Tuesday 25th June

Every so often you have to pick yourself up, give yourself a good shake and declare a new start.  Otherwise we would just sink into the depths of depression, or even further deeper – depending on your point of view.  A new start is what is needed.  A new way of looking at things, even if it is mostly an illusion, at least for a few days you can deceive yourself into believing that things are getting better.

I have stopped laboring on the second book (always harder than the first) and have sent it off to be reviewed by a Literary Editor, though exactly what credentials she really has I am not sure.  It is simply another and possibly more critical pair of eyes.  And truth to tell I was getting tired of the thing myself.   I had forced myself to read and re-read it, write and re-write it, trying to sprinkle a little fairy dust on it, to expunge some of those slightly turgid sections and to expand where I felt it needed it too.  And I almost know it off by heart now I have looked at it so long.  And I have lost all ability to see if any of it is any good anymore.  So, a fresh pair of eyes, which hopefully will not tell me it is complete rubbish, but may suggest improvements and crucially, give me enough enthusiasm to make them.

But just as important it takes the thing away from me.  It also frees me up to start writing something else.  I have decided to exhume a bit of writing I did about a year or so ago.  It is a psychological thriller (or will be) set in the not too distant future.  Maybe a modern 1984, who knows.  Anyway I am going to give it a go.  A new start.

As for the rest of my life.  Well, like most of us a lot is already mapped out, dates in the diary, holidays scheduled and so forth.  But I am trying to think just a little bit further down the road than that. I will shortly be down, by my own request, to three days a week.  So the challenge will be to not fritter that extra day away completely.  I need to make that extra day a new start.