Tuesday 20 July 2010

Another scorching hot day

I don't get much done in the heat. I drove to the next shopping centre and had a look at the sales. It was really cool in the store - empty of customers, but full of junk. Very disappointing. No bargains worthy of the name. The supermarket had run out of mineral water. Very annoying. On the way home I did some shopping for the fridge and cats, then came home and threw myself on the sofa for a very protracted siesta, after which I have been groggy all evening. I'm now on strong coffee to regain my equalibrium before...... going to bed.
I'm revising a book I've written. I'm now about half way through after printing all 107,000 words of it. Amazing how much easier editing is on paper than on the screen. I work on a few pages every night before going to sleep and enter the corrections next day on screen. I'm relieved that the newer parts of the book are better written than the old bits, which have been adapted from an earlier opus that was published but eventually scrapped by the publisher who bought my publisher out. Mine wasn't the only project to suffer, but I'd already started on a sequel and decided to put it all into one novel. It's been tremendous fun writing it but it's taken donkey's years and a mammoth effort to finish it. Living in Germany, I see it as compensation for lack of communication in English and it is a bit like having a secret life, although the book is fictional and not at all autobiographical. I plan to start a new novel using some of the characters. One is a hobby sleuth and I think she has possibilities. Another is an Austrian who will be living in my fictional village after making it up with his estranged wife. I think I'll get him sleuthing as well, but I must finish editing the other stuff first. 
I joined linkedin, which has numerous interesting groups. Living in Germany is OK except for the lack of contacts to writers and other artists. I don't know how Germans organize these things. I've been living here 44 years and still don't know how people tick here. I'll probably never find out. Anyway, a writing group would be writing in German and that doesn't interest me as an art form. 
So I'm a loner and likely to remain one, confiding in my blogs and books and trying to be philosophical...  

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