Jim Haynes

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... Read Full Story

Well target achieved 15,505 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... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

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. Read Full Story

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. If the widget inserted below works it should chart progress so far. Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

‘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... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story