Thought Soup

I woke up this morning with what can only be described as a head full of “thought-soup”. You know the feeling? When you haven’t slept too well? When your mind is so chock-full of ideas, feelings, and quandaries that it feels like it is dribbling out of your ears...?
So what flavour soup is my mind?

Minestrone?
…It’s strike day, today. Everyone is on strike, and I want to be too, but it’s come at the worst time of the year. I have a stag-do, a wedding, my wife’s birthday, my wedding anniversary and a website to pay for. I can’t actually afford to take two days off without pay, even though I was shafted by this organisation. Yeah, I’d like to strike. But I can’t…

Cream of tomato?
…Two old university friends came up this weekend. Usually I’m starved of long, absorbing chats about films, books and writing, but this weekend I’ve been doing just that, and it was wonderful. I miss that. I miss that kind of environment I had almost ten years ago when we would muse for an hour on perhaps a single line of a song, a page of a novel or a scene from a film. Yeah, it’s pretentious I know, but sometimes life can be a little more colourful with a little pretension. The only down-side was that one of those friends, a writer also, talked about how he has struggled since a teenager to finish a project and that he felt he had lost something important over the years that enabled him to write on instinct. That got me worried, because I very much write on instinct. I don’t always get it right, but I reckon it’s one of my strengths. What if I lost that...?

Vegetable?
…Ah the website. A vanity tool of self-promotion. But why not? If it sells books, then it is a good thing. Most websites are about promotion. They are trying to sell you something – a product or even just an idea. So I went into promotion overdrive and bashed out what the website should look like. Mel is a great designer, so I can’t wait to see how it looks at the end. It should be something special…

Carrot and coriander?
…All things writing never ceases to torment my thoughts for good or ill. At the moment there is a lull in The Secret War. I have my cover (it’s being tweaked) and now I’m just waiting for a further update from the folks at Macmillan New Writing. I spoke to the manager of The Place, the venue for my Sheffield book launch in January next year. It can hold about 200 people, and from the quick list I’ve made already, the attendees should be roughly about that number - but like anyone organising a big birthday party, I’m nervous about who will actually turn-up! Also, The Burning Sands of Time continues to be my full-time project, while I find myself scribbling down notes for Smith when I get the chance (on the bus home, in bed, in the kitchen, and even in the bathroom)…

Oxtail?
…I went to a 30th birthday party on Sunday – another old university friend. She has a new baby girl who is only a few weeks old. She also has a daughter who is almost ten years old (I think), yet it feels like only yesterday that my friend was a student in Sheffield, with no thoughts of having a family on the horizon. Also one of our close friends’ daughter (again, very young - only a couple of months old) was rushed to hospital in London with a severe chest infection and it was a close thing – too close. If that wasn’t enough, this weekend I learnt that one of my best friends has lost someone close to him in tragic circumstances – and is understandably gutted. All three things put my life (and indeed this blog) into perspective for the weekend.
Blogs…
Writing…
Everything…