Patrick Garratt

I was supposed to go back into Ooning editing on March 12, but I decided to leave it the full, King-recommended six weeks. I’ll start again tomorrow. You just know, I think, whether or not you’re ready to move onto a new draft, and I definitely wasn’t. I’m glad I waited. I’ve put three short…

Hope you enjoyed Chicken. Writing short stories is a great way of passing the time before I get back into editing the Ooning, which I’m not allowed to touch until March 12. You’re supposed to try to completely forget the ups and downs of your draft before you retackle, and I’m finally starting to feel…

I finished the second draft of the Ooning today. It came in at nearly 53,000 words. While the length is too short (it’s roughly equatable to the previous draft), the structure’s complete. Slotting in more chapters should be simple as it’s been rewritten in a modular style. The focus of this stage was to block…

I bought patrickgarratt.com. It was time I owned myself. Importing from Blogger to WordPress took a few minutes. It’s like living in the future. I’ve written a third of the next Ooning draft (some 25,000 words), so it won’t be finished this year. I’m very confident of this version being vastly superior to the previous.…

I doubt Meredith could have been happier when I handed over her first penknife. All I could see were beaming teeth. I told her to be careful with it, and she promised. She’s a big girl. She’s six. I showed her how to break it apart so she could use it to eat – it’s…