I’ve fallen for my usual trick.  I’m writing the wrong book again, or at least not the one I’d intended.  I have a complete first draft of what I plan to be the next ‘Saltbury’ novel: ‘History Girls’, and what I need to do now is edit the near gibberish my first drafts always seem to emerge as, into nice clear English that can go to the editor.  It’s a job that usually takes between a couple of weeks and a month depending on the length of the book and just how bad my initial language was.

So what am I really doing?  My mind has been full instead of ideas for the book after that: ‘Martine’.  I already have seventy thousand words written and it’s just pouring out with no sign yet of the dreaded writer’s block.  I woke up this morning and straight away grabbed the note book that lives by my bed.  The ideas were coming faster than I can write, and by the time I actually got up (well apart from making a lot of cups of coffee), I’d filled forty pages.

Oh well, if all else fails, I can always reverse the order in which the two books appear.  ‘Martine’ is a prequel, by the way: one of two I’m planning.  It tells the story of how my central character Hazel’s lesbian Mums first got together in the 1970s and guess what, the story that’s emerging isn’t quite the one I’d planned.  Twas ever thus!