a marriage versus a love affair

I've just watched Newsnight on BBC2, and some blathering idiot was going on about 'selling a deal to the motorist' (they were on about the congestion charge). Since when did we elect politicians to 'sell us deals'?! I thought they were supposed to come up with policies, not deals. Shows you just how politically inept I am!

Apart from that, I had a good day's writing. After spending over a year thinking about the story, it's taken me ages to begin writing anything longer than snippets. I only hope I can keep the momentum going until I reach my target! It's also very difficult to be in England and write a novel set in Spain, so to help me along I listened to Maktub, Camaron de la Isla, and Ketama, LOUDLY, as promised, and watched half an hour of TVEi. Que guay! It worked, and after today's efforts I have so far racked up a grand total of 10,000 words. Hurrah!

The whole novel writing thing is quite a learning curve, I have to say, and it's interesting to find my head taking a totally different approach to the one it takes when I write short stories (my usual medium). I remember Al Kennedy talking about this at a conference last year and thinking, whatever does she mean? But I'm starting to get it now. It really is a love affair versus a marriage. Short stories are all consuming. I constantly re-work each line of prose, reducing it in much the same way as you reduce mulled wine, so that what you're left with is rich, dense material that says far more than the weight of its word count. At least that's what I try to do. Novel writing on the other hand, is a game of not showing your cards too soon, of holding back. There's more scenes to work with and more characters to develop. It's a far larger canvas that stretches as far as the eye can see, and then some. It's going to take me bloody years, and there's a thesis to write as well! I'm okay. No really. The palpitations will calm down in a minute or two.

Also listened to Russel Brand's radio show on BBC Radio 2's listen again, which for some inane reason, I find hugely entertaining. And then the kids came home from school and we made chocolate brownies. Fab!