Got a novel/play/screenplay in your head? Get it on paper! Here is the page count thread for hopeful and actual writers.

[wilbur]

Are you a writer in need of some motivation? Post here each day or whenever you can with your page count. Or post your hopes for how many pages you want to write each day and then come back and see if you managed them. Even if they are rubbish, at least you will have them down on paper and can make them brilliant at a later date.

I will start. I am hoping to write a second full-length screenplay before August 2008. I have two days a week where I have time to write my own stuff and I am aiming to do 5 pages on each of those days.

ooh-er UD, how on earth do you find time to post on MN? Or are you doing character studies on us all?

ive got my eye on one....!

perhaps you write under the name of Rosalind Aviary and write soppy chick-lit poached from the lives of MNers?

Oh I might as well join you for a good boot up the arse! hello nice to see UQD has joined up too

at cod

Telly Addicts topic: Cod's Crime Hour

"Cod, why did the man with the eye-patch kill the sister's cleaner with her Vileda mop?"

Cod: beacsue hetm anwas erllay herf ahtre, goooddd, whdy I bohhhtter?? read myblog.

SaveScrabulous (I've joined that group too!)

• An irreverent guide to a certain era in popular music.

• A perennial bestseller based around the traditions of a certain time of year

and

• A book for first-time dads.

My new one is about politics and is aimed at first-time voters.

finknottle - excellent cod-riff!

thanks

I've nominated you for Quote of the Week indeed.

blimey, it's catching...

Thank you, UQD

It'll cheer me up when her Mag sentences me to a week's hard threading for irreverence...

i can see you lot....

I've been really really really busy, right? Writing. But for money, you know, commissioned money.

at CaptainCod reverently

Ok cheeky question UQD - how many copies does the first time dads one sell a year? You might not want to answer that of course.

It's just that my book targets the first time parent market too (although both parents not just dads) and I want to get a very vague idea of potential sales. I know it's a totally imprecise method as obviously it depends on so many other factors such as marketing, PR coverage and erm how good the book itself is of course!

scrabulous - don't go by other people's sales, as that way likes madness! I couldn't give you a straight answer even if I wanted to. It earned out its advance...

When mine was first commissioned there were hardly any first-time dad books out there. They all seemed to be aimed at mums. In between mine being commissioned and its being published, Marcus Berkmann's "Fatherhood" came out, and since then there have been a few more. (I'd like to do a sequel dealing with the years from 5-10!)

That sounds like a fantastic idea UQD.
I certainly noticed the explosion in the number of guides to pregnancy and babies for dads - there are so many now.

Earning out my advance would mean sales being a little lower than my expectations but then my advance was quite modest.

Good luck for your next book - are there any others out there that are similar?

Marcus's book deals mainly with the build-up - pregnancy and expectations in general - and the time as a baby. There are a few "laddish" ones out there. Charles Jennings' "Fathers' Race" is quite good. There's Steve Biddulph of course. And Phil Hogan's "Parenting Made Difficult" which I have only really dipped into!

(I still can't get over the fact that mine has sold in Finland, France, Russia and Saudi Arabia!)

I hope you translated them all yourself UD...

Oooh, I'm a bit intimidated now. You're all, like, proper writers and I'm just another twatty banker with delusions of latent creativity dreamer.

I am about to go on maternity leave for number two. I have I'd say about an idea a year which I love, roll over in my head, start writing, get despondent, hate, give up. HOWEVER, I now have a great idea (started with title rather than theme for once!) and really want to get cracking on it. Aware timing isn't perhaps optimum. Have asked for this kind of thing from my Mum for my upcoming 30th in the hope I can do some writing even when I am highly unlikely to get any time to sit in front of the computer.

What a terrible advert for my literacy that post was. In my defence I'm focusing on maintaining my calcium levels by eating an entire tub of Cookies and Cream.

I use something like that scampmum, go out walking dogs and have Important Thoughts that would otherwise be lost. I had a mobile telephone that let me record great chunks of speech, maybe yours is the same?

I work quite often, like now, with a co-author and the benefits outweigh the tensions. It was difficult at first because I'm a very 'closed door' sort of writer but I'd recommend joining or starting a real life writing group or do a course - Birkbeck run some good ones.

Books that I found helpful when really really stuck are 'writing down the bones' which has some great exercises and stephen king's 'on writing' (I think it is called that).