This is a rather brief post just to see how useful and aesthetically pleasing WordPress’s "post by email" feature is. Potentially simpler for phone-based updates.
How do I look?
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They do say that the road to hell (which I don’t believe in, of course) is paved with good intentions, and if that were the case then I would certainly be well on my way to having my eyes pricked with knitting needles by Satan for all eternity.
My novel is dominating, at the moment, and no matter how often I promise myself I’ll make a conscious effort at getting back into a regular blogging routine, I just don’t seem to have enough words and energy left over — most days, at least. I strongly suspect that this will not last, however. It’s a fairly huge project (my early estimates suggest somewhere between 150,000 words and 200,000) and it’s extremely important, as I’m sure you can imagine, to get the early chapters well and truly nailed down so that I can be completely sure of whether the novel is going to go the way I want it to. Once this stage is out the way, though, I’ll probably settle back into a more balanced routine.
In the meantime, however, I’m lining up a few guest bloggers to help keep Gary William Murning Online active and entertaining. If you’re interested in contributing something, please feel free to drop me a line — but bear in mind the themes of my website. If you’re a Christian blogger, for example, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll use anything that relates to your Christianity. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be interested in anything else you may be prepared to offer. All I want is to keep it relevant to my particular interests/obsessions.
And, of course, I will still be contributing myself. I have a lot planned for this site and mine will never be just an editorial presence. Apart from anything else, I’m too opinionated for that 😉
Finally, I think it’s fairly likely that I will be posting samples of As Morning Shows the Day some time during the next few weeks. So remember to keep checking back (add me to your feedreader, if you haven’t already, or follow me on Twitter or by email, AOL etc, so as not to miss the announcement.)
I’m having a little trouble producing interesting posts at the moment — caught up in my work (which I am thoroughly enjoying) — and I don’t want to write about just any old thing that springs to mind. So, for the time being, I may only be writing a blog post three or four times a week, rather than every day. The beginning of a project is always one of the most demanding stages, so this will pass pretty soon, I’m sure.
In the meantime, if you’re missing your daily fix of Gary William Murning Online, I post regularly on Twitter (see the sidebar to the right of this.) It’s not always insightful stuff but it will at least keep you up to speed on what I’m doing.
If this page is quiet for a few days, however, please keep dropping back. It will only be a temporary break.
As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time over at the Authonomy website. For those of you who don’t already know, this is a writers’ social network site set up by HarperCollins. Effectively a peer-review, critiquing site it has the added attraction of making one’s work available to the editors of HarperCollins’s various imprints. As well as considering the top ranked work, they also use the tagging system etc to find titles lower down the ranking that might fit on their lists. Just how successful this will be, I can’t yet say, but if you don’t try you’ll never know, right?
So far, I’ve only uploaded the complete manuscript of Children of the Resolution to the site (saving my other work for a later date) but the first couple of comments I’ve had have been… well, to be honest (and utterly immodest), as good as I would have expected. The feedback I’ve had elsewhere, and my own gut instinct, suggests it’s a pretty good read — but it’s always good to have confirmation of that, especially on a website where it might be “seen”.
Another attractive feature to the website is the Authonomy blog which features, amongst other things, blogs by editors at HarperCollins. Whilst reading through this blog, I came across this article entitled What We Want — written by “Rob”, an editor on “HarperFiction’s hugely successful mass market list”.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said to myself and those close to me, upon receiving the latest rejection, “What the fuck do these people want?” Over the years I’ve written in just about every genre imaginable. Horror. Crime. Family saga. Literary. Fantasy. The list goes on. I start, and by the time I’m finished, it promptly goes out of fashion! (That’s a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean.) Trying to second-guess the market is, by and large, impossible. So this piece struck me as actually rather useful.
This comment in particular made me feel a whole lot better, given some of the blog posts I’ve written recently:
“‘Celebrity’ literature is losing sales and perhaps people are looking for something with more depth, some real meaning now that the spendthrift culture of before looks increasingly foolish. Novels of inspiration, of triumph, novels that celebrate and examine life.”
This really does lift a writer’s spirits. The knowledge that there are editors out there who are looking for the new Martin Amis or Irvine Welsh, rather than the next Katie Price or Jade Goody, makes writing that little bit easier. It also helps that publishers are finally taking a rather more proactive approach to finding new talent. Whether it works or not, time will tell.
But at least they’re trying. Hats off to them for that.
As I’ve just been explaining to a friend, “things” are starting to get away from me a little. Tomorrow Will Come and It Will Be Just Like Today is drawing me in and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate for too long on other matters. Consequently, I’m behind on emails, blog-reading and the more sociable aspects of this Worldwide InterWebNet-thing we all love and, to a degree, depend upon.
I’m also concerned that my blog posts of late might not have been quite up to my usual (admittedly quite pitiful!) standard. I like to post something every day. It’s demanding, especially on top of working on the novel, but I have received so much support, appreciation and encouragement through Gary William Murning Online that I at least want to try to continue delivering the things people seem to enjoy.
I’d therefore like to apologise for not being quite as on the ball in these areas as I usually am and also offer you the chance to suggest topics you might like me to cover over the coming weeks. I can’t promise to do them all, but I’ll certainly give it my best shot. (Think of it as an early Christmas present… the socks that you’re elderly aunt gives you, perhaps 😉 )
Fire away!
As the keener-eyed amongst you may have already spotted, I’ve been “fiddling” with the look of my blog. Nothing huge and earthshattering, but a few relatively minor alterations that I’ve been meaning to do for some time, now (for “some time” see “bloody ages”.) I’m not sure if it’s quite finished, yet, but I think toning down all that black has in itself been rather successful. It lifts the body of the blog (you know, the important bit) a little, I think — projects it at the reader. Especially when the page is scrolled and the background remains static.
What do you think? A hit or a miss?
In other news, I haven’t really done all that much this weekend. I got the outline moving again yesterday — back in the swing of it — but decided to take today off. I figured I’d recharge ready for the hopefully highly productive week ahead.
Finally, I’d like to finish with something that both amused and saddened me. Firstly, it amused me because the whole bizarre idea of monks kicking the… of monks resorting to fisticuffs is one that appeals to the well-nourished atheistic adolescent in me. It also typifies the religious sensibility perfectly, however, and so gradually the smile faded somewhat and I found myself shaking my head. If this is the way the divisiveness of religion makes them behave, so be it. They make their choices like everyone else. The only issue I have with this is that we have to live in the same world as zealous idiots such as these.
Seconds out, round one…
After something of a trial period I’m finding genuine benefits in using Twitter and Facebook. Twitter allows me to share bite-sized pieces of information with friends/readers, let them know when I have a new blog post and generally keep up to speed quite efficiently with the things and people that interest me. Facebook (with which I use an application that allows my Twitter feed to be automatically integrated into my status update there) provides another angle on this — a valuable networking tool.
I’m also on MySpace — and have been for quite a while — but, whilst I still notify friends over there of my blog posts, I do not intend to build my presence there any further. If anything, I would like to encourage the few who still follow me from there to create a Twitter or Facebook account (or receive my blog posts via email, aol etc) and let it wind down. I will keep posting updates there as long as there is a continuing interest, however, if my MySpace friends don’t want to use these options.
For those who are interested and want to ensure that they keep abreast (steady!) of all things Gary William Murning, the appropriate details follow:
Another option, of course, is to add me to your feedreader.
If you prefer some other method that I haven’t thought of (anyone who even considers saying carrier pigeon can leave the room right this minute!), feel free to shout up.
Today I turned 42. My beard seems greyer than ever and I’m certain that my neck is making a clicking sound that wasn’t there yesterday. But, to make up for that, it seems that I’ve been nominated for Best Literary Weblog on the BlogNet Awards website!
I’m not sure who nominated me for this, or if they chose me themselves, but thank you whoever you are!
If you agree that Gary William Murning Online is the Best Literary Weblog, please drop by and vote for me!
It’s been an interesting week in the blogosphere for me. My stats are steadily climbing and this week has seen me reach (with one day left) another weekly high. The comments I’m receiving are, as always, extremely helpful and encouraging (not to mention entertaining!)
This aside, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was interviewed this week by The Pakistani Spectator — a large, multi-author Pakistani blog that aims to “foster peace, progress and harmony with passion.” The interview was a fascinating and enjoyable experience. Nowhere near as daunting as I had expected (it was my first interview of this kind.) I replied to their questions and thought that would be that.
How wrong can you be?
I heard back from them fairly quickly asking me if I would be interested in writing for them. I considered this a huge compliment but I wasn’t quite sure how my work would fit in on a site where the articles were rather Pakistan-centric. I therefore asked a few questions before committing and got the answers I would have hoped for. I was assured I could write “with liberty” and so gladly accepted the kind invitation.
I’m now, officially, a writer for The Pakistani Spectator. In order to ease myself into it and test the water, my first piece was a repost of my Where the Buck Stops post from earlier in the week. So far, on The Pakistani Spectator, it’s had 3,838 views and is receiving very encouraging comments.
Time will of course tell, but I think it’s going to be an extremely interesting and educational experience.
At the time of writing, my blog is rated number two in the Top Blog Area Literature Section. Okay, so it’s just been reset and could be considered a bit of a fluke, but still I intend to grab the number one spot — however briefly!
Gary William Murning Online 