Category Archives: novel – Joe in Amsterdam

Lovely blue laptop problems and lovely boyfriends

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My lovely blue laptop (which was far more expensive than any equivalent laptops because it was blue and I wanted a blue one) has refused to wake up this morning.

The power supply thingy has been dodgy for a while, and it’s now refusing to work at all.

My patient lovely boyfriend has set me up on the big computer in the other room, so I didn’t have to go into internet withdrawal and so I could get on with my writing. I’m almost at the end of my second draft of Joe in Amsterdam.

The computer fan does sound like an aeroplane, and I can’t really concentrate. Can I have permission to take a day off my writing please?

PS patient lovely boyfriend has just popped his head round the door and he suggested it might be more productive for me to go onto forums and look at power supply problems with my laptop rather than blogging about it. Doesn’t he know that I’m a WRITER?

On not knowing how my own stories end (until I get to the end)

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I’ve just this minute finished the first draft of the novel I’m currently working on – ‘Joe in Amsterdam’.

This is very satisfying because:

a) First drafts always seem to be SO hard for me – scary, beset by terrible persistent doubt, easy-to-avoid etc. and second drafts always seem to be a little less scary and a bit more fun, and
b) Now I know what happens to Joe at the end of the story.

It seems a little strange to me (OK quite a lot strange) that I don’t know how my own story finishes before I get there, but hey – that’s how it works. Who am I to question? I am only the typist.

I’m looking forward to getting started on the next draft, and starting to clean up some of the terrible mess that is the first draft. But first I need to write a list of Amsterdam-related questions to send to a kind person in Amsterdam. But before THAT I need to start a long lunch and go and eat some cake. I do hope you’ll join me.