Mid October

No, not finished yet - the novel that is. 
And the natural world outside the back door is perturbed and shocked at the blast of summer heat that came out of nowhere & will be gone tomorrow.  Not for long though.  The days are warming & after a coolish, hopefully more than damp week, we're back into the high twenties for next weekend.  Summer approaches.  Inexorable, not wanted, dreaded.  Many of the plants are wilting.  It is, perhaps, a little too soon for this sort of temperature & I'm just hoping it's not a repeat of last summer which started about now (though the rain had already disappeared) and didn't go down below 30 till at least mid May.  It was still in the thirties in Mud April.  An unpleasant summer.  A harbinger of things to come.  My novel in the flesh, so to speak.

Ah - the novel?  Well, it progresses, though it will need cutting back.  I tend to overwrite and prune later & not sure whether that's the best thing or whether a sketch is best first.  But, although I love drawing, and always start with a sketch (as opposed to an outright plan - though in the oil paintings still in progress, I completed detailed drawings before even getting the brushes and tubes of paint out of storage), in writing I just go hell for leather as it were.  Though, if I am doing a pencil drawing it's the same.  Both start with the blank page which gets filled in, following the writing/drawing along its own logical plane without planing ahead.  Obviously, conscious choices get made along the way, but it all seems to be done subliminally to that self-conciousness that can stuff up so much.

What a fascinating little realization: that my writing's like my pencil drawings :-D

Next time, I shall publish some photos