Sunday word count & excuses, excuses…

Since I started my mini race with Sheepish I’d been writing pretty consistently. This was good because it meant I was carrying all the threads of the plot in my head and was shuffling between them as and when it was needed. Then I had the emotional traumas of the UK and even when I had a tiny opportunity to write, I couldn’t.

The day that I left Bangkok, you may remember that Paul Theroux came to visit the Neilson Hays Library. He said during his talk that he was grateful to his family for providing him with a stable and happy environment in which to write. I noticed this comment but didn’t think much of it until several weeks later, a good while into my UK trip and then I realised that this is essential to me too. My family here give me that (mostly) and I am very grateful to them for it. (It also appears that I can’t write in my pyjamas…I have to get showered and dressed and honestly, I feel a bit resentful about this. What is the point of working from home unless it’s so you can stay in your pyjamas all day?)

So the writing should have exploded in this last seven days but in addition to losing the thread of what happens next, I’ve also been making hats fighting jetlag. I really am rubbish at changing time zones – what am I doing living here? Or going back there?

Anyway, the words this week have been a rather pitiful 458 but any words are welcome: some are most definitely better than none. And this has pushed me to a word count of over 80,000 which is rather fab.

I was still holding onto a bit of anxiety though; these weren’t new words. They were inserted while rereading the last 10,000 words which I had to do in order to remember what was going on in my story. Even after re-reading I still couldn’t see my way forward so I was quite despondent yesterday but I went back to it fresh this morning and I’ve disentangled the different threads and now I have mapped out a rough way forward.

Fingers crossed please.

Paul Theroux

It's jolly difficult to believe that last night the Board at the Neilson Hays Library were welcoming Paul Theroux and this morning I'm sitting in a little hotel room in overcast London.

We had a wonderful night. It was a great coup to get him to come and talk and members and non members alike turned out in their droves to come and listen.

He was wonderful, funny, charming, and generous. I'm a bit fuzzy headed to give you a report so I'm just going to leave you with some pictures. (Yes, that's me meeting Paul Theroux!)

Busy

I fly tonight and I haven’t packed yet.
I had book club today to discuss The Little Stranger. It was an excellent meeting.
I wasn’t going to stay for lunch because I hadn’t packed yet, but I changed my mind, saying ‘well, I’ve got to eat…’
I’ve come home to pack now.
And here I am blogging.
I have to go out in one hour because Paul Theroux is coming to talk at Neilson Hays Library. He is in Bangkok for the Sea Write Awards.
And now I must go and pack.

See you in the UK.