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12 Books in 12 Months

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#WIP – Tandy

I looked around for a phone, but couldn’t see one anywhere.  It looked like I’d have to go all the way back down to the concierge’s office and call for help from there… but I didn’t fancy waiting around and having to admit that I’d lied to him in order to get up here.  Equally I didn’t want to keep up the pretense to the authorities, and wind up organizing a stranger’s funeral.

I turned away from Mrs Kerr and moved towards the doorway, when I thought I heard a door close.

“Wayne?” I said, “that you, son?”

“Wayne’s gone,” came a voice, as the door opposite this one creaked open.  “Mum kicked him out weeks ago and we’ve never seen him since.”

The voice belonged to a small girl, very skinny, who was clad in a ballerina tutu, pyjama bottoms, and a denim jacket.  Her hair hung lank about her shoulders and her face wore the remains of her last meal – which looked like it might’ve been chocolate and baked beans.

“And how long’s your mum been like that?”  I asked.

“Three days,” the girl replied.  “She gets like this, sometimes.  She’ll wake up soon though.”

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#WIP – The Highrises

With no idea of how far up flat 159 would be, I pressed the button for the top floor and waited.  It took a few moments for the lift to creak into life, and when it did there was a horrible crunching of gears before it juddered asthmatically upwards.  I’d never been more grateful to live in a bungalow.

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#WIP – Mhairi Mclennan

“It’s they kids,” she stated flatly.

I wondered whether Mhairi Mclennan could read minds.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she could.  Folk from up north are always more magical, I’ve noticed.

“I’ve seen them outside your house, throwing things,” she explained when I didn’t respond.  “They target me, too.  Ring the doorbell and run away.  Put things through my letterbox.”

She paused.

“Nasty things.”

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#WIP – An Incident

My wife would’ve had me to call the polis in a situation like this.  She’d have been awake now, quivering with indignation on my behalf.  She’d head to the kitchen, ranting and raving about speaking to that boy’s parents and him being a bad influence on all the other kids in the neighbourhood, especially Julie.  She’d fix us a cup of tea – or something stronger – and start drafting a letter to our local councillor, whoever that was.

I did none of those things.

Instead, shaking my head in confusion, I climbed back in to bed and reopened my copy of Riders of the Purple Sage.  This would never have happened in Zane Grey’s Wild West.  If someone wanted to call you out, they would have just gone ahead and done it.

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Confession

You may have guessed from the comparative blog silence that book 3 has been going pretty slowly.

I am currently out of the house at my temp job between 7.30 and 5.30 Tuesday-Friday, which gives me evenings, weekends and Mondays for this and other stuff.  Unfortunately I am juggling a bit more of the other stuff than usual at the moment.

For instance,  I said to STV Local “sure, I’ll profile all 21 bands involved in the Sick Kids Charity CD I wrote about for you” – which means setting up interviews with 21 bands, and trying to ask them all slightly different questions so that all the articles don’t wind up being the same. This means quite a bit of prep, and of course it takes time to write these things up.

I had another article commissioned by IdeasTap too, but the interviewee is very busy and hasn’t had time to answer my second round of questions – so essentially I can only file when there’s a gap in her schedule, which almost certainly won’t coincide with gaps in mine.

I’m also supposed to be setting up weekly Ten Tracks blogposts, which will hopefully get done today, and likewise I think I’m overdue a Mslexia update (although the onus is on me – there’s no set pattern agreed for those).  I’m also awaiting the answers from an email interview for an article for The Edinburgh Reporter, and need to send out some more for a different article I’d intended to have done for this week.

I’ve blown off several social events to give myself writing time, but it hasn’t been enough.  I think that logically, sleep now has to go!

Today being Monday 21st, if I was sticking in any way to the 2k daily word target I should be on 42, 000 words – barely any to go before 50k.  As it is, my word count is 8, 519.

If I can bash out 3,771 words a day between now and the end of the month it’ll be fine – theoretically that should only take a couple of hours because I know what I’m doing with the story and when I’m in the zone I type pretty fast.  But where to find those daily 2-3 hours?  In evenings this week I have at least 3 face to face interviews to do, which means travelling to various bits of Edinburgh, so maybe I can get some done on the bus – depending how much interview prep I’ve managed to get through already.  And I can do some in my lunch breaks, I guess.

I’ve also got to go to a gig on Thursday, because most of the bands I need to catch up with will be there; and a cocktail party on Friday because several people I blew off last weekend will be there and I can’t do it again.  The point of this project is universal adulation, not pissing off all my friends and acquaintances…

So anyway, I’m finding it a bit hard to get book-writing time shoehorned into my schedule just now (and don’t even get me started on reading time, because it makes me feel sad), but I’m going to schedule a few #WIP type posts from the meagre amount I do have for this week so that I don’t leave you hanging.  Next weekend I think there’s going to have to be a night of writing dangerously.

Also, if anyone has any thoughts on how to pre-empt the intevitable RSI that my writing lifestyle is surely going to cause before the end of 2011, do leave a comment!

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#WIP

A snippet.

She regarded me with clear grey eyes that gave nothing away.

“Don’t you start making grandiose plans,” she commanded.

I shifted uncomfortably from right foot to left, like a child that has been caught out.

“Ah amnae,” I protested, which was true, really.  My plans weren’t grandiose, not by a long chalk.

She frowned.

“You can’t be the hero in this, Victor.”

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