Sharp Words

Well, I’m flying fairly well through my actual writing now. I churned out over 4,400 words on Sunday, which brought me ahead of my daily goal, and I’m still ahead even though I haven’t actually written much today. (I need to cram in 1000 words before I go to bed, which isn’t impossible.)

Had a good meeting in Belfast on Monday evening, with a very acceptable turnout and an excellent cheese&chicken toastie. We were in Undaground (maybe with that spelling, it’s the wrong place for novellists to be though) which is near my work, and turned out to be pretty handy for everyone, so we’ll be there again next week.

Then today, Ian Sansom at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry (Queen’s University Belfast) held the first of his weekly sessions. It was highly entertaining and very useful, covering why he thinks NaNoWriMo is a good idea, and why we shouldn’t let ‘specious barriers’ (his term) stop us from writing.

We had both the radio mikes and TV cameras in too, for Radio Ulster’s Book Programme (next Saturday) and UTV Life (Thursday, hopefully). I’m also being interviewed live tomorrow morning on Radio Ulster’s Good Morning show – it was supposed to happen this morning, but the US election took precedence.   Radio-taped interviews are fine; TV-taped interviews are horrible (especially with a big spot on my nose); and the idea of a live radio interview, even over the phone, is making me nervous.

I’m sure it’ll all be fine… and it’s great publicity!