Dickimaw Books Blog 
First Drafts 🔗
[Previously published on Facebook 2015-05-21.] I prefer writing first drafts (or complete rewrites) using a pen. There are too many distractions on the computer: email notifications, the spell checker, hitting the wrong key on the keyboard (an increasing issue over recent years). I find writing the first draft hard. It’s easier to edit it later once the ideas are on the page. The characters, places and situations develop in my mind, frothing, fermenting and expanding until they fill up inside my head and it seems like there’s no room for anything else. Writing these ideas down is like a mental trepanning. It’s tough trying to drill through but once the flow starts it builds up momentum and becomes faster. Interruptions break that flow and trip the momentum. So I switch off the computer, leave the answerphone on, select an album on my mp3 player and wedge in the ear plugs.
My handwriting is verging on illegible to most people. In my haste to write down the ideas before they evaporate I miss out small words, drop syllables, or spell phonetically, but it’s enough to trap the ideas on the page before they vanish, and I can later type them up on the computer. Once the first draft is done, then the editing will smooth out the rough edges.
So if I don’t seem to be around online or I’m not answering the phone, don’t take it personally. I’m just writing or thinking. It’s not you I’m avoiding, it’s the Person from Porlock.
Next Post
Once upon a time, a little parrot decided to migrate across the vast ocean to the cloud lands, with nothing more than a handful of cookies. The Dickimaw Books site has migrated to a new web hosting provider and this is the story of its journey.
Previous Post
Once upon a time, a little parrot decided to migrate across the vast ocean to the cloud lands, with nothing more than a handful of cookies. The Dickimaw Books site has migrated to a new web hosting provider and this is the story of its journey.
Recent Posts
Evelyn, a CCTV operator, sees too much information while she monitors a store’s self-service checkout tills in this cybercrime short story about identity theft.
The DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords “Read an Ebook Week” Sale is on from 3rd–9th March 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords? 2024-03-02 📂 Books Children’s Illustrated Fiction Crime Fiction Speculative Fiction 🔖 I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing News Sale The Foolish Hedgehog The Private Enemy Unsocial Media
The DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has their end of year sale from 15th December 2023 to 1st January 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords? 2023-12-15 📂 Books Children’s Illustrated Fiction Crime Fiction Speculative Fiction 🔖 I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing News Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back! Sale The Foolish Hedgehog The Private Enemy Unsocial Media
The DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has a sale from 1st – 31st July 2023. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords? 2023-07-06 📂 Children’s Illustrated Fiction Crime Fiction 🔖 I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing News Sale The Foolish Hedgehog The Private Enemy Unsocial Media
I was recently informed that
dickimaw-books.com had a medium severity reflected cross-site
scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the version of cPanel this website
was using at the time. I solved the problem by moving to a
new web-hosting provider that didn’t have the issue. The security
researcher used a non-invasive probe. No data was compromised.
Greg has unwisely accepted a friend request from “Natalie”, a stranger who starts to stalk him after failing to hook him in a scam but, unknown to either of them, Greg’s wife (the narrator) is quietly investigating Natalie, following the trail from online into the real world.Search Blog
📂 Categories
- Autism
- Books
- Children’s Illustrated Fiction
- Illustrated fiction for young children: The Foolish Hedgehog and Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
- Creative Writing
- The art of writing fiction, inspiration and themes.
- Crime Fiction
- The crime fiction category covers the crime novels The Private Enemy and The Fourth Protectorate and also the crime short stories I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing and I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing.
- Fiction
- Fiction books and other stories.
- Language
- Natural languages including regional dialects.
- (La)TeX
- The TeX typesetting system in general or the LaTeX format in particular.
- Music
- Norfolk
- This category is about the county of Norfolk in East Anglia (the eastern bulgy bit of England). It’s where The Private Enemy is set and is also where the author lives.
- Security
- Site
- Information about the Dickimaw Books site.
- Speculative Fiction
- The speculative fiction category includes the novel The Private Enemy (set in the future), the alternative history novel The Fourth Protectorate, and the fantasy novel Muirgealia.
🔖 Tags
- Account
- Alternative History
- Sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history is “what if?” fiction.
- book samples
- Bots
- Conservation of Detail
- A part of the creative writing process, conservation of detail essentially means that only significant information should be added to a work of fiction.
- Cookies
- Information about the site cookies.
- Dialect
- Regional dialects, in particular the Norfolk dialect.
- Docker
- Education
- The education system.
- Fantasy
- Sub-genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements.
- File formats
- Hippochette
- A pochette (pocket violin) with a hippo headpiece.
- I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing
- A crime fiction short story (available as an ebook) set in the late 1920s on the RMS Aquitania. See the story’s main page for further details.
- Inspirations
- The little things that inspired the author’s stories.
- Linux
- Migration
- Posts about the website migration.
- Muirgealia
- A fantasy novel. See the book’s main page for further details.
- News
- Notifications
- Online Store
- Posts about the Dickimaw Books store.
- Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
- Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
- Re-published
- Articles that were previously published elsewhere and reproduced on this blog in order to collect them all together in one place.
- Sale
- Posts about sales that are running or are pending at the time of the post.
- Site settings
- Information about the site settings.
- Smile for the Camera
- A cybercrime short story about CCTV operator monitoring a store’s self-service tills who sees too much information.
- Story creation
- The process of creating stories.
- TeX Live
- The Foolish Hedgehog
- Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
- The Fourth Protectorate
- Alternative history novel set in 1980s/90s London. See the book’s main page for further details.
- The Private Enemy
- A crime/speculative fiction novel set in a future Norfolk run by gangsters. See the book’s main page for further details.
- Unsocial Media
- A cybercrime fiction short story (available as an ebook). See the story’s main page for further details.
- World Book Day
- World Book Day (UK and Ireland) is an annual charity event held in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on the first Thursday in March. It’s a local version of the global UNESCO World Book Day.