Day 343

When I woke up this morning after about three hours sleep (A had a late shift last night that over-ran, and I didn’t get to bed till about 3, and then couldn’t get to sleep), managed to feel human, and got some work done, I thought maybe it’s time for a bit of narrative rather than poetry, and almost clicked on the button to take me here to start writing. But then I got distracted by something, and now it’s a lot later (almost 12 hours in fact), and I’m only just sitting down and taking a breath (although I suppose my weekly call with Colonel L counts as drawing breath and chilling, too). I could quite easily have made that sentence even longer, but relented after an internal dialogue. I’m not Morrissey, after all, in more than one way.

As I sit here, I’m listening to the final version of Not Nul Points XXI – 2022. I had already burned my first draft of it on Wednesday night, then listened to it on my portable CD player (my stereo is in what is now temporarily O’s room). And didn’t like it. So I went through it all again, binned the opening song of the whole collection, swapped some tracks round, added one, and then it was the way it should be. There has to be politics. There has to be social commentary. Good music is about politics and/or love. To an extent that was missing from last year’s although, in hindsight, some of it has become retrospectively political. And the cover is designed, and copies printed and cut to size, and most of the CDs required are burned. Now I just need to get my act together and write cards, and send the thiings out. They’ll never get to where they’re going in time for Christmas. The government has seen to that. There. Decide on the rest of that particular narrative for yourselves. If you come to a conclusion different to mine, you’re probably not the person to be reading this. I’m catching a bus into London on Wednesday for work so I don’t have to cross a picket line…

Whilst I was staying up last night to go pick up A, I wrote two Aggie chapters starting at 23:59 (that’s important to note because I named the file after the date on which I started it). I can sense a certain reluctance in myself, and in the characters, to bring the book to its conclusion, sense a certain degree of putting off decisions and actions, stopping the night from approaching and passing, because the denouement will happen the next day. But there are only 22 writing days left to draw the novel to its conclusion, which if course is not yet known to me or to the characters, least of all Aggie herself. It’s a weird position to be in. And it feels very strange, this one particular novel, because I’ve written it on a daily basis, short chapter by short chapter, almost as part of my everyday life rather than as something that’s separate from my daily life (which all my other books have been, in effect, because it’s beenall about shutting out the “real” world and focusing on creation and complexity rather than being a part of the journey – I’m probably not explaining that very well, although I know what I mean and feel. I may feel more bereft when I’ve finished this than I have done with any of the other books I’ve written. Although part of me will be relieved that I will no longer have a distraction from completing The Mortality Code.

Perhaps next year I should start my blogged novel halfway through the year so that coming up to its ending won’t coincide with the busiest time of the year in my work life and my personal life. Perhaps. Or maybe I’ll take a year off writing and focus on marketing and publishing and recording spoke word pieces. Now that’s an idea.