I am just about to start the second – and hopefully final – draft of the current book, which so far has been going spookily well.  Normally I manage about 40 pages of a first draft but this one is already 95 pages long, and at times I just didn’t seem to be able to shut my characters up.  Of course, not trying to do another job at the same time helped, but generally I think it’s just that some books acquire a life of their own and others, like the one I have just finished, never quite click.  So I’m hoping that this book will continue to write itself ...

Am busily touching wood, though, as updating this diary is a bit of a displacement activity in lieu of starting back at Chapter One, which could be a bad sign.  I’m sure I’ll be all right once I get going though, as this time I have a very clear idea of my heroine, Kate, and the hero, Finn, and where they are (London) and what they’re doing (the usual!), and the assorted secondary characters, including Derek the dog seem to have found a place for themselves too.  So now it’s really just a question of padding out and refining the existing draft which is very short on punctuation and extremely variable when it comes to tense, but has the basic skeleton of dialogue.  (But if it’s just a question of that, why aren’t I doing it right now, instead of inventing excuses as to why it’s not worth starting just yet??)  Might just have to go out and have a drink to put me in the mood, and then I’ll start …

I really must, as I don’t have a lot of time to play with.  I want to have the book finished by the last week of July, and am committed to working mornings until then as well, which is a pity but can’t be helped.  However, I have a huge incentive in the form of a weekend in Paris to look forward to then – surely the ultimate in romance, and which I trust will be a lot more fun than just writing about it!