Right, I just managed to do my 2,000 words. This was after drinking far too much red wine last night, which resulted in me waking up at 3.30 in the morning and only dozing intermittently thereafter. And this was after I’d deleted some drunken tweets from the night before and while our house was overrun with plumbers – doors open, central heating off, electric fire just managing to stave off the cold. I’m not sure they’re very good words, but they’re down now and I can knock them into a shape another time. I then felt I should do a blog post and asked for suggestions on a subject. These included: hovering robotic coffee cups, steampunk prador, xenobiology and neural warfare.
Nah, as I noted on Twitter, I have a dead pigeon in my mental reservoir.
So I’m just waffling to see what surfaces (hopefully not the pigeon). Some bright spark suggested I do a post about Margaret Thatcher but, just like some of my old posts on Global Warming, I suspect that’d go down as well as bacon sandwiches in a Mosque. People’s opinions on both subjects have petrified and long since moved into the territory of confirmation bias. I have to wonder how much spittle is being wiped off computer screens lately.
More about the Night Shade Books thing perhaps? All you need to know is that I’ll be signing up for the new contract and crossing my fingers. I haven’t got the time to be too paranoid about books I wrote years ago because I’ve got books to write. And as for another idea I’ve been toying with – of all that’s been involved in getting my books published in the US – that I’ve promised elsewhere.
A book review perhaps? Well, I’ve just started Peter Hamilton’s Great North Road so there won’t be any reviews here for a while. Enjoying it btw, and was amused to see a character in there who works in publicity at Macmillan.
No, I’ll go back to those 2,000 words even though it’s territory I’ve visited before.
It’s not actually 2,000 words in total but of fiction. In reality, after I get up in the morning I first fill in a page in my journal so that’s about 200 words. This is sometimes quite difficult as you would expect in extending ‘got up, pissed about on the internet, wrote 2,000 words, ate stuff, went to bed’ to fill a page. Then there are the tweets, occasional blog posts and stuff on Facebook. I kid myself that this is all justifiable advertising and that writing on twitter is a good exercise in précis, but I just enjoy that shit. So, as I alternately muck about on the internet and write, I normally do my 2,000 words of fiction by about 3 or 4. On those occasions when things are going a bit slow the count might be 1,000 to 1,300 at that time, and by then and I’m thinking to myself I’m not going to hit my target. At 4 we have a dance to the Wii because the glamorous life of a writer is sadly lacking in exercise. After 4 I then usually polish off any remainder within an hour. Don’t ask me why. The workings of my brain are a mystery.
But next week things will change because we’re heading back to Crete. There, without an internet connection, I open up my laptop and have few alternatives but to write. There, because hell it’s sunny and I want to get outside, I usually polish off my word count by about 2. This year it’ll be the same for a few weeks as I complete the first draft of Penny Royal III, then I’m going to spend plenty of time editing and generally tidying up those three books, also writing synopses and blurbs. I look forward to the time, after that, when I can sit down and work on some short stories.
So, how do I end this? I know…
That’s all for now.