Quick Update

You may have noticed that a new widget has appeared on the blog called "Book" showing how much of my book I've written. It stays relentlessly at zero for the moment, although I do have a rough chapter breakdown and I've concluded most of my research, so I am ready to go.

But not a word has been written.

Why?

I've had a really bad couple of weeks with work, and when I say bad I mean sleepless night, 3am pacing bad - worrying about the discovery of a huge issue with one project close to completion which seemed, at 3am at least, completely unsolvable - while trying to deal with a series of 'what if...' questions that are basically unanswerable. So my poor head feels as if a hole has been drilled in my skull and various fingers have poked and prodded what's left of my brain.

The good news is that there are certain deadlines that can't be avoided so things should get easier soon. But I'm still not getting enough sleep as I'm worried that it is going to be too quiet in the second half of this year!

The good news is that this all means that I might actually have the time to get a good first draft of the entire novel written. I nearly abandoned the whole project a couple of weeks ago, because I thought I didn't really have anything to say, but then I read a couple of books that really didn't seem to be saying anything at all, to me at least, and this has spurred me on and I'm aiming to write around 10,000 words a week which a break for the bit of research that I've been avoiding. The 100,000 words on the widget is just an estimate, I may write more, I may write less - as Neil Gaiman says in the Intro to Smoke and Mirrors 'Sometimes the only way I would know that a story had finished was when there weren't any more words to be written down' and I suspect that this is true for me.

To OU or not to OU

Well it wasn't much of a week off as I ended up working every day and I am not dealing with very nice people. So I am seriously beginning to wonder if I want to do this any more ... but how else to earn an honest crust? Hmm.

I did have time to sort one thing out though. For a while I've been trying to decide whether or not I want to take another OU course. A few people have been trying to seduce me into taking the new level 3 creative writing course which I have been more than a little reluctant to sign up to for various reasons. Anyway while I've been dithering about what to do, I've been offered a contract which will keep me working in central London for the next six months or so. After years working either from home, or North London, or West London and more successfully recently on the South Bank, I am going home to Soho! Whoo hoo. So I've been able to sign up for one of the many creative writing courses, aimed at potential novelists, which run in Central London.

Yes potential novelists - the real decision is that I've decided to really have a go at writing the novel which has been brewing in my brain for the last ten or so months. Not that writing as a profession is a way to make an honest, or dishonest, crust so I guess I am going to have to keep the day job.

Does this mean I am through with the OU? Well, there is this short course in Ethics starting in October ...

Shhhh

I'm not really here, I am somewhere else.

I know I know, but as far as most of my clients are concerned I am working today, just for someone else.

Its been non stop recently, with deadline has following deadline, and they just keep on coming. The thing is, no one will die if I don't meet these deadlines and I just need one day of truancy. If I try and work today my head may just explode. Seriously. And that would not be good.

So if anyone asks, you've not seen me, I'm at my desk and working hard.

All work and no play makes...

River a very dull girl. Very dull indeed.

What is really annoying is that although I am working flat out and have been for the last three or so months, I am really impecunious. Its the peril of self-employment as I can never quite tell when the money is going to come, although from the silence following my last set of cost updates (which are usually greeted with a resounding chorus of 'send us your invoice'), it won't be soon.

My only solace is reading and its when that stops I am really in trouble. I've had days recently when I thought my head might explode, so I've been limiting myself to reading old favourites and undemanding prose. Stuff meditation, yoga etc., 30 minutes with a good, fun undemanding read is all that I need to prevent my brain overheating.


One book I would really to recommend everyone interested in detective fiction (as I am) is The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House
by Kate Summerscale. This is an examination of the Road Hill House Murder in 1860 and how this murder and its investigator, Jonathan Whicher, captured the popular imagination and inspired Dickens (Inspector Bucket in Bleak House) and Wilkie Collins (Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone). The Afterword is particularly salutory and stunning.