Books, life the universe

Wednesday 2 January 2008

Back to work

I had just got out of bed this morning and was definitely not in the best of moods - 6.00am is way too early when I haven't been getting up until at least 9.30am for the last fortnight - when I was asked if I was looking forward to going back to work. Grrrrhhh! No I was NOT looking forward to it, even though I happen to enjoy what I do at present. Once I was in the office things were fine, and it was good to see everyone and find out what we'd all been doing over Christmas. But of course I would rather be at home reading, writing and just generally doing what I want. Winning the lottery would be good.

My current writing project has reached the 20,000 word mark, and I added about 1500 words this evening, so I'm feeling pleased with myself. Once I get further on with it I may say more about it. At the moment I just don't want to jinx the whole thing as my 'novels' usually die at the 30.000 word mark.

I've adopted a rather different strategy with this one in that I am just keeping going even if what I've just written is rubbish. I'm always coming across the advice to just get the first draft written and worry about the quality afterwards. You can edit what you've written, but you can't edit a blank page! Very true. I'm also trying to write about 1000 to 1500 words each day. It doesn't always quite work out like that but we shall see.

I'm currently reading an anthology of crime stories which I will report on at a later date - authors are Ian Rankin, John Mortimer, Lindsey Davis, etc. So there is a nice mixture of police and amateur detectives and historical and contemporary.

Off to wind down for a while otherwise I'll never get to sleep tonight.

2 comments:

Anne Brooke said...

Enjoy trucking on with that novel! And don't forget all novels appear to "die" at the 30,000 or 40,000 mark - it's just part of the deal of being a novelist. You simply have to either (a) keep writing through it or (b) write other scenes from later on in the novel then come back and fill in the gaps.

Enjoy!

A
xxx

Jilly said...

I'm hoping if I announce publicly how many words I've written it'll keep me going! Yes I'd read before that many people have a problem at 30,000 words - so I'm determined to keep going this time.