Variety

Whatever you might have thought from my blog last night, yesterday was a difficult one.

I had a tough workday, one that I had to extend into today because I remembered things I needed to do for Monday, but forgot to do yesterday.  Still it is done.

Although I didn’t sleep well last night, the heat keeping me awake, today has been a much better day. I got up at midday, went out and did the shopping, spending an obscene amount of money for one week of food.  Mind, because I do a food list for the week, there’s nothing there that will go to waste. 

To be honest, there was a lot of meat and alcohol in the trolley. We’re having a barbeque in the backgarden tomorrow, and none of us are working, so it should be a good day and I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve also done some sewing today. A creative outlet other than writing has been of use. One of the difficulties of writing is the sheer length of time that it takes to see a finished product.  We’re talking months at least, sometimes years. But with sewing, although I didn’t finish the garment, I took a length of fabric and I turned it into something that will soon be wearable – hopefully I’ll finish it tomorrow.

It’s good to see something achieved. Word count usually helps me, but not always. Over two thousand words yesterday didn’t feel like the achievement that sewing part of a dungaree pattern did today.  Which I suppose goes to show that variety is the spice of life.

Guess we all need to mix it up now and then.

The Long and The Short of It

The month has rolled on again then.  Can’t believe how quickly the first half of December has disappeared beneath my feet.  Time is running way too short these days.

November was interesting, naturally I did the whole NaNoWriMo thing, which didn’t go at all to plan.  In fact, it was so bad I pulled the plug on the story I created for the month – it was too weak to bother with, so I went back to one I had been working on prior to the start of the games.  I did have to cut back the word count, to match what I’d already typed up, and to make it easier to keep track for word count through the last few days, but I didn’t have a problem with that.  Besides, it seemed fitting that this year’s NaNoWriMo be the second in the trilogy which I started at last year’s NaNoWriMo.  Theoretically I’d like to finish the trilogy next November, but the story lines I keep thinking up are just hopeless, not one worth the effort, so not sure I’ll be able to do that, there again, I have ten months to come up with something, so fingers crossed inspiration will strike.

I will admit I had written the novel out long hand in 59 days from the end of August, and it turned out not to be half so long as I thought.  I’d thought I’d made 60k, but in the end it was only 42k, so I edited it up to 50k, mostly by adding the details I’d deliberately omitted so I could get on with the story when writing long hand.  To be honest, I don’t remember a time I was more relieved to finish a book.  Not relieved as in happy achievement, but relieved as in “got that monkey off my back”.  So much so, in fact, that I haven’t bothered to pick it up again since.  I know I need to, there’s loads of edits required.

Talking of edits, I’ve done a mass of freebies in the last couple of weeks, everything from, “this is really good” to “oh my God no!”  Still, it keeps the brain firing. And I have a science fiction novel coming in for a full edit in January which should be interesting.

Have decided that 2015 will be a year of short stories, I’m going to leave the long novels for a bit and concentrate on getting more shorts together, might even get enough sorted to put a collection together.  Fingers crossed.

So the long and the short of it is that I’ve been busy, busy, busy – just how I like it.