Well, I’m glad I made the most of my two lovely, drifty weeks without a deadline glowering on the horizon.  On Saturday I made the foolish mistake (or possibly extremely sensible decision) of sitting down and typing out a timetable for the next book (the one inspired by the story not told in Made of Honour)  I took out nine days when I’ll be walking round the Isle of Wight in June, and another four next week when my mother, aunt and cousin are visiting  for a major birthday celebration, and then was aghast to find out that I was left with precisely 33 (now 32) days in which to write an entire book from scratch.  This includes time when I also have to finish a separate major editing project, and prepare a workshop for the RWA conference in San Francisco.  Saturday saw a lot of gulping going on, I can tell you … and I made a very brisk start on the rough draft!  There’s nothing like a shot of adrenalin every now and then.

Part of me almost wishes I hadn’t realised how little time I had.  I could at least have waited until I had finished tidying my study, a job that has been needing to be done for at least five years. Every time I get an edition in a foreign language, I put one on the shelf for a while and chuck the other into a cupboard, but the cupboard has been literally bulging for a very long time now. I finally got around to emailing some libraries, hospitals and language centres to ask if anyone would like some of these books, and in the hope that someone would say yes, got as far as dividing them into different languages.  Now my study floor is littered with books, as you can see, and is in a far worse state than before I started.  And of course, now I’m in a tizzy because I haven’t got time to sort it out, but I will have to do something about it before next week as this is technically my second spare room and poor Jenny is going to have to sleep in here …

I’m someone who likes a calm, ordered environment, and I don’t function well in mess, in spite of the fact that my desk is usually a jumble of papers, pens, letters, bills, books, tweezers, tippex, emery boards and nail polishes.  The piles of books behind me are really bugging me, and I know I won’t be able to settle to the new book until I’ve done something with them.  Still, there’s not much more I can do tonight, so it’s back to the rough draft.  The target for today is to get to page 20 of the rough draft (that’s about to the end of chapter 5) By the time you read this, I should be well on my way (and if I’m not, there’ll be trouble …)