Happy St Andrews Day!

With a month left in the year it seems pretty unlikely that I will have the novel finished by then.  Not unless I write at a rate of around 2000 words a day every day for the whole of December.  Anyone keeping score will appreciate that that probably won’t happen.  I am still writing, but at a rate that is not really helping myself.  I will finish the thing next year though.  Promise.

It’s been a bit of a trying week to be honest, glad it’s over.  It’s St Andrews day of course.  You knew that.  I quite like how the Scottish Government are really trying to push the day as a big deal in Scotland, in the same way St Patricks day is in Ireland.  Getting more money coming into the country can only be a good thing, even if it does mean avoiding more and more tourists taking pictures during my lunch hour.

Oh yeah, if you’re not watching Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe (BBC4, 10.30pm Tuesday) already then make sure you give it a look this week.  Never seen it before?  Youtube is your friend.

The (now) weekly update

Still haven’t got into World of Warcraft.  I’ll probably be cancelling my subscription soon I would think.

The writing is still going slow, though for once that’s not been my fault as we have had relatives over for the weekend.  I did have a good idea though about the integration of the new character viewpoints which I’m quite excited about and as it happens has also led to me coming up with a new title for the book: ‘Beginnings, Middles and Ends’.  The name of the novel has never been something I’ve been completely settled on.  I can’t say that I entirely am with this one either, but it’s the best one I’ve had yet.

Hard to believe we’re almost in December now, but we are.  Christmas is nearly here.  We’ve actually got all but one of our christmas presents, which is a level of organisation I’d love to be able to apply to my writing but what can you do?

My kingdom for an orc

Unsurprisingly, still not a lot of progress on the writing as far as word count goes but there was some good news in that I finally finished the chapter that has been given me so much grief.  It was funny because I had planned to write a lot more for the chapter, rewriting the events of the scene I wrote in the first draft.  I reached a point though where I almost did a double take when I realised that I had written enough.  The chapter would be much more effective if I left the rest of it to the reader’s imagination.  So I did.  It was a relief to finally get it done but now I’m on to the next chapter with another new voice to write from and again I’m struggling to get it started.  Ah well, who wants an easy life anyway?

On the recommendation of a colleague at work I reinstalled World of Warcraft to try and see what the fuss is all about.  Because you know I’m sure that wouldn’t eat into my writing time.  I had tried it before and got bored pretty quickly.  I thought I would give it one more go but to be honest i’m still struggling to see what the big deal is.  The thing is, before you can do anything fun you seem to have to put a lot of hours into “levelling up”.  You do this by completing quests and killing things and selling things and It’s all a little too much like work.  I’ve paid for the month so I’m going to try to get into it but I can’t see it happening.  I’m too old for this shit.

And then I got off the bus.

Well what a result that was then eh?  The people voted and the world is a different place now.

Still, I didn’t expect the judges to boot off Laura.

That’s right, I wasn’t talking about Barack Obama!  I was talking about X-Factor.  I fooled you with my comedy skills.  A classic pull back and reveal gag there, executed to perfection.  I took you one way and confounded your expectations.  From thence the humour arose.

I was pretty nervous switching on the television on Wednesday morning.  The polls looked promising but Americans have let us down before.  But I think they made the right choice this year.  Perhaps in time I can forgive them for the past eight years but it’s still too soon.

The writing crept forward a little bit this week but still not enough.  My hope to have the second draft done by Christmas is out the window now.  Probably closer to next Christmas if I keep going at this rate.  I sent off my short story this week.  I think it’s quite good, but who knows?

Brand, Bond and Zombies

This week I have mostly been hearing about Brand and Bond.  It’s hard to say what got more on my tits.  The Ross/Brand stuff has been completely perplexing the way it has just gotten so far beyond out of control.   Talk about a story where just about everyone involved has looked bad.  I’m not much of a fan of Brand or Ross but there have been times this week where I have had to remind myself that neither actually raped or killed anyone.  The fact that people have resigned over this mess is mind-boggling.  You have to love the British media.  God help you if you don’t.

As for Bond, well apparently there is a new film of his out this week.  Yeah I know, they kept that quiet.  The advertising for the film was so exhaustive that for the last week the studio actually hired a guy to stand in my kitchen and scream ‘BOOOOOOOOOND’ at me whenever I went in it.  I have to confess that it worked though as I went to see the film today.  It’s alright.  It’s what you would expect if you’ve seen Casino Royale.  Probably not any more or any less.

I’ve been watching Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set this week.  I tend not to watch a lot of british tv shows because they have the annoying tendency to be quite rubbish.  But Brooker is fantastic so I was always going to give this a look.  So glad I did.  Most entertaining thing I’ve watched in months on the television.  The only thing that sucked about it was it being only five episodes long.  It could easily have been longer.  I just hope that the critical success this has had leads to more from Brooker.  Hopefully screenwipe will be back soon too.

Writing is still going slow.  I made some progress but not enough to be shouting about.  I’m going to send off my second short story tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes.  Should have a bit more time to write this week.  Whether I’ll use that time is another question.