Manuroscript, last touched November 9, 1998

The Old Man isn’t the first attempt at a novel I’ve ever undertaken. I dug around in the closet and retrieved this old chestnut, Walker.

Walker is a sci-fi story set in the fairly distant future when the human race had colonized much of the galaxy before encountering a technologically superior race and from that meeting a long, drawn out war had ensued. Into this war steps our heroine, Dawn Walker, who is a combatant, committed to the human cause until she discovers a truth that turns her world on its head.

I wrote it in England while I was working for GEC Plessey Semiconductors, and since then it has been dragged through ten different addresses in five different states. I last had anything productive to do with this manuscript almost twenty years ago when, after completing the first initial draft, I went back over it and concluded it was utter garbage.

This was before – long before – I understood that it was okay for a story to contain complete garbage since this was only the starting point.

I may resurrect Walker once The Old Man is complete, since the story itself isn’t that bad (if I remember correctly) and those hundred thousand words or so of effort won’t have been completely wasted that way.

Also, it’ll be illuminating to compare how my writing has changed in the last two decades.

Meanwhile, the work with The Old Man continues. I’ve been working on Chapter Eight and I’ll probably have that finished before class tomorrow morning, since writing my own book is far more interesting than reading someone else’s.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Categories: The Old Man, Work Update, Writing