Welcome to my perfumed garden

...assail me this cold, damp morning.

I may have made a mistake when I decided - of all my many ideas - to choose to write Shed. I may have to rethink this. It's not really happening like I hoped, it needs more work, more prep, more thought and I think, maybe it'd be better to cut my losses and go with another idea that is happening in what I jokingly think of as my brane.

The other one is a plot I've had on my mind, off and on for years. I's better prepped and covers much of the same territory than Shed. The ideas I'm having seem better suited to the other (working title 'Window' - for reasons too strange to go into right now) and, well, I have lots of reasons for switching that I won't bore you with but the main one is, it just feels right. Shed, I think, will have to wait.

I find THIS highly illustrative of my thought process on the matter for the past several days. No matter how many times I see it, it makes me giggle.

Anyway, I have a father to feed and a house to clean. Life eh? So far from perfect yet what's the alternative? Answers on a postcard. In the meantime, I'll be the one rocking in the dark and dusty corner, sucking my thumb with spiral-eyes, like a cartoon.

ETA: And pausing to say, I've been working on the plot and already written more in an hour and a half than I have on Shed in the past 2 months. Kiss my face!

Tbh, I don't understand now, why I set myself the challenge of writing something entirely new when this story has been nestling in a cosy corner of my mind for at least 10 years, for as long - maybe longer - than Entanglement. There's no accounting for it, none at all but whatever strange and convolute reasons I had back in January when I embarked on the decision to write Shed first, they're lost to me now.

But oh, the relief! Like having a boil lanced or a splinter removed, only a whole lot less painful!  I feel quite jolly, justified in the decision and finally getting somewhere.

OK. Tea, and then on. I've got till 2pm to churn out some more plot before I have to shift myself and do less exciting things.

Yes, it's that time again. The new doors are made and in place, a new stair carpet has been ordered and we were supposed to be painting today, but look what we found when we stripped off the old carpet.



Two old, very cracked and highly knackered pre-Victorian stairs that will have to be fixed before much else can go ahead.

::sighs mightily:: Things b'ain't never simple, be they? I've done what I can, put a first coat of Japanese Willow #3 on the doors but can't do much else till the stairs are fixed.

There may be time (but is there the strength?) for some work on the new novel. I've been toiling at this for the last three days, a thousand words a day are being torn, kicking and screaming from my reluctant bod. I've been writing about it in my blog - I haven't mentioned the blog much up till now, it's where I'm putting all my tedious writery blatherings, to spare the innocent and blameless amongst m'Flist who don't want to be bothered by such things, but thought I might mention it anyway, in case you wanted to be bothered. Or something. I fear I ramble. I am a little tired and, like Fly Fishing by JR Hartley, rather old.

I don't really know why I brought that up, other than that you really can't have too much of JR Hartley, can you?

Where Hilary, my sister, was spending a day working on a show-reel for voice-over work. It’s something she’s wanted to do for a long time and she found a studio in Nottingham that specialises in that very thing. They’re also an agency and they’ve put her straight on their books. Talking to the sound-engineer after, it appears she impressed everyone mightily with her talent for characterisation – apparently it’s really hard to get voice-actors to characterise, they tend to want to do everything in their own voice - and Hilary is really good too, with a massive range. They’re sending her audition disc up for a couple of ads, talking books and the new series of Creature Comforts, which is most excellent news indeed.

I took my lappy assuming there’d be a green room where I could sit and work since I was only there for the moral support. There wasn’t, so I spent the morning in Starbucks, had a browse about (its been years since I wandered the streets of Nottingham) and passed a very long afternoon in the Costa in Waterstones where at least they had comfy sofas and a host of students and academics similarly occupying space for hours on end on the strength of a pot of  Earl Grey  and a ginger snap. *g*

I got a goodly bit of my sitcom worked out and some interesting ideas for the novel, switching to notes when the lappy batteries finally failed – a productive day, if a tad tedious and massively tiring, but there are far worse places to spend a day than drinking coffee, writing and browsing in a bookshop.

In other news, I got my first ‘where’s this story then?’ email from one of my Moonridge winners today. Gently worded but a prod nonetheless. Gentle reader, if  you too are one of those poor, patient souls waiting for the next update to the Academy tale (and/or waiting for Rainbows 3 to start) I can only tell you what I told them – I'll be back with you as soon as I can. I’m truly sorry, but the muse just isn’t dancing in that direction right now. I guarantee I will finish them  – barring death or coma – but I honestly can’t say when that will be.

Needless to say, I’m not offering anything for Moonridge this year.

And as my fannish life continues to diminish, I dropped another 23 communities from my flist – the bulk of them fandom and fic-related -
doctorwho, crack_van and the like. My morning sojourn on LJ hasn’t been this quick, easy and stress-free for a very long time. (o: