I've got worms!

It's okay, though ~ they're the good kind.

We recently purchased a wormery. I’d wanted one for ages, in much the same way that Carrie Bradshaw wanted Blahniks. Eco-consciousness is the new consumerism, perhaps?

I like to think I’m fairly ‘green’, although I think we probably all like to think that, just as we all like to think we’re good drivers. Or good lovers. But I do try: we recycle with a fervour (husband is almost evangelical about this ~ I contest that he negates the beneficial impact of recycling every single solitary recyclable item by leaving all the lights on when he goes out. At least they’re the energy efficient lightbulbs, though).

We washed at 30 degrees long before the adverts started urging us too, I only use the car once or twice a week, and then only if necessary, we buy organic locally produced veg and we don’t really keep up with technological advances, so we’re not junking a lot of electricals on an annual basis (thought this just as much to do with cash as conscience).

But back to the wormery: I love the idea of popping our food leftovers in there, rather than them going into the bin (and from there a landfill site). And the resultant ‘worm wee’ that you drain from the sump at the bottom is apparently magical in its effect on the garden. Which can only be a good thing, as lusher leafier plants must surely process more carbon dioxide.

I think I fancy myself as a bit of a Barbara Good (although I’m notably less pert of derrierre and disposition) and given the time and space to make it feasibly I’d love a veggie garden and some chickens. No such room in the garden or the timetable, unfortunately, so the wormies are the only livestock I’ll be cultivating in the foreseeable future.

I’m sure this wormery is some sort of metatphor: there’s cycles of nature and nutrients, putting something back in order to sustain our future, and so on, but I haven’t quite pinned it down, yet.

Yet despite a brace of gourmet meals (manky brown lettuce from the bottom of the fridge with a couple of tea bags for dessert on Saturday, some old baguette, more tea bags and some tops and tails of aubergines and broccoli stems yesterday ~ makes your mouth fair water, doesn’t it?) they don’t seem to be very wriggly or proactive. I fear the wormery may be a short-lived venture….. If anyone out there has any tips on perking up your wrigglies I’d muchly appreciate some advice.

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W.I.P still ticking along ~ must get round to doing some typing up, word-counting and meter-updating.

Ok, Deep breath, here goes: First page

A few months back Liz Fenwick wrote about the first page challenge. At the time I was far too much of a scaredy-bairn to post mine (although I tried plucking up the courage several times) and probably with good reason. That novel is in a semi-permanent staet of hibernation right now ~ it may have been the right book at the wrong time, perhaps, and maybe it will prove revivable at some point.

However, since then I have moved onto a new project which I'm far more motivated about, and I'm determined to do it justice. So, in a "c'mon, gels!" spirit of derring-do I tentatively present what is currently the opening page of "Should Have Been Me". Would you want to read on?




Should Have Been Me

It could have been me. No, not ‘could’. ‘Should’. It should have been me. Why not? It’s not that I’m bad looking, and I’ve certainly got the raw talent, if not the polish. I would have had an agent, one who was far-sighted enough to see the potential in me, take me under their wing and nurture that burgeoning ability, secure in the knowledge that once I got to the top they’d be raking it in. Because we’d remain friends, really close, ‘like sisters’, I’d say in interviews. I wouldn’t abandon them at the first sniff of fame and all of the fawning alternative offers that would bring with it.

No. I would remain true to my roots, close to the friends who knew me before I was someone. I’d be nice to the people I met on the way up (even though there was no real need; I certainly didn’t intend making my way back down). That would be one of the traits that would endear me ever more to the general public ~ that I was so ordinary. ‘Grounded’, they’d say, just like one of us, really, despite all the success. The girl next door with a little bit more.

Could have, should have been me. Why wasn’t it?

I’m Sonia Thompson, and you’ve never heard of me.

Sickness and health

It’s been a case of “spirit willing, flesh weak” of late.

I’ve been raring to go with the novel, but totally exhausted ~ there’s been some sort of thing going round and making everyone generally a bit floppy over this last week or so, and its pole-axed me. Saturday I felt dreadful, ~ achey, fragile, clammy. I attempted a 25 minute run: I reasoned it was kill or cure. Kill, was the resounding response from my poorly bod……

And then yesterday I awoke to discover that somehow I had acquired a very painful sleep-induced back injury. A trapped nerve, was the general consensus, based on my whiny and woeful description, just under my right shoulder blade. It hurt A LOT. (It’s still quite sore now too.) So I ended up taking the day off work yesterday and lying prone on the sofa with a tennis ball under the hurty bit (long story, but it worked sort of) and effign like a navvy every time I needed to do anything pain inducing like breathing or turning the pages of my book. At one point I sneezed ad felt like I’d been knifed in the back. Owwwwwwwwwwww. How on earth did I inflict this on myself in my sleep? ****

A further affliction includes the billions (five) insect bites I acquired in my sleep the same night as the back injury ~ you try scratching your foot when you can’t move from the neck down!


Having said that, last week wasn’t a total write–off in terms of productivity ~ I achieved a personal best on a 7 mile run on Wednesday, polished up my opening pages to the novel (jut trying to pluck up the courage to post them for critique!) & did some longhand writing (hence lack of budge on the word-o-meter) and some plotty / planny stuff. So, some ups, some downs……

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**** Husband to me, last night whist I was incapacitated on sofa with bad back: “Misery is on later. You’re a bit like James Caan in that film. “
Me, excitedly: “Why? Because I’m a writer?”
“No, because you’re an invalid”.

He needs to work on his bedside manner……

Phew!

Last night, after work, I managed to:

Read about 200 pages of HP7
Write 1060 words of the work in progress
Watch “Heroes”
Go for a 4 mile run.

Not bad for an evening's work!

Doubt I’ll be able to keep the pace up every day of the week, but I’m pretty chuffed overall.

Looks like I might be making Saturday’s 7k target after all!

Ready, aim, fire!

Ok, weekly target: by Saturday morning (28th July 07) that wordometer doodah will show at least 7000.

Not a gargantuan target, admittedly ~ but there's a few bits and bobs which will be eating into the remaining evenings this week (i.e. today's delivery of HP7) , so i'm aiming low but manageable. And 7000 will be roughly double what I've got so far.

Still firing on all cylinders enthusiasm-wise, just wish my days were slightly more elasticated!

It is a truth universally acknowleged that a writer in possession of a good manuscript....

....must be in want of a publisher.

Interesting article all over the media today: Jane Austen in rejection shocker!

I’m in two minds about this: yes, it is rather damning that so many publishers failed to recognize Austen's work, but is it that much of a surprise that they turned the submissions down? Not a comment on the quality of the writing at all, but more a question of Austen being “of her time” (and indeed timeless too, yes). I mean, is there likely to be a battalion of publishers sitting there wishing “oh, for a submission written in the manner of an 1800’s social satire!”? Or did they take a look at them and think "hhhhm, bit too much of an Austenesque pastiche, and not what we're loooking for right now". In fairness, publishers are looking to publish what will sell, and as only adaptation tie-ins push the classics into the bestseller lists these days it's not that surprising that they weren't accepted.

(I wonder what would happen if someone submitted some lesser known Beatles tracks to a record company? Probably much the same reaction….)

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If I [need to explain the second rate writing] , then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

Sorry mate, but I enjoy the tales of Potter & co ~ I’m not reading it to be blown away by Rowling’s use of the English Language (the possibilities of which, you patronising *****, are not lost on me in the slightest) but because they are well plotted adventures ~ same reason that I read the Alice books, and Narnia books, and indeed Enid Blyton as a youngster (and sometimes, on rainy afternoon, still do).
Sometimes you want to watch a profound and beautifully shot arthouse film, and sometimes you want to watch “Diehard” ~ nothing wrong with entertainment for entertainment’s sake from time to time.

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Writing still coming along nicely. And I’m still smiling from the entirely unprompted kiss my friend’s 22 month old daughter planted on my lips as she said goodbye to me last night…..

Damn you, Facebook....

....for I am now addicted. Although on the plus side I am now back in touch with an old Uni mate who I haven't spoken to in years, so that's a happy occurrence .

Incidentally, Evolution Writers is heading over to Author's Abode, and the progress meters are available here. And jolly good they are too.

Can't think of a title

I really can’t (that doesn’t bode well for a budding author, does it?)

Nothing dramatic going on, but lots of lovely progress, in general really:

· The new book is starting to take shape, slowly but surely. I’m still only jotting brief paragraphs & ideas down at the minute, hence the mini-word count, but I’ve had some great ideas about character, themes, plot development, so I’m feeling very very positive about it. On the subject of plot development, many thanks to everyone who has shared their plotting ideas and book suggestions with me, both on here and over on the novel racer’s blog. I am creating a sort of amalgamated version of several of the suggestions and coming up with my own peculiar method, and it seems to be working so far. I’ll blog a wee bit about it when the plotting is all in place.

· On Saturday I attended a writing day school as part of my OU A215 writing course ~ TOTALLY inspirational, and I’ve come away with a new project partially on the go ~ the topic was life-writing, something I never really envisaged myself really going for, as previous attempts at autobiographical writing have been quite difficult for me. Nothing seems to come to me, apart from things that I don’t wish to write about, and I am fearful of offending my family and friends too (it feels like a gross intrusion to write about them, to create a version of them that they have no control over).
We tried out a few exercises in the class, and I found that a lot of childhood memories of my grandparents flooded out. In fact everything I wrote that day was connected to them somehow. Ever since I have found myself frequently recalling memories of them, especially related to their house (which is, incidentally, the house in which myself and my husband now live ~ we purchased it from my grandmother when she moved into a bungalow). I feel like I’m surrounded by ghosts, not in a spooky sense, but in a personal and emotional sense.
So, for reasons as yet unknown to me, there are stories about the house trying to get out, and I think I’d better start recording them. I’ve set a notebook aside especially for writing these memories and anecdotes down as they come to me. As I said, no idea what they’re for, just yet, but I think it will all come to make sense eventually (as well as giving me a head start on my life writing assignment for the course, too).

· I’ve been running again, a lot, after the pre-wedding / honeymoon hiatus. It’s a relief to get back into it, to be honest ~ not least as the writer’s backside is developing an unattractive case of post-wedding spread. No, its nice to be getting back to being fit again, and to getting outdoors for the inspiration. Tonnes of ideas occur to me when I’m running, usually triggered by happening upon something I would not have seen otherwise. I’m still nursing, from several years ago, the image of a buckled metal fence, with bits of car bumper embedded in it, with a bouquet of those trick flowers that a magician would use lying nearby. There’s a story there somewhere, I’m sure…. On Sunday I went running in Jesmond Dene, and I’m still smiling ~ absolutely beautiful location.

Facebook: there’s a lot of it about all of a sudden, isn’t there? I don’t really know what I’m doing, why I’ve been invited/added or what it’s for ~ is it like Myspace but for grown ups?.....

Creeping along.....

Thats what the word count for the new novel will be doing this week, sadly: I have an assignment for my OU creative writing course due on the 29th, and although I've got lots of notes I've got nothing approaching the requisite 40 lines of poetry yet, so I shall be honouring my time-served, Douglas Adams inspired approach to deadlines, an approach I have honed over two degrees and countless short courses over the years. The "skin of the teeth" method seems to work for me, somehow.

Also, much as I am dying to plunge headlong into the new novel I have resigned myself to laying some good foundations, as thus far I only have a main character, the object of her obsession and a very vague plot idea. I don't want to hit a wall of unpreparedness, so this week will be spent on plot outlines, character sketches, etc. I think the plotting will be the toughest for me ~ ideas and characters come fairly easily, its what to do with them that gets me stuck.
So as well as reading the excellent "Wannabe a Writer?" (me and 99% of the rest of the writing world seem to be reading this right now! And rightly so, it's very funny) and attempting to relive my honeymoon with "Almost French" (and proving to myself in the process that I am far, far too much of a coward to move to a foreign country! Or at least a one with a foreign language that I'm none too fluent in. ) I have also started to read "The Plot Thickens", in the hope of gleaning some plotting tips. If anyone has any other books / articles / websites they can recommend for plotting advice I will be very grateful to hear of them .

Least shock headline of the day: "Rain delays start of Wimbledon". Well I never.....

Buzzing!

A fantastic idea for a novel has just hit me! Actually its a theme that's been in the back of my mind for a long time, but never really had enough about it to expad into a full length piece. However I thought of two additional elements to add into the mix which will mesh together nicely and really beef it up.

I'm so excited I can't sit still ~ I've just bashed out the first paragraph and made a set of notes of basic content along with a "to do" list for plot and character development exercises, which I'll get onto tonight.

It's a relief, as the momentum for the DeadBeats novel has ebbed slightly ~ I am certainly still going to be working on it, but having been away from it for so long I'm not quite sure how or where to pick up, so hopefuly having this new book running alongside will help by taking the pressure off ~ maybe if I'm focussing on something else the DeadBeats will simmer away simmer way in my subconcsious until I've got something really tasty to go back to.

Loving having something to be excited about again, after the post-wedding slump :-)

Back to reality

Second day back at work, and its dreadful. I woke up in the early hours of this morning wracked with worry about how we would ever afford for me to change careers and have a baby, and then I walk straight into a day from hell where it transpires that alongside the mountains of paperwork which accumulated in my absence and was dumped on me yesterday I am discovering many things left partially done (or ignored completely) by colleagues in my absence. This has resulted in a load of old cack for me to sift through, along with a barrage of bitching complaints from customers who haven’t been responded to. I locked myself in the loo and cried for 5 minutes this morning, out of sheer frustration and misery. I am clinging to the very last shred of honeymoon serenity by the skin of my teeth. (and this is a very timely article that appeared on yahoo this morning ~ oh yes, I know it well!)


Speaking of timely, Kate’s gentle reminder about the spirit of the novel race was right on the button for me. Now that the wedding has passed I should have far more time and space for writing. The novel has been sorely neglected over the last few months (I can write a novel anytime, I reasoned, but I’ll only be getting married once) but I’m ready to get back to it. I hope I still want to write it, I am rather worried that it may have evaporated….. Maybe something new will start to glimmer and beg to be written instead, or as well as.

And I’m in the process of updating the novel racer’s list and catching up with you all too.

I’m going to aim for 5000 words a week ~ I know I probably won’t make it every week, but I always tend to aim higher than is entirely realistic. But as part of my new “married woman” outlook I’ll be treating my writing time with the respect it deserves and guarding it with pride.
Our wedding gift list booty gets delivered tonight, however, so I see tonight’s word count being nil whilst we play with coffee makers and duvets and toasters (oh my!)

A quick update....

I return to this blog a (very happily!) married woman.

Our wedding was utterly wonderful. Perfect. We arrived back from honeymoon late last night, so I'm currently in a frenzy of laundry and food shopping (ok, I admit I am mooning around in front of the pc gazing at our pics again. And again. And again) but over the next few days I'll post a bit more about it all, as well as setting out my new and improved writing plans and popping round to catch up on all of your blogs.

Maybe just one more lok at the wedding pictures first though ......

Blissful!

Truly, these last few days have been utterly blissful.

After a very hectic week of finalizing wedding details (every man and his dog wanted final payment and confirmation of every x, y & z at least 14 days before the wedding date, meaning last week was a finalization frenzy!) I have had a very relaxing and energizing few days.

Thursday evening was 42nd Street ~ I’ve seen it before, many years ago (featuring a pre-celeb Catherine Zeta Jones as a hoofer in the chorus, no less), and as an avid tap fan (and one-time hoofer myself) I LOVE it! This production wasn’t quite as polished as it could have been, it lacked a little “Kazaam!”, but there were some great routines in it and you just can’t help but be uplifted by the outstanding songs.

And then on Friday my wonderful, gorgeous, talented and adorable best friend / bridesmaid treated me to a spa day at Serenity Spa at Seaham Hall. Amazing. Words cannot do justice to the experience ~ a two hour body scrub, massage and facial (I drifted off and actually snored at one point!) followed by a delicious lunch of Thai tapas and a languid afternoon of stewing in the pool, steam rooms, Jacuzzi, hot-tub and sauna. The perfect antidote to bridal stress and strain. I swear I look five years younger now. There was some reluctant dragging of feet as we eventually forced ourselves to leave…..

Most of our time around the pool was spent deep in girl talk, but those moments that weren’t found me reading my way steadily through Lucy Diamond’s “Anyway you want me”. More on this later….

A few perfect days can do wonders for your spirit.

Write off....

....That's what this last week has been, basically. A few nasty personal issues have bubbled to the surface (nothing like an impending wedding to shine a very bright light on some unsavoury stuff lurking in corners!) but getting it all out in the open has proven to be very cathartic and probably flagged up some essential relationship mends that need tending to before they become irreparable.

I'm still bemused by the irony that planning a wedding puts you under such monumental strain ~ we've seen it happen to a few other couples over recent years too, so we are fortunate in the knowledge that its not just a fundamental weakness in our relationship. I suppose its beneficial in the long run ~ if you're prepared to go through all of this without giving up then I guess you know that you really, truly do want to be together. And we do.

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Liz Fenwick is very generously running a series of racer profiles over on her blog here. It's nice to get to know a little more about the people involved in our little community, and I shall be tweaking and airbrushing a wee biog of myself to send over to her in the next few days.

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And a big hearty congratulations to Caroline Smailes ~ In Search of Adam is on sale now. My copy is ordered. Make sure yours is too.

Keep on running....

For some reason, recently, I’ve spotted a lot of babies socks lying on the pavement ~ at least one a day, and on Saturday whilst out running I saw three. Maybe the babies are trying to tell us something...

Sunday was a gorgeous day (apart from the point when I think a speed camera nabbed me, I hope it was just the sun glinting off it but I'm not overly optimistic…) and after taking my grandma for lunch the fiancé and myself did a bit of gardening (I’ve planted some courgettes ~ hope they come to something. I was quite successful with peppers and tomatoes last year). But the odd thing was, there was a strange flying thing (not a wasp, but similar), which hovered at head-height on the side path and wouldn’t let us past. It was literally squaring up to us, and intermittently it would fly a few feet away in order to ‘challenge’ another of these peculiar flying things before returning back to the exact same point of its hovering sentry duty. What ever it was, it was very territorial.

And then last evening a bat flew past me, right outside my front door. I’m sure I should be reading something into these ‘signs’.

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I’m enjoying reading Jane Henry’s blog about her marathon memoir “Running on Empty”, and I shall be ordering a copy asap. I am officially in awe of anyone who has completed a marathon, seeing as how I have only tackled a half marathon thus far. It’s on the “one day I will…..” list, and I did try (unsuccessfully) for a place in the FLM ballot this year. Maybe next year.

“Two years ago I couldn’t run a mile”, says Jane. Me neither. But there was something about running that fascinating me, kept pestering me the same way the pesky novel kept digging me in the ribs until I sat down and started writing it. I persevered: from my inaugural run (where I managed the grand total of 89 steps in a row ~ seriously, I was so inept there was no point trying to time myself or measure distances, I counted those early runs in terms of total steps) I have managed to complete the Great North Run, and regularly take part in local 10k runs. I can’t imagine my life without running now. And I’m particularly interested in Jane’s section on what to do when you’re running and you need the loo: the only time I ever suffer from penis envy is when I’m caught short in the middle of a long run….


Today I ordered a copy of Lucy Diamond’s “How do you want me?” and I’m really looking forward to reading it.


Writing tip of the day, courtesy of Stephen King:

Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.


Tip-top-tastic luck to all the marathonees this weekend ~ I'll be watching, in envy and admiration.

Hi everyone,

Kate Harrison raised the issue of writing rituals in this weeks coffee break: I don't think I have any writing rituals or superstitions (other than keeping it all a closely guarded secret from everyone bar my fiance until i feel I'm at a strong enough point to start sharing). I write in longhand in notebooks with a fountain pen to start with, and then transfer it all onto my laptop, but I'm not sure if thats really a ritual or just the fact that I am a bit of a luddite.

WIP: I have made some progress, and also some not progress ~ the word count has ground to a near standstill as life is getting very very hectic (upcoming wedding ~ don't know if I mentioned it about a billion times or so, plus the usual "real life" stuff that clogs up the flow ~ I don't so much need a room of my own as a soundproof isolation chamber that locks from the inside. Maybe I can get one of those when I get the lottery win that will allow the day job to take a running jump....) so I am fairly behind on the novel, my A215 course and a short story I am working on too. I think i'll have the face facts that there will be very little headway made until after the honeymoon, but I only plan to marry once and so I'm gong to make sure that I really enjoy this.

So, little word count process, but the ideas are still bubbling ~ as this is the first novel I've tackled I don't quite know what i'm doing yet, and I came to realise that whilst the tension between my two main protagonists is central to my plot I don't quite know enough about my supporting cast of characters to provide a fully authentic "colouring in" of the rest. So any spare novel time this weekend will be spent "interviewing" my peripheral characters in order to beef them up a bit. I'll be doing some "hot seat" question and answer sessions just as soon as I've devised soem suitably searching questions.

Hope the sun is shining on you all, happy writing,
Kate

(pre-) Dawn of the Dead

Word count so far this week = not much at all: I'm getting married soon, and myself and the fiancé have spent most available evenings and weekends on wedding stuff which never seems to end. It’s all very exciting, but very time consuming too.
On the plus side my new laptop EVENTUALLY arrived, so as soon as I have a few free evenings (which won't be until towards the end of the week as there are 120 invitations to be written over the next couple of evenings and my mum is running it like a military exercise) I can get on with the task of transcribing my reams and reams of handwritten stuff.

I am ruthlessly keeping the laptop internet free, as I have realised that I do not have the willpower to avoid trawling cyberspace for total crap in the name of "research". And despite the word count being low the words that did make in onto paper were written in a couple of early morning, pre breakfast sessions, and as a staunch non-morning person that’s some pretty impressive behaviour for me. I have come the realisation that if I am to commit many words to paper/screen over the next few months I am going to have to cultivate a fairly unshakeable daybreak attitude to my writing. It’s the only way in light of the tidal wave of bridal matters which will be slapping me full in the face between now and the wedding.

In fact, I am so resigned to the diminishing hours available for doing my two favorite things (running and writing, in case you’re wondering. Eating, sleeping and the other are going to have to go onto the back burner for a while!) That I even bopped out of bed at an ungodly hour this morning and attempted a quick three mile run. PRE-EIGHT A.M.!! My body hated it, and hated me for forcing it to do such an unspeakable thing at such an unspeakable hour. The rebellion took the form of a total refusal to co-operate, rather like a toddler that won't put its anorak on: legs and brain put up a fairly impressive protest, which I gamely ignored, so much so that the attack advanced and I developed a sort of temporary hysterical blindness in one eye. Nice. Anyway, I lived to tell the tale, and am feeling undeniably smug now (cos, you know, I ran three miles before 8 o’ clock this morning. I’ll shut up about it now….)

Hope you other racers are all speeding ahead ~ I have theatre tickets for tonight, so I see another early start for the writing tomorrow. Yawn.

Would I lie to you baby ?

(The Eurythmics one, not Charles & Eddy, you philistines!)

This is an interesting piece from the Guardian, about lying and the possible root causes. Like most people I had naively divided untruths into "white" lies designed to protect other people's feelings ("We would love to come to your civil war re-enactment meeting but sadly the boiler has packed in & the the plumber can only come this saturday ~ drat!") and the blacker, darker variety which have a more self-serving and destructive intention.

However the guardian piece raises an interesting point: "it became clear to me for the first time: the brutal cruelty of your mouth acting against you, of wanting so much to communicate and not being able to use the words you choose". This bit leapt out at me, as I am planning to play around with the reliability of my narrative voices in the novel, with the seemingly most reliable protagonist ultimately being the least dependable in terms of truthfulness. This isn't intended to be a malicious character trait, more along the lines of him being a "head in the clouds" musical type who rarely touches ground level (by contrast the polar opposite character is someone with an almost autistic inclination to always be honest, regardless of how painful that truth might be). Maybe I'll alter his make-up a wee bit now, with him being entirely authentic and honest when communicating through music, but a rather tongue-tied and inelegant communicator in everyday discourse.

I love it when the connections all start sparking!

Next step, or running before I can walk?

Righty, having bitten the bullet and abused my poor Mastercard to the tune of a new laptop I am finally in a position to start typing my reams of handwritten material into some semblance of order.

But, I'm in two minds about how to proceed: should I submit a couple of chapters and a synopsis to a publisher/agent whilst I'm still in the process of writing? Or am I better off waiting until I've finished the majority of the writing so that I have a more complete product to offer?

How did other writers approach this issue?

Pulped fiction

This is a rather disheartening article, from the Independent this weekend:

The average author earns about £16,000, a third less than the national average wage, it is revealed. So what? They're doing what they love. But hidden behind that figure released by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a grimmer truth: when you take away the superstars who are earning shedloads, the actual figure for the rest is closer to £4,000.

That's less than it was last time anyone looked, seven years ago, and far less than the distant days when the Net Book Agreement kept prices high. Forget living on baked beans in a garrett; this is barely enough to buy stale bread and a tarpaulin for shelter.

And it is only for the lucky ones: fewer authors are being signed up unless they're famous, advances are shrinking, and those who sell only moderately well are dropped, ending careers early.

It's the sort of thing that makes hearing about the £million advances paid to the likes of Wayne Rooney (for an "autobiography" he is unlikely to ever read, let alone write, a single word of!) even harder to stomach.

[Incidentally, an university comtemporary of mine, Lucie Cave, ghost-wrote Jade Goody's "autobiography". I'm guessing that she did it for the cash, and fair play to her, but I've often wondered if she was ever tempted to slip a few veiled references to the Bakhtinian carnival or the odd bit of feminist theory in there, subliminally cloaked within a gripping pasage about being falsely accused of having a verucca whilst in the BB house. In fairness she may have done, I haven't actually read it....]

But, back to my original point, it doesn't take a Mensa candidiate to make the connection between dwindling author incoming and the internet/supermarket phenomenon of selling books at less than half their cover price. Apparently even the niche bargain bookstores are struggling. The current trend for "cheaper, cheaper, cheapest" worries me, and not just in relation to book selling. We've become a society that sees it as our basic right to acquire as much as possible as cheaply as possible, and yet the obvious conclusion is that when prices are cut back to the bone then someone, somewhere, is losing out. I'm thinking specifically of the likes of Primark and the other cut-price fashion outlets ~ I shudder to think what the foreign manufacturers/employees are being paid, so that we can exercise our god-given right to buy a t-shirt for £2.00.......

Monday morning rant over. And on a lighter note, this just in from the "You couldn't make it up (and if you did you couldn't use it in a work of fiction as no-one would believe you)" corner: Man cleared of murder by Curb Your Enthusiasm wins damages.