My writing week: Issue 46, Year 4.

Hi all,

I’ve nearly finished my Christmas shopping. I just hope the Book Depository keeps their promise of delivering within seven to ten working days. I used the Book Depository because my local books shop did not have the audio books I was after and I loath crowded shops.

I cringe at the thought of shops full of old people who have parked their electric vehicles, trolleys and fat bums across aisles. My head hurts at the thought of listening to Paul McCartney sing over and over how wonderful Christmas is. I sympathise with Harry’s in The Slap every time I am stuck in a queue with a parent who seems to have no intention of stopping their kid from screaming.

It seems that I have become a real Christmas grouch. Apart from being an atheist, except when I visit my father’s grave, I think the Christmas spirit could do with a good Marxist reboot. I think Christmas would be much happier time for all if we all it we just forgot about the gift giving (even retailers. Consumers will then spend more evenly during the year and wouldn’t return piles of unwanted gifts). There would also be fewer no-longer-cute-and-cuddly-puppies discarded in the months after Christmas.   

Christmas shopping also interferes with writing and thinking about writing. My goal last week, the first full week after NaNoWriMo, was to write 7,000 words. I completely blame Christmas shopping for not achieving that goal.

I started the week okay with 1040 words on Monday. But then on Tuesday, I spent too much time in Big W looking for some DVD’s that they didn’t have. When I finally got home I only had time to write 440 words.

On Wednesday, I wrote 1127 words, even after being side tracked into writing a review of Ian Irvine’s, The Last Albatross. On Thursday, I was back proving that except for food and grog, the retailers in Wang sell absolutely nothing I want to buy. They should spruik Wang as a great place to save. When I finally got home, I ended up writing 750 words. Friday, was my best writing day of the week, just, with 1130 words.

I had decided to only write if I really had to on the weekends. On Saturday, it was back to skulking around the shops. At last I found a present for my sister, yay. Relieved of Christmas gift agonies, my thoughts instantly returned to my novel and changes that needed to be made. I just had to do some deleting and then writing when I got home. I wrote 550 words for the day. On Sunday, exhausted from Christmas shopping, I took it easy and only wrote 220 words.

All up I wrote 5037 words for the week. I had written 55,600 words of the novel and was in the middle of chapter 27. Now if it wasn’t for Christmas…

Scribe abandons trade paperbacks.

I am a bit behind in my newspaper reading, so my outrage at Scribe is about six weeks late. According to the Bookmarks column in The Age on the 29^th of October, Scribe has abandoned the trade paperback. Fools. Most of the new books I buy and am given for Christmas are trade paperbacks. I buy them because they have bigger print than paperbacks and are cheaper than hard-backs and look better on my bookshelves than paperbacks. It looks like I will be buying less books and getting less Christmas gifts published by Scribe.