose ropes on the back of an eighteen-wheel truck steaming down the motorway are skillfully secured to the sprawling narrative, leaving your reader speechless and nervous in bits. 

I have written around 5,000 words describing my characters and the world where I will watch them grow over the decades. I have also done about twenty hours of research online and in libraries and private collections that will guide me as I build and immerse myself in this world so foreign to my own experience. 

This was my first experience editing and rewriting my first WIP. I had almost forgotten how sweet and reassuring it is to begin the first draft of my next book. Well, that’s it for another week. Remember to hit the like button and subscribe straight for future posts to go straight into your inbox for future publications. I want to push myself and have given myself a mammoth task. There were moments of pantsing, but only after many hours of carefully outlining the narrative of each chapter. Identify the threads that I will attempt to weave intricately so that, quite frankly, I have no friggin idea of what it will be or look like. My theory is that if I can succeed in surprising myself, how much more thrill will this give me? 

There are significant differences between this first draft and the last. Well, I’m a published author, first of all. See the link below for more details. I have a team of beta readers whom I owe so much. They help me to keep my goal in front of my eyes at all times. I don’t want to be a good writer. I want to be the best damn writer I can be. This book will most probably take me all year to get to the stage of my memoir now. But by that time, I will have another team around me: an agent, an editor and a publisher. 

I Am Stating In Ten Years, The World Will Know My Name

In ten years from now, I will have published close to twenty books, I predict, and my name will be known all over the globe. I am waiting to see what Tom Gale will bring out next. A hunk of that work will be a hugely popular series which may or may not bring financial success. I’ve never been it for the money from the get-go.  I will, however, be in a place where I will never have to worry about how to feed, house and clothe myself ever, where I will be seen when I need to get something moving as quickly as possible. The rest of my time spent is in privacy, surrounded by those who love me most in the world and without their tireless efforts behind the scenes, I owe my career and life to will live and love without friends and family laughing, being silly, pottering and entertaining until the time comes once more for to write the first word of the first draft of my next book.  Oh, and I almost forgot to mention I also have a short story, a novella and over 50, 500 word Flash Fiction stories that I plan to submit to various competitions. I’ve begun a new file titled ‘rejections’ I smile as it grows as I believe that each is just a stepping stone that will eventually lead me to where my career will take off. 

I Do It All For You, My Readers and Followers

One more thought for you all I have recently come to a greater understanding that whilst storytelling is an art. Selling books is a science. As my life experience has afforded me a foot in each of those worlds, I think this gives me an edge over many others. So social media, you have been on the steepest of learning curves, but I think I’m on the verge of you and I reaching understanding and respect for one another. A community of writers are forming bonds to strengthen and build each other. We want the world to have more writers. More incredible adventures of the mind, body and spirit to thrill and lift their readers out of their usual world to where even for the briefest of moments, they are transported to places they never dreamt possible, where they feel things that may shock, thrill, scare, where their imagination is given a wonderful space in which they generate hope and move into a tomorrow knowing that today was slightly less shitty than the day before. We writers do that for them. They, in return, provide comments and feedback that make us better writers.  So when our minds and should are screaming as once more we put ourselves through the agony and ecstasy of being a writer. 

Leave a comment by hitting the “comments” button, and leave your feedback which I value greatly. 

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#0056 My First Recommendation of 2023

A blog by Tom Gale, a new LGBTQ+ writer  Jan 2023 The City of Salford, England

First, I am relieved to see you all made it back in more or less good shape, if not better than when I last saw you. That is not nothing. Good on you. Here’s why. 

  1. It shows that you have what one of my old bosses described as ‘stickability’, and for the sniggerers on the back row, yes, I hear you, and if you look more carefully, there is no ‘W’ in that word—moving on.
  2. You are first in the queue for all the exciting stuff planned for 2023. The team and I at TomGaleWriter HQ have been working flat out towards this, and we are excited.

We are driven by finding ways to give you the best experience we are capable of.

However, if you have a great idea you think your fellow readers/ community members would enjoy, whip it over to us, and we will give it our full attention and give you feedback within 2 to 3 days.

Once again, it is good to see you back. I can’t stop grinning. It makes me so happy. 

So, without any further ado, let’s start with the business. 

My First Book Recommendation of 2023

 

 

 

To scare the bejeezus right out of you. 

Now hands up if you like a book that scares the bejeezus out of you. 

Those with your hands down, you are excused. 

Now keep your hands up if you like that with a side of ‘beautifully crafted’?

And if you are swayed when a book messes with your head, as it challenges the current convention on style and content?  

Finally, keep your hand up if you enjoy the fact that one of the major themes of this scary book is Folklore, specifically Slavic mythology.

For those of you who still have your hands up, then you are going to love the recommendation I have for you.  For those of you who dropped out on the last couple of questions, I think you could do worse than giving it your best shot. 

 

My first recommendation for 2023 is ‘The Bone Mother’ by the Canadian, international award-winning author David Demchuk. It was David Demchuk’s first fiction novel. 

Winner of the 2018 Sunburst award. Nominated for the Shirley Jackson award. Amazon’s first novel award and The Scotiabank Giller prize. In paperback from Proving Ground Press May 26 2020.

Available from all the usual suspect booktoriums and the like

I read it during a recent transatlantic flight. With ancestors from Lithuania and a robust masochistic streak satisfied by having the bejeezus scared out of me, I realise this may have made me an easy catch. 

However, this did more. It landed, smashed my head on a rock, slit me open, removed my guts, and filleted me, keeping the skull and bones for stock. It gripped from the first page to the last, and I couldn’t put it down. It even worked a bit of magic on my bladder, which usually is weakened when I fly transatlantic.

It Satisfied My Robust Masochistic Streak 

 

If anyone has muttered ewwwww at any of that, then maybe The Bone Mother isn’t for you. I’ll let you be the judge. I will not do any spoilers but rather leave you with this. The greatest delight was for me other than having someone tell me some creepy, scary and even horrific stories with the fact that Mr Demchuk had left sufficient space between his words for my imagination to expand and contract in the same rhythms as his structures. 

 

Well, that’s it for another week. Remember to hit the like button and subscribe straight for future posts to go straight into your inbox for future publications. 

Leave a comment by hitting the “comments” button, and leave your feedback which I value greatly. 

Click the links below for my social media sites, website and published work. 

 Twitter

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Website

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