Let’s say, just for laughs, that your boiler is busted today. Here’s a list of stuff you might do while waiting for the repairman/contemplating said repairman’s actual existence: You may decide that it is colder in your flat than it is outside. And, not only is the water cold, it also tastes weird, making your coffee, for lack of a better word, funky. You may then ask your PA, if you have one, to go to Starbucks and get you…
And so, last weekend I started a healthy eating kick. For me, this meant leaving the lettuce and onions and one or two peppers on Saturday’s burger, and not having sour sweets while watching Tin Tin at the cinema. I took fruit-bars to work and came home to rice-cakes and grapes. I may have asked Sarge to boil spinach pasta and then left the tomato chucks in the sauce. I was doing pretty well. And then Thursday happened. I’ve told…
What follows could either be a. a snippet from my NaNo novel or, 2. a recent conversation between Sarge and me: I need to write. Then write. How do I get out of the way? Write in the bathroom, on the toilet, in the tub. Write in bare feet, using a pencil with no eraser. Stick your head out the window, shut your eyes and breathe. And don’t take breaks to talk to your mother about goat wool. That wasn’t…
And so, I’m ‘doing’ NaNoWriMo this year. We have always had a strange relationship. Past attempts have seen me bang out 20,000 words and then well, edit them. Note to self and others: Don’t. Do. That. I have a penchant for abandoning projects in favour of others which I think ‘sound better’, and I don’t finish anything. Except really short stories or ‘novel excerpts’. Novel excerpts are short stories that wouldn’t shut up. See, I don’t like writing that sounds…
I talk to my computer. Depending on my mood, my headset and speech recognition are optional. When I’m not apologising for the coffee stains, procrastinating, shall we say, positively willing it to hurry up, or punching the keys, I’m dictating. And sometimes, I’m misquoted. Hemingway thinks I should be more interesting. Or grammatically incorrect. Some recent examples are: I Said: She wished she could speak French like French people. He Heard: She wished she could speak Brent like I…
