Tuesday 11 June 2013

At the hut

At the hut, listening to evening birdsong, the plaintive bleating of sheep about to be shorn and distant traffic. It's a glorious, warm, sunny evening, the amber light spilling through fresh-leafed trees, ferns unfurled, chestnut flowers just starting to fade and elder about to froth forth. Drove down in the MG, top down, smugly aware of all the other irritable, sweltering drivers in their family wagons and repmobiles. There's something wonderfully liberating about driving a car with no roof in the sunshine. It makes motoring fun again rather than just a trip from A to B.
Rickie just texted me back to say they are at Bala. Having a cup of tea on the fire escape steps. There's a train whistle down in the valley and sun slowly slips up the hillside. Stone is warm to the touch, moss shrunken from lack of moisture and uncommon heat.
Next time I am at the hut it will be the tail end of the year, damp and dank and dying. How impossible all that seems on this fine evening, with all of summer's promise lying ahead.

Monday 27 May 2013

Update

Well, maybe I haven't managed to write very single day, but before I came on holiday I had done 26,000 words of the novel and have added another couple of thousand while I've been away. It's hard to write regularly at home, especially now at the garden and allotment are needing plenty of attention and work is as hectic as ever. If I was on holiday for another month or so, reckon I could get it all finished!

Friday 4 January 2013

New Year thoughts

The murky weather continues; flooded fields are a commonplace sight, the mornings seem darker than ever and my new solar panels are doing a great job of keeping the rain off the roof. And yet, there are signs of spring. In the garden, snowdrops are pushing up through the soil and this evening as dusk fell, birds were singing as they never do in the dark days of November and December. They know that the year has turned and the nights are slowly shortening.
So far this year I have been writing every day. On New Year's Eve, Dave worked out that if I want to get to 70,000 words by the end of the year, I need to write 164 words per day, which, lets face it, isn't much. So on January 1st I sat down and wrote 405 words in about 20 minutes. Then on the 2nd I managed 499 and last night around 399. Writing regularly has always been the key to getting through writer's block, procrastination and the feeling that it is too daunting and huge a task to ever be completed.