Bad for laundry, good for writing

Today has been a highly suitable day for writing, largely because it was shockingly unsuitable for anything else - especially doing the laundry! Normally I intersperse my writing day with loads of washing because the action of sorting the whites/coloureds/fluffies, washing them a load at a time, hanging them out, in batches, and bringing them in fits in at the end of the day fits quite nicely with my concentration span. Whether I'm writing, studing or doing other work, I can usually concentrate quite well for about 45 minutes, then I start to taper off. If I force myself to keep going until the hour is up, I have then earned myself a little break for having a glass of water or an apple, or dealing to the next stage of the laundry. usually on a Friday I get two or three loads washed and dried, but I never seem to have enough time to fol d it all as well, and often it ends up in a big pile on the bedroom floor, where it stays for a week. Oh well, as my good friend Amanda says, boring women have immaculate homes!
In short, today it rained virtually all day, with varying levels of intensity from miserable drizzle to full teeming. The remains of a tropical cyclone have passed over Auckland and sogged away over the Hauraki Gulf, so hopefully it'll stop raining in a few hours. Meanwhile, I got my 3000 words written even though I had to go into work for two and a half hours for an important meeting (impressing the publishing hierarchy being more important than my sputtering little career as a writer). So I didn't get any work done on other projects, such as the three cartoon outlines I have to write for Birkdale Intermediate (I must get this done) or any work on my non fiction project. Fridays seem to come round so slowly and pass by so quickly - there's never enough time to do everything I want to do! But I made my novel the number one priority and got done what I needed to on that today. No interruptions next week - fingers crossed!

Recent reading
I finally got to the end of The Birth of Venus: as I said, great atmosphere but I couldn't sympathise with the main character and the ending was pretty far-fetched. Wouldn't stop me reading other Sarah Dunant novels, though. Since then I have been speeding through Stephen King's On Writing, which I have wanted to read for a long time. Although I've only read one or two of his books, he is obviously a master of the craft and has some excellent things to say - largely, that writing is just a big mystery and you can either do it or you can't, which is something I agree with heartily. As I near the end of this I am trying to choose between more non fiction - Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania, which is one of the prescribed texts for my Travel Writing paper this year, or Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, an archaeological mystery novel set in Carcassonne, which sounds fabulous. I'll probably just try to read both!

Writing someone else's story

The last couple of weeks I have been writing much more than usual - and most of it outside my usual Friday slot. I spent more than 30 hours over the last 10 days working on a rewrite of a autobiography which had been submitted too short and way too light on information by the ghost writer. After editing it down from 33,000 to 30,000 words, I then had to interview the subject (a well-known New Zealand sportswoman) every day for up to an hour, taking shorthand, then build it back up to around 42,000 words. I have been up at six in the morning; I have worked till 10.30 at night. And it is just about done. I could have got it finished today (I just need to edit the appendix and finish composing the preface and it's over) but I went to lunch with a friend instead - I can't work all the time! I didn't really have time to take on the job and would rather have been writing my novel the last couple of weeks but it was a great opportunity to earn some Visa-bill-paying money (those Killers tickets weren't cheap, nor was the Coldplay one) and to get some more experience writing non ficiton and especially biography. It was a real privilege to get to know the subject better - we are pretty much the same age and although we have had very different lives, we got on really well and built up an excellent rapport. I can see myself doing ghost writing of this kind in the future - my journalistic skills have taught me parts are lacking or need to be filled out, and what questions to ask to tease out more information. It was also really interesting writing someone else's story in the first person and trying to retain their distinctive voice. I just hope she likes it!
Not only has all this made me rather tired, I've also got a bit of RSI in my shoulder from using the wheelie mouse and the laptop so much, so am going to sign off. Back on the job next week, with the challenge of trying to get back on track in terms of word count: I will aim for 4000 words the next two Fridays and see how I get on!

Recent reading
I have nearly finished The Birth of Venus and I have to confess, I'm picking up my reading pace so I can get to the end and onto the next thing. While it has great atmosphere, I think the author, Sarah Dunant, skimped on both plot and characterisation. I just don't buy the central romantic connection. But she's a multi-bestselling author, so what would I know?