The Year in Numbers

I suppose that I could give this blog post any number of numbers, Only one really matters and that number is...    ...some. It is the amount that I have written this year, It really isn't enough but I have had a hectic year in which many many many things have changed. Far too many to mention in a blog post. The upside of this is that I now have a dedicated writing space in my house. Now all I need to do is write in it.

Other numbers of note.

One - The number of times that I have blogged this year, the very entry that you are reading.

Four - The number of colossal life altering changes that happened to me during three weeks in February.

Fifteen thousand - The approximate number of clementines that I have eaten over this Christmas period.

Fifteen thousand - The exact number of glasses of whisky that I have drunk over the same Christmas period.

Four - Number of chapters that i have left to write in one particular story line, exactly the same as this time last year.

Sometimes trying to be a writer sucks.

DR

Headlong

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog will no that I spend a considerable amount of my time trying to create the perfect conditions in which to write. It is absolutely mandatory that I have a pen (that is to say, the right pen), some paper, access to my notes in case of panic, a pleasing ambient temperature - let's say between seventeen and twenty-three degrees, the right surface on which to lean, a surface which can maintain itself at the right height from my pen nib without requiring my regular intervention, music pertinent to the mental state of the character and so on, ad finitum.

Yes, I know ad finitum is not really a word but I don't know what the opposite of ad infinitum would be. What I mean by this is that as much as it seems that I need many things to be in my writing headspace, it is not an infinite number of things and I find myself rushing towards a glorious opportunity.

Mostly I write on trains. I move around a lot for my job and I gather together these snippets of writing time to piece together as many glorious hours as may be found in the week. Of the available snippets, a large number of them may be found outside my writing zone and may be discarded. Sometimes these snippets may last several months. I will soon have a good amount of comfortable air-conditioned trains on which to write. I will have my leather bag, not my slippy nylon one, good pens and everything else I could possibly want. I am anxious with anticipation at the mere thought of it. Equally, like so many men, I find myself under pressure to perform.

I guess that I write in a Sir David Brailsford kind of way. Marginal gains. Everything I have been preparing has been leading me inexorably towards the ninth of August and this glorious opportunity to stake my claim.

I have been given every chance, I have neither stopped nor stinted in my preparation. This is my moment of destiny.

England Expects.

DR

P.S. This is only until something else falls of the wagon and breaks the whole damn system. Yet again.

Hot Hot Heat

This is not a post to extol the virtues of the Miami Heat. Despite LeBron James' return to championship winning form this is not about him. Nor is it about Dwayne Wade. Don't get me wrong, I like basketball and can still name the great Chicago Bulls starting line-up from the multiple title wining era. (Man that era was great. Jordan, Magic, Gary Payton, Stockton and Malone. *sniff, getting misty-eyed here*)

Even though I like basketball, this is still not about the Miami Heat, (the Spurs were damned close though). 

This is not about Death Valley and wildfires in California. It could be but it isn't about Mr Heat Mechanical Inc. in the Toronto Area. (Go here for more information and reviews)

No no no no no.

This is about summer and its final and dramatic arrival in Paris, neatly coinciding with the Tour de France. 

On a side note, I love the Tour de France. and is the reason that I haven't been writing. I have been obsessed, consumed and delirious with Tour de France fever. I am every year. I love it. I go almost every year to the Champs Elysees to watch the champagne stage. They go faster than italics. They really do go quite incredibly quickly. Naturally, they slow down for corners but they can hold an average speed of 55kmh through a TT stage. That means more than 60kmh on the flat. On the TTT, Team Sky were shown going at about 65kmh. If you are not obsessed by le Tour like I am, you should be. On the 14th July, the remaining riders will climb the Mont Ventoux. It will be Bastille Day, (the French just call it Fête Nationale) all the French riders will be going bonkers to win as there is nothing more glorious than winning atop a mountain, nothing more worthy than doing in the Tour de France and worth dying for to do that on the 14th July. The fact that the Mont Ventoux is iconic just adds to the insanity. Well, actually what adds most to the sanity is that on a cold, windy, bald headed mountain in the middle of nowhere, 500,000 spectators will line the road to cheer the cyclists on. If you only watch one day of the tour, watch that one. (If any/all of that went over your head, try this)

I digress. 

I have been writing and I have finished another couple of chapters but once again I have ground to a halt. It's the heat. I don't deal well with heat, even on the best of occasions. The fact that I write on crowded trains, each one spending the day pushing its metal and glass form through the hatred of the sun, means that I write in a furnace. The sweat drips off my brow and onto my page and I can't bear it. So I have stopped writing again. I will try again tomorrow morning. Perhaps the train will not have heated up too much as it will be early in the morning. I doubt it. Nevertheless, I shall try. There are so many things that rip me from my writing bubble. I wish I could write gently and fluidly. I can't, it's like kicking myself in the armpit every other step. Monty Python would be proud.

Yours, sweatily 

DR

P.S. I haven't changed my bag. This is not the best of circumstances I know but the bag is required for my day job. I don't know what to do about it. Answers on a postcard.

Work Surfaces

'You are where you work', said nobody, ever.

Today I had a moment of clarity about the standard of my work. The great problem I have is being in the zone and unless I am in the zone, I find it virtually impossible to write. I need to be in a comfortable space, free of distractions. I need to have a reasonable book for writing in and a good pen. I need to be sitting at the right angle and I need to make sure that people aren't going to distract me. It's a long list of things that can go wrong. Even simple things. For example...

I might not have enough battery on my phone to listen to music.

My pen might have run out/got lost/been stolen.

My wife, (Yes, I got married last summer, I don't think I blogged about it) may want to talk about Grey's Anatomy/Glee/X-Factor.

Any body else might want my attention. 

My book may have run out of pages.

Anything else, like the temperature or a fly or the fact that the rosé I'm drinking on this warm summer's night is too sweet for my palette. (wine is almost as important as writing)

Actually, while we're on the subject, I never drink and write. I write much better when I've been drinking, though slower, I'm frightened of the idea of the alcoholism slippery slope. If I ever feel that I need a drink to create, I'll stop writing forever. George Orwell said that writing must come first and I'm inclined to agree. I would sacrifice a lot of things to follow my dream but a line has to be drawn somewhere. I'm writing the best book I possibly can. If it is not good enough, so be it. In the end, it's only a book, even if it's my life's work.

All that, however, is an aside. 

I wanted to talk about my bag. I put my bag on my lap and use it as a writing desk. I always have. Maybe eighteen months ago, I swapped a beautiful soft leather briefcase for a nylon computer bag. I wanted to work more on computer for the day job and I didn't want to destroy the leather case my wife had bought for me. Today, I use this nylon case as my writing desk and today I understood why I have been writing less. The nylon fabric slips. This may not seem very much but It throws me out of my zone. I am no longer at the right angle, comfortable and undisturbed and I think this may be why I have written so much less. Simply because I am not comfortable writing. I don't know what to do about it. I suppose that I am going to have to change bags. We will have to wait and see. I am trying to reclaim my mojo and this may be one of the steps that needs to be taken.

All that said, I have actually been doing some writing over the last few days. I made a start on the next chapter today and got through about half of it.

Just imagine what I could do with a bag that has a higher friction co-efficient...

DR

Trees, or, how to keep track of a plethora of Characters

As you may have noticed, this is another blog post.

I know, I know. They are like London buses. You have nothing for ages and now suddenly two crop up. Well the truth of the matter is, as I mentioned, that I bought a Chromebook. I'm enjoying it and trying to be more organized in my ways of working. It's why I bought the Chromebook in the first place. It seems to be working. I am on an organizing drive. Images, documents, mp3s and anything else that I can lay my hands on. I have done a reasonable amount of internal organization too. I have turned ephemeral ideas into things that are a little more concrete. I have started compiling my notes into something useful. I believe that it is Terry Pratchett, someone whose work I greatly admire, who has a directory on his computer called 'The Pit'. I have ended up with something very similar. A great morass of junk, duplicated documents and irrelevant information. I have been trying to render it less morass-y and more reclaimed-farmland-y. It has been going well.

George RR Martin, another writer I hold in esteem, has huge long lists at the back of his books in order to keep track of all the different characters. I think that I am going to need something similar. I'm not really stealing his idea, I certainly wouldn't want to include them as appendices, more that he has had a good idea that I could perhaps share relative to organizing my characters.

I know he can be spiky about people reusing his ideas so I hope that he is OK with my reproducing a little of his organization. I don't have houses per se in my book so I think that I will need to organise them in a tree structure relative to their geographical location. Different characters have different interactions in different places at different times which means that my geographical structure may not work. But a tree structure is almost certainly the way forward. I think I may colour code them. Principle Characters, Major Actors, Medium Actors, Minor Actors, Foreshadows and Mentioned.

For example, I have a character called 'Tom'. He is a barman and has been repeatedly been mentioned through the chapters as some of the action takes place in his bar in the town of Outpost. Other then pleasantries, I don't think he has much to say. He would be a Minor Actor but his two daughters, also mentioned by name and who have virtually nothing to say in the book would be Mentioned.

Why is this necessary? You do like to ask questions don't you.

The answer is because I am on an organizing drive and getting that organized and keeping it up do date will help me write. I haven't been writing of late and so I have tried to drive that inactivity to place myself into a situation where when I go back to writing, everything is where I need it. Plus, I can never remember names when it comes to mentioning them again and I don't always have the Notebook to hand.

I hope it works. If it doesn't, it will be George RR Martin's fault.*

DR

 *Seriously George, it won't be your fault it will be mine.**

**What will be your fault is not getting the Winds of Winter out soon enough.