Well, it’s the same old story … I start off in fine fettle, having carefully drawn up my three-days-per-chapter timetable.  The first three chapters crack along, the fourth sticks a bit and by the middle of Chapter Five, I grind to a halt, paralysed at the thought of filling another five and half chapters.  So the rough draft gets rougher and rougher.  At this stage, I’m just writing dialogue and the occasional stage direction (although I’ve never attempted a screen play, I guess it would be something like this) so while the first three chapters fill 15 pages each, and it’s easy to see how they’ll expand to the final 17 or 18, Chapter Four is only 10 pages and Chapter Five only 7.

My timetable, too, has been radically revised, which is just as well, as it left me only 10 days to rewrite the entire book.  Now, I’ve allowed myself a day each for the last four chapters,  and I’ll think myself lucky if I can fill five pages for each.  This will give me three days to prepare a talk and a workshop which I’m giving in Glasgow on 2nd and 3rd November, and means that – in theory – I can start on a proper draft on 5th November.  That’s the plan anyway.  I know it will be all right, I know I always work like this … but it doesn’t stop this stage feeling horrible!

My idea of blocking off October and November entirely to concentrate on the book hasn’t quite worked out either, what with the start of term at the university, workshops, friends coming to stay, two part-time jobs, trips to London, a sudden, irresistible impulse to replace my loathsome cooker (rather more time-consuming than you would think) and what seems like a permanent appointment at the vet.  All three of them have been this week, Walter twice.  It’s a very funny thing that just as I begin to think that I haven’t had to take them to the vet for a while, they will suddenly produce suspicious lumps (Walter) or bad ears (Mungo).  Always when I am hanging out for my next advance and can least afford it, too.

But apart from all these distractions, I do think the book has potential.  Chase, in particular, is developing quite differently from what I had originally imagined, and seems to have taken on a character of his own, while Bea, poor thin,  is now endowed with a number of my own personal hang-ups (especially re. her hair).  It’s all right for her, though – she gets to stay in the outback in the end.

Having been obsessed with Freya and Max throughout the summer, I had the proofs through for The Honeymoon Prize this week and I felt quite detached about them, having moved on to new characters.  It was almost like reading a book by someone else – I’d look at a passage and think: ‘Did I write that?’  I did enjoy it, though, so I hope you will, too.