How (not) to write a book

1. Click on 'Favourites' and then 'Bank Account' and try to work out how come you've spent nearly a hundred quid in Sainsbury's since you last went, which was only two days ago. Surely there's baked beans and crap in the freezer you should be eating before replenishing your stocks? Didnt' you listen to ANYTHING your mother told you?!
And how come you seem to be spending more on Amazon books P&P than you would do if you actually drove your car into town, parked and bought the damned things from Waterstones?

2. Click on 'Favourites' and then 'Facebook' and realise you have less of a life than that Donna girl in Cheam who's always playing *Bedraggled* or whatever the hell it's called. And how come Neil in Croydon, who's Janice's ex's best mate's cousin from Northampton is friends with Pauline from Surrey and more to the point how come you know more about your daughter's life from her wall-to-wall with her mates than you do by actually speaking to her.  Face-to-Face.  Like.

3.  Click on 'Favourites' followed by 'Twitter'  and watch threads of people having 140-character-long (or less) snappy, conversations with each other and 4 or 5 other 'others' and wonder how come their lives seem so jolly and bright and fun compared with yours, and how come even though you *think* you've got a great retort, that the minute you've typed it into the 'reply' box, checked for typos, grammar, punctuation and entertainment value, somebody else has beaten you to it or they're now talking... sorry, *Tweeting* about something completely different.

4.  Make tea.
And,
5....  oh go on then, help yourself to a slice of cake as well.  You deserve it after the exhaustion of trying to keep up with the Twitter threads.

6. Click on 'Documents' followed by 'ideas' and then wonder how, at 1,500 words you ever thought there was *truly* a book in that hair-brained lunacy of an opener.  Seriously, if you stuff too much into the chicken's neck too soon, isn't it all going to end up coming out of it's arse?

7. Open another file in the 'ideas' folder and marvel at the humour, intellect and biting social satire of the words that you now sit back, arms folded in smug repose, reading.  My God, but you were on FIRE when you wrote that - so where's it going?  How's it going to unfold?  Where's the spark gone?  Write another sentence.

8.  Delete it.

9.  Undo delete.

10. Repeat until there's a small bald area of scalp on your head and you have no fingernails.

11. Repeat 4.

12. In fact, just repeat.

13. Until you have absolutely no idea what made you think you could ever write anything worth reading - EVER.  (apart from that document in 'ideas' that you're masochistically drawn to time and time again).

AAAArrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

p.s. d'you think this is what's commonly termed "Writer's Block"?
p.p.s. Roll on 1st November and the Na-No-Wri-Mo-Lax!

SOMEBODY STOP ME!

Ever since the decision to undertake the re-write (daunting but not a little bit exciting. But still more daunting than… anyway) I have found myself in an eBay frenzy of mental-sized proportions. My wardrobe has exceeded its fill-by date and I’m no good at chucking away even if it doesn’t fit or look any good.
These are the rules:

“one day I’ll get (back or just) into it”
“one day this’ll be back in fashion”
“one day I’ll like it better cos I’ll be too old to give a toss what I damn well look like” (I fully intend to be a bitter, crusty, moaning old baggage of the highest order)

Whereas what I should actually be telling myself is:
“one day I’ll know better”(I won’t of course – this is ingrained madness) (hereditary)

There’s a White Elephant in my wardrobe and he keeps wanting buns.

I should stop putting a ‘watch’ on every item which catches my eye because it’s fatal. That little *ping* which announces that my watched item is Ending Soon and that’s it.
A well-hidden freakishly scary competitive streak launches me into the “quick-quick-buy-buy-BUY” frenzy and I can’t stop until I’ve managed to out-bid that other person who’s sitting there with a massive make-or-break re-write to do but leaps at every *ping* opportunity thrown her way to duck out of it briefly.
Only it’s not a brief ducking.
The minute I’m committed to buy I start to sweat. Too late. It’s not like having a try on in the shop and deciding it’s not really what I want. That’s it. No returns. Stuck with it for the rest of my days.
Re-list it? Yeah, yeah it would be SO simple, wouldn’t it?
But then I’ve got to take a photo of it, decide how much I want to start it at, angst for 5 days over why nobody wants my cast-offs and then worry that what I’ll get won’t cover the price I paid for it in the first place – plus there’s that tricky question of how much postage – oh AND having to buy a bag or two to put them in – and then that trip to the Post Office … my God, does it never end?!
That level of hesitation and anxiety I could do without right now. I’m in the middle of a re-write, didn’t I tell you?