I've been having a very mixed 2008.
It started very well, with me finishing off last year's NaNoWriMo effort. It was a rough and hideous thing, incoherent in the extreme, but it was still done. Then I embarked on a new project. I was trying for something shamelessly commercial, but it came undone. Couldn't make it work. My bloody detective wouldn't detect. She just mooned about, trying to ignore my attempts to prod her in the right direction.
So I abandoned her, somewhere in a field in the Manawatu, if I remember rightly. Twenty thousand words. Going nowhere. Blergh. Then I tried to make amends, and get her to do something else. Again, she wasn't having it and this second attempt was put on hold after just a thousand words or so. They were good words. But they weren't going anywhere.
But now it is June, and June is So.C.No.C. and that means I really have to try to write something. Forget the new job and the new child and the benighted in-laws that just won't go away. I have to find something to write about, so I've reverted to type. I've dragged the long sufferring Jack Callaghan out of (unofficial) retirement for another stumbling, incoherent, and probably very violent adventure.
So far, it's going pretty well. I've managed to set a new personal best, killing seven people in the first couple of thousand words. Shotguns in enclosed spaces will do that, every time. And, after the fustration of the failed efforts earlier in the year, writing hackneyed pulp nonsense is a breeze.
