Sometimes I wish my mind had an off switch and other times I’m grateful that it doesn’t. The first case applies when I’m worrying about something, wake up at three in the morning and lie there fretting and churning over things that would have looked better in the morning after a  good night’s sleep. The usual result of this is me managing to get to sleep – usually after getting up and having a cup of tea – at about five in the morning, then waking up a few hours after that feeling like crap. Then there are those other insomnia moments.

I’ve been getting a little bit stuck with the latest book, writing, deleting changing sections and trying to make it work properly. I woke up and started thinking about this and it at once appeared that during my brief sleep my subconscious has been doing some heavy lifting. I got up (this morning I woke at about 3.30 and got up half an hour later) and I started writing stuff down. Things that previously seemed vague to me had begun to come clear. Yes, I had backed myself into a corner there so change that section and delete that section, write-in the POV of that character and lose that one. Go through the entire book, and the book before, and completely change another character.

By this time I’d finished my second cup of tea it was 5.45 AM. What to do next? From previous experience I knew that if I went back to bed I would wake up feeling like crap, my mind sluggish, and what had seemed clear to me before would not be so clear then. I took a shower and now, as I write this it’s 6.20 AM and, once I’ve finished this sentence, to work!

I’ve just passed the 130,000 word mark on Penny Royal II but this last week I haven’t been hitting my target of 2,000 words a day. Generally it’s been at about 1500 a day, but in total. I’ve probably been writing more than 2,000 but deleting plenty too. About 1,000 words disappeared into my BitsSF file at the start of the week. While going through the text altering certain plot points I’ve been coming across bits that just do not need to be so complicated and hacking them down or deleting them. A new character put in an appearance then was quickly disappeared. And then there are those bits of text where the motor has been idling while a clear the ice off the windscreen – often rambling and sometimes repetitive – and they have to go too.

This slowing down process always happens with me at the end of a book. It’s the start of moving into the editorial phase. It’s also even more involved this time because I’m not only altering and deleting stuff in Penny Royal II but in Penny Royal I as well. It’s all very necessary because, near the end, I don’t want you skipping stuff because you’re thinking, ‘What the hell happened then?’ or the even worse, ‘Oh get on with it will you!’

While in the process of writing a book I occasionally reach a point where, having just written a large block of text, I decide, on reflection, I’ve been heading in the wrong direction. Sometimes this text is amenable to some heavy editing, and sometimes it just has to be cut out like a growing tumour. Thing is, I’m a bit of a hoarder, and am reluctant to throw something away I’ve spent work on. So, what I do is drop said block of text into a file called ‘BitsSF’. Sometimes I’ll go back to that file when I want to start something new, maybe a short story, another book, but not often.

Anyway, I just tweeted ‘Okay, so what shall I blog about now? Any bright ideas?’ whereupon a guy called Robert Annett replied, ‘What about some extracts from the cutting room floor?’ I do believe I’ve done this before, but it’s still a good idea. Here’s a small piece from BitsSF for you, warts an’ all:

The NEJ’s weapons carousel was much more complicated than the name implied. It spanned the nose of the ship between nacelles and not only offered up selected weapons to the various launchers within those nacelles, but was also an autofactory in itself. From this complex of packed moving machinery and shifting linked belts carrying the ship’s armament, Jack could select a variety of missiles and also customize them to specific purposes. Here there were also facilities to make entirely new weapons to the AI’s specifications. It was all either automated or utterly under Jack’s control. There was no room in there for human beings – they would have been minced by the machinery.

Standing in a corridor that ran beside the bulkhead to the rear of the carousels, Cormac glanced at Blegg and smiled.

More later.