Random Pen

Jacob and the redhead have left the bar, but what of the fat girl in the purple fishnets?
I put her in for a bit of an ironic chuckle, but Christ, doesn’t she deserve better?
It’s her ad that’s set this whole thing in motion. Our embryos wouldn’t have been conceived without her. Oh yes, I haven’t told you they’re twins. You won’t find out for ages.
Anyway, I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of purple fishnets.

I literally had no idea before I started writing what I was going to write. The voice surprised me. It was rather opinionated – and they weren’t my opinions. Odd. The picture of the mother that emerges from the embryo-narrator, well, it resembles a rather jaded view of me.
But the father, where does he come from? Literally, from the other side of the Atlantic. I chose Washington, I suppose, because I have been there and it’s in the news, what with Obama.
I think as well that I’ve been subconsciously influenced by reading The Time Traveller the autobiography of black physicist Ron Mallet. I don’t mean that Jacob W is Ron, just that reading that book opened up imaginative pathways to the experience of a black American scientist. Jacon W is part-Jewish and I think that’s probably influenced by Obama’s mixed heritage.
On a more philosophical note, I am studying, as part of my PhD, different epistemologies and I have been struck by the limiting subjectivism of, for example, certain sorts of feminism. What I mean is those claims that you can know what you haven’t experienced. I reject this idea. I think it’s antithetical to all the good things we can achieve through creative imagination. So I think perhaps Jacob W is a challenge I have thrown out to myself. Can I create a convincing character who is all the things I am not? Black, American, male, Jewish, religious, scientist – oh, and married. You haven’t learnt that yet, but you will when he touches down.

I suddenly thought: Chinese New Year – year of the Ox, symbolising persistence, obduracy, endurance – why not beging a new novel-in-a-year from Conception to Delivery.
I turned the page and began writing:
ox1dgen

Well, I did my first day: 2283 words of Montjoyesse. I have almost done nothing else today except write and type it up, and buy a newspaper. is this how the month will go on? will it be so bad if I achievce nothing else but a 60-word novel for young adults?

My friend is about to embark on online dating, and it sets me thinking.
I read a lovely book A Round-heeled Woman – how I admired her for going after what she wanted.
And yesterday in the library I read about a female tv presenter who ended her 7-year ‘drought’.
Which gave me an idea for the Ideas Book: crone-lit. It’s like chicklit for the over-50’s. I thought about a kind of Mallory Towers 40 years on.
4 Marys (or whatever I choose to call them) meet up at a Friends Reunited reunion and discover they are all suddenly single and resolve to Make a Plan like they used to back in the day.
4 Gs and a Dog (like the Famous Five): Gerry George Goldie and Gabby.
there can be flashbacks to them at school.
I haven’t really got a plot but “When shall we four meet again?” …
maybe there’s one who is very innocent and virginal and needs to be educated in the ways of sex.
And one who’s been-there-done-that-got-the-piercing, but is nursing a secret hurt.

Well I got it up by the deadline – ish!

I have spent the next couple of weeks Facebooking, asking everyone I know to look at the site. I’m going to try to systematise my promotional efforts. First thing, set up a  promotional blog.

I have progressed on the Chez-swann stuff. If I keep it up for another – 17 hours – I can see myself getting it done. I was just lying here thinking of cliff-hangers to end the second season. And the way things link up: Moo and Shiv and the arms fair; Phil and Archie’s secrets; Noor and the Christmas connection; Deedee ‘seeing things’; and Rosie walking innocently into a kidnap after visiting the Pipeline Company.

30/05/08:

11.30 : start typing

17.21: go for a little snoozette

18.30: back at the wheel

break for pizza delivery and QI

Newsnight

final fiddles

00.11 time for bed

So it’s 30 hours and counting down.

I have got Season 1 up. I have done two sisters of season 2. Just five moore to go.