Authors Electric

 In my previous post here I reported on my new writing plan for 2023, but I must confess I've already driven a coach and horses through it. The desolate wastes of January seemed to stretch so far ahead that I couldn't restrict myself to working on only one novel at a time, but I didn't entirely expect to end the month having written 12,000 words of the novel I was halfway with as well as 15,000 of the one I didn't intend to start until February. And there's more... What I had planned to do was to spend most of January finishing the historical novel I was in the middle of, while occasionally getting out my plotting notebook to draft a plot for a new mystery novel in one of my existing series. I'm not quite sure where it all went wrong, but I think that as usual I got bored with plotting and decided I wouldn't know where the story was going until I made a start on writing it. I am already well aware that this is a high-risk strategy and often results in a lot ...

 I'm not sure whether I've been writing too much lately and have burnt out, or whether this always happens in the summer - maybe I have a sort of vague memory of long school holidays at this time of year. It would certainly be nice to spend a month at the seaside as we sometimes did when I was a child. This year we will be lucky to get away for a planned long weekend in Llandudno, which is at least by the sea as well as having a lovely long promenade for walking. Unfortunately our journey there relies on all four trains we have to catch being present and more or less correct at the right times. That's four trains there and another four back, by the way. Llandudno must be one of the most difficult places in the country to get to from here. But I mustn't ramble on about trains, tempting though it is. View from Conwy Castle No matter what the cause, I am having trouble concentrating on my work in progress. It may be because I've made it too serious and so it isn't ...