In which there is little to report.

My birthday has come and gone and taken my youth away with it. Aieeee! I’m not a big fan of birthdays (see photo for evidence) I always find the lead up and the day itself to be excrutiating but once it’s over I am quickly back to my crazy extrovert wiseass ways (see photo for evidence) My lovely family brought me to Eatzen in Ashbourne (snazzy!) and put up with my moods for a good few hours. Well done to them.

Also, this week saw my triumphant return to the Dunshaughlin table quiz scene. Actually, ‘trumphant’ might be pushing it. Quiz-Team Aguilera, as we called ourselves, managed a mildly-respectable score of 47 out of a possible 80 and finished somewhere in the middle. Hey, there were only three of us on the team.

But in the raffle afterwards we cleaned up, yo– one bottle of wine, a voucher for dry cleaning and money off a beauty treatment in the village. Who were the real winners? I think we all know the answer to that.

It was us. I don’t think even the Glorious Dead of 1916 would argue with me.

Oh wait, this is supposed to be a blog about writing. Shit. I better put some stuff in about writing. So, Graham how have you been getting on this week?

Poorly!

I keep a log– my Log of Triumph— an excel document wherein I record anything to do with writing/performing. It is very bare this week, I must admit. Probably the biggest thing, or at least the one thing with the greatest potential, is the fact that I’ve begun my novel. Well, I say began, but really all I did was right-click the desktop (on my computer) and create a new document called ‘Untitled Novel.’ There aren’t any words there, not yet.

I haven’t decided whether the novel should tie into my previous writing (everything I have written since my one-act Hot Stuff on the Dancefloor over a decade ago are linked together) or whether it should stand alone. If it’s the former I have a nice prologue ready to go called ‘Seven Conversations’ to tie the novel to the 150-story sequence that precedes it. I am hesitant though. Part of me wants to make a complete break, but another part loves the idea of a unified body of work. (I like the idea of dying as an old man, shrieking “Don’t you see? It’s all linked! It’s all part of one big thing! Ah, Lord!”) I suppose I’ll take my own advice: write it and see.

I have vague ideas of what I want to do with the novel, a clearer idea of what I don’t want to do, but as of yet no grand narrative is presenting itself. I need to start it soon though, even if I don’t know where it’s going. The lack of writing is beginning to grate. I wonder how the process of writing a novel will differ from writing stories. I’m a bit intimidated. I need to come up with a story that earns the format. It’s fine to write a little shitty story, I waste a week and twenty pages on it and then move onto better things. However, I’ll be writing this novel for anything between six months and a year and expending perhaps a hundred thousand words on it. Intimidating.

Work continues on the secret project. Very close to announcing it but not quite. Before Christmas, I think. Don’t hold me to that.

In terms of submissions I was a bit hard on myself last week for not getting more done. The fact of the matter is there’s just not much out there. Of the 450+ updates on my Duotrope RSS feed there were only three places worth sending things to– Blackbird, The Puritan and Unmanned Press. After another search of Duotrope I found three more that I wanted to submit to, but those submissions required a fee. Once my finances are straightened out I’ll submit next week. As it stands I have thirty-three open submissions. Fingers-crossed at least one of them comes good in the near future. I received no rejections this week, at least not at the time of writing. Things will be slow over Christmas I guess.

And that, dear friends, is where things stand. Some mild effort on my part to Get Somewhere. Let’s give the week a C-. Must try harder.

Off now to see The Hobbit.

Yay!