Progress

It’s handy to have a deadline. I’ve given myself to the end of the summer to complete the follow-up to The Secret War, and late June for the end of the 3rd draft of the book. It means completing around 4 chapters every two weeks or so, which I consider a challenge in view of other disruptions in my life right now.

Yet I’ve managed to complete 4 chapters in a week which is close to miraculous – and needless to say, I’m quite chuffed about it. But it’s come at a cost. I’m utterly fucked – mentally and physically. I feel rundown for the first time in years and realise I have been pushing myself a bit too far too quickly. Not surprising, I guess, with having two full-time jobs. The day-job is twice as demanding as it was 12 months ago, and the writing… well there’s the intense writing regime of a 450 page book coupled with promotion of The Secret War – and even though the latter has been scaled down, I still find myself doing radio shows and promising my services, not to mention writing this blog. Weekends don’t really exist for me at the moment, nor do evenings. And spare time seems to be a thing of the past.

I’m not really complaining about this, because I think feeling a little knackered is a worthwhile price to pay for being published; I just need to slow it down and scale it back, and I think the promotion side of things for The Secret War will be the chief casualty.
Apart from a gig in September (which I’m setting up) the two other planned gigs are going to be scrapped. They sit right in the middle of the final draft of the book, and it’s too inconvenient, not to mention distracting.
Last weekend kind of optimised the distraction, when I appeared again on BBC Radio Sheffield for an hour-long discussion show. It was in the morning, and my brain was fried from two days of intense drafting. That I managed to string together a coherent sentence on air was surprising, that I managed to do it more than once is fiction. I just couldn’t think straight. My arguments were in a mess, my mind fractured on other matters. I was told it went well, though I’m not so sure it did. I felt drained, cranium-fornicated and needed a holiday.
But I won’t get one until late summer, maybe even September.

So, harking back to “why we do what we do”, I’m concentrating less on the promotion side of things for the time being, and more on the writing. I’ll still blog - it’s cathartic – I just need to get these drafts done before my mind turns to porridge.