Day Four - One against many

There's something to be said for working on one project to the exclusion of all others, and there's something else to be said for having several different things to work on at the same time.  I'm really enjoying writing The Shift at the moment, but that's because I'm trying something new. I'm not one for planning things in advance, I like to let the story evolve how it should without any preconceived notions and that's the way that I've always done it.

When it comes to The Shift however, I've written down chapter headings and just worked on the premise of putting a thousand or so words in each chapter.  There's another twenty or so chapter before I run out of material and I'm finding that when I'm doing the individual chapters, they're coming up with new things as I type.  The curious thing about this is that I'm not considering that the chapter headings have got many things in them and I haven't put any thought into them (and to be honest, most of the chapters are named after various things that I've seen in films or read in other books and I'm using them as a guideline to put me in the right frame of mind.  One example of this would be that Chapter two was originally titled "And they mostly come at night." Now obviously I can't use that because everyone knows where it came from, but at the same time, it made it very easy for me to put the ideas down on the page.

So, short on time today, to be continued tomorrow, as I'm up for work in around six hours, better planning and less Lethal Weapon 2 is required I suspect...

Still, This is John Dodd in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...