should be

I should be editing right now. The document's opened on not one, but two screens. The task itself is not a major overhaul, but a minor tweak. Well, two minor tweaks, really. Merely a matter of a sentence or two. Outside, the sea is silver and calm, its waves minuscule and constant. Inside, the cat refuses to eat spiders but will devour mosquitos, moths and daddy longlegs (the British ones, with wings; American daddy longlegs are themselves arachnids and thus would not appeal to the cat). 

I like the edits. I feel no sense of injured pride that my publisher read my work and said 'that's great, but…'. Well, none right now. I'm sure that with the passage of time disagreements and bruised egos will run rampant. But for now it's a nice feeling to have someone read my stuff and make the odd suggestion. It helps that they're additions, rather than subtractions. 

I should be editing right now, but I keep looking out the window at the calm of the sea and feeling the light sting of jealousy.

little progress

I made a mistake a few months ago. I was chatting to my publisher and he asked me how the writing was going. I told him it was going great, and that you can always tell when the writing is going great because I invariably am writing more of everything. I blog more, I email more, I scribble in my notebooks more and, of course, I write the book more. The urge to pound out prose doesn't stick to one particular project; words spill out onto everything. It's a nice feeling. 

Of course, since that little chat, I've not blogged or written very much of anything. He's not asked me about progress on the book since then either. He can easily check this blog and the wine blog and see ever-lengthening time between updates and surmise that there's been a bit of a lull. It means I don't have to stammer out excuses, at least.

I can't attribute the lull to any one particular thing. It's a convergence of scattered bits and pieces that drag my fingers away from the keys and my pens. Some good things; I finally signed my publishing contract for the new top secret book that will be revealed imminently. Some bad things that will go unmentioned here, but cause me to furrow my brow and sigh with all the world's weight when I think no one is listening. 

I'm in Scotland at the moment, until Sunday. The cat's good company and the weather's almost summer-like. I know so few people here now that it's easy to hide and write. The lull's retreating, and hopefully the words will return.