madelinekelly

Cast down by three realisations:

1. I'm not going to finish this book by 16th July.

2. I'm not going to finish it within 50,000 words. I've written almost 40,000 now and it feels like I'm only halfway through the story.

3. It's a rubbish story, written badly.

I'm beginning to feel the way I did when I was 18 and trying to paint a picture for A-Level Art: I'd have an idea in my head, and it'd look fantastic, but I never had the necessary skills to make that image a reality. I have the nugget of what could be a brilliant children's story, bumping around in my empty skull, and I don't have the skills to put it into words on a page. I think I might get the necessary skills, eventually. But I don't have them now, and it's so frustrating -- reading what I've written and seeing how far removed it is from what I envisioned. Bah.

Anyway. I'm going to carry on writing it until it IS finished, because otherwise I'll never acquire any writerly skill at all -- and I'll need some if I'm going to write the Pig story (desperate to write that one, now). I am also not going to let myself buy or read HBP until I've finished writing this story -- got to have something to look forward to at the end of it. But this does mean that I'll be off-line after 16th July, so that Miri, Loz and Lou can spoil as much as they like without fear of melting my eyes.

At a family party on Monday night my little seven-year-old brother was running around, bumping into people, saying, "I'm a suicide bomber!"

Apparently it's the game of choice for most children in his primary school, when they aren't being observed by horrified adults.

We thought of telling him off, then remembered the antecedents of Ring-A-Ring-A-Rosies. Kids, eh? They have a knack for it.