On progress and procrastination.

This last week has been the busiest since the week before Christmas. Why? Because I worked nearly 70 hours over six days. Phew! So it means that I've had very little time for anything else. Well, it is a good excuse - there can't be too many people pulling those kind of hours in a week and still achieving a hell of a lot besides. I did manage around 4,000 words of writing, but clearly my progress has been slow.

I am a little ashamed to admit that despite having sent off the first part of 'Bringing home the stars' to the agent, it still isn't actually finished. *hangs head in shame* It just keeps on growing, and although there is an end in very near sight, I just haven't quite got there yet. I've been doing a little writing this morning, but there's still a couple more bits to do. In the paraphrased slogan of the old and useless British Rail: I'm getting there.

Today is another day to be sacrificed to the wedding. It's hair consultation day, and to be honest I'm not the kind of girl who enjoys all things hairdressers at the best of times. So I'm not really looking forward to today. Still, it has to be done I suppose. Maybe tomorrow I'll be allowed a day to myself to get back to pottering through the writing?

I'm already thinking over the next project. It will be a relatively simple edit of 'Orb of Arawaan' to refresh my memory of characters and plot before I launch into writing the long awaited sequel. I've been thinking of titles, but I actually am struggling. I need something that says: 'Fantasy fiction' but doesn't scream it too loud. Still, I've got around 120,000 words to come up with one, so no particular hurry.

I hear a scraping noise. That must be my nose going off to be pressed back to the grindstone.

Deploy the white wine spritzer.

'Bringing home the stars' was sent off this morning after a hurried finish of the synopsis. I then went off to work a fifteen hour day, so it was quite reassuring to check my emails when I got home to find an email back from him. He let me know to remind him if I haven't heard from him in two weeks. He is impressive. Of all the agents I have had dealings with, he is one of only two who actually seem to have a real passion for their work and actually treat writers like they are intelligent humans.

I'm going to eat a pizza to celebrate then go to bed. Well, it is late and I'm tired.

Of books that lurk in the night and the reprise of the 7" single.

'Bringing home the Stars' the book is now all but finished. There's a little tidying to do, and a little bit at the end, but by and large I'm finally done. Woot! The first 25,000 words should be being emailed to the agent tomorrow after Zoë has penned the synopsis for me. She's doing this from a rambling voice recording, as I am useless at doing synopses. I rambled instead for ten minutes into a dictophone, and she should sort out the rest by the time I get back from the 'day' (night?) job.

After that it's all hands on deck for the wedding, so don't expect me to be writing much at all except the blog. After that I really would like a little time off to devote to relaxing as I feel like the last 18 months have been a rollercoaster with no time to myself. I'm planning on getting that Wii cheerleading game completed for a start! Given my workaholic tendancies though, I'm sure that I'll start work again sooner rather than later. I want to do a re-edit of 'Orb of Arawaan' and this should be closely followed by the long awaited part two of the trilogy. I'm one of those authors who does like to vary the genre they write in. So far the list, in order, has been: sc-fi; comedy; sci-fi; fantasy; sci-fi; biopunk/thriller and now sci-fi/horror. I think sci-fi can safely be described as my first love, but I've not baulked at trying something a little different.

Today I was on the radio. I did a featured programme playing nothing but 7" vinyl singles. I just wanted to be a little different. Actually, it worked very well. They've got excellent turntables at the radio station, even if they see infrequent use these days. I tried, bar two 7", to stick to stuff from the last ten years, to prove that 7" singles never died. My newest were two from 2008 ('Ghosts' by Ladytron and 'Hometown Glory' by Adele) and if it had hurried up and arrived I would have had an even newer one in the form of 'The Fear' by Lily Allen, but alas it remains lost in the sorting system. I covered every year from 2000 to 2008, as well as Blur's 'Beetlebum' from 1997.

Worry balls armed and ready

From 'All Over the House'

Nearly there!

Work has been dire this week. I've been on call, but not actually called out since Sunday. As I only get paid when I'm called out, that's made for a disappointing week where I haven't really been able to plan anything. Still, we've got the wedding plans largely paid for and done. There's just a few little details to tidy up and then we're done. But of course, there's always minor details that will be found to do right up to the day!

I've passed 85,000 words and I reckon that there aren't too many left to go. I've got a real handle on the ending, and it's just left to right the stuff and tick all the boxes. I'm really pleased with this book and the way it has turned out; it'll be the best yet. No, really! Zoë has finished editing the first 25,000 words ready for their sending off to the agent. She seemed pretty blown away and impressed, which is a very good sign. What was an even better sign was that her red pen marks were very few and far between which means the story cannot be too bad 'straight from the box'. Tonight we still need to write the synopsis to go with it. That's something I never look forward to. I hate writing synopses, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the greatest at them. But Zoë is going to co-write it, so hopefully we'll end up with something special that will make the agent call back within the hour and offer a five figure advance. Or something like that. Maybe. Well, hey! I'm allowed to dream.

I'm going to take a much needed break now. I'm going to play Carcasonne with Zoë. It's a great little game, and we've really enjoyed it lots since we first got it. I cannot recomend it more highly. I find it great that I can stop for a break and my editor will play board games with me. (Well, she is shortly to be my wife!) Actually, that leaves me on a pondering note: I take it we describe each other as each other's wives? I've never really looked into the etiquette of civil partnerships.

Writer's block, writing and other people's writing.

Today has been one of those days where I just could not be productive. Let me explain: every once in a while4, all writers get that time where the ideas do not flow and maybe the motivation just isn't there. They happen; it's best not to dwell on them I find when they do come along.

I've nearly finished the book. There's maybe a few thousand words to go, and then it's a case of handing it over to the editor to go through and translate the lapses into Jennyspeak back into English. You would have thought that this close to the end there would be a second wind and away I would go. Well, not always. Today was one of those days where it just didn't come. I went out for a walk to the supermarket instead. It was nice to get out and about. Tehre's still around 45 minutes before I go to bed, so I might write a little yet, but it certainly won't get completed tonight.

I'm not bothered by the odd day. I think the worst period of writers' block was a period of around two and a half years. That really was scary. In quite a contrast to that, the last 18 months have been the most productive of my writing career, and I even managed to hold down a fulltime job plus overtime during that time too. So one day here and there isn't going to hurt. We'll see how tomorrow goes before I start really becoming a whingy drama llama.

At times like this I find it best not to try and force it. Forced writing rarely works at all. It's just a mess and jolts along like a farm tractor over a ploughed field. I find doing something completely different really does help, like a walk in the fresh air, a browse of the shops or even just watching a DVD or reading a book.

At the moment I've been reading a book called 'More than Human' by Theodore Sturgeon. It's apparently considered a classic, and at times I could almost see why. There are good bits in it of well-written prose. When it all starts to come together, hell, I like his style. But there is very little plot, and the bits that link the good bits are hard to follow, jolt and are, quite frankly, really boring. All in all it is a book that I would say doesn't really deserve its 'classic' status. Actually, I think he should have got a better editor, then it might have made a really, really good short story. As a book it simply just sucks.

Just a quick note...

Two stories have been uploaded today to the Portfolio section of the website. 'The long Summer of war - part 3' is up, and is the continuing serialisation of that story. Also up is 'Loneliness of the long distance trucker' now that it's appearance in print in Folio is over.

And finally....

Well, not quite. But I'm nearly there. I've spent this evening going through the manuscript tying up loose ends. You see, all books-in-progress have these. They are the bits were you find yourself struggling, so you move on and vow to come back later to tie this bit of the story in with the groovier bit that you wrote to come afterwards.

In the most ideal World, you would not need to go looking for these breaks, but they happen. Actually, they can be useful because it makes it a little easier to write in references to later plot in a more fluid way. I've just been doing that now. I'm happy that I've tied up almost all of the loose ends leaving me only with the ending to write. If you get too many loose ends, you end up with jarring scene breaks and plot holes creeping in. Fortunately I haven't been near that territory for a good many years - it would normally spell the end of a draft it that did happen, and I'd be back writing another draft all the way from the beginning.

Now, this is unusual for me. Usually it is the beginning I labour on the most, with the ending being one of the first things to get done. After all, a finished ending makes it easier to be heading for something certain in the plot development. In this case though, the ending is still in my headf. It should not be too long to go though before I get there. Maybe the title for this post would have been better to have been "Almost done"?

As I've talked before, I'm already absent-mindedly plotting the next book idea in my head. It's a book that I started back in 2004, but it got waylaid. It will eb another change of genre, though rather than to a new genre for me it will be one I last visited at the beginning of 2004. I'm not in a hurry though; there's a wedding to come in the meantime as well as an edited version of that aforementioned 2004 book. Not to mention that I've promised myself a well-deserved one month's holiday from writing and other tasks. I might get to finish that Wii cheerleading game after all.

Of snow and more snow.

Doesn't time just flash on by? Well, it's been a busy old week at work on planning the wedding. I hadn't realised quite how close (and therefore tense) it's getting. Not to mention expensive. It's not that we';re going over the top, it's just colour something ivory and call it 'bridal' and the gougers charge three times the price.

The snow that everyone is whinging about has still not fully reached Bolton. I think we're the only place that has not had any. We never get the fun weather here; only rain, hard frosts and drizzle. Lots of drizzle. I would just love the kind of snow where you get snowed in. That's the best kind. The stuff that leaves you snowed out, well that can be a pain. Late last year I was nearly caught out by that kind somewhere north of Thirsk. I found out what that little air freshener thing was all about in the cab that day I can tell you. Ever wondered what it feels like to be driving a 44 ton articulated lorry on a dual carriageway at forty-five miles per hour then realise that under the wheels is now just ice? I'll tell you what it feels like: sh!t-your-knickers scary. I made it home though, which is more than can be said for a lot of the imbeciles that they allow to drivwe a car in this country. A bit of snow, and the morons come out to play.

I remember coming back from a rock gig in Manchester years ago. It had snowed heavily whilst we were in there, and the biggest obsticle to getting home to Bolton was not the actual snow, but the morons who decided it was really clever to dump their cars in the middle of the main road just because it had snowed. We made it without incident all the way to Bolton, and the guy whose car it was subsequently drove over the A666 all the way to Blackburn safely too. It beggered belief why the idiots dumping their cars as a road hazard were not able to get through either. We had to drive on the hard shoulder and, at one point, the wrong way around a roundabout to avoid being stuck behind dumped cars.

Of course, if your car does get stuck in the snow, don't ask these boys to help you get unstuck if you value your car.

State of the Jenny address - February 2009

Some people might have wondered where the book was up to. I had aimed to have a draft finished for the end of January and, well, it's February now. Well, the book grew, as they so often do. I had a target, and I passed that target with a week of January still to go. It's still getting bigger, and still 'nearly done'. It's one of those things; you cannot accurately predict how long a book will be when you start writing it. Sometimes bits grow here, shrink there, but mostly grow. That's what I find anyway.

So I'm going to go back over the first 20,000 words and make sure they are finished. I'll give these to Zoë as she promised to cast her eagle editorial eye over them. That way I'll have material to send to the agent, and I'll keep writing in the meantime. The way I look at it, he'll probably take anywhere up to six or eight weeks to get back to me, which is more than long enough to finish off the rest, pass it to Zoë, and have it tweaked.

The current recession is a weird thing. That is, it's affecting the 'day' job quite mercilously. It does not mean I'm necessarily earning any less. Just that the notice I'm getting on the work I get is now pretty minimal. Generally, the phone rings and a little voice asks: "There's a job at 'x', how quickly can you be there?". This isn't very conducive to planning your life around work. This means last week when spending four days with apointments in the evening for wedding related stuff, I lost three days' work, because the shifts clashed with the apointments. That's very iritating. More work has come in though, so I shan't starve, but I could have done with that £400 squids, thank-you-very-much. Still, at least I'm still working. My poor brother-in-law has been made redundant, Zoë cannot find another 'day' job, and my Father is struggling a little too. In fact, it's getting hard to find people who aren't struggling at all.