On the NaNoWriMo front I hit 23,433 words this morning. That means that, if I do the expected 16,667 words tomorrow, I'll be over the half way mark. Half a novel. Better than no novel at all. It's weird that I'm being incredibly disciplined just to see my name stuck on a website amongst thousands of others - I'm not usually this well-behaved when somebody has paid me hard cash to write. Writing with no outline is scary, all of a sudden. I've got a rough idea, inside my head, of where and what and why, but it's very, very sketchy. It's liberating too, though, and I've ended up in quite frightening, alarming places that I didn't expect to go When I've finished it I'll post it on my website - so you can already start looking forward to being incredibly bored or making some good excuses ("I don't know how to download," "No, sorry, I'm out that night and for the rest of my life," "A 6000kb file is just too much for my dial-up account" will all appease me). I have no problem with dialogue when it is needed in the novel. But my prose is clunky and very unpoetic, I think. Still, it looks like I'm on schedule to have 50,000 words by the end of the month which I can then spend time going back over and playing with. Easy, ain't it, this writing lark?
Arts Council emailed me yesterday as they're sending out a press release about the round of awards that my Arthur Rank project is in. I have to write "with particular reference to the difference it will make and to whom if possible". In around 50 words. How come I can write in excess of 20,000 words without breaking sweat but this particular 50 feels a bit daunting?
All this research I'm doing is all well and good (I was even dammed with feint praise the other day by two different people for my ability to dig up oodles of source material while they "wouldn't know where to start") but I'm getting tired of the mundanity of pushing buttons on photocopiers, typing up bits and pieces and trying to make sense of some of the scribbles I've put in notebooks. I am, quite possibly, just days away from calling a halt to all that and actually starting the writing process proper. Imagine that, actually using my imagination. The freedom!
Listening: Damien Rice - 9.
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