Richard Yates: A Tragic Honesty

Screenplay complete!

I am pleased to say I've now completed a screenplay for my novel The Pride and the Sorrow.

To distinguish it from the novel, I've called the screenplay The Knight of New Orleans. It's currently with the Film and TV agent Meg Davis, Director of MLA Literary Agents in London.
I also took the move of registering The Knight of New Orleans with the Writer's Guild of America, East as proof of copyright. Copyright is immediately assigned to the originator at the point of writing, so registering any work (or mailing it to yourself in a sealed post-stamped envelope) has to be a wise move.

I look forward to The Knight of New Orleans being sent out in 2009!

How do I write?

I realized a long time ago that I find it very difficult to actually sit down and write. Do writing of any kind. I even despair of e-mails. I used to write long, flowing e-mails to entertain friends, but that was when e-mail was new. E-mail is not new.

The hardest thing is to sit down and write my novel - actually put words on the page. I am sure this is not uncommon So to counter this failing, I realized that setting the bar low was the answer. But not too low. Basically I know I need to write every day, 5 days a week. I am not crazy so I don't feel bad at taking the entire weekend off, so long as I work my 5 days. My approach is to get the writing out of the way as soon as possible. For this reason I start at 8 a.m. And I realized that 2 hours is my maximum capacity at one sitting - this is based on the idea that if the writing is going well, I can actually drift into it for 20-30 minute spells without noticing the time. These are the best times. On that basis, I can doze off a little after a difficult start to discover there is 45 minutes or so remaining in my two hour slot. Which I struggle through to the end.

The next part of my self-imposed plan is to take a break, neither too long nor too short, so it is a break, but before I realize it, I am basically back at it. After much experimentation - involving starting too soon, or usually, drifting off somewhere for the rest of the day/week - I've realized the perfect time is 30 minutes. This allows me to do something - make tea, move something around (including myself), check what's in the fridge, but more often than not make tea and walk around, and then PING! the desk duty calls!

So all in all, I write 4 hours a day and stop. 8am-10am, and 10.30am - 12.30pm. The advantage of this schedule is that you get everything else done in the afternoon, rather than fretting around thinking about writing!

Matt wins Unpublished Novel Competition

Bookhabit.com is pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Bookhabit Unpublished Competition is Matt Fullerty's The Pride and the Sorrow. Matt receives a US$5000 prize and is "thrilled" about winning the first Bookhabit competition. We will be posting an interview with Matt on Bookhabit.com shortly. Congratulations from Bookhabit! You can see full details with an endorsement of the novel at http://www.bookhabit.com/newsdetail.php?nid=48

The Pride and the Sorrow is the story of Paul Morphy (1837-1884), born in New Orleans as a chess prodigy, his famous journey through Europe and his ultimate downfall on and off the chessboard. He is celebrated in fashionable European society, honored by Napoleon III of France and Queen Victoria of England and returns to New Orleans a local celebrity, only to find Civil War looming, a storm brewing in his family and his own mind coming apart ...

The novel itself is available at http://bookhabit.com/book_details.php?book_id=459