About This Blog & Graham Strong

Ever Wonder What It Takes for a Writer to Go From Blank Page to Published Novel?

I know I did. That’s one reason why I created this blog.

Graham Strong’s Novel Writing Blog is a day-by-day record of my novel-writing adventures. For the fellow writer, I hope it offers insights on what it takes to get that first novel finished. For readers who enjoy novels, this may be an interesting glimpse “behind the scenes” of how books come to be books — or at least how this one was written!

Besides sharing the ups and downs of the novel writing process, I will explore related things like books I’ve read, people and stories that have inspired me, writing-related topics like publishing, and basically anything that I think will interest you.

I hope it will be an entertaining and informative record of the writing and (with any luck) publishing of my first novel.

About Graham Strong

In my day job, I am a freelance marketing writer and web designer with clients literally all over the world. Although I love what I do, I’ve always wanted to write a full novel.

I started writing at the age of six, when my father helped me get featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio’s As It Happens advertising free songs to all who asked. It wasn’t until I was eight that I really knew I was going to be a writer. Where others wrote half-page stories for creative writing, I was writing 15-22 page epics about flying hamsters, journeys to other planets, and mysterious men in back alleys BBQing shark steaks.

In university, I wrote for Argus, the Lakehead University Student Newspaper, eventually becoming Editor-in-Chief. I bypassed a career in journalism to travel the world, experiencing  Europe, Egypt, Eastern Africa, and the Caribbean. Along the way, I dabbled in short story writing, winning a local award for my story Hat Trick.

I started my marketing freelance writing career in 1995, and have since built up a list of wonderful clients. I recently returned to my journalism roots, writing freelance articles for The Chronicle-Journal here in Thunder Bay, and The Canadian Press (CP).

Like every writer, I have two or three novel starts stuck away in the drawer (or now, more accurately, a box and a long-broken, 90’s-vintage laptop). All are unfinished for exactly the same reasons as you’ve heard a million times from others.

This time I’m approaching it a bit more logically and (hopefully) with a bit more discipline. I’m not sure if the book will be published or not, but right now that’s not really the point. The goal is to get in an hour per day, every day, to get it written. I’ll worry about getting it out there afterwards.

A note about this blog: one of the great things about technology  is that I can journal my progress and put it out there for all who want to read it. I hope that if you are reading this, you get some enjoyment in this blog on some level. For me, I hope it will be motivation for me to keep writing, and a record of the experience.

Feel free to comment along the way, and don’t forget to sign up for updates either through RSS or through email (sign up from the Home Page). You can also Contact Me if you prefer to keep your comments “off the record”.

~Graham
August 29, 2010