Finding new writing habits

So the summer holidays are nearly upon us, they effectively are really as Boy Lacer finished playgroup last week and that means no more writing mornings. Writing on Tuesday and Thursday mornings has become so ingrained, it feels odd when I don’t do it, but I need to find different times now and I am going to have to be a lot more flexible in finding them if I want to get any work on my novel done between now and 21st September (when Boy Lacer goes to nursery). I could, for example, be writing right now, but I have spent the last hour faffing round on the internet and playing Uno on my iPhone, I could have got a 1000 words done in that time. Girl Lacer is at a party and Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer are watching Kung Fu Panda, so there has been absolutely no danger of me being interrupted, but I still couldn’t do it (and can’t now, will have to go and cook tea in a minute). And although part of the problem is that I’m at a stage in the novel where I’m about to do a complete scene switch, taking the action away from the city where most of the book has taken place so far, and into the desert and I’m nervous about doing the switch successfully, the real reason is, I think, because I’m not alone, I can hear the movie on in the other room and the occasional chatter from Boy Lacer and I worryingly can’t seem to get into the mind set to do work when I can hear other people around, which will be a problem, as I say, until the 21st September. Can my work-in-progress survive that long with me not working on it? I doubt it, I’ll loose all impetuous.

The Alchemist’s Daughter

I went on a bit of a cheap book buying splurge in Smiths a few weeks ago, it was surprising or perhaps unsurprising how many heavily discounted books there were by previous Richard and Judy writers, I’d heard that that was the case, that people were buying Richard and Judy bookclub books but not going onto buying other books by the Richard and Judy authors, well not in droves anyway.

So amongst others I brought The Alchemist’s Daughter by Katherine McMahon, I had previously read her The Rose of Sebastopol, which I had enjoyed. McMahon’s main character in The Alchemist’s Daughter, Emilie, was far less sympathetic however, but that may have been my older maturer self judging the actions of a reckless teenager harshly, but for a good chunk of the book I wanted to grip Emilie round the shoulders and go “can’t you see what you’re doing? You stupid girl”. However much as Emilie’s actions are annoying, they are understandable, kept enclosed with her alchemist father, of course she’s going to fall for the first flash in his pants that gallops through her village. Makes me glad that I’m a woman in the 21st century though, as women in the 18th century, particularly those it seems of either a higher class or a particularly lower class were essentially powerless (whereas women like the character Mrs. Gill, Emilie’s housekeeper, being inbetween, seemed to have more autonomy).

I liked this book, but it didn’t light any particularly great fires for me, so in the end I stayed up deliberately late last night to finish it, just to get it over and done with, take that for what you will, the fact that I wanted it over and done with versus that I did manage to stay awake till 1.30am reading it!