Dame Boudicca

I would like to end my short story about John today - I need another 6000 words to get it where I want it. And at four (read 2½ hours) I am to be somewhere doing something completely different.

Which means I better get started.

But first off to wash my hair.

Right, I'm back. Just for a few days, but quite enough time to pop by here and do some updates on my writing.

In the end I managed to sort out my issues with the short story about Charlotte. I never could warm up to her completely - but I allowed myself to lean back, look at her and let her go loose and do her own thing, say her own lines and just pat her a tad bit on the head. It might need some rewriting, but all in all I like the result. More so than I thought I would.

The next short story in line is even more of a challenge for me. (But that was the point, right? Writing about stuff and people I usually try to avoid, hoping to learn something from it, in the process.) Though this might have been to bite off more than I can chew. What do I know about 18 years old boys, who are spoiled rotten by over-indulgent parents and who just happen to be gay to top it off. I will finish it though. I have to. Just because it will prove to me that I can. But I doubt I will write about such a character again - at least I will avoid having someone like that as a main character.

And when I was on the train I edited two whole chapters of Love and Friendship. Chapter 6 and 7 to be more precise. I do love that story, I love the characters and I get all warm and fuzzy when I work with them. I have this nagging suspicion, though, that anyone who has read the actual story would look at me with an odd expression in their eyes if I told them that. It's not a warm and fuzzy story.

(Well, if this is supposed to be about creativity, I might as well write about creative stuff - right?)

My writing for the moment is rather slow. It is kind of annoying, because I have some great ideas - but for once there seems to be a problem to get them from head to paper. It could have something to do with my aching fingers, but it is still annoying. I am working on a rather big project at the moment, 25 short stories, set in a school-class. Each short story follows one of the students for a week, and sometimes they pop up later on in other stories, and so far I have finished four.

The fifth I am working on is the story of Charlotte, who spends her afternoons writing in a small café - and eyeing up a man who always comes there on Mondays. So far, so good, but the writing still goes slow, I know what I want to happen, and I can kind of get it to move in the general direction of that, but that is about it. It's like wading through mud.

Usually when things like that happens I know it means I have to delete some of the text and rewrite it - but I actually don't think that's the problem now. I just need to keep on pulling. It might end up in something worth while, after all!