The First (and second) Drafts of Everything

Ernest Hemmingway apparently said, ‘The first draft of everything is shit.’ This has always been a source of consolation to me. It and the phrase ‘Perfection is the enemy of completion’, have been the strongest motivators for getting me to write.

I’m going to go right ahead and add a bit to Hemingway’s advice: the second draft of everything is also shit. But – probably less shit.

To test the theory, I’ve uploaded a fairly long short story I wrote recently. Flying High was written about the apocalypse. If you have a spare twenty minutes, please feel free to read it and let me know what you thought – good or bad. It’s fun, I think, and dark. There are notes in there on it also.

I don’t have time to read that long short story – do you have a short short story I could sample?

It just so happens I do. Flash fiction is a short short story, usually less than 1,000 words. The Bath Flash Fiction competition which I’m hoping to enter (deadline 16^th Feb) is looking for a 300-word story on any theme. This is surprisingly hard. I’ve written two and am going to submit one of them. The other is called Rules of Engagement – I hope you enjoy it! (Edit: I had a different story up here, but I’ve changed it for this one)

‘People actually are reading this stuff!’

I had a quick look at the analytics (again thanks in large part to my brother in law, who is a tech – and life – genius; check out his tech site, Sequential Networks) and was blown away by how many people clicked on here. Shout out to the 106 readers from the Russian Federation. Even more so by all the lovely messages people left me on Facebook and Instagram. Sincerely, thank you!

The Writing Club

Even cooler, the Writing Club now has four members; which is exactly three members more than I really ever expected it to have. They’ve given me permission to dox them, so do please check out Francis McCaughan, Hazel O’Rourke and Niamh Campbell. If you’d like to join, send me a PM on Instagram or drop me an email.

Thanks again for reading!

An Intro to the Site

Hey Ethan, what’s this thing?

– You, probably.

Thanks for checking out the site! I’ve been typing words in some sort of order for some time now and I thought I may as well find somewhere to put them all down.

I’m currently working on one project, which I’ll mention in a minute. A few other pieces I’m hoping to get to though, include a play involving Irish dancing and dementia (Forgetting to Dance is the working title), a fantasy series that has been knocking around in my head in one form or another since I was 16 (Fallen) and another story for which I’ve got a fun magic system but no definitive story line worked out yet. Also no title.

That project I’m currently working on is called ‘Follow Me.’ I’ll put up a few sections of it in a few weeks, but in short it’s a story about social influencers and the bizarre world they can sometimes inhabit. In my work I deal with them from time to time and they’re nearly always super nice people. The story explores the responsibility that probably should come with advocating travelling and looking at the implications of a lack of that responsibility. Because really, you’re just a person with a phone taking wee pictures. (Obviously I’m simplifying – companies hit me up and I’ll influence the hell outta your stuff .)

In addition, I’m hoping to plug away at short stories and other bits and pieces just to keep me writing. You can check out the short story competitions I’ll be entering.

Also, doing this stuff by yourself is scary. I’d love if anyone else wanted to try their hand at writing, to turn this into a friendly writing club.

Yeah, but why though?

Who doesn’t want to become a published author? I totally do. Having said that, I also love writing and it’s a long slog that has a low percentage of success and a high percentage of frustration, failures and unfinished works. Still, the only way to the first thing is generally through the second. More importantly, it’s just a great outlet. In the same way if someone is out playing football, they likely don’t have the FA Cup on their mind – it’s just fun.

So with that in mind, it’s also about forcing myself to write – which I enjoy – and get feedback; which I sometimes don’t. This page will mostly be looked at by friends and family which is great. So don’t be afraid to be constructive! If something is crap, or you didn’t enjoy it, please say so With the caveat that you also explain why you thought that. (Please also feel free to let me know if you liked it.)

Over the course of this week, I’m going to be uploading some short stories I’ve found on my hard drive over the years. If you’ve only time for one, I suggest going with ‘Signs’. I’ve made some notes about it as well which you can check out.

I’ll update the site every Tuesday. Sometimes it will be small things. Other times, it may be even smaller things. But occasionally I’ll add some new work. If you enjoy it, that’s brilliant. If you REALLY enjoy it, feel free to drop me a line. And if you have the heart of a saint, feel free to link the page to someone you think might enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.