Smug mode

I have spent the last month (along with the w-i-p) partaking of ScriptFrenzy and today reached the goal of 100 pages of script.

Strictly speaking, I wasn't writing a script, but used the opportunity to sort out some notes for a novel. Although I reached the target, the story is far from finished, so I will try to keep up the three page a day target until I have the whole plot sorted (with hefty chunks of dialogue thrown in for free).

I am, therefore, feeling a touch smug.

Er...

...I don't usually do this sort of thing, but as it is vaguely writerly, and as I've just finished some stuff, and as I was asked nicely (my thanks to tea and cake), here is a picture of my desktop. Boring, or what. The picture is by Richard Akerman. The giant icons are courtesy of V*st*, which changes their size from day to day, depending on which way the wind is blowing or some other technical reason.

I'm also adding seven things about me that you are unlikely to know and which will probably not be interesting enough to remember.

1 - I am right handed, but left footed.
2 - The first book I ever bought with my own money was the Observer Book of Astronomy.
3 – The first book I had published was written on an Amstrad PCW.
4 – The first book I wrote was handwritten in a foolscap pad. Which I lost on a train. Thank goodness. (I was 17, can you imagine how awful it was.)
5 – At Junior School I was a blackboard monitor.
6 – At Junior School I used to draw little spaceships and kept my pencil sharp so I could put in every single rivet.
7 – I have lost my obsession with rivets.

Fascinating stuff, eh?

PS - This is me at the Amstrad all those years ago:

Moving on.

A good week, although it has left me exhausted. I have managed to keep on track with ScriptFrenzy (although I have still to do my three pages for today). And I've done another chapter of Charlie Cornelius. Everything else has gone out the window. Brief bursts of activity at the keyboard have been punctuated by long periods of resting with a notebook handy. It's a system that seems to work and it will be intresting to see how long I can keep it up.

I’m not impressed.

After several months of negotiating, including a breakdown in communication (lost e-mail addresses – I should have taken note then), it was agreed with a US online radio station that I would be interviewed this evening for an hour. The subject was to be my Druid books and my beliefs. Not earth shattering, but it might have helped with sales and provided an hour of interesting conversation.

Because I have ME I rested all day (after a bad night last night). After my weekly treat of watching people dig holes in a field, I evicted one of the cats from my chair, prepared my notes, got everything organised, and waited for the phone to ring.

And waited.

And waited.

At two minutes past the programme’s start time, I began to suspect it was not going to go according to plan. I logged into the radio station and listened to the person who was meant to be interviewing me talking with someone else.

I was (a) disappointed; (b) annoyed; (c) and felt just a bit humiliated. I had told people I was going to be interviewed on radio. They tuned in. I wasn’t there. I was sitting looking at a telephone and it wasn’t ringing.

Now, I’m fairly easy going about most things, but if I make arrangements that involve others, I keep to them. It is my responsibility to do so. It is one of the tenets of my faith that I have that responsibility. Of course, I cannot now discuss that on radio, because people didn’t keep their end of the bargain.

They have been told, politely, what to do with their interview.

I shall get back to writing.

I'm impressed...

...though clearly not modest. Another chapter of the novel and 20 pages of script. Not bad going. I'm off for a lie down.

That creaking sound?

It's just me getting my brain into gear.

After too long away from Charlie, I have started a new chapter and, because I am some sort of idiot, I am signed up for Script Frenzy as well.

Watch this space. You will either see news of a completed chapter and an increase in the word count or a message about a man's head imploding.