Preparation

Next week my children go away on their school residentials. All of the senior school – apart from years eleven and thirteen – go away for five days, leaving the school quiet for mock exams.

Last year I went to Andaman Discoveries which is community based tourism project set up in the wake of the tsunami. This year I’m off to write for five days in Khorat in the Nakhon Ratchasima province. Famous for its silk and stone industries, I might have to take a day trip out to Pak Thong Chai where the best silk cloth is rumoured to originate. The jungle at the nearby Khao Yai – Thailand’s oldest national park – was the backdrop for the film version of Alex Garland’s novel The Beach.

I was scrabbling away for somewhere to go last week, my priorities being:

Relatively cheap
Max half a day’s travel
Mountains in the distance
Internet

It isn’t a rural idyll as it's Thailand's third largest city but it’s a change of scenery and being away gets me out of my regular ‘stuff to do’ mode.

In the meantime, my ‘stuff to do’ list is gigantic as we have to purchase all sorts of things on the kids’ lists of essential items.

My new mantra

The last week – ten days has been a disaster writing wise. No time to do anything. Today I’ve got to take the artwork for the banners to MBK where they will … do something with their software to make them into banners and print them for us. Then I’ve got other errands to run. Tomorrow the children need picking up and dropping off and totally different time of day in different parts of Bangkok. I want to go to the Thaicraft fair in the middle of the day; Husband and Daughter have piano lessons in the afternoon and then on Sunday Husband’s off to India. It’s so busy.

I’ve really got out of the habit of 100 words a day, and need a big boot shoving up my backside. The part that I’m working on has turned into a ‘I simply can’t work this out’ kind of project so rather than open it, harrumph, close it again I have to take it a sentence at a time. I can do that: one sentence at a time.

I have earmarked next week to write (apart from Thursday). I have two weeks before my writing course on Koh Chang and I’m feeling an amateur, fraudulent and devoid of imagination; but also quite a bit excited.

One sentence at a time is my new mantra…

Back in Bangkok

Of today

Son is fourteen today; I’m not sure how this is possible.

Husband’s birthday is today too, but he is much older and yesterday he began to make grouchy noises about this fact. I am of the opinion that being older is much better than being … not any older.

Of elastic deadlines

My break has done me good. I am quite desperate to get writing again. My self-imposed deadline is nearly here and I haven’t done what I wanted to do. But. I can’t stop so there’ll be no more talk of quitting.

I am cheered too by an email from Julia Bell who told me that The Literary Consultancy is holding a writing holiday in Koh Chang in September. You can see the news here, and their website is here and will go live at the end of April. I am not making a new deadline but I do want to attend the course with some writing under my belt.

Of Monday

I AM FLYING TO ENGLAND ON MONDAY NIGHT AND CAN BARELY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT.

If you live there, what is the weather like? What clothes do I need to unearth and pack?